NaNoWriMo ends, and the real work begins.
I did it. Can you believe it? After however many days during which I was sick, or exhausted, or just too fragile to delve into the subject matter that makes up “Locked & Cranked,” I actually did it. I broke the 50K mark this morning, and while I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to some degree of relief, the truth is that I don’t feel like I’m anywhere near “done.”
And you know what? That’s a good thing.
I had a few people express some pretty major doubts about me taking this story on so soon after losing Martin, and a big part of me was nodding right along with them. But the rest of me knew that, if I left it any longer, it would never happen. One very dear friend gave me the words I needed to hear on a day when I felt like throwing in the towel; I will never forget how she put it.
Take a deep breath. The book needs to be born now, love, and that’s going to hurt you. Nothing gets born without hurting its mother. But you’ll get through it, and it will be worth it.
She was right. As much as I cried after reading her note to me, I knew she was right. And here I am, on November 30th, able to say that I stuck with it and, I hope, gave myself a good jumping-off point to write this book the way it was meant to be written.
(To read any of what I’ve posted, just browse the “Locked & Cranked” links in the right-hand list, or click on the “Locked & Cranked” tag. And remember that it’s all first draft stuff, and not even in chronological order, before you write me off forever!)
As you all probably know by now, one of the things I put in place so as not to allow myself to falter was the promise of raising money for charity in Martin’s name, once I’d officially “won” NaNo. Initially I’d named only one charity, one that seemed fitting in his memory…but I’d like to add a second option, for anyone who’s interested in donating. The first, of course, is for Suicide Prevention. The second was Martin’s favourite charity, one for which he worked tirelessly every year: the Ride To Conquer Cancer for Princess Margaret Hospital. Right after he passed, countless friends and fans raised the money he himself would have brought to the table, had things gone differently. As a result, the Hospital has a page dedicated to him now.
They’ve titled it, “Martin Streek – What an extraordinary legacy to leave behind.” Yes, indeed. I’m forever grateful that I donated while he was still with us. And I beg of you, please read that page written about him. It’s beautiful.
So, my friends, you may feel a stronger tie to one charity than the other, or maybe, if you were planning to donate $10 in his memory, you’ll want to send $5 to each. It’s all up to you – whether you donate, and where, and how much – while I’m simply acting as a conduit for all of this. It’s my hope that, if everyone is able to go through me, I’ll be able to collect any “In Memory Of…” or “Tribute” cards and have them sent to Martin’s family. This Christmas will be hard for them. I imagine it has to help for them to know how many of us still think about their son and brother every day.
You are, certainly, welcome to donate privately to either cause. But if you’d like to be counted among those whose well-wishes I’ll be extending to the Streek family, there are ways to do that, too.
1) If you have a PayPal account, you can transfer your donation to me (with instructions as far as which charity you’d like which amount to go to, and what name you’d like to appear on the card), and I’ll send it along on your behalf. You can use this button; it’s very simple and safe. Just don’t forget to leave me info, such as your name, when you donate!
2) If you’d like to make a donation on your own, and would like to have a tribute card sent but don’t have an address for Martin’s family, you’re welcome to contact me for my mailing address (via email, comments left here, Facebook, phone…whatever works!), and you can have the cards mailed to me so I can deliver them. The links for both charities are as follows, if you’d like the option of having a tribute card sent:
3) If you’d prefer to handle the donation end of things entirely on your own, but would still like me to write your name down in the card I’ll be sending to the Streeks (assuming that’s okay with them; they are obviously the most important consideration here), contact me via email to let me know where your donation went, and I will add your name and your wishes for the family to the note they’ll receive from me.
Thank you so very much to everyone who offered words of kindness and encouragement throughout the last several months. Without you, not one of those 50,000 words would exist today. I couldn’t have done this alone. Now it’s time for me to keep at it and turn this into the book Martin wanted to read. And while we’re at it, if we can give a little to a cause that would matter to him…that would be nice, too.
“Locked & Cranked”: Meeting Damon Rayne
This was the first time during writing L&C that I’ve had to stop because I started sobbing uncontrollably right in the middle of Ivy’s diary entry. I got my mother to sit up with me at 4 a.m., and I cried in front of her, for the first time since the morning we found out Martin was gone. I sobbed for nearly 2 hours, and I was sure I couldn’t finish writing, even though I was barely 1,000 words in, and I’m still behind in my word count. But I let it all out, and sat back down with my laptop…and somehow managed another 3,400 words. It’s hard to force myself to remember the moments upon which I’m basing these entries. But here it is, all the same. I’m hoping that’ll be my one major breakdown, and that I’ll cross the 50K line on the 30th with a feeling of accomplishment, rather than sorrow.
~~~~~~~~
December 1st, 1997
I can’t believe I’ve waited this long to update you, dear reader! So much has happened!!! Oh, my GOD, so much, so so so much is different now. I never thought that one email could set off such a domino effect and change my LIFE, but, well, here I am!
Where do I start?? Okay…well…I finally printed off that first email I got from Damon, so I’ll put it in here for safe keeping. Whatever happens now, at least I’ll always have this to look back on and smile like an idiot!
To: Ingrid
Date: September 5th, 1997 04:21 EST
From: Damon Rayne
Subject: RE: You don’t know me, but…
Yes….of course I want to read it….send it on…..don’t make me wait…..any longer….
-DR
— Original Message —
To: damon@razr.ca
Date: September 4th, 1997 22:26 EST
From: Ingrid
Subject: You don’t know me, but…
…I thought you might like to know that you’re the reason I got an A on a paper today. I’m sure it sounds kind of insane, since you have no clue who I am, but bear with me. I was given an assignment during the spring term to write a piece of erotica, which I was to turn in at the start of this term (as in, now!). I’d had a pretty uninspired summer, but the one person who managed to get my imagination working was you, even just via the radio waves. So…I took what little I know about you, and what little I’ve seen, and used it as the basis for my piece…and it would seem you’ve served your purpose well, if an 84% is any indication!
Anyway, I suppose this note is just to say thanks. For giving a girl something to think about. And if by some chance you happen to want to read what I wrote, I’m sure I could be persuaded to send it your way.
~I~
Yeah, yeah, I know, I was a chicken to not let him know what my real name is, but Lily and I both agreed that it made just as much sense as anything else that I use the pen name I’ve been using since I was, what, 13? She’s convinced I’ll be famous under that name someday anyway, so why not let my first official piece of work, meant for someone’s eyes other than my professors’, have “Ingrid” blazing across the top, right??
Well, it got a bit complicated…but that’s jumping ahead again. Oh, god, I’ve got butterflies just thinking about this again! And that was two months ago!!! I have a feeling I’ll never stop getting butterflies over this man. Especially now. (Oooh, look at me, the master – or should I say “mistress”? – of foreshadowing! HA!)
Okay, so, I sent it to him. My last entry, as I can see from flipping back a page, was mostly me squealing and scrawling all over the place, not really putting much down for posterity. So the short version is this: HE LOVED IT. What he doesn’t know, of course, is that I actually had to change quite a bit of it from the original version, since the way he looked when I DID meet him on my birthday didn’t quite match up with what I’d written for the assignment. But it’s just as well that he got the new and improved version, since he’s been such an enthusiastic audience…
God, am I jumping around here or what?? But, seriously, dear reader, if you could see this man…you wouldn’t be able to write in order either. Hell, I’m not even sure how I’m holding a pen. Do with THAT what you will!
What I could never have foreseen, despite Lily saying she knew that first message to him was going to start a snowball effect (as if), is that it actually got us – meaning me and Damon (oh my GOD do I ever love even WRITING that) – involved in a regular back-and-forth correspondence via email. And all along, he had no idea that this Ivy chick who would occasionally be at one of his club nights was, in fact, “Ingrid.” I didn’t hide it from him on purpose; I just never really thought it would matter. “Never the twain shall meet,” or however that old saying goes. I’m not sure if I’ve ever been more wrong about anything, unless you count my entire relationship with Jeff, but…forget about that. Ancient history! Onward and upward!
Lily and I have been back to the Cathedral a few times, and we’ve gone with friends to Zenith twice on Damon’s nights (you should see Lil flirting with Leumas – I swear, if it weren’t for her professing her adoration for Charlie with every other breath, I’d be convinced things were heading somewhere mighty intense there…but she says it’s just something to keep her occupied while we’re not tearing up the dance floor, which in all fairness isn’t very often…). And I’ve talked to him – Damon, I mean – a few times, too, since he seems to remember me from my birthday (he must, ‘cos he’s made reference to the fact that I “can’t hold my liquor” more than once, and I can only assume he’s talking about whatever that awful shooter was he bought for me that night… I don’t think he understands how Lil and I can have such an amazing night out every time when we’re only ever drinking ginger ale!). But despite him making me feel like a 12-year-old with a massive crush, and despite the countless times I’ve felt like a moron while trying to make casual conversation about the newest single from whichever group we both love (we have an awful lot of those in common), things have been pretty normal. Casual, even. Just a sort of “hi, how are you?” relationship that he probably has with hundreds of the people who hit his clubs every weekend. And that was enough for me…especially when I’d go home at 3 a.m., and by 4 I’d have an email from him, to “Ingrid,” that was TOTALLY different from how he and I talk when I’m just me. I’ll have to print off the greatest email EVER and put it in here at some point, but suffice it to say that, when I asked him what he thought of my paper, he wrote me quite the lengthy message in return, telling me (in surprisingly not-graphic and gentlemanly terms!) about the “ahem…physical reaction” it had inspired in him. You can just imagine the look on my face while I was reading THAT. I was blushing so much, even though I was all alone at my computer. And then, the first time I saw him in person after that – with him still having no idea that I am who I am – I got all tongue-tied, because I could all too vividly picture what he was describing in that email, and…yeah. Wow.
So now I get to the good stuff. Yes, it gets BETTER.
Lily and I were at the Cathedral just this past Thursday night, and we had a fantastic time, flirting with these two adorable security guards and dancing up a storm to the awesome stuff Leumas was playing (and don’t think for a second that I don’t tease Lil about how much better the music gets as soon as he sees her on the dance floor), but Damon was pretty scarce. I saw him for maybe two whole minutes the entire night, and all we did was exchange a little wave, but he was off with some friends playing pool or something, which is all the way down on the first floor. The good music is on the third. Lily and I weren’t going to sacrifice that just so I could go and feel awkward horning in on Damon’s conversations with other people. When we’d had our fill for the night, then, we simply left, even though Lil tried her damnedest to convince me that I should stop by the pool tables long enough to at least say good night. It seemed stupid and…needy. I mean, yeah, do I have the hots for the guy? Sure. But do I want to be one of those stalker fan-types who imagines she has a relationship with a guy she barely knows? Uh…no. Been on the receiving end of that more than once, as you well know, dear reader. I’m not up for having it the other way around either. So…we left.
But imagine my surprise when I got home… I’d taken a shower and gotten into my Pjs, grabbed a drink of milk, and was still kind of wired, so I figured I’d check my email before I tried going to bed. And wouldn’t you know it?? In the time it had taken me to get home and ready for sleep, Damon had obviously left work and gotten back to his place, too. Because there was a message from him. And it blew my mind.
I’m paraphrasing here, but the gist was this: “I’m starting to get a little paranoid…..you know who I am, but I don’t know you….so here’s what we’re gonna do. You’re going to come to Zenith this Saturday night, and you’ll be on my guest list….so come up to the booth and introduce yourself, finally…..I want to put a face to your words…..see you then….”
OH. MY. GOD.
It was after 4 in the morning. There was nobody I could call to shriek and panic with, not even Lily, who is the lousiest “night person” I’ve ever known. I forwarded the email to her, obviously, but still…it was HOURS before the sun came up and I could freak out about the fact that MY COVER WAS ABOUT TO BE BLOWN. I was seriously riled up about this. How insane was I going to look to him??? I’ve been one thing in his presence for the past few months, and now suddenly I had to admit that yes, we’d met already, however casually and briefly, and that I’d never bothered to tell him that it’s ME who is behind the naughty little emails…???
I’d already sent him a message back, saying I would come – it’s not like I could say no at this point! And would I even want to?? – before I got a message from Lil. Damn it all. She was as hyped about it as I was, but she was GOING AWAY for the weekend, and that meant I was going to have to do this without her. That terrified me even more. What the hell kind of night was this going to be without my support system?? I NEEDED her to be there…but she was stuck. Some family thing. I don’t even think I asked for details, since it didn’t matter why. All that mattered was that she wouldn’t be by my side on what could be the most terrifying night of my entire social life. Even with her phone call later that day to coach me on what to wear – she has very distinct opinions about which colours look best on me, and which outfits in my closet are her favourites, so I have to trust her on these things – I didn’t feel even remotely secure about this whole thing. Damon was going to label me a headcase and have me banned from every club in the city. I was sure of it.
So now you’re caught up to this past Saturday. I think I’m still suffering from a completely scrambled brain, days later. Ready? Here’s hoping I can do the night justice before my hand falls off.
Not only was I being abandoned by Lily, there was also a snowstorm completely wrecking the roads by sundown. And the only person I could convince to come with me? Mick. Yeah. I know. Of all the people to have as your “wing man” on a night such as that, your high school boyfriend is probably last on the list. But I’d tried everyone else, and nobody wanted to venture out because of the weather, or they already had plans, yadda yadda. It’s not that I don’t have a good time when Mick and I go out, but there’s still some residual weirdness that I don’t think ever really goes away after you’ve been with someone for 3 years and things end the way they did between us. Anyway, that’s all beside the point. He was willing to come with me, even knowing the story behind what it was I had to do that night, and while I could tell he was less than pleased with the idea, he was still good enough to pick me up and do all of the stunt driving it took to get us to the club. He even helped me over the ice in my insanely high heels (I was, obviously, all decked out for the occasion. I wore red, just as Lily had made me promise. Low-cut and red. I looked good. I felt petrified).
I hardly remember anything about the early part of the evening; I think I was scared witless by the time we walked up to the entrance. And sure enough, “Ingrid” was on the guest list. I’d thought about maybe emailing Damon and confessing that it wasn’t the name on my ID, just in case I got asked for it and there was some kind of problem at the door, but…I just couldn’t. So I took my chances, and as it turned out, the security guys who asked for my ID were different from the staff in charge of the guest list, so I was lucky. And I think Mick was quietly impressed with the whole VIP treatment thing, even though he didn’t say as much. I gave him my jacket and sent him off to the coat check, and started taking deep breaths to calm myself down, getting ready to make the introduction of a lifetime.
The club was EMPTY. I mean, there MIGHT have been ten people there other than us. The weather had obviously kept a lot of people home…and we were there pretty early, too, since we’d left ourselves a lot of time to get downtown in that blizzard. It was only about 10:30 when we got there. I figured that meant I’d have a bit of time to decide how best to work up the nerve to walk up the two flights of stairs to the DJ booth and confess my sins…but as it turned out, I’d barely sent Mick away with our coats when I stopped in my tracks. Right there, just inside the doorway to the retro room that housed the pool tables, was Damon.
And he was alone.
Oh, god.
I knew it would be easier to approach him if there weren’t other people around, because I had no idea how he was going to react, and if it was bad, I really didn’t want there to be a bunch of witnesses, or anyone he could turn to and say, “Do you believe this psycho???” On the other hand, if it was just the two of us, I had nobody to back me up if I forgot how to speak English or whatever other disasters might befall me. I had a hard enough time talking to the man when it was about completely inconsequential things. This was not inconsequential. Not to me, anyway. And I had a hard time imagining he’d think it was, either.
But putting it off wouldn’t help. So I tried to get a grip, focus, and decide how to go about this. I figured the best way was to sneak into the main room of the club, buy a couple of drinks – one for me, since I’d need it, and one for him, since I’d seen what he normally drank and would at least be able to thank him for the guest list thing that way – and then make my approach. That’s what I did. The bartender probably wondered why I looked like a deer in the headlights, but all I could do was order my rye and a Corona for Damon, and try not to think about how I’d probably never be able to hear the song that was playing again without thinking of this night. It was “Life In Mono.” Just thinking about it now gives me chills…and not the bad sort.
Drinks in hand, then, I took another deep breath and walked for what felt like forever, back to the retro room, and was somewhere between relieved and terrified to see that Damon was still all by himself, completely engrossed in clearing the pool table. I stopped in the doorway and tried to make my heart rate drop to something under 400 beats per minute, but just at that moment, Damon looked up from a shot he was about to make, and he smiled. I felt like I’d been struck by lightning.
“Hey,” he said casually. I lifted the hand that was holding the bottle of beer, as a really lame attempt at a wave, and he managed to sink the 8 ball. I was trying not to shake so much that I’d spill my drink. Once he’d finished his game, he stood up straight and just sort of looked at me, nothing strange about his expression, probably because he knew me to see me and wouldn’t have thought anything of me being there. I cannot tell you how hard it was to take those few more steps toward him.
I held the Corona out to him, and he looked a little surprised, but he thanked me and clinked the bottle against my glass. And in what had to be the worst timing ever, I waited until he had a mouthful of beer before I said, “That’s to thank you. For putting me on the guest list. So…here I am, saying hello.”
Dear reader, you’ve never seen a look on a man’s face quite like the one I got from him. I’VE never seen anything like it. He looked ready to do a spit take, but he managed to swallow his drink and not cough his lungs out before his expression turned from shock to puzzlement to…I don’t even know what.
“Wait…” he said. In that voice. And all I could do was shrug and give him a helpless little smile. He blinked at me a few times. “Waaaaaaait a second. You’re…?”
“I’m…sort of…two people, I guess,” I said, and I felt like a moron. But then the most amazing thing happened. He SMILED.
“YOU’RE my writer??”
I nodded. And took a really, really big gulp of my rye. I have no idea if I winced as it went down.
“Holy shit,” he said. “I had no idea… But…your name is…”
“Ivy,” I told him. “Ingrid has been my pseudonym for years. I wasn’t using it to trick you or anything… I just never really thought about it, or thought we’d have any reason to, you know, officially ‘meet’ or anything.”
His smile – ohhhh, god, that smile – got bigger, and he stepped closer to me. I felt like, even if there’d been a hundred people in that room with us, I’d never have noticed.
“Like I wouldn’t want to get to know the woman who was writing such….uh…flattering stuff about me?” he said, and I was kind of amazed at how his smile could somehow be sweet and completely devilish at the same time. It didn’t help my pulse to slow down, that’s for sure.
“Well…I don’t know,” I said, a bit boggled at the fact that he was referring to me as a woman, when I’d never felt more like a stupid little girl in my life. “I thought maybe you’d think I was one of those crazy sorts or something. That’s why I never told you that we’d sort of met before now.”
I hadn’t even had a chance to wonder if he was going to be disappointed in what he saw, if what he’d imagined me to be was so much prettier, or older, or sexier, or…something…when he seemed to have the same thought. He’d been holding the pool cue in one hand and his Corona in the other, but he set the cue down on the table and then handed me the bottle. I was a bit confused, but then he stepped back and spread his arms, turned all the way around until he was facing me again, and then stood there. Sort of…Christ-like.
“So…” he said, giving me that cute-but-evil smile again. “Does the real me live up to your writerly expectations?”
Oh, GOD. Did he ever. His hair was down, and he was wearing all black, as usual, his shirt’s sleeves just short enough to show off his ridiculously well-toned arms, and I immediately had countless thoughts that would probably get me arrested in most countries. His eyes were so blue, more so than I’d ever noticed before, and the way he was looking at me…it was like he knew what I was thinking. In a way, I guess he did, since he’d already read the story I’d written about what I’d wanted to do to him in the middle of a dance floor…and now here we were…
I’m not even sure if I answered his question. I don’t think I did, because he laughed and took his bottle back from me. “Thank you for the drink,” he said. “It wasn’t necessary.”
“Well, but, it was,” I managed. God, I sounded stupid. “You were nice enough to put me on your list…”
“Yeah, but it was completely selfish of me. I wanted to get a look at whoever it is that can write things that keep me up at night.” He smirked. “In more ways than one.”
OH. WHOA. Hello. In over my head much??? If I thought his emails had made me blush…I must’ve turned five different shades of red right there in front of him.
“So you’re…not freaked out?” I couldn’t believe I had the guts to just come out and ASK that. The answer scared the hell out of me. If I’d let myself think about it for even a moment, I’m sure I’d have stopped myself from saying those words at all. But in retrospect, I’m really, REALLY glad I got it out of the way so early.
“Nope,” he said, taking another long drink from his bottle, and never taking his eyes off me. “Why would I be? Now I know who to ask when I want to read more.”
I stood there, feeling torn between throwing myself at him and bolting from the room. HOLY SHIT. Of every possible outcome I’d expected, this one never entered my mind. Not for one second. That he would like what he saw, and would actually encourage…more???
“Uh…well, I don’t exactly have assignments like that one crop up very often,” I said, probably looking as freaked out as I felt.
“So what if I give you an assignment of my own?”
It was my turn to just stand and stare, blinking at him. “What…?”
“Well. You know. If you’re so inspired…” He put a lot of emphasis on that last word, and the smile that went with it was all devil, no angel. “We can make it a fair trade. You’ll be on whatever guest lists you want, whenever you want, and in exchange you can keep me entertained with reading material.”
I’m still embarrassed to admit it, but I actually said, “Seriously???”
“Dead serious,” he said, and took the last gulp of beer before plunking the bottle down on the edge of the pool table. He crossed his arms in front of him and simply stood there, looking at me, smirking.
“Oh…kay?” I said. What else could I say??
“Good. Deal.” He glanced at his watch. “Look, I’ve gotta go do my thing upstairs, but come up and see me at least once before you leave, okay?”
I just nodded.
“Thanks again for the drink, ‘Ingrid’,” he said with a laugh as he left the room. I watched him go, and only when he was out of sight did I realize that there were at least two dozen more people now milling about by the bar and on the dance floor, one of them being Mick. I don’t know how long he’d been sitting nearby, glowering at the exchange I’d been having with Damon, but at that point I just didn’t – couldn’t – care. I knew once the terror had faded, I’d be flying high, and even the jealousy of an ex wasn’t going to stamp that out.
Wow. My hand is KILLING me. I can’t write anymore tonight! I did end up making that very frightening trip up the stairs to the DJ booth to say good night to Damon, and he asked me when I’d be back. I said I wasn’t sure, but that it would probably be sometime within the next week or two. He gave me a quick kiss on each cheek (LIGHTNING BOLTS AGAIN) and thanked me for introducing myself, which was SO bizarre to me, because what the hell?? But he left it off by saying he “can’t wait” to see what I write next…which is where I’m at as of now. Trying to think up what I can send him before the next time I see him, which, according to Lily, is going to be this coming Saturday. No pressure. Ack!!!
I just cannot believe this is my life. I went from having a crush on a guy on the radio to having him commission me to write for him. And not just WRITE, but write VERY SPECIFIC THINGS that would probably make my mother send me to church or something. I’m so much the Good Girl in every other way, and yet somehow…I’m Damon Rayne’s personal erotica author.
How did this happen???
I don’t even care, really. I’m just going to enjoy the ride. Wherever it leads me.
And with that, I’d best get to sleep. Maybe my dreams will give me the inspiration I need to fulfill Mr. Rayne’s demands…
~~~~~~~~
“Locked & Cranked”: Gossip
I’m starting to piece things together in order, even though I’m still not posting them that way! I’m at the halfway point now, with only NINE DAYS LEFT, and I’m trying not to go into a blind panic. But the good news is that, since I’ve found an order and therefore a pattern of how this will all be laid out, it’s coming a bit more easily. I’m gonna go rest my hands and shoulders now; I leave you with the most recent 2,000 words from the “mouth” of our ever-so-charmless narrator. She’s a lot more fun to write than Ivy’s diary entries. Can you tell?? Hah.
~~~~~~~~
I was laying on my stomach, absentmindedly attempting to flatten that one goddamn spring that had been digging into me, right through the cheap mattress the Phoenix people try to pass off as “beds,” when I heard some chatter getting closer to my door than I was comfortable hearing. For one thing, there was a rule about laying facedown on one’s bed, and I’d already seen what sort of privileges got taken away from people who ignored that particular regulation. If the Nazis behind the plexiglass at the nurses’ station thought they’d catch me doing something that meant I couldn’t whip the schizo floor’s asses at euchre every Friday night, they were sorely mistaken.
Not to say I actually cared about the rules. I just didn’t get caught. Not me.
The other possibility, and one that seemed more likely as the voices came nearer, was that it was a gaggle of patients, the ones who had free run of the corridors until bedtime. There weren’t many of those around these days. I glanced at the giant clock that was screwed rather precariously into the wall above the desk in my room, saw that it was only 6:24 p.m., and sighed. Still too early to dig into the stash. Three more checks until lights out, and damned if those nurses weren’t given to shining a fucking flashlight into your eyes if they suspected you were dabbling in extra-curricular pharmaceutical use. Stupid, really. What did they think would happen to pupils when suddenly exposed to a MagLite? I’d gotten tired of wondering where these bitches had gotten their diplomas, but the prospect of missing out on euchre once again won out over the temptation of asking. After all, it wasn’t money I stood to win from the schizos. And bed checks or not, my stash was looking a bit skimpy at the moment.
“You actually believe that?” I heard one of the voices say. I recognized the pitch right away. Nails on a chalkboard. Tracey Truth. I sat up a bit, despite knowing that I wasn’t about to get busted for breaking an arbitrary and as yet completely nonsensical-to-me rule. I wanted to hear this. Tracey lived life as though every day was her own personal episode of The X-Files. I kept meaning to jot down those lines – you know, the sort that prisoners use to mark off the days they’ve been caged – to keep track of how many times in a 24 hour period she used the word “believe.”
The door to my room was open only slightly, and I was, mercifully, alone for the time being. I had to make sure I was in a good enough position to eavesdrop without making it look as though I was welcoming company.
The second voice became clearer now. “Well, yeah,” Gully replied. Had I already known who was talking, I’d have ben able to write out their conversation like a script that had been played to death and back again. I didn’t call Alicia “Gully” for nothing. She continued, and I realized that the pair of them had stopped right outside. Perfect. “I mean, she’s so open and honest, right? Like, who else would have the guts to read their diary on Group days?”
“Oh, please!” Truth groaned. I could just barely make out her eyes rolling in that supremely annoying way she had. I shifted to prop myself up on one elbow. Now that I knew what – or, more accurately, who – they were discussing, I was more interested than before.
“What?” Gully simpered. I’d never known anyone who could actually simper in one syllable before Gully, but there it was. “I mean, like, she’s baring her soul!”
“She’s a fucking drama queen,” Truth shot back. “And if you don’t think we’re getting the sanitized version of every little thing, you need to up your meds or something. She could be making all that shit up, for all we know!”
Gully sighed, and I could see her hands twisting together nervously. She was so Truth’s bitch. I had that pegged from Day One.
“But, like, what would she… I mean, how does she benefit from telling us this way how she got here? Everyone else just, like, goes in and sits and says, ‘I had to come here because I was…’ You know. Whatever.”
“That’s my point,” Truth said, her voise rising just a fraction. I had half a mind to tell her to hush, because the Nazis would come and drag them both away if it looked like there was anything more compelling than tea-time talk happening here, and then how would I hear this pathetic attempt to dissect The Enigmatic Ivy?
“What is?”
“That we all just tell it like it is, but she has to haul her stupid books in and read to us like we’re in third grade. Come on. She’s probably a pathological liar and has to keep things written down so she doesn’t lose track of what she’s told people. She’s not stupid.”
“Well, no, of course she isn’t,” said Gully in her comparative whisper.
“Although I guess she can’t be a rocket scientist if she landed in here. She got caught, somehow.”
“Not necessarily…”
Truth laughed, the sound of a dog being jerked back on its leash just as it tries to bark. “You don’t think anyone wold put themselves here on purpose, do you? This isn’t Promises, in case you hadn’t noticed.” I saw her gesture to the ceiling, and I knew she was calling attention to the stains creeping around the edges of every styrofoam panel. “She. Got. Caught.”
“Caught doing what, though?” Gully asked, sounding more anxious than even her twisty hands would let on. I perked up a bit more. I always wondered what people said about The Ivy Story when they thought they were out of earshot.
“Think about what everyone else here has done. There isn’t one of us who hasn’t got a rap sheet for something. Not on this floor, anyway. The Cuckoo’s Nest is pretty self-explanatory, but us? We’re completely inorganic fuck-ups!”
Gully didn’t say anything for a moment, and I wondered if I might be about to hear some grand revelation, either about her – not that I cared, but kicks were getting harder to find – or about what she thought was written on the last page of the last black-and-white composition notebook.
“Um…what does that mean?” she asked.
Unbelieveable.
I tried to slap a hand over my mouth before the guffaw escaped, but either sound would’ve tipped them off, and that was it. Through the gap between the door and the wall, I saw both of their heads swivel toward me, two pairs of eyes widening as they realized they’d been overheard. I thought the level of alarm in their expressions, especially Gully’s, was more than a bit overblown, considering neither of them had said antything of consequence whatsoever, but either way, I’d just screwed myself out of hearing anything more.
Truth slid her hand along the door and pushed it open, about halfway now, but didn’t step into the room. She glanced around nervously, and I thought about asking who she was looking for, just to be a smartass, but I didn’t. I just leaned back on my elbow a bit further, the very picture of mellow, and smirked at her.
“Oh… Uh…sorry,” Truth offered. It was pretty lame, coming from her. I’d have expected her to be a bit more brash, accusing me of deliberately listening in, even though I’d been there the whole time and it was their choice to pick their location for chitchat.
I sat up rather suddenly, and the sound of the spring jumping up against the mattress once more ricocheted off the paint-peeled walls. Gully actually jumped, though I couldn’t tell for sure if it was the noise that did it or if it was me. Both options struck me as funny, and I let myself laugh. That definitely creeped Gully out, and Truth didn’t look altogether comfortable either.
“We didn’t disturb you or…anything…did we?” Truth asked. Gully looked as though she was trying to shrink enough to be completely obscured by the taller woman.
“Nah,” I said. I felt my face twist into a sweet smile. “I wasn’t doing much. Don’t mind me.” With a gracious wave of my hand, I motioned for them to carry on as they were. Truth shot a look over her shoulder at Gully, who was the only thing preventing her from backing out of my line of sight.
“Okay…” She stepped back and elbowed Gully, the way you’d dig into a horse to give it direction. “Sorry, again, anyway.”
“No worries,” my singsong voice said, but they’d already vanished before I could finish even that short a sentence. I heard them scuffling away, and I just shook my head and smirked again. Nutjobs. And to think they hadn’t even invited me into their little pow-wow.
“I’m telling you…” I heard Truth hissing at Gully as they neared the end of the hall, but whatever else she said was swallowed up into the labyrinth of corridors. I glanced over at the stack of composition books on the desk, each one labeled with a flowery little flourish and the words “IVY” and the start and end dates of the volume on the spine. As I closed my eyes and laid back onto the bed, hearing the springs groan in protest, I wasn’t even remotely tempted to pick up the last one and flip to the end.
~~~~~~~~
“Locked & Cranked” – Ivy’s first diary entry
As slow-going as it’s been, I have, in fact, been plugging away at this damned thing. I’ll have to break my back to make the November 30th deadline, but if that’s what it takes, so be it. I’ve been so sick for the past week, and it’s made writing next to impossible, but I just wrote (finally) Ivy’s entire first diary entry, so you can now see the other part of the plot that, up until now, you’d not gotten to witness. It’s rough as hell, but it gets the point across, I hope. These are the diary entries that get read aloud during group therapy at Phoenix…and here’s hoping I can make Ivy’s life sound interesting enough for people to understand why an entire institution waits with bated breath for her next entry. Considering this bit is heavily based on my own life, I’m sure there are some of you reading this who’ll remember just how interesting it was when I turned 21! Anyway, as usual, feedback and criticism and suggestions are more than welcome. Thanks for sticking by me. ~H~ xoxo
~~~~~~~~~
August 22nd, 1997
3:04 a.m.
Oh, dear reader, where do I even start??? This whole day (well, okay, it’s yesterday now, since I’m writing this at 3 a.m. & have been out since about 6!) has been so surreal. Happy birthday to me, of course, but you wouldn’t think turning 21 in Canada would be a big deal. Even if it was, I don’t drink! Although I’m starting to reconsider that…but I’ll get to that in a minute. Or twelve. This could take a while…
Lily had already asked me to get the day off work for my birthday a few weeks ago, so I knew she was planning something, but earlier this week she said it might be better if I took the day after my birthday off instead. Um…sure. I don’t have to do the whole “but I don’t want to get druuuuunk” song and dance with her, ‘cos she already knows that. She’s under the table after one cooler. We don’t do the bar thing. But how was I to know what she had in store??
So I was a little (okay, a lot) pissed off when my phone rang at NOON and woke me up. If my call display had said anything other than “Lily” I’d have unplugged the damn thing, but it was her. I answered and gave her proper hell for waking me up before, oh, nightfall, but she had an excuse. A pretty good one.
“I was calling to tell you I’m taking you out shopping before dinner,” she told me. Shopping? What the hell for? “You need something to wear tonight.”
I dunno what made her think I didn’t have plenty to wear, no matter where we were going – I mean, I DO have three closets full of clothes – but when I asked who was paying, and she said it would be her, I wasn’t gonna refuse. But I did have to ask, “Why do I need new clothes…?”
And that’s when the way my birthday appeared suddenly changed. In a big way. I already knew that the BIG party we have every year to indulge my inner Leo was planned for Saturday, so my birthday falling on a Thursday meant, in my mind, that we’d be doing something pretty low key.
HOW WRONG I WAS.
Lily said she was taking me someplace we’d never been before. A place I’ve wanted to go for ages. And the reason I wanted to go was gonna be there.
She was taking me to the Cathedral. YES, the single hottest club downtown, with line-ups around the corner any time we happened to be driving past. She said she’d gotten us on a guest list or something, because it was my birthday. And Thursday nights just happen to be the night when you-know-who does his DJ stuff there, after he’s finished at the radio station.
Right while I was thinking about it, Lily actually said to me on the phone, in a scarily accurate impersonation of the man himself, “Head on down and hang with us! This is Damon Rayne at the Cathedral…keep it locked & cranked…”
I couldn’t help myself. I laughed so hard I nearly dropped the phone. But then I realized…oh my GOD…was I gonna have to face this guy, and introduce myself??? Yeah, okay, it sounds stupid, but I’ve had a crush on That Voice for, like, ever. What if I had to meet him and he was hideous? I mean, that old phrase, “a face for radio,” didn’t come out of nowhere.
So I said as much to Lily, who gave me hell for being “shallow” (I look at it as hedging my bets, personally) and told me to “lighten up” blah blah blah. “Who CARES if he’s not all that??” she said, rather wisely. “Just close your eyes when you drag him into the bathroom stall and…”
I had to cut her off. HONESTLY. “Anything I can do in a bathroom stall will probably require my eyes to be open, you realize,” I told her. She laughed her ass off at me.
“Uh, I don’t know how boring your sex life was with whatshisname -” She refuses to refer to Greg by his name, ever since that horrible night I gave back the ring… “- but use your imagination! And it’s YOUR birthday, which means Mr. Damon Rayne should be doing favours for YOU, not the other way around. Stop picturing yourself on your knees and make sure you’re ready when I pick you up at 5. We shop, we eat, and then we conquer the nightlife. Go back to sleep.”
So I did. Set my alarm for 4, got up and showered, and couldn’t stop thinking about how much of a disaster this could be. Damon Rayne. I’d never even seen a picture of the guy. I just listened to him four nights a week on the radio. As does everyone else who has the slightest bit of good taste in music. He’s, like, my generation’s radio god, basically. And god, that voice! If there was a way, dear reader, to somehow put his voice onto these pages so you could hear it for yourself, everything would make perfect sense to you.
Anyway, I could go on for pages if I got into every detail, so I won’t, because my hand is cramping up already (not for that reason, just FYI!! Although…well, okay, I’m ahead of myself already!). Shopping was successful, and Lily convinced me to get an outfit I never would have DARED to buy on my own. But she was right in saying that we only ever see the Beautiful People standing in those long, velvet-roped lines, and we had to become that. “Glamazons” was the word I’d always used to describe the club set, and now I was twisting and turning in front of a changing room mirror, realizing that I was one of them. I admit it, I looked pretty fantastic. So did Lil, and she got a new outfit that complemented mine. I was decked out in shimmery black pants (size 8!! I guess the non-depression I’ve not been suffering post-engagement split has done good things for my ass?) and a respectably low-cut shiny purple tank top. Oh, and platform heels! I get to be 5’9″ in these things! Lil’s outfit was black and green, which was fantastic, since if we stood close enough together we’d look like the Joker. In the best possible way, of course.
I was nervous as all hell when we got down there, and was glad Lil was driving. I know she noticed how quiet I got as the car got closer to the Cathedral. She just kept cranking up the radio, and every time Damon Rayne’s voice would come on (usually to announce that he would be heading to the Cathedral as soon as he was off the air, which did nothing to calm me down, as you can well imagine), I would grit my teeth a little harder. The music was good, at least.
Lil got us a pretty awesome parking spot, mainly due to her superior parallel parking skills, and then we were there, amidst the throngs of the Beautiful People…and we fit right in. We looked like we’d been there every week. It was surreal. What was MORE surreal was when Lily grabbed my wrist and tugged me up to the gorgeous security guard at the front of the line, and told him that we were on the list because it was my birthday. He barely glanced at it, even when she told him it would be under “Ivy & Lily” (we usually get a hard time for that), and spent more time looking at what we were wearing. When he lifted the velvet rope and told us to have a nice night, and we heard the people who’d been waiting MUCH longer start to bitch and moan behind us, Lily just smiled sweetly and said, “I guess we picked the right clothes.”
Oh, dear reader. The Cathedral is even more incredible inside than it is from the outside, and that’s saying a lot. The first floor is all antique-looking pool tables. The second floor…well, we only sort of poked our heads in, because there was some sort of Top 40 dance crap playing for the dumb blonde set in there, but it looked like it was pretty swanky, anyway. Where WE were headed was the third floor, and wow…it is very aptly named “Heaven.” Lily and I must’ve looked like a couple of hicks, gazing up at the high ceiling that had windows in it, where people on the rooftop patio were looking down on the dance floor. There are these huge pillars everywhere, very Roman-looking, and the dance floor? IS MARBLE. Can you imagine??? I so wish I’d brought a camera.
The music, from the second we set foot on that dance floor, was also heaven. There’s a little DJ booth off to the side, all closed in and barely lit, so I could make out the figure of a guy in there, but Lily correctly said that there was no way Damon Rayne could be there yet. Even so, the guy in the booth, playing the wall-to-wall incredible songs, was of some interest to me. As it turns out, though, he’s more Lily’s type…but again, that’s a tangent that will take me too far off point. (As if I haven’t already gone there? Ha!)
Lil bought me a celebratory rye & ginger, and we toasted being 21, knocking back our drinks and trying to ignore the guys who were starting to circle like vultures around us. So not my thing. Lily’s always dealt better with that kind of attention, so I let her be the one to shoot them down. Besides, the clock was ticking, and any minute could see Damon walk through those doors…although I had no idea how I would KNOW it was him. I said as much to Lily, who immediately looked like she was up to something – after being best friends for 7 years already, I can tell what every smile and the narrowing of her eyes means – and she left me there, beside the bar, as she bounced over the the door of the DJ booth, which was closed. The music was loud enough, and I was far away enough, that I couldn’t hear what was being said when the guy who was in there opened it and answered whatever Lily was asking. But I could see immediately that this guy was into her, which made me smirk. Oh, Lil. She can’t go anywhere without breaking a few hearts on the ride. Then again, I did sort of wonder why she was so adamant about not bringing William along with her tonight. I like the guy, more than I’ve ever liked her previous boyfriends, even if he doesn’t smile much. She’s told me more than once that “our kind of music isn’t his kind of music,” although I still dunno what that means. But seeing her flirt it up with the mystery man in that booth… Yeah, I think this was meant to make up for her lack of a 21st birthday romp of her own.
She came back and told me that the guy she’d spoken to is the infamous DJ Leumas, who we hear Damon talking about all the time on the radio these days, and that she’d made a few song requests for my birthday. “Oh,” she added, “and Mr. Rayne will be here in in the next ten minutes. So I think you should go fix your lipstick and pull your shirt down a bit. Play up the cleavage.”
I smacked her, but then did as she said and dragged her to the impossibly posh bathroom, getting her to check my appearance and give me the Lily Stamp Of Approval before I (potentially) met the Voice Of A Thousand Orgasms, as we’d started calling him. The mirrors told me that Lily was being honest when she said I looked good, so I was satisfied that I could proceed with confidence…until we made our way back to the dance floor.
And I saw him.
I don’t know how I knew it was him in that first second, because there was nothing about him that would’ve given away what he does for a living…but I did know. And oh, god, dear reader…he is beautiful. He’s everything I’m not usually attracted to – a bit on the thin side, long hair, a goatee – but on him it worked. Did it ever.
Lily noticed that she’d gone ahead of me by several feet and turned around, giving me this look of confusion, before she saw where my eyes were fixed. And sure enough, the man in the very expensive-looking black clothes made a beeline for the DJ booth door, stepped inside like he owned the place, and we could just barely see the friendly greeting between him and Leumas as the door shut behind him.
“Holy shit, Ivy!” Lily said, immediately grabbing my wrist again and starting to pull me toward the booth. “That’s him, isn’t it?? And you were worried about what he’d look like??? Uh…wow…”
“I can’t,” I told her. I couldn’t. I knew she wanted me to race right over there and do the cutesy “it’s my birthday, please fawn over me” thing, but…I was frozen in fear. I couldn’t remember the last time – has there ever been one?? – that had found me reacting so…strongly…physically!…to a guy I hadn’t even met yet. I knew I wouldn’t be able to put two words together if she tried to make me TALK to him. Lil kept pulling on me, like she was yanking on the leash of an unwilling dog.
“Come ON!” she hissed. “Do I need to buy you another drink for liquid courage? Because I will, if that’s what it takes…”
Just then, the music changed…and the song that came on was one Lil had requested for me. Nine Inch Nails. “Ringfinger.” I turned my gaze toward her for a second and said, “Let’s…just…dance, for now.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes at me, which she so often does, and let go of my arm, but kept an eye on me to make sure I was really following her to the dance floor and not readying to bolt for the exit. My heart was pounding. It was so bizarre. I’ve never felt like that just from seeing a guy before.
I closed my eyes while I danced, trying to think of the song, and how much I loved it, and how good life is right now, free as a bird and gearing up for days of birthday celebrations. Anything to not think about the fact that Lily was SO going to force me to talk to THE Damon Rayne, who was a thousand times hotter than his voice could have let on. Oh god oh god oh GOD. Just thinking about him NOW makes my heart hit triple time.
And then…and then…my eyes opened, ever so slightly. And I was facing the DJ booth. And in the faint glow of whatever tiny light they had in there, I saw Damon looking back at me. I could read Leumas’ lips. He was telling Damon that this song was a birthday request. And then…oh, god…I saw Damon pick up the microphone. I closed my eyes again as soon as he started speaking, because I was sure that seeing him AND hearing him at the same time would probably make my brain – or god knows what else – explode.
“Razor 99 at the Cathedral tonight,” he announced, his usual greeting when he introduced himself and the radio station, and my stomach felt the way it does when you’re a the top of a really high roller coaster hill. “Damon Rayne with you here, along with DJ Leumas, spinnin’ the tunes, and we’re gonna go real late for you…” I opened my eyes for a second and saw Lily smirking at me. I glowered at her and slammed my lids shut again. “Want to wish a very happy birthday to…Ivy!” Oh, god, he was reading it…the DJ had written it down…LILY HAD DONE THIS. “Happy 21st, Ivy!”
Lily elbowed me, hard, and called over the music, “At least smile or wave or something! He’s looking right at you!”
Oh, god. GOD. I took a deep breath and was barely aware of whether I was even dancing anymore or not (apparently I was), and managed a weak smile and a wave by way of thanks to the small window through which Damon was still watching me. He smiled back, and it was the most devilish smile I’ve ever seen. I was in way, way over my head if I even wanted to say HELLO to this guy.
As soon as the song was over – and honestly, I’ve never realized how short a song “Ringfinger” is – Lily demanded that I go over and speak to both Damon and Leumas, to thank them for the song and the birthday wishes. I said no way. She said she’d break the ice for me. I knew she wouldn’t stop until I said yes. So…I straightened myself up, tried to look confident – snobby, even, which is something that comes very naturally to me on any other night – and followed Lil to my doom. I could actually feel my heart pounding in my throat at this point, which is something I’ve read about and always thought was just a lousy literary whatever, but yes, dear reader, it happens. Actually, I can feel it again, as I’m writing this. Safe in my bed and miles away from saying anything humiliating to Damon Rayne, but still…
Lily didn’t even have to knock on the door this time. Damon was coming out just as we spproached. I was bowled over at seeing him up close this time. Good lord. I’m gonna need to trawl the intenet for pictures or something, because no words I use will do this man justice. And it’s more than just him being good looking – which he obviously IS – but he absolutely oozes sex appeal. I can’t tell if he knows it or not. He must.
I had no chance at all to think of something clever to say. Lily didn’t have to break any ice. Because Damon Rayne was mere inches from me, and he was holding out his hand and saying, “So you’re the birthday girl, huh? Let’s get you a drink.” And he kissed my hand. He kissed. My. Hand. I felt dizzy and I know I was about a hundred shades of red, and I felt like a complete moron as I wordlessly trailed him to the bar, having no idea what he was ordering for me, and I suddenly realized that Lily hadn’t come along. I shot a look back to the DJ booth, where she seemed to be quite contentedly involved in conversation with Leumas, and I wanted to kill her. But I felt a glass being put into my hand, and I turned my attention back to the man who was now leaning casually against the bar, looking so effortlessly sexy that I wondered if he could actually be human. I didn’t even look at the contents of the glass. I was too distracted by his eyes. Oh, god, those eyes. He smiled. I felt my knees wobble and hoped he didn’t notice.
“Happy birthday to you,” he said, and held his glass up in a toast. I clinked mine against his and watched for a second as he knocked back the drink in one gulp. Okay. So this was a shot of…something. I’d never had a shooter of any kind, and I certainly hadn’t had one in a regular glass, so there was some question of whether or not I’d look like a total loser as I attempted this. Damon saw me hesitating and gave me that devilish smile again, which…oh, god, like I needed to be any more nervous?…and said, “Take it all.”
Which, of course, made my mind race to places that it normally doesn’t. But god. GOD. The things I could’ve said to him at that moment.
Instead, I tilted my head back and poured the shot down my throat, and as I swallowed I realized that my insides were on fire, now for a completely different reason than just Damon being in front of me.
“Holy shit,” I gasped, and I know I looked stupid, waving a hand in front of my mouth as though I was trying to put out the flames. He laughed – his laugh is otherworldly – and patted my shoulder before ordering me a glass of Coke.
“Not a big Jagermeister drinker, huh?” he asked with a smirk. I shook my head. “Well, I’m happy to be your first, then.” His expression was quite plain about the meaning behind his words, and I blushed and ducked my head.
“Uh…thank you?” I don’t know why it sounded like a question. But it did.
“You’re welcome. Let me know if there’s anything else you wanna hear.” And with that he was off, I have no idea where, and I was alone at the bar, guzzling Coke and wondering if my esophagus was permanently damaged. Lily saw me – god only knows how, considering how VERY interested she seemed to be in her conversation with Leumas – and made her way over to where I was.
“Well?” she asked, smiling widely and looking pretty proud of herself. “How’d it go?”
“He set me on fire,” I croaked. Lily laughed.
“No shit.”
“No, I mean…whatever he bought me to drink…it sounded German…”
She waved her hand, like what I was saying didn’t matter. “Yeah, okay, but what did he SAY?”
“Not a lot…” I told her what he’d said about being my “first,” which left her squealing about how THE Damon Rayne was already flirting with her utterly irresistible best friend, and I was about to change the subject to ask her what she’d been talking about with Leumas for that whole time, but she interrupted me.
“Two questions,” she said. “One, are you gonna rewrite that erotica assignment and give it to him, now that you have a face to go with the voice? And two…what time do you want me to pick you up next Thursday?”
I set my Coke down and covered my face. She knows me too well. “I can’t believe you even remember that assignment,” I said. She’d joked at the time that I should look up his email address and send it to him, but because I’d had to make up so much about him, and how he looked, I’d refused. Besides, how twisted is it to email a perfect stranger and tell him that his voice inspired a university English paper for your creative writing/erotica section?? He’d slap a restraining order on me for sure! Still…I’ve been thinking about it ever since she mentioned it…and maybe if I don’t send it from my normal email address…
Okay, I need to stop thinking about that. And I need to stop writing before my hand falls off. We had an amazing night, dancing to the greatest music I could’ve imagined, and while I only got to see Damon for a moment before saying goodnight, that was enough to leave me feeling all butterflied and flutter-hearted. Still. After I’ve been in bed for an hour.
I cannot wait until next Thursday. Happy birthday to me.
~~~~~~
Excerpts from “Locked & Cranked” v2.0
If you haven’t yet read the explanation as to what on earth I’m doing with these (heavy on intro, laying the groundwork, without yet tipping a hand about which direction it’s headed or allowing a glimpse of Ivy’s diaries; these bits will be bridges, of sorts, between actual chapters), you might wanna go there & check it out, just so this makes sense! Otherwise…read on! And please feel free to leave feedback; I’m wide open to criticism and suggestion. But unless you’re in Group B, I’m not tellin’ you anything more than what you already see. Hee.
~~~~~~~~
Sure. Yeah. Let’s all of us sit and stare at Ivy. Nobody in this group knows her story yet. What’s she in for? Was she a junkie? Does she like little boys? Had she killed someone?
See, the best thing about these “rehab centres” in the private sector is that you get to meet a whole bunch of different characters. This isn’t like some State hospital, where your typical skid-rower usually ends up. No, this place… You could be in here for a lot of reasons. Maybe you’re just here to dry out because the kids keep playing that “Please, Daddy, Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas” song in October and you’ve finally gotten the hint. Or maybe you got lucky and some judge commuted your sentence, figuring two years in the klink was good enough…as long as you got yourself a Cinder-Block Suite here for the eight remaining years. You know, to address the little meth problem that led you to rob that bank in the first place.
Occasionally you’d even see a B- or a C-list celebrity here, and it was anyone’s guess why. Some of the ex-crackheads in the Wednesday afternoon “Face Your Demons” group always got a pool going. Speed, maybe? Or one of those infamous nervous breakdowns that are usually prefaced by a flurry of nonsensical blog entries on said celebrity’s website? One starts to wonder if it’s all an elaborate hoax so they’ll have a hideout while they recover from their ass lifts or implants or whatever the current trend is in plastic surgery.
Hell, I don’t know. I’ve been a little out of touch with celebrity trends while I’ve been here, as you might imagine.
It’s my second time at this particular group, but I haven’t yet spoken. I haven’t yet “told my truths” to these folks. A few of us haven’t, actually. We’ve been too busy meditating on what we’ve done wrong and making lists of who we need to ask for forgiveness and all that shit. Or maybe all of them have given up their truths, and I’m too new to know. Whatever. See, depending on what’s brought you to this facility, you could be having therapy with four or five different groups each week. Depending on how screwed up you are, you could have veritable therapy orgies with endless permutations of shrinks, “group facilitators”, and co-crazies. It’s like rehab’s a big game of musical chairs, but without the music.
Anyway, back to the present. I look around at this group of mostly unfamiliar co-crazies, each with a postcard-sized name tag stuck crookedly to their facility-issue blue shirts, just like mine. Lifting my eyes from my own messily written name tag and looking around at the circle of people in the room, I realize I don’t know anyone here, save for one. And that’s who’s being eyed by the others. Ivy. And since I already know her story, I lean back in my cheap plastic chair, ignoring the cracking sound it makes, and I yawn.
Fresh meat or not, this is going to be one long, dull hour.
~~~~~
Some of have roommates; some don’t. There are two kinds of rooms on our floor: one features solitary living space, presumably reserved for the nuttiest nuts who are prone to midnight outbursts of a nameless sort; the other is a much bigger room designed to house up to three crazies at a time. Sometimes the women who have to share, dorm-style, are fortunate enough to have only one roommate instead of two. The benefits are obvious. One fewer headcase, and loads of extra closet space.
My little joke about my particular housing situation is that I’m lucky; I live with Me, Myself and Ivy. But these people don’t seem to care much for levity, or jokes, or plays on words. They don’t care about wit. They’re not here to care. They’re all here for a million different reasons, yes, but their common denominator is what they’re not here to do: care.
~~~~~
Let’s tell this story E! True Hollywood style. You’ve got a “protagonist” named Ivy. You’ve got the loyal sidekick, Lily. You’ve got the man nobody could classify as the “good guy” or the “bad guy”, who’s got a name as slick as he is: Damon Rayne. You’ve got the guy who showed Ivy and Lil the face of darkness in the first place, who is somewhat ironically named Leumas. And then there’s Max, the man who’ll try just about anything to rescue Ivy the maiden fair from Damon, or herself, or the endless other bits of nastiness she encounters along the way.
Now you know the players.
Now you can put this story together piece by piece, as though you too were sitting in a room with us, our only respite from the tortures of daily therapy and “searching our inner selves” being The Story Of How Good Girl Ivy Got Here.
Now you can make your own decisions about whether or not one young woman’s descent from suburbia to hell is even remotely justifiable.
~~~~~
It’s obviously a story the entire group looks forward to. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Picture a dozen or so mentally defective people all gathering in the same stark room, dragging those cheap plastic elementary-school chairs into a circle, each metal leg screeching against the tile. If you weren’t already half-cocked coming into this room, you sure as hell would be on the way out. Either the décor would do it to you – fluorescent lights, puke-green cinderblock walls, orange chairs and a floor that might have been yellow about 35 years ago – or the stories you heard would.
~~~~~
It was down to a routine by now. Each little magic pill laid out, two by two, as if Noah’s Ark was a fucking pharmacy.
Four Xanax on the nightstand. Two for now, two for later – which usually meant no more than half an hour from now. Two Dilaudid. Same deal. Split them up to prolong the effects. At least a couple of Gravol to keep the morphine down – god knows there’d been enough nights spent facedown in the toilet because of this hobby. Toss in two or three sleeping pills, and the Cocktail For Coping was complete.
Yes, this is what it now took just to get through the night. The hope was that it’d all be slept off before work or school or anything else that might require “normal” behaviour the next day.
It didn’t always work out.
And besides, eventually, there was no work or school to worry about. Apparently you can only show up bloodshot and word-slurring so many times before you get the bum’s rush from most respectable places.
No matter.
This lifestyle was becoming a full-time job anyway.
~~~~~
When the toughest question of the day becomes, “Why are these morphine pills so fucking hard to grind into powder?”, a normal person would realize that the downward spiral had just sped up.
Our little Ivy had stopped being “normal” some ways back.
~~~~~
Everyone always noticed the same thing at the same time when the little kitchen timer “ding!”ed to signal the end of one of our sessions. It was only that “ding” that made the talking stop, and these days there was usually only one crazy doing the talking. These groups, lately, they’d become The Ivy Show. And when that timer went off, everyone always saw the Sleeve Tug that silence suddenly brought.
You know, that not-so-subtle effort to hide how many times you’ve wielded your Lady Bic wrong. The sheer number of times you couldn’t even get suicide right.
See, there are two main functions of talk therapy, and only one of them would be approved by most medical associations. The first is, of course, to air out your dirty laundry, get feedback from the shrink and/or your fellow group members, and hopefully have an epiphany somewhere along the way. Just by hearing your life’s issues spoken aloud, sometimes that can be enough to trigger a change. Enough for some people to come to new realizations and really turn it all around.
Whatever.
The second, and in my opinion the more important, use for this kind of “monkey on display” behaviour is that it gives everyone a chance to make the silence go away. Either you’re talking or someone else is, but whichever way it goes, there’s no chance to hear the voice inside your head. No time to meditate or mull over the enormously stupid things you’ve done. And because of that, when you’re talking or listening, you’re too involved and caught up in it all to do stupid, self-conscious things like the Sleeve Tug, which is a dead giveaway.
No pun intended.
So after the “ding” and the credits start to roll on The Ivy Show (“…until next time!…”), all everyone has to think about is Ivy. It’s a much more appealing option than thinking about oneself in this place. And so it’s not really a complete session these days until you hear someone in the group whispering to somebody or nobody or everybody.
“Look at Ivy. Like she thinks she can tell us her whole goddamn life story and still hide her botched cries for help.”
Bitching and bitching under their breath, even though they love every episode. It’s so much better than The Young And The Restless.
“She thinks she can sugar-coat everything,” the whispers say. “She thinks she can hide how crazy she really is.”
Sometimes, in that moment of silence after the credits have rolled, I can’t tell if those whispers are outside or inside.
~~~~~
Heather V. Swanson 