The Harrowing Houseguest
Some posts flow so quickly from my fingers, and others are stuck behind a whirlwind of pain, shame, and blame. But if I don't write this out, then I can't warn my friends. This same thing will happen to lots of people I love. If you can spot it quicker, maybe it'll be a smaller hurt. So here goes, my cautionary tale.
It was a little over a week until the Winter Fetish Fleamarket of 2015, mid-February. I'm pretty mellow, considering it's my one con of the year. Something about having a D/s partner to bring, especially when it's the same one for the second year in a row, just makes me so calm. I've got a little nervous energy, but not a whole lot.
Meanwhile, Coyote has been single for many years. He doesn't go out, wouldn't dream of using OKCupid or the like, so his only prospects are women who play in his one LARP (very few of which are single, or his type) and cow orkers.
Sure enough, he did have a massive crush on a cow orker, a slight, graceful blonde named Laura. Blue eyes, fair skin, a recent MFA grad from RISD, she does beautiful paintings and reads voraciously. Coyote wasn't the only one charmed by her, I was nursing a puppy crush of my own, but I was pretty sure she was straight and didn't make any moves. (Very likely, I would've done the same even if there was clear evidence of her desire for women. I am pathetic at pursuing women.)
In spectacular introvert fashion, Coyote did finally manage to admit his feelings to her- some months after she'd moved to Los Angeles! I don't really know if they engaged in an online relationship or just talked in circles around the idea, but obviously there was nothing physical that could happen while she was an entire continent away.
Years passed, and they seemed in the same holding pattern. Whenever I asked Coyote if I should refer to Laura as his girlfriend, he gave me a gigantic shrug or threw his hands up in the air in exasperation. My best guess is that they were friends who were both aware that the "with benefits" thing might happen if they were in the same place again.
Then, out of the blue, Coyote gets a call from her that leaves him shaking visibly. I thought something had happened to her, but sat by him and waited for the bad news to come spilling out.
"She's coming to visit, for like a week."
"Oh. Okay. She knows we don't have a bed or couch or anything?"
"Yeah. She's coming tomorrow."
Hence the shaking. Introverts fucking hate surprises, particularly surprises about people entering their personal space and staying there awhile. Even when it's the object of their love, they really do need some coping time. I was a bit shaken up by it, too, but hey- I'd get to hang out with a friend I hadn't seen in a long while, and then I'd get to do the Fetish Fleamarket! And, Coyote would finally get to maybe consummate that desire he'd had for so long! All good. A little notice would've been better, but I'm okay.
Coyote and I did a whirlwind clean of our perpetually dirty little apartment, and figured out what bedding options we could provide. And then- she didn't come. Confusing texts and calls. She'd been in a bike accident a few days ago, she'd gotten a concussion and the airport personnel decided she was too out of it to fly. They sent her to the hospital, she stayed a day or so and then flew out. Maybe there was one other delay, too.
She finally arrived a day or two before the Flea started. I felt glad that the lovers- if that's what they'd become- would very quickly get three uninterrupted days and nights together. We bought her the few groceries she requested, and all went out to dinner at Boston Market together, with Tiger. She had a little trouble balancing on the ice, but she'd had years to soften up in the desert. After dinner, we hung out at home and Laura was louder and more giggly than I'd seen her, and a little confused.
It was Tiger who noticed it first! I'm still stunned by it, but it was.
"She seems a little off. I dunno what it is," he told me as we were driving to his apartment in Warwick.
"Oh, that's just jet lag! It's a big deal, flying across the country. Your cells can feel all the distance, and you're exhausted and loopy even though all you've done is sit down all day," I answered.
We were off to the Flea, except Tiger managed to forget his wallet in my living room. I came back for it Friday afternoon. Laura was scowling at her Macbook screen, and kinda reserved when I asked her how things were going, but I didn't think much of it.
Tiger and I had our Flea, thrilling and exasperating in turns (but that deserves its own entry), and then Sunday night I was back home in my own warm bed. Coyote was happy, he and Laura had indeed hooked up! But there was a little worry tugging at him.
"Try to encourage her to eat." he told me before heading off to work.
I was puzzled. She's a naturally tiny woman, but she's a baker. I've seen her eat decent-if-smaller portions of food, plenty of times. Something lingering from that concussion, perhaps?
But she was pretty normal at first. She refused all food for a few hours of that Monday morning because she'd decided to power through a spreadsheet and get all of her work for the week finished so that she could have a lot of time to hang out with us. But after that, she cheerily ate her usual "meal": one piece of bread, topped with a little mustard and one slice of turkey.
We got into long and awesome conversations, and much merriment was had. On Monday evening, we played DDR: she was so much more graceful than I, her arms naturally swaying into perfect ballet positions as her pointed feet tapped on the buttons. She managed to talk Tiger into taking a turn or two, but no force on earth can make a Coyote do a dancing game. She'd really wanted to go rollerskating, too, but we didn't get ourselves organized in time.
Tuesday was more stressful, and by Wednesday I was terrified for her. Something was definitely wrong! I looked up the CDC guidelines for treating someone after a concussion, and yeah, a lot of that was present- the extreme confusion, the slurred speech, having trouble with motor functions, poor appetite. But why was it getting worse, the farther away from her concussion she got? Did she have a brain bleed? Had she reinjured herself somehow? There was a purple bruise under her eye Wednesday morning, like a black eye! When questioned, she couldn't remember knocking into anything. Brain bleed, surely!
Wednesday was one of the most frightening days of my life. I was on edge the whole day. I took a log of the food and medicine I managed to get into her (she was complaining of horrid head pain):
L ate: 1/2 a turkey sammich thing at 9:30am.
1/2 a turkey sammich thing at 11am.
Fed her an Advil at noon.
1/2 orange at noon.
Not enough, nowhere near enough food (considering how extremely little she'd eaten both Monday and Tuesday), despite all that I said to cajole and bribe her into eating. She would nap unexpectedly, right in the dish chair. All I could do was go into my Toy Room, keep the doors open, and half-watch Fresh off the Boat or build a new Lego set, while I listened for her to stir and ask for something. I was her faithful nurse, trying everything I could think of to help, but she just got worse and worse.
By just before dinnertime, she was giggling while curled on the floor, not able to change her own clothes. Finally, I talked to a combat medic friend, saying, "I really need to know if I should take this woman to the hospital right fucking now." I listed the first two of her many symptoms and he was like, "Yep, ER, right away."
I just needed that confirmation from an outsider. Coyote was concerned, but that qualified opinion was enough. But curiously, she refused to go to the hospital. She tried everything- she begged that she'd eat more, she went fully limp (even a very small person is hard as fuck to carry when she's dead weight. I should've called Tiger to help. As it was, we had to set her down on an icy pathway several times.), and when in the car, she threatened many times to hurl herself out of the moving car, frightening the fuck out of Coyote. I sat with her in the backseat and held her hands, trying my best to be reassuring despite the confusing terror. Why on earth was she doing this? She had great insurance, and she was obviously sick. Why was she so resistant?
As I spoke to the admitting nurse, I was shocked by how calm and logical I sounded as I listed her symptoms, putting appropriate emphasis on the ones that I knew would bypass a long wait in the ER. The nurse agreed, but would only let one of us non-family types go into the hospital with her. Not much choice, she'd gain far more comfort from holding Coyote's hand and I was exhausted by the efforts of the last few days.
So I sat in the ER waiting room, fervently texting Coyote. What he texted back, when there was real news from the doctors, didn't make sense to me. Especially his final text: "They're going to let her sleep it off, they'll release her in the morning." SLEEP OFF a brain bleed?!? What the fuck were these quacks thinking?!?!!?
But Coyote explained on the ride home. She was drunk, dead drunk. Blood alcohol level five times the legal limit or something like that. Of course I had seen her carrying her big purse into the bathroom every time, but I just figured she was changing a tampon or pad. Nope, tiny little delicate Laura was taking swigs from plastic bottles of some extremely cheap whiskey* and then using our toothpaste to cover her breath. I'm still amazed I didn't smell it coming out of her pores with my sensitive nose, but maybe that was masked by all the layers of clothing everyone needs to wear in our frigid apartment in the winter.
I hadn't worried and slaved over a sick little bird, but was used by a raging alcoholic who was on a bender the entire fucking week! Rage came quickly to me, and stayed for awhile. I'm still angry, I'm still amazed at how cut off Coyote and I are from the world, and yet got played by an addict anyways. So few people we would both welcome as houseguests, and one of those few played us for fools. Could've been worse, she did not steal any money or possessions, but I'm still upset over having my hospitality and good will spit on like that.
She missed her morning flight back to LA, but was gone by the early afternoon. She closed the door of the room where she'd been sleeping, and I hissed one thing through it. "You better be packing, not drinking in there!"
I made Coyote drop her off at the airport a few hours early because I could not abide her presence any longer, then he came back and brought me to lunch at McDonald's. We were so wrung out mentally, the large amounts of fat and salt were the comfort food we needed. I remember that lunch, I remember us sitting there like two veterans of a rough battle.
No, it's not what Tiger and thousands of others faced in Iraq. But it's another aspect of the seedy underbelly of humanity, friendship flipped, betrayal and evil, a different evil than what I'd ever experienced directly before.
We figured out that she ran all the way across the country to us because her parents were trying to get her into rehab. I kept her phone in the ER waiting room, and marvelled at the texts that kept flashing on the lock screen. Dozens of different people, most of them male, asking her to hang out. Seemed she was quite the party girl, maybe she was really friends with the "misunderstood" Chris Brown. (A notorious domestic abuser, if you didn't know. His latest reported punch was to a female reporter he was not involved with.)
The whole thing fucking sucked, but I know it sucked far worse for Coyote. He fell in love with a woman who was not the one he finally got to kiss and fuck. Or if she was an alcoholic the whole time, she hid it better when we were all friends, years ago. He has no idea if there was any part of her that actually loved him back, and that has got to sting, especially for a boy who gives his heart so cautiously.
I talked to an ex-lush friend of mine, that very night. I needed to unload everything, and I knew they'd have good insights to share. "That's a brilliant cover" they said, when I mentioned the concussion. Until that moment, it didn't even occur to me that the concussion was probably a lie, too. So many lies, so much pain.
What sucks is, we're wary now. When a friend reaches out to us for help, we're always going to wonder if they're physically ill or just genetically deficient, that miserable tiny fraction of humanity with the genes for heavy addiction to toxic substances. We're always going to hesitate before stretching out a hand. We're always going to wonder if we wouldn't be better off turning our backs. That's a terrible thing. I miss our innocence.
I read an article about studies they've done on addiction, with rats. Instead of addicting the rats to morphine-laced water and watching them starve in bare, lonely cages, they gave some addicted rats the same bare cages and others a thriving environment with lots of toys and friendly companion-rats. The rats in the rich, supportive environment weaned themselves off of the morphine-water very quickly. They had plenty of better things to do than drugs, man. Rat snuggles for all!
No, but, the study suggests that we do the opposite with the addicts in our lives. Rather than push them away into an isolation that's only relieved by the companionship of other addicts, we should love them, support them, embrace them, tuck them into our warm nests.
I read that article post-Hurricane Laura. I thought about her, and about the other addicts I'd seen in documentaries and such- about how they suck people dry. First of their money and possessions, then of their love.
To the kindhearted souls who can regenerate that love, bless you. You should absolutely try what that study suggests. Me, I will always choose my dearest loves over anyone else, and will drive away any who are toxic to them. I hate watching Coyote get hurt.
The good news is, we have rebuilt the levees, we're strong and confident and ready for the next hurricane. A few months after Hurricane Laura, Coyote started feeling attracted to a current cow orker. But rather than keep it to himself, he realized that he wanted to act on it. Except, he wanted to make sure that he was doing so for the right reasons, and not just rebounding. We had a long conversation, until we were both satisfied that his head was clear. I wasn't happy about the timing of the new relationship, right as I was bedding down for hibernation, but I knew it would be good for him. His last two or three crushes had been so long-distance, and he absolutely deserves someone immediate.
So far, it's working out well.
* Oh hey, that's part of why I'm so against the plastic-bottled whiskeys that Tiger and his friends enjoy. That's interesting.
It was a little over a week until the Winter Fetish Fleamarket of 2015, mid-February. I'm pretty mellow, considering it's my one con of the year. Something about having a D/s partner to bring, especially when it's the same one for the second year in a row, just makes me so calm. I've got a little nervous energy, but not a whole lot.
Meanwhile, Coyote has been single for many years. He doesn't go out, wouldn't dream of using OKCupid or the like, so his only prospects are women who play in his one LARP (very few of which are single, or his type) and cow orkers.
Sure enough, he did have a massive crush on a cow orker, a slight, graceful blonde named Laura. Blue eyes, fair skin, a recent MFA grad from RISD, she does beautiful paintings and reads voraciously. Coyote wasn't the only one charmed by her, I was nursing a puppy crush of my own, but I was pretty sure she was straight and didn't make any moves. (Very likely, I would've done the same even if there was clear evidence of her desire for women. I am pathetic at pursuing women.)
In spectacular introvert fashion, Coyote did finally manage to admit his feelings to her- some months after she'd moved to Los Angeles! I don't really know if they engaged in an online relationship or just talked in circles around the idea, but obviously there was nothing physical that could happen while she was an entire continent away.
Years passed, and they seemed in the same holding pattern. Whenever I asked Coyote if I should refer to Laura as his girlfriend, he gave me a gigantic shrug or threw his hands up in the air in exasperation. My best guess is that they were friends who were both aware that the "with benefits" thing might happen if they were in the same place again.
Then, out of the blue, Coyote gets a call from her that leaves him shaking visibly. I thought something had happened to her, but sat by him and waited for the bad news to come spilling out.
"She's coming to visit, for like a week."
"Oh. Okay. She knows we don't have a bed or couch or anything?"
"Yeah. She's coming tomorrow."
Hence the shaking. Introverts fucking hate surprises, particularly surprises about people entering their personal space and staying there awhile. Even when it's the object of their love, they really do need some coping time. I was a bit shaken up by it, too, but hey- I'd get to hang out with a friend I hadn't seen in a long while, and then I'd get to do the Fetish Fleamarket! And, Coyote would finally get to maybe consummate that desire he'd had for so long! All good. A little notice would've been better, but I'm okay.
Coyote and I did a whirlwind clean of our perpetually dirty little apartment, and figured out what bedding options we could provide. And then- she didn't come. Confusing texts and calls. She'd been in a bike accident a few days ago, she'd gotten a concussion and the airport personnel decided she was too out of it to fly. They sent her to the hospital, she stayed a day or so and then flew out. Maybe there was one other delay, too.
She finally arrived a day or two before the Flea started. I felt glad that the lovers- if that's what they'd become- would very quickly get three uninterrupted days and nights together. We bought her the few groceries she requested, and all went out to dinner at Boston Market together, with Tiger. She had a little trouble balancing on the ice, but she'd had years to soften up in the desert. After dinner, we hung out at home and Laura was louder and more giggly than I'd seen her, and a little confused.
It was Tiger who noticed it first! I'm still stunned by it, but it was.
"She seems a little off. I dunno what it is," he told me as we were driving to his apartment in Warwick.
"Oh, that's just jet lag! It's a big deal, flying across the country. Your cells can feel all the distance, and you're exhausted and loopy even though all you've done is sit down all day," I answered.
We were off to the Flea, except Tiger managed to forget his wallet in my living room. I came back for it Friday afternoon. Laura was scowling at her Macbook screen, and kinda reserved when I asked her how things were going, but I didn't think much of it.
Tiger and I had our Flea, thrilling and exasperating in turns (but that deserves its own entry), and then Sunday night I was back home in my own warm bed. Coyote was happy, he and Laura had indeed hooked up! But there was a little worry tugging at him.
"Try to encourage her to eat." he told me before heading off to work.
I was puzzled. She's a naturally tiny woman, but she's a baker. I've seen her eat decent-if-smaller portions of food, plenty of times. Something lingering from that concussion, perhaps?
But she was pretty normal at first. She refused all food for a few hours of that Monday morning because she'd decided to power through a spreadsheet and get all of her work for the week finished so that she could have a lot of time to hang out with us. But after that, she cheerily ate her usual "meal": one piece of bread, topped with a little mustard and one slice of turkey.
We got into long and awesome conversations, and much merriment was had. On Monday evening, we played DDR: she was so much more graceful than I, her arms naturally swaying into perfect ballet positions as her pointed feet tapped on the buttons. She managed to talk Tiger into taking a turn or two, but no force on earth can make a Coyote do a dancing game. She'd really wanted to go rollerskating, too, but we didn't get ourselves organized in time.
Tuesday was more stressful, and by Wednesday I was terrified for her. Something was definitely wrong! I looked up the CDC guidelines for treating someone after a concussion, and yeah, a lot of that was present- the extreme confusion, the slurred speech, having trouble with motor functions, poor appetite. But why was it getting worse, the farther away from her concussion she got? Did she have a brain bleed? Had she reinjured herself somehow? There was a purple bruise under her eye Wednesday morning, like a black eye! When questioned, she couldn't remember knocking into anything. Brain bleed, surely!
Wednesday was one of the most frightening days of my life. I was on edge the whole day. I took a log of the food and medicine I managed to get into her (she was complaining of horrid head pain):
L ate: 1/2 a turkey sammich thing at 9:30am.
1/2 a turkey sammich thing at 11am.
Fed her an Advil at noon.
1/2 orange at noon.
Not enough, nowhere near enough food (considering how extremely little she'd eaten both Monday and Tuesday), despite all that I said to cajole and bribe her into eating. She would nap unexpectedly, right in the dish chair. All I could do was go into my Toy Room, keep the doors open, and half-watch Fresh off the Boat or build a new Lego set, while I listened for her to stir and ask for something. I was her faithful nurse, trying everything I could think of to help, but she just got worse and worse.
By just before dinnertime, she was giggling while curled on the floor, not able to change her own clothes. Finally, I talked to a combat medic friend, saying, "I really need to know if I should take this woman to the hospital right fucking now." I listed the first two of her many symptoms and he was like, "Yep, ER, right away."
I just needed that confirmation from an outsider. Coyote was concerned, but that qualified opinion was enough. But curiously, she refused to go to the hospital. She tried everything- she begged that she'd eat more, she went fully limp (even a very small person is hard as fuck to carry when she's dead weight. I should've called Tiger to help. As it was, we had to set her down on an icy pathway several times.), and when in the car, she threatened many times to hurl herself out of the moving car, frightening the fuck out of Coyote. I sat with her in the backseat and held her hands, trying my best to be reassuring despite the confusing terror. Why on earth was she doing this? She had great insurance, and she was obviously sick. Why was she so resistant?
As I spoke to the admitting nurse, I was shocked by how calm and logical I sounded as I listed her symptoms, putting appropriate emphasis on the ones that I knew would bypass a long wait in the ER. The nurse agreed, but would only let one of us non-family types go into the hospital with her. Not much choice, she'd gain far more comfort from holding Coyote's hand and I was exhausted by the efforts of the last few days.
So I sat in the ER waiting room, fervently texting Coyote. What he texted back, when there was real news from the doctors, didn't make sense to me. Especially his final text: "They're going to let her sleep it off, they'll release her in the morning." SLEEP OFF a brain bleed?!? What the fuck were these quacks thinking?!?!!?
But Coyote explained on the ride home. She was drunk, dead drunk. Blood alcohol level five times the legal limit or something like that. Of course I had seen her carrying her big purse into the bathroom every time, but I just figured she was changing a tampon or pad. Nope, tiny little delicate Laura was taking swigs from plastic bottles of some extremely cheap whiskey* and then using our toothpaste to cover her breath. I'm still amazed I didn't smell it coming out of her pores with my sensitive nose, but maybe that was masked by all the layers of clothing everyone needs to wear in our frigid apartment in the winter.
I hadn't worried and slaved over a sick little bird, but was used by a raging alcoholic who was on a bender the entire fucking week! Rage came quickly to me, and stayed for awhile. I'm still angry, I'm still amazed at how cut off Coyote and I are from the world, and yet got played by an addict anyways. So few people we would both welcome as houseguests, and one of those few played us for fools. Could've been worse, she did not steal any money or possessions, but I'm still upset over having my hospitality and good will spit on like that.
She missed her morning flight back to LA, but was gone by the early afternoon. She closed the door of the room where she'd been sleeping, and I hissed one thing through it. "You better be packing, not drinking in there!"
I made Coyote drop her off at the airport a few hours early because I could not abide her presence any longer, then he came back and brought me to lunch at McDonald's. We were so wrung out mentally, the large amounts of fat and salt were the comfort food we needed. I remember that lunch, I remember us sitting there like two veterans of a rough battle.
No, it's not what Tiger and thousands of others faced in Iraq. But it's another aspect of the seedy underbelly of humanity, friendship flipped, betrayal and evil, a different evil than what I'd ever experienced directly before.
We figured out that she ran all the way across the country to us because her parents were trying to get her into rehab. I kept her phone in the ER waiting room, and marvelled at the texts that kept flashing on the lock screen. Dozens of different people, most of them male, asking her to hang out. Seemed she was quite the party girl, maybe she was really friends with the "misunderstood" Chris Brown. (A notorious domestic abuser, if you didn't know. His latest reported punch was to a female reporter he was not involved with.)
The whole thing fucking sucked, but I know it sucked far worse for Coyote. He fell in love with a woman who was not the one he finally got to kiss and fuck. Or if she was an alcoholic the whole time, she hid it better when we were all friends, years ago. He has no idea if there was any part of her that actually loved him back, and that has got to sting, especially for a boy who gives his heart so cautiously.
I talked to an ex-lush friend of mine, that very night. I needed to unload everything, and I knew they'd have good insights to share. "That's a brilliant cover" they said, when I mentioned the concussion. Until that moment, it didn't even occur to me that the concussion was probably a lie, too. So many lies, so much pain.
What sucks is, we're wary now. When a friend reaches out to us for help, we're always going to wonder if they're physically ill or just genetically deficient, that miserable tiny fraction of humanity with the genes for heavy addiction to toxic substances. We're always going to hesitate before stretching out a hand. We're always going to wonder if we wouldn't be better off turning our backs. That's a terrible thing. I miss our innocence.
I read an article about studies they've done on addiction, with rats. Instead of addicting the rats to morphine-laced water and watching them starve in bare, lonely cages, they gave some addicted rats the same bare cages and others a thriving environment with lots of toys and friendly companion-rats. The rats in the rich, supportive environment weaned themselves off of the morphine-water very quickly. They had plenty of better things to do than drugs, man. Rat snuggles for all!
No, but, the study suggests that we do the opposite with the addicts in our lives. Rather than push them away into an isolation that's only relieved by the companionship of other addicts, we should love them, support them, embrace them, tuck them into our warm nests.
I read that article post-Hurricane Laura. I thought about her, and about the other addicts I'd seen in documentaries and such- about how they suck people dry. First of their money and possessions, then of their love.
To the kindhearted souls who can regenerate that love, bless you. You should absolutely try what that study suggests. Me, I will always choose my dearest loves over anyone else, and will drive away any who are toxic to them. I hate watching Coyote get hurt.
The good news is, we have rebuilt the levees, we're strong and confident and ready for the next hurricane. A few months after Hurricane Laura, Coyote started feeling attracted to a current cow orker. But rather than keep it to himself, he realized that he wanted to act on it. Except, he wanted to make sure that he was doing so for the right reasons, and not just rebounding. We had a long conversation, until we were both satisfied that his head was clear. I wasn't happy about the timing of the new relationship, right as I was bedding down for hibernation, but I knew it would be good for him. His last two or three crushes had been so long-distance, and he absolutely deserves someone immediate.
So far, it's working out well.
* Oh hey, that's part of why I'm so against the plastic-bottled whiskeys that Tiger and his friends enjoy. That's interesting.