Read an excerpt from
Love is the Drug:
Chapter 1: The Rules
I'm in a Rite Aid in the Valley and Peter Cetera is playing. I am singing along
while I'm in line buying exactly three postcards, a bottle of Evian, a lighter,
some butter, and a metal-barreled round hairbrush. And I know the fucking words
to "The Glory of Love." Every single one of them. Okay, so Karate Kid II was
overrated. But Peter Cetera was a genius in a bad Eighties bomber jacket,
singing the theme song. I saw Cetera once at a carnival. His wife looks like
you would think Peter Cetera's wife would look. Like a bleached-blonde
California silicone-enhanced ditz twenty years his junior. But, bless you,
Peter, for "The Glory of Love." It's just the kind of bad radio song I need to
relate to right now. Not quite as respectable as Billy Joel, not quite as
horrific as Michael Bolton.
There's this pudgy black-haired little girl at the Good Humor Ice Cream stand
inside the pharmacy who is yelling at the acne-covered Latino ice cream man
because she wanted the other kind of fudge ripple in her three-scoop cone. She
has the air of a forty-five-year-old CEO in New York City who has been jilted
by a cabby. She is maybe seven years old. This California girl is jaded beyond
repair. My turn comes up in line.
"A pack of Marlboro Lights and a pack of Marlboro Ultralights, please."
I gave myself away right there. No one says please in the Valley. Or thank you.
Unless it's in a sarcastic tone when the coffee is two minutes late and they
want the head of the server. You got me. I'm not from here. But I need the
Ultralights. I need something to separate myself from him, pretend that I'm not
on the same path of self-destruction. Pretend that I care just one percent more
about my blackened lungs to buy the "lightest" version of lung cancer
available. David wants the Lights, to show that he isn't totally hard-core
anything. Wishy-washy. Fucking Libras do it to me every time.
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-four."
"Can I see some ID?"
I get carded to this day, and I am now twenty-four, five days ago. I feel like
I'm seventy half the time, so being mistaken for someone less than eighteen has
gotten old by now. Once I show the counter girl my ID, and the two old bitches
behind me have sighed their L.A. sigh that everyone has learned in the Valley,
she lets me go. I sort of shimmy out of the pharmacy, feeling very proud of
accomplishing something. He'll be so happy. David will see that I care enough
to help him smoke himself to death.
I'm walking and trying to light a cigarette at the same time and traffic here
is like a game of fucking Frogger. Dodge the cars, watch for bullets. I am
getting a buzz from one puff of my Ultralight cigarette and I have to put it
out. All my bright ideas make me sick. As I head over past the 7-Eleven, I'm
thinking of what else is on my internal list of things to do to be a good
person today, and I'm overwhelmed. But I got his cigarettes. I got the butter.
Now I can bake for him. He will love my cookies. If he loves my cookies, he
will love me. If he loves me, I am worthy.
I open the gate to the little white duplex on the little dead end street, and
tiptoe to his door. I can hear the TV blaring. I can hear the stereo's sound
effects from the video game he's been engrossed in for the last few months. He
won't even notice I was gone. So now I must tiptoe inside. He can't notice when
I'm there, he has to notice when I'm gone. These are the rules I have made up
for David to need me. If I'm noisy, he will want me to leave. If I break
something, he's better off without me. If he says the house is too small, it
means that I am too big. I take up too much space. I need to figure out how to
shrink myself. I need to become like rice paper, like origami, so he can fold
me up and put me in his pocket until he's ready to unfold me again.
When I shut the door behind me, David glances up from his game.
"Hiya, sweetie."
"Hi, baby."
"How was your run?"
"Uh, okay."
I dodge cords and clothes on the floor and hand him his pack of cigarettes. He
still hasn't really looked up from his game.
"Thanks, hon."
"Sure."
I shuffle papers, open and close drawers, try to seem like I have something to
do while he's busy saving his universe there on the computer. I look over at
the bottle of Cuervo on top of the fridge. I can't start drinking yet. It's
only five. He'll think I'm an alcoholic. And I am so not an alcoholic. I never
drink at home. I only drink when I'm on vacation, or when I'm bored or when I'm
depressed. My dad is the alcoholic. I'm just...young. But God, I need a drink.
I need to relax. I need to stop feeling like David doesn't want me here, like
he doesn't like me, like he's just humoring me. I have to stop asking stupid
questions like, "What's your favorite color?" and "What's your mother's sign?"
I have to stop being young. I have to get jaded. I have to be cynical. I have
to stop speaking. I have to be invisible. He likes things that don't really
exist.
"What's wrong?"
He knows I'm a basket case, but I am this way because of so many things. I have
a right to be uneven right now. It's my father's sickness, it's David's
disinterest, it's that I'm twenty-four and I still haven't really figured out
if I want to live or not. It's my tendency to choose the wrong times to talk.
It's that with David, it's never a good time to talk. It's that I love this
bastard so much I am becoming everyone I ever hated just to be nearer to him.
It's that he doesn't want me near him anymore. It's that I just want this one
thing to be okay. It's that it never will. It's your fault, David. I am a mess
because you won't let me clean us up. You would rather remain on the floor,
spilled, tracked over, something that would have made a nice conversation
piece, a thing of beauty, if someone had allowed it to. You would rather be
broken glass in my feet than the looking glass I peer into every day. It's that
you don't care what's wrong, David. I try to hold back the tears as I look up
from the twice-cleaned countertop.
"It's my dad."
David doesn't look up from his game.
"What about him?"
"He's not getting better."
Silence. No, I take that back. Not silence. There is a happy techno sound
coming out of the stereo, because he is winning his video game. David's
character is fairly powerful by now, and he has all these spells he casts on
his opponents and each spell has a specific sound to it. And this sound means
that he gained something. A weapon, money, a slave, whatever. Life is good.
David is happy. He looks up triumphantly. Uncomfortably.
"That sucks."
I try to fold into smaller pieces when he looks at me, so the space around me
looks bigger. So he doesn't think I take up much room at all. I suddenly want
to be like the treadmill you can fold up and put under the bed.
"Yeah. He's basically...dying."
David gives me a blank look and turns back to kill some more creatures. I
tiptoe to the bathroom and shut the door. Turn on the bath. And start to sob.
How can I ever compete with an immortal character? Why do I want to? Why is it
necessary for me to find the one person in the world who wants to die alone and
try to force him to change his mind? This is my brand of attention. I need this
attention most.
Top Ten Reasons I Cannot Leave David
1. He needs me.
2. I think I need him.
3. I am in love with him.
4. I have to make him love me again.
5. He is too fucked up to find someone to be with him now, and I won't let him
die alone.
6. I am too jaded for dating around anymore and I hate dates and I hate guys
paying for dinners and expecting pussy in return and I might as well settle
down now.
7. We have great sex. Did I say great? It's fucking amazing.
8. We have really good sex. It counts for two. It's that good.
9. We are both very shy and very bruised from love and we both don't trust
people so we might as well be distrustful and miserable together.
10. We have a lot in common. Like cooking. And music. And books. And sex.
Copyright © 2003 by
Sarahbeth Purcell
