Fast Girl (9 page)

At first, life without Prozac was fine. We'd settled into a life we liked in Madison, and I was busy with Kylie and the work I continued to do with Mark at the real estate agency. Although my state of mind was much better than it had been, my job was still a source of stress. I couldn't seem to do anything right, and I was constantly making mistakes, missing appointments, and embarrassing Mark, or that's how I felt. I was convinced he was always unhappy with me, and yet I couldn't tell him how overwhelmed I felt or how much I wanted to stop doing real estate.

Within three or four months, my depression crept back in, my mind once again spinning out of control. It started with a dark thought I couldn't shut off about hurting myself. The thought went away, then came back again. If someone had told me to smile, I couldn't have done it. Eddies of anxiety whirled through me. I couldn't sit still. But I couldn't seem to finish anything I started. I paced. I rocked. I started masturbating obsessively again. Everything was back, with a vengeance. I needed help, again.

I called my doctor for an appointment, and again, I was told it would be nearly three months before I could get in. Well, this time, I wasn't really on the verge of killing myself,
and so I didn't want to make a fuss. I figured if I could just go back on Prozac, everything would be fine. I found a different doctor who could see me that week. When I went in for our appointment, I explained what was going on with me.

“I've had depression, and I went off my medication,” I said. “Somebody told me that if you go off the drug you were on and then try to take it again, it won't have the same effect.”

“Well, let's have you take Zoloft, then,” she said. “It's good for depression.”

“Okay, great,” I said.

I was relieved to think it could be as easy as that, and in a couple months, I'd be feeling better again, just like I had after taking the Prozac. And it's true, it only took about six weeks for the drugs to kick in and start changing things. Only, this time, everything didn't go back to normal. Just as with Prozac, in a matter of a few weeks, I could feel the Zoloft working. I didn't feel depressed anymore. In fact, I felt great. I definitely didn't want to die. I wanted to live with a capital
L
. I wanted to live like I had never lived before. I wanted to run half marathons. I wanted to experiment, try new things, and have adventures far beyond our ordinary life in Madison, which now seemed too predictable and boring.

I suddenly had more energy than I could remember having for ages, and it felt amazing, especially after the heavy dullness of the depression. I couldn't wait to get up in the morning, and I made plans for all the things I wanted to do every day, zipping from one task to another, while already looking ahead to whatever I would do next.

Since officially retiring from competitive running following
Kylie's birth in 2005, I had been able to build a successful side career as a motivational speaker. I had soon started going far beyond the talks about self-esteem and positive visualization given by most athletes and begun talking candidly about my depression and my brother's death. Even on my darkest days, when it was hard for me to get out of bed, speaking came naturally to me, and I never felt nervous before an appearance. It felt so good to finally open up about a topic my family had never let me discuss, and to find that I had the power to help people, who came up to me after my events to confess their own problems and tell me how much strength and hope they'd drawn from my words. And now that the Zoloft had kicked in, I was being asked to make more and more appearances, which I loved, because all of my energy and enthusiasm seemed to be focused in the best possible way when I was speaking to a crowd.

I kept hearing that people liked the pep and positivity I brought to my talks, which usually found me getting the whole crowd up and dancing at the end. I wanted the people in the audience to feel as happy and free as I did, and for me, that meant being in motion, always in motion. I loved looking out over a sea of faces and seeing their expressions transform from reluctant embarrassment, when I first told them to get up and dance, into the kind of unselfconscious happiness I felt. That, to me, was a successful event. I wanted to do as many of them as I could. The only damper to my happiness about my public speaking success was my family's reaction. Wisconsin was a small state, and it didn't take long for word to reach them that I'd begun talking about Dan publicly. My mother was so upset
that she called an all-family meeting. While I knew she just wanted her family to be as close as possible, it felt like she was asking my sisters to gang up on me and take her side, and I left the conversation feeling more misunderstood and distant from my family than I ever had before.

Overall, I was excited about life again. As Mark and I began planning a special way to celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary on May 25, 2011, I was full of ideas for fun adventures we could have together. We both knew we needed to do something big, not only because we were approaching such a milestone in our relationship, but also because conflict at work and at home had been rising for years. Over the course of the five years we had worked together, as tensions escalated, it had gotten to the point where Mark often chose to spend long hours away from home, sometimes staying at the gym after work until past midnight. And when we were in the same place at the same time, it was common for us to fight. Although we were careful to always wait until Kylie was asleep or out of the house, sometimes our emotions got the best of us, and we even had a huge argument in front of Mark's father not long before our anniversary. Once again, I had messed up something Mark had asked me to do for a real estate transaction, but this time it was really serious, or so Mark said. Even though his dad was standing right there, we lit into each other, my hypersensitivity instantly touched off by any hint of criticism from him.

“Suzy, we could get sued,” Mark said angrily.

“Come on, Mark,” I said. “In the scheme of life, is it that big a deal?”

“Oh, it matters,” Mark said. “It matters a lot. We could get sued for a hundred thousand dollars. When something comes in, pass it to me from now on, okay? I won't screw it up.”

“Oh, come on, Mark,” I said.

“No, seriously, Suzy, I keep telling you that you need to learn this shit, but you won't. Are you just lazy, or what?”

“I have a learning disability,” I shouted. “You know that. Give me a break.”

Mark didn't believe I was doing all I could for our business, but that being said, he didn't like being mad at me any more than I liked being mad at him. His solution was to take on more of the work himself. If we weren't working together, we couldn't argue. We began to grow distant from each other, and I blamed the job, never my behavior.

By this point, I was fighting back tears. I hated when he talked to me like this. I did try, but I couldn't focus. Simply passing the real estate exam had been difficult for me, and I'd had to use all of the four hours allotted.

But even with these tensions, we'd been married for a long time, and many of those years had been extremely happy. I'd always thought I had the best marriage ever, one that was unique and incredibly special. Mark had at times put my running before his own career, and he'd done so gladly because he knew I had a special talent and a rare drive, and he'd wanted to do everything in his power to help me succeed. We'd both always loved each other unconditionally, in a way we'd rarely seen among our friends. Even though I was the life of the party and a total flirt, and Mark was quieter and painstakingly meticulous in his preparations for every detail of life,
we both accepted each other exactly as we were. We both got everything we needed to thrive in the relationship and knew how loved we were. Even with the recent tensions we'd experienced, we still loved each other deeply and wanted our marriage to work. When I started on the Zoloft, we were both optimistic that maybe this would lighten the mood in our relationship. And it did, at least a bit. Going into our anniversary, we were fighting less and looking forward to having the kind of romantic weekend that could reignite the spark.

A
bout a month before our anniversary, on a rare night when Mark came home from his after-work trip to the gym while I was still awake, I sat up eagerly from where I'd been watching TV in bed, or at least looking in the general direction of the TV. I was too excited to really concentrate.

“I've been thinking about our anniversary,” I said, leaning toward him.

Mark sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Oh yeah?”

“Let's go to Vegas,” I said, already fully invested in the
plan. We'd only recently discovered Vegas, vacationing there a few times because we both really liked it.

“Works for me,” Mark said, as he'd always loved Vegas.

Mark was always the one to plan everything in our life, and that's how I liked it. As he started to put together our anniversary trip, I kept thinking of all of the fun things we could do in Vegas. By the time we were five days out from our departure date, I'd come up with all of the ingredients for what I considered a perfect, wild celebration. I just had to find a way to convince him of my plan.

“When we get to Vegas, first, I think we should go skydiving,” I said.

“I thought you said you'd never want to do that. Remember Dan?”

“Well, I want to do it now,” I said, not feeling at all scared at the idea.

He laughed. “Okay, we could do that,” he said, a bit apprehensively.

“And then,” I said, pausing for drama. “I was thinking, maybe, we could hire an escort and have a threesome like we've always talked about.”

Mark drew back a little and looked at me closely.

“Talking about it is one thing,” he said. “Are you sure you want to actually do that?”

Although our relationship was strained now, we'd had a long and loving marriage with an adventurous sex life. We'd tried everything over the years, from sex toys to the Mile High Club, and we had talked about the possibility of having a threesome on several different occasions, even though
we'd never acted on any of these conversations. Mark knew I'd always had some attraction to women, although I'd never been with anyone but him. Although I'd grown up in a conservative town, I'd traveled the world from a young age and been involved in women's sports, where it wasn't at all uncommon to be around gay athletes. But then I'd met Mark and fallen deeply in love with him. From that time on, I'd never wanted to be with anyone but him. But I had wanted to have a threesome since we were in college, and over the years, we'd both wondered if this could be a good, safe way for me to explore my sexuality without putting a strain on our marriage. Now, I had confidence and clarity. I knew I wanted a threesome, and I was ready to make it happen.

“Come on, it'll be fun,” I said.

“Yeah . . . okay,” he said, grinning at me, like most men would. “It will be fun.”

Mark had set up the whole trip, booking us a nice suite at THEhotel at Mandalay Bay and a dinner reservation for the night of our anniversary. Now he started planning our skydiving adventure, and finally, finding a website for one of the high-end escort services. The next time we were home together, he pulled up some pictures on his computer and showed them to me.

“What do you think?” he asked, pointing to several girls we might choose from.

“She's pretty,” I said, pointing to a brunette named Pearl, who looked like a nice, sweet girl who could have easily been a schoolteacher from Wisconsin.

“I thought you might like her,” he said. “Pearl it is.”

I looked at her picture more closely, feeling a sizzle of excitement and arousal inside of me. Were we really going to do this? Yes, we were really going to do this. I couldn't even imagine, really, what it would be like. But I had a feeling I'd enjoy it. And it seemed so easy. Maybe it was naïve of us, looking back, but we actually thought hiring an escort was completely legal. As far as we were concerned, we'd be paying Pearl for her companionship, and anything else that might happen while she was in our hotel room was just a little fun between friends. In fact, if anything, it seemed like the service was more worried about us than we were about them. When Mark called to set up the appointment with Pearl, they told him that they'd need to run a background check on him, and they asked him to provide his work number, so they could call and verify that he was who he said he was. Obviously, Mark was a little uncomfortable with this, but the woman he spoke with came across as very intelligent and professional and she put him at ease by reassuring him that she could pose as whoever he wanted her to, and she did, pretending to be a representative from Wells Fargo when she made the call. Once we were cleared, the service called back to let us know our plan was a go. She asked us questions about what we wanted for our time with Pearl, including how we preferred her to be dressed. Mark was still nervous about the whole endeavor, especially because she would be coming to our hotel room. He asked that she be dressed normally, in everyday clothes, so she'd blend in. Me, I wasn't worried about anything. I was just very, very excited.

BY THE TIME WE LANDED
in Las Vegas, I was extra amped up, even for me. I felt like I was about to leap out of my skin, to the point where I could hardly sit still. In fact, the next day, when we found ourselves running late to catch the limo at another Vegas hotel that was going to take us to the skydiving location, and facing a snarl of impenetrable Vegas Strip traffic, I knew just what to do. As Mark and I stepped out of the air-conditioned oasis of our hotel into the bright dry heat of the Strip, he shook his head.

“Suzy, we're not going to make it,” he said. “Let's just skip the skydiving. We can hang out by the pool until it's time for our appointment.”

But I wanted to go skydiving, so skydiving we would go. I felt the old, familiar uptick of adrenaline, as if my veins were buzzing with electricity.

“Don't worry, I've got it,” I said.

“What are you doing?” he asked, laughing.

Just like that, I took off, sprinting, and Mark had no choice but to fall into step alongside me. He was in the habit of working out regularly at the gym and was in good shape, so he was able to almost keep up as I raced several blocks to the hotel where we were supposed to meet our limo, getting us there just in the nick of time. I did stop short, however, when I saw the limo, which was not exactly part of the luxury Vegas experience we'd been expecting. It was an old black beater, and part of the back tail fin looked ready to fall off. But the driver was already getting out of the car and rushing over to open the door for us. Mark and I looked at each other
and shrugged. I climbed into the backseat and Mark piled in after me. A young couple, along with the woman's father, was already seated inside, and we made small talk as we settled in for the drive. They were scheduled to do their jump right after us, and then we would all ride back to the Strip in the limo together.

The airstrip from which we'd make our skydiving ascent was about thirty minutes away. I was beside myself with excitement as we pulled up at the airfield, and there was no time for second thoughts anyhow. We were doing a tandem jump, which meant we'd each have an instructor strapped onto our backs, and as we approached the two men we'd be jumping with, they hurried us into our suits without taking more than a minute to give us the lesson and instructions we'd been expecting. Right away, it was go time. While the people we'd arrived with awaited their turn, we walked toward a gorgeous, brand-new plane, the bright afternoon sunlight glinting off the high sheen of its polish. Now
this
was more what we'd been expecting. Mark turned and smiled at me, finally looking a little more relaxed.

And then the men walked us right past the shiny new plane to a junky piece of shit with a missing door that looked about as structurally sound as the limo that had delivered us. Mark went back to looking nervous, but I just wanted to laugh even harder. I knew Mark was the kind of methodical planner who had researched every single detail of our skydive, making sure we chose a top-notch company that would keep us safe and give us the best experience possible. And, just like always, his meticulousness allowed me to be the one who didn't think
about the details and just enjoyed the experience. This was true now more than ever.

There was one other man in the plane with us, who had told us on the way up that he was working toward a certain number of jumps. As soon as we were one mile up in the air, he smiled at us, moved toward the open doorway of the plane, and, just like that, disappeared into the sky.
Wow, he fell really fast,
I thought, looking over at Mark. His face was white. Usually I was the anxious one and he was my rock. Not today.

It took another ten or fifteen minutes for us to reach our jumping elevation. As we climbed higher into the sky, Mark looked more and more unnerved, getting a little pale in the face. After receiving a signal from his jump partner, Mark was suddenly sitting at the opening, silhouetted against the bright blue sky, and then he was gone, too, before I had time to really adjust to what was happening or how I felt about it. My stomach dipped.
Wow, maybe I've been taking this all a little too casually. I didn't even say good-bye. I wonder if he's all right.

In a flash it was my turn, and I was being moved toward the door. The next thing I knew, I was falling down through the air. But inside I was rising up and soaring so high it was like the most powerful rush possible. There was a camera strapped onto us that shot video of me as I fell through the air. I talked to Kylie the entire time. “Oh my god, Kylie, you should do this with me someday. I will do this with you. Oh my god, this is incredible. You have to try this someday, Kylie.”

Watching the distant world below us, I could see what seemed like all of Nevada, the desert stretching out in subtle variations of brown and red, all the way to Lake Mead, thirty
miles outside of Las Vegas. It was spectacular. I
felt
spectacular.
Everything
was spectacular. This was the best day of my life. I whooped with pure joy.

After drifting down for several minutes, we landed in the desert, where Mark and his instructor waited for us. My instructor disconnected himself from my back and I turned around and gave him the biggest hug.

“Oh my god, you're so amazing,” I said to him, reluctantly letting him go.

Standing close, I leaned in toward him flirtatiously.

“Thank you!” I continued. “Thank you! That was so fucking amazing.”

I loved him. I loved Mark. I loved
everyone.
I loved the whole world. I was practically jumping up and down.

“Well, you're fantastic,” my jump partner said with a laugh. “I wish I could jump with you every time.”

“Can we go again?” I asked, ready to do just that.

Mark laughed and shook his head, like I was a little kid getting off of a roller coaster asking for another ride. He was used to my flirting and didn't take it seriously, especially on this day that was all about celebrating us and how far we'd come.

“We've got to get back,” Mark said. “We have to rush as it is.”

I was disappointed, but only for an instant, when I thought about what would come next. I could hardly wait for the others to finish their jump so we could make our return trip. When we were finally en route, the car suddenly came to an abrupt stop on the side of the highway. As we watched in bewilderment, the driver ran by our window to the trunk of
the car. Mark opened the door and a blast of hot desert air hit us full on as he climbed out to investigate. Never wanting to miss out on a possible adventure, I was close behind him. As we came around the back of the car, the driver was bent down, tearing off a piece of duct tape, which he was using to secure a piece of the wobbly tail fin to the rest of the car.

“You've got to be kidding me,” Mark said, pacing away a few feet.

I laughed. I was thoroughly enjoying myself.

“Oh yeah, hey,” the driver said, looking up at us sheepishly. “I am so sorry about that. Don't worry, though, everything is taken care of now, and we'll get you back on the road right away. We'll be back on the Strip in fifteen minutes. Tops.”

I felt a wild giggle rising inside of me, like the need to sneeze, but I managed to push it back. All the mishaps only made it better. Now
this
was an adventure.

“Hey, let me make it up to you,” the driver said.

Again, Mark and I looked at each other, this time with curiosity, as the driver reached into the back of the car. When he reappeared, he was holding two cans of Coors Light, and he extended one to each of us. “Here, it's on me,” he said.

Mark and I both looked down at the cans in our hands and looked back at each other. Again, not exactly the luxe Vegas experience we'd planned for our anniversary. But it
was
pretty funny. We both started to laugh as we climbed back into the limousine. We each opened our cans and knocked them together with a dull clunk.

“Cheers,” Mark said.

“Cheers,” I replied.

“Classy,” he said.

We both laughed harder and drank our beers.

I was already giddy with endorphins from skydiving when we got back to our hotel room just after six o'clock. The escort was due at seven. I pulled on a special bra-and-panty set I'd brought along for the occasion and then slid into a light blue sundress. It was short enough to show off my legs and looked good against my skin, which was tan from spending the previous day by Mandalay Bay's huge pool, although I'd barely been able to make myself stretch out on one of the chaise longues, and I'd been far from relaxed. I'd felt giddy and sparkly with anticipation all day—but now my mood was slightly shadowed with nerves. I kept wondering what it would be like when she got there. I suspected the girl in the photo would not be the girl who showed up at the door. I was expecting a stereotypical prostitute, unable to hide how worn out she was, even with her big hair, heavy makeup, and skimpy clothes. I didn't know if I would even be attracted to her, and if I was, if I'd like how that would feel.