2 Years Without My Train Angel
I first met Belinda on a balmy afternoon in 1996. I'd only been sober a few months and was hanging on for dear life. At 27, I was enjoying rebirth but at the same time felt like it was all over. "I'll never be able to have fun again," I thought. Sitting on the front porch of the Windsor Club, smoking cigarettes and drinking weak coffee with people in their 50's and 60's was what I did for fun. And I went to the movies. White flour and sugar were also very important. One day I decided to venture up to Glendale College for an "unofficial" young people's 12-step meeting. Belinda wasn't there but I was told I'd meet someone special, "after the meeting, she's..." Belinda was on a date and joined us in obvious afterglow. She regaled us with the sordid details of her afternoon, her laughter filling the restaurant. The big, boisterous blonde struck a chord and made an impression. "From that moment we were fast friends" would be the easy version but it didn't go quite like that. What happened was way better.
I'd met Belinda late in the summer, her number stuffed in the top drawer of my dresser drawer with my accumulating sobriety chips and spare change. I'd been afraid to call her. She was too happy, too much fun, had too much of a life. I didn't know how to hang out with someone like her. I worked, went to 12-step meetings and tried to get my boyfriend to come pay attention to me. He was too busy with booze and coke and chasing twinks. I'd actually caught him at the "sidewalk sale" (2am leftovers out in front of Rage in West Hollywood, desperately trying to find someone to drag home.) Shortly after, he showed up at my apartment one morning, his well-worn blue Cavalier, overstuffed with his belongings, soles of shoes pressed against the back windows. The twink-chasing man (for those who don't know, a "twink" is a barely legal or not quite legal boy who looks under age) who didn't deserve my love was leaving me which was an incredible blessing. I just didn't see it that way at the time.
An ocean of tears launched me into Christmas Eve and onto the northbound Amtrak Coast Starlight for an 8-hour ride from LA to San Luis Obispo. I'd been sober 15 months and life hadn't gone the way I'd planned and I didn't know what to do with the heartbreak. Historically I'd pour a bottle of Jack Daniels over it and presto! It's the only time since I've gotten sober that I've actually made the decision to end my sobriety. I know what that decision feels like. I rose from my coach seat and started walking to the bar car. What happened next was miraculous.
"Jeremy!" It was Belinda, seizing me by the arm, yanking her into the seat next to her.
"Belinda?" What the fuck is she doing here? I thought.
"Y'know, the funniest thing happened, I went to the airport to catch my flight and the airline had just gone out of business!"
She caught the nearly sold-out Coast Starlight at the last minute and would make it to her mother's house in Redding before Christmas morning. At that moment, she was telling me jokes and grabbing me in semi-inappropriate places. She kept me occupied for the remaining 7 hours of the train ride. I wondered if she had any idea what she'd done. Over the years my belief system has waxed and waned but of one thing I'm certain, be it serendipity, synchronicity or something higher than myself-- I was saved. In the moment I got up out of my seat to buy a drink at the bar car, I decided I wanted to die. That grab of my arm and the shenanigans courtesy of my new friend changed the course of my life because until that moment, I'd given up. Past that moment, I was able to see the miracles that had happened in my life.
We caught up after New Year's.
"Hey Belinda!"
"Glad to hear you didn't lose my number this time."
"Listen...there's something I need to tell you. A confession. When I ran into you on the train, I was on my way to do something. Do you have any idea what it was?"
"Yeah Jer, you're were going to drink."
And she'd busted out everything in her tool chest to make sure that didn't happen. For years I wondered what she saw but now I know what it is: one addict/alcoholic can see it in another: "the obsession." Stopping booze and drugs is easy. Staying stopped and learning to live in your own skin isn't.
Fast friends? After this, you bet! I marveled at how many people knew and loved her, what an amazing organizer she was and how good she was at having fun sober. She had an amazing gift: she could plan great parties and people would actually show up! I was there when she turned 7 years sober which seemed like an impossible feat. A bunch of us went to the Laser Tag place on Ventura Blvd and we had a blast that day. She'd arranged it all in advance and paid for everyone.
She'd pick me up at my little Glendale apartment and we go cruising in her 300ZX Turbo named Margaret. We kept the t-tops off in 107 degree record-breaking heat that descended upon us that summer, her red tail Boa constrictor "Boaz" around her neck, enjoying the ride. She let me borrow it at every opportunity, leaving Margaret and Boaz in my care when she went on a cruise. Later that summer I got really sick, what was basically pneumonia. She stopped by regularly and brought me food and medicine.
Belinda wasn't "cool." She clung to things of years past. Perms, "whore claws" (long fake nails) and silly looking "country home" decoration (this is about to become important.) She loved country music and got me listening to Trisha Yearwood and Wynonna. Her favorite article of clothing was something she called her "cat suit," a black, low-cut leotard thing. It worked well for a variety of occasions. I wish I had it. But...she was also intelligent, cunning and had the instincts of a head hunter.
The thing that struck me the deepest was her generosity. No one she loved went without, ever. She'd make sure her loved ones had what they needed even if she had to go without. More than once I've known her to pay someone's electric bill to get it turned back on. She'd give you her last dollar. She wouldn't stop helping you because it was inconvenient. Also, whatever she had, she'd make sure you had equal or better. She was a super-sized, collector cup, VIP pass, preferred seating, special edition, upgrade kind of girl. Whatever the best was, she wanted it and thought everyone else should have it too.
"Jer, your hair is orange," she said one afternoon just after my porn star friend had colored it. As we went to the beauty supply for dye remover, professional color and developer, I learned she'd gone to beauty school and worked in a salon as a stylist for a couple years. The finished color was a little more demure than what I wanted at the time but in retrospect, she did a damn good job.
From her little apartment in Hollywood she taught me 2 skills every young gay man should know: how to pick up boys in AOL chat rooms and photoshop.
"You want me to give you a smaller ass?"
She wanted to be perfect for her brothers. Her lineage was complicated: it involved a mother, a birth mother and a stepmother. She felt like she was a disappointment to them and because of this I think presented them with a sanitized version of her life. Am I going to disclose the un-sanitized? Nah. If she was here she could tell you plenty about me. She always wanted a home that would accommodate lots of people which (more than once) landed her in houses too large in size and mortgage.
She didn't have great taste in men. I tried to tell her the stripper she was living with had pipe burns on his lips from smoking crack but she wouldn't listen. That one had an ugly ending but the important part was he brought her Z car back. Yes, there's a lot more to the story but I'm not going to tell it.
Christmas 1998 she arrived at my apartment in Vegas. Something happened that we later agreed would be better to just never mention again. She always made an entrance, flipping a u-turn on my tiny street in the largest Ryder truck with Margaret trailered behind, driving over the curb, sidewalk, shrieks of laughter coming from the driver's window. I'd gotten a Christmas tree but hadn't decorated it. While I was at work, she'd gone out and bought decorations and gussied up my tree. I walked in the door and was horrified. "Country home" with little teddy bears and shit. I was furious. I hauled it down my stairs, threw it in the back of my truck and took it to an AA club, my Christmas donation. They were thrilled to get it. She didn't understand why I was so upset. I asked my boyfriend at the time why he let her do it. "She just DID it." She left quietly and we didn't talk for a couple months. Now I realize it was a totally silly argument and she was doing it out of the goodness of her heart. Hideous tree (shudders).
She met a German guy online and I actually really liked him, but I liked the crack smoking stripper too. They both tried to fix me up with his brother while they visited me in Las Vegas but I wasn't quite single. I told her she drove him crazy which I think isn't far from the truth. The husband after him was dreadful.
When I suddenly moved to Hawaii, Belinda took in my 2 cats and a dog. She loved them and did all the necessary (and expensive) quarantine stuff before delivering them personally. It was an arduous process that took many months. My boy kitty Elmo and Belinda didn't get along. He dug his heels in by pissing in her hallway every day. Little Sadie Dog bossed her Great Dane "Bo" around. Apparently 140lb Bo didn't sit until 17lb Sadie allowed it. Lucy was a perfect angel and Belinda loved her.
Belinda's biggest disappointment was never having a child. I know from conversations we had that there are Belinda eggs frozen somewhere in the San Jose area. I know she spent a great deal of money on fertility doctors. After her marriage to the German guy, her light started going out. She moved up to Washington just by the Canadian border. Visits to her family in the LA area became less and less frequent. She stopped returning my calls or would return one a month later. When she moved from a small town deeper into the sticks, I kn
"Jer, I'm going to be in town a couple days. If you want to see me and meet the girls (2 exchange students) come have dinner with us tomorrow night...or spend the whole day with us at Disneyland, my treat."
"I hate Disneyland."
"I knew you'd say that, but...we can spend an hour together or all day."
I'm glad I went to Disneyland with her. It was the last time I ever saw Belinda. We had an awesome day. We all got soaked on Splash Mountain, she bought towels for all of us. She saw me playing with a light saber and bought it for me.
Belinda was an alpha dog and as much as I expected her to butt heads with people, everyone loved her, except 1 or 2 who have something nasty to say about everyone. In the newscast immediately following her death, they mentioned her cooking thanksgiving dinner for the local (sizeable) Baptist church. Years ago when I still ate meat, she'd make "Belinda Burgers" which were bacon burgers with the patty cooked in bacon grease, melted Tillamook Cheddar on grilled sourdough. She took me going vegan as a personal affront.
I think it's easier to make friends when you're young. Good friends. As the years wear on, I have less and less friends in recovery because they drink, die or both. Belinda died 22 years sober. Of all my loved ones who have trudged the road of sobriety with me, only 1 is still sober. Some are dead, some are walking dead and those are the hardest cases. As long as they're still alive, I hope they can recover. I think of Belinda every day of my life. Sometimes I forget and picture her in her yard in Maple Falls playing with her dogs, goats and chickens. I can hear her laughter like she's still here. One of the last things she said to me was "we're gettin' old, Jer."
She once told me she wanted to have a license plate frame made that said "I've got a tank full of gas, a head full of dreams and boys, boys, boys." In my mind, it's on the back of Margaret, Wynonna's "Girls With Guitars" blaring on the stereo as she hits the gas.
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