Chapter 9 There’s a First Time for Everything
There’s a First Time for Everything
LISA COULDN’T HAVE ME AT HER HOUSE THAT NIGHT, so we paged one of my other friends, Kim, on her beeper and she called us back on a pay phone. It was the middle of the night in Las Vegas. I picked a crazy time to run away.
“I need a place to stay,” I told her. “I’m leaving home for good.” Kim didn’t bat an eyelash.
“You can stay the night at mine,” she said, but when I got to her house, Kim’s mean-as-fuck mom kicked my ass out. That tiny Asian lady didn’t play. Kim clearly felt bad, so she left with me.
“Let’s walk the Strip,” she said. “We’ll figure out a place for you to crash later.”
Kim and I spent all night under those bright-as-fuck flashing lights.
There were people smiling and laughing everywhere, but I squinted my eyes at them.
Are these people really happy? What does happiness even mean?
It was all hitting me: I was fourteen. I’d left home.
I didn’t belong anywhere, and I didn’t have anywhere to go.
My protective instincts kicked in, and my brain started spinning, trying to figure out my next step. I needed to find a way to make money and take care of myself. Giving up was not an option.
I looked at Kim and felt gratitude for her washing over me. Kim was a senior, but we always had a bond. We kept that bond until the day she passed away. She was too good for the world.
By the time the sun started coming up over Vegas, Kim figured her mom was asleep and she took me home.
“When you wake up, you gotta go.”
* * *
I CRASHED ON DIFFERENT COUCHES for the next few days before landing at Tasha’s for what would be the best time of my life.
By then, Tasha’s mom, Theresa, had straightened up enough to be in Tasha’s life more consistently, and Tasha, her baby brother, and Theresa lived in a tiny little tinfoil trailer we called the Roach Motel.
But the roaches didn’t bother me, because that trailer was full to the brim with love and laughter.
There were Christmas lights up all year long, and the kids who lived in the park became our extended family.
Theresa’s dudes, though. She had a habit of dating men who put their hands on her, and one time, she came home with a black eye.
And all I ever knew was to stand up for the ones we loved.
So, Tasha, me, and all the kids in the trailer park jumped this grown man and beat the shit out of him the next time he came around.
Theresa called up some more biker friends for backup, and the trailer filled up with dudes on bikes ready to kill people. We knew we were safe with Theresa and that nobody could fuck with us. It was the first time in my whole life I’d ever felt protected. She was and still is a true badass.
* * *
JORDAN WAS SIX FOOT TWO, half Asian, and fucking gorgeous.
He played football and had the most innocent, sweet smile I’d ever seen—not to mention that his Richard Gere eyes used to make me melt, along with the freckles sprinkled across his nose and cheeks.
Poor kid never even knew what he was getting himself into with me.
We met as freshmen and instantly had a thing for each other.
For some reason, it was always the privileged rich boys who ended up wanting to be with me.
Maybe it was some other-side-of-the-tracks thing.
Maybe it’s because I gave off damsel-in-distress vibes—or maybe, just maybe, they thought I wouldn’t run from them.
But that boy fell for me and then we fell hard for each other.
It was your regular old high school ditch party at someone’s house where we decided it was time to give ourselves to each other. We were both virgins, though my childhood and life at home had more than prepared me for all things sexual. But when it came down to it—we were both nervous wrecks.
I took his boxers down and saw his penis for the first time. Now I know for a fact it was on the smaller side, because I’d seen plenty of porn. But I wasn’t disappointed—it made me less afraid. I figured if he was smaller, it wouldn’t hurt so bad.
I laid myself down on the bed and pulled my panties off so he could get on top of me.
Unfortunately, he was so small that being on top meant it would barely go in.
He was so unsure of his movements that he wouldn’t go deep enough and was just laying it in the very entrance of my vagina.
I was starting to get frustrated. Pop my cherry, my guy.
But sweet Jordan couldn’t figure it out.
“Let’s take a break and get a change of scenery,” I said.
We both threw our clothes back on and I went into the bathroom to give myself a pep talk.
I looked in the mirror, took a deep breath, and knew what I had to do.
I walked out of the bathroom, into the hallway, and grabbed his hand. I led him outside.
In the backyard, I told him to lay down on a lawn chair.
“I’m going to ride you,” I said. This is my first time ever having sex. How would I have known how to ride somebody? Like always, I’d figure it out. He looked at me in disbelief.
“Are you crazy?” Why does everyone say that to me?
“Yes, I am,” I giggled as I threw him down onto a perfectly positioned lawn chair. You can’t tell me the universe didn’t provide.
I started kissing him and took off my top so he would get rock hard again. Bingo. I slid his pants down to his knees and took one leg out of mine. I wanted to be able to cover ourselves just in case we were caught in the act.
I slowly straddled him and grabbed his hard dick with my hand and slid it inside me and then bore down.
Pop! I winced in pain, but as I kept moving, the pain faded away and was replaced with the best feeling I’d ever felt.
I only had that feeling for a minute flat before he busted inside of me and it was all over.
I’d popped my own cherry the first time I had sex.
Tell me that’s not the story of my entire fucking life.
That night, I realized how much control I had—control over him, control over myself, and control of what I wanted. It was like a lightbulb went off in my head: Pussy is power. If I learned how to control every situation with sex, I could get whatever I wanted in life. What a lesson to learn.
* * *
JORDAN AND I COULDN’T WAIT to fuck each other again, and by the third time we knew what we were doing. But as with everything in life, because I’m ruled by Daddy Saturn, all my fun comes with lessons. Brutal ones.
Midway through that third time, he came inside of me again. I felt a quick pain like a needle going through my uterus. I grabbed my stomach.
“I just got pregnant,” I said.
“You’re crazy,” he said. “There’s no way you’d be able to tell.”
“I’m definitely fucking pregnant.” He rolled his eyes and rolled off me.
A few weeks later, I was a raging bitch—gaining weight and feeling nauseous constantly.
At another ditch party—even if they’d expelled me, they couldn’t keep me away from the parties—I told Jordan I was scared and wanted to take a pregnancy test, so he left with some friends to go buy some tests and bring them back to me.
With kids partying on the other side of the door, we sat on the edge of the tub and waited for the pee stick to marinate. And when the three minutes were up: Positive.
The room got super hot and tiny, and my brain started spiraling. Oh my god. Fuck. I can’t have this baby.
“We can’t have a baby,” he said, but I barely heard him. My brain was going a mile a minute. Fuck. Fuck. What do I do? Should I have this baby?
“Alisa. I cannot have this baby. My parents will kill me,” he said. He was right. We were just sixteen. There was no way we could be parents.
“Fine,” I said. “If you can pay, I’ll get an abortion.” Both of us stared wide-eyed at each other.
“Deal.”
That week, Jordan stole three hundred dollars from his parents and handed me the cash.
* * *
I WAS A RUNAWAY LIVING on the streets. I couldn’t even take care of myself.
How would I ever raise a kid? Sitting in the clinic waiting room with Stacy and other pregnant teens was mortifying for me—they all knew what I’d done and what I was about to do.
I didn’t even ask Jordan to come with me. This was my problem.
The nurse opened the door, called my name, and we went into the back operating room.
It was cold. And the staff was so unwelcoming. I’m not sure what I expected.
They handed me a gown and laid me on a stainless-steel operating table under bright lights. It was a tiny room with an ultrasound machine. There weren’t any pictures on the wall—nothing at all to look at. Just my feet in stirrups.
The nurse came over and rubbed gel on my exposed tummy and placed the ultrasound device over my uterus.
She moved it around on each side going back and forth until she paused and hovered for a minute.
No words, just clanking on the keyboard and snapping what sounded like a picture of the little baby she could see on the screen.
She printed out the photo and handed me an ultrasound picture of my baby. What in the actual fuck, lady? I looked at her blankly. Was she hoping I’d change my mind? Was this a keepsake? Tears welled up, but I fought them back.
She started an IV in my arm and told me that soon I’d feel relaxed.
To this day, I don’t know why she showed me that picture, but I didn’t have time to ask questions before the drugs started kicking in. The room went fuzzy, and the doctor walked in.
It was like something out of American Horror Story.
A dingy, dark operating room with a doctor who wouldn’t even speak to me and that I could barely even see because the drugs made my eyes so blurry.
He shoved what felt like a vacuum nozzle inside of me.
The pain was intense. All I could do was scream on the inside.
“No,” I mumbled. Something had shifted, and the second he started, I knew I’d made a mistake.
“I want the baby. Stop.” The doctor didn’t listen.
He continued the procedure and it felt like being split open and having my insides ripped out.
“You didn’t give me enough medicine,” I wailed. “It hurts. Please stop.”
He didn’t care about anything I had to say. I was sobbing and inconsolable, and it felt like my body wasn’t mine. In the recovery room, I bawled my eyes out for a couple of hours alone. I just wanted someone to hug me.
I didn’t know then that the doctor had messed something up during the procedure. My insides would never be the same again.
* * *
STACY DROVE ME BACK HOME while I waited for the anesthesia to wear off. I called Jordan to come over that night, and we lay on the couch watching TV. I put my head on his chest and tried to breathe through the pain. I felt so vulnerable.
It seems crazy now, but we had sex that very night.
That’s how disconnected from pain and abuse I was then—and from my own body and what it had been through.
And looking back at that sixteen-year-old who made the choice she thought was right at the time, she probably just wanted to feel loved and cared for. Maybe it’s not so crazy, right?
A couple of weeks went by, and Jordan’s dad found out he’d stolen the money.
“I need that money back,” he said.
I didn’t want Jordan to get in trouble, so I somehow got the money together and paid up. Nothing’s free in this life.
* * *
TASHA WAS DATING A RICH kid named Dan who lived in Summerlin, the ritzy, immaculate development on the edge of Vegas.
He’d throw lavish parties where people would be huffing gold paint in the corners of every room.
His mom was a single mom with a sugar daddy who provided a life of comfort and luxury for both of them.
I always thought rich kids were the lucky ones but I learned quickly that more money meant more problems. I was definitely a troubled kid and I loved to party, but huffing just wasn’t for me.
By then, I’d tried glass, but not in the quantities Dan was bringing out at his parties.
One night, I ended up in a bathroom with Dan, Tasha, one of Dan’s friends, and a tray with more glass in a mound than I’d ever seen.
Maybe I was dumb or showing off, or maybe I truly didn’t understand how bad methamphetamines were, but I laid out twelve lines.
Six in one nostril, six in the other. I can’t say exactly what I was thinking as I snorted, but I know that back then, taking risks with my body was just part of the deal.
That girl just didn’t think of herself as something worth protecting.
Within a minute, my nose started pouring blood. It looked like an artery had ruptured. Tasha started screaming, and the room got darker and darker and—
“I don’t feel good. I need to lay down.” I knew they wouldn’t call the cops—if you called the cops, someone was going to jail. I started shoving toilet paper up my nose to get the bleeding to subside, but it wouldn’t. My skin was crawling.
I somehow made it to an empty bedroom and lay on a bed, spinning. I started puking and praying. God, just let me get through this.
One hour turned into three fucking days of not moving, not eating. People would come and check on me, but I could barely even answer when they asked if I was okay. It was my first time overdosing, and I didn’t have the energy to do more than groan in response.
What the fuck did I do to myself? How am I still here?
It would take years for it to finally sink in: that I was worth more than rotting from the inside out.
That ultimately I could take control of my own life and my happiness, that I could forgive myself for how I’d treated myself the same way everyone else had treated me, and that I could choose to care for myself and heal.
But even if it would be another decade and a half before I could truly help myself, at least that morning I was awake—or awake enough—to get my ass up.
Some part of me was starting to see trickles of the truth: Life waits for no one. And I had so much more life to live.