The Dirty Book Club(79)
You’re welcome,
Dan
M.J. called his cell phone. It went straight to voice mail. She sent a text. It went unanswered. She kicked the door. It really hurt.
“I drove today,” she cried to a room full of Dans who weren’t there.
How dare he make that decision for her—for them! She never even had a say. Could he be any more arrogant?
Unless it was a test.
What if he was stalling the flight crew with the hope that she’d come bounding toward him all adorably snotty and disheveled, protein bars tumbling from her backpack, as she pledged her bone-deep commitment to him and the Red Cross.
Because she could do that. There was still time.
Or she could unpack the malaria pills and cargo shorts, fill her steamer trunk with black cashmere, board that flight to New York, and wonder if Fortune just spun her a lucky break.
CHAPTER
Twenty-Five
Los Angeles International Airport Saturday, September 17
Full Moon
“MA’AM,” SNIPPED THE flight attendant, “your device.” He flicked his chin at the window, indicating the passing runway markers, the trails of brown grass zipping by. “We’re taking off.”
M.J. apologized and turned off her phone, but her attention remained fixed on the screen. Though dead and dark, she searched it for a possible explanation. Something that might help her understand what Addie meant when she texted: It’s bad, isn’t it? Must be or you would have called by now.
It wasn’t until she woke up from her nap, choked down a rubbery omelet, searched her crocodile bag for gum, and brushed against those two pieces of paper that she understood: Last night, when Addie was beside her in the Mini, or maybe when they hugged good-bye, she slipped M.J. that letter.
THE DATE: May 26, 2016
THE DIRTY: How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale by Jenna Jameson with Neil Strauss
THE DETAILS: By Marjorie Richards
This book is about bad decisions, the resulting consequences, and surviving anyway. This book may as well be about me.
Chapter one begins: “There comes a moment in every life when a choice must be made between right and wrong, between good and evil, between light and darkness,” and as you can imagine, porn star Jenna Jameson chose darkness. I, however, chose light along with adventure, sex, and freedom. But in 1981 the darkness found me anyway.
I was at the Rolling Stones concert in Los Angeles with some gals from work. We had a seventeen-hour layover, an ounce of weed, and a twenty-dollar bet that said I wouldn’t show Mick Jagger my tits. I won the bet and lost my shirt—literally. I was waving it over my head and accidentally let go. I didn’t care. My friends didn’t care. The guys next to us certainly didn’t care. But the cops did.
While they were yanking me out of the crowd an attorney from Pearl Beach handed me his card. A Richard Gere type who got me off the hook and into bed, all before my 8:00 AM flight. He also got me pregnant.
My roommate Ingrid set me up with a doctor in Paris who said I’d be out of bed in two days and back in the sack by the end of the month. But I couldn’t go through with it. All I could think of was Liddy and Patrick and how badly they wanted a baby. So I decided, what the hell? Why not bake the bun and give it to them when it’s cooked?
Of course, Liddy was over the moon, but Patrick had one condition: I had to tell the Richard Gere type that the baby was his so he could bless the adoption. It was the “light” thing to do.
As you might have guessed, I did not get a blessing. I got a proposal from a stranger named Charles Oliver and the promise of a life I never wanted. But what I wanted no longer mattered. I quit my job. I moved back to America. I had nightmares of being buried alive.
Then, just as I was leaving a DBC meeting, you kicked. (The book was Family Secrets—how apropos.) Anyway, that kick must have knocked some sense into me because from that moment on I was all in.
You were born on the Fourth of July amid fireworks and the joyful tears of my best friends—all of whom thought they’d never see the day. And Charles, of course. He was elated. Everyone was elated, except me.
I felt detached and disoriented. Like the time Suzette Rodgers and I got our luggage mixed up. I unzipped her bag and didn’t recognize a thing. “These are my clothes,” I thought. “But why don’t I know them? Why do they feel so unfamiliar? Am I losing my mind?”
But with you, Addie, it was different, because you did belong to me. I assembled you in my body, I felt you grow, we have the same green eyes. But none of that mattered. You may as well have belonged to someone else.
I asked Gloria and Dotty if they felt connected to their babies right away. Of course they said yes. And Liddy? She connected with babies who were never even born. So I did the things that mothers do: I cooed and took pictures and strolled around town with a proud smile on my face. But you may as well have been a box of Pop-Tarts. Actually, I felt more connected to those.
I stopped eating and sleeping. It got so I couldn’t get dressed or hold you. Sometimes I would leave you in your crib from the time your father went to work until he came home. Forgetting to feed us both. “See,” I’d sob into my pillow. “I wasn’t meant to have kids.”
One day the crying was so bad (yours or mine, I can’t remember) I boarded a flight to Paris wearing slippers and a housecoat. Once again, Ingrid took me to that doctor of hers and I was diagnosed with postpartum depression: a mood disorder caused by big drops in hormone levels after you give birth. Who knew?