The W(hole): Have You

by Caitlin McGill

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photography by Greg Schmigel—Unsplash.

Are you coming home soon? the text from your sister reads. Did you forget Grandma was stopping by? Mom and Dad are getting worried. Where have you been???

You’re fifteen, on an air mattress in a dorm room, yesterday’s halter top and tight jeans still sticking to your skin. It’s sunny. Your parents are twenty minutes west and have no idea you party with college kids. Your temples throb as you turn to find your friend Anne, a few feet away and asleep in her sister’s University of Miami bed.

You can’t remember getting here and you have to pee, bad.

In the bathroom, on the toilet, you see in the middle of your thong a red stain—Didn’t you just have your period? Then you remember gulping vodka-Sprites at someone’s house with Anne, standing in a kitchen, noticing the tall stranger noticing you. Dane?

Your neck heats. You don’t remember walking out with him, but you do remember the inside of his silver car, not round but not square and parked beneath a palm tree. Something about his college classes. His words—We can try it, if you want—words that must’ve come after the question:

Have you ever...?

Have: to hold or maintain as a possession, privilege, or entitlement—I have a car; I have a choice; I have a story to tell.

Or: to feel obligation—have to have.

And another: to experience especially by submitting to, undergoing, or suffering—I have a cold.

Now, thirty-one and newly sober, you don’t feel like you possess what happened with Dane: neither the agency nor the complete memory. Definitely not pleasure. Did you, then, experience it? Have it? Perhaps only in the sense of obligation, and in service of your wish to be desired. Did you, as in another definition, partake?

You remember leaning the passenger seat back. You remember the flutter in your chest: he wants me. You remember stopping. You remember trying to seem cool. You remember pain’s replacement: a soda can and Dane’s words, given like a gift, Some girls like to spit it out, but special girls like to swallow.

In the dorm bathroom at fifteen, you look away from the stain—We probably didn’t. We definitely didn’t. You tuck paper between your legs and flush. Brush your hazy teeth. Ignore your sister’s call. You slide into Anne’s red Civic and drive to Denny’s, where you order the Grand Slam.

My Caitie Boo! Dad says when you open the front door. He’s been dozing off to golf in the living room. Mom’s in bed, eating her salad and Wheat Thins while watching Young and the Restless on TiVo. You offer quick hugs and convincing lies—Anne’s mom made pancakes! Forgot my charger!—and head toward your bedroom. Lindsay, two years your senior, opens her door and whispers into the hall outside your rooms, Where were you? Your old friends say you’re sneaking out. Have you been sneaking out? Have you been drinking? Why are you doing this to me?

Why are you doing this to ME, you want to say.

She has not told Mom or Dad her worries—she does not want to tell on you, but she also does not want you to die. You roll your eyes when she says this. In the hall you insist she’s overreacting, and when she’s not convinced you hiss, I’m done talking. You step into your bedroom and lock the door.

Are you doing drugs? Lindsay whispers through the wood. Hanging on the inside, near your TV, is a poster of Bob Marley smoking a blunt. You slip into pajamas and get in bed. Through her looming tears she repeats, Why do you keep doing this?

This is a question you won’t know how to ask yourself, let alone answer, for years.

You were fourteen when you first drank.

Mom was ten.

Now you’re fifteen and your parents are tired. After long days of starting IVs, Mom drinks a few glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon. In his recliner, feet from his framed Purple Heart, Dad sips Absolut and orange juice. They’re never wasted, never throw things, never twist your wrists like the man you’ll soon meet. They’ve never missed a soccer game or spelling bee. You still get A-’s without finishing books for English, but you’re getting C’s in AP Bio—they do notice this. But they believe your excuses; they shower you with kisses and hugs and You’re so pretty, you’re so smart.

They weren’t drinking when you and Lindsay were born; they started again when you were ten. Now most nights they’re…out of it, extra sleepy. They don’t notice when you pour Mom’s wine into a paper cup, sip it in your room and text Dane, who your parents don’t know about. You wait ‘til they’re asleep to pour Dad’s vodka into a water bottle, peel off the label to remember what’s inside, and slip it beneath your shirt when you sneak out.

Soon after Dane’s silver car, you spot a stack of homemade fliers in the kitchen and realize: Your sister planned a surprise, for your sixteenth birthday, for you! Despite her fear of breaking rules, and despite how much you’ve always fought—her brown curls in your hands after she pushed you off a table at Disney World; her bite mark on your thumb and your scratches on her chest—she and her friends seem eager to expose their hipbones now, too, to drink with you.

At the party you feign surprise. You drink from a keg in your sister’s friend’s backyard, no parents near. You’re impressed with Lindsay’s planning, but no one’s drunk and you don’t see many guys.

You text Dane.

When he responds—I can be there in a few! ;)—your fingers shake. You assume you’re just excited.

In the kitchen, he says something he thinks is funny, so you playfully push his chest.

He touches your hip. You smile at the tile. Run your fingers through your side part and flip your hair to the other side.

One of Lindsay’s friends pulls you away. You don’t want to hang around with him, she says. Trust me.

Why not?

He’s no good. Just stay away from him, okay?

We’re just friends, you say, certain she likes him too, and then you laugh through your nose and turn back to him.

Days later, Dane picks you up from another party. You swallow your vodka and take one last hit from Anne’s bong and cough so hard you drool. You tell Anne and her sister Dane’s waiting outside, his parents out of town. Get it girl! they shout as you slip out.

What do you do on the high drive? What songs in the speakers? You vaguely remember the windows open, your frantic hair, your humid brain too baked to stay awake.

Sometime in the night you come to. An Irish family crest above a bed, a TV buzzing at his body. You wrap yourself in a sheet. Walk until, a toilet.

You sleep off and on until the sun is up, the window warming, your body a puddle and the blinds a cloud. You text Anne, Hola chica! Pick me up?

But then Dane’s saying he wants to go again. You’ve only ever “gone” while blacked out with him and, have you ever seen him in the sun? His limbs seem thin, his dirty blonde hair greasy.

Then he’s behind you and your eyes are open and closed and open and closed, your gritted teeth stopping you from speaking. You flinch but he keeps going. And then your phone is singing Rihanna’s “S.O.S.” and Anne is waiting and you’re saying you have to go. You have to.

Have, as transitive verb: I don’t have time to stay; I have to go.

He seems displeased. Surprised. Like the vending machine took his dollar. Like they’re all out of Cooler Ranch.

You slip on your two shoes. When you drop into the car, Anne turns to you, smiling. So, are you part of the club now, too?

You see Dane one more time, in daylight in his car outside your house. You’re surprised he’s not alone—behind the wheel is some guy you’ve never met. Sit with me, Dane says as he opens the passenger door and introduces you to his friend. Dane has you on his lap, your spine curling like a fishhook, your stomach crumpling like used foil. When you stand Dane calls you Sweetie, says, See you. Pinches your side and stays seated. And that’s it. That’s the last time you see him.

Maybe he stops texting. Maybe a new crush. Maybe this is around the time you fall in love with Ecstasy.

Or maybe it was your crumpled stomach, no alcohol to numb you from your sense of how little with him you have.

A few months later, at someone’s sweet sixteen, your new crush Nick grabs the mic and asks you to be his girlfriend. You cover your face with your hands, as though you don’t love the public display of being claimed.

At the after party, at Nick’s parentless house, you drink and drink.

The switch flips.

The next morning you wake with wet hair.

A flash of last night: Nick and you in his mom’s shower, barely room for two.

As you lie there untangling your damp hair, Nick rolls toward you and says, smiling, I didn’t know you were so sexual, Caitie. Laugh and look away. Sort of see yourself there, after the shower, on top of him, your hips moving toward the past.

Have, in present perfect continuous tense: something that happened in the past, and that's continuing in the present: Where have you been???

That night, Nick’s mom still away, he asks it: Was that your first time? Had you ever…?

His hazel eyes studying yours—concerned? A smile starting at the corners of his prickly mouth—hopeful? That you’ll say Yes, you were my first? That you’ll say No, I hadn’t?

Not really, you say, pulling his mom’s pillow to your chest. Well, sort of, I’m not sure…

Okay good, he says, I’d feel a little guilty if...

But—he sort of seems less happy now. Like he wishes you said yes.

The next time a guy asks, the sun’s up and you have not been drinking. Diego, the twenty-two-year-old you met while shrooming, he sits on the edge of your bed and looks at you.

You’re still sixteen. The AC condenser outside your window is spinning and Mom and Dad are at work. Weeks ago, they picked you up at the South Beach Police Station, your hands cuffed. Underage drinking. Dad angrily blamed the kids you were with, blamed anyone but you.

Now you lock your door. Brush aside your baby blanket. Diego’s Sidekick whispers against the window: Robin Thicke—“Lost Without You.” Your bottom lip between his teeth, your mouth mimicking his, then moving down his neck and naturally hairless chest and finding his stomach, his stretch marks.

Your lips keep traveling south. Diego fingers your shoulder and says, You don’t have to… Have you ever…?

You say yes, but never like this. And it’s true: without alcohol, you are more conscious.

Then you tell him what you’ve never told anyone. Dane. The red stain. Special girls.

I’ll kill that fucker, Diego says. You’re still in bed. Mom is probably clocking out, walking through the sliding hospital doors and into the heat.

You don’t yet see Diego’s response as possessive. When he holds your chin, you curl into him and think, This is different. Naked and sober in daylight, telling this “romantic” twenty-two-year-old the truth.

Nearly every day for two years, until you leave for college, you drive past Dane’s house. Sometimes you’re alone. Often Diego is beside you, twisting your wrists or punching your steering wheel or threatening his life when you protest.

For six years, Diego has you. Half of high school and all of college.

Whether or not Diego is beside you, you could in theory avoid Dane’s street. But—

Maybe unconsciously you want to return to this scene, to conquer it without speaking it, to stare straight ahead until you’re beside it and can’t stop your head from looking left.

Maybe you want to keep passing it, the window you saw when you woke, the glass you’ll be stuck behind for years.

You escape Diego for Boston: Grad school. Twenty-two. Six years since Dane. One day you wake to a pounding head, and a guy with chest hair. When you speak, he seems sweet. He’s your age. Outside, this guy, Noah, says he’ll text you. You laugh. He’s sad that you’ve laughed. But you’re already burning away the shame, the anxiety, the sex you don’t really recall.

He does text, and you drink together every week. You become obsessed with straight As again, so busy you barely feel your body shrink. When it brings you to therapy, you finally talk about Diego and Dane, and though you don’t admit how often you wake hungover and confused, you remember your first blackout.

A couple months before Dane. New Year’s Eve, 2005.

Your bronze heels match your lip gloss. Your dress is blue or purple. The kitchen yellow or white. The Bacardi 151 is also bronze. The liquid burns but soothes your stomach, relieves your spine: no storm inside your mind about your flaws. Just your head buzzing as tipsy-you starts to do what sober-you wouldn’t. Halfway through your first drink you’re already fearing its finish. Thrilled when you remember: you can have as much as you want. The warm glow inside you. Then the swirl. Who will stop you? Drinking tells the low-lit party mirrors to tell you that you look good—good enough to be loved. You’re confident, daring, special. Consequences do not exist.

You’re fifteen. You’re laughing. Then you’re gone—a lizard tail squirming even after its head and stomach have detached.

Your next memory is of an unlit part of the backyard, a college guy (one of Anne’s sister’s friends?) from this college party standing against the house, his dress shirt caught on concrete. Trash cans to his right. You in a squat, not sure how you landed here. Feet away, the party. His fingers behind your head.

Maybe his is the hand that inadvertently flips the light, helps your hippocampus hold a flash: Your palm on the house or on his thigh, pushing. The knowledge you’ve done or almost done something you never have.

Or: the feeling that you were too fucked up to log what was going on and now suddenly, partially, briefly, you’re alert—somewhat aware that you were too gone to choose but now for a second maybe you can. But just what is it that you want?

Trash can and concrete and hands and hair. That’s all you recall when you wake with Anne, on another air mattress, this time in an empty room. The people who own the house are moving. The air everywhere is very cold.

You adjust your angry bra and exhale when you find your metallic blue Nokia, one of your bronze heels. But where’s the other? Then you ask about the guy in the dress shirt.

Maybe you want to confirm his existence. Maybe you want him to call. Maybe, something else.

There were lots of college guys and dress shirts, Silly, Anne says. About him, you say nothing more. If you’ve even said anything. If you even know there is anything to be said.

You search and search. Anne’s sister and her friend, they say, We’ll keep looking. For sure it’ll turn up before the move. Mouths open and close, chug water, replay the wild night. Voices echo through the house, like in the playroom after you and Dad emptied it to paint. The fan pushing air around and around over your head. The room’s the same room, you told Dad as you jumped around, but so different!

Two months later, Dane.

Eleven years later, twenty-six and wasted at a conference. Still dating Noah (it’s been four years; you were happy for three). You remember the poet’s face near yours, but not your lips touching. You remember a table in a dark, windowed classroom, a space anyone could enter if they tried. Your tampon inside you, so, I can’t. You remember your mouth remembering an alternate. You don’t remember goodbye.

A friend wakes you. She’s your ride home, in a bit of a rush, and you are still in your tight dress and teal eyeliner and you must be drunk. Birds are chirping. You don’t remember and you remember and you don’t remember and you can’t let yourself remember and you are throwing clothes into a suitcase and hauling it down the stairs, you are grabbing a glazed pastry in the lunchroom, and you are in her car. Then you’re in a department store in some town off the highway, pushing through clothing racks toward a bathroom, and you are telling no one, not a soul, and after four hours you are pulling up to the building where you live with Noah—Noah—and you are inside and saying, Hungover, need space. In the bathroom you undress: bruises on your boobs. And then you are in the shower and you are in bed and the door is closed and Noah is not allowed to touch you, not for months.

You tell two people what happened at the conference: your therapist, and a single friend. This is important, that you told so quickly.

But you keep repeating the combination: blackout + sex with someone you just met. Someone who’s not your partner. You didn’t think you were a bad person but—why do you keep—

You’re not sure you want Noah, but you stay. Two years later it almost happens again, so you finally pack your things and he tells you there’s a ring and you tell him the most loving thing you can do for him is go.

You try to stay single. Try not to have sex too quickly. You stop taking birth control: What do you think and feel and do when it’s just you?

You still can’t see how drinking blurs this answer, how alcohol alongside injury impacted your young brain. For now, you ask: Where did she go, that middle-school kid and her friends lying about their ages in AIM chat rooms, laughing so hard she peed? Two years later, tenth grade, that guy on New Year’s Eve. Two months later—Dane.

You flirt with women, though you’re only brave enough to do so when you drink. Is that also something you lost? Never discovered? You feel alive in your desire and you find more of you and, sooner than you planned, you fall in love with another man. This one does not drink much. This one does not take too much from you. This one, Channing, asks, months later in bed, Do you feel sexually expressed?

You shrink. You cry. You have no idea what he means but you assume you’ve done something wrong. You have not given him what he wants. Even though…you sense his question is truly about you.

You fall hard for him, how he’s worked on his own past through “shadow work”; how he asks on New Year’s Eve where in your body you feel anxious: For example, it might feel like a stone in your stomach; how he revels in relativism and two things true at once.

Two things true: He loves you, and he does not want to possess you. He wants you to have you. He wants you to partake. He wants to know what you really want.

You keep uncovering the old you, the kid slipping whoopie cushions under her big sister’s seat, making fart noises with her armpits and palms. Still, once or twice a week with friends, you drink quite a bit. You don’t know how to stop. You don’t remember getting on the bus or in the Lyft. Don’t remember buying ranch-flavored Wheat Thins at Shaw’s. Where did you lose those sunglasses? Hide away the crumbs. Hide away the shared bottles. Hide inside your accomplishments. Every few months, even if you haven’t drunk as much as your friends, the lights flip. When you and a friend rent a remote house to write, when you’ve had several drinks but are neither stumbling nor slurring, you ask her to walk around with you before bed, double-check the window locks. The next morning, when you say you didn’t sleep well, nervous in this unfamiliar place, she says, Aww, checking the windows didn’t help? You ask, When did we check the windows? and she looks concerned. She explains.

Two years later, when you and Channing are living near the ocean north of Boston, an old friend stays the night. By three p.m. you’re both drinking. At sundown you’re drinking, holding hands like little kids as you walk, offering your other hand to Channing, giddy. You tell her secrets you could never tell her before, all that was taken, all you’re taking back. How much better your life is these days.

A few drinks before dinner, a few during. You will not remember getting home. Will not remember stepping onto the balcony or looking down. You will not remember the moon above the tide. Will not remember pulling out the whiskey—you’ve never actually liked whiskey. Wine. An entire bottle. THC chocolate, too. Melatonin? You will not remember unearthing more. You will not remember getting lost.

But you get lost.

You get lost

you get lost and

hours later you wake up on your own mattress.

Your stomach feels knifed and your head hammered and you realize—blackout. The worst in a long time.

Where did you—

How did you—

Did you—do it again? If you don’t remember, have you partaken?

You’re thirty-one—a teacher and partner and friend—you could’ve fallen from the balcony. Could’ve bruised your face, like Mom. That’s why she and Dad stopped. You could’ve pulled Channing down; Channing, whose body and mind still light yours—

You like your life. Why do you keep losing yourself? Losing choice? Losing consciousness? What is keeping you stuck?

I understand if you don’t want to work with me anymore, you tell your therapist.

Gently, she asks, Why wouldn’t I want to work with you?

Seven years of therapy and still—

Then she gravely offers a term you’ve never heard or never paid attention to: Alcohol use disorder. She thinks, though you never drink alone like your parents did, never drink daily or before brunch, you might have some version of it.

Hearing the phrase, possessing words that might explain where your brain goes, you feel relieved.

It’s as though you have been trapped behind a window: you couldn’t see the glass, so you kept running into it.

Repetition, your therapist says, is often an attempt at mastery. Repetition is telling you, “Look here! Pay attention to this situation you keep returning to. There is something you need.”

Have, as auxiliary verb, also called a “helping verb”: Where have you been???

The thing that hurt you is also trying to help.

The session ends. The semester begins. You stop drinking. You swallow the weight of how your prefrontal cortex failed, how your frontal lobe and hippocampus went dark, the maze you’ve been stuck in for sixteen years. You stand before your students and talk confidently and then you remember your eroding self outside the classroom. You take the train home and change clothes and run along the beach and sob.

For weeks, your body wakes you before dawn, new sentences in your head. You watch the sun scratch neon lines across the dark sky and then you write.

You text your sister and your parents, I have something to tell you.

You open the window and climb through.

---

Caitlin McGill’s essays have appeared in Blackbird, Gastronomica, Iron Horse, Hunger Mountain Review, McSweeney’s, Vox, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the 2021 Chautauqua Janus Prize, winner of the 2020 Indiana Review Nonfiction Prize, and a staff scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She has been a writer-in-residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, Ragdale, and VCCA. Three of her essays have been named Notables in The Best American Essays. She is an Associate Teaching Professor of Creative Writing at William & Mary and is seeking representation for her first book, longlisted for the 2024 First Pages Prize. Subscribe to Caitlin on Substack at Turning Down the Noise.

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