Unfortunate Revelations

A sweet girl walked into the club about four months prior for an interview.  Bless her heart she was dressed in a button down shirt, dress pants, and sensible shoes.  She brought her ID and social security card.  We all exchanged a chuckle and she seemed very flustered when she had to audition, as in get naked, for a manager.  She pleaded for someone to lend her an outfit.  I lent her a minidress as were were about the same size.  She auditioned and landed the job.

She called herself Michelle*.  She was a huge Beatles fan and decided to name herself after a Beatles song.  Her first night she was so nervous she moved like she had just downed ten Red Bulls.  She was this petite little sandy-blonde sweetheart and we all fell in love with her.  She taught her everything and she went on to be top earner her second week.  We were all very proud.  She and I became good friends.

The one day, she vanished.  Her locker was still locked up with all her shit in it.  We wondered where she was, and she wasn’t returning my text messages.  Then one day she showed up, looking very tired.

Michelle had beaten the daylights out of some girl she said stole money from her.  When he story changed when she told it to me again about an hour later, I called her on it.  She was unable to lie to me and with tears in her eyes her story came tumbling out.

She beat the girl up because the girl sold her $300 in fake Oxycontins.  She went to get her money back and her friend searched the girls pockets after Michelle beat her bloody and held her to the ground by her neck.  There was a warrant out for her arrest for assault and battery, among other things.  Also, her father had been popped for having 15lbs of jane, along with scales and baggies, and the police wanted to talk to her.

She said she didn’t know what to do.  I said she needed to turn herself in, for one, or else shit would get so much worse.  Second, she should consider rehab.  She nodded but didn’t say anything.  She left right after.

She came abck about two weeks later with a bag of her clothes in her car.  SHe was on her way to the local rehab center.  SHe even showed me her admittance papers to prove it to me.  I wished her luck, then she left and I didn’t see her again for a month.

A month later she walked back into the club to get her job back.  But there was something wrong.  I was watching her and she was most certainly high.  I asked her lat out if she was on any pills, and she giggled and shook her head, but it was pretty plain she was on something.  It was cemented when she fell asleep at the bar, drooling into her lap.  She was fired, permanently, on the spot.

She came back in about a week later with a large garbage bag to empty her locker.  She admitted to me that she fell off the wagon two days out of inpatient.  She didn’t think she could kick pills, and she said trying was too taxing.  SHe was going to a different club, a club I knew had problems with drugs among the girls, and I told her so.  I also told her the end result of drug was jail or death, and I knew this, as the daughter of a mother addicted to meth.  It nearly killed her and she ended up behind bars for it.  I told her I knew she could do it, and one fall off the wagon doesn’t mean she couldn’t do it some day.  She said maybe, but she couldn’t do it right now.  She emptied her locker into the garbage bag, hugged me, then began to cry.

It tore at me, but one thing I learned from being around the forms of addiction for years, is many times to tears of an addict are crocodile tears.  I told her if she needed to talk, or cry, or rant, she mad my number, but I will not lend her money, and I cannot give her a place to stay and that I hoped she understood my position.  She nodded.  “I don’t trust me either.”

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