Late in the summer of 1976, I stood on the landing outside of my building while the telephone rang and rang in my back-garden apartment. As soon as the front door opened, I ran down the long hallway and jammed my key into the second lock. When I finally burst into my place, I dove for the phone.
“Hello,” I huffed.
“Hiya, Raff!”
It was Cole, my ex-con-boyfriend-with-a-shotgun.
I stood frozen in place and resisted an urge to slam down the receiver.
“I’ve been in San Fran for a week now and I’ve been thinkin’ a lot about you.”
“Oh, hi Cole. How are you?” I asked robotically.
“I’m doin’ real good. Got out a few weeks ago and I’m lookin’ up old friends.”
His warm Texas twang slightly defrosted my standoffishness.
“Can you meet me at the Cinch in an hour?” he asked. “I got lots to tell you.”
He didn’t sound drunk, but still I hesitated.
“Um, I just got home from work … but okay, sure.”
“Good, see you then.”
I spent the twenty-minute bus ride to Polk street absorbed in rationalization.
Everybody deserve a second chance.
He sounded good, so maybe he’s changed.
We’re meeting in a public place; how bad could it be?
As soon as I walked into The Cinch, a smaller country-western bar than Badlands, I saw Cole’s wiry body hunched over the pool table in the back. A tall guy in his mid-thirties loomed behind him. His swarthy face sported a permanent five-o’clock-shadow and his black, slicked-back hair revealed heavy-lidded, brown eyes. He wore a black denim shirt, black cowboy boots and black jeans. A tooled black leather belt with a silver buckle surrounded his narrow hips.
Cole circled around the table and gave me a friendly hug before guiding me over to the pool table.
“Raff, meet Jimmy.”
My nervous system flashed white hot.
Jimmy! Cole’s lover from prison!
Jimmy! The hustler who killed a man at the St. Francis!
“Y’all get acquainted while I get us some beers.”
Like an abandoned lapdog, I kept my eyes trained on Cole’s back as he made his way to the bar while I stood frozen next to Jimmy.
“Cole told me you was good-lookin’ but I didn’t know you was so purty,” he said looking me up and down.
The word “purty” hit me like a jolt from a cattle prod.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, shifting my gaze to the floor.
When I looked back in Cole’s direction, I was relieved to see him heading back with three beer bottles. As soon as he handed me one, I knocked back a big mouthful and took my first deep breath since entering the bar.
Jimmy took his beer and returned to the pool table while Cole and I settled on some nearby bar stools. After a few seconds, he answered my unasked question.
“We both got out at the same time. I served out my sentence and Jimmy got sprung early ‘cause he got a good lawyer.”
He took a pull off of his beer before answering another unspoken question.
“Got him off on a technicality.”
“Oh, well, that worked out nicely.”
“Yeah, it’s real good for us to finally be together on the outside.”
I nodded and we both took another gulp.
“And it’s real nice to see you, Raff,” he said patting me on the knee.
When Cole touched me, I checked to see that Jimmy was too busy concentrating on his last shot to notice. Once he sank the eight ball, he replaced his cue into the wall rack and moseyed over. He plopped down on a stool on the other side of Cole and draped his arm over his shoulders.
When I felt his hand nuzzle up against my upper arm, I wondered if they were grooming me for a three-way.
“I got a job drivin’ a cab again,” Cole continued.
“And we got us a room in The Tenderloin,” Jimmy chimed in squeezing my arm with his hand.
I was concocting a plan to excuse myself and clatter out of the bathroom window when Cole suddenly leapt off of his stool.
“We gotta go!” he exclaimed.
He and Jimmy tossed down their beers. When they started toward the door, I thought I was off the hook until Cole called back to me.
“Can I give you a ride home?”
Everything was moving so fast. I didn’t have a second to think.
“Okay … sure. Thanks,” I replied.
Once outside, they dashed to the taxi parked a block away while I trailed behind. As they hopped into the front seats, I just managed to jump into the back and close the door before Cole peeled away.
Assuming that they were dropping me off first, I gave Cole my address. When he pointed the cab in the opposite direction, the word “kidnap” crossed my mind.
Cole must have seen my panicked look in the rear-view mirror.
“Don’t worry, Raff. I’m takin’ you home. We just gotta make one quick stop.”
“Yeah, I got me a client,” Jimmy added.
I jerked my face toward the window.
A client!
Jimmy is still hustling after the murder?
As we drove up Cathedral Hill, I inched closer to the door, ready to tumble out onto the street at a moment’s notice.
Cole pulled in front of a glass high-rise on Nob Hill as Jimmy flipped down the mirror on the passenger windshield flap, ran his fingers through his hair and gave Cole a peck on the cheek. Upon leaving the cab, Jimmy tapped at the back window, raised his eyebrows and flashed me a smile before swaggering up to the swanky apartment complex.
After Jimmy was buzzed in, Cole waited until he made it past the doorman.
On the ten-minute ride to my place, I decided to just say “thanks” and bolt out of the cab. When we pulled up to my building, I popped open the door but Cole foiled my getaway.
“Can I come in and wait ‘til I pick Jimmy up?”
“I don’t have any booze in the house,” I replied, hoping it might discourage him.
“That’s OK. I gotta watch my drinkin’ anyway since I’m on parole.”
A troubled look swept over his face.
“I got way too much to lose.”
He looked so forlorn that I asked him in.
After we entered the apartment, Cole settled onto the couch while I glanced at my roommate’s open door to confirm that he wasn’t home.
“I’m all out of coffee, how about a cup of tea?” I asked.
“Tea’ll do me fine.”
I disappeared into the kitchen, put the kettle on and quickly dumped some cookies onto a small plate. Returning to the living room, I set the plate on the coffee table and sat in a chair across from Cole who was twirling a simple silver band on his wedding finger.
“I really love him a lot,” he said softly.
“Well, anyone can see that you’re crazy about each other,” I replied.
“Yeah, we got real close in prison. It was us against the world in there.”
I picked up a cookie.
“Still us against the world, I guess … just a bigger world,” he mused.
When the teakettle squealed, I tossed a few sympathetic words over my shoulder as I hurried back into the kitchen.
“Must be good to know that someone has your back.”
“Oh, Raff, you always say the right thing,” he called. “I knew we could be friends!”
When I winced at the word “friends,” I was thankful that he couldn’t see me.
I sloshed hot water over the teabags in two coffee mugs, gave them a quick dunk and raced back into the living room as Cole resumed the conversation.
“We got big plans. After we make a little money, we’re headin’ to Texas to settle down near family.”
Cole blew some steam from his cup and grew pensive.
“We just gotta make it work.”
I nodded and took my first sip, thinking that we looked like a couple of friends catching up. In fact, we were just killing time while Jimmy was having sex for money.
“How ‘bout you, Raff? How come you don’t have a boyfriend?” Cole asked.
“Don’t want one. There’s way too much fun to be had in this town.”
He paused and took a swallow.
“Someday you’ll get tired of all that shit.”
“I don’t know, I just want to have a good time while I’m young,” I replied popping another cookie into my mouth.
“Suit yer-self,” he shrugged.
After a few seconds, he gave me a flirty look.
“Still, it’s a real shame. Yer a real catch! Purty and smart all in one.”
That word “purty” again. It made me turn my attention away from him to the cookie crumbs on my shirtfront.
“Anyway, I’m too busy with work,” I continued wiping myself off.
“Well, a man’s gotta work but that don’t keep you warm at night.”
He glanced at his watch.
“I gotta pick Jimmy up.”
As I walked him to the door, I said what had been on my mind since I got his call.
“I’m sorry for not writing to you.”
“Oh, don’t pay it any mind. Probably the best thing for everybody.”
As soon as he left, I collected the mugs and started to worry about letting Cole know where I lived.
After several days passed without a word, I figured that Jimmy had made enough money for them to make their way to Texas.
A few weeks later, the doorbell interrupted a dinner party I was hosting for my friend Leslie and her husband. Excusing myself, I slipped out of the apartment and padded down the hallway.
I opened the door to find the scary-drunk Cole from my past.
He sat on a low wall on the landing at the top of the stairs outside of my front door. His left eye was purple-black and his brow was caked with rust-colored blood.
“I need money!” he growled.
When he slid off the wall and approached me, I shut the door halfway and took a step backward into the hallway.
“Jimmy’s in jail and I gotta get him out … NOW!”
“I don’t have any money,” I replied flatly.
He just glared at me for a few seconds until I glanced back toward my apartment.
“I have to go. I have guests.”
When he took another step forward, I closed the door until I was speaking through a six-inch gap.
“Guests? Well ain’t you Mr. Fancy-Pants. Y’all have yerselves a real good time now,” he sneered.
“I have to go,” I repeated, narrowing the crack between us by another inch.
He spat on the landing, turned and clomped down the stairs toward the sidewalk. Stopping midway, he spun around and gave me a disgusted look.
“Yer just like all the rest, you want me to hurt somebody!” he shrieked.
I slammed the door.
I leaned up against it until I heard his cab squeal away. My heart was racing, so I took a few deep breaths. By the time I returned to the dinner table, I had my game-face on.
“It was some guy collecting for charity,” I said plopping back into my chair.
“Why do they always come at dinnertime?” Leslie sighed.
“Because they know you’ll be home,” her husband grumbled.
I took a mouthful of red wine and poked at my lasagna.
After my guests left, a sense of dread settled over me so I got busy collecting the dinner dishes. I dumped them in the kitchen sink and returned to the living room with a half-full bottle of wine. Picking up the push-button phone, I strung the long cord across the room until it reached a small window that looked out onto the stairs where Cole had just threatened to hurt somebody. I pulled a chair up to the window and sat waiting for his return with the telephone in my lap.
Gazing out at the dimly lit steps, I glanced up at the landing outside my front door and a memory of the previous July 4th sprung to mind. I had spent the country’s two-hundredth birthday in a bar getting sloppy drunk before stumbling home alone. Lurching up the same stairway, I spewed vomit all over the same place where Cole had just surprised me.
Once again, he had landed on my doorstep, dead-drunk and headed for calamity. When I thought of Cole and Jimmy making a new start, I knew that too much booze had already knocked them off course. In that moment, it was so obvious that all of their troubles came from drinking too much.
I guess no one sets out to have a horrible life, I thought bringing the bottle to my mouth.
In that moment I saw myself gulping down more wine and my 4th of July puke memory felt like proof that I was on the same path as Cole. Since leaving my alcoholic family seven years earlier, my once-promising life was going nowhere. Like him, I had come to San Francisco full of hope for the future. Now here I was, my finger poised over 9-1-1, polishing off a bottle of wine while waiting for a date with disaster.
“Who am I to think I’m any better?” I muttered aloud.
Then something clicked inside of me like a tumbler in a combination lock. During my four years in the city, I had watched friends pursue stable relationships and successful careers while I partied alone and took dead-end jobs to pay the rent. No one was forcing me to get drunk, but I couldn’t stop.
“I’ve got to do something about my life,” I said aloud before swilling down the last of the wine and, within minutes, conking out.
I awoke with a clang at 3:00 AM when the phone slid off my lap and crashed to the ground. Dial-tone humming, I left it on the floor and staggered to my bedroom where I flopped on top of the sheets fully dressed.
I’d like to say that I got up the next morning, picked the phone off the floor and called AA, but I continued to drink and take drugs because it seemed like the only way to get through my lonely, pointless life.
I never saw Cole again.
It took many years for the words “I need to do something about my life” to resurface. Although I got sober from substances in 1979, I continued to put myself in perilous sexual situations. After hitting bottom in 2006, I entered an outpatient treatment program for sexual compulsivity.
When I met my husband Sean in 2010 at the age of fifty-eight, I told him that he had caught me at a really good time. During the ensuing months in after-care, I realized that my compulsions were receding into the past because our relationship was satisfying many unmet, non-sexual needs that I never knew I had.