He was always late to dinner. He slept through Christmas. He was late to
his mother’s funeral. He asked if they had taped it because he missed it.

His house was the party house. The house was infamous for addicts. It
brought together the famous and glamorous, more precisely, the formerly
famous and glamorous. They were really all one hit wonders. They loved
success, but they loved drugs more. Their delusions had plummeted them to
the bottom of the Hollywood food chain, but when they were high they were
still movie stars: indestructible, immortal movie stars.

He lived in a house made of glass. The house was perched up in the
Hollywood Hills, even though it was see through, it was secluded. He was
incredibly generous, and lonely, and they all took advantage. The house
held secrets. The house was a secret world where vampires gathered.

He got deeper and deeper inside the cave he had built, Hell on the Hill. As
the years passed, time seemed to slow as he deteriorated. He was so
intelligent. He had a photographic memory. He loved the world. He loved to
travel and be in the water. He would wake up each morning with a need to
discover, a need to travel and learn and see. This all vanished. Instead of
the adrenaline of life running through his veins poison flowed through his
blood. And it spread and spread into each and every speck of skin, through
every vein. The red lines and shapes were the staves and notes of his
demise. The lines looked more alive then he did. His skin became
translucent and his hair grew longer, tangled, and lifeless. His muscles
and bones became weak. He was a vampire too; living in his own world where
each and every night the other ones would join him wearing masks of real
people that they once were that one-day had functioned in the real world.
They thought they were functioning humans inside their heads of mush and
high. I was ten years old when all of this got frightening.

*

I always dreamt about the vampires. I always wanted to bust through the
front door and walk inside to see them all at night. They were all sucking
on poison, drinking it and injecting it, their sustenance, and their
demise. The thing about them was, they were all real and vampires were made
up. There was the homeless man that lived on the roof. He didn’t want to
bother anyone. He kept quiet. He would whistle old blues songs to keep him
company. I think he had been in the army. He had a faded tattoo of an eagle
on his now weak arm. I wasn’t scared of him; he had a friendly face with
white whiskers.

There was the man who lived in the bathtub. His clothes were all worn and
muddy. He stank up the bathtub and caked it all in black mold. He wore
heavy combat boots untied. His head shaved and across it a tattoo that
read: This Way Up. Just in case he forgot.

There was the rap star that wasn’t really a rap star. He used to sing soul,
but he thought it was too old now that the rap is what the kids are
singing.

There was the woman who lived in the closet. She said she couldn’t leave
it. Her old singing boyfriend had locked her in one.

There was the woman wilting like an old flower. Once glamorous in black
cocktail dresses, now uniformed in laddered tights and sweatshirts. She
told me once that she would never get into drugs, she would get him off
them.

And there was the other woman. She used to be a writer. She used to be
bright and her red hair used to shine under the California sun. Now it had
made a nest of dreadlocks that she wrapped in an old tea towel. She never
left the couch. She would eat old Betty Crocker cake mix out of a bowl even
when it had run out. She would watch QVC all day and order old antique eggs
and worthless gemstones. She still sounded very posh when she spoke: “I’m
going buy them and sell them all for profit.” Boxes of QVC orders lived
around her in piles. She ordered all of her goodies off the man’s American
Express.

Sometimes there was the Dominatrix with low self-esteem. She would walk
around the house in head to toe leather or P.V.C. crying, crying as she
dropped her whips and her chains.

One day I went to the house. As I walked to the front door I looked up at
the roof. The homeless man wasn’t there. I walked round to the other side
of the house. There he was in the grass clutching his old Walkman. BB King
playing through the beat up headphones. He had fallen. The fallen roof
angel had fallen and was no longer breathing, but he had a smile on his
face that reminded me of my grandmother. Right before she passed my mother,
my aunt, my cousins and I were gathered around her. There was a smile on
her face and her eyes were closed. Her smile stayed there with her red
lipstick on her lips.

It is hard to see someone break. Especially when they are addicted,
especially when you can’t help them unless they want it. I never thought he
would ever get help.

The last time I saw the woman she had developed a disease that infested her
skinny legs, now even skinnier, with awful blotches. In a funny way even
though I had only known her for a short while and only had a glimpse of the
healthy version of her I felt close to her. I felt like I could tell her
things and that she would listen.

I sent letters to the woman at rehab when I was allowed to contact her.

She got better quicker than the man in the glass house. She never forgot
the letters I sent. She kept them all.

Illustration by Carolyn Tripp