10.

I flew into Honolulu on a Wednesday evening. Like every other time I've returned to Hawaii, I felt a wave of emotion looking out at the island below. The sun had just set and the lights of Waikiki could be seen in the twilight. A backdrop of green mountains suggested the unspoiled paradise Oahu had once been. The nearer ridges and valleys were now covered with houses. Closer to the shore were hundreds of high-rises. Waikiki stuck out because of its dense concentration of high-rise hotels and condominiums, but twenty to thirty story buildings were sprinkled throughout the city. A smaller concentration of tall office buildings was visible in the downtown area before we banked around for our final approach.

As soon as the cabin doors were opened to the jet-way, the warm moist air engulfed us. The smell of tropical flowers wafted in and I was glad to be home.

My second night home I decided to go to a meeting. First, I'd called Jessica, but she said she was busy.

In my head, I knew that to stay sober I needed to get involved in fellowship and service in the recovery community. I would have to stick out my hand and introduce myself, volunteer to help out by cleaning up after the meeting, and continue to go to meetings so people can get to know me. This kind of involvement seemed to be working for Matt and his wife in Minneapolis. It had worked for me years ago when I’d first gotten sober. I tried to suppress the nagging feeling that it wouldn’t work for me as long as I “cheated” by using DXM.

I chose a social sort of meeting to go to on that Thursday night. It was one I'd been to many times before, where lots of fairly well-off alcoholics, who could afford to live in the expensive parts of east Honolulu, mingled and shared the message with van-loads of treatment center residents who would sit in a group in the back, some attentive to the speaker and others displaying various degrees of boredom.

The meeting was on the grounds of a church and parochial school. It was sort of out doors; there was a roof, but no walls. A podium with a mic stood in front of rows of folding chairs and picnic tables lined the perimeter. Once I'd grabbed a cup of coffee and some cookies I scanned the rows of chairs for a place to sit. I looked for a place with a good view of attractive women.

I liked this meeting because there were usually quite a few pretty girls there, but this time I was disappointed. I saw quite a few old-timers, some I recognized, none I wanted to get to know. I wanted fellowship, but I didn’t want to have to shake hands and talk with boring old farts. I was lonely for the company of the opposite sex and I couldn’t see how I could find it in this sort of place.

There was one beautiful local girl with tattoos across her back, over her shoulder, to her chest, and forming a sleeve that went halfway down her right arm. I found myself with a seat that offered an excellent profile view of the girl. I spent much of the meeting staring at her breasts and convincing myself alternatively, that she was out of my league, and that she was probably crazy and would be bad news and lead me to relapse. After the meeting I began to approach her, but she turned toward the older women who’d been the main speaker at the podium.

I decided to help stack chairs. This was my means of escaping the awkwardness of small talk as the meeting broke up. Small talk, apparently an innate skill for most people, only aroused my anxiety. I decided really didn’t have anything in mind that I could say to the girl with the tattoos or anyone else for that matter. I stacked a few chairs and headed for my car where I downed the remainder of a bottle of cough syrup I’d opened earlier.

It was still early and I didn't want to go home. I wanted social interaction. I've never had a group of friends, a group I can choose from and just call and say, "Hey, do you wanna hang out?" So I decided to go to Club Rock Za.

I ordered a diet coke and sat back in a booth while I took in the scene. I spotted the same Korean dancer who I’d shared tequila shots with just a few months before. Fit, tan and flexible, I caught her eye as she finished up a dance for another guy.

The song ended and the guy she was dancing for left his seat at the stage. I took his place and, as I watched her writhe around on the furry little mat she used to keep her naked skin off the stage, she would pull at her garter every so often as a signal for me to slide a dollar between the garter and her firm thigh.

After giving her about twenty bucks, a dollar at a time, I asked her to join me for a drink. She said she’d like that, but had a couple more songs in the set. I went back to my booth while she danced for a couple of rowdy Marines.

She told me her name was Sasha and asked for a shot of tequila. I ordered myself another diet coke and we sat close together, her hand rubbing my thigh under the table. My soda and her twenty dollar Jose Cuervo arrived and we toasted, her shot glass clinking my tumbler. Then Sasha tipped her drink back, only emptying half. She leaned into me as to kiss me; when my lips touched hers she opened her mouth and emptied the half shot of Jose' Cuervo into mine.

I finished the rest of the cough syrup in my car before going into Club Rock Za, the first of two, maybe three, strip clubs I hit that night; it's all very hazy and I don't think I'd remember it at all, but my memory was to be triggered months later.

Rock Za was crowded. I stood while the hostess went to get me a Corona. When she returned with the beer, I gave her two twenties and asked for a shot of tequila and the rest of my change in singles. The club has two large stages and a small one. A large breasted local girl was just climbing on to the small stage; not really my type. There were three girls on each of the other two stages. All but one of the dancers had guys sitting right in front of them, shoving dollars their way. The neglected blond was past her prime, too skinny and desperate looking.

A tiny Filipina made eye contact with me from the stage across the room. She smiled at me as she shoved her ass toward the guy she was dancing for. Then I noticed a guy getting up from his seat near me. The hard bodied Korean who’d been dancing for him slid her thong back into place and began gathering up dollar bills from around the cushion she’d been kneeling on during her “dance”. I moved into the seat just as my drink and my change came.

She smiled at me, then motioned to the hostess who’d just set down my drinks. While she traded a thick stack of singles for several twenties, I tried to see if I could find the scar from where her implants had been inserted. I could find none; still her breasts were too firm, too erect to be real. I’m not a huge fan of implants, but they seemed to complete this fantasy woman. Her completely smooth, hairless body, was evenly tanned and perfectly toned. Yet, in the minute or so it took her to make the exchange with the hostess, I noticed the beginning signs of aging. Hands of a thirty year old, maybe thirty-five; through the dim light and her makeup I could see lines around her eyes. Thirty-five maybe...it’s so hard to tell with Asian women. She was still in her prime, but I wondered if she had a plan for the future. I threw back my tequila and took a sip of beer.

Finally, with her smaller roll of larger bills firmly strapped into her garter, she turned her attention to me.

“I’m sorry, that was my last song of the set. Would you like to buy me a drink?” She was bending from her kneeling position on the stage. Her hair brushed against my face as she spoke into my ear. The combination of her perfumes, the ones she had applied and the natural scents of her body, combined with her slightly husky Korean voice and her proximity to me and caused my dick to be suddenly engorged with blood.

“I don’t buy twenty dollar juice for strippers.” I told her. Lot’s of the girls at strip clubs and hostess bars will have the men buy them drinks at inflated prices. The girl then takes a kick-back from the bar. This is a standard practice that I simply accepted. Some girls (understandably) wanted to stay sober as they plied guy after guy for expensive drinks, so they’d stick to tiny glasses of pineapple juice. I’d be damned if I’d pay twenty bucks for a glass of pineapple juice.

She put her top back on, straightened whatever other small strips of cloth she was wearing and held her hand out so I could steady her as she stepped off the stage in six inch clear platform stilettos. When she reached me at the bottom, she said, “I drink tequila.”

Jin Hee was her name and I bought her a couple of tequila’s as well as a couple more for myself. She was attentive at first, but soon seemed distracted. She told me she would be back; she had to say “hi” to one of her regular customers.

Jin Hee eventually found her way back to my table to work me for another drink. This is what she did; this is how she made her living. I knew this coming in; I wasn’t new to the scene. But, somehow it all seemed transparent to me at that moment. Jin Hee was clearly getting drunk as she took my money, but there was no way I was going home with her tonight. That fantasy would never happen. When she next rotated to her other “client”, I left the bar.

You’d think, after that brief moment of clarity, I’d have had enough of strip clubs for one night. Instead, I soon found myself a couple blocks away at the Crystal Palace where I met, for the first time, Darlene Wunderlich.

She had a light complexion with exotic features, ivory skin with dark hair and eyes that suggested an Asian background. I asked her, as I would sometimes do, to tell me about herself. Where was she from? What was her ethnicity? Was she a student? Did she have ambitions beyond gyrating for horny men?

Some girls will share some personal information, others keep things all business. Darlene turned out to be of the former type. At least on this night, she was very chatty. She seemed a bit tipsy already when I first stepped up to the stage in front of her. I learned that her family was from Idaho. Her father is German and her mother Japanese. The whole family had moved to Honolulu when she was in High School, but her parents had moved back to Boise a few years after Darlene finished her undergraduate degree.

“A college graduate! Working here? What did you study?”

It turned out that Darlene had a Masters in special education. She was a special education teacher at Kapahulu Elementary School and she worked with severely mentally and physically disabled children.

I learned all this between songs and I shared about my own experiences in the special education field. She would dance, grind, and writhe around during the songs as I stuffed dollars into her garter. Standard strip bar behavior. During the quite moments between songs we talked. When her set was over she came to my table and I bought her a twenty dollar drink. We talked about the challenges of working in the field, children with difficult behaviors, parents with difficult behaviors, limited resources and support from the school system. I told her of my plans to leave the DOE and begin working with Mark. She told me that she too was thinking about leaving.

The next morning I woke up bleary and hung over. I had blacked out the night before; I remembered starting out at Club Rock Za, but I didn't remember where I ended up. By my bed was a slip of paper that said: "Darlene Wunderlich" followed by a phone number.

At the time, I didn't remember my conversation with the gorgeous stripper/teacher. I thought, "Darlene Wunderlich, I don't even want to know a Darlene Wunderlich." I threw the paper away.

October 2004


7.

Perspiration is the bane of my existence. I am a sweaty guy. It's early, but I'm sweating like a pig. Yesterday I had sixty-one days sober (OK, I’d been drinking cough syrup for most of that time, but that doesn't get me into trouble like alcohol does). This morning I'm not feeling great, I’m still a bit drunk and I've lost my car.

Some homeless guy woke me up with his toe a few minutes ago. He told me I should get up before the police roust me. I don't remember passing out on the grass next to King Street, but the guy was right. It's a busy street; I'm lucky it wasn’t the cops that woke me up.

After getting myself oriented I begin walking. I’m nearly a mile from the last bar I remember being in last night. WHERE DID I LEAVE MY CAR? Miraculously, I still have over half a fifth of vodka in a plastic shopping bag, but I have no cash. I go to an ATM to check my balance and make a withdrawal. I'm sickened by the puny amount. The balance shows a few hundred, I should have well over a thousand. The ATM won't let me have any.

I vaguely remember leaving Club Rock Za last night after the ATM there stopped feeding me cash to feed the strippers. My shopping bag tells me I bought the vodka from Daiei, a Japanese store near the strip clubs. I take a swig from the bottle and start on foot to find my car.

I’d thought I was doing so well, putting my life back together. I had stayed for a couple of months with Matt after hitting what I thought was my absolute bottom. I'd been going to meetings, spending my days playing with my new nephew, Frankie, and helping Matt repaint his house. I just got back to Oahu a couple of days ago and now I'm in a worse bind than I’d been in when I'd left in August.

*

My life had seemed so full of promise last spring. I'd given John my notice and I was looking forward to making some real money in private practice working for Mark. I was making arrangements for Shea's summer visit. Though I'd backed off, Jessica and I continued to see each other. I knew that Shea would get along great with Jessica and her daughters.

In May and June I had more time on my hands. I was winding things down at work. Jessica less interested in spending time with me, and I was less interested in going to 12 step meetings. I began to focus my energies in other directions; I went to strip clubs. This was not a new activity for me, but one that I usually did when I was drunk (or wanting to get drunk) and lonely.

One Wednesday after work I went to Club Femme Nu; I just ordered Diet Cokes and spent about an hour (and $40) looking at the girls. Then Thursday afternoon I did the same thing, but after one Diet Coke, switched to beer. I'd been nearly 4 months without a drink, and I wanted to prove to myself that I could drink like a gentleman, so I left after just two beers. But I stopped on the way home and picked up a six-pack.

I was still using DXM constantly and was drinking one or two eight-ounce bottles of cough syrup per day. It was fortunate that I stopped drinking at the bar after just two beers because the interaction of the two substances really had a multiplying effect. Eight beers in one night would normally have been a very slow night before when I was drinking.