Unwifeable(64)

Outside the mysterious China One club, Alex gives the password (“I’m naughty”) and whips out two hundred-dollar bills for entry. One for him. One for me.

We head down the stairs to the lounge below, elliptical Moroccan music encircling us, and he takes my hand again, guiding us to the bar to get drinks, then to a maroon velvet banquette on the side. The two of us sidle up next to a buxom British chick who is pouring out of a tight red dress and snuggling up next to some dashing Peter O’Toole–looking motherfucker.

The Absolut I’m downing is starting to take effect. I’m feeling loose, brash, and free.

“We should play a get-to-know-you game!” I say to this ridiculously attractive couple. “Like truth or dare or something.”

“Ooh yes, okay, me first,” the man pipes up. “How about, I dare you . . . Mandy, is it? I dare you to go down on Sylvie here. Sylvie just loves girls.”

“No problem,” I say, smiling and empty. As I walk over to Sylvie, a small crowd begins to form, which includes the resident coke dealer—whose job is to obviously know where the action is before anyone else.

No one wanted to buy any coke.

“Oh, that’s okay,” the dealer says to me, “I just want the visual so . . . I’m going to give you a bump to do off that girl’s big-ass titties so I can have that burned in my brain, okay?”

I do the line greedily, then dutifully lift the bottom of Sylvie’s dress and slowly lick her clit, all the while perking my ass up in order to best pornify the whole encounter for Alex and all our new friends.

“Oooh, my turn!” Sylvie cries out. “Mandy, I want you to go down on Alex!”

The energy changes a little, and Alex looks annoyed.

“Sure,” he says, clipped and less confident than I’ve seen him all night.

I soon see why. Alex is adorable, but this is his best—his biggest—attribute.

There are times like this in life when you are really forced to woman up to be who the man you are with needs you to be. And I am not going to let Alex down.

“Oh yeah,” I say, summoning every acting lesson I’ve ever had. “Mmm, give it to me.”

I get on my knees, count to a hundred Mississippi, and do the best object work of my life.

Yeah—my first attempt at sobriety is not going well at all.



* * *




EVEN WORSE THAN blowing my eight days of sobriety is the unbearable guilt I feel at having totally blown eight days of sobriety. I hate more than anything the feeling that I’ve done something wrong. It’s a debilitating kind of perfectionism I’ve had since childhood where I’m so afraid to have done something wrong that I stubbornly stick to whatever wrong choice I’ve made—all so I can avoid the shame of having to admit I screwed up in the first place. So instead of returning to the rooms of AA, I stick to my guns that I did the right thing in going back to partying. Besides, you never know, Alex the sex-club boy might . . . actually . . . be interested in me?

I am so dumb. But, truly, from the moment Alex grabbed my hand and said, “I’m your boyfriend now” and talked about going on a “sexual heart of darkness” journey with me, I thought there might be a real connection. That he would call. That he would want to hang out again. That the drinking and the partying and all of it was worth it—the right thing to do. It had to add up to something . . . right?

But the sun still rises in the east, the sky is blue, and of course he doesn’t call.

That doesn’t mean I can’t talk about the experience, though, to get the whole thing out of my system. Which leads me to a conversation with a man who is a friend of friends. When I spill to him the details of that crazy night, he tells me that he, too, has been to sex clubs. He seems to accept my weirdness, and I like that. He gives me weed and booze and coke, and I like that even more. It’s an escape. That’s all I’m seeking. Just one more escape. Just for a little while.

But the higher we get together, the darker our encounter becomes. He slaps me, insults me, and jerks my hair in a way that feels like my neck is snapping. It doesn’t feel like playful S&M. It feels sinister.

When I finally sober up to realize I need to get the fuck out of his apartment, I rush to get dressed in the dark. I don’t want to have sex with him. I don’t want to be this fucked-up. I don’t want any of this. As I’m walking out the door I ask him weakly, “Can we just be friends?”

“I don’t think so,” he replies.

His rejection confirms all my worst fears. He knows what I am good for—and when I don’t give him that, I’m good for absolutely nothing. As I walk home in the rain as the morning light starts to break, my mind races as I chain-smoke and stare at the disgusting pavement below. None of this is fun anymore. None of it. I feel like I am offering myself up as some kind of human sacrifice for a story that has long since lost the plot.

When I wilt into my crumpled-up pile of sheets at home, I grab my phone and study the cracked screen. Someone inside my iPhone must genuinely care about me, surely. But I don’t want to burden my friends. I know my family doesn’t want to know how bad things have gotten. I don’t want to break everyone’s heart.

Scrolling through my contacts, I swallow my pride and dial a sober comic I know who’s given me really straightforward advice in the past. Truthfully, though, I feel like a jerk for even reaching out, because I spoke to him a few weeks back when I tried sobriety the first time around—and he congratulated and supported me. Then, of course, I cockily updated him on exactly why sobriety wasn’t for me and how I obviously had to drink because of my super-legendary swinger’s club night. That time, he was still nice, but his response was more distant and polite.