A Walk on the Beach after Meth Upended My Life

Slammed: a Memoir — Chapter 1 Part 5

I exited through the rear sliding glass door of the vacation home that served as cast housing. It had been a little over a week since it happened, and rehearsals for 42nd Street had been providing a good distraction during the day.

But not at night.

By the light of a nearly full moon, I walked over grass, passed the golf course driving range next door with its five-story high netting, and onto the street. With no real direction or care, I walked the residential streets of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. The moon was the only source of light because of an ordinance protecting sea turtles who lay their eggs on its beaches.

The breeze was warm, thinner than it had been during the heat of the day. The persistent chorus of frogs was everywhere. The palm trees and oak trees stood like black paper cutouts against a shimmering backdrop of a star-filled sky. Spanish moss hung from the oak trees like garland, like fringe, like strings you could simply pull and the tree would explode with light. The air was thick with smells foreign to me yet charming somehow. Sweet scents of flowers, but also decay, with the salt of the sea never too far off.

All around me something in the air, in the scents, in the trees with their moss, permeated it all. Something older than the vacation homes and golf courses that surrounded me. Older than the plantations they replaced.

An undercurrent thrummed through it all. The ground was pungent and bitter with history.

And I felt detached.

I felt I had been swept away by a flash flood, ferocious yet silent, unable to grasp for a root or a ledge to pull myself to safety, finally washing up on a shore of a foreign land. Like I had suddenly found myself in the wrong story.

I walked the hard pavement with no real direction, no real purpose, down streets, through neighborhoods, not knowing or caring if I could find my way back.

I found myself on a cul-de-sac of unfinished multi story homes. I walked up a set of temporary stairs into a home that was nothing more than thin bones coming together to suggest the idea of a house. The smell of raw, freshly cut wood was sweet and sharp. The wind from the sea was blustering. It had ripped loose a plastic tarp, leaving it to flap in the breeze like a weathered flag, like torn skin. I imagined kicking one of the 2x4s loose and causing the whole thing to come crashing down.

I walked through what I thought would be the living room, then the kitchen, imagining what the finished home might look like. Wondering what kind of life was led by the owner of such a house. This house, unfinished, with its thin bones and torn skin, felt distant, unattainable. I knew I shouldn’t be there. I didn’t belong there.

I walked out back onto the beach. Clouds had rolled in hiding the stars but somehow the moon still shined down. The wind off the ocean made it colder. I shoved my hands in my pockets for warmth. My shoes sank into the sand as I walked toward the water, the moon illuminating the breaking waves as they rolled toward the shore. All else — the water in front of me, the trees behind me, the sky above — was all black.

I wanted someone to find me. I wanted a man, cruising, looking for something, looking for me. I wanted someone, anyone, to find me standing there on that beach.

I wanted to be held. I wanted to be warmed. I wanted to be protected. Against the cold. Against the darkness.

I stood there waiting for some other human being to exist as the moon moved in the sky until she too went behind the clouds.

No one came.

I stood there, alone, shivering.

I turned around and found my way back.

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