Chapter 12 Never Break a Promise
Never Break a Promise
I WAS NINETEEN. MARK WAS BANGING SOME HOSEHOUND stripper named Hope.
She was scraggly as shit, but Hope had something I wanted: She was making money dancing.
I’d always wanted to be a Vegas showgirl.
I wanted that glitz and glam. As a little girl, I’d swung from the post of my Strawberry Shortcake canopy bed.
One time, I swung so hard I snapped my imaginary stripper pole in half.
You can imagine how that went over with Bill and Mindy.
In my teens, I realized I had power over men, and I loved it. But the fact that men would have to pay me to touch me at the club was even more tantalizing.
I knew many girls who danced, but Mark absolutely wouldn’t let me go to the clubs to work.
Instead, I had to make a dirt salary with a fucking square job where I’d keep my clothes on so Mark would never feel like he had to share.
He even made me leave Karl’s company because he knew I was getting too independent and financially secure.
By the time I found out about Hope, I was working odd jobs at restaurants for minimum wage and barely making tips.
And when I found out he was sleeping with that stripper behind my back, something inside me snapped after years of being told what to do. I was done being the obedient house mouse. I said, Fuck that. I’m going to fucking strip, too.
All the girls I knew worked at Cheetahs, and if you were hot shit, that’s where you would go. I already had an outfit prepared, so I threw on my teeny-tiny bikini with a schoolgirl skirt and clear heels and sashayed my way out onto the floor.
I was nervous as fuck, but my girl Veronica was with me, and she was a seasoned vet. The OGs who had been dancing for a while called us newbies “green”—and let me tell you, the men could always spot fresh meat. They were drawn to innocence like moths to a flame.
My first customer signaled me over, and I anxiously walked toward him, trying not to teeter in my sky-high heels.
“I want you to kick me in the balls. I’ll pay you seven hundred dollars,” he said—no hesitation. I jerked my head back, totally appalled. Veronica was watching, and she raised her eyebrows at me, like What the fuck you waiting for?
“Absolutely not,” I said. Kick him in the balls? How? Wouldn’t that hurt him? I’d never heard of such a thing. Now that I think about it, my innocence was kind of endearing. Talk about green.
But Veronica the Vet didn’t hesitate and swooped in like a vulture on prey.
“If you’re not, I’m going to take him in the back and do it,” she said.
“I can’t do that!” I said, shaking my head.
“You better get used to weird shit, Lis. All these motherfuckers have fetishes. You just have to decide which ones you’re okay with.” She fixed her face with a smile and walked up to the guy. She took him by the hand and they walked back to VIP together.
Great. So now I have to kick dudes in the balls?
My heart was racing. I was getting more nervous by the minute, and I could feel my stomach was churning.
What kind of shit happens here? What have I done?
Before I could turn back around and catch my breath, a bachelor party signaled me over and asked me to dance.
It was a group of about ten men. It’s out in the open. Surely they’re not all ball kickers.
I wasn’t about to bitch out again.
Shaking, I stood in front of one of the bachelors. All eyes on me, I could feel their stares as they undressed me with their eyes. The butterflies in my stomach were overwhelming. The pressure to perform was building up.
I turned around to plop my ass into the bachelor’s lap and start grinding. My stomach bubbled and—
A fluff slipped out. I just couldn’t hold it in anymore.
Luckily, it was silent. Phew. My relief morphed into panic within seconds.
I was grinding my ass off as we wafted in the smell of a rancid fart.
It had a kick to it. I couldn’t believe it had come from me.
I’m going to be known as the fart dance girl for the rest of my stripper career.
“Bro, you ripped ass!” one of them yelled. I whipped around to try to defend myself, but to my surprise, the bros were pointing at each other. Nobody thought that smell could come from li’l ol’ me.
I finished dancing for them as the smell dissipated and ran to the dressing room mortified. Fuck this shit. I’m never dancing again. I didn’t think I belonged there, and a moral battle was raging internally. Everything I was ever taught in church said this was evil. So what was I doing?
I put my clothes on, took the single shred of dignity I had left, and ran the hell out of that place. I was fucking disgusted. With myself. With stripping. With men.
Maybe I just wasn’t one of the “cool girls.” I figured I was destined to be a square after all.
* * *
SURPRISE, SURPRISE, ONE NIGHT WE were fighting because some random girl was calling his phone, so I went out with my girl Erin. I knew Erin from Mark’s car club—she was one of the other members’ girlfriends. And that night, I took X for the first time.
If you’re ever going to take X, you sure as shit should not do so while The Devil’s Advocate is playing on the damn TV.
Don’t do it in some stranger’s house—especially a stranger whose mom collects haunted horror dolls.
When that X hit, those fucking creepy-ass dolls came to life as people going up in flames while Satan laughed. Too bad I didn’t take my own advice.
Instead, I watched in horror and spiraled into a scene straight out of hell.
I started puking my brains out—for the life of me I couldn’t stop throwing up.
I didn’t even want to stop puking—I wanted this drug out of me.
I hated how it made me feel and the severe anxiety it instantly gave me.
I puked myself silly, until the muscles in my throat were so relaxed I couldn’t get any more out, even if I stuck my whole hand down my throat.
I was fucked up beyond belief. I felt completely outside my body with zero control—and I was overheating like crazy. Was I going to die? What was in this pill?
My brain worked long enough for one clear thought: I need to get to my car. I’ve got some Panda Express in there. If I can just get some food in my stomach, it will make me feel better.
I got my ass over to the car and found my take-out box of fried rice. I downed it—just shoveled food into my mouth. Dry rice with nothing to drink is a fucking health hazard, by the way. How I survived that, I’ll never know.
After getting the food into my stomach, I was still terrified. There was only one thing that had ever gotten me through hell before: Prayer. God will see I took an illicit drug and I’m freaking out and have mercy on me, right?
It was worth a shot. I got down on my hands and knees in the middle of the street and talked to God.
“Lord, please let me fucking live through this. Just get me through this and I promise you I’ll never touch another drug again.”
My friends thought I had lost my mind, but I didn’t care. At least if something happened to me, Big Homie upstairs would let me through the Pearly Gates. Amen.
I pulled myself together and told Erin we needed to go somewhere.
I needed to be anywhere but that house with the creepy fucking dolls.
Erin had taken the X too, and we were fucked up when I got behind the wheel of the 1997 red Honda Civic that Karl had bought me.
We only made it by the grace of God. I should not have been driving—I took a turn and all the streetlights and road blended together like a watercolor painting.
We somehow got to Erin’s apartment. The last person I wanted to see was Mark—he would have lost his mind seeing me in that state.
The sun started coming up and we couldn’t sleep, so we laid in the room staring at the ceiling.
This was the worst drug I’d ever taken. Erin and I rotted in bed for two days, sick off our asses.
When the drugs finally started to wear off, we both had black circles under our eyes.
Her boyfriend came in periodically to check on us, and even he couldn’t deny that we looked like death warmed over.
“What the fuck did you take? You look like you’re on fucking heroin,” he said.
Later, we found out that the X we’d bought was laced with heroin, and that’s why we were so sick. But I’d survived. God had my back again, and I pulled through.
* * *
AFTER THAT, I WOULDN’T EVEN take an aspirin for years.
I still drank, but I wouldn’t pop a pill if you paid me.
After the X, I started having full-scale panic attacks.
It’s like that pill had unlocked Pandora’s box in my brain.
I genuinely thought I was losing my mind.
The anxiety would get so bad that I’d drive myself to the hospital and just sit there until the panic would subside.
I was such a frequent flyer that I learned the doctors’ and nurses’ first names.
The only place I felt safe was in the hospital, but when doctors would prescribe me medication, I refused to take it.
Later, down the road, I’d cave and start taking the Xanax a doctor prescribed me. But at the time, I just knew something was building inside of me that was eventually going to explode.
* * *
I WAS GETTING READY FOR work when I felt a dull pain on my side.
At first, I thought it was period cramps, but it got so bad I had to call out of work.
I prayed it would stop. It didn’t. I braced myself on the bathroom sink and looked at myself in the mirror.
There’s no fucking way. Please. No fucking way.
But I knew I was pregnant again, and I knew what was happening.
I dialed Mark.
“I’m really hurting,” I told him.
“What do you want me to do about it? You’re always going to the fucking hospital,” he said. “So why don’t you go to the fucking hospital?” I hung up and went and found the only person I could think of to help me: Mark’s mom.
“I think I’m having an ectopic pregnancy,” I told her. She shook her head.
“There’s no way you’re pregnant,” she said. Wait. What? I was baffled but in way too much pain to argue. I also didn’t have time to go down that road with her. I just knew I needed to get myself to the hospital.
As soon as I walked through the double doors I greeted the familiar nurse.
“I think I’m having an ectopic pregnancy. It’s my second.” Her eyes widened and she took me straight back to a room. They immediately did a pee test and an ultrasound.
Yahtzee! Fuck. Another one.
I called up Mark’s mom looking for some sort of comfort and told her the news, using every ounce of energy to keep my voice calm.
“I am pregnant, and I’m having an ectopic pregnancy.” She responded just as evenly—it was almost scary.
“If you’re pregnant, it’s not my son’s. There’s no way he got you pregnant. His sperm isn’t strong enough.” What the fuck? Who says this shit?
“Listen to me. They’re about to take me to the operating room. Can you just let Mark know that I’m about to have surgery?” Click. I hung up the phone in disgust.
I was alone. I was scared as fuck and I was losing another baby. One of the nurses was standing by and saw everything. She came over and started rubbing my arm and told me everything would be okay. Thank God for women who bring comfort to other women.
They wheeled me into surgery, and when I woke up hours later, Mark still wasn’t there. No one was. I couldn’t drive, and they wouldn’t release me alone. I had to call around, groggy and nauseated from the anesthesia, until I could find someone to find my boyfriend and tell him to come get me.
Hours later, Mark finally crashed into the hospital room, pissed as hell I had inconvenienced him by having a medical emergency.
He hurried me out, not saying a word as we walked to the car.
I crumpled myself into my seat, still groggy.
I just lost our baby, I kept repeating in my head.
Why is he treating me like this? It’s almost as if I were trying to take mental notes so that this time I wouldn’t forget.
At home, I headed toward the guesthouse where I lived, but his family redirected me upstairs into some dark, spare room away from the family.
Like they were throwing me in a hole. Like I was in quarantine.
I lay down and bawled my eyes out. I’d been trying for so long to keep a damn smile on my face and keep everybody happy by cooking, cleaning, and being perfect, no matter what I’d been through.
My spirit was finally crushed. Up there in that dank little room away from everyone, I finally, truly broke down, and to this day, it gets me emotional to think of my teenage self up there all alone, just begging for the universe to cut her a break.
Mark never came up to check on me—even one fucking time. I lay in that bed for days, not eating, not talking to anyone, not watching TV, not existing. I didn’t care about anything besides watching the sun rise and set every day.
There was one bright moment: I’ll never forget when Mark’s friend, Mike, poked his head in. His was the first face I’d seen in days.
“You okay in there?”
“Not really, Mike,” I said.
“Do you need anything?” I couldn’t think of anything in the world I needed more than what he’d already given me, which was just an ounce of care.
After Mike left, I got to thinking. You know what? I am never, ever going to let a motherfucker make me feel like this again. Alone, scared, and angry, I decided right then and there that my life was going to change. I promised myself, and I never break a promise.