Chapter 17 Love and Money
Love and Money
I MIGHT HAVE BEEN DONE WITH METH, BUT I WASN’T DONE with drugs. I’d nearly wound up with a hook for a hand from meth, so I took my ass back to Xanax.
I’m almost certain it was around my twenty-sixth birthday that my friends left me alone to die, but I’m bad with dates, and when you were partying like I was, it’s hard to remember.
We didn’t know much about Xanax in those days, and docs were handing scripts out like candy.
I didn’t know people were forgetting huge chunks of their lives and overdosing—or what it would do to me. All I knew is I fucking loved it.
You probably wouldn’t expect it, but I’m shy and full of social anxiety.
Back then, I needed Xanax and alcohol and drugs to bring me out of my shell.
Just one little pill made me feel a peace I’d never known.
It washed over me like a glowing blanket of fairy dust. It made me the life of the party that my friends, family, clients, sugar daddies, or anyone who crossed my path wanted me to be.
I even obtained the ever-so-eloquent nickname Xanna Nicole, because I became the ultimate seductress on those things, a sexy vixen with no fear.
The goal was to get fucked up enough not to remember the night before or feel a trace of anxiety.
It was perfect, and I couldn’t believe I was brave enough to do some of the things I heard about the night before. I relished the aftermath stories.
By then, I’d started selling pills and blow at the clubs—no sweat, easy money.
I’d been dating a dealer named Mateo, and he kept plenty of coke around my house, all bagged up and ready to go.
If one of my customers at the club wanted to buy and I didn’t have anything on me, I’d just call Mateo between trips to VIP.
An eight ball would cost me eighty dollars, and I’d turn it around for three hundred. Big homie tax.
I bet I had a million dollars pass through my hands before I turned twenty-two, but I never had anything to show for it.
And by twenty-six, I was squandering cash like I didn’t have to sell my body.
The truth is: I wasn’t Mateo’s main girl.
I was the side bitch—unknowingly at first, the sweet delusion of a twenty-something-year-old. Lucky me.
In the daylight, I was going to beauty school and trying to make something of my life so I could leave sex work.
Thanks, Pops, for the religious trauma and unwavering moral compass.
I moved around constantly, most of the time to get away from whatever dude I was living with who had trashed the place in one of our knockdown, drag-out fights.
Like I’d done my whole life, I was clawing my way toward survival.
After being told by so many people I’d never amount to anything, I was determined to be something, to be someone. I just didn’t know who.
* * *
WE WERE OUT AT A club like we always were, and I got an idea.
“I’m gonna see how many bars I can take!” I yelled, and everyone cheered me on. I counted each yellow “ice cream” bar, as we’d lovingly called them, that I swallowed, and my crew kept getting rowdier and rowdier. One, two, three, four . . .
I was feeling good. Why stop? Five, six, seven . . . More.
That night, I took fifteen yellow bars of Xanax. I must have had a death wish, or I was just that fucking stupid. When you’re young, you can convince yourself you’re invincible. You don’t have any idea about your own mortality. Nothing can touch you.
Mateo put me in the back of his Hummer—and he was pissed.
How dare I be so unladylike? A boss’s girl should never act like that in public, let alone around any of his compadres.
He was always cool, calm, collected, and he never raised his voice at me.
Instead, he’d give me the silent treatment and disappear for days—sometimes weeks—if I made him mad enough.
I don’t know which was worse: not hearing from him or just wishing he’d yell at me.
“You’re fucking disgusting,” he said. Even though most of what happened is hazy in my memory, his tone is still clear as day. “You can’t live like this.”
I’d gotten too fucked up for a man who made his living off people like me. Don’t get me wrong—Mateo definitely got high off his own supply too, but I was his woman on the side. Sloppy bitches were never cute. It didn’t occur to me that maybe I needed some help instead of punishment.
To teach me a lesson about embarrassing him, he dumped me at my house, so fucked up I couldn’t walk.
I was so far gone I could feel my soul trying to leave my body.
There wasn’t anything left for me down here on Earth.
I headed to my bathroom to look in the mirror at myself and what I saw was straight out of a horror movie.
Lipstick smeared, mascara running down my face—very 1990s Courtney Love gone possessed.
I’d also earned the nickname “the Green-Eyed Monster,” because when I would be lit, so were my eyes.
I had no pupils, and my irises were neon green.
Where was I? I flicked the light off so I didn’t have to look at myself anymore, and I managed to drag myself to my bed.
Mateo sent my friend to check on me. She found me choking on my own yellow vomit. At first, she thought I was playing, but then she realized I wasn’t even conscious. She turned me onto my side and left. Walked out.
I’ve had my moments of being a bad friend, of letting people down even when I loved them and wanted to be better.
But leaving someone unconscious and covered in benzo puke?
I just can’t imagine it. Months later, she told me, “I didn’t want to be involved in it,” when I asked her why the fuck she abandoned me.
Looking at her, I could see how frail she’d become.
My heart was breaking for me, but for her, too.
I’ve seen the game ruin so many women. She was no exception.
She was battling demons of her own, and meth eventually got ahold of her.
At least she turned me on my side, right?
I came to later that night, projectile vomiting.
I clawed myself to the bathroom, but the whole scene was warped, and time didn’t make any sense.
It was like seeing a series of camera flashes.
Quick shot of my hallway. Quick shot of the bathroom door.
I just gotta get through this. Quick shot of the bathtub.
Then, pitch black, and I just kept trying to keep myself together enough to breathe.
God, please let me get through this. I’ll never do another drug again.
They were empty promises, but I was scared out of my mind, and something deep down inside me wanted to live.
The only thing that’s brought me comfort in these moments is talking to Him.
It was the only thing that brought me peace, even if I knew I was lying to Him when I said I’d quit the drugs.
But each time He always pulled me through.
The quick camera shots went dark. I woke up two or three days later.
The bathroom walls had yellow handprints all over from me swimming in my own vomit.
It looked like a psych ward where they’d keep you in a straitjacket, shooting you up with sedatives until you stopped wailing.
It looked like somebody was trying to escape.
After waking up in that puke-stained bathroom, I knew something had to change.
I couldn’t quit Xanax cold turkey, but I figured I’d be more conscious of how many I took.
I’d break pills into little pieces and let them dissolve under my tongue before I had to be social or if I just felt that anxiety taking hold of me.
I’m not going to lie—to this day, I still crave that taste.
Nothing beats how relaxed Xanax makes you. I will always yearn for that feeling.
Even though Mateo had his own money and didn’t need me for anything, I still liked being in charge of my relationships, especially back then.
I would get with a dude, fuck them, let them move into my place for a while, and then I was done with them.
I liked being the breadwinner—my thinking was this: If I’m supporting you, you can’t control me.
And while those men weren’t good to me, I wasn’t good to those men either.
If they told me no, I told them to get the fuck out of my life.
I would cheat. I would hurt their hearts.
I would push them so far that they’d cheat on me so I could use it to give myself free rein to be a piece of shit right back.
And so when Eric gave me that look, I dropped Mateo without a second thought.
Eric followed the same pattern as the dudes who came before him.
We fucked, and then he was mine. He was great in the beginning—tall, dark, and handsome.
And he loved me, even though I was a nightmare dressed like a daydream.
(Shout-out to T. Swift.) His parents hated me, and I don’t blame them.
I would not want my son to bring home a girl like me.
I consider myself a voyeur of sorts. I love watching people have sex. And at these clubs you could walk room to room and watch people going at it. Sometimes just a couple, sometimes throuples, and sometimes gang bangs—and always consensual.