In the two years leading up to the night I met my husband, there had been four deaths in my family. My dad’s brother and two of my mom’s relatives drank themselves to death. Literally. As in the film Leaving Las Vegas. Fortunately, that film had come out the year before they started dying, and it gave me the frame of reference I needed to process their deaths – sort of. You never expect this sort of thing to happen, at least not when you’re still in your 20s. Sure, I’d seen a friend overdose on heroin, but that was different.

On some level or another, I knew my dad’s brother, Winston, was killing himself with scotch and cocaine when we’d visited him a few years before.

The death of my grandma’s brother, Dan, was much more of a surprise to me. He was on the good side of my family, the normal side, my mom’s side. They were Midwesterners who had traveled the world in the Air Force but maintained their small-town values. Dan was my mom’s favorite uncle and my smoking buddy on family visits. He and I were the only smokers in the clan. Besides, he spoke to me like an adult when most of the family still treated me as if I were 12. I was one of three great-grandchildren, the oldest one, but still one of the babies. Dan and I talked about love and sex while drinking and smoking at the edge of my great-grandma’s driveway in Phoenix. That’s my last memory of him and of that house. After he died, my great-grandma was moved into a home. Dan had been her caretaker after he had retired from his role as the VP of Marketing of some big hotel chain.

My great-grandma’s house wasn’t a fancy one in a nice suburban neighborhood, but it was filled with love. I remember the smell of my great-grandma’s tea-rose perfume, her bath cubes and oils, the pink and gold marbled wallpaper in the bathroom, several hand-crocheted afghans throughout the home, ’70s green and brown shag carpet in the living room, and family photos everywhere.  There was always the smell of food cooking in the kitchen: granola baking in the oven, Cincinnati chili, and popcorn cooked in bacon grease on the stovetop, sometimes even spoon bread.

I’d sit on the barstool watching her cook, eating chocolate turtles and Almond Roca. At one time my family was huge, more than 20 people, and we completely filled that house. I was the first great-grandchild, so that place meant love to me. It was the one place in the world where I was cherished and special and wanted.

As I got older, my great-grandma’s and grandma’s generations started dying and my mom’s cousins left town, scattering to Cincinnati, Atlanta, and a few smaller towns in the South. Our gatherings got a lot smaller and Dan was left alone to take care of his mom.

We knew he was unhappy, but we had no idea how much drinking he was doing until the day my grandpa went to take a sip from the wrong glass, Dan’s glass, of what he expected to be water. That was three months before Dan died. Before that, we didn’t know anyone in the family had a problem. Or at least we didn’t talk about it. I mean, everyone drank, but not to the excessive levels of my dad’s side of the family. And there were no drugs. Then, out of the blue, Dan was found dead in his living room. He’d died of complications from drinking.

Two weeks later, my mom’s younger cousin David was found dead in a hotel room from alcohol poisoning. He’d sequestered himself in the room after his wife kicked him out. I hadn’t known him well, but he had been seated with me at the kids’ table a few years in a row, along with his wife, Mimi, when I was a tween.

Then, one year later, my great-grandma died. My mother and I flew out to Missouri and made the drive together from Kansas City to Mound City. The funeral itself was in Fairfax, a town of 700 people and 10 churches, but no motel. My great-grandma was well-loved in Fairfax. She had been actively involved in the Fairfax Christian Church as a young girl and into adulthood, up until she and her fourth cousin got married and moved to Cincinnati, where they opened a funeral home. I never got to meet my great-grandfather, but everyone in the family spoke highly of him. He was missed.

In Cincinnati, both joined numerous congregations across several denominations, though the bulk of their business was with Catholics, including several members of the Mafia. It was the Great Depression and the Mafia had money. Too many of the payments they received at that time were gifts of desperation: jewelry, silver coins that had been melted down into a bowl and pitcher, and various services that community members could offer. My great-grandparents were good people. Everyone said my great-grandpa had been a remarkable man. He died when I was just a baby. For me the center of my family was my great-grandma. She was all love. She had held the family together across generations, money struggles, and death. She was a true matriarch.

Her funeral ceremony was one of those overly religious ceremonies with guarded words explaining her death as “a move on to another life in heaven,” skirting the very real loss I felt, we felt as a family. The lack of acknowledgment of our very real grief was stifling, as was the gathering afterward in the basement of the church with its fluorescent lighting, endless cakes, cookies, potato salad, Jell-O salad, sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and soda. I couldn’t handle any of the food on this trip. It was everything I had ever binged on.

Most of my family members there were over 60 and unfamiliar to me. I felt walled-in with my emotions, without an outlet. I stood out as the only great-grandchild present and everyone wanted to talk to me, but all I wanted to do was run away and cry. And drink.

Things got even worse when we left the gathering and headed back to Mound City. Everywhere we went, I got stared down. I didn’t fit in. I thought it was my dyed-red hair and jeans, my age. The reality was probably that I was being checked out by the local guys, age-appropriate or otherwise, and sized up by the women.

Later that evening, my immediate family gathered in one of the hotel rooms to do a proper memorial the way my great-grandma would have wanted, the way we wanted to honor her –with Dixieland jazz and booze. My mom’s cousin, Scott, had brought a nice bottle of Captain Morgan’s. We each said a toast and drank a shot.

It felt as though my family was dwindling, dying off. There were fewer than 10 of us there: my mom, my grandparents, my grandma’s sister, Jackie, and her husband, and my mom’s cousin Scott. There were others who hadn’t been able to come, but still. We were tiny and it felt as if that was all that was left. I didn’t want my family to end. I felt the weight of that on my shoulders and the pressure to have a baby.

Marriage and children weren’t things I’d ever really thought about. I wasn’t entirely sure I ought to be bringing children into the world, either. I knew I was pretty screwed up emotionally and had never been comfortable bringing another person into my reality. I didn’t trust anyone, not enough to let anyone in – not all the way. Anytime I had, it had made things worse. I lost track of myself in romantic relationships. I’d let this other person tell me who I should be and what I should do until I would cut my losses and run.

I considered myself an utter failure in all of my attempts to build a great relationship. But I was 27 now and feeling that maybe all I needed to do was put my mind to figuring this love thing out. If I could be successful at work and school, I figured I could deal with dating, marriage and maybe even kids. I was in business school at the time, so I was meeting lots of people and feeling pretty confident about myself.

I started domesticating myself: cooking more, cleaning my house. I planted sunflowers and Mexican sage in the front yard. I stopped making out with random guys and stayed celibate for nine months. I went on dates. There were quite a few guys who asked me out, mainly fellow students, though most of the ones I hoped would ask never did because they were already married or otherwise attached.

At the start of my summer break in 2001, I took a batch of homemade absinthe to a party at a friend’s apartment in Sherman Oaks. I was wearing a red velvet tube top with tight, dark Levi’s. There were two guys flirting with me in the kitchen: one a successful but socially awkward C.G.I. animator and the other a handsome, charming, broke writer whose actress sister had brought him to the party. Being true to myself, I asked the writer if he’d ever tried absinthe.

“Yes.”

Dick had never tried absinthe before. Probably a good thing because mine wasn’t the best–tasting – but he didn’t say a word. I figured out his lie a few months later, well after we’d started calling each other daily and spending our weekends together.

The one thing I can say about Dick was that he was easy. I got him drunk on our third date together and made him watch Requiem for a Dream with me. And then we fucked on the carpet in front of my television. Then on my desk. Then on the bed. Then we got up in the morning and messed around on the couch and in the kitchen.

 My nine months of celibacy were over! 

In the early days of our relationship, we had fun. We had wild, passionate sex and drank a bit too much. But I was still living by myself, saving the reckless, raucous relationship for the weekends. When we were at his place in Hollywood, we were surrounded by his sister’s filmmaker friends. I met Rob Zombie and Sheri Moon at a wrap party for Toolbox Murders right after House of a Thousand Corpses came out. There were film premieres and awards parties, ongoing film and writing projects with her neighbors and the various people she met along the way.

Two years later, when his sister moved to Austin, Dick and I moved in together. All of his sister’s friends were out of the picture. We spent our weekends drinking and shopping. He didn’t always make it home by a reasonable hour at night, and sometimes came home drunk. But I was working out in the evenings and bringing work home. I was making good money at the time. We lived right off Third Street on Orlando in a giant 1920s apartment.

Things were looking good for my future and my plan to get married. It took a few months of arguing, but Dick finally agreed to get engaged. I started planning our wedding and designed my engagement ring. I asked my mom if I could use the diamond from her engagement ring from my dad. She’d taken to wearing it as a toe ring and said yes.

It was a beautiful ring. I had it made to match a pair of earrings Dick had bought me the first year we were dating. They were beautiful, white-gold flowers with aquamarines clustered around an amethyst. The ring wasn’t terribly expensive since we’d reused the diamond. I knew how much it cost. I paid for it.

A few weeks later, he went and picked up the ring and proposed to me in front of a sculpture of the Hindu goddess Shri Lakshmi at LACMA. I had hoped he would take me to the Getty with its spectacular views of the city to propose, but LACMA had been the spot of one of our first dates. After he proposed, we went straight to Molly Malone’s for drinks, and spent the rest of the day drinking.

The first giant red flag I ignored was straight from my subconscious mind. I was determined to get married on April 31. Really determined. It took a few conversations with locations and wedding planners before I understood that April 31, 2005, wasn’t a real date on the calendar. I accepted May 1 as the date. A Sunday.

Next, I wrote the ceremony myself, throwing in enough “God” for the Christians but not too many for the atheists in my family. Nothing from the Bible. I handpicked poems for our mothers to read. My mother read, “A Variation on Sleep” by Margaret Atwood, and Dick’s mother read Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.” I wrote our vows. My family walked the aisle to Blondie’s rendition of “Follow Me” from Camelot. Dick and his groomsmen marched out to Johnny Cash singing “ ’Cause I Love You.” And then my bridesmaids and I made our entrance with PJ Harvey’s “One Line.” I cried as I made my way toward Dick, looking into his eyes the whole way there. It took me a minute to catch my breath before the ceremony could start.  I was thankful for the length of the song.

The only contribution that Dick made to the wedding was picking the closing song, PJ Harvey’s “We Float.” Ending with that song, of all songs, should have told me something. You carried all my hope until something broke inside. It should have given me pause. But the advances had been paid, the invitations sent.

In the final weeks before the wedding, I realized that Dick hadn’t done anything regarding the wedding bands. I found white gold replicas of 17^th-century poesy rings online that read “cuisle mo chroide,” which means “pulse of my heart” in Gaelic. They didn’t arrive on time though, so I bought a couple of cheap silver bands for the ceremony.

Three weeks before the wedding, Dick realized his out-of-state Texas driver’s license was well past expired. The new one did not come in time to get a marriage license. Our marriage was not legal.

We ended up driving to Vegas a month later with my mother and a friend of hers as witnesses to make it legal. Dick and I were drunk and high on blow, but I looked fabulous in a white skimpy mini-dress and four-inch platform heels as I walked down the aisle.

In my defense, through all of these mishaps, as I walked face-first into these gigantic red flags, I was focused on other things. Once the wedding was planned, I bought a condo. And then I hired a personal trainer to get my body into perfect shape. I worked out twice a day and lived on energy drinks. The day I got married, my weight had hit a new recent low, not medically anorexic low, but 25 pounds lower than it had been the year before. I was obsessed with my body and appearance. I ignored what was going on with Dick. He was secondary to my goals, really. I was determined to own a home, get married and then have a child. Never mind that Dick wasn’t the right partner. I mean, I was in love with him, or had been at one point. We just weren’t right for each other. I wasn’t rich enough to afford him or who I became when I was with him.

The week of the wedding, we flew out to Austin. Dick’s family lived there along with Winston and several other members of my dad’s family. The wedding was to be performed outside on the lawn at the Four Seasons, walking distance from the bridge with the largest bat population in North America. It was a beautiful setting with trees, a lawn, and the Colorado River right at the edge of the property, glinting in the distance.

It rained all day, every day, the week of my wedding, right up until the morning of May 1, 2005. The news that week was filled with updates on the search for Jennifer Carol Wilbanks, the woman who had run away from her home in Duluth, Georgia, a few days before she was scheduled to marry John Mason. She was finally found two days before my own wedding amid speculations that she had been kidnapped or killed. It turned out she had simply run away. Everyone was talking about it. The staff in the hotel gym joked with me about it. I was the blushing bride staying at the hotel.

The day of my wedding, I was relieved to see the sun rise, bright and full without a cloud in sight. I got up early and worked out, then ordered champagne and lox and fresh fruit for the bridesmaids and my mother as we put on our makeup and got ready. Dick’s sister was the last of the bridesmaids to arrive, two hours later than expected, so the first round of photos ended up being rushed.

After the photos had been taken, we went back up to the room. Guests were starting to arrive. The planner had promised to ensure that Dick and his groomsmen didn’t see us as we went back up. But, of course, we walked right into each other. The wedding planner apologized profusely. I laughed and kissed Dick on the cheek.

The ceremony went smoothly other than a quick ring mix-up. He’d accidentally put his temporary silver ring on my finger, and then, of course, mine didn’t fit him. But otherwise, it was the single most beautiful party I ever threw. Everyone danced and had a good time. My younger cousin Suzanne caught the bouquet. My father gave a speech that was the closest thing to an apology to my mother I have ever heard.

And then it was over.

We flew home the next day. When we got back to the condo, I looked at my life and nothing made sense. I immediately started using cocaine again after five years of abstinence. My personal trainer hooked me up. It was Hollywood, after all.

In the first six months of our marriage, Dick spent all the money he’d received for our honeymoon on booze, and then he got fired from his job for drinking. He told me he was laid off, but with the amount of drinking we were doing –not to mention his clonazepam –he wasn’t handling work all that well. Besides, he was drinking over the lunch hour and possibly before he even got to work.

We went into debt. I refinanced the condo. I would love to blame Dick entirely, but I had a cocaine habit and liked eating out at fancy restaurants and drinking expensively. We were supposed to be celebrating, right?

I think the only thing I really liked about being married was being able to flash my ring when guys were hitting on me. For a while, it was nice having Dick join me at work events and such, but by the time we got to our first Christmas seven months after the wedding, I found myself buying a gift and card for myself and having him sign it. All he really wanted to do was drink.

I did everything: paid the bills, cleaned the house, bought the groceries, managed the budget. I even painted the bedroom while he was asleep on the mattress in the middle of the room with tarps all around him.

He drank everything that was in the house. The first time he drank an expensive bottle of wine I’d bought to share, we argued a little but I let it go. Soon thereafter, I started buying stuff I knew he didn’t particularly like: mezcal and gin. Over time he drank those too.

He eventually got another job as a videogame tester, which didn’t pay as much as the salary he’d made as a production manager. It paid enough for him to drink and maybe chip in a sixth of the monthly mortgage payment.

One late, drunk Saturday night, we ran out of cocaine and I decided we ought to check out the strip club down the street on Sunset.  Our sex life was more or less nonexistent by this point, so it seemed like a good idea.

The experience was pleasant but they didn’t serve booze, so after a few dancers had performed, we left. As we were walking out the door, I went through my purse looking for the valet ticket and held my jacket out to Dick.

“Could you hold my jacket for a minute?”

“Why don’t you hold your own fucking jacket?”

And all of my frustration and pent-up rage came rushing out.

“Why don’t I hold my own FUCKING jacket? Let me see, let’s start with, I paid for the strip club. I pay the mortgage, I pay the bills, I do the laundry, I do the cleaning and you can’t be bothered to help me with my fucking jacket? FUCK YOU!”

The valet brought the car around and we both got in. I continued to yell at him. He’d ask me to let him out of the car. I’d stop and let him out, drive around the block and pick him up again. He’d get back in and I’d keep yelling, driving 50 miles an hour down residential streets. He’d ask me to let him out. I’d stop. He’d get out. I’d skid out the tires driving off, then circle back around.

“Hey, get in again. I’m not done yelling at you!”

He got in the car for maybe the fifth time and we both looked at each other and started laughing.

“It’s kind of funny. I told you to get in so I could yell at you some more and you did.”

“Yeah, I did.” We smiled at each other.

Driving up the hill to our home, the oil light came on in the car. Apparently I’d busted the oil pan going over a dip in the road. I drove the car all the way home and damn near destroyed the engine.