Lifestyle
L.A. Affairs: How I learned the difference between love and survival in a chemsex world
On Christmas morning, the man I thought I needed left me in another man’s cabin.
Hours earlier, Thom and I had been sprawled on the floor of a Santa Rosa utility closet where we’d been living, passing a meth pipe between us. I was 34 at the time. The mattress barely fit and it folded like a taco beside lube and dead torch lighters. Thom, in his 50s, had become my partner in chaos.
“Christmas. Anything you wanna do?” he asked with a tenderness I didn’t trust.
I scrolled Grindr. I’d traded seeing my family for crystal meth and the relief of nobody expecting anything of me.
After crashing my mom’s car and a stint in jail, I couldn’t face her disappointment. A decade in New York had promised stardom; by Christmas 2016, the promise had curdled. All I had left were men who only wanted my body. That was all I had left to give.
I showed Thom a torso-only photo on Grindr. “This guy’s having people over.”
He squinted. “That’s Ed.”
Thom’s Prius wound into Guerneville, a gay mountain retreat with meth undercurrents. That’s where Ed, a onetime costume designer, held his gatherings. Porn playing, GHB Gatorade, torch lighters that actually worked — everything we’d failed at. Billy, who was in his mid-20s, answered the door naked.
The cabin smelled of rot and wood smoke. We stripped down. It was part ritual, part performance. It’s how I’d stayed high and housed for the last few months. So I knew what came next. I knew my role. I pulled on a jockstrap two sizes too small.
Ed, who was in his 60s, grinned. “You’ve got that ‘West Side Story’ face, like you’re about to break into dance at the gym,” he said.
“Well, I played Tony,” I shot back. “No dancing for me.”
He laughed, and we were off, trading theater jokes, wardrobe malfunction stories and references Thom couldn’t follow. Thom’s jaw tightened as our connection excluded him.
He watched, his contempt spilling over, calculating whether I was worth competing for.
His face said exactly what I was: too much, replaceable. We were all using each other: Ed and Thom locked in an old rivalry, me the bait that kept older men supplied with boys. Billy was about to be replaced by me — I didn’t care. That was the cycle.
Thom yanked on his jeans, gave me one last sharp look and slammed the door. I waited for his car to circle back, even just to tell me off, but it never did. So I stayed with Ed.
Months blurred together without Thom. His absence weighed more than his presence ever had. With Ed, there was more than meth and sex. He spoke to the part of me that still loved literature, pop culture, acting — the part I assumed died. It wasn’t love the way people imagine it, but it was the closest thing I’d felt in years.
We settled into a routine of smoking, not sleeping, drawn curtains and dirty dishes until one morning I made peace with dying in a chemical haze.
“You really loved Thom,” Ed whispered over eggs neither of us wanted and then added, “I’m just glad I won.”
The words were petty, but I knew what he meant. I wasn’t just another Billy. In his own broken way, Ed cared, enough to know I didn’t belong there, not forever.
I stared at him, trying to read his next move. Was he kicking me out?
“If I let you stay here, I’d never forgive myself.” His voice was low, steadier than usual.
Ed was a dark character, fueled by his own hurt — he didn’t need to consider my future, he could’ve kept using me like everyone else had.
“Would you take me to L.A.?” I asked.
Ed nodded. “I’ve got an uncle in Venice.”
So we packed up his orange Honda Element. We tried leaving a few times, car loaded, engine running, but we were too high or too terrified of life on life’s terms. Then we finally made it. Even collapse felt easier in motion than rotting in that cabin.
The Central Valley stretched endlessly with dead grass and lawyer billboards. As palm trees started appearing, the air felt different — warmer, full of promises I hadn’t earned. But I told myself I would — if I could just get clean.
Ed’s uncle’s garage apartment reeked of must and jug wine. It was blocks from Venice Beach, yet still a prison. I didn’t know how to break free from the drug or the cycle that had trapped me. “Isn’t there a Ferris wheel on the beach?”
This was me trying to sound like I’d be willing to brave the world outside. But Ed knew better.
“That’s Santa Monica, the pier.”
The next day I reached out to Diana, an old college friend in North Hollywood. I’d told myself just get to L.A. — old connections would save me. But the look on her face when she saw me, my emaciated frame, the chemical burn under my clavicle, sour smell I couldn’t mask, told me otherwise. She hugged me stiffly, then pulled back.
“Jesus, Nick,” she said.
Ed said he was leaving and going back to Guerneville, but I begged for one more night. At a cheap motel, I accused him of hiding drugs.
“They’re my drugs,” Ed snapped. He grabbed his keys and was gone.
Abandonment had a sound — engine noise fading into Ventura Boulevard traffic. By morning, I still hadn’t slept. Outside, the sky burned neon pink and orange, the kind of L.A. sunrise that’s beautiful even if it’s born from smog. I just lay there, listening. Every car that slowed could be Diana or nobody.
At 10 a.m., she knocked, flinched when she saw me and helped me into her car. On the drive, she filled the silence with inconsequential chatter, as if nothing had changed. I pressed my forehead to the glass and counted palm trees to slow my heart.
Three months later, I landed at Van Ness Recovery House, an old Victorian in Beachwood Canyon under the Hollywood sign — 20 beds, three group sessions a day and nowhere left to lie.
The program director, Kathy, slid me a scrap of paper. It had a phone number with an area code I recognized.
“Ed?” I asked, though it wasn’t really a question. I knew what was next. I’d told the whole story in group. She knew everything.
“No contact. Ever,” Kathy said. I nodded.
“Tell him it’s over, and then hang up.”
Kathy handed me the phone. My hands shook as I dialed.
“Nick! How are you, sweetheart?” Ed answered, his voice warm and familiar.
Tears came before words. “Ed, I can’t … They say I can’t talk to you anymore.”
Silence stretched as Kathy watched and waited.
“But you helped me. You got me here. You …”
“Hang up, Nick,” she said firmly. “He’s a backdoor to your recovery.”
“I have to go,” I whispered.
“Wait, Nick, …” he started, but I hung up, Kathy’s eyes still on me. I handed the receiver back to her.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” she said. “This is your last chance. You can’t afford an escape route.”
Outside, the Hollywood sign caught the afternoon light. For the first time in months, no meth psychosis obstructed my view. It looked different, not a destination, but a witness.
Ten years later, I’m married to someone I met at an AA meeting; a quiet, steady love, the opposite of the chaos I once mistook for devotion. We bought a house in the Valley, have two rescue bulldogs. Today, when I drive past Van Ness — that old Victorian recovery house where I learned to tell the truth — I remember the Nick who thought survival was the same as love.
It wasn’t. But it got me to Los Angeles, where I finally learned the difference.
The author is a Los Angeles–based writer with recent bylines in the Cut, HuffPost and the Washington Post.
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
Neve Campbell in Scream 7.
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The OG Scream Queen Neve Campbell returns. Scream 7 re-centers the franchise back on Sidney Prescott. She has a new life, a family, and lots of baggage. You know the drill: Someone dressing up as the masked slasher Ghostface comes for her, her family and friends. There’s lots of stabbing and murder and so many red herrings it’s practically a smorgasbord.
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Abriana Vicioso is the host of the Flower Hour, which takes place monthly.
(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)
Each flower carries a personal history. For Abriana Vicioso, the calla lily was her parents’ wedding flower — a symbol of her mother’s beauty. “She had this big, beautiful white calla lily in her hair,” Vicioso says. “I love my parents. They’re the reason I’m here. I’ll never forget where I came from.”
The Flower Hour begins with Vicioso announcing, with a warm smile: “Today is about touching grass.” The florist-by-trade gestures behind her to hundreds of flowers contained in buckets — blue thistles, ivory anemones and calla lilies painted silver — all twisted and unfurling into the air. “Tonight is going to be so sweet and intimate,” Vicioso says, eyeing the beautiful chaos at her feet. A grin buds across her face.
Moments before the workshop, participants sit at candlelit tables exchanging horoscopes and comparing their favorite flowers. A mention of the illustrious bird-of-paradise flower elicits coos and awe from the women. Izamar Vazquez, who is from Jalisco, Mexico, reveals her fondness for roses, which make her feel connected to her Mexican roots.
Vicioso hosts her flower-themed wellness workshop near the iconic Original Los Angeles Flower Market in downtown L.A. In January, the first Flower Hour event sold out, prompting her to make it a monthly series. Vicioso describes the event as a “three-part journey” where participants are invited to drink herbal tea, smoke rose-petal-rolled cannabis joints and create a floral arrangement. “The guide is to connect with the medicine of flowers,” Vicioso says.
Rose petal joints, tea and flower arranging are all part of The Flower Hour event’s offerings.
The event is hosted at the Art Club, a membership-based co-working space. “The Flower Hour is really beautiful. Everyone gets to explore their creativity while meeting new people,” says Lindsay Williams, the co-owner of the Art Club.
The idea for Flower Hour came to Vicioso during a conversation with her mother. “We joke all the time that flowers were destined to make their way into my life,” she says. She works as a florist and models on the side, even appearing in the pages of Vogue. Vicioso grew up in a Caribbean household, where flowers and offerings were part of daily life. “In my culture and religion, a lot of my family practices — an Afro-Caribbean religion — we build altars.”
Like many cultures, flowers carry sentimental value in her religion. “I’m Caribbean, so a lot of my family practices a Yoruba religion, which comes from Africa. In the Caribbean, it’s well known as Santería.”
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After a difficult year and a breakup, Vicioso wanted to marry her love of flowers with community building. Because Vicioso uses cannabis medicinally, the workshop naturally includes a smoking component. “My family has smoked cannabis for a lot of reasons for a long time. It’s a really healing plant,” she explains.
In the workshop, even the cannabis gets the floral treatment. Vicioso presents her rose-petal-wrapped joints on a silver platter at each table. She rolled each by hand. “If you’ve never smoked a rose-petal-rolled joint, the difference with this is it’s going to have roses that have a slight tobacco effect,” she announces.
During the workshop, Vicioso stresses the importance of buying cannabis from local vendors. The cannabis provided was purchased from a Northern Californian vendor. The wellness workshop aims to reclaim the healing ritual of smoking cannabis. “This is a plant that has been commercialized,” Vicioso says. “There’s a lot of Black and Brown people who are in jail for this plant.”
The resulting workshop is what Vicioso describes as “an immersive wellness experience that is the intersection of wellness, creativity, community and an appreciation of flowers.” The workshop serves as a reminder to enjoy Earth’s innate beauty in the form of flowers — including cannabis. “It’s this gift that the universe gave us for free and that I have this deep connection with,” Vicioso says.
Conversation cards to generate discussion among participants (top, letf). The workshop serves as a “third space” for Angelenos to engage in tactile creativity and community building outside of traditional nightlife settings.
After enjoying lavender chamomile tea and smoking a joint, Vicioso introduces the flowers to the group before inviting them to pick their own. She emphasizes each flower’s personality traits, describing green dianthus as a “Dr. Seuss” plant. Then, there are calla lilies with their “main character moment.” It gets personal. “Start thinking of a flower in your life that you can discover,” she says. “If you’re feeling like you need inspiration, you can always remember that these flowers have stories.”
Vicioso infuses wisdom into her instruction on floral arrangements: There are no mistakes. Let the flowers tell you where they want to go, she urges. Intuition will be your guide — the wilder, the better.
“Hecho in Mexico” reads a sticker on a bunch of green stems. “Like me,” says Vazquez with a laugh. “They’re all doing their own thing. Like a family,” she says later, arranging stems.
The Flower Hour participants and Vicioso, center, chat as they build their own floral arrangements at the sold-out event.
Two participants — Vazquez and Rebeca Alvarado — are friends who run a floral design company together called Izza Rose. Like Vicioso, the friends have a connection to flowers through their Latin American culture. They met Vicioso in the floral industry and were overjoyed to discover her workshop.
“This is a great way to connect with other people,” says Vazquez.
Alvarado agrees, adding: “You’re getting to know people outside of going to bars. You can connect in different ways when there’s an activity.”
Vazquez uses flowers to stay connected to her Mexican heritage, adding that she prefers to support Mexican vendors. In recent months, the downtown L.A. flower market has struggled to recover from ongoing ICE raids. “Some are scared to come back,” says Vazquez.
Hand-rolled cannabis joints wrapped in rose petals are presented on a silver platter at The ArtClub (top, right). The Flower Hour aims to reclaim the healing rituals of cannabis and flowers.
Another participant, Barbara Rios, was attracted to the workshop for stress relief. “You can hang out with your friends, but it’s nice to do things with your hands,” she says. “I work a stressful job, and it’s nice to have that third space that we’re all craving.”
On this February night, the participants were predominantly women, save for one man. In the future, Vicioso hopes that more men learn to engage with flowers. “There’s a statistic about men receiving flowers for the first time at their funerals, and I think we have changed that,” she says.
To conclude the workshop, Vicioso encourages participants to build lasting friendships and incorporate flower arranging into their daily practice — even if it’s just with a small, inexpensive bouquet.
“Get some flowers together, go to the park, hang out with each other and hang out with me,” she says. Participants leave with flower arrangements in hand. In the darkness of the night air, it briefly looks as though the women carry silver calla lilies that are blooming from their palms.
An underwater view shows US’ Lilly King competing in a heat of the women’s 200m breaststroke swimming event during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Paris La Defense Arena in Nanterre, west of Paris, on July 31, 2024. (Photo by François-Xavier MARIT / AFP) (Photo by FRANCOIS-XAVIER MARIT/AFP via Getty Images)
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This week’s show was recorded in Bloomington, Indiana with host Peter Sagal, judge and scorekeeper Bill Kurtis, Not My Job guest Lilly King and panelists Alonzo Bodden, Josh Gondelman, and Faith Salie. Click the audio link above to hear the whole show.
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