She told me I wasn’t crazy anymore. This was 10 years after we had met. She said I wasn’t crazy like I used to be. I’m just a lame bore. All I wanna do is read & write. I said I’d much rather write a poem than be a human being. She told me I was asking her to love a poem but she can’t love a poem. I told her the only thing she was really in love with was the past…. She remembers the first time we met : : : there was a group of us and I suggested we make ether. I remember the first time we met : : : there was a group of us and a homeless man bought us all bananas instead of the booze we had asked him to buy for us, so then I must have suggested we make ether instead—although I don’t remember that, exactly. One night we met up with her and her new college roommate in Harvard Square. It was a typical wasted night. I was 18 and I was going through my all-nighter faze that summer, when I would spend all night outside with a group of friends and in the morning we’d sit down by the tracks and watch the sun rise over the empty early-morning ghost town. I invited her to come along the following night. I didn’t know she’d say yes. She said sure, sounds fun. She was always up for having a good time. She met me at Park Street and she wore these tight white stretch jeans and her hair was colorful and spiky. All the Bostonians in this underground train station stopped and stared at her and so did I. Although I wasn’t staring because I thought she looked kinda freakish like I assume the rest were. I was staring because I thought she looked beautiful in her denim vest covered in band patches and studs. We rode the train back to Newton, MA. This night we did not do ether, in fact. But she taught me about Triple Cs. Cough & Cold Coricidin. You ever hear of Robotrippin? It’s the same concept, only Triple Cs are even more dense with DXM than that of their sister medication, Robitussin. I tripped like a bastard and she vomited her college cafeteria dinner out by the Newton Center train station. I knew I was stricken with something powerful right then. We were a match—surely a match made for destruction. After she vomited, we spent the night together roaming and watching the stars and mingling with the other late-nighters heading home from the bars, or the other kids that squandered these lame city streets, until we were the last humans left alive and the sun was so beautiful as it rose like fire and we smoked our cigarettes and talked and laughed and some amazing energy was happening between us. It took a while for us to ever make out. She said she could only hook up when she was drunk, and by hooking up she meant make out and she loved to make out with people when she was drunk, but just not fuck them because she was weird about that. I asked her to be my girlfriend one night but she said she doesn’t do relationships. We made out in a park in Harvard Square the night before she went home for Thanksgiving vacation. She laughed the whole time and it made me insecure and when I pulled back from her and asked why, she said because she was so happy. A few weeks later, the day before she went home for the Holidays, we went into Harvard Square together and got drunk. I remember we sat down by the Charles River in Harvard Square and drank whiskey and we left our mark on the side of the bridge with spraypaint. Then we walked to Central Square and we spraypainted fuck religion on every church and I scrawled fuck Hollywood in Sharpie on the wall outside of a Blockbuster movie store. She had to use the bathroom and we went into some fancy-ass hotel and found the bathroom and inside the lady’s room there was a nice couch which the men’s room did not have and I hung out on that couch while she peed and some woman walked in and took one look at me and she looked like she was about to jump out of her skin. I said: It’s okay, I’m just making sure my friend doesn’t get raped. The woman darted out of the room and I laughed and when she came back, I told her all about it. We were rowdy. The night was alive. We were mischievous and I wouldn’t see her again for another few weeks and suddenly it hit me. We got back to her dorm and I was pouting. I was always a sensitive boy. She told me once I was too emotional. She was going home soon and she’ll probly meet someone else because I was just not good enough for her. She told me to quit my wining. I told her to be a human being for once. She mocked and insulted me and I felt degraded. This was the girl I was yearning for, and she was a cold-hearted bitch. I was so upset. We got back to her room and I crawled into her roommate’s bed. She had two roommates and one of them was never around so I crawled into that roommate’s bed and curled up and sulked. Her roommate’s bed was elevated and she was screaming at me to come down. No, I said. Come down, she said. Fuck you! I said. What’s your problem? she said. I didn’t know why I was so upset, really. I just was. She threw her keys at me and they split my lip. I climbed down the small ladder and left. She followed me out. What the fuck! she said. I kept going till I was outside. Once out there I lit a cigarette. She found me there and I was puffing so fast and shaking even faster. She came over and hugged me so tight. She said: Come to bed. Why? I said. So you can harangue me some more? She said: You can sleep in my bed tonight. My eyes lit up and I flicked the cigarette into the cold winter sky and she took my hand and led me back inside the building. I climbed into bed with her and we cuddled and made out and her other roommate was there and she was under us, on the bottom bunk, and she kept yelling at us to shut up, but we kept giggling and kissing and rolling around on each other and we were just so drunk. She asked me to be her boyfriend. I told her to ask me again in the morning. I didn’t want her decision to be solely because she was drunk. In the morning she asked me to be her boyfriend again and I said yes and then she told me I better leave now. Her dad was coming to pick her up soon and I wouldn’t want to meet him. He was like Robert De Niro mixed with Al Pacino and trust her on this, I didn’t want to meet him. I left immediately and my smile didn’t fade for the whole next month. I was so in love———only the next few years brought me through such levels of grandiose torture that I became a devil and so did she and this love became our hell. I was lying on the curb crying, covered in blood, and all of her tires were slashed and I held the knife in my hand. This would be my way of saying I wanted nothing to do with her anymore. I was 22 and I was done and it was her fault that those two assholes had jumped me earlier in the night.
Earlier I was stumbling and staggering down the street in Central Square when I got a phone call. It was a number I didn’t recognize. I answered. Hey, said the strange voice. Who’s this? I said. The voice said: I’m gonna rape your girlfriend. What? Who is this? The voice said: The police!—and the whole time I heard her laughing in the background, like this was some kind of sick fuckin joke. I eventually found her after looking all over the place. She was hanging out with two white boys who wore baggy pants and slanted Red Sox baseball caps. They three were all alone in a large, vacant lot and I wanted to fight but was too drunk and she stepped in the way and told us to break it up and I pushed past her and left. The ground was moving in spasmodic waves. I stared downward and tried to remain balanced as my feet refused to cooperate. I was zigzagging now, swaying and staggering up the street. Past cars that shined their lights outward and plowed past me with a flurry of force. Past drunks and shoppers and bums. Past street corners and alleyways. As I walked alone, I saw a quick flash zip toward me and a fist knocked me in the head. I stumbled back and took another to the gut. I fell and there were two boys stomping and punching me and stomping and punching me and when the cops showed up they took off running. The cop loomed over me and I wanted to plead for him to help me up off the street but he just guffawed real nastily and left me there lying in my own blood. A friend lifted me up and I could feel a trail of blood dripping out of my left ear, and he helped me onto the train and my upper lip was soaked with blood oozing from my nose. I could taste the warm copper. One of my eyes was swollen shut. The whole train ride home I didn’t once look up because I was afraid of what I’d find out if I saw my own reflection in the window. When I got home, I pulled out my knife and slashed all four tires of her car and then fell on the curb and bloody tears burst from my eyes. It had been five years. Five frikken years. I wasn’t about to do this anymore. And I thought this would be the end of it. And it was … for a short time\\\
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I was sitting in the alleyway behind the Lowell movie theater. This was my second day working there and I was having a cigarette break by myself. I liked all my coworkers; they were very laidback and easy to talk to. I could smoke whenever I wanted to as long as I didn’t have any other tasks to complete or if there was no movie rush going on and I had to work box office or concessions. This was my first real job. I worked at a DJ studio for a little while when I was a few years younger but that job led me to a dead end. I tried working at a smalltime coffee shop but I took too many cigarette breaks and too many free drinks and they let me go after my first day. Nobody trained me or told me what to do so I got bored and smoked cigarettes and drank soda for the whole day until the manager told me I clearly didn’t understand what they were doing there and he had to let me go. I worked a day at a grocery store just to get fired. I contacted the Better Business Bureau about this. They hired me to fill in a shift and then fired me at the end of the day. But at least I made 30 dollars. Now I was 18 and I was working at the Lowell movie theater in Harvard Square. My black, flamboyant manager exited through the backdoor and stood there and retrieved a rolled cigarette from the inside pocket of his Lowell vest and turned to me and said: “Do you mind if I smoke?” I raised my cigarette so he could see and smiled at him. “I’m already smoking.” He chuckled and lit his rolly and instantly the smell of pot smoke wafted through the air. I understood now. He held the joint out to me. This was my manager and this was my second day working here. I felt like I had no other choice. I took a hit and passed it back to him and he took a hit and passed it back to me and I took a hit and passed it back to him and when the joint was cashed, I lit another cigarette and my black, flamboyant manager went back inside. I finished my cigarette and stood and the murky alleyway floor shuddered and swirled and I grabbed the wall and held on so as not to fall. The pot was so frikken strong and I realized I didn’t know how to walk anymore. I couldn’t move my feet. My knees didn’t bend properly. I had no feeling in my toes. My heels were crooked. My thighs were oscillating and the ground was liquid. I held onto the wall and felt my way to the door and grabbed the handle and cranked the latch and the door released so suddenly I fell through and almost collapsed but I caught a pole and hugged it. I looked around the store. My coworkers were busy at work. The next rush of movies was just getting started. A girl I worked with, who had purple hair that moved and flowed like Medusa’s head of snakes, hurried over to me and said: “Get a move on, you’re ticket taker.” I stood there silently. I had to cross the large mass of moviegoers pouring out of the theater doors and pooling in the atrium and talking and laughing in droves. I held onto the wall and stared at the distance I had to cross to get to the front doors. She said: “Are you okay?” I leaned close to her and said: “I don’t know how to walk.” This was my second day working here and I was so fired. Why did I have to smoke that pot? “You’re stoned?” she said. Shit, did I say that out loud? Or can she read my mind? “Shit, what the hell is going through your mind?” “But the black man. I can’t remember his name.” “Come on,” she said, and grabbed my hand and led me to the front doors. I was so getting fired. “Don’t worry,” she said. “No one’s firing you. This happens to the best of us.” She can read my mind. She is so hot. Wait, think of something else. Next thing I knew I was standing at the front of the line taking people’s tickets. I did not get fired for that. These people got me. One day I brought a half gallon of whiskey to work with me and as soon as they caught wind of it, the break room was packed with us all sharing the whiskey. Four months later, AMC bought out the store and they were so strict they took the fun right out of working at this smalltime movie theater. I was one of the first of my coworkers to quit. The last time I ever set foot in that movie theater was because I was in Harvard Square with Samantha and she had recently acquired some crack cocaine and neither of us had ever tried it before and we needed a quiet, closed-in location so I went into the movie theater and asked the boy working there if we could smoke crack in the alleyway in back. He remembered me from when I used to work there.
He said: “No problem, go right ahead….” Andrew and I were walking through the Fens when we came across a tall black kid a couple years older than us. He was sitting on a park bench by himself reading a book. We got talking to him. How the conversation started, I can’t remember. When we were drunk, we spoke to everyone. Our conversation abilities were all inclusive in that state. I told him we were going to get some coke. Does he want to throw down? He said he would, although I remember him paying for the whole lot of it, now that I think back on it. His name was Karl and he lived in Dorchester, MA. We took the train to my own town, Newton, then bought the product and hopped back on the train and headed to Dorchester. Not only did Karl pay for the drugs, he offered up his apartment for us to do it in. Sure, we had other options of where to go; it’s not like we were taking advantage of him or anything. Off the train we walked through a dark empty parking lot. There was only one car in the lot and there were three black teenage girls in it. I don’t know what they were doing in that car; it could have been anything. They yelled something at us. I yelled back and told them to suck it. One of them yelled again; they wouldn’t stop yelling at us as we passed them. We sat in Karl’s apartment and I doled out the lines and gave Karl the first hit considering he was the one who paid for it--for all of it, not to mention. After spinning our brains on a mental compact disc that rotated so quickly it set our minds aflame and the whole CD played exploded, we sat in Karl’s backyard. Andrew told Karl that except for spiders, I had no fears. I played in a Punk band called Lethal Erection and we needed a new drummer. A year after meeting Karl in the Fens, Andrew and I were riding the Red Line to Quincy Center. A tall black kid came up to us and said: Hey.
Andrew was like: Oh shit, hey. I said: Hey, but I was wary. Who is this guy? Andrew reminded me he was Karl, the guy who brought us to his apartment in Dorchester a year earlier to blow lines. Oh shit, I said. Hey, what’s up? We’re going to a party in Quincy, Andrew said. You want to come? He nodded. Sure, he said. We got off at Quincy Center and started walking to Bell’s. It was maybe 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 in the afternoon. It was summertime and the sun was kicking our asses. Bell would have these barbecues in his backyard during the summer. Karl told us he played drums. Andrew and I both smiled in unisons. Andrew turned to me, grinning. He said: Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Yeah, I said. I’m pretty hungry too. No, he said. I also really wish I had some beer. He said: Yep, that. He turned to Karl and said: Our band is looking for a new drummer. At that, Karl smiled. Andrew said: You interested? He nodded. I said: The night’s just beginning. First, let’s see if he can keep up. We went to Bell’s and we ate and we drank and then we went back into the city and the night furiously unraveled around us like tilt-a-whirl and when it drew to an end, Karl was still there and we set a time to practice with him. I’m walking alone through the Everett suburbs. Honestly I don’t know where I’m walking. My band just played a show at the Warehouse, and now I’m shitfaced. I’m walking and I see a bunch of college-age kids standing outside their house drinking beers and I ask for one. This guy hands me a beer. Then Samantha pulls up to me in her car.
“What are you doing back here?” I ask. “I couldn’t remember how to get home,” she says. “But you left half an hour ago.” “I’ve been driving in circles. I haven’t drunk like this in two months, I don’t know what I’m doing. Can you drive me at least to your house and I’ll probly be better by then and I’ll drive the rest of the way home?” “But you’re a way better drunk-driver than me.” “Please,” she says. She must really be drunk; she never lets me drive her car. She gets out of her car and goes around and hops in the passenger-side. I sidle behind the wheel with the beer in my hand. I can’t remember which side the gas is on. Here goes nothing…. “Mind if I have a beer?” I asked the big skinhead with the bulbus beer gut. “Only if you do one thing for me,” he said. I nodded. “What’s that?” “Talk to people,” he said. “Socialize. Don’t just sit in the fuckin corner like a fuckin leper.” This was it; it was called A Touch of Class. An abandoned house where the Punks and Skins went to get trashed. Jeff Turner had brought me here. I first met Randy at the free Toxic Narcotic show at the Axis. I’d seen him at other shows but this was the first time I met him in person. Jeff, Harry, and I went to the show together. It was being filmed and I licked the lens of the camera as they filmed the crowd standing in line waiting to go in. In the final production they did not use that footage after all, but they did catch me standing there like a boring buffoon. Just standing there. I was at the front of the line and I was the first one to notice the guy with the camera emerge from inside the big black doors. Usually this venue had many buff, angry bouncers standing around, making sure no one stage-dived—although that never stopped us—making sure no one was high on drugs, making sure no one danced in the pit with studded jackets, spiked collars, lock-&-chains around their necks. Tonight Toxic Narcotic had rented out the place for their 15-year anniversary and they removed the barriers between the band and the crowd, making it so much easier to stage-dive, and got rid of the bouncers, too———it was just us kids. Jeff Turner was caught on camera numerous times leaping from the stage and surfing the upraised hands that brought him to the back of the venue in a fluid, sequential motion. Personally I did not enjoy this show as much as others, because I felt that the crowd was rather divided. There were cliques formed and it was quite boring. As I left the show, down the street from the venue, Harry, Punk Rock Pete, and I were walking and then we were stopped immediately by this large, muscular skinhead who I later learned was named Lester. He said to me: “What the fuck is up with the upside-down flag on your back?” He grabbed the shoulder of my soft, navy-blue blazer, with an upside-down American flag sewn to the back. Pulled me toward him with a single heft. My jacket hung to my shoulders awkwardly after he got a hold of it. I could smell the whiskey on his breath. Next to him was this fat skinhead who I later learned was named Randy. Both were dressed sharp. They had scaly caps, braces, plaid, denim, and steel-toed Docs. Their jeans were cuffed evenly. Their braces were straight, their laces were straight. Even their scaly caps were straight. These two guys had flair, albeit they were piss-drunk and pissed-off. Lester held me in his large, hairy hand. His knuckles were tattooed: SKIN. His hand was tattooed too. I tried to avoid looking him in the eye and I noticed that he even had tattoos climbing his neck. “I oughtta kick your fuckin head in,” he spat, with one hand clung to my blazer, the other hand clenched. I was scared. Harry was scared. Punk Rock Pete was holding something in his pocket. The fat skinhead said: “Lester, let it go.” Lester’s grip on my jacket tightened as he pulled me closer. My boots were raised off the ground. The fat skinhead said: “C’mon, Lester. They’re just kids. Let it go.” He patted the skinhead named Lester on the chest. Lester released me with a shove, and I buckled into Harry. We both stumbled backwards as Punk Rock Pete stood there with his feet planted firmly on the ground. The skinheads walked away. Punk Rock Pete pulled brass knuckles from his pocket and told me that that was fuckin scary, man. Later Jay Drunk said to me: “If our Founding Fathers hated their country, why can’t we hate our own?” I was pretty sure these skinheads were not interested in an intellectual debate. That’s why I was nervous as I sat in the corner of A Touch of Class. Lester and Randy were there.
Randy handed me a beer. Beckoned me into the kitchen. “C’mon, what’re you waiting for?” he said. Lester was stumbling around with a beer in his hand. He gestured for me to come over to him. He put his hand around my shoulder and led me to a private corner. He said: “Sorry, bud.” I was dead silent. “Listen, bud,” he said. “I think we got off on the wrong foot.” He said his name was Lester; I told him my own. We shook hands. Still holding my hand firmly, he said: “Here’s the thing. I hate the government but I love this country. The flag means freedom. I served two tours overseas just to keep it that way.” Then he walked away. I sipped my beer and started to feel much more at ease. These guys were welcoming me in. I was to go to a rehab center in Houston, TX, the following day. This was my last night to do it up///
Me and Lacey met up with Andrew and Caitlyn in Harvard Square; Travis was there too. They all knew the score; they knew that tomorrow I’d be gone. We hit the bottle hard, in the Pit, in the alleyways, going back and forth from the packy to the street corner so we could constantly replenish our stock of booze. The star-speckled night sky was static. The crowd was bustling—from shoppers, to drunks, to winos, to bums. Men in business suits going home to their families after a long day of work, or to their mistresses to let out some steam. Hipsters with their friends having a blast and going from one store to the next. Hippies with their long dreads trying to sell some bud. Gangsters trying to sell some dope. Junkies trying to score. Hobos trying to make some change. Andrew would do this thing where he’d run at some random person so fast they’d flinch, and right before he’d crash into them he’d stop there and start dancing. It was pretty hilarious. Lacey was around my shoulder. Caitlyn was glued to Andrew. Travis was in the middle, and he wanted to score some pot. We moved from Harvard Square to Central Square, all the way down Mass Ave. and back, harassing folks, shouting, being weird and mean, but funny. This was our city and tomorrow I was going to leave…. When we arrived back at Harvard Square, after causing the slightest of mischief in Central Square, Andrew and Caitlyn were gone. Travis was still with us. I called Andrew and he told me where he was. Travis, Lacey, and I followed his directions but when we got there he was nowhere to be found. So I tried again. Where are you? He told me and the three of us went there and he was gone again. What the fuck is going on? I was starting to become rather aggravated. He knew it meant a lot to me to be with my girlfriend and my best friend tonight. This was my fuckin night, and he fuckin ditched me. Tomorrow he could do what he wanted—after I was gone———but tonight, this was my fuckin night. He led us all over the place; it was like a wild goose chase. Everywhere we’d go was exactly where he wasn’t. I was so frikken pissed. Finally I saw him coming up the street. I ran to him as fast as I could and shouted: What the fuck! Huh! he said. What the fuck! And then I went to slug him in the face but I stumbled and he moved and my fist split open on the side of the building. Fuck! He looked at me fierce and I saw him and Caitlyn and Travis—since he was Travis’s ride home—all take off around the corner. Now it was just me and Lacey. I looked at her and she was beaming because it was just the two of us now and now I could give her my undivided attention. We walked along until we got to the park. We sat on the fountain and talked and laughed and drank whiskey from the two-liter coke bottle. Before long, I forgot about Andrew; he was dead to me. Some guy a little older than us wandered into the park. As he passed the fountain, I said: Hey! He came over to us and he had weed. So we smoked with him. I was pretty sure he wanted to have a threesome with us. It became quite apparent when he asked to kiss me and I said sure and then he gave me some pot to take home and Lacey and I left and he didn’t seem too happy about that. But whatever, this was my night. We smoked and drank all the way till 7AM and my flight was at 8 and I got on the plane and immediately ordered myself a drink. This was it: my last bout of freedom. I ordered another drink. And then another. But the guy who was there to take me to the program said I shouldn’t have any more. So I stopped. I don’t remember much of what Houston looked like as he drove me to the program; I don’t remember much of the program either because they subdued me with Ativan the whole time I was there—for alcohol withdrawals and anxiety. I left a week later because they said I was trying to take advantage of some girl in a vulnerable state. She was having a bad day and I read her some of my poetry—that was it, I swear. Nothing else happened between us—although maybe it could have if they hadn’t kicked me out so quickly. The morning before I left, I took an Ativan. The guy got me and took me to the airport and first thing on the plane I started drinking again and I don’t remember much of the flight. Or much of getting home. Or much of meeting up with Lacey. Next thing I’m waking up beside the fountain where I kissed the guy a week earlier. I was just leaving the open-mike. It was at the Center Street Alley, and as I was cutting through the first-floor balcony, there was a group about my age clustered at the picnic table closest to the door. I was sleep-deprived and stimulated; I was running on fumes and I might have said something obnoxious to them. I think I asked them if they wanted to buy one of my books. I slipped I Need Help: The SkullFuck Collection from my backpack and handed it to one of the girls. She flipped the pages and looked at the art and then asked me: “Are you on drugs?” I told her: “No.” I said: “I’m just crazy.” She said she wanted to buy the book sometime. Asked if there was a way to contact me. We exchanged Facebook information and then I left. A few months went by and out of the blue I got a message from some girl who I had no recollection of ever meeting and she told me who she was. She was the girl I met a few months earlier at the open-mike who had shown interest in buying my book. She said she was having a really bad night and she needed someone to talk to. It was probably 1AM when she messaged me, and I told her she could come over and we could talk. She agreed to meet me at the library and then we went back to my apartment. We sat there and talked but she never told me what was going on, why she was so upset; we kept it innocent and I read her some of my writing and she bought a book and then I suggested we go for a walk and we walked all around town and, as the sun crested the hill and rays of light burst from behind the storefronts and cars began buzzing past us as people went to work, I walked her home. We continued to talk. I put a cigarette out on my wrist to show her that people have different thresholds of pain; mine happens to be higher than most. At her door she hugged me goodbye and I said bye and then left and went home. Late that day she messaged me and told me she read the whole book and I said cool and we made plans to hang out later that night and when we did, we walked all over the place, talking with the energy of a highspeed train, chugging caffeine and whatnot. When the night came to an end, as it usually does, I walked her home. The following day I was feeling rather crummy myself and when she called me on the phone I told her so and she invited me over and I met her little toddler girl and we talked and smoked cigarettes outside her backdoor and she played me David Bowie’s newest music video and I remember he looked so old, for I think he had cancer, and he was still kickin and making music videos even in his cancerous state and it was kind of impressive and inspiring. The following day she met me at the library cuz she was taking her little girl to Walmart and she wanted me to come with her. I met her there and she said her fiancé worked at Walmart and he wanted to meet up with her when he got out of work and she guessed I could come along too. I didn’t know she was engaged. She never told me about it. I wondered did she tell him about me? All those late nights talking and hanging out and I was starting to develop feelings for her and I could sense the feelings were mutual, her leaning on my shoulder as I read her my poetry and me putting my arm around her or letting her wear my jacket when she was cold. She could have at least told me she was engaged. So I went to Walmart with her and her little girl and there I met her fiancé and I was a completely blank asset, didn’t say a single word. I was brewing resentments. They had no chemistry whatsoever. Complete opposites. She was fun and interesting and he was a bore. He wore a collared shirt and khakis and he was such a boring fuckin asshole. I was brooding so hard into the day until I said I had to get going. I went home and called a friend of mine and told him about it and he said he knew her fiancé—what with living in a small town in Vermont—and he was not surprised she was so drawn to me like that since he and I were total opposites in every sense of the word and I was so mad. I texted her and said I didn’t know she was engaged. She insisted she told me. I said she hadn’t. Did she ever tell him about me? Was he just as shocked to meet me as I was to meet him? She immediately changed the subject. Said I was just too conceited to remember a detail such as her being engaged. I told her it was a detail I wouldn’t forget. Then she told me to lose her number. Said she would get over her massive crush on me. “What?” I said. She blocked me. I was so distraught. The fuck just happened. Why are crazy girls so drawn to me? And why the fuck am I so drawn to them?
I don’t know where we were or what we were doing or where we were going. We were on the highway; my dad was driving. The sky was dark and filled with stars. If you rolled down the window, you would smell the sweet and natural smell that only comes from the countryside.
Half a mile up the highway there was a large, lumpy shadow splayed out across the road. As we got closer to it, the shadow turned into flesh and we realized it was a dead bear. We were going way over the speed limit and we were much too close to it to slow down and pull around. All we could do was barrel through. We got closer and it grew larger in the front windshield. Closer and closer the dead bear just got bigger and soon you could almost see its cold dead eyes in our headlights as--thrump-thrump—the car bounced and came down and a sheet of dark red fluids draped the front windshield, raining down all around us. My dad was frozen sold. I was screaming, asking him if he saw that. He didn’t move or speak. He was in complete shock. Almost on auto-pilot. I said: “Are you okay?” He said nothing. All I could see was red. The car kept going. Then the windshield wipers kicked on and wiped away all the blood. My dad shook his head; he snapped out of it and we continued on our way >>> My dad gave me a ride to Waltham, which was the next town over from Newton. I was going to some boy’s birthday party. Even though I didn’t know the boy whose party it was, I knew Kyle—he was the singer of the band Predictable Chaos, which was just one of the band’s playing tonight. And although the party was at a bar, I promised Kyle that I would not drink because I would always get out of control when I was drunk.
In the car my dad asked me: “Where’s a good place to let you off?” I shrugged. “Anywhere,” I told him. He pulled over on the side of the street and I got out. As I crossed over the bridge, I saw Katie and Seth sitting down by the river. I waved to them, and they waved me over. I darted down the stairs and saw they were drinking straight vodka from the bottle. Seth held out the bottle to me, but I held out my hands in protest. I said: “I promised Kyle I wouldn’t drink tonight.” Katie was sitting on the ground smoking a cigarette with her back against a brick wall. Seth looked disappointed. “You can’t even have a sip?” he asked me. “Just one sip.” What the hell! I grabbed the bottle from him, and he stepped back as though I was to chuck it at his head. I lifted it to my mouth and took a swig then immediately passed it back to him. “You happy?” I said, and lit a cigarette, laughing. Seth was chuckling; Katie was smiling. The three of us walked up the stairs together and headed to the show. Kyle spotted us coming. He came over to us right away. He must have smelt the vodka because he immediately wrapped his hands around my neck and screamed. Katie said: “Dude, Kyle!” Seth said: “Yeah, Kyle, he didn’t drink any.” “I didn’t?” I murmured, as Kyle’s grip got tighter. “Yeah, I didn’t.” Katie said: “It was us!” “Yeah, we were the ones drinking,” Seth added. “It was us, not him.” I sighed as Kyle released his grip on my neck. He looked me dead in the eye. “I swear!” I said. We went to the show. I was painstakingly sober. Outside the bar I called Andrew and asked if he was coming. He was on his way. He’d be there soon, he told me. When he got there, he didn’t even have to get out of his truck. I hopped in and said: “Let’s get outta here!” I suggested we go back to my house, park there, and then go to Harvard Square and get drunk. In Harvard Square we hit the bottle hard. I was so tired of people telling me what I can and can’t do. I have rights, too. Who do they think they are? Watch out for the Punk Police!!! We sat in the Pit and saw others we knew somewhat well, others we didn’t know at all, and those to whom we might have even felt a connection. Hannah was there too. She was Midget’s girlfriend. Midget was this big squatter we called Midget for irony’s sake, who I’d known since I was 16, and he was one of the first guys I’d come across in Harvard Square and I remember him telling me about a band he liked called Adolf & the Piss Artists. Hannah I didn’t know as well. She had only been coming around since the beginning of the summer. The things I knew about Hannah were: She was a heroin addict, and she was a prostitute. Or, she was a heroin addict, when she was living in New York City, and she still, as in currently, sold her body for money. She had dark black hair and brown eyes and she always wore this ratty denim vest with a UK Subs backpatch. While we were sitting there she revealed to us that she and Midget had broken up a few days ago. Andrew and I both nodded. I said to Andrew: “Hey, man. Wanna go get some blow?” “Yeah, sure,” Andrew said. I invited Hannah to join us. She said we could do it at her place. She lived right next to a needle exchange, so she had plenty of clean needles we could use. Andrew and I exchanged a menacing look. Andrew said: “We don’t shoot it.” “We just blow it,” I added it, “and sometimes we smoke it.” Andrew said: “Well, I guess there’s a first time for everything.” Midget walked past us and drilled us with his angriest of stares. I remember this one time when Midget had challenged me to a fight and he said he wouldn’t use his hands at all. He won. He kicked the shit out of me, with his hands tied behind his back. Pretty crazy, right? This woman in the Pit overheard our conversation and she asked if she could pitch in. We said sure. We’d bring it back to her. She gave us the cash and Andrew, Hannah, and I hopped on the train and headed back to Newton. On the train I called Greg, asked for soft, and requested a quantity. He said he would meet us at the Newton Highlands park in an hour. We went back to my house and the three of us sidled into Andrew’s pickup truck and he drove us up the street and pulled into the parking lot of the park. I had many memories of smoking crack with Andrew and Samantha in this lot. We all got out but Andrew left the truck running and we were listening to Richard Hell & the Voidoids. Still to this day when I hear the song “Down at the Rock & Roll Club” by the Voidoids, I think of Hannah and that night. We danced, talked, laughed, and waited. We waited for much longer than an hour. Possibly two or three hours before Greg showed up with the product. They always make you wait. Good thing we had Andrew’s truck, though, because the trains had already stopped running. We took the cocaine and Andrew drove us to Central Square where Hannah lived. It was a fairly nice apartment, all things considered. Once inside Hannah stripped off her clothes right in front of us and put on something much more comfy. I remember earlier she had told us she could only cum with a guy if she felt comfortable enough to take a shit in front of him. She was so hot. She went into the bathroom and came out with a bottle of caffeine pills. She was going to cut that woman’s portion with caffeine pills so that there would be more for us. We sat down on the couch and from under the coffee table she came out with a shoe box. She opened it up and there were brand-new, untouched, unused needles inside. Neither of us questioned how she was able to have more than one clean needle in her possession. It was a question that didn’t cross our minds; we didn’t really care. She took a bottle cap and started mixing coke with saline water and adding a cotton ball and she filled her own needle. On her right arm was a big black hole right on her vein. She always used the same hole to shoot it in, she said. It was gross. Next, she shot up Andrew. She said: “Promise me you’ll never shoot it up again unless you’re with me.” We both promised. I gave her my arm and she tied a torniquet to my bicep and she tapped my forearm and when a vein popped out she jabbed it with the needle, released the torniquet, and I was set. I fell back into the couch. I looked over at Andrew and he was staring out the window. It was like I could read his thoughts. I knew what he was thinking. Even though it didn’t make a lick of sense. My own thoughts were exploding, my mind a gleeful mess of broken train tracks. I felt bliss. At the tip of the needle. When the initial, immediate euphoria faded away, we were all over the place. Moving around. Talking to one another. Fidgeting with everything and anything and nothing. We were brilliant. We were sexy. Then there was some Guatemalan man I didn’t know hanging out with us. In the morning I awoke and everyone was gone. I was on the cusps of panic. Nothing felt right; I felt awful. I tried to call Andrew but he didn’t answer. I called him again and again but there was no response. I was alone in this apartment. When Andrew and Hannah came back I found out that Hannah had given the Guatemalan man a blowjob for more cocaine but then he took off without forking over what he had promised. Hannah was pissed. She and Andrew drove all over the place looking for the Spic to kick his Guatemalan teeth in. A few days later the police called me because they needed me to make a statement. Hannah got raped by the Guatemalan man and they needed to find out my side of the story, so they could compare details. I didn’t know anything, I slept through it all. Except that Hannah was very upset when I woke up—upset because of What That Man Had Done to Her. This morning I woke up feeling awful. It could have been allergies, it could have been caffein withdrawals, or it could have been something so much worse. My head pounded like there was someone in there, someone small and mean, knocking nail after nail into my brain. My nose was jammed up, and the postnasal drip was itching my throat. Oh, and my eyelids were dangling from a noose called exhaustion. First thing, I took some Allegra D to rule out allergies, and after showering and walking the dog I promised Michelle I’d drop something off at the Post Office for her. On the way there I stopped at the gas station and bought myself one of those carbonated raspberry-flavored Yerba Mate drinks. I’d say I could use it, all things considered. In the car I popped the tab and the passageways in my nose burst open as a hint of raspberry wafted through. It smelled delicious and the stuffiness was dwindling. I took my first sip and felt the bubbles dance on my tongue and the smell of raspberries reminded me that it was summer now even though outside the car it was gray and drab and possibly would rain later. But inside the car it smelt like summer, like when you’re younger and you pick berries with your parents at a nearby farm. I started to feel a little bit more awake now and I realized the nastiness I felt earlier was from a lack of caffeine. So I drove the rest of the way to the Post Office, and, with the windows down, the air outside licked my skin and swirled and hopped through my hair. I didn’t care that it was colder than it should be for this time of year and the air had that nasty mildew smell before a storm. The music playing released just enough endorphins to keep me going and the wind itself continued to waltz and wave in a brisk cataclysmic buzzing array and the Yerba Mate kept the car smelling sweet and delicious.
On the way back from the Post Office it was the same scene: Wind, Rhythm, and Sweetness, until I stopped at that red light and the first putrid wave hit my nostrils. It smelled of shit, dirty feet, and the blackest of mold. I looked ahead of me and before the car was a dump truck sweating an odor so revolting it made me gag. The windows were down at the time so I rolled them up but I think it was too late, for the smell was stuck inside my car. The Yerba Mate didn’t taste the same, the music didn’t sound the same, my mood plummeted drastically. I was so distraught. I shifted to the left lane and, when I could, darted past the dump truck and when it was far enough behind me, I rolled the windows back down to air out the nasty stench that only comes from rotting carcasses or dumpsters sweating beneath an epic sun. |
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