The door was closed. I was ready to go out, but I lost my keys on average about once a week. They would always turn up in the strangest places--the laundry bin, a trash can where I put my really bad first drafts of literature, and even once in the seldom used microwave; it came with the apartment. Somehow they never turned up in the refrigerator.

I had learned to leave my door unlocked because possessions had stopped meaning anything to me. If someone wanted to take something, that person could have it. I lost two digital cameras that way. I had the bad habit of taking in strays for a few days so they wouldn't have to suffer the intense California rain outside or, even worse, the brutality of the Claremont police. I didn't know which was worse--having a warm place in jail but getting bruised all over or suffering the natural elements that living so close to the sea could bestow at a moment's notice.

I also took in drug addicts. I may be naif, but they had mothers who loved them once (I hoped) and they needed a place to stay and food to eat. Often they would agree to do some work around my home, but it never was done and expensive items were missing. I just didn't care anymore. My parents were dead, I talked to my sister once around Christmastime, and my friends were tired of my constant depression. It has been eight years, they told me. It could have been a lifetime.

There were some success stories. Tom was off crack and teaching down in San Diego, and Ryan had found a male lover and a place to live in West Hollywood. They never came back to thank me. The priest said God's thanks were enough, but why did I not feel God's thanks? All I felt was that God hated me. Everyone I loved was gone. Sometimes I had left them so they would not have to suffer the pain of living with someone who was mentally ill.

I always let myself take the blame in these situations. Not realizing how self-pitying it was, I always said It was all my fault; I was too crazy. My friends tired of helping me look for my keys at least once a week.

But there was a more important key, one that I had thrown away. I thought I had done it out of compassion, but I really had done it out of selfishness. I wanted to be alone. I didn't want anyone else to suffer, and I thought I knew what other people's sufferings were like. So I alienated everyone who loved me. When I needed sex, I turned to prostitutes; I thought in my misguided mind I was helping the poor and homeless. However, all I really was doing was using them. So I stopped and turned to alcohol and drugs, both so easy to find in Los Angeles.

The drinking bothered my friends immensely. I would get up at 0400 hours (I never forgot military time or living in Europe), and work until 0600 hours when the liquor stores opened. I would go buy a bottle and come home and write. I could do it for a while, but then I would pass out. I discovered that cocaine or crystal meth could keep me going. But the meth made me incredibly sexual but incapable of having sex, so I turned to masochism. I couldn't feel anything any way, so why not let someone have his or her pleasure beating me?

One day I was online, cruising for sex, and I received an instant message. I read your profile, it said, and I think I would like to meet you.

Why on earth? I wondered. But I thought Why not? I started to give him my address and he said he knew where I lived. How on earth did he know that? He said he would be by in half an hour.

I didn't put on a shirt so the marks would show up better and just threw on a pair of gym shorts and put a sharp single tail whip on the bookcase near the door. I figured he had been to my home before to beat me.

It seemed like hours. Finally there was a knock on the door. I knelt down in a submissive position and said, "It's open."

The door opened and a well-dressed Ryan came in. I hadn't seen him in ages.

What are you doing on the floor and why are there welts on your back?" he asked.

"Don't you want to beat me?" I said. "I would get off on it. Why do you think the door was unlocked?"

"It was closed and unlocked, but now it's open. I heard about the dire straits you have fallen into from a mutual friend, but I had no idea it was this bad. I've come to open your heart back up again, like it used to be."

I started crying. I had been beaten to a bloody pulp several times and felt nothing, but these tears were real, and oddly enough, they felt like tears of hope.