“Hi, I’m Alexis, and I’m a ...” Yeah, right.

In those twelve-step programs that never did me any good, they say, “One day at a time.” They say, “Once an addict, always an addict.” They say, “Hi, I’m blah-blah, and I’m a (insert your substance abuse here).” Maybe that works for some people. But some people stay clean for thirty years, decide to quit and never look back. I mean something happens, something Big ... An epiphany. And then everything changes. No meetings. No sponsor. No birthday cake. I am one of those people. One day, I saw the light. I got lucky.

But before I got lucky, I got high. Or maybe I should say, oblivious. Trust me, I had my reasons.

At twenty, a sparkly, promising actress half-way through college, I lost control of my life. Survived a head-on collision at 70 mph—a trucker fell asleep at the wheel, killed himself, my fiancé, and my unborn child. I was excised from the car with the Jaws of Life. Both my legs were crushed, both femurs snapped, the left one actually breaking through the skin of my thigh. My knees were in small, smashed pieces. They said I’d never walk again.

So, I spent a year in one hospital and then a year in another. Played the only part offered to me: that of the Courageous Heroine. Endured surgery after surgery. There was talk of amputation, but my mother said no. “She’s healthy,” she said, “with young bones. She will heal.” And I did. Defied the odds. Walked. Ran. Finished college. Traveled. I began to think I was back in control, that I’d have a life, maybe go to grad school. I considered the possibility of falling in love again. And then my mother began her slow dance with colon cancer. My father fell apart, and—

I turned to junk.

Junk was readily available. It never let me down. It didn’t get sick. Or die on me. And it always returned my calls. Just like the Demerol I’d been injected with in the hospital, junk killed the pain. I didn’t have to think, didn’t have to be in control. I became a slave to the ritual—rubbing alcohol, cotton ball, leather belt to tie off my arm—a devotee of the needle. I began substituting junk for relationships, junk for love. Worse, I was a connoisseur of the rush, and blew off the high. Dangerous. Shooting up over and over until I passed out. Oblivion. Over easy, on toast.

No more sick mother, dead lover, dead child. If death was what I was seeking, I’d definitely boarded the right train. My mom died. I stayed on the train. My dad re-married, packed up the house, moved out of town. I stayed on the train. Then my dad gave up on me. Told me to my face, the one that burned with shame when he said:

“This would kill your mother if she wasn’t already dead.”

That was my moment to get off the train. And I quit cold turkey. Figured I could stay clean on my own if I was out of L.A. My therapist agreed.

Driving north from L.A. toward San Francisco, I hit the 101 and flew up the highway, top down on my cream-colored Porsche, foot down, pedal to the metal, doing 95 in a 65, long brown hair dancing in the wind, convinced that a change of scene would cure me, get me to abort my deadly trajectory, turn my life around.

You know, I think everyone has a tape loop in their head, a single sentence that describes them, if they’re being honest with themselves. One that comes from lack, rather than self-esteem. A sentence like, “I’m less than.” Or “Always chosen last for the team.” My sentence, back then? “I am damaged goods.” As if “damaged” described the whole of me. Like I was junk. Forget about the sparkle, the talent that remained. I was either perfect or nothing. And in place of my dreams came the surety that I had to settle. And that made me want to get high.

When I met Ronnie The Rescuer in San Francisco, and he looked at my ravaged arms with pity instead of disgust, I decided to settle. To my credit, I was honest: I told him I was trying my best not to self-destruct. That clinched the deal. He took me home, said he was going to save me. And he did. Things were good. I got a part-time job, did the whole Betty Crocker Homemaker thing. I was in love and he loved me, too, told me I was beautiful, perfect.

I had beaten it! No 12-step program necessary, merely the love of a good man! For a while after we got married, I was content, but Ronnie had a roving eye. The stronger I became, the less he hung around. There were so many other women out there to rescue.

It still might have worked out if I hadn’t convinced Ronnie to take a lowball settlement from a lawsuit. The case was worth a lot more, he said, but I didn’t want to wait. The money changed us. The party never ended. Who knew we had so many friends? When I found out he was cheating, I started using again, and I wanted to take Ronnie down with me. Together we pissed away all that money. We fought all the time, and took horrible risks, flirting with death on a daily basis, sharing dirty needles, scoring from some dealer in the Haight who cut his stash with God knows what. Then one day Ronnie says he’s had enough, doesn’t want to live like this anymore. Tells me to get in the car.

So, Ronnie’s driving. The top’s down on the Porsche; we’re crossing the bridge at about 50 mph, listening to the Eagles, “Hotel California.” We’ve been fighting for hours about money and drugs, or money for drugs. The exhaust from the truck in front of us is fierce, and Ronnie’s screaming at me over the road noise and the music. His eyes are on me instead of the road.

“You ruined my life,” he says. “You know that? I wish we’d never met!”

“Screw you,” I tell him. “Nobody stuck a needle in your arm.”

“Screw me?! You’ve done that already, haven’t you? I tried to help you! I gave you back your life! Where’s my ten grand, bitch? Where’s my ten grand?!”

“Oh, I don’t know, Ronnie,” I say. “Maybe up your arm?”

And he guns the engine, swerves the car to the left, into oncoming traffic. I’m screaming but he’s staring straight ahead, his big hands locked on the wheel, singing with the Eagles under his breath, such a lovely place ... such a lovely place. Then everything slows down. Each breath takes a lifetime. We jerk forward frame by frame. I can see Death—

I swear, the real deal. And Death’s smiling. Waving. Like He’s been expecting me. Here it is, the oblivion I’ve been chasing. I can check out any time I want. Strangest thing, right before I grabbed the wheel, I don’t remember wanting to live—I just remember that I didn’t want to die.

So there you have it, my lucky day. The moment when I knew for certain that I was worth saving. Whenever things get rough, that’s the moment I remember. And I replay it in my head like a talisman, hang on to it like faith.

I got lucky. Never arrested. Never overdosed. Didn’t die. Didn’t take Ronnie with me. All the years between then and now ... it’s almost like the junkie times never happened. But I still have those tracks like outgrown tattoos on my skin. A memento of the worst of times. Just in case I forget.

 

 

See also Rhone Fancher’s poem here in MacQ-27:
“I Was Hovering Just Below the Hospital Ceiling, Contemplating My Death”

Alexis Rhone Fancher

is the author of 11 books, most recently Triggered: A Pillow Book (MacQ, 2023), an erotic chapbook collaboration with artist Kenna Barradell and editor Clare MacQueen; BRAZEN, a full-length erotic collection (NYQ Books, 2023); DUETS (Harbor Editions, 2022), an illustrated, ekphrastic chapbook collaboration with poet Cynthia Atkins; and Stiletto Killer (in Italian) from Edizioni Ensemble, Italia (May 2022).

Other books include EROTIC: New & Selected (NYQ Books, 2021); Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018); and three books from KYSO Flash Press: a full-length collection of poems, Enter Here (2017), and The Dead Kid Poems (2019), a companion chapbook to State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies (2015).

Rhone Fancher’s poem “when I turned fourteen, my mother’s sister took me to lunch and said:” was chosen by Edward Hirsch for inclusion in The Best American Poetry (2016). Her poems and flash fiction have been published in 200+ literary magazines and journals, including Aeolian Harp, Askew, Cleaver, Diode, Duende, Gargoyle, Glass, Hobart, Nashville Review, Pedestal Magazine, Petrichor, Plume, Poetry East, Rattle, Slipstream, South Florida Poetry Journal (SoFloPoJo), Spillway, SWWIM, The American Journal of Poetry, The MacGuffin, The night heron barks, Tinderbox, Verdad, Verse Daily, Vox Populi, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles, and elsewhere.

You can find photographs by Alexis on the covers of Witness, Pithead Chapel, Pedestal Magazine, Heyday, and elsewhere, as well as a five-page spread in River Styx. Her street photography is published worldwide.

Since 2013, her work has been nominated numerous times for the Pushcart Prize, and multiple times for these annual anthology awards: Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and Best of the Net. In 2018, her prose poem “Cruel Choices” won The Pangolin Poetry Prize.

Until summer 2023, Alexis and her husband were living and collaborating on the bluffs of San Pedro, California, 25 miles from downtown L.A. They’re now settled in the Mojave Desert a hundred miles east, and they still have a spectacular view.

www.alexisrhonefancher.com

www.alexisrhonefancher.com/audio/

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ “It’s All Cake” by Eileen Murphy, a review of Alexis Rhone Fancher’s Junkie Wife in Tinderbox Poetry Journal (Volume 5, Issue 5, March 2019)