Going Places

While waiting at the West 4th Street station, green tiles lining the subway-yellow walls, I watched a clearly intoxicated young man nod off and fall into the tracks. We all stood in horror. A couple brave strangers jumped down and pulled him up. The crowd roared—not in celebration, but in outrage. How dare he risk the lives of two good Samaritans. Someone called the transit police. Or maybe they were already there.

It was Cinco de Mayo. I’d spent the evening with Nick and his friends, enjoying the hum of the hustle, the scent of tequila and lime emanating from patio tables, while paper menus flapped in a spring breeze. 

They’d all called it a night around 10:30 PM, early for a Friday by New York standards. So there I was, waiting for my train. I boarded an uptown C and began calculating how I might spend the rest of the evening. Part of me wanted to go home—like Nick did, like my roommates expected. But a gnawing in my mind whispered of bars still open, of drinks still pouring, of bathroom stalls where generous girls might hold out their house keys dipped in powder for me.

The subway roared past 34th Street. Then 42nd. Then 59th. At every stop, I asked myself: 116th or 125th? 125th meant safety. I wouldn’t pass any bars on the way home. But deep down, there was this fatalistic sadness sitting still, knowing the answer already. 

Double Dutch was attached to a coffee shop. It wanted to be a dive bar, but it was new. Part of a large gentrification that was happening all along Frederick Douglass Boulevard. I pulled up a corner barstool, ordered a Sauvignon Blanc, and struck up conversation. A lesbian couple to my left. A hipster barista from the neighboring cafe to my right.

Soon, down at the far end of the bar, a stranger started buying me shots. Cherry, the bartender, brought them over one by one. She asked if I knew him. I didn’t.

Later, that same man approached. Hispanic. Forties, maybe.

“Do you like to party?”

I nodded. My brain fired off: Mission accomplished. Cocaine.

We stepped outside for a cigarette. He told me he had some back at his apartment. But we’d have to drive. I followed him across the street to his car, leaving behind my purse and coat in the bar. Gratefully, I had my phone. He could sense I was uneasy, and so as we pulled away he reached into the glove box, and handed me his driver’s license.

“Here. Take a picture. I can tell you’re scared.”

I took it. Sent it to my roommate Diane. Of all the girls I lived with, she would understand.

We drove into Central Harlem and parked in front of a brownstone. Across the street, he led me upstairs in an apartment building. The apartment was strange. Half-empty. A couch. A dresser blocking a door. He disappeared, I turned change over in my pocket fruitlessly willing the nickels and dimes into a weapon. The gravity of my choice grew heavier and heavier through the jangling. I wondered how long it would be until someone realized I was missing. My boyfriend thought I was home. My roommates thought I was with him. In reality, I was doing lines in some-guy-named-Oscar’s empty apartment.

My anxiety rippled as he reappeared with a gallon-sized Ziploc. He cut neat rows, and handed me a fifty. My confidence restored, I offered to pay, but he declined. My stomach sank, until he said

“Don’t worry about it. Let’s get you back to the bar.”

By some miracle, I made it back to Double Dutch. My coat and purse still hung on the stool, as if time had frozen while I went on my little adventure.

It was close to 4 a.m. Closing time. I guess I tried to go home with the lesbian couple, but they pointed me toward my apartment, and asked to text them when I got there. I pulled out my phone when I reached the front steps, but had no one to call. I laid sleepless for a while, watching night turn to dawn turn to day. 

I had a dentist appointment at 8:00 a.m. As I approached the front desk, the staff let me know the appointment had been canceled.

I stood in Columbus Circle, still grinding my teeth, vaguely still drunk, surrounded by go-getters. The kind of people who wake up early on Saturday morning to go for runs in the park, to walk their dogs, or head off to yoga classes. It seemed in that moment the world was spinning around me and I was in some alternate reality. I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. Life was not supposed to be like this. I was supposed to be a go-getter, not some desperate single white woman at a bar begging for love and drugs.

What I realize now is those strangers may have seen me more clearly than I saw myself. Maybe they saw a girl consumed by alcohol and drugs. Maybe they knew I didn’t belong there. Maybe my luck was actually their kindness. Their pity. Maybe they were the good Samaritans pulling me from the tracks.

Except this time, there was no crowd yelling about how irresponsible I was.

There was only me.

And the foggy feeling that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.

***

The blue binding and gold writing of Alcoholics Anonymous had been gathering dust on my bookshelf for years. Inside the beat up hardcover lay an inscription to someone named Kookaburra, and scattered throughout were 3x5s of unfamiliar faces: A mustached man smiling wide in the cab of a long-haul truck, a pair of old women who looked like life-long best friends — or sisters — in a church basement. 

I didn’t think I’d end up there again, but as I approached the church on West 74th street, I caught sight of the round blue sign that read AA. I passed through a large red door set in a stone facade to a long damp hallway. Morning light illuminated bulletin boards full of community events, colorful rooms full of children’s artwork, directions to a food pantry. My heels echoed. I sipped my coffee. 

Ahead of me were double doors behind which a gravelly voice carried. I crept in gently, a child late to church, careful not to interrupt her sermon. A few eyes glanced as I grabbed a seat in the back. A sea of orange chairs surrounded an old maple desk where the woman sat. Wrinkles gathered around her eyes, the crinkle of her dimples took us through her life. She’d lost her husband, missed her parents’ death, chronicled her dreams slipping away one milestone at a time, all in the name of King Alcohol. 

My flannel sleeve caught the first tear.

“There was no reason I should have survived.” 

Her words seared into my heart. The wound was too fresh. I ached.

 “But I did, and I’m here today with a life worth living.” 

The tears came in angry streaks, my sleeves wet with snot, muffling sniffles. As she went on, I turned into something uglier. I clawed at my hand begging for the unravelling to stop, but with every word I broke. 

I shouldn’t have survived. 

A dam opened. The tears came faster and faster. A woman slid in next to me,  handed me a tissue and put her arm around my back, I shook.  

I was dying in this church basement and everyone could see it.