Rock Bottom Was Only The Lobby

Tag: #comingofage

  • Pipe Bombs, Tail-less Hamsters, & No Leg Steve: Mom Bartending Through Hell

    Pipe Bombs, Tail-less Hamsters, & No Leg Steve: Mom Bartending Through Hell

    (Photo credit: Me & my cousin Shonna on a float trip down Illinois River)

    Spring was a blur after my stepdad Richard died in what I can only describe as the world’s most inconvenient garage explosion. One minute we’re a normal(ish) family, the next there’s a hole in the deep freezer patched with duct tape like some redneck war wound. I avoided that garage like I owed it money. The air felt heavy, cursed, haunted by whatever the fuck Richard had been up to. Running in for frozen meat or ketchup? I sprinted like the devil himself was chasing me with a lit fuse. Silly? Maybe. But trauma makes you superstitious.

    The FBI hung around for months afterward, asking questions we couldn’t answer and parking unmarked cars nearby to watch who came and went. Eventually they ghosted, leaving the pipe bomb mystery as our family’s favorite unsolved true-crime podcast episode that actually happened in our garage.

    Plot twist (you’re welcome, I won’t make you wait 20 years like I did): While staying at a surrogate “uncle’s” house visiting, (actually an old client from my mom’s secret double-life days) I casually mentioned what a fucking weirdo Richard was. Then I dropped the gem: “And who keeps pipe bombs when the whole family is home?!” Uncle calmly informed me that Richard had been selling explosives to the Mexican Mafia. Oh, and my dads brother once middle-manned a deal for a live claymore mine. A claymore. For the Mafia. In suburban Oklahoma. My jaw is still on the floor somewhere in 2002.

    Important note: The people who knew those details are all dead now. If they weren’t, I wouldn’t be telling you shit. I’m no snitch.

    Suddenly a lot of things clicked. Like how we always had money even though Richard wasn’t a doctor yet. And why Mom came flying down the stairs after the blast, told me to grab my sister Rachel and the neighbor girls, and run next door, because she knew exactly what that sound meant. She wasn’t going back to sex work (Richard wouldn’t allow it), so apparently blowing shit up for cartels was the family business plan. Cool. Normal.

    A couple months later, around May, we got a frantic late-night call from my Uncle Johnny (Moms brother). Aunt Susan needed the hospital, something was very wrong, and he’d been drinking so he couldn’t drive. (Why no ambulance? Still a mystery. Oklahoma logic.) Mom & a friend hauled ass in her Isuzu Trooper from Broken Arrow to Bixby, they carried my gray-looking aunt into the car, and drove like bats out of hell to Saint Francis. Miraculously, no red lights the entire way. She made it, slipped into a coma, and we were left wondering what fresh hell this was.

    I was 13. My cousins came to live with us while Aunt Susan was out cold. By then Richard had been dead about six weeks. Mom was still mostly in bed, Grandma was working in-home health and gone for days, and suddenly my mom had five girls under one roof. Enter my dad, the bartender/manager at The Bottom Line in Broken Arrow, who showed up one evening, marched upstairs, and told Mom to get her ass out of bed, shower, put on something cute, and meet him at the bar.

    She laughed. He wasn’t joking.

    “You’re gonna learn to bartend,” he said. “You need a real job. You can’t go back to the industry now, the girls are getting older and starting to notice.”

    Mom, being the fast-learning people-magnet she was, dove in. She was gorgeous, hilarious, and could make the phone book sound like a stand-up routine. People loved her. Before long she was working nights at The Bottom Line, and later at C.J. Moloney’s, selling personality and shots instead of her body, and actually making it work.

    That summer turned weirdly awesome. Mom would take all five of us to Albertsons and we had two buggies again, one for her, one for us kids, and basically say “get whatever you want.” Just like the old days. Grandma hooked us up with pool membership (including the cousins). We lived on MTV, BET, junk food, and chlorine. It was the best summer ever, which is insane considering the spring had featured a mafia-adjacent explosion and a coma. But when you’re all drowning in the same shit storm together, you somehow float.

    During that same coma summer, Mom started dating Jimmy. He had two little hellions under seven that I got stuck babysitting way too often. Those kids were absolute freaks, they once cut the tails off Rachel’s hamsters. Like, snip-snip, no tails, just because they could. Ewww. Little psychopaths in training. Weirdly, I’d still pick babysitting them over dealing with Rachel any day. I no longer have a relationship with my sister, and stay tuned, you’ll get that story one day.

    I actually liked Jimmy. He had full custody, a good job, his own house with a pool (which I loved), and he was good to my mom. He just didn’t like Rachel (the one Richard had spoiled like a princess). Fair, she’s… a lot. Still is. Jimmy also drank too much. They lasted about a year and a half, including a memorable Ohio Christmas trip. I was genuinely sad when it ended.

    Then came the parade of not-so-serious guys, including one who tried to impress Mom by buying me an expensive watch and this giant hot air balloon/gift basket for my 16th birthday. Dude, gift the woman you’re sleeping with, not her teenager. Weird.

    Freshman year brought Steve. Steve was 25 (only nine years older than me, ew), had no legs (train accident as a teen), and got around fine on prosthetics. He also sat around doing nothing while Mom supported him, then tried to play stepdad and boss me around. He even coached my little sister’s basketball team. A guy with no legs. Coaching basketball. I affectionately called him No-Leg Steve. (Yeah, I was a bitter little shit. Still kinda am.)

    They dated about a year and a half. Shortly after the breakup, when I was 17, Mom went missing for five days. No one had seen her. Work hadn’t heard from her. I was losing my mind but knew better than to call the cops, our family doesn’t do that. Right as I was about to break the rule, she called. Steve had kidnapped her, held her hostage in a hotel, and repeatedly raped her in a fit of rage and desperation.

    I wanted to call the police. We didn’t.

    Recently I saw No-Leg Steve’s obituary. Everyone described this beloved, wonderful man who died of cancer. Not the arrogant, bossy rapist I remembered. Karma’s a bitch, I guess. He deserved it.

    The biggest lesson from those middle-school-to-early-high-school years wasn’t the explosions, the mafia side hustle, the coma, the hamster mutilation, or the kidnapping. It was watching my mom’s insane resilience. She fell apart after Richard died, bed-bound, depressed, barely functioning. Then my dad dragged her up, taught her to bartend, and she ran with it. She provided. She bought name-brand consignment clothes, let us have grocery cart freedom, and she was always there for us, even if it wasn’t always the healthiest way. The Xanax and Arby’s came when we were dealing with stressful or upsetting situations like a breakup or fight with a friend. Again, not healthy but she was doing her best. She did it all with a smile, cracking jokes, and loving us unconditionally.

    It’s okay to fall apart. It’s okay to break down. But my mom showed me what surviving, and then thriving, actually looks like. She did the damn thing, every time.

    Thanks for coming to my Oklahoma trauma dump. Pass the Arby’s.

  • The Secret In The Suburbs : My Mother’s Double Life

    The Secret In The Suburbs : My Mother’s Double Life

    The Mirage of Normalcy

    Growing up is a universal struggle, but for most, there’s a roadmap. You have parents who, in an ideal world, act as the bumpers on a bowling lane, keeping you from sliding into the gutter. For a while, that was my life. My mom was the efficient office manager for Greenwood; my dad was a grease-stained mechanic who could fix anything with an engine; and my grandma was the backbone of the house, juggling shifts as a bartender and an at-home health aide.

    Those days were draped in the blissful beige of the American dream. We were “normal.” But normalcy is a fragile thing, and in our house, it didn’t just crack, it shattered.

    The Slow Unraveling

    It started with the paychecks. My dad’s money began disappearing into a haze of drug use. Then, the betrayal at my mother’s office hit like a physical blow. Her boss, a man she had served loyally, asked her to train his niece. My mom, ever the professional, poured her knowledge into the girl, only to be handed a pink slip the moment the training was complete. He didn’t just fire her; he replaced her with nepotism and a cold shoulder.

    Pretty soon, payday became a ghost story. My dad wouldn’t come home. I was eight years old, and while I couldn’t articulate “financial ruin,” I could feel the electricity of anxiety in the walls. I knew my dad was a shadow, and I knew my mother’s silence was heavy with a mix of fury and soul-crushing sadness.

    The final straw for my mother came while making the bed. My parents had a water bed and while tucking the blankets in between the frame and mattress on my dad’s side, she pricked her finger on a used syringe. Even after the divorce, the chaos had a rhythm. They stayed friends, which meant I saw my dad whenever he was “up.” The rule was written in stone: If Daddy is using, he visits us at home. If he’s clean, we get the weekend at his place. I lived for those weekends, even as I learned to swallow the bitter pill of disappointment. The no-shows, the “I’ll be there in twenty minutes” calls that turned into three-week disappearances, that became my baseline.

    The Lady at the Table

    Survival took my mom to the Cajun Boiling Pot. It was a local seafood joint where the air smelled like Old Bay and desperation. Nightly tips weren’t just extra money; they were the difference between keeping the house in Broken Arrow or losing everything.

    Then came Chris.

    She was a customer who didn’t quite fit the scenery. She spent the entire night staring at my mother, making cryptic, lingering comments about her beauty. My mom was beautiful, striking, actually, but Chris looked at her like an investment. When she finally paid her bill and walked out, she left a business card face down on the table.

    “If you want to make some ‘REAL’ money, give me a call.”

    The Transformation

    At first, the change was a whisper. The atmospheric pressure in our house dropped. My mom stopped pacing. My grandma, usually sharp-tongued and stressed, began to soften. Then, the whisper turned into a roar of new things.

    We went to Scaggs for groceries, a trip that used to be a calculated battle of coupons. Now, my mom handed me my own cart. “Put whatever you want in it,” she said. I remember the weight of that permission, the sheer luxury of not having to check the price of a box of cereal.

    For herself, the transformation was cinematic. The tired waitress was replaced by a woman draped in Dillard’s finest. She smelled like Estée Lauder Private Collection and expensive hairspray. There were real-hair wigs, designer heels, and a new “job” selling Visa and Mastercard services. But the biggest sign was the new phone line installed in her bedroom.

    “Don’t EVER answer or use this phone,” she commanded.

    I would sit in the hallway, heart hammering, trying to catch snippets of her voice through the wood of the door. Who was she talking to? Why did the phone ring at such odd hours?

    The Parade of Men

    Then came the boyfriends, a revolving door of security.

    • Ben was the wealthiest, driving a car that looked like it belonged in a magazine. He moved in, got rid of all of our worn out furniture and decor and filled our house with luxury. They got married right there in our living room. Six weeks later, he was gone. Oh, and so was his stuff.

    • Ed the Optometrist was the “handyman” who fell off a ladder while painting our house, breaking his arm in a clumsy attempt at domesticity.

    • Bobby was the romantic, leaving behind stacks of mixtapes. My mom never touched them, but I devoured them. To this day, the sounds of Salt-N-Pepa, Mariah Carey, and Marky Mark are the soundtrack to my confusion.

    I started to see the pattern. My mother wasn’t looking for love; she was building a fortress. She had tried college, she had tried the 9-to-5, she had tried to play by the rules, and the rules had left her broke and abandoned.

    So, my mother, the PTA member, the doting homeroom mom, the woman who never missed a school function, became a high-dollar sex worker. She started in a “cathouse” run by Chris and eventually started her own “outcall” business out of our home, right under the noses of the quiet, manicured streets of Broken Arrow.

    On the outside, we were the perfect suburban family of girls. On the inside, we were living a lie that was about to catch up with us. Little did I know, the “good life” was about to cost us more than we ever imagined.