The Circle

"At Beer Land, swinging and bobbing in that circle of smiling, shouting bodies, I thought this time it would be different. That all along it was the drugs and alcohol that had fucked up the scene. "

When I first got sober I learned that in order to get better I needed to learn to love myself.

The following is an excerpt from I Can Only Give You Everything, an auto-fiction book based on my coming of age in the punk scene and my battle and recovery from alcohol and sex/love addiction. I am currently in search of a publisher and/or literary agent for this book.

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I saw Honey standing on the stage that night, screaming into the microphone. Her swollen hands ripped lustrously through power chords. Her body was bouncing up and down. A formation of pogo dancers slammed into each other on the ground below her. Next to her, a Sid Vicious look-a-like played the Bass guitar, shooting daggers of want at me from the edge of the stage.

I felt myself being pulled back to my salad days in South Bend, Indiana, at the Hoi Polloi, where the other high school misfits and I would find each other watching bad college bands every Friday night. Back to the sticky, beer-drenched summers in Trina’s red convertible. It was the first time in my life that I didn’t feel like a freak. It was in those dark, hot rooms at the house shows and the clubs that I found my tribe, and for once in my life, the unbearable loneliness subsided.

Once again, in the pit at Beer Land, I saw myself in these strangers’ smiling, sweaty faces. I was fifteen again, saved by the gentle violence of the scene. I was back in that circle before it had been broken by date rapes, suicide attempts, and overdoses. Back when I thought you could just do the opposite of what society told you to do, and all that pain, all that shame could be left behind, replaced by a new promise, a new dawn built on the refuse of the American death cult, which had almost killed me. But we were all just a bunch of broken kids, unconsciously replaying our brokenness.

At Beer Land, swinging, kicking, and bobbing up and down in that circle of smiling, shouting bodies, I thought that maybe this time it would be different. Perhaps all along, it was just the drugs and alcohol that had fucked up the scene.

After their set was over, Sid Vicious asked me if I would give him a ride home. At first, I thought he was madly annoying with his sweaty armpits and his spiky black mullet.

But then he told me he was sober, “I looked in the mirror this morning, and I realized that I am my own worst enemy. It was me messing everything up. It was me all along.”

Yes, that was exactly how I felt.

His name was Elliot, but I could call him Sid if I wanted to.

*

Underneath highway overpasses and past homeless meth addicts waving stolen gas station cleaning squeegees, Elliot confessed to me that he was an atheist and a communist.

“How do you stay sober if you don’t believe in a higher power? Isn’t that the whole point of AA?” I asked.

We were sitting in his driveway outside of the sober house he lived in.

“When I drink, I end up in the hospital. It’s fear that is my god. The fear of that big nothing, the fear of death that keeps me straight.”

I lit a cigarette and offered him one.

“That’s heavy,” I said, waiting for him to tell me more. But he never did.

Instead, he grew quiet, drumming nervously on his thighs, “I’m going to a show at Spider House next week. You should come.”

*

I called my sponsor the next day and told her how I told Elliot that I was a sex and love addict, “I’m being honest with him.”

Connie thought that was real funny: “That is like going up to a bottle of booze and telling it you’re an alcoholic and then drinking it.”

Of course, I didn’t heed her warning and after the show at Spider House, I let Elliot walk me home. He didn’t have a car. He had wrecked it a year ago.

“I flipped that old Chevy right over the curb and into someone’s front yard. Every time I walked by my car lying there, I kept thinking, why aren’t they doing anything about it? Why in the hell are they letting that wreck just sit there to look at each time they go outside their front door?” Elliot said, laughing to himself.

Even though he had gotten a brain injury and he could have died, he still found the whole thing quite funny. And it was kind of funny, in a crazy way, what people choose to ignore, how bad things have to get before anyone does anything about it.

*

“I like your hair like this,” he said before placing his arms around my waist.

We were in my apartment, sitting on my bed. There was a song on my stereo about giving yourself to someone who doesn’t want you, about sleepless nights, and impossible friends.

I told him I once over dosed on morphine. He asked me if he could have all my records if I died and then he kissed me. It felt good, just like the first time I got drunk. Elliot had nothing smart to say, but when he held my breasts, I felt I could die right then and there, that nothing at all mattered because I was nothing anyway. It really seemed simple back then. And all I had to do was give myself to this false god, and the pain would finally go away. But life’s not like that, is it? The high never lasts.

Within minutes, Elliot had lost all control. My shirt was over my head, and he was pounding me hard like an unneutered pit bull with his pants still on. I was a faceless sex doll. Worst of all, I was sober, so it wasn’t like I could pretend that I wasn’t being used.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I said, pushing him off me.

“Have you been drinking?” he asked.

“No. I told you I’m sober.”

“It’s okay if you’re not. I mean, I wouldn’t judge you.”

I pulled my shirt down, “How long have you been clean?”

“I’ll have a year next week.”

“That’s great! When I get a year, I’m going to get a tattoo that says to thine own self be true.”

He was putting his shoes on. My heart sank a little.

“You shouldn’t do that, because what if you relapse?”

“I won’t, and if I do, I’ll get right back on the wagon.”

I wanted to ask him to stay. Just to lie there and hold me. I wanted to be loved, really, I did, but I didn’t know what it was.

As I watched him walk out the door, I felt betrayed, but not by him; I felt like I had betrayed myself.

That night, staring at the moon outside my bedroom window, I sensed Elliot’s hands on my body again; I saw the lost look in his eyes, and that’s when I saw myself. But not as I was then, no, I saw myself as a little girl crying alone, holding tightly to a teddy bear. I wished I could go back and hold her. What I would have given just to have cooed and hushed that eternal loneliness. But there was too much noise in my head, so I called Connie instead. And she told me I needed to put myself on my amends list. That if I wanted to get better I needed to forgive myself and everyone else that hurt.

“There are only two primary emotions in this world, fear and love. That’s all there is, fear and love. Choose love, Delia.” That’s what she said. Or something like that. She was really into that book, A Course In Miracles.

*

The next morning, Connie let me smoke cigarettes in her Cutlass as she zipped down the fast lane to the Pink House, where a women’s recovery meeting was being held. When we got there, over thirty women were sitting in a circle. I listened to them share their stories and all the screaming, broken rooms of my mind grew silent. I cried and kept saying how sorry I was. In response to my pathetic display of unplanned vulnerability, those beautiful creatures took my shivering hands in theirs and pulled me down into a seat in that circle. In their eyes, I saw myself. Their mouths were my mouth, their stories, my story.

For the first time in my life, I felt like I was at the right place at the right time.

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May the New Year bring you restitution, joy, and freedom from suffering.

Peace, Love, and Gnosis, your pal,

Border Land Delia-Ann

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