Episode 21: Inappropriate in all the Right Ways: Live Show with Ann Randolph

Writing Class Radio goes live to the stage. This episode is part live show, part interview with star of our show, the award-winning, solo-performer, Ann Randolph. Allison Langer is our host.

This episode is about the importance of telling stories--not fairy tales, but the real scary, true stories we like to hide. Allison got into writing after the death of her young daughter. Writing about the situation helped her deal with the pain and get back to the job of mothering her other children. Telling that story also helped her let go of the label she cast on herself as that woman who lost a child. Listen to how she learned to get personal with her writing.

Andrea Askowitz tells the story of being rejected by a man when she was 8 months pregnant after being inseminated with donor sperm. When a man offers to give Andrea a massage, she gets excited by the possibility of finally getting laid, even though she’s a lesbian. Andrea describes the massage in very intimate detail. She also shares her shame from the ultimate rejection and how that shame disappeared when she told her story in her very first writing class.

Ann Randolph was a student in that class. Andrea feels forever indebted to Ann for laughing at her pain.

Ann tells the story of how she worked her way up to performing off-Broadway and then lost it all. Ann persists in telling her stories even after being called inappropriate or failing miserably and ending up broke. When Ann goes off mic, Allison asks Ann why she comes out on stage in costume as Shanti Lightgiver and then disrobes. Ann tells us what she goes through each time she walks into a new theater. She talks about the time she bombed and how she recovers from failure. She details her experience with producers Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft and how her dream of being a successful performer almost came true.

Ann then takes the audience through a writing exercise, where several of them step to the mic and tell their own stories.

Writing Class Radio is produced by Andrea Askowitz, Allison Langer, and Diego Saldana-Rojas. Daniel Correa is our theme musician for this episode and the coming semester. We’re sponsored by The University of Miami School of Communication and Sanibel Island Writers Conference, coming Nov. 3-6, 2016. Thank you Miami Light Box and all the volunteers who made the show happen. Thank you to our listeners.

We want your story contest. Here’s the prompt: A time you fucked up. Give us your best 1,200 words or fewer. First and second place winners will be aired on our podcast. Deadline: November 30, 2016. Guidelines at writingclassradio.com.

There’s no better way to understand ourselves and each other than by writing and sharing our stories. Everyone has a story. What’s yours?

Episode 23: I Fart, You Fart, We All Fart and Most of Us Deny It

Allison Langer is the host on Episode 23 of Writing Class Radio, a podcast for people who love and get inspired by true, personal stories and want to learn a little about how to write their own stories. Allison is a student in the class. She shares all the reasons why writing class is so much fun. FUN: a theme chosen because life has gotten too busy, too scheduled and way too serious.

In writing class, we laugh. We disconnect from social media and from judgement. We share our most intimate and peculiar “things” and then cry or crack up, whatever the context requires. Instead of judgement, there’s compassion, requests for more details, suggestions to make the second draft better. In writing class, we bond through story and life experiences.

This episode hopes to show the humorous side of writing class; the goofy, first draft silliness that happens when we can write as if nobody is listening.

The students you will hear responded to prompts given in class. Misha Mehrel tells us about the time he and his dad pretended to have accents just for the fun of it. Nicki Post reveals a secret: she squeezes and releases her butt cheeks all day long. Why does she do this? Listen and find out.

Allison reveals her once private and now not so private “things.” But first, Allison invites her dad and everyone who has ever dated her or anyone who plans to date her to tune out.

With just fifteen minutes left in class one evening, Andrea throws out a random word as a prompt. The word: Fart. Everyone let’s it rip: Diego Saldana Rojas, Chaplin Tyler, Nicki, Misha and even Andrea Askowitz, the teacher of the class. You’ll learn about HAFE (high altitude flatus expulsion)...a real thing. And then Andrea and Allison discuss what stories about farts says about someone’s character.

We hope you enjoy sitting in on our writing class. If you’d like to participate in a real writing class, visit our website for options all over the world including our miami workshops offered every other month. If you’d like to participate now, here’s the prompt for this episode: Write about a time when you felt free and happy. Write for 10 minutes, record what you wrote into the voice memo of your phone and send it to us at info@writingclassradio.com. Your response could air on this podcast.

Writing Class Radio is produced by Andy Benoit, Andrea Askowitz and Allison Langer.

Theme music by Daniel Correa. Additional music by Taryn Southern and other royalty-free sound.

Writing Class Radio is sponsored by and recorded at the University of Miami School of Communication.

There’s more writing class on our website writingclassradio.com. Follow us on Twitter, @wrtgclassradio.

There’s no better way to understand ourselves and each other, than by writing and sharing our stories. Everyone has a story. What’s yours?

Walking in Someone Else's Shoes Feels Impossible Right Now

Andrea Askowitz is the host of Episode 22. She talks about how writing a good story and understanding the results of this presidential election require a mammoth effort in understanding someone else’s point of view, an effort she is failing at right now. She interviews Stephen Elliott, who is the author of seven books and two movies and the founder and senior editor at The Rumpus, about the job of a memoir writer.

Stephen says that in literature, memoir and in life there are no bad guys. “Everybody is part hero and part villain. Most people know that intuitively. But sometimes in our writing we get so angry at somebody that we decide to portray them as strictly a villain. And we forget that somebody loves them. That they’re capable of love. That they do good things. We don’t look for the reasons why they do what they do. We paint them as evil and that’s just never an accurate portrayal of anybody, so it comes off as false because you’re not really exploring that person’s character.”

It is our job, according to Stephen, to strive for honesty, which is not someplace you arrive at, but a constant quest.

To get her students closer to the real truth, Andrea had them write from another person’s point of view or to put themselves in another person’s position. Chaplin tries to understand his dad by writing about a time they worked the same difficult job. Allison Langer also tries to understand her ex-boyfriend Gerald by writing letters in Gerald’s voice.

Andrea and Allison have a conversation about a time recently when Allison stepped into someone else’s shoes. She was teaching a writing class and felt challenged by one of the students. Allison was able, in the moment, to realize that the student probably just needed to be known as someone more than the way she appeared. Andrea on the other hand, has been struggling for months to put herself in her friend, Esther’s shoes. Esther spent the months leading up to the election spewing vitriol against Hillary Clinton, including arguments professing the superiority of male bosses. Andrea knows that to tell an honest story, she has to be able to really understand Esther’s motivations. But she’s not sure she can. Certainly not now.

Yaddyra Peralta, a new student in Writing Class Radio, does the hard work in figuring out why her brother, who hurt her, did what he did.

Writing Class Radio is produced by Andy Benoit, our new sound guy, Diego Saldana-Rojas, Allison Langer, and Andrea Askowitz.

Theme music by Daniel Correa. Additional music by The Mann Sisters and Kevin Myles Wilson.

Writing Class Radio is sponsored and recorded at the University of Miami School of Communication.

This episode is sponsored by The South Beach Jazz Festival, created by David New. Every act at the festival features a performer with a disability. This is a perfect sponsor for this episode because the Jazz Festival’s mission is to help people experience what people with disabilities experience. One event is called Lights Out Miami Beach, Dining in the Dark. On Saturday Dec. 10 at Nexxt on Lincoln Road participants will eat blindfolded while listening to jazz. Tickets available for all events December 7 through 11, 2016 at sobejazz.com.

There’s more writing class on www.writingclassradio.com. Study the stories we study and listen to our craft-talks. If you don’t like the prompt I just gave you, pick one of the daily prompts from our website. Or follow us on Twitter, @wrtgclassradio where we post daily prompts daily.

There’s no better way to understand ourselves and each other, than by writing and sharing our stories. Everyone has a story.  What’s yours?

I fell in love with a girl

By Karen Collazo     

At 35 years old, I finally know what it feels like to fall in love—and, at first sight. I’ve lusted, crushed hard and really liked, but never loved. Then Patty walked through the door of the Women’s Narcotics Anonymous meeting. It was March and unseasonably chilly that evening. It was my first attempt at socializing outside in the real world. I had just been released from a two-week spiritual journey at Orchid, the Women’s-Only Rehabilitation Center in West Palm Beach. It was my first NA meeting and my whole body was buzzing with anxious energy.

Patty casually scanned the dimly lit room, as she quietly slid into the seat across from me. Our eyes locked like two gear arrangements joining in the precise gap that was designed to connect one to the other. In that electric space between us, I witnessed a single gossamer thread glide across the room. It leapt from her chest toward mine and cast a silky web around my heart. She had pulled me in without uttering a single word. I immediately thought: I have to know this girl.

It took three months, before I worked up the courage to allow the thread that connected us to strengthen its hold. We were at a meeting, once again sitting directly across from each other. I turned around to grab an Oreo Cookie, but was struggling. The speaker of the night had started to address the group and I didn’t want to make any noise. After a few minutes I gave up. Then Patty gets up to pour herself some coffee. There was a fresh pot sitting on the table behind me. She pulled two Oreo’s from the pack and on her way back to her seat, delicately placed one on my lap. That night, I friended her on Facebook and sent her a short message: I almost didn’t recognize you by your profile photo. You are most definitely sweeter in person. She replied: Do I look tough? Because I am.

On our first date, she told me her story. How growing up her mother used to beat her in front of her little sister. Her mother had been 19 when she got pregnant with Patty. She wasn’t in love with Patty’s father so didn’t want to go through with the pregnancy, but her grandmother intervened. For the next 17 years, Patty’s mother provided daily reminders that she was unwanted. Eventually, she fell in love with another man and had a daughter that was loved and cared for the way Patty never got to know. One day, Patty’s mother is rummaging through her bedroom when she comes across a love letter from a girl, tucked inside Patty’s jewelry box. Full of rage, her mother drives to Patty’s high school. She finds her sitting with a group of friends outside the main entrance. She storms over, with the love letter in one hand, and begins shouting at Patty. She belittles her daughter in front of her friends, yanks her by the arm and marches right into the office to withdraw Patty out of school. It was two months before graduation.

Patty’s mother had every intention of shipping her off to the army, but instead dropped her off at a shelter after learning that her daughter was too young to join. Abandoned by her family at 17, she found herself navigating without a map. Sadistic sex and heavy drug use were now her means for survival. She bounced around, from woman to woman, lost in a labyrinth of false connections with mother-figures, deceptive lovers and truly fucked up individuals. She fed off their heat, one day at a time. And just like every addict tends to do, she was constantly looking for the next high, before even coming off of the one she was on. I listened intently while the netting around my heart grew tighter.

Over Caramel Macchiatos, I concluded that we were absolutely destined for one another. We both had Sun and Moon tattoos on our right shoulder blade, which as it turns out, we got the same exact year. Back in 2003, she returned to Miami, after living in New York City for two years. That the same year I moved to New York. We were like to ships passing in the night. As the night wore on, I learned that her dog’s name is Cleo and what are the chances… My dog’s name is Chloe! All her best friends were Pisces and I’m most compatible with Scorpios. The morning before we met up, she had seen an Instagram post of the New York Times Best Seller, Luckiest Girl Alive, a novel by Jessica Knoll. That night I had brought it with me to Starbucks – to give to her.

Looking into her dark brown eyes, framed by long soft eyelashes, I was immediately reminded of a line delivered by Tak, in the movie 2046: “That day, six years ago, a rainbow appeared in my heart. It's still there, like a flame burning inside me”. 

But unlike the old-timers who’d climb a mountain, find a tree, carve a hole in it, whisper their secret into the hole and cover it up with mud so that nobody else would ever learn their secret... I didn’t think once about protecting my heart, like I had the tendency to do. I wanted to tell her that very first day, that I loved her.

As a little girl, I was exposed to the prince charming archetype. Once exposed to what “happily ever after” looked like, I developed an unhealthy fervor for stories with knights in shining armors. I read all the romance novels I could get my hands on and devoured every romantic comedy starring Meg Ryan. I spent family vacations in Spain, daydreaming about my future European honeymoon with Mr. Collazo, instead of enjoying the Goya paintings that hung before me at El Museo Del Prado. I envisioned him to be tall, dark and handsome. He’d protect me at any cost and stand vigil by my side as I lay in bed dying from a terminal illness.

And yet, here I was. Consumed by obsessive thoughts of loving someone who did not come close to the image I had held onto for so many years. She was broken and her edges were made of poetry. She had a boyish gait, thin figure and Morrissey hair. I wanted to love every inch of her body with my mouth. I wanted her to know what it was like to be wanted.

I wondered how many beautiful experiences I may have missed because I never considered the possibility. Then again, perhaps there was never meant to be a previous experience of this kind. In that way, my heart would be wholly available to her—like a vacant drawer in a chest, whose purpose is not stripped by the fact that it sits empty for so many years. It just needs to be filled one day.

A week after our first date, Patty shared where she was at in her recovery, with the twenty women sitting around the small wood-paneled lounge reserved for our weekly NA meetings. She spoke about recently coming to the conclusion that relationships were not a good idea. In the past, she explained, she’d jump from one to the other, not allowing any time to heal and letting these new partnerships consume her, body and soul. And when the union reached its inevitable expiration date, the unavoidable downward spiral that followed always led her back to her drug of choice. To a room of sympathetic women, and one rejected girl, she confessed that after a recent first date, she had almost given in to this predictable pattern.

I sat silent staring at my toes. I had painted them red in anticipation of our date and the bright blue sandals I was now wearing, strapped across my pale skin, created a very patriotic combination, which I found funny. My efforts to block the words were absolutely fruitless, though. This speech was meant for me and accepting it, the knot that tied our hearts together began to come undone.

Perhaps I had been too aggressive when we sat in my car listening to “Obstacle 1” by Interpol, and I grabbed her beautiful face for a deep impassioned kiss? “She puts the weight into my little heart,” the singer croons. In that moment, she hadn’t hesitated with her mouth, but her heart must have deflated under my grip. I confessed to her that I had not been in a serious relationship in thirteen years and that I only slept around to feed a primordial need, because I thought love was momentary. In hindsight, I should have added that I thought she was different. But, I buried that secret into a hole and covered it with mud.

Before she could even finish sharing, my little blue sandals walked out of that lonely room and led me to my car. I looked back, hoping to catch her standing right behind me, but she wasn’t there. No matter, I decided, I’m going to do what I know is best: love that girl. 

 

Episode 20: Where Do I Go From Here? metadata

Writing Class Radio is a podcast of a writing class. You’ll get true, personal stories from the students in the class, plus a little about how to write your own stories. This episode is about those moments in life when you have no idea how you got here, whether to stay or go, or where to go next.

Allison Langer, student in the class and host for this episode, asks the questions most of us struggle with. Did you land that dream job that turned out to be not so dreamy? Do you wish you lived somewhere else but can’t afford to move? Do you wonder what life would be like if you could just finish school already? Have you ever reached that point when you’re not sure you want to go on at all?

Writing Class Radio teacher, Andrea Askowitz forces Diego Saldana-Rojas, our audio producer to write stories in class, then finish the stories at home. Finally, at the end of the 2nd semester, Diego did his homework. He reads his story What Next?

Allison asks Diego why he didn’t ask his former editor for a recommendation. Diego confesses that he messed up a few times and did not feel confident his editor would give him a good recommendation. Even though it was his first job, he felt like he couldn’t mess up.

Diego wonders if he should just give up freelance audio to become a bartender, a much less stressful job. He was not the only person with this question. Three other students in the class were also uncertain they were on the right path.

Nicki Post, student in the class and a regular on the podcast, tells the story of leaving city after city and starting over, which worked until she found a group of friends in Miami she didn’t want to leave.

Nicki’s stories got Allison thinking about why people leave: college, new job, marriage, divorce, failure. In Diego’s case, fear prevents him from leaving. In Nicki’s case, fear causes her to leave.

Student Missy Hernandez tells us about a time she felt she had nowhere left to go. Her mom took her to the psych emergency room when she had thoughts about killing herself.

Karen Collazo, a student in the class is in her 30’s, had the great job in NYC and was miserable. She reminds us of Noelle Hancock, who left a $95,000 writing job in NYC to scoop ice cream in St. John. Noelle wrote an essay for cosmo.com. There’s more Karen on our blog at www.writingclassradio.com.

Diego and Allison talked about the imposter syndrome? That feeling where you think you don’t deserve your job because you’re not good at it. Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild and the host of the podcast Dear Sugar Radio, said she feels like an imposter, so did Gretchen Rubin, the author of The Happiness Project.

This episode is sponsored by the Sanibel Island Writers Conference. Tom DeMarchi, the director talks about creating the conference he’d want to attend. So he invited our very own, Andrea Askowitz to teach there. More on our website. Sanibel is November 3-6, 2016.

Writing Class Radio is hosting our first live show Oct. 1, 2016 at the Light Box in Wynwood featuring Ann Randolph, an award winning solo performer and writing teacher. Details and tickets are on our website.

Do you feel like an imposter? That’s the prompt for today. Set a timer for 10 minutes, record what you wrote on the voice memo of your phone and send it to info@writingclassradio.com. Your story could air on our show.

Writing Class Radio is produced by Diego Saldana-Rojas, Andrea Askowitz and me, Allison Langer with editorial help from Sonesh Chainani.

Theme music by Adriel Borshansky. Additional music by Misha Mehrel, The Boundary Birds and Daniel Correa.

Writing Class Radio is sponsored by and recorded at the University of Miami School of Communication.

Study the stories we study and listen to our craft-talks. There’s no better way to understand ourselves and each other, than by writing and sharing our stories.

Everyone has a story.  What’s yours?

 

Him

By Karen Collazo     

Each one of my addictions provides its own unique high. Shoplifting gives me a real sense of accomplishment. For days afterwards, I marvel at my collection of stolen goods and I’m filled with pride. I feel smart and slick and vindicated for having taken something that this world owes me. Binge-eating suppresses my anxiety. When I sit down and stuff an entire bag of Cheese Doodles down my throat, I’m focused on a specific task, with a straightforward end in sight, blocking out all the other noise. There is but one thing on my mind and that is to pick up the next doodle, and then the next, and then the next—until I’m staring at the bottom of an empty bag that is covered in orange cheese flakes. This act refocuses my attention away from the thing that is causing me to panic. Cocaine makes me confident. One bump and I’m the smartest, hottest and funniest person in that room. Another bump and my ideas are the fucking best. Sex is about control. I hold the dial between my legs and I get to choose how much pleasure you’ll enjoy. And when they beg for it, my ego floats high above our heads. I can only cum when I’m looking down at a puny man that moans for more.

From an intellectual standpoint, I understand that these are unhealthy coping mechanisms that I need to quit. These are dangerous and harmful ways to avoid life on life’s terms. But there is one addiction I have yet to share with you that I refuse to stop giving into. It is an obsession that infinitely outweighs the overwhelming need to binge-drink, shoplift, snort an eight ball of coke or eat a whole box of Swiss Cake Rolls in one sitting. It was eighteen years ago when I had my first taste. And since then, I’ve found myself time and time again leaping beyond my perverse limits for just a second of the most irresistible indulgence I’ve ever experienced. For a long time, I was confused about my desire and what it achieved for me. But now that I’ve begun my journey of recovery, I have a better sense of what it is and why I seek it out with such fervor. The one drug I won’t give up is Him.

We met late in high school. It wasn’t until the 11th grade that our paths crossed. I had gone to another school nearby, but due to a falling out with friends—after an unfortunate event at a party, I decided to transfer. I had gone from the popular preppy girl to an emotionally disturbed punk rock teen in the span of one summer, and was now looking forward to reintroducing this new poetic and misunderstood version of myself to the world. It was my first day at my new school, when a practice fire drill during fourth period Journalism thrust all the students out into the sweltering August heat. I was wearing the required uniform of the time: wide-legged Jnco jeans, a washed-out thrift store baseball tee, black combat boots, a Claire’s beaded choker and Manic Panic cotton candy pink streaks in my jet-black curly hair. A tall brunette approached me excitedly.

“Hey, aren’t you that girl from the Montel Williams show?” she asked.

“Uhh, no… I think you have the wrong person,” I said.

She laughed it off and suddenly I found myself being pulled through the crowd towards The Tree, a shaded corner across the street from the school where all the rocker kids lounged under an old pepper tree—before, during and after school. She quickly introduced me to her misfit friends as the girl she just confused for the one on the Montel Williams show and I thought: well, it could be worse. The group that had gathered was debating what to do for the weekend when someone mentioned there was going to be a show.

At the time, the music scene in our town was tiny. Indie rock bands played to small overexcited crowds, in whatever space they could find. Most weekends, kids stood around listening to live music in old-timey wood-paneled and carpeted pool halls, makeshift indoor skate parks and warehouses that housed ice cream trucks by night and future rock stars by day. You knew there was a show coming up only by the cheap black-and-white flyers that were passed out at the event you were currently attending. They were simple ads—usually listed band names like, a time, a place and a rough hand-drawn sketch of a nun bent over while a priest takes her from behind.

The first time I interacted with Him was at a hole-in-the-wall bar that was command central for the local rockers. At the time, the neighborhood was very sketchy. You had to tip the homeless guy on the corner to “keep an eye” on your car, which was parked on the side of the street. If you didn’t throw the guy a couple of bucks, he would look the other way if someone tried to break into it. The place was grungy, but the bartenders never carded and they called you “sweetheart” and “darling” when asking: “What’ll you be havin’?”

The boy was tall, skinny, pale and shy. He stood around cracking stupid jokes with his friends, but didn’t really say much else. He called me “rosy cheeks,” handed me a demo of his band and asked if I wanted a beer. He was cute and his smile was genuine. It might have been the way he threw a glance in my direction every so often, as though he was trying to make a decision, which caught my initial attention. But it was his emotional intelligence that ultimately did me in. I crushed hard for years and then he became just another addiction.

It wasn’t long after the 11th grade started that a close-knit group of us all became very good friends. We shared a common love of music and an open optimism for life beyond what we knew. We felt bigger than our town. We lived for each other and the weekends, when we would steal away and enjoy the life of a rebellious teenager's dream. We skipped school to watch scary movies that I borrowed from my part-time job at Blockbuster. We hung out on the beach. We drank beers in empty parking lots, while listening to Sunny Day Real Estate. On Sundays, we snuck into clubs, where we danced to Depeche Mode and made fun of the Goth kids. When the weather was nice, we’d pack into my two-door Toyota Tercel and drive out to my parent's beach place to get high on weed and roll on ecstasy. When any one of our parents went away on vacation, we’d take over that friend’s empty house and throw bacchanalia-style get-togethers. We were friends, lovers and family.  Young and free, surrounded by my new friends, I felt safe, understood and loved. Life had yet to burden me with the death of my parents, debt and true heartache. I was so lucky then and didn’t know it.

When I look back at the happiest point in my life, I’m transported to the summer of 1998. I’m seventeen and six of us have all drifted off to sleep, laid out across the couches and beds in my 3-bedroom house. My parents are in Cuba for the next two weeks and I have the whole place to myself. Earlier that night we had killed two bottles of tequila, a 24-pack of beer and smoked tons of pot. We danced like idiots, took silly pictures and cracked jokes at each other’s expense. The sun was beginning to rise and there was Nagchampa incense from the local Hare Krishna temple wafting through the air. Somewhere in the background, The Cure’s “Lovesong” is playing.

It’s just us two. We’re lying on my parents’ king-sized bed, which is covered in a bright sunflower-patterned duvet. The blinds are halfway open. The cool morning sun is creeping in. We’re spooning and fully clothed when he asks me to give him cosquillita to help him fall asleep. This is the first time that we are alone together. My fingers tremble as they make small circles on his back, under his shirt. I tune into his breathing and wonder if he could tell how nervous and excited I am to be lying next to him. Then, I slowly slide my arm around to his front—to lightly caress his flat stomach. His breathing remains steady, while mine becomes labored, as my fingers trace the trail between his belly button and the elastic band of his boxers. Then my pinky grazes the head of his cock...

When a junkie indulges in addictive behavior, they are always chasing that first high. There is nothing like your first. Over time, it just doesn’t feel the same and you eventually require inordinate amounts of the substance to barely gratify the intense urges that beg for relief. But every hit after your first, no matter how big, will never compare. Chasing that dream is how you find yourself hitting rock bottom. And from that place is where you can begin to recover. The problem with my addiction to Him, is that it's bottomless.

When I lived in New York, he came into town a handful of times. Beforehand, we’d make plans to see each other—texting feverishly about all the dirty things we were going to do to one another when we were finally face-to-face and alone, in my apartment. But, I never did keep my promise and left my phone unanswered for days. His presence was too much for me to handle. The two worlds did not fit on one island. I had left Miami to escape my ghosts and he was a haunting reminder of life before cancer. But on my yearly trips back to Miami for the holidays, I sought Him out anxiously. Having Him took away the stress of being back home and made visits with my extended family bearable.  

Over the years, our physical connection evolved. The sex got better, hotter, more intense and extremely depraved. While the ability to reach orgasm has always been exciting in and of itself, for me it has always been more than just sex. Fucking Him is a journey back in time—to a moment in history when I was inexperienced, full of dreams and could never imagine the battle that would wage inside and torment me for years to come. When his lips touch mine and I’m full of him, I’m transported to the summer of 1998.

Over the years, we’ve tested the limits of degeneracy by outdoing our last encounter. We’ve stayed in dirty cheap motel rooms on, driven to dangerous neighborhoods for drugs and have been careless in many other ways. When we saw each other last year, I did $200 worth of coke and Molly in one night and then we fucked for 12 hours. It was exhilarating, filled my deviant soul and took me where I wanted to go: away. At the time, I needed to be transported to that moment and place. I had just moved back to Miami and the demons I thought I had left behind were patiently waiting for my return. I wanted to run so badly, but I got high off Him instead. Then, like when I’m coming off a coke high, when I couldn’t have more of Him I lost my shit. I spiraled out of control and found myself trapped in that place all addicts succumb to when the drugs have run out and you have no more money. 

Some days, I wish that my desire would have remained as innocent as it once was; a simple high school crush. Unfortunately, it became another one of my sick afflictions and probably the most dangerous, because I've never had a bad trip. Each time I’m with Him, I reach new levels of high. Quitting Him is just not an option. Living clean would mean erasing a memory that I never want to let go. It means losing that place that once existed, where my parents will be back from Cuba in two weeks and I am safe and loved.

Transcript of Episode 18: Who is Jahn Dope? The Path from High School Football Star to Homeless man to the Great Philip Sylverin.

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EPISODE 18: WHO IS JAHN DOPE?

ALLISON: Hey you’re listening to writing class radio, a podcast where we share stories with you from our writing class. I’m Allison Langer your host and a student in the class.

Today you’ll hear a story from one of my fellow students, Jahn Dope.  His story is called dark matter. The story begins after Jahn overdoses on LSD then backtracks to childhood.

Dark Matter

            I remember my sister Dominique asking me, what happened to you? Why are you always caught up in some drama?  You need to protect yourself from these dangerous situations.

            I didn't have a good answer then. I just kept quiet and let her put vitamin E on the scar on my forehead I got from smashing my head through a window. I overdosed on L.S.D. I had bad trip on 15 hits of acid.

            I was born in Long Island, New York in a Haitian American family of five. I was the only boy and the fourth child. My family was the only Haitian family on Ridgewood Avenue. Both of my parents had more than one job.

             My mom Nadja worked in a Hospital, she also worked at Eaton Corporation assembling parts on a conveyer belt, and as a caterer for special events. I never met a person that did not like her cooking. Nadja was also born in Haiti and did not get far in school either. Her mother died of pneumonia when she was an infant. Her father traveled and dealt in the black market. The only pictures I ever saw of my grandfather were in a hat and overcoat pointing a revolver. The other was in a coffin.

             My dad Leon was born in Haiti. He didn't get passed the fourth grade because his Dad made him work instead. He was an electrician supervisor for a company, a cab driver, and a mechanic.

             I know basically nothing about my father's side of the family. I only saw one picture of his mother that he kept on his nightstand. The picture was in black and white and her complexion was very fair. My father didn't like that I had a dark complexion. He would ask me when I was a toddler… Why are you so Black?

            Nobody helped me with my studies. I remember going around the house looking for help. I would start at oldest or the one in charge. “Wewe.” Which stood for Wilamina, “Can you help me?” She was always on her way out to be with her boyfriend. Next was Doe which stood for Dominique, She stayed away from everyone locked in her room by herself or with her best friend. She burned a lot of incense and when she came out would send me to the store to buy Entenmann’s chocolate chip cookies. Doe said my ears remind her of them. Next was Mymy, which stood for Mayaliane. “Mymy… I need help.”

            “Not right now I'm on the phone.” She then started talking in Pig Latin. One day I found out how to decipher it on the back of the school bus. I snuck through the kitchen to the living room and under the table. I had my pencil and black and white composition book. I spied on her as I looked through the embroidered tablecloth. She was on the couch with her back to me chatting away. I found out she kissed a boy. I sprung out startling her. I said, “Ewwww I'm going to tell.” But I was just joking. She rumbled and pounced on top of me. She was five years older and stronger than I was at age 11. She pinned me down on my back and grabbed my arms. “You're going to tell what?” I laughed and said, “That you're kissing boys.”

            “You're not going to say nothing or I'm going to tell poppy you’re the one who broke the VCR.” I got mad because we already agreed that was going to be a secret. I crossed my heart and hoped to die. I caught her smoking a cigarette and kept quiet when my dad found one of them that she left out in the room we shared. I cried out! “Oooohhhhh you're not fair!” And she said, “Life is not fair.” Then she grabbed my arm and made me hit myself in my face. While she did that she said… “Why are you hitting yourself?” I started to cry because I was scared. She let me go, and I asked, “Are you going to tell poppy? Please don't I was just joking with you. I'll do anything! Pretty please. Mymy I'll do all your chores.” I was petrified of Leon and another whooping. He was so violent with his belt, and the most violent with me since I was the only boy.

            There were three kinds of whoopings… one you hold out your hands palms up and he would spank them. Mostly during some kind of interrogation of an incident. I also learned my multiplication that way. My arch nemesis was 7 times 6 or 6 times 7: 42. He'd get me every time with that one. He would start low and I would count in my head. If I was worried I’d get one wrong, I would lie and ask to go to the bathroom and count on my fingers.

            The second and the ultimate mind fuck, was the metal olive green folding chair that was placed out in the middle of the kitchen. That meant someone was going to get it when he came home. You would have to take down your pants and underwear, bend over the chair and feel his wrath. “Poppy… what did I do?” I’d say as I undid my pants. He'd say, “The longer you take, the longer I take.”

            The third was the scariest, the creep up on. The whooping that was made especially for me, because I ran one day. I was four or five and after stripping off my clothes I ran butt booty naked out the room, down the stairs and out the door I went. He was on my tail as I ran out the door, but we had a big yard and he could not catch me.

            I ended up in my mother's arms and she pleaded with him to leave me alone and he did. That night he came into my room turned on the light and shut the door. He was calm but his eyes said I was in big trouble. I was trapped. Quickly, I hid under the bed. He snatched me out from under the bed and grabbed my arms tight so I couldn’t get away. He hit me repeatedly and I cried and screamed. I was frightened and in pain. I heard my sister yelling through the wall to leave me alone. I don't think he heard her. He was deaf with rage. I embarrassed him and I had to pay. I ended up passing out.

             Leon left when I was seven. You’d think life would get calmer, but it didn’t. He would come back to reprimand me. Like when my mom told him I got bad math grades. And no one was there to watch me. Wewe and Doe had left the house. By the time I was 9 years old Mymy was into boys and mom was working. My mom moved our family to Florida when I turned 12. She could not keep up with the bills and sold our house for a smaller one: a house in Miramar with a smaller backyard. Middle school was rough. I was picked on because I spoke too proper for the local kids. You talk like a cracka. I didn’t even have the clothes that were in style.  My clothes came from flea market, Wal-Mart, and my sister’s hand me downs. I would bleach the clothes if they were pink or any other girlish color. I ended up getting into fights and I won every single one! I eventually earned the other kids respect for that and my athletic abilities. When I was 14, I smoked my first joint. I stole it out of Mymy’s purse while I was looking for candy. It felt great, I forgot about all my troubles and worries. Laughing never felt so good and food never tasted better. From that point on, I was not afraid of taking drugs. When I was a freshman in high school, Wewe withdrew me from Miramar High and moved me to Naples, Florida. I ended up around rich kids and harder drugs like cocaine. When I first tried cocaine it was by accident I thought it was a crushed Percocet. Wewe had told me that if I ever did coke I would have a heart attack.  That wasn’t true. So I did it all: weed, pills, coke, and my favorite, acid.  Most of the time, I did all of them at the same time.  It only got darker from there. Because of drugs, I lost my home, a chance to host a radio show, the woman I love.

            I’ve been clean for 5 years, but I still have regrets and the scar on my forehead is a reminder of everything I lost. When I look in the mirror, I can still see it.  There isn’t enough vitamin E to clear it up completely.

The scar inside bothers me, the most.

Allison: After hearing his story in class, I was curious to know how Jahn’s life got darker. What did he mean he lost his home? What regrets? So we sent our audio producers, Diego and Misha to get the scoop. But, before we get to that, here’s a word from our sponsors.

Allison: For all you west coasters, I am going to be teaching a writing class at the explorists retreat in napa valley nov 3-6th 2016. I will be sharing my story of going from the impossible to the possible and there will be yoga and meditation, other dynamic speakers and workshop leaders, delicious organic meals, and other healing and motivational wisdom to inspire change in your life.

You can find more info at the bottom of our website or at theexplorists.com

And for all you east coasters, Andrea is teaching a writing workshop at the Sanibel Island Writers Conference. Andrea taught at this conference last year and won’t shut up about it.  

Sanibel Island Writers Conference, A POWERHOUSE LINE UP INCLUDING: Richard Blanco, Joyce Maynard, Steve Almond, Darin Strauss, Karen Tolchin, Steven Elliot, and Sue Monk Kidd. They are awesome, awesome storytellers and authors. And you can take classes with all of them, including our very own Andrea Askowitz.

That conference also runs November 3-6, 2016. A conference for writers of all levels.  To register, click on the link at the bottom of our website.

ALLISON: Welcome back. You’re listening to writing class radio. At the beginning of this episode, Jahn Dope read his story, dark matter, which gave us a little background into his life growing up. In class, when Jahn ended this story, I was like, whaaaat? What happened? I wanted so more.

But in class we don’t get to hear the answers to those questions, because the narrator is not allowed to speak after the story’s read. He’s not aloud to explain what he meant.  The story has to speak for itself.

Jahn’s story had holes, and I wasn’t sure if he was afraid to share his whole story or if he just didn’t get there in 1200 words. I wanted to know everything. Jahn agreed to meet up with Misha and Diego and share his whole story with us.

DIEGO: Hey guys, this is Diego. I’m one of the audio producers. You may remember Jahn from a previous episode.

Hear clip about Jahn's relationship with his mother and some background into childhood. (mother ep) I’m really mad at my mother….came from a family of 5 and she taught us a lot of traits……but she has these relationships with these random men that have torn apart our family and has thought nothing of it.

DIEGO: In that episode, Jahn told a story about his mom. In the story Jahn read at the beginning of this episode, we hear a little about his sisters and their role in his childhood.  We were curious to find out what happened in Jahn’s life during and after high school, so Misha and I decided to meet him outside of the event space he now works at.

Jahn: heyyyy…..I gotta tell these guys. Hey guys, it’s closed.

Jahn: About 95, I end up moving to Naples, Florida. You know, out of nowhere. I just go to school one day and they’re like you’ve been signed out.

DIEGO: Jahn was 14 yrs old when he transferred to a new high school in freshman year. The change was hard for him, but because he was a good athlete, he was asked to join the football team. By senior year, he was one of the best on the team and a prospect to play college ball.

One day in his senior year, he was invited to wrestling practice…

 JAHN: I was wrestling with him and he just fell on my knee. I didn’t feel too good. There was no urgent care for me. The wrestling coach was like, if anybody asks, you just fell and tripped in the parking lot.

DIEGO: not long after, college football recruiters from ball state, a division 1 school, came out to see him.

Jahn: like imagine like 2 or 3 period of class. Full hallway. I’m walking on my crutches….. hear his voice….He sees I’m on a stabilizer. I saw my coach with these two guys…you’re one chance. I ended up getting hurt. One of the rare opportunities to better my life and better my schooling was taken away.      

DIEGO: After losing his opportunity to play college football, Jahn gave up on himself.

Jahn: After that, I started to experiment more with drugs to cover up the pain and hurt to not be able to fulfill the dream I had. It was the emotional pain. I was trying to get out. When drugs came into my life, it made me feel good. And I did it to the best of my knowledge. I wanted new experiences. I wanted to escape from the mental trauma.

DIEGO: Jahn was given a spot on the football team at Methodist College, a d3 school in North Carolina, and his dad, having a desire to get back into his life, offered to pay. But toward the middle of his second semester he takes the train home for spring break.
 

Jahn: I ended up missing the train and I couldn’t get back to the school in time. I missed my midterms and got put on probation. My dad doesn’t understand that and after that, he cut me off completely.

DIEGO: After Jahn’s dad cut him off, he dropped out of school.

JAHN: well, I’ve gotta live life on life’s terms...you ain’t got a college education...I did that for a little minute. And, I worked odd jobs here and there, quit some, got fired from others for being a weekend worrier.

Jahn:  I partied on the weekend and worked during the week. This went all the way to 25. I started bouncing from couches to my sisters house and eventually I became homeless”

DIEGO: WHEN AND WHERE WAS THAT TIPPING POINT? When was it that you couldn’t balance doing all these drugs on the weekend?

JAHN: I would say the tipping point was when my sister contracted HIV from her husband. Her death and the death of my father was when I got to be a real emotional wreck. I took more chances. Things I thought I would never do, I started trying. You know. I wanted to numb myself of the whole picture. I am sorry I can’t give a clear picture of everything that happened.

JAHN: I tried stronger drugs. A lot of stuff I block out..It’s too much to deal with...in Miami…started doing crack cocaine. I started trying to sell drugs to make a living and to self medicate…to being homeless. I was never comfortable sleeping right there on the sidewalk. Being the kind of lifestyle I grew up in. it was too shameful for me to look up from a piece of cardboard ….like hey, remember me?

JAHN: I remember trying to find a nice, safe spot to sleep where nobody’s going to mess with you. Waking up to sirens. The cops saying, you’re not supposed to be here. People on the streets have mental issues. They’re not right. Everyone doing all these drugs, you can’t expect people to be right…..they are not.

DIEGO: When Jahn first started using drugs to get away from his day to day, he didn’t imagine himself becoming addicted and homeless in Miami.  What was he thinking, what was he feeling going from promising athlete to weekend raver to surviving on the streets.

JAHN: I just didn’t care anymore at that point. Everything has gone wrong in my life. This is what I might as well do. Rug gets pulled out from under me. I’ve made some regretful mistakes. I couldn’t do it anymore. I felt like I must belong here, because of where I’m at….nothing happens to you without a reason. I tried to live like a real homeless person. I learned spots to eat. Put me under their wing. This where you can eat, shower and stuff like that.”

JAHN: You know, when I tried to sell drugs. I got caught a couple of times. If you’re good, you’re going to have customers come up to you. They know this area is high drug activity and they keep seeing you. So of course, you’re going to get busted….they just come up on you.

Diego: I asked if selling was the only thing he got locked up for.

JAHN: possession, trespassing, criminal mischief, grand theft.

Diego: And it was that last one, grand theft, that landed him in jail for 180 days. Jahn would also make money by selling scrap metals, sometimes by ‘finding’ them on construction sites he’d sneak into. One day someone came asking for a favor

JAHN: some guy comes up to me a couple of days bef my bday and he’s like, hey man, I need this dolly to move some stuff. I’ll rent you a dolly, bc it was a way to make some money. He was doing it wrong, and I started showing him how to do it correctly, and the cops came. We were breaking apart this old dilapidated aluminum fence that was already missing pieces, but it wasn’t ours. I got out and was back out on the streets and I’m like, I’m here again. I started looking for a way to make some money…all the way to “There’s a way it can be done.”

 Diego: After getting out of JAIL, Jahn made a choice to change his life. He left the spot he was getting high at and walked 25 blocks to the Miami Rescue Mission.

 JAHN: “I came from that street right there. 14 down. I was deep down town and took the walk way over here. Somebody offered me a tent, a job, to get high…where was all this stuff when I needed it? It was clear I was doing the right thing. I was sick and tired of being out there...and I felt good!

Diego: Misha and I went to the rescue mission so Jahn could show us around and he immediately ran into one of his old buddies.

 JAHN: “This is my friend Sam, Sam Chiver.”

 Diego: Sam and Jahn talked about their shared experience at the mission. Having to sleep on the chapel floor for the first few days and taking communal showers with people who hadn’t bathed in days and being woken up by a PA system.

 Jahn stayed at the mission for three years. He became the leader of the rehab group he got placed in and completed the program in an under a year.

 After finishing the program, he worked for the mission; placing calls asking for donations.

 In a less than a third of the time he spent homeless, Jahn sobered up and was earning an honest living.

 And if you ask him what was it that lifted him and sustained him through that transitional period at the mission?   

Jahn: the mission, god, the writing class and a book by Louise L. Hay called You Can Heal Your Life that my sister Dominique gave me. Life experiences and that book helped me get where I am today.

Allison: Jahn met Andrea when she taught classes at the Miami Rescue Mission. John showed up every week for two years. One day in our class, Jahn wrote this:

Had a chance to dig deep and work on myself. Her class helped in saving my life! Thank you Andrea and I love you for that. You helped me find feelings that I suppressed that give me the inspiration to give a shit. Plus she laughs at my jokes.

ALLISON: Jahn joined Writing Class Radio a year and a half ago. We let him use a pseudonym because of his affiliation with the Rescue Mission but he promised to come clean when he could. A few months ago, Jahn left the mission after living and working there for three years. Now, as promised, he’s proud to use his real name.

Jahn: My name is PHILIP SYLVERIN… I’m Haitian American born in Long Island. I’m a production manager and now I live here in Wynwood. (insert music here)

Ari Herstand new day in album Brave Enough.

Allison: Phil’s life has been hell for a really long time. Life is fucking hard for all of us in one way or another.  The trick is coping in a healthy way. Writing my stories has helped me get through a lot of shit.

Jahn told us that writing class was one of the main things that saved his life. I saw it first hand.  In class when Jahn wrote about the shitty things he’s had to overcome, it seemed like writing them down and sharing them with the class helped him move past Jahn Dope and on to a thriving, healthy, Phil Sylverin.

Everyone who comes to class is working through something. Are you? Are you working through something in your life? If so, we want you to share your story with us.

That’s the prompt for this episode. Write about what you are struggling with right now. Is it motherhood, addiction, your weight, aging? Write for 10 minutes quickly without too much thought and record what you wrote on the voice memo of your phone. Then email it to us at info@writingclassradio.com.

We’d love to air your response right here on the podcast.

Thank you for listening to Writing Class Radio.  

This episode is produced by Diego Saldana Rojas, Misha Mehrel, Andrea Askowitz, and me, Allison Langer with editorial help from Sonesh Chainani and Wendi Adelson.

Writing Class Radio is sponsored and recorded at the University of Miami School of Communication.

Theme music by Adriel Borshansky.  Additional music by Ari Herstand and Monplaisir. Check out all our musicians on our website. Study the stories we study and listen to our craft-talks.

There’s no better way to understand ourselves and each other, than by writing and sharing our stories. Everyone has a story. What’s yours?

Dedicated to a Warrior of Fun

By Karen Collazo          

Losing my faith happened slowly. It started when I was five years old and I couldn’t find an adult to give me a straight answer when I asked: “What happens when we die?” I was told there was this ethereal place where we are reunited with our family, under the love and light of God. My innocent mind couldn’t wrap itself around the idea of such a place, especially because during this time we had very little family in the states. We were a small family—just four of us living in Miami. My extended family lived in Cuba and New Jersey. Who were these people that we would join in heaven? How will I know who they are?

As a teenager, I was exposed to the cruel practices and unethical treatment of animals around the world, for the purposes of: testing beauty products, creating coveted and expensive articles of clothing, entertaining and feeding the population and selling prized items like ivory on the black market. I questioned God, wondering why a power so great could let such horrible things happen at the hands of children made in his own image. And what was the point of all this meanness?

As I got older, I studied other religions in hopes that I would find the one that spoke to me. Having grown up in a house with a Jewish father and a spiritual mother, we had zero traditions we practiced. We only celebrated the National holidays. If the banks were closed, we were eating lechon from a caja china, around a table made up of random friends and one-off 3rd and 4th cousins. I was never baptized and I was spared the dreadful tiny wedding dress and church procession that most of my Catholic and Christian friends were subjected to for communion. I was desperate to identify with something and was drawn to eastern religions like Taoism, Hinduism and Buddhism. But growing up in a predominantly Hispanic city, with limited resources, there was little in the way of being able to practice anything but the common religions available in the West.

I even tried my hand at Wiccan and Pagan paths. I remember being so moved by the concept that mother earth was the center of all spiritual energy. The moon and the sun were Gods. Your successes and happiness rested in the hands of your relationship with nature. One day, I was so upset after a heated argument with my mother—about getting a tattoo behind her back (with a fake id) that I picked up a Wiccan practice and spells book. I read that one way to get rid of negative energy was to sweep the floor and push the pain and hurt out onto the street. There I was, all of sixteen years old, sweeping around the house, while muttering under my breath all my arguments for why I had the right to do what I wanted to my own body. My mother was pleased, thinking that I was making up for “hurting her” by getting my Sun tattoo on my right shoulder. But I was in fact trying to clean our house of the tension.

The incident that pushed me over the edge and led me to completing turning my back on spirituality and faith was, of course, the death of my mother. Not only could I not understand why this would happen to her and to us, but the advice I received during her battle and afterwards, just did not sit well with me. As a spiritual person, my mother depended heavily on mediums, santos and advice from “the other side.” When she was frail, hallowed and sinking into the hospital bed we setup in her bedroom, the spiritual guides in our family assured us that everything was going to be okay. But it wasn’t. After eight months, several rounds of chemo and radiation and a gastric bypass, my mother let out her last breath at the hospice wing of Mercy Hospital. I felt duped. If in fact one knew the outcome, why not provide the facts as they are to better prepare those seeking comfort? Was this a question of free will versus determination?

My mother was a country girl, from Las Tunas, Cuba. She grew up dirt poor, wore shoes two sizes too small and fell in love with a man that had very big ambitions. In the end, she succeeded in getting a college degree (the first in her family), leaving a communist country, raising two healthy daughters, owned her home and travelled the world. She battled major depression her whole life by keeping busy. But when she was on a high note, she enjoyed living to the fullest. Always the life of the party, her infectious laugh could paint a smile on anyone’s face. She had just started a new diet and had lost some weight, giving her a new sense of confidence. My father had quit the business and was making an honest living, and had even quit smoking cigarettes after 45 years of going through one pack of Marlboro Reds a day. Both daughters were in college… By all accounts, life was good. So, why?

There were a lot of comforting words handed out by friends and family like business cards at a networking event. “She’s resting now.” “She’s in a better place.” “She’s watching over you.” “She’s reunited with her father.” But, I truly believed there was no such place or cause. I felt empty. Life had no purpose, but to make the most of what you had because you never know… This catapulted me into a drug-fueled lifestyle that I would later pay dearly to walk away from.

When five years later, my father died of the same type of rare stomach cancer that was not traceable to anyone in our family’s lineage, I completely and utterly let go of the sliver of belief that sat way down deep at the bottom of my heart. With my hands in the air, I surrendered to the spiritual void that I would live with, until recently. Sure he smoked cigarettes and ate mostly red meat, but there were cases of healthy, holistic individuals dying of the same disease. What had my sister and I done to deserve being orphaned in our late teens/early twenties? With no answers, I turned to drugs with more fervor than before.

A year ago, my best friend’s 32 year-old sister was diagnosed with colon cancer. This week, she passed away at home, surrounded by friends and family. She was a bright light—a free spirit who sucked the juice out of life like no one I have ever known. Right after college she moved to San Francisco and made a living by managing startups. She traveled the world, became engrossed in spiritual retreats like Burning Man and, as expected, bought into the whole organic/farm-to-table movement. She was curious, spontaneous and beautiful. This loss has affected me in ways I could have never imagined. Immediately, I was overwhelmed with grief and sadness for the loss of a friend, a little sister and the last bit of hope that God would never do this to me, and take my one last surviving family member away from me: my own little sister.

But something much more beautiful has emerged through all the pain: a tiny bud has sprung. It seems to me that our souls are all traveling through space, collecting love and light, evolving—to keep this world turning on its axis. Each life we live is a test. When our energy is first released, we may find ourselves lost. We perhaps fall prey to the seven deadly pecados. Through experience and acceptance we unlearn how to live without transgression. Once we achieve this, as soon as we learn life's purpose, we graduate.

Kristy knew that it was her time to live wild and free. Her purpose on this earth, this time around, was to enjoy what she had earned from past lives. We were so lucky to have been a part of her journey. She knew the answers to the questions that have plagued me all my life. And her parting gift was showing me the path back to faith.

Mr. S

By Karen Collazo

Narcotics Anonymous has a set of rules for drug addicts who are starting the recovery process. One of these rules states that a new addict should not get romantically involved during their first year of recovery from drug addiction. On an intellectual level, I understand why this rule exists. But, I’m also a sex addict.

The first time I heard him speak was at Happy Hour, a Narcotics Anonymous meeting that takes place every day at 6pm in South Miami. That night, he shared with everyone that he was trying to stay positive after losing a part-time job as a security guard. He said he had seen worse days, like when he was in the grips of active addiction and for months had to live out of his truck. He was tall with a thin but muscular frame, had dark chocolate skin and big brown eyes. He spoke eloquently; his voice was low and deep. He was an old soul trapped in the body of a 25 year-old.

I saw him around a few more times, before we exchanged pleasantries. Stragglers had gathered outside the church, after the Last Chance meeting—another NA meeting that takes place late in the night, when he shot me a goofy smile from across the hallway.

“Porque tu no me hablas? No te gustan los negros?” he asked with a flirtatious smirk across his lips. (Why don’t you talk to me? You don’t like black guys?)

“A mi si me gustan los negros…” (I like black guys…) “We just haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Karen,” I said.

“I’m just joking with you. I’ve seen you around. How many days you got?”

“I picked up my 90-day chip just last week. How about you?”

“I’m going on almost two years.”

We snuck away to sit on a concrete bench that was nestled on the other side of the auditorium. It was tucked away in a small garden that had a single holy saint statue standing tall in the middle. I don’t recall which saint it was, but it watched over us as we talked about what brought us to NA, our DOC’s (drug of choice) and what we liked to do for fun when we weren’t high. The chemistry was palpable. On the surface, there were all kinds of words being exchanged, but on another level chemicals were being passed back-and-forth. They were computing the formula that would equal us, naked and inside each other. He asked for my number and hugged me goodbye—one of those long hugs where your bodies are studying the topography of the other’s. I felt butterflies in my stomach and the blood rush to my lady parts.

“We should vibe soon. You got good energy,” he said.

On our first date, we had coffee at the Starbucks just down the street from the church that held the NA meetings we frequented. He was charming, confident and very sexy. He asked a lot of questions and told me war stories about the acid trips that led him to rehab. There was something immensely powerful drawing us to one another. We both could sense that underneath the drug addiction, there was a stronger desire; an obsession with getting off on the most powerful drug there was: sex. He licked his lips, while observing mine as I spoke.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

“Where can we go?” I asked.

“Meet me at Tropical Park.”

“What could we possible do at Tropical Park, at 10pm at night?”

“You know…”

We walked back to our cars, which were parked in the dimly lit outdoor shopping mall. Before reaching the handle of my Honda Civic, I turned towards him and smiled—inviting him to kiss me. I wanted confirmation that we were on the same page. He grabbed my hips and pressed his body against mine, backed me onto the car and softly placed his lips on mine. His tongue was cold and sweet. He tasted like iced coffee. Before pulling away, he bit my lower lip.

That night, I let go of all my insecurities and worries and let him take me in his truck, parked under a single street lamp in an empty Tropical Park. He kissed like he was searching for something. His tongue moved slowly, making figure eights. But this wasn’t just sex. He worshipped every inch of me, making me feel significant. He drank me up slow and steady. At 35, this was my first time having sex without the assistance of drugs or alcohol.

We snuck around for a few months; having sex in abandoned parking lots and empty parks, without telling anyone—not even our sponsors. The secrecy made the sex that much more potent. We met up at NA meetings and sat across from each other, barely listening to the speaker, ravaging each other with our eyes—as the other addicts shared where they were at in their recovery. We knew very well what we’d be doing once the meeting ended and the fantasies danced in my head, proving too difficult to pay attention to the message being delivered, during that torturous hour.  

“Can’t wait to have you inside me,” I would text.

“I’m already hard just thinking about it,” he would reply.

After sex, we’d sit in his truck smoking cigarettes and talked about our hopes and dreams for the future. I told him that I wanted to be a writer one day, so important in the literary field that I would meet Oprah. He told me that he wanted to be a music producer and shared some of his produced tracks on Sound Cloud. Although he was ten years younger than me, he seemed to have a good head on his shoulders—a serious and mature personality. Most importantly, he was a kindred spirit. Soon, we stopped going to meetings and he started sleeping over at my place. And then, we relapsed together.  

Transcript of Episode 17: Gym Rats, Circuit Boys, Papi Chulos...Which One Are You?

EPISODE 17: GYM RATS, CIRCUIT BOYS, PAPI CHULOS, FASHION QUEENS, AND BEARS, WHICH ONE ARE YOU?

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ANDREA: This is Writing Class Radio. I’m Andrea Askowitz your host and your teacher. If you get inspired by true, personal stories and want to learn a little about how to write your own, this is your podcast.

Today you’re going to hear from Bo. Bo’s story is about the time he got blocked from a 1-900 gay chat line.  Later in the episode I talk to Bo.  We met on Miami Beach to talk about his life now, 24 years after the incident he writes about. We talk about perspective and how sometimes it takes years to figure out that the way we thought or the things we did were totally fucked up.

WARNING: The story you’re about to hear contains explicit language, so if you’re listening while driving carpool, you might want to tune into FM radio and listen to something more appropriate, like Drake.

Bo: I moved to Miami in the early 90s and chose to live in the heart of the gay ghetto, South Beach.  I had grown up in a small southern town in the Bible Belt, and I wanted to live in a place where being gay wasn’t an issue; in South Beach being gay was celebrated. Within walking distance were gay clubs, gay restaurants, a gay gym and there were gay people everywhere.  But I soon learned that shared sexual orientation didn’t guarantee community.  While I had envisioned scintillating conversation with like-minded intellectuals, what I found were groups and cliques that I just didn’t fit into-gym rats, circuit boys, fashion queens, bears, papi chulos, club kids.

The ubiquitous handsome, muscle men with the chiseled bodies of Greek and Roman gods that one admired from afar quickly lost their allure when they opened their mouths and screamed “HEY GIRLLL!”

I wanted to work hard and have a career and here I was surrounded by people who were living for the moment.  So most weekends when others were out “partying,” one of my friends from home, Eric, would come over to watch TV.

In these pre-Internet days, I was amused by the late-night commercials for local “chat lines.”  A second-rate stripper-looking model preened on a sofa holding her telephone and tossing her hair.  She’d say, “Hi, I’m Amanda, and I just love to talk to hot singles in my area.  You never know who you might meet!”  The commercial ended with Amanda opening the door to a handsome guy carrying a bottle of champagne. And wouldn’t you know it, Miami Beach TV had a GAY version of this. A muscular guy holding a football said, “Hey guys, do you want to talk to hot men in your area?  Call the man to man chat line and talk to hot local guys…”  

Eric and I couldn’t believe that such a thing existed, so we dialed the number.  There was no ring, just a short pause, and then a thumping synthesizer beat.

A man’s voice spoke, not the jock carrying the football.  No, it was the voice I couldn’t bear…that GAY voice.  A very gay voice trying to sound masculine and it wasn’t working.  “Hi Guys, thanks for calling the Male Room, THE place to cruise for hot man on man action.  I’m Trevor, your cruise master…” This was the voice that made me ashamed to be gay; it was the voice that people in the straight world would hear and try to lump me into a category I didn’t want to be in.

Trevor explained that you could “cruise the ads” but to interact, you had to record a quick intro, hit the pound button, then you had 10 seconds to “tell the guys who you are and what you want!”  You could hit the pound key to move on, press one to send a private message, or star to connect live.  The “ads” shocked me.

BEEP.  “Larry: Hi guys, hot leather daddy in Wilton Manors looking for submissive guys who like discipline to come play in my sling!”  Oh that’s sick!… GROSS!

BEEP.  “Carlos in Hialeah. Latino thug looking to chill and smoke yerba, daleee!” Oh my God--Illegal Drugs!   

BEEP. “Arvin: I’m looking for hot, hot s-s-s-ex, only h-h-h-ottt ot guys with large ARG p-penises.”  Bless his heart, he has Tourettes.

BEEP. ”Devon bottom… I’m a hot masculine bottom looking for someone to come fill me with raw.”  Oh my GOD, in the midst of an AIDS epidemic?  

BEEP. “DL Brother, Yo hot body body brother on the DL looking for discreet men on the DL, hit me up.” I had recently learned that DL meant down low…oh no!  He’s cheating on his wife!

I found it horribly depressing that men all over South Florida were lying in their beds jacking off on this gay phone line.  Where were the book clubs?  Where were the professional networking associations?  The political discussion groups?  I didn’t want to be part of this parade of freaks... I didn’t want to be one of those gays—and I realized, I didn’t want THEM to be that kind of gay.  

I wanted so badly for gay people to be just like straight people, or my at the time idea of straight people—Ozzie and Harriet with a white picket fence.  Ozzie and Harriet were not into leather.  I wanted to jolt them out of this.  Eric and I discussed what the most jarring, un-erotic message I could leave and we decided I should use my preacher voice.

For my intro I sang a bar from the hymn “Jesus Saves” in a nasal, backwoods voice. “Jesus Saves” and then channeled the Baptist preacher from my grandmother’s church:  “Brothers, homosexuality is a SIN, an abomination to God, but Jesus died on the cross for you and if you repent, you can be saved from an eternity in hell.”  

It took no time for responses to come pouring in.

BEEP.  “Hey asshole, get  the fuck off this line!”

BEEP.  “Hey preacher, how big is your cock?”

BEEP.  “I’m gonna fuck you up the ass!”

Eric and I laughed hysterically.   I pretended this was a big joke, but on some level I felt like I was doing something more important. In the book Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield says he wants to be the catcher in the rye, to protect the children from going over the side of the cliff. I envisioned myself the gay catcher in the rye, keeping these gay people from doing dangerous things, sinister things.  I wanted to save them.

The next day, Eric came over again and suggested I continue my mission of “saving gay souls.”  I giddily agreed and dialed the number again.  Instead of the thumping disco beat greeting, I only heard Trevor’s voice in a loop.  “Sorrrrry guy, you’ve been blocked...Sorry guy, you’ve been blocked…

Those faggots!  They blocked me!

On Sunday, a group of us went to Eric’s for dinner and we told everyone about our weekend telephone calls. Everyone wanted to hear me do it, and Eric’s number wouldn’t be blocked. So we dialed.  

We heard “Bumpabumpabumpabump...Welcome to the male room, the place for men to cruise. This is Trevor the cruise master. Guys we have heard that there have been some Jesus freaks terrorizing people on the line and we just want you to know that we’ve taken care of that.  Happy cruising!

The room exploded with laughter.  

It would be many years before I would become comfortable enough with myself that I didn’t view people who were into different things a threat to me.

I realized that the message I’d been delivering them was not unlike the church messages I’d grown up with and had come to Miami to flee.

ANDREA:  Later in the show you’ll hear a conversation I had with Bo.  But first I want to tell you about our sponsor THE SANIBEL ISLAND WRITERS CONFERENCE, one of the best conferences in the world. I taught there last year and can’t believe my luck that I get to teach there again. What I love about this conference is there’s a total blending of students and teachers. It’s like a big party.

I sat down with Tom Demarchi the creator and director of the Sanibel Island Writers Conference to ask him why he thinks this conference is so great.

TOM DEMARCHI:  And I attribute all that praise and goodwill to the strength of our lineup. The people who came in and taught the workshops really bring their all every year.

I've just been really lucky in that the people that I enjoy reading and that I know have a good reputation also turn out to just be stand-up human beings.

ANDREA: Sanibel Island Writers Conference, A POWERHOUSE LINE UP of standup human beings INCLUDING: Richard Blanco, Joyce Maynard, Steve Almond, Darin Strauss, Karen Tolchin, Steven Elliot, and Sue Monk Kidd. Awesome, awesome storytellers and authors. And you can take classes with all of them. Including me.

November 3-6, 2016. It’s also really, beautiful, perfect beach weather.  Click the link on our website for more info. Register now before it sells out.

ANDREA: When Bo was 26 years old, he moved to Miami Beach from the deep South. He wanted to find a safe place to be gay.  Twenty-four years later, I sat down with Bo on Lincoln Road, which is the heart of Miami Beach.  We talked about coming out and being comfortable with himself.  I wanted to know what has changed.

ANDREA: We’re eating, so excuse the chew.  But um, we’re talking about coming out.

BO: I was probably about 32 and my mom came to Miami Beach for the weekend to visit me. I finally came out to her and she cried and was very upset but over the weekend she sort of seemed to come to terms with it.

At first she was like, “We can’t tell your daddy, it will kill him.”

My dad would see a billboard with a woman in a bikini “That’s an attractive looking young lady.” And look at me for a reaction. When he came to Miami he’d see all these gay guys. Two guys kissing, “Good God almighty, what the hell?” He was totally freaked out.

A: But that was before he knew.  That was before he knew that you knew he knew.

B: Exactly. But I think that was a genuine visceral shock reaction.

A: He had the reaction you had when you first saw them.

B: Kind of.  What I always didn’t like or what I was afraid of was that people would see people like that and put me in that category. That was always the issue I had. The fear that I had.

ANDREA:  Bo was still a kid when he moved to Miami Beach and called that hotline, trying to distance himself from the queeny gays.  

I get it.  When my mom first met Victoria, who is now my wife, she gave me a high five like a frat boy. I knew exactly why my mom did it. And I was like, BAM!

I think it’s pretty universal, especially when we’re young, to worry about what people might think of us based on the people we associate with.  And sometimes it takes writing a story to reveal to ourselves where we were and what we’re still trying to overcome.

Okay, back to Bo’s visit with his mom...

BO:  And then after a couple of days she realized that everybody else in my world, everybody else knew and she was like we can’t hide this from him, we have to tell him. And then she went home and told my dad, because I wasn’t going to tell him.

He called me a few days later and he was totally cool  and supportive and it ended up being a good thing.

ANDREA:  So look ok there’s two guys walking. One of them is wearing the typical beige pants. Right? The gay male uniform. Do you see that? two men?

BO: Yes.

ANDREA: Maybe those are gay guys, you think?

BO: Ahhhhh, probably. They look like kind of like a couple.

ANDREA: How do you feel when you see guys like that now?

BO: Now, I think how nice that they can be in a place they can walk around and nobody will bother them or harass them.

ANDREA: Now, if you saw the guy in the g string in the feathers at a gay pride parade or walking down Lincoln Road, how would you feel?

BO: I would not care that people see that and are going to think I’m like that because my perspective is totally different. I’ve grown up and I’ve matured and it’s not an affront.

A: When did that change? And how do you think that your perspective has changed?

B: Around the time of that story. I started realizing that probably a lot of those people that I saw as um, that i judged or whatever had gone through rough times themselves. As I got to know people, that contact with people who are different and understanding where they’re coming from. Kind of changed my…

A: So you made friends with the Hey Girls.

B: Yeh, and then just kind of becoming more comfortable with myself made me less predisposed to judging others or being threatened by their self expression.

ANDREA: I don’t think Bo would have been able to write this story 24 years ago without everyone thinking the story was mean. As it was, one woman in our class called him out for being homophobic. And you may also.  

I think the story could have been strengthened if Bo had made fun of himself as hard as he made fun of the papi chulos and the other gay characters he imitated.  When a narrator makes fun of him or herself it shows that he knows himself and it shows evolution. It shows there’s been a change in that character.

But what impresses me is Bo’s commitment as a writer to be true to his character then.  The story reflects the way he felt then. He’s able to tell it now because he knows NOW that what he did was a dick move.

I was thinking that just like Bo was on a mission to save the gay soul, I’ve brought it on myself to save the straight soul. I feel it’s my public duty to improve gay-straight relations.   

When we first moved into our house, we heard, that our neighbor didn’t like us because we were lesbians.  My neighbor’s housekeeper told our housekeeper.  So, instead of waiting for a welcome basket, I knocked on her door. I really thought that if she didn’t like gay people, she needed to meet me.  Like I would do her a favor and improve her life. I was sure she’d like me. So my whole family went door to door to meet the neighbors. Sebastian was in the stroller, Tashi was on a skateboard. Vicky even went along with it. I told her it was an American thing. And everyone was super nice except the woman next door who has a daughter, who was 12 at the time. When we came by, the daughter was “in the shower.”

Since then whenever i  go over there to bring cookies, I forget to wear shoes and a bra.   

Here’s your assignment:  Set a timer for ten minutes. No, set your timer for eleven minutes, just to be queer. That’s it, 11 minutes. All you have to do is write without stopping. Keep your pen moving or your fingers tapping.  

Also follow your mind. Go where it takes you. The thing about the prompts is they are just meant to get you started.  If what you write has nothing to do with the prompt, that’s okay. There’s no wrong way to do a prompt.

When the timer goes off, stop. Then read what you wrote into your voice memo on your phone and email it to us at info@writingclassradio.com

Some of your stories will end up right here on our show.

Here’s the prompt:  Everyone is hiding something. What are you hiding? In what way are you in the closet?

Writing Class Radio is produced by Diego Saldana-Rojas, Allison Langer, and me, Andrea Askowitz with editorial help from Alejandro Santiago and Claudia Franklin  NEW CUT heme music by Adriel Borshansky.  Additional music by Blue Jay. and Cat Cousteau. Links to all musicians below.

I want to thank all the musicians who donated their original music.

Writing Class Radio is recorded at the University of Miami School of Communication.

This episode is sponsored by Sanibel Island Writers Conference. Listen, this is such a good conference. I’ll be there. I hope you’ll be there too.

If you like Writing Class Radio, please rate us on iTunes. I just figured out how to do it from my iphone. You go to the podcast app. Search Writing Class Radio. Click on the big logo. Then click Review.  Did you get that?  If not, Google it and tell the world how great we are.

There’s more writing class on our website: writing class radio dot com.

Study the stories we study, listen to our craft-talks, follow our daily prompts and time yourself.  Then record what you wrote and send it in.

There’s no better way to understand ourselves and each other, than by writing and sharing our stories. Everyone has a story.  What’s yours?

Episode 17: Circuit Boys, Gym Rats, Papi Chulos, Fashion Queens, Bears...Which One Are You?

EPISODE 17: Circuit Boys, Gym Rats, Papi Chulos, Fashion Queens, Bears...Which One Are You?

LISTEN NOW!

This episode explores perspective, how sometimes it takes years to figure out that something you did or thought was totally fucked up. Bo tells his story about getting blocked from a 1-900 gay hotline. But the story is really about how it took him years to become comfortable enough with himself to stop judging the free expression he witnessed among the gay people he first encountered on Miami Beach 24 years ago.  Bo came from the deep South in search of freedom from oppression. He wanted gay book clubs and stimulating political conversations with other like-minded gay men. But what he found instead were all kinds of people who fit into categories he describes as circuit boys, gym rats, fashion queens, papi chulos, and bears. He felt like he didn’t fit in. He didn’t want to fit in. But when Bo called the gay hotline to try to “save the gay soul” and made fun of it, he realized he was imparting the same hurtful and hateful church messages he came to Miami Beach to get away from.

Twenty-four years later, our teacher Andrea Askowitz sits down with Bo on Lincoln Road, the heart of South Beach to talk about what’s changed and how he changed. 

Andrea tells her own story about trying to “save the straight soul” when she finds out that her next door neighbor doesn’t like lesbians.  (Her neighbor’s housekeeper told Andrea’s housekeeper). So Andrea tries to make friends with her.  When that backfires, Andrea brings cookies to her neighbor but “forgets” to wear shoes. And a bra. 

Set your timer for 11 minutes to be queer. Here’s the prompt: Everyone’s hiding something. What are you in the closet about? Go.

Record what you wrote on the voice memo of your phone and send it to info@writingclassradio.com

Original music in this episode is by Cat Cousteau and Blue Jay. Theme music by  Adriel Borshansky.  

This episode is sponsored by the Sanibel Island Writers Conference, created by Tom DeMarchi, where there’s a powerhouse lineup including: Richard Blanco, Joyce Maynard, Steve Almond, Darin Strauss, Karen Tolchin, Steven Elliot, and Sue Monk Kidd. Awesome, awesome storytellers and authors. And you can take classes with all of them. Including Andrea Askowitz.

November 3-6, 2016. It’s also really, beautiful, perfect beach weather.  Click Sanibel Island Writers Conference before it sells out. 

Dear Dad

By Karen Collazo   

It must have been no later than 8am on a Saturday, because the light was breaking behind the warehouses on the east side of the Palmetto. The air was cool and crisp; it was winter in Miami. That morning, Mami woke me and Annette up early, made us café con leche and told us we were going to see you. I don’t recall how she explained why this meeting was taking place in the Mall of The America’s parking lot, but there we were waiting for your white 1989 Bronco to pull in. It had been a few months since we had last seen you, since you had left on your business trip. The visit lasted just a few minutes. You hugged Mami and told us that you missed us and would be home soon. And just like that, we were on the highway on our way back to Hialeah without you. Mami cried all the way home.

This wasn’t unusual growing up. Throughout the years, you popped in-and-out—always living between two places.  But you always made sure your time with us was the most memorable. The three of us, Mami, Annette and me, had grown accustomed to being a family of our own, with you as recurring guest. And while you may have missed unimportant events, like: science projects, trips to the doctor, Saturday morning pancakes and volleyball games, you always tried to make it up to us on our birthdays, during the holidays and on family day. Sundays were our day to pile into Mami’s blue Cadillac and eat lunch at a fancy restaurant as a family. Then you’d spend the rest of the afternoon showering us with gifts as we went shopping around town.

Do you remember that one Sunday when I was eight years old when we went to an upscale seafood restaurant downtown? As we walked up the steps toward the entrance, Annette and Mami leading the way with you and me trailing behind, a man jumped out from the bushes. He snatched Mami’s brown handbag and pushed her down the steps. It was an expensive purse that you had bought her on a recent business trip, which she wore with so much pride. As both she and Annette tumbled down the front steps, you ran after the thief. He dove in head first through the back seat window of a getaway car and sped away, as you ran to our car to get your 9mm Berretta from the glove compartment. I followed you, scared.

You saw me trailing you and yelled at me to go back and help Mami. You stopped in the middle of the street and pointed your gun in the direction of the car that was quickly speeding away. It was too late. They had made a left at the light and were no longer within range. The restaurant hostess had seen everything and called the police. We were escorted inside and statements were taken. After we had all regrouped and credit cards were cancelled, you proudly recounted how fearlessly I had run after the bad guys. But, I wasn’t running after the bad guys, I was running after you.

I was your quintessential daddy’s girl – a Jewish-Cuban princess who got everything and anything she ever wanted. My closet and dressers were filled with the clothes and accessories of a teenage girl’s dream. On my seventh birthday, you came home with Minnie, a Shih-Tzu puppy who would later round out our family and always stand guard when you weren’t around. On my ninth birthday, you lied and told me that you hadn’t bought me anything. I was so hurt. I thought you didn’t love me. I ran crying to my bedroom and crawled into the bottom bunk of the bed I shared with my sister. You followed me into the room and told me that if I was going to be a spoiled brat that the least I could do was cry from the top bunk, which is where I slept. I yelled at you to go away, but you insisted that I move. When finally I climbed the stairs to my bunk, I found a bright pink boom box with a bow on it. You laughed and hugged me and told me that you would never forget my birthday. You were always playing pranks like that. For my 12th birthday, you bought me my first set of pearls. When I turned thirteen, we took a trip to Spain to celebrate. For my quinces, you and Mami threw me a quinceañera party, which you told me cost $30,000. As soon as I was of driving age, you gave me my first new car. And on my 18th birthday, you came home with a platinum Montblanc pen. You said you hoped it would inspire me to write the greatest words ever written.

Most of my memories of you come attached to the things you bought me. You were the new Bongo Jeans, the Motorola cell phone, the brand new white and pink bedroom set. I was surrounded by you, but you were never there.

I know you tried. You taught me that a girl could do anything a boy could. You hammered in me the importance of going to school and never letting anyone take me for a sucker. If I was home sick and you happened to be in town, you’d take me with you as you ran business errands. I was your little assistant. On these days, I got to see first-hand what it was like to get “things” done.

Like that day we went to visit your cousin, to collect some money he owed you after you helped him get his trucking business started. You asked me to wait in the car while you met him inside his office. You expected things to get ugly and you didn’t want me to see the two of you arguing. I remember it was raining. I sat in your black Pontiac Bonneville, listening to Jose Feliciano. I studied the gun in the glove compartment.

After you collected your payment in full, we went to a small cafeteria in Little Havana for coffee and pastelitos. As you sipped your colada and flirted with the waitress, my eyes lit up when they spotted the Butterfinger candy bars in the glass case beneath the coffee window. I didn’t even have to ask. Seconds later, there were two Butterfingers in my hands–one for me and one for Annette.

These days, I think about how if you only knew what would become of me, you might have changed some of the choices you made. Would you have tried your hand at a noble profession that paid little, but set a good example for your daughters?

When Mami was dying of cancer at Mercy Hospital, five years before you lost your own battle, she looked at me the way one looks at a starving child in Africa, in a Save the Children commercial; it pulls at your heartstrings, but you know deep down there is nothing you can really do to change that kid’s future. The last time she spoke to me, she said, “Can you imagine it? A father provides for his family by trafficking the very thing his daughter later becomes addicted to.” That’s when it all came into sharp focus–when the trips to Puerto Rico, the extravagant parties and the lavish jewelry, car and houses all finally made sense. I had just turned 21.

I am comforted by the fact that while you weren’t physically there for us, or a model citizen, you did love us in your own way. You always protected us, especially from the reality of your career. The only one who truly suffered was Mami, who didn’t always know if you would make it home that night, while Annette and I assumed you always would. We didn’t know any better.

You grew up poor, on the streets of Cuba–bouncing from family to family and sometimes even crashing with friends, after your mother handed you over to her mother so that she could start a new family with her second husband. Later, your grandmother would try to commit suicide in front of you when you were nine years old. You grew up with nothing, but always found a way to survive. Once in America, your ambitions found a fertile underground world where your dreams of being wealthy could finally come true. You put yourself in danger in order to give us what we needed, except you.

Later, when it was your turn to lie in a hospital bed dying of cancer, one of my best friends from middle school came to visit. She walked into that cold and sterile room at Coral Gables Hospital and found you buried underneath a pile of blankets. You were weak and skinny–almost unrecognizable, except for your strong hands. Even as the morphine dosage increased, they continued to mimic the act of lighting a cigarette, which you did several times a day, every day, for 40 years. I fondly remembered how I used to wrap my little hand around one of your big fingers, as we walked along side each other. My friend smiled at you and asked: “Hola Viejo, te acuerdas de mi?” (Hey old man, remember me?).

You smiled graciously, but I knew you didn’t recognize her. It was Mami who drove Grisel and me to gymnastics every day after school in the sixth grade. It was Mami who made us s’mores and popcorn when Grisel slept over. Mami was the one who knew that Grisel’s mom, Elena, called her by her nickname “Cookie” and once borrowed her recipe for natilla pudding with vanilla wafers, because I couldn’t stop raving about it.

In that moment, any anger I may have felt towards you for not being around, melted away. I felt sorry for you. You were once my hero and overnight had become an unfit father. But just then, you turned into a poor old man who was never really able to enjoy the true riches that this life had to offer.

Growing up, it was rare when you were around. On those occasions when you missed my birthday, you would send me a bouquet of one dozen pink roses. It always made me feel like the most loved and most special girl in the world. The card would always read: “Feliz cumpleaños a mi bella hija. De tu papa, que te quiere.” (Happy birthday, to my beautiful daughter. From you father, who loves you.) I would go to school and tell everyone about it feeling so important. Today, I wonder if those flowers ever really came from you or if Mami sent them on your behalf. I have so many questions that I know will go unanswered. Your business associates may know more about you than your family did. They called you “El Ingeniero,” (The Engineer), a nickname you carried proudly. But no matter what you did or didn’t do, after all these years, you were and will always be Papi–the only man to ever send me a bouquet of flowers.

Who am I, really?

By Karen Collazo   

The hardest aspect of life after treatment is the grieving process. I rarely encounter this concept in recovery literature, but I once heard a fellow addict put it succinctly during a late night NA meeting: You must allow yourself the process of grieving for the loss of your former self. These words struck a powerful chord with me. It clarified a big issue I have been struggling with: How do you grieve the loss of someone you never really knew? Up until a few months ago, my sense of self was grounded in a web of deceit and uncovering my real truth has placed me smack dab in the center of an isolated and dark wasteland. During active addiction, I ensured my survival by deftly manipulating my reality and over-rationalizing my behavior – to the point where I don’t know what is real and what is not.

For instance, I used to think I was good at my advertising job because I had never been fired before and found myself climbing up the ladder. Every new job came with a new title, more responsibility and a bump in pay. This was the mark of success in my book. However, now I’m not so sure I was ever really as successful as I thought I was. I have recently become acutely aware of the fact that I did quite a bit of bouncing around during my 15-year career. I never held down a job for more than two years. Usually, I left as soon as my gut told me that it was obvious to everyone how incompetent I was, but before any of my employers could take any real action. In this way, I managed to escape the experience of being rejected. At the time though, I was convinced that I was the one doing the rejecting for very valid reasons, like: I need to diversify my experience, the agency culture is just not for me or I’m ready for more work-life balance. This whole time, though, I was only beating them to the punch – to save face.

These last few months, I’ve been encumbered by revelations like this. It’s a heavy load that keeps getting heavier and is weighing me so far down, I feel as though I’m trying to crawl out of a pit of quicksand. The sack on my back continues to grow with each old belief that unravels before me, proving it difficult to grieve the loss of someone who is a stranger to me now. I wish it was as simple as letting it go; it would make recovery a lot less painful. Instead, I’m stuck at the beginning. Each day, becoming more defeated as I discover things about Karen that make me cringe. Therein lies the true conundrum: How do you move past your loss when it’s all just so unbelievable?

When you think you know yourself and come to find that you really don’t, a dangerous shift in perception takes place. Everything comes into question. It’s like finding out that your husband has been leading a double life and maintaining a second family in another state. You pick apart the past for clues that should have been obvious warning signs. You lose faith in your own memory and your ability to interpret the present. This is exhausting. It makes it extremely difficult to make any decision. It overwhelms you. The past becomes a sham and you worry that perhaps you still can’t be trusted. When you are this vulnerable, you risk not being able to get to the why. And knowing the why is how you develop compassion for yourself. Compassion is the key to knowing.

It has been said that grief is not about forgetting, but remembering with less pain. The process of recovering from drug addiction extends beyond learning how to cope without drugs and live a new healthy and meaningful life. It also involves becoming intimately acquainted with your pain for the very first time. And once you’ve faced what hurts, you have to learn to be completely and utterly okay with it. For someone who is still struggling with denial, that simple act seems insurmountable and too great for me to survive. 

Hope Is The Thing With Feathers

By Karen Collazo   

The night before I left The Orchid, I paced back-and-forth in my apartment anxiously anticipating the moment I was to step out the front gate of the treatment center and enter the real world. In treatment, you learn and grow in the safety and comfort of an isolated self-esteem boot camp. You’re afforded the luxury of practicing morale-boosting drills, as a means to reverse the negative thinking that led you to abusing drugs in the first place, without the outside influence of life on life’s terms. I knew that once I returned home that was when the real work would begin.

We were all sitting in the TV room of the apartment complex, doing our morning round of “Goals and Gratefuls,” when my therapist announced to the group that this was to be my last day at The Orchid. I nervously addressed the room with a tearful speech of gratitude and expressed to the women how I was forever changed by the experience because of each and every one of them. I said I could never repay the women for teaching me important life lessons and wished them all the best of luck. I remember singling out Rachel, Mandy and Ashley – three of the ladies that I had developed a very strong bond with.

Rachel was from Illinois. She was an attractive young mother of three with a newfound addiction to Suboxone. Like most of us, she was terrified to be her true self and got high to be able to fulfill the role she had carved out for herself – one that was based on everyone else’s expectations. She was a prisoner to a life she didn’t want, unable to break free from the weight of what turned out to be self-imposed ideas about what it meant to be a good wife, mother and daughter. She had a crippling fear of hurting others, a kind soul, was extremely encouraging of everyone and was always quick to remind me of how beautiful of a person I was. Rachel taught me to accept myself for who I truly was, regardless of the negative beliefs I had adopted over the years.

Mandy was from Virginia. She was smart, gorgeous and caring; she often looked after some of the younger girls at The Orchid. Her father had been her best friend and when he passed away, unable to cope, Mandy turned to alcohol to help with the grieving process. We connected the way only two women who have lost their parents at a very young age ever could. Anyone can sympathize with an event like that, but unless you’ve experienced it you could never truly understand what it is like. Mandy had a lot of conviction. She carried around meaningful amulets that worked as reminders of important people and events in her life – giving her the strength to go on another day. She reminded me of how important it was to have faith. This was something that I had lost long ago.

Ashley was a very witty girl with an amazing fashion sense. Everyday she took particular care of dressing up and donned stunning makeup, which had the caliber of a professional makeup artist’s work. Ashley was very quiet in group activities and always receded to the background, in the shadow of other more vivacious characters. But one-on-one, she had an incredible sense of humor. She reminded me of how debilitating a lack of self-worth could be. She was a sweet girl who was deserving of love and happiness, although she didn’t believe she was worthy of it.

I felt such a strong connection to these women, because they embodied a little piece of me that I didn’t even recognize existed. Before I left, I gave each one a token of friendship to remember me by. During my stay at The Orchid, I learned a lot about myself. Some of the issues that were exposed were not necessarily new news, but I was alarmed to uncover the impact they had on my life. Most importantly, I learned to accept that I had a disease, but that I was not just my disease. Coming to terms with this fact, allowed me to break free. It was okay for me to be traumatized, in pain and broken. These things didn’t make me less than. Experiencing heartache wasn’t going to be the end of me.  And denying this out of fear was a betrayal to my genuine self. When I finally told the truth to someone else, I revealed lies I had lived with my whole life – allowing hope to spring again. There is nothing as liberating as being faced with a new reality that makes sense of your past and frees you from the hurt that you have caused yourself. Now, I was free to deal with the pain that was not totally in my control. Now, I was going to be able to grow from my past experiences, instead of remaining stuck in a self-inflicted purgatory. Now, life was in sharp clear focus.

After we said our goodbyes, Erin approached me with a basket filled with sweets. The night prior, all the women had rummaged through their kitchen cupboards for cookies, cakes, chocolate and candy to create a mini gift basket for my sendoff. It was a very touching moment, especially because it included a handmade card with lovely thoughts of encouragement. But the best gift I received that day was the ability to give a fellow addict the strength to admit to the group that she was not only in treatment for alcohol abuse, but for cocaine addiction as well. Nicky had been so ashamed of this fact that she had hid it from everyone for a month. She told the group that because I had been so open during my time in the program, she finally found the ability to admit this aspect of her disease. This was the most inspiring gift of all. It was proof that I was significant.

The last thing I did before leaving The Orchid was to leave behind a bottle of Chanel Coco Mademoiselle perfume in Tina’s locker. A few days prior, a group of us were standing in line waiting for access to our meds, hairsprays and perfumes, when Tina got a whiff of my Chanel as I dabbed a little on my wrists. She told me that in her 50+ years, she had only owned one bottle of perfume. It had been given to her as a gift and she had cherished it so much, she kept it long after the contents had run out. I asked her if she wanted a little and her eyes lit up like the sun at high noon. Soon, I found myself spraying all the ladies in line, who were all so excited for the chance to feel beautiful if for just that one moment. As I collected my things on my last day, I asked one of the techs to place the bottle of perfume and a note in Tina’s locker. The note read:

Dear Tina,

Thank you for teaching me some of the most valuable lessons I learned while being here. You are amazing and courageous, and I’m honored to have been trusted with your story. I leave you this gift because every woman deserves to feel beautiful, especially you.

Love, Karen.

The Day I Met Tina

By Karen Collazo   

The day I first heard Tina’s story was the day I learned the true meaning of hope and courage. Tina embodied the drug addict stereotype and while I initially felt that we may not be able to share anything in common, I was mostly terrified about exposing myself as someone who was undeserving of her own pain. In her sunken and dull eyes, you could see the years of abuse, hurt and heartache. Before she uttered her first word, I could tell that my story would pale in comparison.  In that small community of women who were seeking redemption, we were true polar opposites.

Tina’s looks betrayed her youth. She had saggy alabaster skin and black shoulder-length hair. She was missing teeth and always wore a pair of washed-out ripped blue jeans and a simple t-shirt. And when she spoke, a southern regional twang came out that stretched the a's and added r's to words that had no business ending in r.  She was rough around the edges; a don’t-take-shit-from-no-one bitch, with the aching heart of a lost little girl. She was lovely, as lovely as they come.

Tina had been molested as a child. Along with her siblings, she had been held captive in a dog cage and was only allowed inside the house when it was time for her father to throw himself on her. To make some extra cash, he rented her and her siblings out to the local men. She was a fighter, she said. But even if she hadn’t mentioned it while telling the story, I knew right away. I pictured her kicking and screaming and scratching the skin of whatever grotesque man was punishing her with his dick. She was probably loud too. Demanding that they stop and trying to run away until it was over. So because she was a fighter, Tina’s dad started injecting her with heroin. The heroin calmed her down and took her far away. It gave the men the ability to do what they pleased without walking away injured by the clawing of a six-year-old.

When she was ten, she ran away from home. She found a tiny hidden nook in the top corner of an overpass, under a quiet highway. There, she slept, ate, urinated and defecated for one year, while dreaming of a better life. An older gentleman from the neighborhood, who walked past her secret hiding place on a daily basis, noticed her and began to bring her food. Every day, the man would leave a bag on the sidewalk, without uttering a single word. At first, she’d wait for the man to leave before climbing down from her spot to retrieve the food. But soon, she mustered up the courage to wait for the man out in the open and eventually they began to talk. He took to the spunky ten year-old and invited her to live with him.

With nowhere else to go, Tina accepted and soon after found herself working for the man. He was a local dope dealer, but treated her with respect and loved her like a daughter. At ten years old, Tina finally experienced love thanks to heroin. She dealt dope for him for eight years. At nineteen, she decides to move to Arizona to start her own business. Dealing dope like a redneck gangster in the dry desert, she quickly rose to the top of her game. She grew her empire and bought a house with cash. Then, a man came along. He noticed this young girl with tricks up her sleeve and decided that he wanted in.

One evening, as she approaches her house, she receives a powerful blow to the head and gets knocked unconscious on her front door step. Hours later, when Tina finally comes to, she finds a strange man in her home rummaging through her belongings. Tina does what she knows best and puts up a fight. A neighbor who hears the ruckus calls the police. When the police arrive, the man claims to be Tina’s husband and insists that the noise was just the two of them having a marital dispute. Tina pleads with the officer. She tells him that this man is a stranger and that he had forced himself into her home. She wants him arrested. But it was the 1980’s and there weren’t very many laws protecting women from domestic violence. The cop, convinced that these two were just having a quarrel, eventually leaves the scene and Tina’s captor beats and rapes her until the sun comes up and she could no longer move a muscle.

The very next day, he binds her arms and legs with a metal chain and moves in. For years, she is held prisoner in the home she had worked so hard to buy. He takes her dreams and meager success and squashes them like a tiny insignificant bug. He terrorizes her, keeps her doped up and never allows her to go outside. She has six rape babies – all of them born addicted to heroin. Two of them die at birth. The one’s that survive don’t feel like anyone’s babies; Tina certainly didn’t see them as her own. They were just these things that cried and pooped all day. They distracted her when she was lonely and were a nuisance when she was high.

Then one day her youngest son comes crying to her. He tells her that his butt hurts. Suddenly, Tina’s maternal instincts kick in. Her blood boils at the thought of this innocent child suffering the same way she once did and decides it’s time to run away again. Over the next few weeks, she studies her abuser’s movements and patterns, and carves out an escape plan. She puts on the best act, follows all the rules and is on her best behavior so that he begins to let his guard down. One afternoon, he leaves to go sell dope and forgets to lock the front gate. When she is sure he has left, she grabs all the kids and runs over to a neighbor’s house for help. She makes it out of town with only the clothes on her back and a few days later finds herself back to where she grew up.

By then, her parents were both dead and most of her siblings had moved away – except for one brother. Living nearby, she tries to start a new life by pan-handling and prostituting herself and contracts HIV. Her children grow to become juvenile delinquents and follow in mom’s footsteps: stealing, dealing and committing crimes. One daughter is incarcerated for murder, while the other struggles with drug addiction. After years of being attacked by the hand she had been dealt, Tina decides it’s finally time to get clean. In her 50’s, afraid but still determined, she found herself at The Orchid.

Each chapter of Tina’s story started and ended with running. It reminded me of my running. We both had very different reasons for why we ran, but we shared one thing in common; we both had a light inside that so many circumstances could have blown out. And yet, through it all we found ways to keep the light aflame. We moved forward. We continued to hope that something better was about to come. Tina’s story taught me that there is always room in your heart to believe and try. If she could do it, so could I. I finally grew the courage to put my truth down on paper and tell it for the first time. 

Welcome to Orchid

By Karen Collazo   

As I passed the threshold into The Orchid Recovery Center, I braced myself for an environment that would contain hostility, anger and – most importantly, women I could not relate to. During my stay at the detox facility I had convinced myself that I was in for a very odd experience; one that would no doubt provide tons of stories to tell at dinner parties, but nothing like the positive life changing journey that was about to take place. Over the next two weeks, I lived with a group of twenty women who seamlessly took to their position in the social order, followed firm rules and maintained a very strict schedule. In that cocoon, we learned about ourselves, grew fond of each other and healed some of our wounds.

Orchid is comprised of two facilities. There’s the main office on the top floor of a 4-story building. This is where we spent most of our days, being split up and shuffled from one room to the next for: group therapy sessions, acupuncture, art therapy and one-on-one meetings with our individual therapists. It’s designed with a comfortable and soothing aesthetic in mind. Near the entrance there is a large bamboo plant. As you walk down the halls you feel the healing energies of the space and the people. The walls are painted in a muted mustard-tone and are tastefully dressed with inspirational quotes. The furniture throughout is dark cherry wood and you can find Hindu statues, Asian Zen décor and orchid flowers adorning the tables. The couches are soft, comfy and red.

The second facility is the apartment complex. Orchid owns an entire 2-story building, which includes: 18 one and two-bedroom apartments, two laundry rooms, a TV room, outdoor seating, a grill and a pool. Each apartment is simple and contains all your basic furnishings, appliances and kitchenware. They each feature ample living space, closets and bathrooms, and are all decorated the same. Apartments are supposed to be kept tidy, with beds always made and all personal items in their respective drawers or put away in the cupboards. Women, who stay for long periods of time, tend to put up pictures of friends and family to make the place feel homier. You’ll typically find loved ones taped to mirrors. If on Saturday you had a few dollars leftover from your grocery run to Publix, you might splurge on some flowers for your place.

The day started promptly at 7am. This was when prescribed medicines were distributed under supervision from a tech that stood on the other side of a glass window, in one of the apartments that had been setup as a small office/ storage space. Meds were handed out daily until 8:30am. If you had packed perfume or hairspray with your belongings, this was kept in a locker and you had to ask for it every morning. The techs supervised the use of these items as well. As the women gathered by the gated entrance, the staff would quickly check each apartment to ensure all maintenance procedures had been followed. More often than not, there was a dirty dish left in a sink or a bed was unmade. This would hold up the entire group and we would all wait patiently as the woman in question returned to her apartment to take care of whatever mess had been left behind. Then we’d all board the bus to head over to the office.

The two facilities are only five minutes apart, but the ride goes through a sketchy neighborhood. Every morning we were greeted by a despondent homeless man standing at the entrance of I-95 asking for change. Promptly at 9am, with all twenty of us sitting in a circle in the main room, we started the day with what was called “Goals and Gratefuls.” This was when all the women would go around the room and share where they were at in their recovery.

“Good morning ladies. My name is Karen and I’m an addict,” I’d say.

“Hi, Karen,” they said in unison.

“My drug of choice is cocaine and today I’m 12 days clean.”

Round of applause.

“Today, my goal is to not obsess over what time it is but to be here now, so that I can fully take in all the tools that are being provided. I am grateful for my family, friends and all of you ladies for helping me feel worthy of recovery. My defense mechanisms are rationalization, isolation and avoidance. Yesterday, I reached my goal of writing my life story, which I will be sharing later today.”

Once we’d all had our turn, we’d move on to participating in a group activity. We had a number of activities we engaged in. There was therapy, yoga, educational movies and classes on nutrition. At Noon we would get a lunch break. All twenty of us would return to the apartment complex in the white vans. An hour later, we were back at the office for our afternoon activities and sessions. At 5pm, we returned to the apartments for the evening and were allowed to relax and use the phone for two hours. If for some reason you broke a rule, your phone privileges were the first thing to be revoked. The day ended at 8pm with another round of “Goals and Gratefuls.”

“Hi, I’m Karen and I’m an addict.”

“Hi, Karen.”

“My drug of choice is cocaine and today I’m 12 days clean.

Round of applause.

“Today, I did not reach my goal since instead of looking at the clock I just went around asking everyone for the time.”

The room erupts in laughter.

“I’m grateful for Orchid, the techs who bought me cigarettes and my clean time. My goal for tomorrow is to stop judging everyone and focus on myself.”

On my first day, I was assigned a big sister. Your big sister is a fellow female addict who takes you under their wing to show you the ropes. My big sister happened to also be the matriarch of the group. She was known among the women as Mother Mary. She was very dedicated to the program and had a laser focus on winning back her family’s love and respect by completing a 30-day program. Every Sunday, my big sister took care of coordinating family potluck dinners with the girls and was a natural at policing the gossip that unsurprisingly took place among the women. Mother Mary was a former 911 operator and a current badass with short red hair, that had purple streaks in it, tasteful tattoos sprinkled all over and numerous piercings. Her DOC (drug of choice) was alcohol.

My roommate was the only other Hispanic-American in the program. She was an older professional from South America who had enjoyed a successful career in the field of psychology for 30+ years. Her accent was thick and she had long and curly blonde hair that she carried around like a crown. Every morning she would take special care to wash her hair and condition it and always wore it down. It was her pride and joy. My roommate and I connected like mother and daughter. We both shared an addiction to sugary treats and on our trips to Publix made sure to stock up on cookies, candy, ice cream and cake. We’d sit on the L-shaped couch in our living room, watching TV and devouring snacks, until it was time to go to bed. When you’re recovering from a drug addiction, you naturally replace drugs with food. She was intelligent and insightful and really believed that I was going to make it. As soon as we met, I let my guard down. It fell off like a chain-link cloak and remained gathered where I left it for the duration of my stay at Orchid. Her DOC was Xanax.

A few nights in, after dinner with my roommate, I made my way down to the poolside tables for a cigarette. I sat there thinking about the revelations I had made that day during therapy. I had learned that most addicts believed themselves to be unique, but we were not. We might be special, but were no different than one another. For the first time in my life, I could be Karen not just one side or aspect of her, because these women knew how I felt. They were like me. It was liberating. And when the women accepted me with open arms, it felt like home. Regardless of socio-economic background, educational level or race, we were all the same: individuals looking for love who at some point turned to drugs when we didn’t find it. I connected with each and every one of those women on a spiritual level that I could never fully put into words. Each one of us was a candle whose flame was slowly withering into defeated embers. Coming together turned the gas on high and reignited our value in the world.  

While I sat there, I was joined by Jessica; she was in her early 20’s and from New Jersey, the heroin capital of the country. Jessica introduced herself and told me all about her passion for music and the influence it had in helping her through her brother’s recent death. She had dark blue eyes, olive skin and the goofiest laugh. She had been through rehab before and had ended up in a flop house in South Florida. A flop house is a halfway house that has been neglected. There is typically very little supervision taking place and a lot of drug abuse. A halfway house or sober living house that is well-managed is where recovering addicts transition into life after rehab, by learning the skills necessary to integrate back into society. Halfway houses usually have rules and curfews, with 24-hour staff coverage. According to Jessica, there was a flop house epidemic in Florida and she and her brother had been victims of this horrible growing trend.  

A few months earlier, while both of them were trying to get their lives on track, her brother gave in to the disease and started using heroin again. One night, he overdosed and no one was there to help him. When the medics finally arrived, they didn’t bother to give him Naloxone (a drug that can reverse the effects of opioids) and he unfortunately passed away. He was in his early 20’s. This triggered a downward spiral for Jessica, which led her back into treatment at Orchid. She was lost, lonely and upset. While sharing her story, I was deeply humbled by her experience. My heart caved under the weight of her tragic story. I reflected on the fact that while I’ve had my fair share of traumatic events, I was still lucky enough to have my sisters in my life. In that very moment, I looked up at the dark sky to gaze at the stars and thank the universe for this gift, when suddenly a shooting star broke through the atmosphere. It was the first shooting star I had ever seen. 

Women Only, Please

By Karen Collazo  

When I began my search for a recovery treatment center, I had only one criterion: that it be a women-only facility. By then, I had learned that my disease had metastasized from drugs and alcohol to sex and shopping. I thought that if I admitted myself to a co-ed rehab center, I was most certainly not going to stand a chance. I found a women-only center that specialized in dual-diagnosis in West Palm Beach, Florida. After my 24-hour stint in detox, this is where I would spend the next two weeks. But before I could check-in with my sisters at Orchid, I had to survive the next night with a co-ed population. Survival meant not engaging with any of the male patients.

After a 3-hour nap, I tech knocks on my door. During detox, the techs are continuously monitoring your vitals to ensure a safe detox process. This entails taking your blood pressure every 2-3 hours during your entire stay. I woke up hungry and could tell by the chatter coming from the dining area that lunch was still out. I grabbed my grey hooded-sweatshirt, took a cue from the others, and slipped on socks and a pair of flip flops.

The dining hall is an open space that separates the men and women’s dormitories. The walls and furniture are all dressed in the same drab peach. On the right-hand side there is a glass partition that allows the techs to observe the common area from their station. I’m wondering if the glass is bullet-proof when a girl interrupts my thought by walking past the window. She’s tall, lean and tan with deep green eyes and beautiful straight auburn hair that reaches her waist and curls at the ends. She’s wearing leopard-print tights and a dark purple sweater. She’s seductively licking a vanilla soft-serve ice cream inside a small waffle cone. We exchange friendly smiles.

On the left-hand side is the buffet station, which is reminiscent of an elementary school cafeteria. A messy stack of plastic orange and blue trays greet you at the start of the line. As you make your way down the metal counter a fellow recovering addict serves you food. Tonight, we have a choice of Salisbury steak, chicken pot pie and Caesar salad. My stomach does a tiny flip.

“We have leftover baked goods and fruit from this morning if you want something lighter. Or there’s the cereal station,” says the server, as he points to a large dispenser in the corner filled with all the sugary cereals of my childhood dreams. There’s Frosted Flakes, Fruity Pebbles, Cocoa Puffs, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Raisin Bran.  

“I’ll take a raspberry Danish and a banana. Thanks.” I wait while he disappears to the back of the kitchen and scan the room, noticing that everyone is huddled around, either with new friends they’ve just made or sitting alone, curled up within themselves. It’s like a walk-in freezer in this facility and most patients are shivering, including me. A skinny guy with shoulder-length dirty blonde hair and a neatly trimmed beard jumps up from his lunch and rushes over to the large garbage bin next to the coffee station. He vomits violently and it echoes across the room as everyone has gone silent. I’m suddenly reminded that some of us may not be shivering from the cold.

When my snacks arrive, I make my way to an empty four-top table in the center. I pull a chair out and the red-headed girl approaches.

“Do you mind if I sit with you?” she asks.

“No, not at all. Hi, I’m Karen,” I say.

“What’s your DOC?”

“My what?”

“Your DOC? It means drug-of-choice. Mine used to be coke and then after my last trip to rehab, I went back out and tried heroine for the first time and now I’m here for both. So, what’s your DOC?” she asks.

“I guess my DOC is coke. How old are you?” I ask.

“I’m nineteen,” she says.

“And how many times have you been to rehab?”

“This is my fourth time. I started coming when I was sixteen,”

“I take that back. My DOC is whatever I can get my hands on at the moment. Sometimes it’s not even a drug. It’s sex.”

Back in New York, a therapist once posed a question that has haunted me ever since: why do you think you fuck like a gay man? When I first moved to Manhattan, I hit the dating scene like a category five hurricane. Every man I encountered was a potential object to destroy and therefore subject to being swept up by my destructive wrath. I had just left an emotionally abusive relationship with my fiancé of two years and thought men in general were now indebted to me. I would collect my dues by jumping from one anonymous dick to the other, under the guise that I was dating like one of the fabulous ladies from Sex and the City.

Most nights, I would walk into a bar with one goal: to get the guy. I’d scan the room, as I sipped my cocktail and half-heartedly listened to the conversation going on between friends. Then I’d spot him: the one I was going to conquer and take home that night. It was a competition; a game I played with no one but me. If I could get the guy to buy me a drink and take me home that night, I had won. I racked up quite a few points during my ten years in New York. And I thought I was fully enjoying my new-found sexuality after almost committing to a very sick man.  

But according to my therapist, I was promiscuous because I was trying to recreate the night of my first trauma. At fifteen, I was sexually assaulted during a night in which I had no control of the situation. And according to him, seeking sexual encounters with men was my way of regaining the control I had lost that night. This somewhat explained why once I was in bed with these men I lost complete interest in the whole thing. The formula made sense on paper, but it really disturbed me.

I thought of myself as a free-spirited woman with a unique sexual libido, which was unmatched by most of my female peers. In my mind, I was a woman with a modern point-of-view on relationships. However, if I was to believe what my therapist was suggesting, then I was nothing but a sad little hamster running on its wheel, trying diligently to attain something that would eventually get me nowhere. This was the first indication that my addictive behavior extended beyond drugs and alcohol. It also included men.

Back at the detox center, I’m fighting every desire in me – to interact with the male patients. For me, the longing is like a sick deep yearning that starts in the caverns of my gut. The disease starts talking to me. It poses an innocent question and responds with a staunch exclamation. And then, because it is a fact, I must set out to make it happen. It goes from thought to action in a split second. I think I need this: to survive, to feel better, to get something I must have. He was shuffling around the halls and common area anxiously, after throwing up back in the dining hall. Wearing the detox uniform: pajamas; a pair of red flannel bottoms, a long-sleeved white shirt, black socks and flip flops, he opens the door to the patio. Ten of us addicts were sitting out there enjoying a smoke, when he spots an empty chair and sits next to me.

He introduces himself and tells me his DOC is meth. He had been in detox for three days and was going to be released to Palm Partners soon, the co-ed treatment center down the street. He had a nice smile, even though he looked tired.

“You don’t look like you belong here. Is this your first time in treatment?” he asks.

“Yeah. Is it that obvious?” I say. And then, I turn on the charm. I smirk and bite my lower lip. I’ve been told that you can see it in my eyes, exactly what I’m thinking. I want to have sex with this guy.

“Don’t worry. You’ll do okay. You should get my number,” he says.

He writes his number on a napkin, after borrowing a pen from the tech that was supervising the smoke break. Since we’re not allowed to have lighters on us, the techs have to stand guard and light our cigarettes for us. When my new friend hands his number over, our fingers lightly graze each other and I feel a hot heat rising between my legs and slowly reach my face. Suddenly my mind is racing and I’m in planning mode.

How can I get this guy back in my room and on top of me? The TV room is across the hall so I could suggest we go watch TV together. We could steal suggestive glances and if we find ourselves alone I could give him a hand job under the blankets. How funny if we got in trouble for breaking the rules posted above the couch: No blankets allowed. Men and women are to sit on opposite sides of the room. A giddy tingling starts brewing. I imagine myself pulling him into my room, closing the door behind us and guiding his hand down the front of my pants, if only to kill the pain and sadness for just a few delicious moments. I’d hate myself afterwards and probably cry myself to sleep, but I never think that far ahead.

“Guys, smoke break is over so take your last drag,” says the tech.

I snap out of my racy daydream, put out my cigarette and smile at the guy as he hands over the napkin. On my way back to my room, I toss his number into the same garbage can where he had puked in earlier. I crawl back into bed and stay there until morning. 

The Intake

By Karen Collazo

He slowly removes the first item from my tan leather Cole Hann shoulder bag; the handbag that I had purchased as a gift to myself two years prior, when I landed that six-figure Account Director job in Chicago. He sets it gently on the desk; it’s a pair of Coach Aviator sunglasses.

“One pair of go-lasses,” he says, as he writes it down on the form in front of him. We’re sitting in a small 5 x 5 drab and grey room, off to the left side of the lobby. There’s one metal desk, one dusty old black computer, two plastic chairs and right below the cobweb-covered drop-down ceiling, a security camera points directly at me. He pulls out my iPhone, which is protected by a fuchsia Kate Spade case.

“One cell phone wit cova,” he says to no one in particular. He writes this down too.

“One wallet,” he says of my light pink Rebecca Minkoff leather wristlet from the Spring Collection. Sensing my anxiety in the quiet that hovered between us, he looks up and makes eye contact for the first time.

“Don worry. Ju don’t need tees tings inside and ju will get dem back when you are dischawged.”

How did I end up here? I’m not a drug addict. I have a successful advertising career, where I get to travel all over the world with my clients—to production shoots in Mexico, off-site meetings in Aruba and private concerts in New York. I have a brand new car that is current on its payments. I live in an updated 3-bedroom condo with marble counter-tops and stainless steel appliances. I get my hair and nails done every weekend. I have an Amazon Prime account. I have tons of friends and family… Where and how did it all go wrong? Do I even belong here, at a detox facility? It suddenly occurs to me that I may have made a huge mistake.

A blonde woman cautiously shuffles past the door of my new tiny hell. Her roots are darker than the night. Her eyes are dull and sunken and her frail body is hidden beneath an over-sized Miami Heat t-shirt and grey sweatpants. She’s wearing black socks with flip flops. Cigarette in hand, she reaches for the front door. A guard quickly catches her hand before it touches the door handle. I notice the track marks.

“You don’t have permission to go outside,” he says.

“Come on man, I just wanna drag of ma fucking cigarette,” she says.

I look back at the tech rummaging through my belongings. I wonder if I will have access to the outside world or am I just like her? After my purse has been emptied of all its things, a short mousy woman escorts me to the nurse’s station. As I follow her out of the room, I look back one last time to see all my stuff being dumped into Ziploc bags.

The nurse’s station is cheery by comparison. The walls are sky blue and there’s a healthy 4-ft palm tree standing tall in the corner. Along the right wall is a row of brown leather chairs. To the left is the registration area, an L-shaped counter with a sign-in sheet, one pen and a bell to alert someone that you are there. Three young blonde women and one man are waiting to be seen. Everyone is wearing pajamas and barely awake.

The mousy nurse motions for me to follow her through the doors directly ahead, which lead to a long sterile hallway that is lit with bright fluorescent overhead lighting. The floor is beige linoleum and the walls are painted a dull peach. We are in the women’s dormitory wing. We walk past several open doors that provide a sneak preview of what my home will be for the next few days.

The rooms are simple: one twin-sized bed with taupe bedding and a cherry wood headboard, one small matching nightstand and one brown leather chair (like the ones in the nurses’ station). Each room has a tiny 1 x 1 ft window at the very top corner of the back wall, reminiscent of windows found in most basements up north. Each room has a small flat screen TV. The occupied rooms we walk past are all empty. Scattered clothes on the floor and unmade beds give away that the rooms currently belong to someone. Everyone is eating breakfast in the mess hall. The small talk and laughter that travels back to the dorm rooms are barely audible over the sound of someone’s television, which is playing Cops. 

We turn the corner, pass the closed medicine window and enter a handicap stall in the women’s bathroom.

“We need a urine sample. Use this,” the nurse says, as she hands me a plastic cup. I nod and stare at her.  She says, “I’m not going anywhere. I need to be with you when you pee into that cup.” What the fuck? I’m not a criminal! I let out a defeated sigh and proceed to follow instructions.

All the tests come back negative. It’s been six months since I did molly, three months since I snorted coke, a month since I smoked pot and a week since I’ve had any alcohol. I hadn’t intentionally stopped doing drugs in anticipation of rehab. I was just going through one of my usual funks; a steady and progressive depression that spikes in intensity every few months, completely draining me and forcing me to check out from my personal life. After a few months, when my body has grown accustomed to this new level of hopelessness, I’m able to engage again.

The onsite psychiatrist meets me in her tiny office, next to the nurse’s station. She informs me that since I tested negative for drugs and alcohol, that I will be moved immediately into the treatment center. However, because it’s after 10am, I’ll need to spend one night in detox. It’s standard procedure. She asks a series of medical history questions and we discuss my dual diagnosis. I ask if it’s possible for them to give me something for anxiety. I’ve been short of breath since I walked through the front doors of the facility and I can’t stop fidgeting with my hands and shifting in my seat.

She logs in a request for a suppressant, which she assures will help me relax. On my way to my room, I pick up the two yellow pills at the medicine window and throw them back with icy cold water from the cooler, which is placed directly under a notice. It reads: Only over-the-counter, mood stabilizers, SSRIs, and anti-depressant medication are approved. A tall black male tech observes my every move. A few minutes later, I close the door to my room, crawl into bed and fall asleep to Cops.

My Proverbial Bottom

By Karen Collazo

I’ve carried the weight of depression around with me my whole life. When I was five years old, I would bring on anxiety attacks just thinking about existential topics my little mind couldn’t wrap itself around. Things like: What if my parents die tomorrow? What will happen to my soul when I die? Where does the universe end and what’s on the other side of that? Is there a God? These might seem like average questions for a philosophy major, but I was in Kindergarten.

I’d let these questions and ensuing dreadful thoughts race through my mind as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep on a school night. I’d get so worked up that I’d race to my parents’ room to kneel down by their bed and beg God (or whoever) not to take them from me or let anything bad happen. Sometimes my mother would find me curled up on their suede chaise lounge chair the next morning and innocently assumed that like most children; I was scared to sleep on my own. But really I was afraid of much more.

When I think back to my childhood, I see myself all alone. I grew up in a home with two parents and a sibling, but we were all pretty absent from each others’ lives. My mother and father were typical immigrant parents, in that they had degrees and careers in Cuba, but were relegated to minimum-wage jobs when they first arrived in this country. My mother, an architect, quickly picked up the English language and began managing an insurance agency. She would be the stable bread winner until her last breath. My father, an engineer, was obsessed with getting rich quick and took all kinds of odd jobs and illegal side gigs. He was always away on business.

Because of this, my mother was typically consumed with thoughts of her husband’s whereabouts. Add to that: managing the household, helping family abroad and keeping it together for the sake of the children, and you can’t blame her for not being fully there for us kids.  Sure she’d ask about our report cards and drive us to Michael’s to buy supplies for our science projects, but she only covered the basics. When I was repeatedly bullied in school, I never turned to her for help. I simply tried my best to ignore my tormenters and eventually learned to stand up for myself. When I was sexually assaulted by friends at a party, and later ostracized by everyone at school, I took matters into my own hands and transferred to another school. My mother never probed as to why I would leave all my childhood friends behind, nor did I provide that information.

My mother was ignorant to the life that was unfolding inside of me and the experiences that were shaping my character. Some say it’s a cultural gap that forces second generations to raise themselves, because the traditions and practices of this new world elude our parents. However, there was a space that existed between our personal orbits that eclipsed our immigrant circumstance. At a very young age, I was forced to navigate life on my own and this created major resentments in me. To survive, I did the only thing I knew how. I pushed past the pain and disappointment and learned to function through the hopelessness.

Over the years, I became skilled at managing my anxiety and depression. I self-medicated with a limited set of tools available to me: food, stealing, drugs, alcohol and sex. When one device alone didn’t do the trick, I started combining them. At 30 years old, I finally lost the ability to keep things under control. I started spiraling and could not find a balance between the demands of a high-stress job and the need to cope with my ongoing despair.

One night, after drinking a bottle of Malbec and smoking a joint, I experienced my first full-blown panic attack. I was standing outside my Gramercy apartment in New York, smoking a cigarette with a friend. I remember talking about work and bouncing some ideas off him when suddenly I was struck with an unequivocal awareness that I was going to die. I was certain I would not survive the sudden impending doom that was fast approaching. My arms and legs started to shake uncontrollably. I started hyperventilating. I grew dizzy and then… black. When I came to, I couldn’t move at all. I stayed there on the ground for what seemed like hours, trying to steady my breath. Later that night when I was safe in my bed, I resolved to finally seek professional help.

The first time I ever saw a doctor for depression, was right after my mom passed away. I was 21 years old, in an abusive relationship and trying to finish up my bachelors. I woke up every day feeling defeated. It was suggested to me that a therapist might help and so I thought I’d give it a try. That experience was the coldest and most impersonal encounter I’ve ever had with a healthcare professional. I was prescribed drugs within 15 minutes, asked for the copay and told to come back next month. I walked out of that doctor’s office feeling even more lost than when I had walked in. So it was with a lot of hesitation that I approached the idea of giving therapy a second try.

Since my depression and addiction were top secret, I didn’t want to ask around for a recommendation so I decided to use an online counseling tool available through my medical insurance provider. After filling out a brief survey, I received a phone call from a specialist. For 30 minutes, I sat in the break room of a prestigious advertising agency near Union Square and discussed my medical history, my parents’ and my lifestyle choices with a total stranger. He was friendly, calm and his voice was soothing. During that first conversation, I found the courage to be honest with myself and another human being about my problem. What I had rationalized as normal behavior for so many years suddenly became clear to me as unusual behavior.

How often do you consume alcohol in a given week? Well, on average about 4-5 times a week. But you know, I’m young and single and I live in New York City so... How much alcohol do you consume during each occasion? Oh, it really depends on the circumstance. Sometimes I’ll have a bottle of wine with dinner and a few shots of whiskey. Other times, I’ll have 3-4 beers and a few shots of whiskey. Always whiskey. But, like, I have a bottle of whiskey on my dresser and I don’t wake up with the urge to drink. It’s been sitting there for a few weeks. Have you ever consumed any other drug? Umm… yes. I mean, who hasn’t am I right? Which drugs and how often? The sympathetic specialist concluded that I needed to seek treatment. I immediately hung up and met up with friends for happy hour at a hole-in-the-wall bar we used to frequent for bingo and trivia nights.

That tape played three more times, with three different therapists, and each time I lost the ability to argue my point. Little by little, each professional chipped away at a carefully crafted façade that I could no longer hide behind. It was a very slow process for me to come to understand and then accept that I was a drug addict. In fact, it took exactly five years. It wasn’t until I returned to Miami, that I finally faced my demons.

When I left Miami in 2003, I swore I would never return. I thought I was meant for bigger and better things, which Miami could not offer me then. But after 12 years, I was still that lonely anxious girl who ran away from a failed relationship, a broken family and many ghosts. The only thing that had changed during that time was my income tax bracket. Returning to a place I once called home, but no longer recognized was an unexpected culture shock. It stirred the internal 30-year war and thrust me into the deepest gloom I have ever wrestled with.

My bottom was not a palpable outward-facing collapse. Instead I had arrived at a spiritual wasteland. It was a typical week night and I had pulled in a long day at the office. There was still more work to be done once I got home, so I picked up a hundred of coke on my way. I’ll just do a few bumps to get me through this last round of emails, I thought. As soon as that first hit flooded my system, I was trapped. There cease to exist any control. Instead a savage animal intent on staying alive took over and I receded inside myself. She couldn’t stop. She blew through what I had bought and went out and got more. She spent the whole night doing one line after another, with absolutely no regard for what I truly wanted, which was to stop.

That night, my anxious mind was flooded with thoughts about being, just like when I was five years old. What am I doing with my life? Who am I? Why can’t I just die and be done with it? How can I stop? Why is this happening to me? What is wrong with me? Alone at 6am, watching the light break, I finally disintegrated. A few weeks later, when my new therapist suggested rehab, I was finally ready to surrender. 

Fat Fuck

By Karen Collazo

The best day and time to weigh yourself is Saturday morning. It is the official first day of the weekend, so you haven’t cheated yet, and it marks the end of a long grueling and slow-paced week where you feel like you were a ninja for hiyacking every sweet temptation that crossed your path. Morning time is key. You must weigh yourself before breakfast, but after you’ve gone to the bathroom. This is when you’re at your lightest. I weighed myself every Saturday morning, from the age of nine all the way until I was 32 years old. That’s 24 years of experience, so I know what I’m talking about.

To say that I suffer from poor body image issues, is putting it as insignificant as humanly possible. It actually feels more like I am trapped inside someone else’s fat body and I’ve been trying to claw my way out for two decades. I am really a skinny person held prisoner inside a fat suit, which the outside world mistakenly perceives as my own property. I didn’t ask for this; I inherited the curse from my mother.

In a family of three daughters, she was the tallest by a foot. Like a foreign exchange student visiting for the summer, she looks misplaced as her 6-foot frame towers over everyone in family photos, standing off to the side or behind relatives all the way in the back. Her clothes are always pretty tight and her size 12-feet are trying to bust out of their size 9 shoes. She’s curvy to boot. In the way that is super sexy right now. Hips for days with an hour glass shape. She was gorgeous, elegant and exotic against a post-Castro 1960’s black-and-white backdrop. But in her mind, she was fat. 

Like any good Cuban girl, my mother loved to eat. When she moved to the US in her late 20’s, it was not only a step towards a bright future and freedom from oppression, but a key to THE food wonderland. Packaged high-fructose corn syrup goods as far as the eye can see, cuisines from all over the world and all-you-can-eat buffets! Her love of food knew no bounds and I’m lucky to have inherited her adventurous nature in that regard.

But, she was the kind of woman who hated herself for loving food as much as she did and always compared herself to other women. “Ay, yo no soy tan gorda como ella, verdad?” (Oh, I’m not as fat as her, right?), she would ask her ten and twelve-year old daughters during a random day of doing dilijencias (errands). What this taught me was that one must strive to always be better off than others. If you were not as fat as the woman sitting next to you on the bus, then you were the one that was winning. This constant sizing up of other women and comparing myself to them, continued well into my late 20’s and had a huge hand in promoting my drug addiction.

I know my mother didn’t intend to pass down this debilitating insecurity. She herself was a product of a culture where women with curves are usually nicknamed gordita (little fat girl). And if your sister is thinner than you, chances are very high that her nickname is flaca (skinny girl). And the two of you together cover the spectrum of what women in Hispanic communities can be: either fat or skinny. Nothing else matters.

My mother’s hopes for her first daughter were very simple: may she be skinny, marry rich and have a daughter worse than her so she gets a taste of what I had to put with. Growing up, she tried every tactic to help me lose weight. One summer, when I was thirteen, she decided a monetary incentive might just do the trick of motivating me to lose a few pounds. For one month, leading up to a family vacation to the Bahamas, I was given a dollar for every pound I lost. The goal was to get me to go from 125 lbs. to 100 lbs. If at the end of the month I succeeded in losing the 25 lbs. my mother promised to buy me a new wardrobe for the trip. Since I had also inherited my mother’s love for shopping and fashion, I was in! I remember her observing the scale tentatively, every Saturday morning, as I stripped down to absolutely nothing, lest my pajamas add any unnecessary heaviness. She would show her approval or disapproval of the number on the scale with one simple lift of the eyebrows, or a furrowing. I don’t recall if I got to my goal weight that summer. There have been hundreds of diets since then, that it’s hard to recollect that far in the past.

In addition to my mother’s approval, I also had to find acceptance out in the world. I’ve always had a handful of friends, but somehow found myself the target of bullying at school on a daily basis. Sometimes it was as simple as being called “fat fuck” on the bus ride home. Other times, it was as cruel as two teenage girls asking me if I was pregnant, while I waited in line at Little Caesars’ for crazy bread. I must have been all of eleven when that happened. Because of all these negative external cues, internally I wholeheartedly agreed with everyone. I was a fat fuck who looked pregnant and needed to go on a diet and get skinny. And super-fast or no boy was ever going to like me. This might sound like the silly naïve train of thought of a young girl, but it pretty much sums up how I still feel today.

When you’re old enough to start liking boys and have the freedom to socialize, you don’t want the voices in your head to get in the way of a good time. Enter drugs. Not only did coke give me the confidence I needed to go up and talk to the cute guy at the bar, but because it suppressed my appetite for the following 24 hours, it also helped me to lose weight. Cocaine was the one diet I stuck to for the longest amount of time. It, along with any upper I could get my hands on, was my Xenadrine. Remember Xenadrine diet pills? I was addicted to those too, before the FDA pulled them off the shelves back in 2001.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of hearing a fellow recovering addict with 30 years clean speak at a late-night NA meeting. Her message was eloquent, honest and relatable. Her truth was similar to mine: without drugs, she absolutely hated herself and wanted to be anybody else but who she was. This is my Mount Everest.  If I can learn to be happy with my body and love myself just the way I am, drugs lose one very big reason for being in my life. The thing is I really don’t know how to achieve self-love. I intellectually understand the steps one must take, but I am up against years of ridicule, disappointment and rejection. I am a walking sponge, engorged by all my past adverse experiences, damaging encounters and bad examples. And the file titled “Reasons I Suck” just keeps getting bigger, as I go about my day every day. Because as much as we want to believe that chubby is in, acceptance of plus size women is coming at a snail’s pace. My biggest worry is that my body won’t be a trend in time for me to kick out the voices currently squatting in my head and learn to live clean before it's too late. I now understand that if I never achieve self-love, I’ll never recover.