Thanks to sitting in the wrong seat and the flirting of two
straight me to my right, I got free drink on my flight from Denver. It
was the eve of 1998, and I was moving to San Francisco. I was very tipsy
in the air and drunk by the time we landed. Somehow, I managed to grab
my bags, hop on a Super Shuttle, and find my way to my ex-boyfriend's
apartment.
No one was home as they were all out
partying. I entered the apartment thanks to a key left discretely behind
and set down my bags. A few minutes later gun shots were fired outside
the window. The alcohol mixed with the anxiety of being in a new place,
and I knew I wasn't leaving the apartment that night. A quick telephone
call from my ex confirmed I wasn't joining them. They were in the
Haight. I was in the Outer Mission, and I had no clue how to get there.
So I settled in and laid down on his bed.
I awoke early
that morning when he came home. He was high and drunk. He popped two
ecstasy before entering the apartment. I got up to chat and flirt. We
talked briefly. He welcomed me to San Francisco. I went back to bed. He
jerked off in the kitchen thinking he was quiet, but the noise of the
porn was loud and distracting.
When I awoke the later
that morning, I was violently sick -- the kind of sick you catch on
planes. I ran to the bathroom and threw up. My ex was pissed. I was
ruining his day and his high.
He moved me from his bed
to a futon mattress in the hallway. All I got was that mattress. I had
to use my backed bag as my pillow and my winter coat as my blanket. I
was shaking from my fever unable to get warm.
"Uh...where can I grab something to eat?" I asked.
Dismissively, "There's a grocery store across the street," he replied.
I
stumbled there dizzy, sickness swirling in my head. I picked up some
oranges and saltines that eventually found their way to the toilet. I
almost passed out in the middle of the store.
I
returned to the apartment, and he had taken off. I laid back down on the
futon and passed out. A few hours later, I awoke crying and terrified. I
was so ill I was hallucinating all the horrible possibilities of gun
shots and missing people.
His roommate followed me
around the apartment sanitizing everything I touched -- the phone I used
to call home, the toilet, the glass from which I drank water.
"Sorry," she said. "You look like shit. I'm sorry he isn't helping you. Is there anything I can do?"
"No," I replied. "I just need to sleep and get out of here."
I
was there only a day or two more. A call I placed to my parents
resulted in my grandparents driving up from their home in Sun City West,
Arizona. They picked me up, and we drove to the place I was moving to
in a couple of days, a group home for severely emotionally disturbed
youth ages five to thirteen that I was going to intern at.
We
were greet by a woman wrapped in a bath towel, another intern who
wasn't expecting us. She was sweet and told us where to find a hotel and
the hospital. We left.
The doctor said I had bronchitis and the stomach flu.
I slept for two days in the hotel room my grandparents got for us.
That was my first week in San Francisco, and, thanks to family, I survived.
Labels: exboyfriend, family, grandparents, moving, san francisco, space, the space between
