Playground (37 page)

blue terry-cloth robe. I knew he’d move back into the house even-

tually, but I expected his arrival to be more dramatic. I expected

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J E N N I F E R S A G I N O R

cursing and thrown luggage and a parade of blondes following

behind him.

What I see now is the father I knew when I was a child.

The house is quiet except for his playing. I sit on the stairs and

listen to him gracefully play a song by Barry Manilow. The piano

sounds better than I remember.

I notice how calm he seems. My heart aches for him. I watch

him as I used to when I was small. I think back on the earlier years,

before the drugs, the girls, the commotion. A time when he was

my hero.

A distinct pain in the pit of my stomach tells me I will be sad

for a very long time.

250

Twenty-One

At eighteen years old, I feel twelve or even younger.

I am in college in Washington, D.C., surrounded by perfect-

looking women with sunny dispositions. Meeting nice, friendly

students from average families is a grueling ordeal. Anything nor-

mal is uncomfortable. Being polite, making small talk, remember-

ing names, and keeping to any kind of schedule are all exercises in

futility.

The girls at college are a completely different breed. They’re

concerned with getting married, having kids, pleasing everyone,

generally themselves. I never find myself wistful at the thought of

the day when my dreams will be fulfilled.

I am consumed with my past, with the nightmares and out-

rage, the unanswered questions they inspire. It is a battle to fight

the memories out of my head. Images stream behind my eyes, fast

J E N N I F E R S A G I N O R

and incomprehensible like an MTV video. If I could only slow

them down, decode them, maybe I could make sense of my life.

I move through campus scared stiff of people and banal conver-

sation; the world is as soundless as my nightmares. All the details of

life are like wasted colored confetti in a fog.

One day I am cornered by a posse of freshmen Southern belles

in nearly identical culottes and knee-high boots. I want to run away

from them, be spirited away to a dark bar where the whiskey’s

flowing and music blares from the jukebox.

The Cure blasts from my Sony Walkman headset, which I re-

sentfully lift off my ears for a moment when a redheaded Tinker-

bell asks if I know where group orientation is. I stare at her,

wondering if I could ever be that lame. I try to answer, but my

voice is scratchy from too many cigarettes and not enough sleep.

She looks at me through a veil of health and sunny disposition as if

I’m speaking a foreign language and she can’t begin to understand

me. It’s not good. I walk away without another word, puffing heav-

ily on a cigarette.

The daze follows me into the cafeteria. I try to lay out things in

my mind, organize them and arrange them like homework assign-

ments I can’t quite make sense of. Suddenly, the room begins to

expand and contract. I can’t breathe. I need more space. This has

happened before—this anxiety—and the lack of control terrifies

me. It comes from nowhere and overwhelms my body. I feel dizzy

and nauseated and the room spins. It’s like being drunk on dis-

gustingly cheap alcohol and needing air. Cliques of girls whisper

among themselves at every table. Pure attitude.

At night, when most are asleep, I routinely meet a fellow stu-

dent in dark corners of the college, paying her to complete all my

term papers. I end up putting in an extra hundred for stolen an-

swers to the exams.

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Playground

The following spring, dogwoods bloom bright and pink on cam-

pus. Some have white blossoms, easily bruised by the sun and hu-

midity. My eyes stay hidden behind dark sunglasses, squinting

because they still have not adjusted to the bright surrealism of this

normal place.

I go to get my hair done. My hairdresser, Ashley, lives in

Dupont Circle, the hub of D.C.’s gay capital. He is my closest friend.

At forty, he is still at the center of the underground club scene,

which is where I am most comfortable.

I move through quaint streets with wrought-iron lampposts

and outdoor cafés. Enigma wafts from open windows, the music

mixing with the scent of Nag Champa incense. The streets inter-

sect at a gigantic cement Gothic-style fountain. Men and women

stand around it, posing in Ray-Bans with bowl haircuts, wearing

plastic Jelly shoes.

Ashley has pushed a pink headband over his thinning hair and

wears blue Spandex shorts and a bright yellow tank top. He wears

full makeup, his eyes catlike, circled with black eyeliner. He never

knows when an impromptu cocktail party will descend on him.

Beautiful throws with gold and black stitching adorn his comfy

couch and chairs. Sandalwood and orange-spice scented candles rest

in blue glass holders. Bright green spider plants sit in baskets, which

hang from the ceiling. His shelves are stocked with Campbell’s

soup and his refrigerator is full. On his wall there is a huge poster

of Madonna striking a pose. Fashion magazines, hair products, and

makeup are piled in corners and spill from tables onto the floor.

Ashley grabs both my arms and kisses me on the cheek. I feel

very at home here. He and I are survivors who share stories and

cling to each other like life support.

We sing along to the Pet Shop Boys as he dyes my hair a tem-

porary black, piling it high on my head with loads of mousse and

gel. He lends me Madonna-style lace gloves and a white Spandex

top. The final touch is blue eye shadow and purple lipstick.

We will slide coolly into the D.C. clubs, envied and careless.

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J E N N I F E R S A G I N O R

And so the college years pass. Though I am constantly surrounded

by other people, I feel apart from them. I quickly learn that I was

never taught the basics of how to get along. I have to reexamine

every thought I have for sensibility. There are days when I can’t

imagine how I’ll survive.

A few friends I meet invite me over for family dinners on Sun-

days. Hesitant at first, I am curious how parents outside Beverly

Hills interact. By now I am used to them having to prep their par-

ents on their “L.A. friend who comes from a fucked-up family.” I

can tell by the way their parents embrace me with that sad look

in their eyes as I walk through their front door. They open their

home to me, treating me as a second daughter. I am parented for

the first time by parents who are concerned with a life not based

on appearances, parties, drugs, and hot girls whose names I will

never remember in the morning.

I am no longer that girl glimpsing into windows around my

neighborhood, getting an idea of the kind of family I’ve always

wanted. There are suddenly names to the faces. There are mothers

baking fresh chicken and vegetables in the kitchen; brothers and

sisters who are generous and loving; fathers who are stable and

truly available to their children’s needs, providing them support

and advice. I learn a lot from these parents. I often cry when I

leave their homes because I know I’ll never have parents like

them.

As graduation nears, the visits to my friends’ parents’ homes

become less frequent. I am sad because no matter how much they

include me, I will never be a part of their family—no matter how

hard I try. It was all a facade that showed me what I was missing,

what I will always be missing. All I ever wanted were parents I could

rely on, who were consistent and loved me. Parents who would

help me find my way in the world.

254

Playground

I drive off acutely aware that I have been on my own for a very

long time.

Two weeks before I graduate, two men in dark suits claiming to

be FBI agents come to visit my dorm room. They tell me they are

friends of my father’s and are here to help, that they are investigat-

ing Vicki and her ex-boyfriend Marco Santiago, the infamous

Colombian drug lord. They ask me what I know about Vicki stor-

ing drugs underneath my father’s house.

“You’d have to ask him,” I say calmly, unresponsive, and clearly

indifferent. I walk them to the door and let them out without an-

other word. I spend the rest of the afternoon lying on my bed, star-

ing up at the ceiling.

I may never know the answers to all my questions.

255

Twenty-Two

After college graduation, I move back to L.A. with a new set of

eyes. I find myself in a vacuum where no sound of comfort or

sense of peace can penetrate. I float in darkness, vaguely aware of a

light at a distance. I know that is where the others are. My mother,

who chooses to keep herself so distant from me, and my father’s

life, which is so self-involved that he cannot hear me from inside

his cocoon no matter how loudly I scream. I suffer a void of alone-

ness and abandonment. I have been imprisoned here since I was a

child, suspended in this solitary, embryonic state.

I am a girl still witnessing, barely controlling her uncontrol-

lable fury at the unfathomable neglect by the two people she

needed most to guide and protect her in life. No one acknowledges

the reasons behind my wrath, only that I am angry.

J E N N I F E R S A G I N O R

I will be compelled forever by my formative years and the roles

I developed as a child. The loss and profound emptiness resulting

from my childhood will eat away at me for years. It is as though

someone is chewing away at my stomach until there is nothing left

but raw flesh and eventually I fade away.

I struggle to get along with my mother, wondering if our rela-

tionship will ever deepen beyond the surface. I attempt to have real

conversations with my father but he is trapped in a bubble that no

one can puncture, not even his own father. I want nothing more

than to reconnect with my sister but she is too wrapped up in her

own life. Nothing works. So I give up trying to live by the straight

and narrow, trying to forget, to live and let live. Because frankly it

is bullshit.

It is disgusting how the world has to lie to us.

Today I wake up in my own bed, in my own life, with my own

choices.

It is only by being on my own, purged of any emotional or fi-

nancial help from my parents, that I am able to see myself and my

past as it truly was. So many things had been taken from me—my

confidence, my self-esteem, my trust, and survival skills. It was a

poor exchange for the material luxuries I was given.

By the millennium, I had moved into an apartment in Holly-

wood and began hosting high-stakes poker games in upscale pri-

vate cigar bars in Beverly Hills. I filled my life with the company of

old-school Beverly Hills high rollers, those who partied with

Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. in their heyday, and with

younger celebrities like Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Leonardo Di-

Caprio, and Tobey McGuire. I had met some of the men at local

home games, some through my father, and others at Mansion par-

ties. I enjoyed being around them, laughing with them about the