For a while now I've been working on a book. I started it before I got sober and used to spend drunken nights writing in my living room. Then I got sober and stopped writing.
Encouraged by my dear friend and one time agent/still my agent if he hasn't given up on me yet I picked up writing again recently. The book is about a woman and her experience getting sober, reflecting on her life and trying to figure out where she is at now. Odd subject for a drunk living room writer.....
I’m falling asleep in group therapy.
The room is basic, off white, plastic chairs, therapist, group of 5 people, all ages, shapes, sizes and you can’t smoke.
Why the heck am I here again?
An older man, Ted, is speaking now, we have to listen and seem attentive. He’s going on about being on tour with The Rolling Stones; getting married at Bob Dylan’s recording studio, blah, blah, blah. He seems pretty open and comfortable with speaking to the group. It’s obvious he’s been here for a while and enjoys listening to himself speak.
I’m the newest member and am still in shock that I’m sitting here listening to people just spill their guts in front of total strangers. Ted is still talking, seems as if maybe he’s had a drinking problem for years, but can’t seem to admit that it’s had an effect on his life. He’s been out of work for a long time, supported by the wife. He spends most of his days re-doing the house they’ve bought in Northern California.
Hearing about The Rolling Stones makes me start to daze off, remembering my one of my first jobs in New York, production and stage managing The Rolling Stones press conference under the Brooklyn Bridge. “Bridges to Babylon” tour, get it, bridges. So incredibly creative these press people are.
Everything was clock work, until the band got out of the car, Mick looked young, Keith, of course looked like death. As I walked them up the path to the stage a speed boat pulled up behind us and an older, and I mean older woman pulled up her top flashing the band. Of course, all motion stopped. Press photographer’s flashes started going off like mad, the band was hysterically laughing, pointing and enjoying the moment, in my headset, the press agent and producers are screaming at the top of their lungs, “get that boat away, get the band on stage, we’ve only got 15 mins to pull this off..”
We got them on stage, everything was fine, the over reaction from everyone in this business is out of control.
Now when I take the train from Brooklyn to Manhattan everyday for work, I see the site where that all took place. I’ve rarely think about it until this moment.
Another member of the group starts speaking, she younger, very pretty, short dirty blond bob, thin frame, big blue eyes, accentuated by lots of slightly 80’s looking eye make-up. Her name is Sandra, she speaks deliberately slow and drawn out with a California valley-girl tone. Apparently her boyfriend Dan was killed in a motor scooter accident. She enjoys cocaine and screwing. I take a wild guess that the might be about 16 years old. Sounds like Sandra likes screwing for money too.
My mind starts to wander again, I’m about 15 years old, Greg, ah, Greg, a handsome, tall, 17 year old with a smile that just hooks you the moment you see it. We met through my friend’s older cousin Lindsay who had a mad crush on Greg one night in the Hollywood Hills while smoking weed on a school night. We flirted, he didn’t go to my school, figured I’d never see him again. Lindsay did not like the attention Greg gave me and let me know it. Greg got my number somehow and we ended up hanging out, well, more like making out one night at a party shortly thereafter.
Then one afternoon Brent a friend of Greg’s who was a senior at my school mentioned in passing that he was going to meet up with Greg later that day and would I like to come hang out, and that Greg really thought I was cool. Fuck yeah, go meet up with a super hot 17 year old guy, I’m 15, I’m in.
Turns out I’m in trouble. We pull up to a hotel on Sunset Blvd, down near the beach, at the moment I’m not questioning anything, seems legit. I did go to a school where we would party at hotels, people borrowed mansions, deserted parking lots, and the hotel didn’t seem like a strange place to be. These kids had money to burn.
Greg’s friend had another idea in mind. He and Greg would both fuck me at this hotel. Terrific, now I’m in a hotel with the two of them, smoking weed when Brent sprouts his incredible idea for a threesome. These guys were each big enough to keep me from leaving. “no way, this is not going to happen, I want you to take me home now” Brent tries to reason with me, “how about if you and Greg fuck and I just watch” this way no one gets hurt. “um, no again, I’m out of here” Having no idea of how I’m going to get back home, the bus, do I even have any money on me?
At this point I’m completely stoned and Greg is caressing my back, kissing my neck, etc. We start making out, Brent watches. I insist that Brent must leave the room if anything is going further, I end up sleeping with Greg, Brent stays in the bathroom with the door closed, I cry the entire time, silently. Greg drives me home.
I run in to Greg when I’m a senior in high school at a nightclub. We end up dating for a summer, we hang out nightly with his family, my family, and my mom ends up giving him a haircut one afternoon. Greg’s brother dates my friend Gina that summer. Then he returns to school in San Diego. It ends; he eventually becomes a high school teacher.
Looking back I think of Brent as a peer –pressure rapist, but not Greg. I wonder how many other insecure girls, needing attention they’ve gotten in that hotel room. I still feel like a whore for that afternoon, then I think, fuck, would I want this guy teaching my high school daughter?
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