Searching For My Wand

Paul and I dated off and on in high school, although in truth it goes back even further than that. We first met in kindergarten and quickly developed a mutual crush. By the first grade we were engaged. We hung out together all of the time, until of course, Jimmy Anders told Paul that all girls were gross. Then he broke up with me. I told him he was wrong and that it was boys who were gross, and that was that. We rarely spoke until our sophomore high school camping trip. There he saved me when I clumsily tripped over a rock and our romance was instantly rekindled. That lasted approximately 3 months and then we broke up over something really important, like potato chips. A few weeks later we got back together…and then broke up… and then got back together… and then broke up. This went on for years. He was on the football team and I was a cheerleader and all of our friends were shared. Half the time we’d get back together just to please them. They told us we were made for each other and we wanted to believe them. Our parents told us the same. We were two peas in a pod, or so they said.

We were together again when we graduated. Paul’s family took him to Italy for a two week vacation and it was there that he met Sophia. It was love at first sight. His parents were beside themselves when he refused to leave her and come home. I was a little surprised as well, but after a week or two it just struck me as funny.

Everyone told me that he would be back, and that he was just confused. My mother assured me that boys that age are run by their hormones and that he was just sowing his oats. After all, we were destined to be together, so this had to just be a phase. I decided to go through a phase of my own.

　

　

　

Two years passed before I saw Paul again. It was near Christmas and I was visiting my Aunt Julie in New York. She was just coming out of a nasty divorce and although she used to seem glamorous and fun, so far on this visit she had only been cranky and bitter. I’d finally talked her into taking me out to do some shopping even though the weather was cold even by east coast standards. We were walking down 5th avenue, blowing on our hands and trying to get to our next stop before freezing. I looked up and there he was, walking towards us, hand in hand with a beautiful brunette. They looked great together. Like two peas in a pod even, and I was pleased to realize that I wasn’t the least bit jealous. We hugged and he introduced me to Sophia and I was actually happy for him. I secretly congratulated myself on being so mature as to not even be hurt or bothered by the fact that he was holding her hand and so obviously in love with her. We talked for a minute, eager to catch up, but my aunt was cold so we made arrangements to meet up later that night.

It turned out that Sophia had come to New York to study dance and Paul was taking some writing classes at NYU. They raved to me about how alive New York was as opposed to both Los Angeles and the sleepy little town in Italy that Sophia was from. I, like Paul, loved Sophia right from the start. She was beautiful, funny and kind. We discovered that we had a similar sense of humor, and our mutual love for Paul gave us a bond that neither of us expected. We became instant friends, and for the rest of my visit I ignored my aunt and hung out with them as much as I could.

When I returned home, we began calling each other, at first just once a week, but soon we were talking at least every other day. Sometimes I’d speak to Paul and sometimes I’d talk to Sophia. Before long they were telling me I should come to New York for the summer. Paul had a friend who was working with a small theater group and he was sure he could get me a job. I was at that point in my life where I should have been figuring out what it was that I wanted to do, but I hadn’t a clue. Since my aunt lived in New York and was just barely agreeable to keeping a reluctant eye on me, my parents gave me the airfare to return and hoped that I would find my true calling.

　

　　

The job Paul was able to get me was vague at best, and paid next to nothing, but that didn’t matter. Two weeks into the production, it became clear that the guy in charge had a serious drug problem and he was sent to rehab. When the new guy came in, he had no idea who was supposed to be doing what, so we made up jobs and titles. I become the head of costumes and Paul took over as stage manager. Adam was playing the lead in our updated version of A Streetcar Named Desire, and although the production itself left a lot to be desired, I was instantly attracted to him. He was so opposite of everyone I’d grown up with out in L.A. He had an energy around him that was both sexual and exciting and he was also nice to look at. He had dark, almost brooding eyes with the most beautiful lashes I’d ever seen. I’d have killed to have lashes like that. He was just shy of six feet tall and built like an athlete.

Adam was three years older than us and would insist that we just didn’t understand the piece. To this day he continues to defend it and threatens to back a revival.

 It was a brutally hot summer and the tiny apartment that Paul and Sophia had did not have air conditioning, so we would, more often than not, avoid going home after the performances. Many nights were spent lying on the stage, drinking cold beers and debating the legitimacy of American theater, as well as the pretentiousness of those involved. Most nights there would be anywhere from ten to twenty of us pooling our money together for the beer and a bag of ice. As the beers disappeared, people would begin to pair up and leave, and all that would be left were Adam, Paul, myself and Sophia, who was dancing in a show two theaters down and would join us once her big number was over. It wasn’t unusual to wake up the next morning, hungover, hungry and slightly crippled from having fallen asleep on the stage.

Adam had a girlfriend in upstate New York and wouldn’t cheat on her, even though he’d tell me he wanted to.

　

　

　　

That summer was hands down the best summer of my life. As it came to an end, we were all faced with what to do next, as the theater company had run out of money and was closing. Paul wanted to be a writer and define his generation by creating material that would be quoted by all of those who read it. Sophia wanted to continue to dance and I just wanted Adam to sleep with me. It seemed to much to ask for him to fall in love with me, so I was more than willing to settle. Let us not forget that Adam was three years older than us though, and prided himself on being more mature. He had his career all figured out. He would continue to train on the stage for another year and then move on to Hollywood to do film work.

Paul and I took jobs waiting tables, while Sophia continued to dance. Paul wrote every chance he got and I just kind of floundered. I didn’t know what I wanted to do careerwise, but one night when I was bemoaning this fact, Adam told me I’d been really good with the costumes and that I should study costume design. So just like that, I decided this was my destiny. I called home to tell my parents that I’d finally figured it out. I now knew what I wanted to do with my life and I asked them to pay for me to attend the New York Institute of Design.

Surprise! I was told my parents were getting a divorce and that there was no money for school or anything else, but good luck with that. It turns out that my dad was having his midlife crisis, and had hooked up with a much younger woman. One who not only had gotten pregnant, but had also bled him dry financially. He has since apologized about a thousand times, but at twenty, being oh so holier than thou, I was anything but gracious. Instead I was angry, resentful, and of course took it personally. Around this same time Sophia received word that her mom had breast cancer, and although that alone should have put things into perspective for me, it did not. She immediately returned to Italy to be with her mom when she had her surgery. A week later she called and tearfully told us that it was worse than they had thought and she couldn’t come back. Paul didn’t hesitate for a second. He rushed to be with her and I was left with no place to stay. My choice was simple. I either had to stay with my Aunt Julie, who made it clear that I would be in the way, or I had to go home.

I went home depressed and disappointed.

　

　

　　

This was the first time I ever felt truly suicidal, and like now, who was I going to tell? My angry, bitter mother? My dad who kept saying I can’t believe I’ve done this? Or the girl whose mother was dying and the boy trying to be there for her, but calling me every few days to tell me how scary it was to watch someone disintegrate? So I didn’t tell anyone. Instead I did what anyone my age would do. I wasted my days, hiding in my room, listening to sad music, and sleeping all day, resenting the endless sunshine and blue skies of Los Angeles. The world was leaving me behind as though everything was as it should be, when in my mind it was anything but. At night I attempted to distract myself by going to clubs and partying with friends who weren’t really friends at all. I mean I’d known them all for years, but they were not my usual crowd. They were the Hollywood set. The ones like Mandy Birnbaum, a part of Hollywood who’d either been born into the “biz” or had found some other way in. My having been to New York, and having worked in the theater gave me the legitimacy I needed to hang out with them.

I soon began sleeping with David, Mandy’s cousin, for reasons I don’t understand. Like Adam, he was older than the rest of us, and Mandy seemed to think he was the end all, be all. If she could, she’d have slept with him herself, I’m sure of it. He was overly good looking, confident and successful. He “managed” people or so he claimed, and his family was proud of how wonderfully he was doing. In truth he was a drug dealer, and that is probably the real reason I was with him.

I convinced myself, in the beginning anyway, that it was fun and a way to blot out how lost I was feeling. He treated me okay, and at first the drugs enhanced everything about him, the sex, the money to do whatever we wanted, and even just the fact that he was into me, but as we both fell further and further into addiction, it all fell apart.

　　

　

Over the next year I moved into David’s Hollywood Hills home and all but disappeared. I stopped talking to my family. I lost Paul and Sophia’s number and so we stopped communicating, and I spent less and less time with my so-called friends. Why David, even in his drug filled haze, kept me around is beyond me. He’s told me since, that it was because regardless of what I think, he is not a half wit and he felt responsible for me. He is wrong. He is a half wit, and the programming he is now responsible for, namely reality TV, is proof of that. But I digress.

When I wasn’t snorting coke or ingesting handfuls of downers in order to be able to sleep, I was curled up on his bed, writing long, sad poems about how bleak the world was. Everything I wrote had at least one line about pain cutting through the scorched skies of darkness, or the blood of our sins, past and present, bleeding through the walls. My self absorption, self pity, and flair for the melodramatic was in full bloom, and yet this was when Adam finally fell in love with me. Does that give a clear enough picture into what his issues are?

I weighed 97 pounds. My hair hung on my head as though it had been removed, had all the life strangled out of it and then had been tossed back onto my head a little haphazardly. I was literally out of my mind.

Adam was brought to a party by a business associate, aka an agent, to mingle with the movers and shakers of Hollywood. David was hosting this party in celebration of one of his so called “clients”, who had somehow managed to sell a script. I was 22 years old, and Adam was all of 25.

　

　

　　

The party was going at full speed that night, and hearing everyone downstairs, I decided I was in need of a pick-me-up, so I made a grand entrance down David’s rather grand stairway. I literally slid down the banister because I was too lazy to walk down all of those stairs. I flew off the end, and landed against Adam, who then fell into another guest, who knocked into another one, who landed in the big container of melting ice and cold bottles of beer.

Unbeknownst to me, Adam had spent the summer following the one we’d spent together in New York, traveling around Europe, and had reconnected with Paul and Sophia. When he was offered a job in L.A., Paul asked him to look me up, as he as well as my parents, were worried about me. The fact that he found me was strictly by coincidence.

He had been asking around for over seven months if anyone knew me or where I might be. No one ever connected the girl he was describing to being the same girl that they all referred to as the ghost in David’s bedroom.

He helped me up and asked if I was okay, but he didn’t recognize me. Even in as bad of shape as I was in, I instantly knew it was him. I just wasn’t sure he was real. I stared at him and started to reach for his face, when David came up and asked what in hell I was doing. “Is he here?” I asked.

The half wit’s reply?

“I don’t know.”

We started to walk away and that’s when it clicked for Adam.

“Glenda?” he asked.

“I think he’s real,” I told David.

　　　　

　

　

                                                                            Chapter 2 

   

 “I think he knows,” I say, swallowing hard.

  There is a deep sigh and then he says,