Saturation

Epilogue

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ACKWLEDGMENTS

Moe Fudgie and Messy Tom, I love you both more than all the space in all the Universes multiplied by every star and then multiplied again by every grain of sand on the planet (yes, you can multiply space, stars and sand). I just did. It equals - like - a lot.

A special shout-out, hugs and juicies to all my friends, including Tata J and C.E., and family who have stuck with me through all my trials and tribulations from the beginning - you know who you are. A special thanks to my editor, Richard Sanders - a man who knows how to shoot from the hip and cut to the chase.

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****Names have been changed or nicknames have been used to protect the identity of the people named in my story. I recount it here to the best of my ability and with the help of friends and family.****

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Chapter 1

Busted - Again: An Introduction

When the police arrived I didn’t wait for them to come into the house. I gave Dick a five–minute head start while I smoked a cigarette and finished my drink. Then I walked outside barefoot with my cell phone and introduced myself to the four police officers standing with Dick next to the gate at the end of our driveway. I wouldn’t see the inside of our house again for another month.

As far as I was concerned I was being rescued. I was being rescued from Dick and I was being rescued from the part of me that reaches for alcohol. I was a puppet to my compulsion to drink and by living with Dick I was permitting them both, inviting Dick and alcohol to destroy me. I was a tragedy for it.

I was well aware of the irony in feeling that I was escaping something monumental as I sat handcuffed in the back of a police car on my way to jail for the second time in just over a month. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, my alcohol-induced anesthesia prevented me from fearing my destination. I had absolutely no idea what I was about to go through. I’d spent only nine hours in the tank the first time Dick had me arrested five weeks earlier. Had I known what I was in for this time I most certainly wouldn’t have been so appreciative for the escort.

I sat comfortably in the back seat of the police car, Indian style, and cracked the knuckles in my toes. I remembered that some police cars have a little plastic wall that divides the front and back seats. This car had a metal fence divider that I decided was more personable and intimate.

I studied my handcuffs as we drove away. They were heavy and cumbersome, which made dialing and holding my cell phone awkward. Calling Dad was no easy feat, but I managed.

Hello?" He answered on the first ring.

Hey, Dad! I’m in a cop car. Dick just had me arrested. Again. We’re going to jail. I said, enthusiastically.

Who’s we? He asked. I noticed he didn’t sound very surprised.

"Us. The cops and me. We’re all in the car. Together. We‘re driving. Just a sec.

We’re going to jail, right? I asked the cops.

Yep. We’re going to jail. One of them answered.

Dad? Yeah. We’re going to jail.

Jenny, Dick just called me.

He did? But I just got in the car. We aren‘t even out of our neighborhood, yet.

He called me as soon as you guys drove off. Dad explained.

But it’s almost 2 a.m. there. Weren’t you asleep?

Yes.

For a moment my alcoholic anesthesia lost its potency and I had to corral a small army of hostile emotions into my throat so I could swallow them. Dick called my dad before me! That asshole! Why hadn’t he called someone in his own fucking family?

You need to hang up your phone now. One of the cops said.

I’m talking to my dad. I explained.

I know you are. I can hear you. But I’m not supposed to let you use your phone. You can call your dad when we get downtown.

Oh, yeah? Okay. I didn’t want him to get in trouble.

Dad? The cop says I have to hang up now, I‘ll call you later.

Okay. Hang in there. Call me when you can.

(To be continued)

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Chapter 2

A Wee Brief History Of Me

I was born in Laguna Beach, California way way back in 1969. My parents and I moved to Denver, Colorado when I was two. They divorced when I was four and my sister, Sauce, was one. Mom was granted custody. Dad married Peggy when I was six. When I was eight he fought Mom for custody and won. When I was nine Mom kidnapped us and took us to her parent‘s house in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Dad’s parents lived in Tulsa too and one day, four or five months after we’d arrived, he had them kidnap us back, in a manner of speaking. Mom’s parents helped. We were pulled out of school, I was in the fourth grade, and put on a plane. We didn’t get to say goodbye to Mom or any of our friends. I resented that.

While we’d been living in Tulsa, Dad and Peggy had moved from Denver to Cripple Creek, a small mountain town 45 miles west of Colorado Springs. Dad had taken a job there as the president of a gold mine. At first Peggy was agreeable enough, considering she didn‘t have any kids of her own, but soon after Sauce and I moved in she got pregnant. Once our brother, Hoot, was born her attitude changed.

Peggy started verbalizing that she was there to replace my terrible Mom who‘d since moved to California. I resented Peggy - loudly. The older I got the more she nitpicked and tried to control me. I rebelled and escaped through cycling, reading and writing. Dad never interfered. Sometimes when we fought about Mom, Dad would agree with Peggy’s assessment of her - even comparing me to her on occasion. It was never a compliment. I resented that and felt confused by it at the same time. I was in the 7th grade and miserable. How could I be just like her when I was only 13?

The summer before eighth grade Dad took a job as a Stock Broker in Denver, so we moved. My school in the mountains had been a single building. All 250 students, kindergarten through 12th grade, went to the same school. My new middle school in Denver, 7th and 8th grade only, had nearly a thousand students. I found it a bit much. The boys found me interesting and the girls found me freaky. I was a mountain girl, more interested in housing blueprint magazines than fashion magazines. I didn’t do my hair; it did its own thing in curls down my back. I didn’t do my nails or own makeup. I didn’t own skirts or pants or dress shoes. I wore tennis shoes or boots with my jeans.

Sauce and I went to see Mom during summer or winter vacations and each time we got back the tension between me and Peggy escalated. We fought bitterly on a daily basis. Finally, near the end of my freshman year of high school, I was 15, Dad ripped the rug out from under our fighting and allowed me to go live with Mom. The daily verbal warring between me and Peggy was tearing apart his marriage. I think she had given him an ultimatum - either I had to go or she would. Dad put me on a plane for California three months before the end of the school year.

Over the years since Sauce and I had been kidnapped back from Mom, she had slowly dissolved into a functioning alcoholic and pothead. When I first arrived on the scene in California I was 14 and we shared great times and partied together. My stay with her was short lived, however, and ended a couple months into my sophomore year when we got into a fight one afternoon. I threw an empty coffee cup at her, which naturally pissed her off. She backed me up against the wall with her hands around my throat and squeezed - hard. Several days later my maternal grandmother flew out to get me. I went with her back to Tulsa and finished 10th grade there.

I adored my new high school and made friends my own age. I adored my grandparents. That year with them was the most peaceful and normal experience of my entire youth. But I was too much for them to handle. I’d experienced too much hostility with Peggy and too much freedom with Mom. By the end of the school year I’d worn my grandparents out and Dad sent me back to Colorado to live with him, Peggy, Sauce and Hoot.

Peggy and I picked up right where we’d left off - except I was bigger - I‘d grown taller than her. I finally left home several months into my junior year after she and I had a spectacular blowup. I’d just turned 17. We got into a fight over a teabag I’d left on the edge of the kitchen sink. Peggy had tried to spank me and I slapped her. Dad called from work as I was packing my bags. He told me he was on his way home and that I better not be there when he got there. I wasn’t and I never went back.

A friend of mine decided to bail with me and we took off for California in my little yellow Toyota Corolla. The oil pan was cracked. Over the entire two and a half day trip I had to put in a total of about 40 quarts of oil. Our second day in, a mechanic agreed to swap me 15 quarts for my brand new record player. I’d just received it for Christmas. We barely made it to Sacramento. Not knowing where to go or what to do we agree that talking about it over donuts seemed a good idea. Between us we had less than $20. We wound up staying with a 30-something Middle Eastern guy, who worked the counter at Winchell’s Donuts, and his two housemates.

Mom only lived an hour out of Sacramento but we couldn’t stay with her because she was busy. I’m sorry Jenny. I’ve just got too much going on right now. That’s what she said. Three days into our adventure my friend’s Dad sent her back to Colorado. Dad wouldn’t send for me. You got yourself out there. If you want to come back make it happen. Find a job and get your car fixed. He said. I wasn’t too keen on staying with the Middle Eastern guys so Mom’s parents came to the rescue - again. I moved back Tulsa, got a job and lived with my grandparents for about nine months, until my 18th birthday. I moved into my own apartment the next day.

I still knew quite a few people around town and through friends I met my oldest son’s daddy who was a senior at my old high school. I’d since taken my GED and was enrolled in community college. He moved in with me several months before graduation and a year later we were pregnant with my oldest son who was born at home when we were 20. My oldest, Moe Fudgie, has had that nickname since kindergarten. One day, after he got in from school, I asked him about his day and he said it was good because the class had had a substitute teacher - Moe Fudgie. The name stuck. Moe is 21 now. He‘s a charismatic, gregarious, adventurous spirit, a seasoned certified scuba diver and a business major at a university in Chicago.

Moe Fudgie’s dad and I never married and we didn’t work out, but we did move from Tulsa to Boulder, Colorado which is where I continued my education at CU and met my youngest son’s daddy, Lelo. Lelo and I both worked at the hospital. I was 24 when we married and our son was born at home, like my first, when I was 25. My youngest’s nickname is Messy Tom or Messy T. He earned his name during kindergarten as well. One day after school I asked him what he’d had for lunch - a Messy Tom he said -meaning a Sloppy Joe. Messy T is 15. He’s messy. He‘s also an inquisitive, playful and contemplative black belt in TaeKwon-Do, a junior diver and a popular sophomore in high school.

Moe and Messy T both own an impressively tenacious and muscular willpower - shocking at times, the both of them.

Lelo and I divorced when Messy T. was four, remarried when he was five and divorced again when he was seven. Lelo left us for the east coast when Messy T was seven and he never returned to Colorado, though both boys went out together to visit him frequently. Lelo and I have maintained an odd, yet mostly friendly connection to this day. There’s an old familiarity between us - older than our lifetimes I believe.

My relationship with Mom dissolved over the years. She didn’t even meet Messy T until he was five. Our relationship remained very spotty up until 2010. Today, I don’t have a relationship with her and neither do my kids.

Dad became a very successful businessman and retired when he was 60. He was always very fond - still is - of both boys and they visited him - still do - and Peggy in Denver often.

Hoot was only seven when I finally left Dad’s house, so he and I haven’t had much one on one time together. He’s married now and I can tell you this - do not let him hear you blaspheme the Denver Broncos.

My sister, Sauce, and I maintained a close relationship up until my early 30s, when my relationship with alcohol became more of a priority. Today we get on well, but there is still a small splinter in our relationship. We never had spats as adults like some sisters do. But Sauce experienced something, which I address in my story, when she came out to visit me once when I was 38 and I think it changed her a little bit. Some traumas leave permanent scars. I’ve always loved her very much.

I learned when I was 27 that alcohol could be used for a purpose - to self-medicate. But I took my time with it. I was always a very fit, outdoorsy person. I walked several miles almost every day when I was pregnant with both Moe and Messy T, and in Boulder I got very excited about hiking and cycling. Until I started seriously relying on alcohol when I was around 30.

When I was 29 I became involved with a man, ‘V’, who lived in Cardiff, Wales. He was my Greek adventure, but it didn’t last, and our separation seemed to both ignite and pull something from me - something valuable. When I was 32 I became involved with a man, ’J’, who was a recovering alcoholic. He relapsed while we were together, and the demise of that relationship introduced me to the agony of the death of a relationship in its entirety. I hadn’t experienced it with Lelo or V in the same capacity and fullness that I did with J - or maybe my grief was the culmination of numerous losses, I don‘t know.

Several months after I asked J to leave I turned up the volume on my drinking. Over a period of about a year I went from drinking an average of five bottles of wine a week to drinking around 14 bottles of wine a week.

My relationships with people, men especially, have always been heavy. I tend to enforce plenty of space between me and most folks now days. I find relationships curious and exciting, but also wearing. I’m still learning.

I met Dick, the man in the first chapter, when I was 35. That’s when I took my relationship with alcohol to a level I couldn’t have imagined possible. My story begins there.

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Chapter 3

Meeting Dick

I'd been drinking an average of two bottles of Chardonnay a day, every day, for a couple years when I met Dick. We met through an online dating site. I found out through his profile, and then through correspondence that he worked as an IT tech for a major airline, had never been married, had no kids and was an avid skier and cyclist. He was 46 and I was 35.

His main profile picture on the dating site didn’t impress me much, but another picture of him standing in the ocean with a surfboard did. He looked healthy and I liked his smile. He had straight teeth. His love of cycling also attracted my attention. A couple weeks into our online chats and emails, I finally agreed to meet him for a sushi dinner in downtown Boulder, Colorado, where we both lived.

I arrived buzzed, on time and asked to be seated outside on the patio. I draped my light jacket over the back of my chair and sat facing the street musicians. The warm autumn night brought out scores of people. Families with young kids, groups of students and couples made for the perfect distraction if Dick should fail as a satisfactory conversationalist. The waiter had just delivered my second bottle of sake when I noticed Dick cross the street.

He was 15 minutes late and hadn’t bothered to call. Had I been sober I wouldn’t have waited. I wasn’t sober. He looked older than he did in his pictures and he had terrible posture. We greeted each other and as he sat down he took off his glasses, folded them slowly and placed them near the edge of the table next to the patio wall. As he did this, he apologized for being late, said he forgot his cell phone at home, and said he figured I might be late too. Only after he finished speaking did he look at me again.

Curious.

It was a warm, busy night, and I was too drunk to take offense. Alcohol numbed my judgment and my integrity, like Novocain numbs your gums before a dental procedure. I felt great. So what I said was, No worries.

Over dinner we talked and shared sake. The more I drank the more I decided Dick wasn’t entirely unattractive. I gave him a small handful of points for being a so-so conversationalist. He was clearly educated and he certainly seemed interested in me. Had he been a complete dolt I would have finished dinner and wished him luck on his future dating endeavors. Whether I’m sober or not I normally have little patience for adults unskilled in the art of social decorum and discourse.

Of course, Dick didn’t know I was drunk. My social graces were impeccable in light of how I would have fared during a complex field sobriety test. He could not have guessed I'd already downed two bottles of wine before our date. I didn’t look drunk or sound drunk because my tolerance for alcohol was ridiculously high.

As the sake began to flirt with his brain I’m sure I began to look more curious and gregarious to him. I know how to make people feel interesting, especially when I‘ve been drinking. We ate, talked and shared a few laughs for maybe an hour and a half. After we said good-bye the impression he made on me lingered until I walked into the nearest liquor store, a three-minute drive from the restaurant.

Out of sight, out of mind.

He called a couple days later and said he‘d like to see me again. I said, Okay, not because I was excited by the idea or moved by him in any way, but because I couldn’t think of a reason not to. It was that simple. A few days later when he asked me out on another date I agreed again for the same reason. I don’t remember what we did either time.

This was the beginning of our relationship back in 2005. I think what drew me to him was his handiness. He always made himself available. We also fucked - a lot. At first he was like a useful robot, well programmed, but lifeless, though on occasion I did appreciate his wit. I made a point to drink openly around him. I had to. I knew I acted buzzed sometimes, and if I didn’t have a glass of wine in my hand and half a bottle on my kitchen counter he would know I’d been drinking anyway. I wanted him to think I was buzzed on my second glass of wine, not my second glass of my third bottle.

It served him to overlook my relationship with alcohol, whatever he thought it might be, because he soon realized he couldn’t compete with it. If he wanted me in his life he had to take me with my wine. I made this very clear several times early on in our relationship, when I had to correct him after he suggested I might prefer tea or a glass of water with dinner instead of another glass of wine.

Preposterous!

Sometimes, because I found him so aggressively boring and not even in my inebriation could I convince myself he was good company, I would turn him down for a date, or tell him he couldn‘t stop by to say hello. I might say, No, I don‘t want to see you tonight, I have to clean the toilet. He wouldn’t suggest we go out another night or offer another idea or even say, Okay, I‘ll call you later. Have a good night. He would complain, press me to reconsider and use creative measures to try to convince me I actually did want to spend a few hours with him.

He was completely serious and it really cramped my style. I didn’t understand why he thought I could be so easily convinced to do something I just said I didn’t want to do. I found his disregard intensely offensive, yet instead of refusing to acknowledge him ever again, I felt challenged by him and rose to the occasion.

I’d respond with something like, You’re hilarious. Congratulations on being the first asshole in my life ever to try and convince me I actually want something I just said I don’t want. Like I don‘t know what the fuck I want. No, you can‘t come over. I’ve got a glass of wine in one hand and the toilet scrubber in the other, now piss off.

Click.

Amazingly, that wouldn’t discourage or even insult him. It only cemented his resolve to see me again, and that blew my mind. He was encouraged and challenged by me, not put off. Instead of simply breaking up with me for being an obnoxious, drunk bitch, he would call me the next day and try again. I became something to conquer.

In hindsight, I see now how quickly he learned to say, Hey! I want to see you tonight. Can I come by with a bottle of wine? Of course, that would get my attention because even if I didn’t want to see him, increasing my liquor supply was always a priority, so I‘d usually allow him to stop by, with the clear understanding that his visit would need to be kept short. Several times he showed up empty handed; like I wouldn’t notice.

Wrong.

OFF TO THE LIQUOR STORE, YOU!

That’s how we both learned we could get what we wanted from each other; we used alcohol as currency. Part of me found him entertaining, like watching him trudge out to his car in a late-night snow storm just to buy me wine, yet I was repulsed by him at the same time, for the same reason. Something ugly in me felt empowered that I could get him to do something so ridiculous. I found his insanity amusing.

In just over two short months I became aware of how unhealthy his attachment to me had grown. And I allowed it. I participated. We became like two sick spiders intertwined in a foul emotional web. Why he was so attracted to me, I can‘t say. But I do know that once he acknowledged my relationship with alcohol his determination to spin his emotional web became fierce - almost as though he was competing with the alcohol.

I was well aware that we were very wrong together, but I simply didn’t care because 10 glasses of wine a day made me apathetic. The more Dick attempted to extort support and love from me the more I verbally attacked him for it, which did absolutely nothing to discourage him - it fueled him. His blatant need for emotional and psychological coddling disgusted me, but because I was always drunk, I indulged him with insults, which he welcomed because any attention from me was better than none.

This foul dynamic between us blossomed into a weed of colossal and hideous proportions. His disregard for my contempt for him and the lengths I went to insult him entertained us both and sometimes we laughed about it together. Our nauseous chemistry attracted us to each other like two confused magnets. He’d become as addicted to me as I was to alcohol.

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Chapter 4

Changes

I was rarely predictable. My moods fluctuated depending on the amount of alcohol I’d already consumed, the amount of alcohol within my reach, and the amount of alcohol I needed to buy. My life revolved around alcohol. On a daily basis I was drunk, rude, entitled, cheerful, gregarious, hungover, angry, destructive or enigmatic. Sometimes I managed to pull off several opposing emotions simultaneously, confusing others and myself. Not once did Dick break up with me.

I never broke up with him either and within about five months of our first date I moved in with him. I started drinking more and I started drinking his expensive vodka. Occasionally I’d taunt him. You know you‘ve never seen me sober. I haven’t been sober for two minutes around you since the day we met. You know you can’t possibly love me. How could you when you don’t even know me? You have no idea who I am. Have you ever bothered to ask yourself just what the fuck you think you‘re doing with me?

Mostly I said things like that to him because I was always impressed by the insanity of his answers and I wanted to hear him repeat them. He’d say something like, I can imagine who you are and what you’re like when you’re sober, and that’s the woman I love.

It’s important to note here that Dick was not an active alcoholic. He was a diabetic. He drank no more than three or four drinks a week, though I believe he wished he could drink more. He’d told me stories of a past relationship where he and his ex would polish off a bottle of wine each, every night. That was before he became a diabetic. That’s what he told me anyway.

About a month into our new living arrangement I decided Dick needed to make some changes. For all the wine I drank before he got in from work, I was never drunk enough to muster the patience to listen to him complain about his job, which he did, without fail, every night. So, I finally told him to quit his job and to find a new one in Seattle, Washington.

Something else was going on with me as well, something I didn’t share with anyone - not even myself in a one-on-one, self-talk, sort of way. Until my relationship with Dick I’d managed fairly well as a high functioning alcoholic. When I moved in with him I took my drinking to an entirely new level. My kids became privy to seeing and hearing things from me they‘d not seen nor heard; specifically my uncontrolled rage. I became someone they didn‘t know - a stumbling, slurring, aggressive alien.

When I was very drunk and moody they’d tell me I was grouchy. I’d tell them I was just tired, but they knew better. I believe I decided on an unconscious level that I had to protect them from me.

The first time I went to Seattle I was 21. I’d gone out to visit Mom. I learned then that it’s possible for a person to develop an emotional attachment to a location. I developed a connection to the waters and mountains of Washington like a devotee does with a spiritual leader. Fourteen years had passed since that visit and I hadn’t gone back to visit once.

The morning after I told Dick to quit his job he gave his two weeks’ notice. Just like that. We’d never discussed moving across the street together much less to Seattle. He’d never even been there. Three weeks later he landed a contract position in Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

I could not have been more thrilled. Vancouver is only a two hour drive north of Seattle. I didn‘t care so much about the city we were moving to as much I cared about the environment. All I believed was that I needed to be surrounded by the energy that saturates the Pacific Northwest. Everything fell together without a hiccup.

Every decision I made was made under the influence, including my decision to marry Dick. In May of 2005 my parents, and his mother and sister witnessed us exchange vows on a bluff in Mendocino, California. Moe Fudgie and Messy Tom didn’t attend. I refused to allow them to take part in a ceremony based on emotional corruption. Dick moved to Vancouver later that same week to start his new job and I stayed in Colorado with the kids until they finished the school year. A week after school let out I hugged them good-bye and sent them to live with their fathers.

I hadn’t asked them how they felt about being separated from me and each other. I hadn’t asked them how they felt about me marrying Dick and moving to Canada without them. I told them I would fly them out for visits and that I expected to move them out in a year after Dick and I settled. I disassociated completely from what I thought they might be experiencing and feeling. I disassociated from myself, too - all of it, through alcohol.

Today, I consider my decisions and departure during that time emotionally and psychologically violent. I was merciless and utterly selfish in my intoxication.

Both boys settled into their lives with their dads. Moe already lived with his dad part time in the mountains so his environment and friends stayed the same for the most part. Messy Tom had to adjust a bit when it came time to start school. But he settled in easily because like his big brother he was, still is, very good-natured and approachable, and he made new friends quickly.

In other words, both boys were set up in supportive, loving and familiar environments. Knowing that did nothing to relieve me of my guilt and shame. I was their mother - they were my responsibility and I’d surrendered them. I left the fucking country without them.

I envisioned Dick and me settling into some kind of manageable living arrangement and that we’d send for the kids within a couple months - by August, right before the start of the school year. Well, it turned out I’d be busy in August and wouldn’t see Moe and Messy T again until the following December. But I digress.

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Chapter 5

Canada

I flew to Canada the same day I put Messy Tom on a plane for the east coast. Dick had been living in an extended stay motel in