The Truth About Millionaire Row

The Truth About Millionaire Row

Ch. OO: Introduction

Don’t be fooled if I should chuckle like hyenas in the zoo, it’s just the gas. It turns me on. But don’t let my mirth deceive you, any moment, I’ll be gone. – Little Shop of Horrors, “Now (It’s Just the Gas)”

                        I could never afford the true wonders of life, if only because true happiness simply did not have a price tag.

                        Money – the bane of my existence. If I ever really sat down and considered the true cause of my downward spiral, I knew that it would come back to that five-letter word. Money. An over-abundance of it is lethal. That was the brutal lesson that my mother learned on the eve of her thirty-seventh birthday. Six children, a loveless marriage, a never-ending influx of money… it all became too much, and at a dinner party, she took her final bow over the balcony, wine glass still in hand.

                        It was ruled as an accident, a cut-and-dry case. I would later find out that my father had paid the medical practitioner to close the case, and an extensive autopsy had never been performed. Unfortunately, by the time I discovered this, my mother had been in the ground for seventeen years and it was much too late to find any telling evidence. My family would never know if it was suicide or otherwise… isn’t it amazing, the kind of chaotic, hurtful confusion money can cause?

                        I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. I don’t know why I assume that you’d care. Life is complicated enough without having to handle other people’s drama. I’d like to say that my life hasn’t always been a train wreck, but that would be a lie. With a predisposition to addiction running through my family (alcohol being my mother’s poison of choice, sex being my father’s), it was only a matter of time before I found myself tumbling down that same road.

                        However, my addiction was much more hazardous. A heavy smoker since the age of fifteen – around the time that my best friend, Camilla, had snuck a carton off of her Daddy-Dearest – it was far too easy for me to fall prey to the allure of marijuana. I was addicted fast, and when you have money like our family did, it wasn’t hard to get your fix. Secrets can be hidden well with a little cash floating around in your back pocket, don’t you know?

                        I’ve been clean for seven months now. I regularly sit down for hour-sessions with my psychiatrist, who has been on me for months to write a book… to tell someone else about the truth behind money, to show them that it’s not all ‘glitz’ and ‘glamour’. I had always laughed, never having associated those words with my life before. At home, there was no love. Every day, it is a challenge to love my husband. That’s not the glamour I’m familiar with on television. And so, finally, I caved.

                        The Truth About Millionaire Row is my story, but not only that, it is the story of the life (and subsequent death) of my best friend Camilla, and my husband, Toni. I’ll admit that it’s almost been therapeutic to put the words down onto paper, but I can’t say that it changes history. I’m still bereft two of my siblings and my best friend… life will never be the same again. But maybe, this book can make it just a little bit easier to live the life I’ve been left with.

                        So, without further ado, welcome to Millionaire Row.