My Fall and Rise Ch. 06

The Crossroads

In the years between school and prison, the time I spent dancing at the Cheetah Lounge was the longest I ever held a job. I was there a whole nine months. During that time my life was relatively stable in a way it had not been in years. I rented a studio apartment, the only place I have ever lived that was mine alone. The first night I spent there, I could hardly sleep, I was so excited over all the ideas I had about how to fix it up and make it my own.

But, the normality apparent in my life was just a thin veneer. Underneath, I was still riding on the pillhead rollercoaster. I needed a little something to get me started in the morning, a bump at midday to keep me moving, a bigger bump before my shift, and then, something to put on the brakes afterwards. What had changed was that I was making enough money dancing that I could afford my habit without having to beg, borrow or blow anyone. But, as any addict can tell you, it only takes one little event to start the cascade that can bring the world crashing down around you. A fight with your lover, a bad day at work, and your life spins out of control.

I broke a heel.

As I was climbing the steps to the Cheetah's stage, the heel on my right shoe snapped. My ankle turned and I fell, cracking my shin hard against the edge of the stage. Both my ankle and my knee immediately began to swell. Jordy, the manager, took me to the emergency room, where they determined that nothing was broken, but wrapped both joints in bandages and gave me a prescription for Vicodin.

The downfall can be as simple as that. I couldn't dance for the next three weeks, so I had no income. I went through the thirty day's worth of Vicodin in the first week, and replaced it with Oxycontin and Dilaudid I bought on the street.

I needed to get the money coming back in, so I returned to the club sooner than I should have. Before I was halfway through my first shift, the pain in my leg became unbearable. Between dances, I was popping pain pills like they were candy. By the end of the night, I was stumbling. Jordy gave me a hard look, but said nothing. The next night, I could barely stand, and missed my shift. When I went in on the third night, I was so doped up that I started to nod off leaning against the pole. Jordy had seen enough. She pulled me from the stage and led me into her office. There was a small leatherette couch there, and I flopped on it and immediately passed out. When I woke, the club was closed, and she was sitting behind her desk, toting up the night's receipts.

I sat up and looked at her with bleary eyes. She never looked up from her counting while she spoke to me.

"This crap is not acceptable," she said, "I knew you used the pills, but until now it wasn't a problem. I'm sorry, but until you get your shit together, we can't use you."

"But I'm taking pain pills because I got hurt on the job."

She shook her head. "You're an independent contractor, dear, that's not our problem."

I got up and shuffled out of the room.

"Come back when you grow up, sugar," she said as I shut the door behind me.

My rent was past due. I was driving around on expired plates. There were no minutes left on my phone. I lay around the apartment for the next couple of days in a deep depression. I considered my options. I could drag myself back to my mother's house and once again become a burden on her. I could go down to the street and turn tricks. I could just take all the remaining pain pills at once and end my concerns, but even that was not a sure proposition, because my supply was dwindling fast.

By the end of the week the pills were gone, my cash was gone, there was no food left in my apartment and my car was running on fumes. I decided to beg Jordy for another chance. I ran out of gas two blocks from the club and walked the rest of the way.

I knew there was no realistic chance that Jordy would let me work again. I hadn't slept in two days. I must have looked like the living dead. But I had nothing to lose by trying.

She was standing at the end of the bar when I came in. I saw her roll her eyes as I approached, but she listened patiently while I described my predicament to her. When I finished, she shook her head.

"Melissa, you know as well as I do, if I let you dance, and first of all, you are in no shape to do so anyway, you would just take the money and buy dope with it. If you come back in a month and convince me you are clean, I will be happy to let you come back."

"Okay, well thanks anyhow. I'll come back."

"Sugar, I hope so. But if you come back in dirty, I'm just going to have you tossed out."

"I was doing okay until I fell."

"But everybody falls, sugar. Sooner or later, everybody falls."

I thanked her and started to walk away. I heard someone calling to me by my stage name.

"Chardonnay! Wait!"

I turned and looked. It was one of my regular customers, the owlish man the girls all called The Professor. He put his hand on my back and said, "I couldn't help hearing your conversation. I'm sorry you are having such a hard time. Let's go across the street and I'll buy you a cup of coffee."

I had nowhere else to go, so I went with him. He ordered us each a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin. We chatted and he told me about himself. His real name was Glenn. He was 52 and worked as an office manager for a big commercial real estate company. He had been a widower for many years and had a son in the Navy. Eventually, the conversation worked it's way around to my situation. He thought all my troubles came about because of my injured leg, and I let him maintain that belief.

"Listen, Melissa," he said, "I've got a spare room, why don't you come stay at my place while you heal up. Once you're on your feet again, you can get back to work and everything will be alright."

I was naturally suspicious of this much older man inviting me into his home. But, as limited as my prospects were, it was an offer I had to consider.

"Don't get me wrong," he said, reading my apprehension. "I like you, I think you're a special person. I don't have any ulterior motive. I'd just like to help out a girl down on her luck."

I told him that I would consider it. He gave me his business card and asked that I call him when I had made my decision. Then we drove to a gas station and he bought a can of gas for my car. After putting it in the tank and making sure the engine started, he handed me a twenty dollar bill, telling me I should use it to fill up. When he drove away, I went back to the gas station and put in five dollars worth of gas. I went to the grocery store and bought a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. Then I called a friend and spent the rest of the money on pain pills. When I got back to my apartment, the power had been turned off. I decided that I would call Glenn in the morning and accept his offer.

It was a pretty little bungalow on a quiet suburban street. I was surprised at how neat he kept it. He showed me to the spare room, which had obviously been his son's bedroom, and told me to make myself at home. I didn't have much in the way of possessions. My furniture had all been second hand, none of it was worth saving. I had one suitcase filled with small items, and a trash bag full of clothes.

Glenn was true to his word. He made no advances towards me and tried to help me get myself together. He let me use his car to run errands and would give me money for clothes or items I needed. I would go to a thrift store and buy the newest looking things I could find, and spend the rest of the money on pills. My leg had heeled though, and in the absence of pain I was able to taper down to a manageable level. I felt guilty, though, and would assuage my bad conscience by diligently cleaning the house and cooking him meals.

After a few weeks of domestic routine, I grew restless and began to go out a couple of evenings a week with friends. He voiced no objections, but it was obvious that he was disappointed whenever I left the house.

One night I came home to find him sitting in his bathrobe on the couch. It was obvious that I was high. He asked me to sit down and talk.

"Melissa, I'm a little worried about you. Where do you go when you go out?"

"I just go visit with my friends."

"Men friends?"

"Men and women," I said, defensively. "Is that a problem?"

"No, you can go where you want. I've got no claim on you. But, I like you and I want to look out for you."

"You're not my Dad, Glenn."

"I'm not trying to be your Dad, just your friend." He leaned over and hugged me. When I started to pull away, he held me and kissed me. I had expected this moment to come eventually, and was prepared for it. He was feeding me, clothing me, even inadvertently funding my drug habit. I was willing to pay him back with my body if that was what he required. I pushed his robe open and wrapped my hand around his flaccid cock. I stroked it, but it remained soft.

"You don't have to, I might, it might not..." He said in a shaky voice.

I bent down and put his cock in my mouth. Still, it did not respond. He pushed me away.

"I'm sorry," he said, and got up, went into his room and shut the door.

I was making coffee the next morning, when he came in the kitchen and sheepishly began to apologize.

"I'm sorry about last night," he said. He sat down across the table from me. "I shouldn't have started anything, and then I couldn't even finish it."

"It's alright, Glenn. Really, it is."

"Well, I have trouble because of my medications. It's my heart. I have to take all these pills that affect my blood pressure."

I knew that he was taking cardiac medications. Of course I did. Looking through his medicine cabinet was one of the first things I did when he brought me into his home.

I reassured him that everything was good between us, and our normal routine resumed. The next weekend, a friend and I went to a bonfire, I met Nicky and everything changed.

If I had drawn up a design for a man, I could not have come up with one I would want more than I wanted Nicky. He had a sweet childlike grin and piercing blue eyes. He had a tangle of black hair that could not be tamed. He had a swimmer's body, firm and lithe, and he moved with an easy gracefulness that seemed effortless.

He was attentive and caring, not just to me, but to everyone around him. His wit was disarming. No one ever made me laugh more.

He worked as a roofer, when there was work, but his real source of income was the marijuana business he shared with his brother Wayne. They had little patch of plants scattered in the woods around several towns. Even if someone stumbled across one of them, the others would be untouched. He said that it was a trick he learned from stories of his Wabanaki ancestors, who would plant little gardens throughout their hunting grounds so they would never be far from a source of food.

On the first night I was with him, kissing in the firelight, I knew I wanted to be his. On the second night, we made love until the sun rose. On the third night, we shared an experience that bound us inextricably together and would eventually destroy us.

He lived in a one bedroom cabin high in the hills at the end of a long dirt road. He first took me there on a muggy early summer evening. We held hands as he showed me around. It was a beautiful spot. On one side of the cabin, meadows of wildflowers stretched to the forest, and on the other, a heavily wooded slope dropped to a rocky creek. As we were walking back to the cabin, he stopped me and took me in his arms. We kissed and he put his hands on my thighs and ran them up under my short sundress. They briefly squeezed my ass and then moved on, raising my dress. I lifted my arms and he pulled it over my head, leaving me standing amidst the Queen Anne's Lace in just panties and sandals. He kissed my breasts and the side of my neck as I lifted my face to the last warmth of the setting sun.

"I've got a special surprise for you, baby," he whispered.

He took me into the cabin and guided me to the bedroom. I sat on the edge of his big four poster bed. He stepped in front of me and I unfastened his jeans as he took off his shirt.

"Hold on," he said. He reached into his pocket, then took off his jeans. He was not wearing underwear, he never did.

He knelt between my legs and showed me what he had in his hand. It was a plastic bag of white powder and a small silver spoon on a chain.

"Is that cocaine?" I asked.

He looked at me in surprise. "You've never done coke?"

I shook my head.

"Oh, baby, you are in for a treat." He opened the bag and filled the spoon. He showed me how to take it, lifting the spoon to his nose, pressing one nostril closed and inhaling the powder into the other.

He filled the spoon again and held it towards me. I blocked one nostril as he raised the spoon. I inhaled trough my nose and drew in my first taste of cocaine.

I immediately felt a numbness in my nose and throat. "Give it a couple minutes," Nicky said. He stood up in front of me. His cock was standing at full stiffness right in front of my face. I leaned forward and took it in my mouth. He moaned and ran his hands through my hair. As I sucked, I could feel a tremor run through him.

"Oh fuck," he sighed. "So fucking good."

I didn't know if he was talking about my mouth or the coke kicking in, but a moment later I was swept in a wave of pleasure like none I'd never experienced. Nicky gently pushed me onto my back. I was seeing stars as he raised my legs and slipped my panties off. He opened me before him and lowered his head as if he was bowing to me. When his mouth touched me it felt like an electric charge running straight from my vagina to my brain. I don't know when I came or how many times, as the pleasure of his lips and tongue on and inside me and the euphoria of the coke flowed into one.

Nicky raised his head and reached for the bag of coke. Using the spoon, he drew a thin line of powder from just below my navel down to the edge of my pubic hair. When he snorted it off my skin, I laughed in delight. I raised my head and he offered me another spoonful. After I had inhaled it he kissed me and my lips grew numb from traces of the coke. Still laughing, I licked his face clean of the last specks of powder.

I stopped laughing when his cock pressed inside me. He fucked me with the urgency that usually signals a man is on the verge of an orgasm, yet he did not cum. I rose to meet each thrust eagerly. He fucked me furiously until he became so out of breath that he collapsed, panting, into my arms. His cock was still hard, so I rolled him off of me and mounted him. I rode him hard and fast, fingering my clit and coasting through a crescendo of orgasmic waves. I was nearly hyperventilating when Nicky finally reached a climax, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me down against him as his hips pounded upward, pumping his cum inside me.

I rolled away from him, laying flat on the bed trying to catch my breath. I looked over and saw that his cock was half hard and still twitching. I took it in my hand and gently stroked it.

"Holy shit," he panted, "Did I tell you it was going to be good?"

"You told me, baby." I kissed the head of his cock, then rested my head on his chest and settled into his arms. We were both still wired, and we chatted for a long time.

"Coke makes me so fucking horny," he told me, "but it makes it hard for me to cum."

"That doesn't sound so bad to me."

"Yeah," he laughed, "It's a good deal for you, isn't it."

"It definitely is. Can we do it again tomorrow?"

"Yeah, well, I was going to ask if, well, you wanted to stay here."

"You mean move in?"

"Yes. I know it's quick, but it seems right, I guess."

I wasn't sure what to say. We had only known each other a few days. But I had never been so attracted to anyone before, and I had just had the best sex of my life with him. But he had told me he had a girlfriend. I didn't want to be his side piece, I wanted him all to myself. That would have to be resolved. And there was Glenn to consider.

"If you can take me back to where I'm staying in the morning, I need to take care of some things. Then I will call you and let you know, okay?"

"Sure, that's cool," he said, pulling me closer and kissing me. I don't think there was any doubt in his mind what I would decide.

He dropped me off at Glenn's house in the morning. I had not been back for three days. He was sitting in the living room, reading on a lap top. When I came through the door, he shut it down.

"I was wondering if you were ever coming back," he said.

"I thought you'd be at work."

"I thought I would work from home today, in case you showed up. I didn't want to miss you. Where have you been?"

I sat down on the couch. "Yeah, well, I, um, I met somebody..."

"That's what I figured," he said. "I hope he's a nice guy."

"He's very nice. He's a roofer."

"Your age?"

"Just a couple years older."

"I've been thinking about something, Melissa. I want you to hear me out, okay?"

I nodded. Hearing what he had to say was the least I could do.

"I think you should marry me."

"What?"

"I asked you to hear me out, now just listen." He leaned forward and put his hand on my knee. The gesture was more paternal than amorous. "I have this bad heart. How long have I got, ten years? My boy is a lifer in the Navy, he'll be alright. He doesn't need anything from me. But if we were married, when I go, you could have the house, and you would get surviving spouse benefits from my social security."

I was speechless. It was a gesture of great generosity, but of extreme desperation as well. He would ensure my security, but he would bind me to him, legally and financially.

"You can go be with this guy for now. You can come and go as you please. But I will be here for you and you'll be taken care of in the end."

I took his hands in mine. "Glenn, you have been so good to me, but I am not in love with you."

"I've been in love with you since the first time I watched you dance."

"You don't even know me," I said, shaking my head. "Believe me, you wouldn't love me if you did."

"Of course I would."

I wanted to shatter his illusions, to tell him how deeply I was immersed in drugs and all the things I had done for them and on them. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. He loved a fantasy girl who wore my face and danced with my body. I thought that convincing him that she didn't exist would hurt him worse than losing her would.

I stood up and cradled his head in my arms. He began to weep. I kissed the top of his head, then went into the room that had briefly been mine, and gathered up my belongings. When I came out, he had composed himself and was standing by the front door. When I crossed to him he hugged me.

"If you ever need anything, you know where to come," he said. "My Melissa. My sweet Chardonnay."

I kissed him on the cheek and whispered, "Thank you, Glenn. Thank you for everything," and walked out.

I had been presented with a clear choice, two very different roads were open before me. Glenn offered me a version of the paternal love I had never known, he offered me kindness, stability and security. Nicky offered me adventure and the dream of a great romance. Glenn could not compete with Nicky's roguish charm, his good looks or his erotic energy. But more than anything, Glenn could not compete with the lure of cocaine.

I went to see him after I was released from prison. He opened the door and looked at me. "Hello, Melissa," he said, "Are you alright?"

"Yes, Glenn, I'm doing pretty well,"

"Good," he said, and shut the door.