The Caribbean island of St. Thomas undulated in the heat as I stood in the emergency room of the Roy Lester Schneider Hospital, my hands stained the burnt umber of dried blood. My heartbeat pulsed in my ears as I wandered under the flickering yellow lights, flashes of memory asserting themselves: the last drinks we had before smoking a joint in the parking lot; the decision to not call a cab and instead to drive; the seat belt tightening across my chest as the Suzuki Samurai flipped gracelessly over as we rounded the bend of road; the terracotta retaining wall stopping the little jeep from continuing to roll; my friend’s body splayed in the grass, unmoving; the sight of my boyfriend slumped at the wheel, skin from his scalp hanging with a wet carelessness over his right ear, the blood dripping onto his shoulder.
Fractured glass from the windshield glittered across my lap as I shook him, and I noticed that even as he was unconscious, his knuckles seemed to be as white as the moonlight as he gripped the steering wheel. The sound of sirens punctured the night air and suddenly the small mountain road was flooded with flashing red lights. As if by magic, I found myself standing on the gravelly shoulder, with no memory of how I emerged from the car. I watched in horrified shock as the rescue team heaved the jaws of life to the driver’s side door in an attempt to remove Kevin from the driver’s seat. A woman I didn’t know stood beside me and lit my cigarettes, tiny pulses of light amid the chaos.
***
I arrived on St. Thomas in the fall of 2004 after having spent two years in the scorching heat of the Arizona desert. A friend of a friend had an uncle that rented rooms to the transient population of wanderers that came to work the tourist seasons in the islands and I was able to rent a small room overlooking the Caribbean Sea for $250 a month. Another girl living in the house worked at Sib’s on the Mountain, a local restaurant tucked into the greenery of Lerkenlund Estate, high above the tourist traps of Charlotte Amalie, and she offered me a serving job there. It was within walking distance of the house where I was staying and I enthusiastically accepted, having had no other plan in mind.
In the months since moving I had tried to acclimate myself to island life. Alcohol was the centerpiece of every social interaction, whether it be overflowing cups of sweet rum punch, icy Painkillers sprinkled with cinnamon, green bottles of Elefanté or just straight shots of Jegermeister, Grand Marnier or Goldenschlager served in silver or plastic ramekins. It wasn’t even vaguely uncommon for the bar patrons at Sib’s to order “roadies” before meandering out to their vehicles which were parked in the gravel in front of the restaurant.
As an employee I was able to run a house tab, paying for all of my drinks out of my upcoming paychecks. I took advantage of this and opened each shift with a shot of “Grand Ma”, the thick orange liqueur coating my throat as I moved about the restaurant and back patio, placing paper placemats and rolls of silverware on each table. Swaying under the sweetness of my daily shot and the weed smoke I inhaled on my walk to work, I found myself flirting with a regular named Kevin.
Each day around 5:30pm he would take a seat at the bar, his shoulders a glistening bronze from having spent the day taking out tourists on fishing trips on his brother’s catamaran. He would eat with gusto, his golden hair shimmering as he ordered bottle after bottle of Heineken. I liked his easy laughter, and we had both spent time in Arizona, so we reminisced over bars we had gone to there. We knew some of the same people, but our paths had never crossed even though he attended Arizona State University and I worked at a restaurant in the heart of Tempe.
Kevin lived with his brother near the house I was renting a room in, and before long we began hanging out at the beach, each of us toting coolers full of beer and sandwiches from his cream colored Suzuki Samurai to the sheet we had spread in the sand. Hours would pass as we chatted and smoked cigarettes, drinking our way through whatever beer we had brought.
Having earned a degree in Anthropology at ASU, Kevin was taking a year off from school before going back to get his PhD.
“Are you familiar with Martin Buber? He’s a philosopher that I have spent a lot of time reading. He believes that it is in a relationship that we become fully human. And that to love someone is to feel a responsibility for them, and to want to help them in any way you can. It’s a really beautiful concept. Did you ever read I and Thou in school?”
I stretched out on the flowered sheet we had brought, and dug my toes into the hot sand. “No. I didn’t finish school, or even really start for that matter.”
My skin prickled in preemptive defense, “I went to art school but it wasn’t right for me. I couldn’t really be creative on demand, and it was so expensive. I didn’t even last two quarters. I was supposed to have gone to the University of Cincinnati, but at the last minute I changed my mind and went to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.”
In the years since dropping out of college, I had felt untethered and I found myself becoming more and more ashamed of the decisions I had made.
“It was hard, you know, my mom had a lot going on during my senior year of high school and I kind of just went on a whim, even though I probably could have used some guidance. My best friend during that time, Laurel, I mentioned her to you, she was going to school there and so I knew someone. Immediately though things just went off the rails. School was so much harder than I anticipated and the Graphic Design program assumed we had computers, which I did not. It was easier, and so much more practical, to go to work. I started picking up extra shifts and missing classes. I was so broke, Kevin, you have no idea.”
What I didn’t mention was that at every opportunity throughout the fall months of 2000, Laurel and I swallowed rolls of ecstasy, and snorted fat lines of coke, and drank until every single available drop of alcohol was gone. As a newly minted adult, cocaine and ecstasy and alcohol glowed white hot and it garnered all of my attention. She and I both worked in a touristy sprawl of restaurants and shops along the Monongahela river, and I earned a measly $5.50 an hour. I wasn’t old enough yet to serve alcohol in the state of Pennsylvania, so I was confined to the hostess desk, smiling through a hangover as I led people to their seats.
I rolled my shoulders at the memory, “I was basically living off of those little twenty-five cent packs of crackers from Rite-aid and cans of Mt. Dew and soup that I stole from work. At one point I was actually stealing quarters off of Laurel’s bedroom floor so I could take the incline to work.”
“You can always go back, or try something different.”
I squinted at him and took a long sip of the Red Stripe beer I was holding. “Yeah, you are right, I guess I could.” I finished my beer and stared out at the sea.
***
In the months leading up to our drunk driving accident, Kevin and I spent more and more time together. In the balmy Caribbean heat we would meet after our work days ended and float around to the little bars in Red Hook and the Frenchman’s Wharf. Alcohol was a constant companion, both in the bars and out. We camped regularly, lugging heavy bottles of red wine into the bush with us, or loading cases of beer onto the dinghies we would take to the little unpopulated islands just off the coast of St. Thomas. We ate mushrooms on Jost Van Dyke and went to the Full Moon Tea Ceremony on Tortola in the British Virgin Islands.
Most nights, however, followed the same pattern. We would pull up at the bar, ordering a first round of drinks, smoking cigarettes and chatting with the other bar patrons, many of whom we had come to know on the small island. Our conversations would begin with innocuous topics like the guests we had served that day or plans for our next trip. Eventually though, as the sun would fade over the edge of the horizon and alcohol pumped through my bloodstream, I would inevitably turn the conversation back to our relationship.
“I just want to know what you are thinking. Do you see this lasting? I mean, I do, I can see us getting a little apartment here and just staying on awhile longer. You could put off school for another year. Or you could go to UVI!”
“Honestly, I worry that there might be someone out there for you that is better than I am and that you might rather meet them. Do you think that? I mean, does it matter to you that I don’t have my degree?”
“What do you mean by that? Do you think we would break up if we moved back to the States?”
“Do you miss her? What would happen if she came to visit? Would you want to spend time with her away from me?”
Although Kevin was as hard drinking as I was, it was clear to me that we were on different paths. He viewed this year in the islands as a break from real life, but he had every intention of returning to his studies and earning his doctorate. I on the other hand was adrift, completely unmoored from any particular dream or goal that I wanted to achieve. Occasionally I would draw, or write something and show it to Kevin, more as an effort to appease his desire to have a more focused and goal oriented partner than myself; not because I actually cared about creating. On my days off, I preferred to ameliorate my hangovers by watching the Gilmore Girls on the small tv in my bedroom and to wait for night to fall, when I could begin drinking in earnest.
I was constantly hungover and woke up most mornings needing to vomit. My skin broke out horribly and I couldn’t figure out why, even as I spent each and every night drinking. There was a sort of saturated desperation to the island life that was becoming more visible to me; like a ring of warning encircling the moon. The Caribbean could be a place where one could come to forget, and to ease instead into a life smoothed out by endless bottles of rum and the sound of waves lapping at the shore. It could be a place in which no one would ever ask you to remember who you wanted to be. This notion was alluring and with each passing day I became more accepting of the oblivion.
And so, the night Kevin wrecked his jeep and broke his neck, the course of his life changed. Mine however, did not. Not really.