Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir Read online

  That’s also when I realized the amazing beauty of the ringing phone, a sound I now knew the sober world would never truly appreciate. Even the idea of the phone seemed somehow more significant. “It could be anybody on the other end of the line,” I thought to myself. “It could be Mr. T. Or one of the Thundercats.” The possibilities were overwhelming. I picked up the receiver and listened to the sound of the staticky emptiness across long-distance lines.

  “Uh . . . Hello? Travis?” asked the man on the other end.

  Me: “No, this is not Travis. Is this a Thundercat?”

  “Who?” asked the man, who seemed really very annoyed.

  “I think we both have the wrong number,” I said, and I started to hang up, but then the not-Thundercat started getting all shouty, but I couldn’t really understand him, and I thought that he was probably just angry at the sudden disappointing realization that he would never be a Thundercat. Then I suddenly realized that it was entirely possible that I wasn’t even talking to anyone at all, and that perhaps this was all a hallucination. Maybe I wasn’t even on the phone. Maybe I was standing here talking to an apple. Or a gerbil. Then I realized that if it was a gerbil it would probably soon burrow into my ear and eat my cochlea, so I dropped it on the ground and walked away, and Travis was all, “Who was on the phone,” and I was like, “It was not a Thundercat. It might have been a gerbil. Does my ear look okay?”

  This is when Travis probably should have just turned on the answering machine, but I think he’d actually taken a hit of acid himself, because he seemed to be melting, and it’s been my experience that most sober people don’t do that. And then I started throwing up. I said, “Wow. I think I’m going to throw up,” and Travis said, “No, you just think you’re going to throw up,” and then I was like, “God, that’s a relief.” And then I threw up. On Travis’s feet. Then Travis gave me a mostly empty bag of SunChips to throw up into, and I sat in a dark room and threw up—a lot. Like, so much that I suspected I was throwing up things I’d never even eaten. Travis put on a single of the Doors singing “L.A. Woman,” because he said it would help, and it actually did help, in spite of the fact that the whole house seemed to be dissolving, haunted, and filled with hairy goblins. Also, I was pretty sure all the closets had small fires growing in them, and every time the Doors tape would reach the end, I would start throwing up again and Travis would hear me and have to rewind it and start it again.

  This basically happened every five minutes for the next four hours.

  But somewhere in between the time when I was stomping out imaginary closet fires and the time when I finally fell asleep, I did apparently have a few moments of clarity and inspiration. I know this because when I woke up later, next to a bag of sullied SunChips, I saw that someone had written a bizarre diatribe about Smurfs on the wall, and it was in my handwriting. And also I’d written my name several times on the wall pointing to it, because apparently I didn’t want anyone else to take credit for my discovery that the Smurfs were actually peaceful bisexual communists. And that’s when I realized that drugs were bad and I never took them again.1 Then I left and decided to get all new friends, but first I scratched out my name on the wall and replaced it with “Travis.” I suspected that he might try to pin it back on me, so I dotted his name with a heart, since everyone knew that I was not the kind of person to dot i’s with hearts. Then again, technically neither was Travis. I was probably still a little high at the time.

  Anyway, my point is that drugs are a bad idea, unless you use them only to distract people from embarrassing dildo stories. And also that aside from all the vomiting and paranoia and embarrassing myself, it was actually kind of cool in retrospect, although really not at all at the time. Much like life. Also, you wish Lion-O the Thundercat would call you, but instead you spend a lot of time unnecessarily worrying about gerbils getting stuck inside of you. Which is also kind of a metaphor for life. A really, really bad one.

  1. Except for pot a few more times. And one time I accidentally did cocaine. And also I did acid a couple more times, but I never did it again at night, so I’m pretty sure that doesn’t count. You know what? Never mind.

  And That’s Why Neil Patrick Harris Would Be the Most Successful Mass Murderer Ever

  The week after I turned twenty-one I had made a series of good decisions. I hadn’t gotten drunk yet (because as soon as it was legal it suddenly lost its charm), and I’d been really focused on my anorexia, which is one of the best mental illnesses to have, because at least you look hot while you’re starving yourself to death. Except your hair looks like shit because it’s falling out in clumps, and you find yourself lying awake at night obsessing about how your hip bones stick out too far and wondering how much it would hurt to file them down with a cheese grater. Wait, did I say “good decisions”? Let’s start again.

  The week after I turned twenty-one I was bored, sober, and dangerously underweight in that way that makes people think you’re on heroin or dying of cancer. It was nine o’clock at night when I decided I needed to get out of the house, so I threw on a coat and drove to the only bookstore still open that late in the nearby town. My childhood love of horror novels had side-railed into a brief fling with witchcraft. (Which lasted just long enough for me to realize that none of the spells and charms I made ever worked. When it called for “a white candle waved over newly broken seeds,” I would shrug and wave my dad’s flashlight over a jar of peanut butter. I would eventually denounce witchcraft as completely useless, but to be fair, it’s possible that it was less about the potency of the spells, and more that I was just a really bad cook. Plus, it was the kind of peanut butter that already had the jelly mixed in it, which was a real time-saver, but probably not exactly what the druids had in mind.)

  I walked back to the New Age section of the bookstore and for once I was not alone, as there was a guy there about my age who would not stop staring at me. Also, he looked almost exactly like Doogie Howser, M.D. (Special notes for people reading this book who were born after 1990: (1) I kind of hate you. Please stop looking so good in shorts. (2) Doogie Howser, M.D., was one of the first shows Neil Patrick Harris did. It was before he got all hot. No one ever had a crush on him at that point. Then he came out of the closet and suddenly he was totally hot, and every girl in the world wanted to sleep with him. This is just how girls work. We can’t explain it either.) The (probably unintentional) Doogie Howser impersonator was wearing a denim vest, so I was fairly sure he was gay, but this was the nineties, so all bets were off. He wouldn’t stop staring at me, and every time I’d pull out a book he’d casually remark, “Oh, I have that book.” It was extremely annoying, and I found myself wishing there was a book in this section about tampons just to throw him off, but this was a small-town bookstore, so even if a tampon-witchcraft book existed, they probably wouldn’t have had it in stock. Then Doogie smiled, picked up an astrology book, and asked me what my sign was. He swears that this never happened, but it totally did. And the entire time I was thinking, “This guy’s probably a stalker.” He was thinking, “I’m going to marry this girl.” Mostly because he’d had a dream that he was going to marry a girl wearing a certain coat, and when I walked into the bookstore I was wearing the same coat as the girl in his dream. (I should mention that this was the same coat I’d had since I was fifteen, when my mom was in the hospital having a hernia operation and she was so high she was all, “Jenny needs a new coat,” which my father should have recognized as drug-induced delirium, because we never got new coats, but he totally took me out and bought me the coat and I was all, “Oh, and I need a new hat too.” And when we got back to the hospital room, my mom was still on morphine and she was all, “Hey, nice hat!” Then two days later she sobered up and was all, “The hell? I’m unconscious for one day and suddenly everyone goes crazy with hats?!”)

  Doogie Howser noticed my coat from the moment I walked in the bookstore and became obsessed with finding out who I was. I refused to tell him my last name or give him my number, and I
told him very clearly, “I have a boyfriend,” because I didn’t want him to stalk me. Doogie introduced himself as Victor and suggested that I was wasting my money by buying any of these books, since he had them all and would lend them to me. I pointed out that I didn’t actually have any money and was planning on stealing them. The last part was a lie, but it was one that he genuinely chuckled at, which was a refreshing change from the uncomfortable laughter that I got from most men. He took the book I held in my hand and put it back on the shelf. “You’re far too adorable to go to jail. Come to my dorm room and you can steal them from me.”

  And so I did. Because apparently I’ve never seen any of those movies where the dumb-ass coed gets mutilated by a serial killer. And because no one suspects that Neil Patrick Harris is going to murder you. And because he made me laugh in spite of myself. And because I’d always wanted to have a gay male best friend who could teach me about false eyelashes and blow jobs. More of the last one, really.

  Surprisingly, Victor hardly tried to mutilate me at all, and he actually did have all the books he’d claimed to have at the bookstore. He also had the largest selection of vests I’d ever seen a man possess (three). He was only a few months older than I was, but he acted much older and more sophisticated than anyone my age, and we quickly became friends. He was one of the most ardent Republicans I’d ever met, but he consistently surprised me by not sticking to any of the stereotypes I tried to fit him into. He was a strange combination of Star Wars–quoting geek, tattooed kung fu teacher, and preppy computer hacker.

  He was also the first person I ever met who had the Internet in his room (Special note to those same people born after 1990: I know. Shut up), and I immediately used it to look at pictures of dead people, because I thought it would be weird to download porn in front of him. He seemed oddly fascinated with me, in the same way that watching car accident victims is fascinating. I assumed he’d eventually realize I was not the kind of girl his conservative parents would want him around, but he was stubborn and refused to be thrown by anything I lobbed at him.

  We both attended the same small college in the nearby town of San Angelo, and I spent long lunches in his dorm room where we talked about life and dreams and childhood, and nothing happened at all because I’m not that kind of girl. Until he kissed me. And then he convinced me that he wasn’t gay at all, and was very concerned to learn that I equated gay people with vests. “Not in a bad way,” I pointed out. “I just assumed that only gay men would be okay with wearing acid-washed vests.” (Years later, gay friends would point out that that sentence alone proves just how little I knew about gay men at the time, and that I had obviously confused “acid-washed vests” with “assless chaps.” Then I point out that I’ve never confused the two, because one is much more drafty than the other. Then we all laugh and order another round and toast to how great it is to have fun, gay male friends. Hint: It’s awesome. Go find some right now. Gay people are just like you and me, except better. Except for the ones who are boring, or are assholes. Avoid them.)

  A few weeks after meeting Victor he told me, “I’ve decided I’m going to be a deejay,” and I replied, “Well, of course you are. And I’ve decided to be a cowgirl-ballerina,” but then the next day he was hired as a deejay at the biggest rock station in four counties. It was unsettling. Mainly because it was the same confident tone he’d used when he casually said, “I’m going to marry you one day.” I snorted and rolled my eyes, because there was no way that was going to happen.

  Victor was wealthy, and ambitious, and a member of the Young Republicans, and the exact opposite of the type of guy I went for. And also he was still wearing a vest. So I laughed at his little joke, but he didn’t laugh back, and in the back of my head I was a little worried that he was right. In spite of the fact that we had almost nothing in common, I found myself completely in love with him, and he casually asked me to marry him almost every day. And I laughingly said no to him every day, because he was very dangerous. Not physically dangerous, of course. Although one time he did punch me in the nose. I mean, technically it wasn’t his fault, because he was just doing his kung fu forms and I was standing in his dorm room, thinking about how boring kung fu is, and then I saw something on the floor and I’m all, “Potato chip!” and I bent down at the exact same moment Victor swung around into a form, and he punched me right in the fucking nose. Then I felt bad, because he was so visibly upset at accidentally almost knocking me out, and also because in the chaos one of us had stepped on the potato chip.

  Oh, and another time he gave me a sex concussion. I can’t really go into the details, because my mother will probably read this, but basically he had a bunk bed in his dorm room (because he’s an only child and only children are obsessed with bunk beds for some reason), so we were on the bottom bunk and I tossed back my hair in what I envisioned would be a total porn-star move, except the wooden beam of the bunk bed above us was too low, and so I violently head-butted the wood plank and totally knocked myself out, which is pretty much the least sexy thing you could ever possibly do. Like, if I also lost control of my bowels that would be worse, but not by much. Then when I’d recovered, Victor was all, “Sex concussion, motherfucker!” like it was something to be proud of. Basically it was like autoerotic asphyxiation, except instead of being choked you get whacked in the head with a two-by-four. And instead of having an orgasm you lose all muscle control and pee on yourself. Which I totally did not do because that would be disgusting. I hardly ever pee on myself.

  But none of those things were what I meant when I say he was dangerous. I meant that he was dangerous mentally. For one thing, he was rich. I mean, other people might not have said he was rich, but he was the first guy I ever met who owned his own tuxedo. He’d spent long summers with his grandparents in the rural countryside, so he felt as if we weren’t so different, but when I told him that my parents didn’t believe in air-conditioning he gave me this look like I was some sort of starving leper who needed a fund-raiser. The division between us was evident even when we’d go out for lunch. He would order a giant steak, and I’d get some sort of weak peasant broth, because I refused to allow him to buy me anything (and also because of the whole anorexia thing, which actually comes in quite handy when you’re too poor to buy solid food).

  He was dangerous because he was different, and smarter than me, and he wanted me to be a grown-up. My mother decided that I needed to marry Victor before I slipped back into my pattern of dating poor, mentally unstable artists. About six months after Victor and I had been dating I came home to find that she’d packed up my stuff and told us both that I should just move in with Victor, since I was “obviously already sleeping with him.” This was when Victor and I both got very quiet, and I wondered when my mother had turned into the crazy parent, because I wasn’t really prepared for both of them to be unstable. Then I realized that this whole scenario was less about my mom’s instability than it was about her saving me from my own. I was pretty sure my mom’s infatuation with Victor as my potential husband stemmed from how impressed she was with the whole “owns-his-own-tuxedo” thing, and I considered just telling her that he’d rented it and then changed addresses without returning it, but before I could open my mouth to protest, Victor slipped his arm around my waist and beamed down at me, saying, “Totally. You totally need to move in with me.” I suspected he and my mother had plotted this, because I didn’t really want to move in with him, but he later admitted that he wasn’t expecting it at all, and that although he did want me to move in, he was afraid to do anything other than agree with her, because he assumed my father would shoot him, in some sort of milk-without-the-cow scenario. One where I was the cow, apparently. I told Victor that he was being ridiculous, because although my father did own several full gun cabinets, the only weapon he actually used was a bow and arrow, because it was “more sportsmanlike.” But then I remembered that Daddy had mentioned looking at a new crossbow just last week, and decided it was best to just not mention that at all. Victo
r frowned and pointed out that most people don’t own entire pieces of furniture dedicated to weapons, and I began to suspect Victor was not actually from Texas. Then we both sort of stared at each other like we couldn’t understand what the hell was wrong with each other. This probably should have been my first warning of what my future held.

  Victor and I were still poor college students at the time, so we rented a tiny one-bedroom apartment in the worst part of town, and it was surprisingly wonderful. Except that the guy next door to us was some sort of mentally ill hermit who never left his apartment, but would wave to me from his window occasionally wearing pants. I’m not sure where the comma goes in that last sentence, since “occasionally” modifies both “waving” and “pants.” As in, he waved to me occasionally, and (on those occasions when he waved) he was occasionally wearing pants. But he seemed to do it with less of a lurid “Look-at-my-penis” motivation, and more of a sad “I’m-simply-too-unstable-to-know-how-pants-work-today” sort of way.

  A friendly but bleary-eyed couple on the other side of us seemed to be doing a booming business cooking and selling cupcakes. Except replace “cupcakes” with “meth.” “Cupcakes” sounds nicer, though. Unless you’re really into meth. Then I think you kind of lose a taste for cupcakes. Unless they’re meth cupcakes. Which honestly sounds awful, but would probably sell like hotcakes. Which would actually be a great name for meth cupcakes if they existed. Oh my God, this business plan writes itself. Someone find me a venture capitalist.