Come Down: III.1

III. “HE THAT LOVES PLEASURE MUST FOR PLEASURE FALL”

That I cannot reconstruct the narrative thread of the steps that led me from the edges of the dance floor at Backchannel, sometime before midnight, to a cracked vinyl patient’s chair covered in white exam paper in a 24-hour urgent care clinic in Mid-Cambridge, just after two in the morning by my nearly-dead phone clock, causes me no small amount of distress, even now. While my memory is only average in some areas, I am surpassingly good at recalling the events of my own life, in order, and their relevance and resonance, lining up the dominoes in my mind with fairly exact retrospective knowledge of how and why they fell. It disturbed, and disturbs, me to have come into contact with what I am tempted, despite knowing the term is too pat, to call an actual plot hole. I had never blacked out before.

My feet felt two sizes too big in my black leather sneakers, toenails scraping against my socks, heels beating like a heart, and when I lifted a foot to loosen the laces and ease the pressure I found a rust-colored bloom on the back of my sock that, under inspection, revealed itself to be dried blood from a ragged oval of rubbed-raw skin on my heel; the blister and the bloodstain were twinned on my other foot. All of which suggested that, although the train would have still been running when I -- I had to assume -- threw up and left Backchannel, I had instead walked all the way to the clinic, probably an hour, at least, of limping through the dark, even if I had cut across the Common on my way to Longfellow Bridge. I gave myself a patdown and found the remains of the gogo tips with which I had been paying for B-52s; my CharlieCard was still tucked firmly into my phone case. I longed for a detective novel clue as to what had possessed me -- an explanatory note pinned to my shirt, an article about a derailed train, a text message referencing a desire to ‘clear my head’ or ‘get some fresh air’ -- but judging by the way my head still swam and I had to tuck my phone away and grip the edges of the examination table to stay upright, no clues would be forthcoming. The inside of my mouth tasted rank and bitter, which was unsurprising given that most of what I must have thrown up was the whiskey. I had not sent Élouan any further messages on Instagram, for which I was grateful; I had not sent anyone any messages at all, it seemed. The best I had was a string of misspelled Google searches for the name of my university-provided health insurance company, which at least suggested, encouragingly, that I had not walked across the whole of Boston for out-of-network care.

The door to the exam room opened and a woman in scrubs walked in with a bottle of urine-colored generic-label sports drink in her hand.

“Here,” she said. “You’re dehydrated.”

“I think I walked here,” I said, taking the bottle from her and opening it. Lemon-lime, nominally, although it mostly just tasted like sugar. I found myself wishing it were sharper, sourer, more aggressive, to better overpower the taste of my own vomit.

“That’s what you said on intake.”

“Could I get some band-aids for my feet?”

She opened a metal cabinet above the sink and pulled out a handful of bandages, thrusting them at me with no change in her professionally neutral expression.

“Once you’ve finished off that drink, see if you can handle getting up. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

I took my shoes and socks off. I stuck band-aids to my heels. I drank my sports drink. I put my shoes and socks back on. I finished my sports drink. I stood up. I left the exam room. In the hallway, the nurse handed me a pile of leaflets on alcohol abuse and local chapters of AA and told me to pay at the front desk before I left. I paid at the front desk before I left. The visit was indeed covered by insurance, though I was still out a hundred-dollar copay that could have bought three weeks’ groceries. I emerged through the front doors of the urgent care center and into a black and humid night that suggested rain without outright threatening it. My phone had very little charge left, but I managed to order myself an Uber whose destination address I set, for reasons that are not so much beyond me as they are beneath me -- I think perhaps I just wanted to be taken care of -- as Angus’ apartment.

The front door was locked, of course, and my phone had died on the ride over so I couldn’t call and ask to be let in, which was just as well since I doubted Angus left his ringer on at night and he was a heavy sleeper besides, but there was a hide-a-key rock nestled into a planter pot of succulents that lived in the narrow alley alongside his building, and there were three keys inside it, the second of which unlocked the front door. I left it on the latch, replaced the keys, returned to find that the door had clicked shut on its own, and repeated the process, this time removing one of my too-tight shoes and wedging it in the jamb and unsteadily hop-skipping down the alley to put the rock back in its planter. Every step made my heels and my head throb; my mouth was arid and still tasted disgusting -- possibly worse than before, with the residue of sugar overlaying the residue of vomit on my teeth. Angus, I decided as I collected my shoe and climbed the stairs, slowly, painfully, both feet on each step like a child, probably wouldn’t even let me in. If I appeared on my own doorstep in the wee hours of the morning, looking like I was sure I looked based on how I felt, I would be a fool to let me in. I was more trouble than I was worth. I was in too deep. The smell alone would cause anyone to take a step back. For my sake.

It took a minute or so of knocking on Angus’ door, during which time a dog in one of the downstairs apartments woke up and started barking along to the beat I set, before he opened it, shirtless and bleary-eyed, linen drawstring pajama bottoms the color of vellum, and when he saw me his lips parted and his eyebrows furrowed into a wordless expression of confusion.

“I’m sorry to wake you,” I said, leaning back and forth to favor each one of my sore feet in turn. “I’ve had a bit of a bad night.”

~

What ought to happen to people who hit rock bottom -- people who drink an entire bottle (even a relatively small bottle) of whiskey and walk until their feet bleed and receive pamphlets about alcohol poisoning from nurses -- is as follows: they ought to insist that nothing is wrong even as the world conspires to make every component element of their lives as wrong as possible. They ought to lose their jobs, lose their homes, lose their minds. They ought to alienate all the people who love them with their egregious behavior until they have nowhere left to turn but whatever higher power they feel capable of clinging to, usually God. And then, if they do not die -- in tragedies they ought to die -- they ought to claw it all back, make the arduous climb, becoming an example to those they pass on the way up, extending a hand behind them to pull others along with them, until they have rebuilt a life that is more stable, more sane, healthier, happier, better than what they left behind. The better angels of their and all other natures ought to prevail, and they ought to be saved. But not, I must reiterate, before losing everything. It’s a story an audience can understand.

It follows, then, that I should have become a drug addict of some variety, descending into a Hell of my own making, all that weed and all those drinks and all that coke (as if I had any idea where one obtained cocaine outside of the green room at the Quartz Club), precipitated by a combination of Élouan’s messages and Angus slamming the door in my face. In my stupor, I should have no-call, no-showed a courier shift or four and been fired from the university, followed shortly by a missed rent payment on the basement studio and shortly after that by eviction. Rachel and Zach should have stopped taking my calls. I should have wandered the streets of Boston and all its satellites -- tripping on the uneven bricks in Cambridge, drifting around the reservoir in Chestnut Hill -- until some kind soul took pity on me, helped me get clean, and so on and so forth, or else until no one took pity on me and gentlemen, away, lest you perish with me. I was playing the role of rock-bottomer, and that was the script I ought to have received. It would be more satisfying for you, I think, and it should by now go without saying that I would have played it spectacularly.

But nominally I suffered no ill effects from that night other than, of course, a two-day haymaker of a headache that required me to spend yet another precious sick day, although I was not fired or even reprimanded for this because, again, I had a few more sick days to burn, so despite her disapproval there was nothing Meredith Mays could do about it. Angus took me in at once, made me strip and shower and drink two glasses of water and eat two pieces of buttered toast and brush my teeth before he even asked me to explain what had happened. He was stern and matter-of-fact about these chores of my salvation but not obviously disappointed in me, and he held up one large hand, palm flat, every time I tried to apologize until at last I stopped trying. When I was sitting on the end of his bed in a far-too-large pair of his boxers, rolled at the waist so they wouldn’t fall off of me, and a t-shirt advertising the 2013 annual conference of the Association for Library Service to Children, he raised his eyebrows at me and said, “How much did you have to drink?”

“Too much,” I said. “I took myself to urgent care. Although the only thing they did was give me a Gatorade and some Al-Anon pamphlets. Which I believe I left in the back of my Uber, now that I think about it.”

“How worried should I be about you?”

I shook my head. “You shouldn’t. I’m not going to -- do anything. I just couldn’t go home.”

“Good.” He looked me up and down. “I wouldn’t have wanted you home alone like this. Think you can get some sleep without choking on your own upchuck?”

“Do people still say ‘upchuck?’ I don’t think I’ve ever heard the term outside of gross-out comedies.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Yes, I can sleep.”

“Good.” He pulled back the covers and motioned me toward the side of the mattress that did not have an Angus-shaped dent in it. “Because I’m tired. We’ll talk more about whatever this was in the morning. Finish getting you fixed up.”

And we did -- thanks to the aforementioned headache, I spent all of Sunday and much of Monday in between Angus’ bed and Angus’ bathroom; he would have called out of work on Monday too if I hadn’t insisted that I practice handling myself again after so many hours of being in his care. I ate a lot of toast and several bananas and drank what felt like my body weight in glasses of cold water that appeared and disappeared from the bedside table; I drifted in and out of sleep and rarely caught Angus refilling them. He didn’t allow me any painkillers until Monday morning because, I am told, they would have upset my already overworked liver, and when they and the endless hydration at last kicked in I felt like the joyful women who twirl in overgrown fields in allergy commercials. The world was clear and bright before me, and things were not so bad after all.

I went home. I went back to work. I did not sign up for another continuing education class; none of the theatre classes sounded at all appealing (it being the fall semester, they were primarily introductory classes of the sort I had exhausted in college), and besides, my previous six months’ lifestyle had run through what spare change I would have spent up-front on tuition. I texted Rachel and Zach to apologize for dropping off the map, explaining that I had been sick (true, if misleading) but that I did miss them (true, no qualifiers). Rachel replied almost at once to absolve me entirely, alluding to the notion that artists in general are flighty and unpredictable creatures who are beloved nonetheless. She then texted again inviting me to Zach’s frat brothers’ next monthly pub trivia night, which -- what fortuitous timing! -- was to occur that very Wednesday. Zach replied with three up arrow emojis to indicate his support of Rachel’s support of me.

I began spending several nights a week at Angus’ apartment. Even when I was fully recovered from my incident, he brooked no remorse from me about turning up drunk at three in the morning; according to him, he had done much worse, and needed many more rescues, in his own youth. He did, however, keep a closer eye on me than he had before, inviting me over for dinner much more frequently, earnestly asking how I was doing when I stopped by the ECE library with a pallet of lemon-scented disinfecting wipes or a crate full of Aleut children’s stories on interlibrary loan from Alaska, a flash of pity in the crinkling of his crow’s feet on the increasingly rare days when I answered honestly. I attended trivia nights as regularly as if they were the Al-Anon meetings I’d abandoned in the backseat of somebody’s Jetta. One of Zach’s fraternity brothers had left town to move in with his Coloradan girlfriend, so there was an open spot on the team for me if I wanted it, or I could just watch and cheer them on like Rachel did; I opted to participate in the competition, hoping that something resembling stakes would improve the experience for me. They called themselves MENSA Kappa Psi. I was no great help to them most of the time, as the questions ran more toward identifying yacht rock songs by their guitar riffs and naming as many beer brands as possible in thirty seconds than toward the areas of my expertise, but on occasion I pulled the answer to a history or literature question out of what must have seemed to them like thin air, and Zach would clap me on the back in his just-us-guys way and call me the team’s secret weapon, and Rachel and I would toast, her with a glass of house red, me with whatever strange on-tap the members of MENSA Kappa Psi had elected to taste-test that month. Most recently it was November’s ‘turkey dinner’ beer, which ended up being little more than a cranberry-flavored sour.

For the first month or so after Élouan’s last message to me, I would reflexively refresh Instagram, hoping for the little red bubble that indicated something unread, checking everyone’s stories in hopes of seeing the latest news from the clubs we had shared, but although nobody seemed to have blocked or unfollowed me, I had been removed from the Close Friends lists that Élouan’s posse typically used to circulate the information I craved. I tried to turn up at Backchannel anyway, two Saturdays later, but I was turned away at the door by a bouncer who had watched me smoke with Dolly probably a dozen times before; after the apparently pyrotechnic display of nausea I had made at The Queens And I, I had been put on the do-not-serve list. The Quartz Club had no such rule against my attendance, but I still saw the bartenders eyeing me warily, and neither Élouan nor any of their friends was there; without them, the party felt thin and brittle, lacking anything at its center. I experienced no major cravings for coke and the only occasional desire to float away on a cloud of weed, which I did not sate, the idea of walking into one of the bourgeois white-walled Boston dispensaries and spending sixty dollars on a smoke being anathema to both my wallet and what remained of my self-conception. Angus limited himself to a glass or two of wine on the weekends, and bar trivia was the only time I saw Rachel and Zach regularly, so while I did not get sober, precisely, I never had more than two drinks in a single week unless I was tagging along to Horsie’s for a once-in-a-blue-moon night out with Rachel’s coworkers, who were thrilled to have their Gay Best Friend back and even more thrilled to hear that their Gay Best Friend had a Hot Older Boyfriend (which, though Angus had never officially declared it so, had to be what I was to him considering that we went grocery shopping together most weeks), opening to them a whole new avenue of salacious homosexual gossip. I provided that gossip in the tone and style they expected, although had I seen them more frequently I’m sure my stories would have begun to sound repetitive; many of them boiled down to and then Angus and I had sex. Which we did, most nights I was there, which is to say two to four times per week depending on how physically draining our respective days had been and how long it had been between dinner and bedtime and whether we had had anything to drink (Angus began making a point, since my incident, never to fuck me when I was under any kind of influence), always me on top because his joints weren’t what they used to be. And even when it was cloudy and blustery and the days began to grow short, I would wake up earlier at Angus’ place than I ever did at my own, the whole apartment bathed in morning light, the view out the window nothing but sky and trees and his neighbors’ roofs.

I went to the theatre as often as Angus would buy tickets for the both of us, and when there was something on at one of the big downtown theatres that they would have heard of, I convinced Rachel and Zach and even, sometimes, their friends to come with me. With the exception of Damn Yankees, I hadn’t attended a show that wasn’t a drag performance or Élouan’s birthday party in months, having often been too busy performing on the gogo blocks myself, and based on the profusion of theatre available all over Boston on any given night, I had likely missed out on dozens of brilliant shows that I would have regretted not seeing until my dying day had I been aware of what any of them were. But with my weekends once more free, I returned to sitting in the audience and letting the magic spell descend and standing for the great performances and clapping politely in my seat for the good ones, even when everyone else was standing. It was at one of these performances that Angus finally met Rachel and Zach in person, and the three of them got along like a house on fire, and although I am not supposed to know this, they are in fact planning a surprise birthday party for me in a few days at which I expect to give a masterclass performance in acting surprised.

It was good. It was good, the life I rebuilt. A serious boyfriend, a trivia team, more shows than I could possibly hope to watch in a lifetime, a daily commute on the train that allowed me time to sit and think or listen to music or read as I so desired, a studio apartment, a charming little gay bar with pink vinyl booths and a pool table. Work, groceries, uncomplicated friendships, a drink on the weekends, pop bestsellers from the library. It was comfortable and warm. It was exactly the life I was supposed to be having as a young person who was, by then, settled in the big city. It was a role that came naturally to me. I never even had to think about it. It was perfect.

I believe you know me well enough by now to surmise that perfect did not agree with me, that perfect held in it, for me, nothing at all.

This might have remained the state of affairs indefinitely had not two things happened to me last week that gave me, at last, something to do with myself, something that did not bore me, something that did not leave me crying quietly about the shape my life had taken in the shower when I knew Angus would not hear me.

The first was a post on Élouan’s Instagram -- a public post, meant to spread far and wide, in fact captioned with a request that it be shared with any Boston-area actors to whom Élouan themself might not have already sent it. A church-basement community theatre in Somerville would, the first weekend of December, be holding auditions for their winter production: a queer, darkly comedic take on Doctor Faustus, adapted and directed by local theatremaker Élouan Gage. At once I knew it was a trap -- of course it was, how could it be anything else? Perhaps not the production itself, given that such a trap would require the involvement of an entire community theatre company, producers and board members and so on, although knowing Élouan’s charm I couldn’t say for sure that they hadn’t dreamt the whole thing up for that purpose and simply convinced everyone else of the idea’s genius. But at the very minimum, the choice to post the call for auditions publicly, to deliberately neglect to exclude my account from its audience, to suggest, even, that their followers share the post around to anyone in the Boston theatre scene who might be interested -- it was undeniably about me, for me, a test, a temptation. To ignore the audition call would communicate nothing; perhaps I had seen it and decided, in light of my history with Élouan, to pass, or perhaps I was too busy with my work and my social life to incorporate a rigorous eight-week rehearsal schedule, or perhaps I had simply missed the post. To turn up to auditions, conversely, would tell a very unflattering story about me. The crazy stalker ex after all. How embarrassing for him to come here expecting to work with a former lover who had already expressed concern about his lack of understanding of boundaries, about his tendency to overwhelm. I could picture the glee on Élouan’s face as they related the tale, sparkly-eyed and lip-glossed, to Dolly. There would be no winning their game; the only way to emerge with my dignity intact would be to refuse to play at all.

So -- honestly, what else was I going to do? -- I signed up for an audition slot the moment I saw the post. I received an automated confirmation email and have not yet been told that I shouldn’t attend (nor do I expect to be), so when the appointed day comes I will walk into a church basement in Somerville and make eye contact with Élouan Gage and greet them in my most perfectly neutral voice, and whatever happens from that point forward will be, if nothing else, very, very interesting.

The second thing happened just yesterday as I was walking home from the Porter Square station to my apartment; it was after work and I needed to pick up a change of clothes from my place before spending the night with Angus. It was windy but warm, probably the last warm day of the season, and the sidewalks were littered with the crunchy brown remains of leaves that had fallen or been spit out from beneath the street-sweeping trucks. I had taken my sweatshirt off and tied it around my waist. I got to the corner just as the pedestrian crossing sign was blinking the last few seconds of its countdown and, in no hurry to get indoors, I stopped and waited rather than try to hustle through the crosswalk before the light changed. The first car stopped at the red light was obviously vintage and lovingly restored, a shiny dark grey, all its windows rolled down. A smooth white arm was hanging out the passenger side, fingernails painted a deep autumnal plum, and as I traced the line of that arm upward I saw Dolly, dark-eyed and beautiful, looking at me with her brow slightly furrowed, like she was trying to place how she knew me. As the crosswalk timer ticked down from one to zero, she smiled suddenly, lips the same color as her nails, and gave me a little finger-wiggling wave.

Past her, on the driver’s side, I could just see Élouan, one hand on the steering wheel, the other disappearing somewhere around the gearshift; on Dolly’s thigh, if I had to guess. They were staring straight forward, their mouth moving, monologuing to Dolly or maybe singing along with whatever was on the radio. They had redyed their hair to a screaming neon reddish-violet that put me in mind of nebulas, of plasma balls, of the lights at my first Backchannel. They didn’t see me.

I believe I was, in the moment, too startled to have waved back at Dolly, although I cannot say for sure now. But when the traffic light changed to green and the car pulled away, engine revving just a bit, just enough that it could not be ignored, that, for a moment, the Barracuda was the main character, the star of that intersection, I caught a last glimpse of Élouan through the windshield, the breeze ruffling their explosion of hair, their knobby fingers gripping the wheel, their thin lips parted, their wide eyes pale and alert and full of mirth, and I realized that I had never actually seen them behind the wheel of their beloved car before.

They looked, in their way, rather beautiful.

The End.

Holy shit, y’all. It’s been nearly a full year of this weird little newsletter. I have no way to thank you enough for reading along with me all these months, and I hope you’ll tell me every last little thing you thought about Come Down.

As you can tell by the fact that I finished drafting this novel, Might Makes Write served its intended purpose. I also wrote my first-ever full-length play this year, so it worked a little better than intended! Once I get that workshopped and edited, I may send it out here a scene at a time, but that’s still very much up in the air. Knowing me, though, there will always be more writing to share eventually. We’ll be off next week, at the very least, but then stay tuned for an update about where things are going next, and — Jesus, I can’t believe I’m saying this — happy 2026!

Might Makes Write and all the writing shared herein are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.