Love, lust or any other addiction.
It hijacks the brain and its ability to reason, the mouth and it’s ability to bargain, a vagina for obvious reasons; and is apparently able to override a fear of heights.
In the mid-eighties, I left my husband. We had a perfectly lovely life — just absolutely NO sexual chemistry…and I wanted some. BAD.
I read about it in books. I saw it in the movies. I dreamt of it and fantasized about it; this elusive beast, and being that I was in my twenties, I was damned if I was going to live a life without it.
Cut to 1985 — I’m sharing a dive apartment in drug infested hookerville with my little sister who had just left our father’s cushy home to find her way out from under his thumb and forge her own independence.
It was Flashdance meets Friends only without the great clothes, the sexy dancing and the killer apartment.
My sister had moved a saltwater fish tank up two flights of stairs only to have the summer be so fucking Africa hot on the second floor; in the Valley; with no air conditioning; that even after trying to cool it off with trays of ice cubes — eventually, all the fish cooked.
Later, after she’d emptied most the water and cleaned the green slime off the glass, and since we had no entertainment budget, we organized races with little plastic wind up swimmers from the novelty stores on Ventura Boulevard. Frogs, Snorkelers, a fat man in an inner tube whose legs furiously tread water; even an alligator doing the backstroke.
These were real races. Beers were guzzled. Bets were placed. Money may have exchanged hands.
I’m tellin’ ya it was the wild west inside that toasty little shit-hole with the sticky green shag carpet in North Hills.
After the Feds shut down the toy races, we floated three basketballs in the tank.
It was art.
Speaking of art, one morning when I was getting my fried, I mean permed, blonde hair nice and Bon-Jovi gigantic, my blow dryer gave out from exhaustion. The eighties were a rough time for blowdryers and a boom time for hairspray. My sister and I could go through a case of Aqua Net a week.
Anyway, my blow dryer started throwing blue sparks, and inside of a small unventilated bathroom full of Sebastian Hair Fix fumes, well, the whole apartment could have ignited — blowing us all to kingdom come.
Since only half my head was coiffed, I finished with my sister’s very upscale blow dryer and hung my little flame thrower from a plant hook in the corner of the dining room.
At night we would turn off all the lights and plug it in; then sit and watch that thing shoot blue sparks into the air — because it was art.
It was beautiful and dangerous art. We just had to be diligent about keeping our hair a safe distance away.
How we’re not both dead is beyond me.
Which leads me to the window in my room.
It was rectangular, running from floor to ceiling and narrow, about the width of an average person. Because it was so freakin’ hot, even with my fear of heights, I would sit on a towel (there was no way I was going to let my ass touch that disgusting carpet) next to the window at night and read, paint my toe nails, or talk on the phone.
I talked on the phone a lot.
You see, I had fallen hard for a much younger boy/man who had lived with us for one glorious summer and then gone off to college (yes, that young). I pined for him something awful, so we’d talk on the phone late into the night, he from Cal State Long Beach and me in front of that window, smoking cigarettes, searching for a breeze.
That window became like a portal.
All sorts of weird shit happened around that window.
It just so happens that there was a street light directly below, one of the few in the hood that hadn’t been blown out. I always tried to park my car under that light, you know, for safety, although thinking back I’m not sure why I bothered. Anything valuable had been stolen off of, or out of, my piece of shit Mazda within the first month we lived there.
Parked under that very street light — in full view of that window.
Late one hot summer night, the three of us were startled awake by the sound of shouting and car engines. Of course we went to the window to see what was up. My sister soon joined us, all the noise had woken her up but she couldn’t see the activity from her uneventful, non-portal window.
Our three sleepy, middle-of-the-night faces were now wide awake and fascinated, silently poised right above all the action as we watched more and more police cars surround a vehicle with two men inside. Soon a police canine unit and tow truck joined the crowd. “Drug bust” my boy-toy whispered.
We watched for hours as they carefully and methodically stripped the car down to its skeleton. The seats, the dash, the inside liner — they had this down to a science.
We got snacks—we took potty breaks—all the while staying quiet enough to be eyewitnesses to a potential drug bust. Then, just as we were beginning to lose interest, and it seemed as if the drugs didn’t exist, we heard a cop yell, like they do on TV, “Bingo!” and fifty cops descended onto the metal frame, like ants at a picnic. There it was, bag after bag of some illegal substance, hidden in the dark recesses of that car’s guts. They hauled the two guys away and it was all over in fifteen minutes as if it had never happened.
Yeah, I know, great neighborhood. Not really, it was the site of drug deals, used condoms and hookers, Oh My!
Another evening, as I waited for my sister to get home with pumpkin pie (we both worked at Vons at the time, so we’d call the one who was working late, right before their shift was over, with junk food cravings), I was sitting next to the window, writing a letter to my beloved — yes, with paper and a pen — when I thought I heard moaning.
Now, moaning was a regular occurrence in our apartment. We had a couple with a very active sex life that shared a wall. She was a moaner and he had white-boy rhythm as evidenced by the intermittent, uncoordinated frenzy of headboard banging that used to make us howl with laughter.
But this moaning sounded different — like a wounded animal.
I turned down the TV that was always on to keep me company; and listened. Just below the window was a balled up something on the dead, dried up grass under the street light.
I decided to investigate.
I put on my dime store flip-flops, took my keys to the security gates with me, and walked down two flights of stairs to the street below. It was just slightly cooler outside than inside the apartment but still around eighty degrees — an Indian Summer night in the Valley.
As I slowly closed the gate by hand behind me so it wouldn’t slam (a habit), I could still hear a low moaning. Walking slowly toward the street light, I still couldn’t figure out who or what was there. It was rolled up tight into the fetal position, small, like a dog… or a child? I remember it was beige, the color of skin. Could it be a person?
“Hello?…are you okay?” I ventured closer.
“Do you need…” I screamed and reflexively jumped back.
“Oh my God…” I kept backing away slowly, terrified and unsure of what to do.”I’m, I’m, I’m going upstairs to call 911!”
Her face (I didn’t know it was a woman until later), looked up at me, toward the sound of my voice. Her ear was missing, replaced by shredded skin. I knew she couldn’t see me, her eyes were purple and swollen shut, and her face didn’t resemble anything human. It looked like a hideous Halloween mask.
I ran so fast I flew out of my flip-flops.
No such thing as cell phones in those days, so I sprinted back up to the apartment, made eerie by the juxtaposition of the TV laugh track and the scene on the street below as I dialed 911. The phone was on the floor in front of the window and I watched her like a hawk the whole time. I was shaking so hard it took me three tries to dial 911 correctly.
A squad car pulled up before I even had a chance to speak. I hung up, turned off all the lights in the room and watched from my second story perch as they slowly, cautiously, got out of the car and walked toward her. One cop poked her with a stick and when she moved and looked at up them — even they flinched. The other cop was calling it in as his partner crouched down to talk to her. The paramedics and a fire truck were there in minutes and I watched, nervously biting my nails, from my dark window as they took her pulse, assessed her injuries, loaded her almost totally naked body onto a gurney and took her away.
My sister got home just about that time, “What’s all the commotion down there?” she asked.
It took me a minute to gain my composure. “I’ll tell you over pie” I replied.
As the story goes, and I can’t quite recall how we got this information; the woman was a regular at one of the local dive bars peppered throughout our neighborhood. The drunker she got the more she bragged about getting a big bonus at work. As she bought round after round of drinks, she exposed a thick wad of bills that was like fresh meat to the low-life wolves at the bar. Apparently, as she walked to her car, under the safety of the street light, two of the animals beat her in order to get her purse (which she fought to keep, ladies, don’t ever do that, just let them have it). She fought so hard they practically pulled her clothes off — both of her hands sustained multiple fractures. The last I heard she was hospitalized with a cracked skull, and in need of massive plastic surgery.
It happened right under my window, under the street light, and I never heard a thing.
Why didn’t we move?
Last but not least is the story about the time I jumped out that window. That second story window. To chase after a boy.
“I loved him somethin’ awful” If someone says that, believe them. It was awful.
I had, at long last, found me some chemistry. It burned hot, and was highly combustible, constantly boiling over like those science experiments gone awry.
My whole body was on fire. I was consumed by lust which I was calling love, because honestly, I didn’t know any better.
My brain went offline.
My mouth said things that still, to this day, make me cringe. It bargained and begged.
I was reduced to a writhing pile of pheromones and sex organs. He was a beautiful disaster.
When this boy/man said he had to leave after spending three days straight in bed with me; well, I went a little berserk. I couldn’t see my way clear of the crazy.
I stumbled to the window over the dirty dishes, coffee cups, food scraps, and piles of clothes that had surrounded and sustained us that entire weekend.
It was over and he had to go back — to school — cringe.
I heard his car pull away as I got a running start and literally flew, in one giant leap, through the screen and out that portal/ window without thinking.
“Noooooooooooooo! Don’t go!” I screamed in mid-air. The large rectangular screen made it to the ground first in a twisted mess. I managed to clear a shrub and stick a nice tuck-n-roll landing, but that still didn’t bring me to my senses.
It’s amazing I wasn’t hurt; clearly people that stupid are indestructible — That does not bode well for the gene pool.
My screaming continued to echo outside and around the block.
“Don’t leave, not yet!” I got up as fast as I could and ran out into the street, where I could barely see his tail lights at the corner.
“Waaaaaait!!!!!” I wailed at the top of my lungs and sprinted as fast as could after his car and right out of my flip-flops. (What is the deal with that?)
I’d obviously lost my sanity AND my shoes, and now I was losing my voice but it didn’t matter, I continued to scream his name at the top of my lungs until I saw him pull into the Seven Eleven parking lot around the block — the one just before the entrance to the 405 freeway.
When I saw his face I knew I’d gone too far.
Who was I? What had come over me?
I was bent over, trying to catch my breath while he sat in his car looking stunned.
When I could finally manage to speak all I could say was, “I’m sorry…I just…this is so NOT sexy, right?”
He shook his head slowly, got out of the car, gave me a mediocre hug, got back in the car and drove away.
As I took the slow walk of shame back to the apartment I could see the crumpled screen lying dead on the sidewalk, but there was no sign of my flip-flops.
Someone, some other size seven, had stolen them while I’d made a fool of myself — chasing after a man in a car — barefoot — for no good reason other than addiction.
That stunt shocked me…finally!
To say it was not my proudest moment is an understatement.
I learned so much about myself that day. What I was capable of, how, if I let my vagina make all the decisions I could really get hurt since in her narrow-minded focus on chasing desire, she had little regard for my personal safety — and that we needed to get the hell out of that apartment.
It changed me, I started thinking about self-worth, boundaries, and personal responsibility so that nothing even remotely like that would EVER happen again.
I blame that fucking portal/window.
Okay. So who here hasn’t done a crazy-ass window jump in one form or another in their life — show of hands? Uh-huh, I thought so.
Tell me about it below.
Carry on,
xox
