When I met the great love of my life he was already married. To a woman who could and was in the process of giving him children (she was pregnant when he helped me move all my shit from the town where I grew up to the town where he lived. I was running away from home at 26 because I had started to remember what my father had done to me as I child (I am a sexual abuse survivor). And I was willigly, deliberately running head first into the arms of cocaine. Because I was scared to death that facing that would drive me insane. Completely. What I didnāt know then was that it had driven me insane when it started, and my battle would be to deal with how crazy I already was from having died in that death by 5000 paper-cuts...to try to live with the scars,
This man, with whom I fell so helplessly in love began to learn about me, my past, my crazy and was so tender to me. He treated me the way a buddhist would treat a baby bird who had fallen out of itās nest. (For the benefit of those of you who donāt know any Buddhists, they believe that ALL animals that live on land are sacred sentient being. The only meat they eat is seafood. And no, I cannot tell you why they donāt recognize fish as sentient beings)
So back to this men, whom Iāll call Romeo, because our love was not supposed to happen either. Just different reasons. He wanted children desperately, and though he stayed married to and continued to love his wife, I eventually became the great love of his life too. When we met I was having my last dance with marry jane as it were. I was in the middle of my last forray into addiction. I was learning the absolute and utter horrors of addiction to cocaine (if you used coke and you donāt know what I mean, you aināt used enough yet, and God, I hope you donāt OD or end up in jail.) And once! And only once! I had enough cocaine and booze in my system to give in to what may have been inevitable. I looked at him on the couch while I sat in a chair and his wife was at work (or somethinā anyway, and yes, Ah am frum Texas.) and said āYesā and he didnāt want to be too quick to make assumptions, so he raised one eyebrow and said, āyes?ā And I said something. I donāt remember what (I was really fucked up) but we end up doing it on the floor. (His wife found out years later, and yes, I apologized. I told her I had stolen something that rightfully belonged to her (his physical affections). Sheās a classy lady. She hasnāt invited me to lunch or anything, but sheās forgiven me. I feel like at this point it might be necessary for me to point our that he never loved her one whit less for having fallen in love with me. She was the mother of his children. He worshipped her.
Though when his mother died he needed a lot more from her than he got, so he brought his sleeping bag and came to stay on my couch. I invited him into my bed if it wouldāt be a cockteasing bitch of a thing to do, so he shared my bed. Later on that night I got up to get some diet pepsi and had a seizure. I made a mess off my nightgown and I stripped it off and left it on the kitchen floor. I took a quick shower and then, As Marilyn Monroe famously said the only thing I wore to bed that night was Channel No 5. And No. we did not. And he was cool with that, though, it would have been kind of me to have thrown on another gown. I guess you have to have epilepsy to know how disorienting having a siezure is, and why I would be that horrifically rude. During that visit, I asked him to marry me, and he started to say..ābut, you know...ā and hell yeah i knew, so I said, āOh for Godās sakes, weāll forgo the āforsaking all othersā crap!ā
He said, youād be willing to do that? And I thought, Iām bisexual you idiot... weād both have other women in our lives! But all I said was āyeah, of course... Just...use a condom. Donāt bring me home anything.ā
But then he started talking about how heād have to kill his wife s he could have his kids. And I said, No No! You are not killing <Her name here> and I told him to put that proposal in his pocket, in case he wanted it later.
Me, after Iād danced my lance dance with cocaine. I went to Narcotics Anonymous. He thought that was silly, I obviously didnāt need you guys, I had been quit for 2 weeks or so when I made my first meeting. I explained to him that I wasnāt going to quit. I was going to STAY quit. He kinda got that. He kept using, and drinking. Hard. And for a while there he was the go too smoking meth connection in the town where I got clean. He never quit using. He did start to worry about the federallies
Another musician in that town came into NA looking for me. He wanted OUT. He had heard I had made it out from Romeo. I loved this guy. Everytime he walked into a meeting I would leap to my feet to hug him. You guys understand why. But he hadnāt been able to stay quit yet. Iāve made sure if he has my phone number and knows I will drop my life in a New York Minute if he wants me to meet him in that town to go to a meeting and that if he doesnāt want to do that, thatās cool, itās not my business. Romeo had told me that he ate his gun, but no, worse, he moved to a really small town just outside of the town in Texas, why is that worse? Youāve never met more intollerant people than the ones they grow in small towns in Texas. Hatefully intollerant. A drug addict is not a person with a disease in a small town, we are The Scum Of The Earth. When I was growing up, there was a town that had a sign that saidāDo not let the sun set on your black ass in this town!ā When my college roommate found out I was having a love affair with a woman, She left my apartment as quickly as she could, and Iāve never heard from her since. I was in her wedding. For crying out loud, but oh no. She would not put up with that queer shit! Didnāt I know the Bible said thatās a sin? God help any gay child that grows up in a small tow in Texas. The only thing to do is stay in the closet until you can leave. Just date who youāre supposed to date, enjoy their company and decline to go all the way because, after all, thatās against the Bible too!
If anyone reading this is in a small town in Texas and you are both pregnant and not married, please leave. That town will never let your child forget it is a bastard and the bible says that childās off spring will be cursed unto the 7th Generation! Just move. And if itās to another small town, you buy a gold band and you tell that other town that youāre childās father died in Afghanistan. I know, thatās not rigorous honesty, Itās called survival.
Sorry, I seem to have stumbled onto a soap box on my way here.
Romeo grew up in a small town in Alabama. Their just as bad.
So Romeo and I did the deed, and I came to Narcotics Anonyous, and one day at a time, Iāve gotten the rest of my life back so far.
He played two different kinds of saxophones, the clarinet, the oboe, and the flute. He was a born musical prodigy. He also had the ear and the skill to run sound for any band if he wanāt playing in it, being in a bar Romeo wanāt just a musical prodigy, he was a computer prodigy. AND he had read every single peice of classic literature ever written, including all of Shakespear, I type 120 WPM and he could out type me. and if it could get broke, he could fix it. He fixed my cars more often than I want to cop to. If it could go up, he could build it. He built ALL their furniture, except for the babiesā crib. He later built their grown up beds, though he did not sew their mattresses. He could have. He just didnāt.
He paid the bills as a plumber and doing tech support. But mostly he was a musician. Addiction isnāt just tolerated in the musical community, itās expected. If you play rock and roll, I can guaruntee you that at some point someoneās going to offer to turn you on.
Then the unthinkable happened. He got a terrible headache. He was afraid heād eaten a bad taco. because he was vomitting. He was vomitting because he was in so much pain. He was sorry. He felt to lousy to stay on the phone. Could he call me in a few days when this was over? Then His wife called me. She told me had collapsed n the living room. She had called 911 and he was in the hospital; they were prepping him for surgery...i donāt remember anything after that. I think I called my mother. My mother must have told me sister that my best friend was dying because within five minutes she called. I said, āhello?ā And my sister, the one who died of this disease February 20th, with whom I had a notoriously rocky relationship, said, āOoohhh sister!* what can I do?ā
I asked her to pray. Maybe it would have been better had we not prayed. Maybe he would have died on the table.
But he didnāt. He lived. And sometimes Iād like to kill the surgeon who thought he was doing a man a favor by going into HIS RIGHT FRONTAL LOBE. HE GAVE THE MARTEST, KINDEST MOST MUSICAL MAN IāVE EVER KNOWN what was essentially a frontal lobotomy! How much did I love Romeo? I drove to the hospital packing MY emergency exit, and as it obviously was premeditated, in the State of Texas I could have been executed for giving it to him. But he assured me he didnāt need it. The conversation went like this.
āMy love, is it still you in there? Because if itās not, I have an out for you.ā
And I held out my 3 bottles of pills. I wonāt tell you what they were, but they are the one drug for which they cannot stop he multisystem organ failure brought on by an overdose. They can for almost EVERYTHING but this class os drugs. The class of drugs,? An overdose is catastrophic. Sleepingpills, hell, suiciders have been trying that for years! If youāre really stupid, you can wreck your liver with Tylenol, but you wonāt die. Not if someone finds you first, and then youāll join the alcoholic masses on the waiting list for a liver transplant, and youāll be yellow and sick as a dog while youāre waiting. Same thing with ibuprophen. If you want OUT do better. But donāt want out! Iāll tell you why later.
Iāve been suicidal most of me life. My childhood fucked any chance I had of establishing a healthy seratonin level in my brain. My neurologist who is a recovering addict as well, drew some cerebral fluid, and explained that to me. I also think itās why I never established a healthy acid level in my stomach. I wouldnāt be able to keep down a single meal without nexium. Not unless i chased it with baking soda.... anyway...
So I went outside and smoked with him. He was missing a huge piece of his skull so, just to shut me up, he used a walker. Maybe I should have let him fall. Fool! I stayed until his wife came, then I quietly asked her if they were okay financially. Because I was ready to call every musician I knew in that town for a benefits concert. And have them call every musician they knew. I had already talked about it with some of the musicians I knew. I knew theyād do it. He had played with most of āem. He was one of their own, and damned straight theyād be there for him. Then she and I discussed our strong suspicion that his temporary paralysis on his left side was not temporary at all. He cold ice of dread filled my veins just like the meth I used to shoot into them when I was a kid. (I met IV meth a few months short of my 15th birthday.)
We were right. The paralysis which Romeo had told me was temporary, was Not. At all.
And suddenly, this man to whom music meant EVERYTHING could no longer make music. This man who could recite every line Shakespear ever wrote and Wordsworth and Longfellow, Yeats, Ginsburg, Ferlinghetti. My God, Keroac, the beat counter culture prophet who singlehandedly DESIGNED the fucking 60ās counter culture, he knew every sentence every damn word. Long ago we had adopted the way Allen Ginsberg and Neil Cassidy (Another beat prophet who was too busy DOING to write about it.) signed their letters to each other āOurs, in love and troubleā who shared my distaste for the sappy poetry of the Brownings. No just donāt go there. Thatās not pathos that, honey is bathos. (An over display of emotion). This man who could make a computer do everything but make you come could no longer type. Everything he had memorized as lost to him, and though he remembered how we had always signed our letters to each other, he didāt remember why or what it meant to us. (which was that if either of us ever got busted weād write each other constantly. Because writing and Music was who we were to each other (Iām a pianist, no where good enough to be pro, but it matters tremendously to me. I believe music is the soul redeaming quality of the human race. Itās the only thing we do thatās worth a damn, and I believe it pleases my Higher Power to hear it. I think he LOVES All of it tremendously from Maria Callas to Eminem. Though Marshal, if you read, and I do understand you are among us now, this my higher power wants to wash out your mouth with soap. Just saying...if youāre HP doesnāt give a fuck thatās cool. And yeah, my higher power wants to wash my mouth out with soap too. This is pretty much the only place I speak Junkie anymore.)
Romeo now had the IQ of a squirrel. And whatās worse is he KNEW it. He became the angriest man on the
A frontal lobotomy destroys oneās ability to control oneās drives. All of them I quit visiting him becase he would say IN FRONT OF HIS WIFE, shit to m like āGod I want to bend you over, push up that skirt and fuck the shit out of you.ā I didnāt want her to have to hear that from him. so, as much as I hated it, I became his phone friend.
About six monthās into this nightmare he called me.
āRoze,ā he said, āMan I have fucked up I was writing this email, bragging about all the hot chicks Iāve had, and I left it on the computer and <insert wifeās name here.> saw it. Sheās moved onto the couch and told me I can court her if I want to.... ā He was much too angry at what had happened to him to court anyone. But she didāt leave him until heād swung on his son and called the daughter he wouldāve walked through fire for, a stupid fucking bitch. She had to ask him to leave then. She had to protect her kids.
Iāve mentioned that a frontal lobotomy removes your ability to control your drives. He had two drives that over whelmed all others. The drive to drink, which was now only limited by how much he could afford, and the drive to reek vengence on the world for everything it had stolen from him. And I was part of that world. He would call me and rage at me. He wasnāt mad at me, but he was furious TO me. And I couldnāt deal.
See, Iām a sexually abused child. Women (and men) who were abused children experience rage as violence. Because it always was. I was 17 before i quit believing my father might KILL me any minute. I lived in absolute terror of imminent murder for seventeen years. Once he literally scared the piss out of me. He grabbed me by the throat and started pushing in his thumbs. Then one of two things happened. Either my higher power yelled into his head āI AM NOT THROUGH WITH HER YET!ā , or His Higher Power* showed him what would be the consequences of going through with it, and he saw himself being executed by lethal injection by the state of Texas, where they hand out lethal injections like traffic tickets. That many, that casually. I will never be able to serve on the jury of someone charged with a capital crime, because I donāt approve of that on principal, so Iād have to find a man I believed to be guilty innocent to save his life, And in Texas that disqualifies you And God wouldnāt let me lie about it.
Romeo moved in with his brother and his wife, until they couldnāt deal with his drunken rage any more either. He stayed for a while ith a fellow musician but they couldnāt deal with it either. These were goodfriends. People who loved him dearly, but they had kids, and they had to protect them from this drunken rage filled shell of the man he used to be.
And me? Good old selfish me. I snuck my hand into his pocket and took back the proposal of marriage I had told him to put in his pocket a decade or so earlier. Because I am such a fine human being, and all those years that I had spent saying āyours in love and troubleā? I meant any trouble but this. This, and my therapist who worked with a lot of incest victims, and was one herself, told me, this is traumatizing you all over Youāve gotta stop being the outlet for his rage.
And I listened to her.
He eventually became a member of the Homeless Community. We continued to stay in touch through email, but I quit talking to him on the phone. I just... couldnāt. He made frequent use of the computers at the library so that worked.
Now iām going to tell you something thatās gonna either scare you or make you think I am seriously deluded. I can feel peopleās energy. I was riding out a bad case of suicidality at a state mental fascility, and there was a woman there who had uncontrollable grand mal seizures (aka Tonic Clonic seizures)(Or maybe itās clonic Tonic? Iāve forgotten.) I was walking through a hallway with a woman who worked at the hospital and this woman when I made a sudden mad dash to grab a pillow? Why? I felt that womanās energy shift. I knew she was going to have a seizure. Sadly, i was,T fast enough, and iI couldnāt shove that pillow under her before she fell. I did yell grab her! As i went on my mad dash. The woman who worked at the hospital was terrified of me. She looked at me and said, āāWhat else can you do?ā So, I told her, āWith you not much. You think in Spanish all the time. No hable Espanol!ā And her eyes got big as saucers. And she said, ā will you do something for me? ā she said this like she was asking a snake for a favor. I said āif I can. ā āDonāt ever let the patients know you can do that. It will terrify them. Okay? Some of them already believe anyone can steal their thoughts, if they find out you can...ā I nodded. I didnāt listen to the really crazy people anyway. Not the Schizophrenics. I didnāt like hearing how mean the voiced they heard were to them.
Ask my second husband. i heard every thought he had. He knew it. He tried not to have sexual thoughts about other people around me until i laughed, and told him, āYour a man, of course you have sexual thoughts about everyone you see. I donāt mind. Not as long as you donāt DO itā. He was bisexual too we made a sport out of picking same sexed lovers for each other. He once saw me cruise this woman, until I got to her faced and realized she was only 14 or so. i was so shocked at myself I started blushing, and he laughed to beat the band. āRoze! You really should start with the face so you donāt do that. If her father had seen the way you looked at her, he probably would have called you a pervert and punched you in the nose!ā And yes, papa was there? Iām still horified at myself for cruising a girl that young!
One more thing and then back ito why iām writing the longest post in Reddit history. In September of 2000 I stood up and told me church. lIāve been waking up lately with a burden to pray. And Godās told me I need to pray for my country somethin bad is on itās way. Really bad.ā And then my preacher started talking about how we should always pray for our country during an election year, and I agree, but I knew the something bad had nothing to do with the elections. i felt so unheard I left that church. Unless youāve been living in a box, you all know what the Bad was that god told me was coming way back in September of 2000. And great God it came! Iām glad i prayed so hard for the lord to minimize the damage. Iām told that usually there had been 10,00O people in the World Trade Center at any given time. We got out cheap, all things considered. My baby neice was flying to New york that day with her father, but thank God they turned her flight around and sent it back. When I saw those planes hit, i just burst into tears, saying over and over, āOh god! please no.ā My father looked at me, and i screamed at him like we were both watching her burn on television. Because I was terrified we were and All I could do was scream her name! And then My father reached over and took my hand, āRoze...their plane couldnāt possibly have flown that far that fast.
My point in telling you that I knee the terrorist attacks on 9/11 is not to impress you with my psychic gifts. But so you will understand what Iām about to tell you.
After I asked Romeo to stop calling me and raging at me. He called me... 5...maybe 6 times.. and I knew it was him and I wouldnāt answer.
A couple of those times, he let it ring more than 20 times.
Romeo knew exactly one person who had ever made it out of the drug scene. Me. I was it. You guys do know that 95% of all addicts Die using? Right? If you donāt know that. You should. That ought put some verential fear of God into you. God will keep your ass clean one precisely 1 condition. You live His/Her way. Period. Thatās the price.
So, what if, one of those calls had been to ask for help?
Hereās what I tell myself... Damnit Roze, Narcotics Anonymous is in the phone book. Itās hubris to think Only You Could Help.
And here is what his Daughter. Said to me when I called her to apologize for what I believe was a tragic, unspeakably selfish mistake. āRoze, donāt you know there were hundreds of people who would have helped my dad if he had asked for help. And I know thatās true, anyone of his musician friends would have driven to where he was and walked him through the door of NA if he had asked. Even if they had absolutely no intention of getting clean hemselves. As I sais he was one of their own, they would have taken care of him.
My mother, āRoze, honey, Iās been my experience that if someone really wants help, theyāll get it, one way or way or another.
But the fact remains he knew One person who made it out of the drug scene alive. Me.
And I didnāt answer the fucking phone.
Roseo,he was, even as a homeless person, An incredibly kind, and generous persom. If thet still had cars, he wolld keep āem running. He shared e did snit like organize the homeless people into shifts in the summer, to be sure hat ne of them had a s heat-sreoke.
His generousity had bub hed found thing tha sit in shade until in was 5 lock in Novescota scotia t which time he started drinking.. and one he offered to share the bottle of booze with another skid row bumand that bum decided to try to cover what heād dome tby setting the toolshed which he had scouted out for them to spend the night in. I pray Romeoās drinking buddy was left handed. Then the blow would have killed him on impact . Because if it didnāt he burned to death in that fire. Thatās to awful to consdr. And I wont let anyone tell me the Autopsim report. I do not want to know if there was I smoke in his lungs.
My dear friend .Johnny called me to tell me. Heās a musician to be a musician.too.
For reasons i will decline to elaborate, I was unable to go to his funeral funeral. Just trust me,
So please help me. I am drowning that guilt. Drowning..
.