by Forish, E.
“Don’t worry. He’s a big guy, but he’s harmless,” the stranger remarks before making a point to reiterate. “Completely harmless.”
Although the idea of an additional passenger, regardless of physique, puts me more than slightly on edge, I try not to question the manic impulsivity of my decision to hitch a ride with this unfamiliar man and instead take another toke to alleviate my concerns, allowing all doubt to float away in a miasma of marijuana vapors, for I know nothing beyond following the shadow of smoke and wisdom.
The redundant scenery of thick pine forests, pastures of livestock, and deteriorating barnyards blur together as we cruise along the backstreets, and as I grow increasingly uninterested with my exterior surroundings, I soon choose to turn inward to confront my own distorted delusions. I consider the fact that perhaps I consume too chemicals to properly function, but then again I must alter my brain chemistry in order to heal the maladies of mania, but then again maybe all the signs of mania are merely symptoms of amphetamine psychosis, but then again maybe the amphetamine psychosis is just a mild form of hallucination contracted from lingering mushroom madness, but then again I haven’t consumed psilocybin in nearly twenty-four hours and the speed from this morning has mostly worn off and the mania has not met its counterpartsevere bouts of depression in months, so then again perhaps there is no cause for concern in the first place; perhaps all these thoughts and feelings and actions fall into the category of “normal” after all, for all of humankind experience complicated situations, moments of difficulty and strife within everyday existence, and once such episodes pass, ordinary people just continue onward, often leading very successful lives, for they have been filled with the satisfactions and joys that result from the sense of triumph that always follow such instances of perseverance.
The vehicle’s sudden halt jolts me back into reality. The truck idles in the unpaved driveway of a modest white ranch house as the stranger steps out of the driver’s seat and slams the door shut behind him. He shuffles across the snow-covered lawn and knocks on the front door. After waiting a maximum of five seconds, he twists the doorknob and lets himself inside.
I make an attempt to observe any movement from inside the house, but every window has the blinds drawn, forcing me to simply sit and wonder what will happen once these two men get in the vehicle and drive away.
We’re in the middle of nowhere. I can’t even see the house of the nearest neighbor. I have no means to protect myself, and two men could easily overpower me. No one knows where I am. I don’t even know where I am.
As I wallow in a rare moment of serious self-reflection regarding the possible consequences of my behaviors, the two men emerge from the house, carrying with them a small duffle bag. I climb into the backseat to make room for the newest passenger and hold my breath as they open the truck doors to get inside. I wait for the twist of fate to occur, a tragic event that’ll finally cause a sense of regret in my conscience in regards to my thoughtless actions. As I anticipate the worst, the strangers enter the vehicle and toss the duffle bag in back with me, and I notice the familiar aroma of Mary Jane.
The sudden realization that I hitched a ride with a couple of individuals in the middle of a drug-run smacks my brain like a bucket of ice water to the face. The fear of being kidnapped or raped melts away completely as I accept the current situation at face value, for the occasional participation in a minor drug trafficking operation seems commonplace enough in my daily exploits to counteract even the slightest bit of panic or concern. I now see these men not as some unknown and potentially harmful factor but rather as my equals, just a decade older and still in the game.
As we drive away from the ranch house, residential and then commercial areas gradually replace the fields and forests as we near the center of Greenfield. I sit next to the duffle bag as I stare out the back window, maintaining personal silence as the two men casually discuss the details of their business venture, and survey the drab surroundings as I feign disinterest in their conversation.
In mid-sentence the man in the passenger’s seat turns to me and shoots a minacious glance that clearly conveys his suspicious predilections regarding the presence of this unknown character in the backseat.
“Is she cool, man?” he asks.
“Yeah, she’s cool. She’s cool”
“‘Cause I don’t think we should be talkin’ business around some girl ”
“She’s cool, man,” the driver asseverates. “Trust me on this one.”
The passenger narrows his eyes at me and releases a piggish grunt before averting his gaze back toward the roadway and resuming the conversation.
I recommence my spaced out demeanor and attempt to block out their mindless chatter. Their voices transform into the soft buzz of television static, mere background noise to the symphony of meaningless temptations that swarm my frazzled mind, for I desire a higher level of chemical intoxication, a permanent bond between myself and the molecular configurations that create a cornucopia of divine physical pleasure; I desire a larger stockpile of precious pills in which I can consume more and more until I reach a plateau where I can’t possibly get any higher and then consume more still; I desire prescription bottles filled to the brim with colorful capsules, and when I near the bottom, I will steal from others to replenish my supplies; I desire the ability to con psychologists into writing personal ’scripts just for me in the same vein as they do for those who surround me; I desire to inform others of my capacity to overpower any and all efforts to keep me from my substances of choice; I desire others to recognize my power to consume any chemical cocktail and function like an ordinary human being; but mostly I desire to simply sit and to consume, and nothing more.
The driver suddenly pulls into another Sunoco station and exits the vehicle to pump some more gas. As I rummage through my oversized purse in search of a pen, I instead, in a random moment of good fortune, find a roll of quarters buried deep beneath the piles of crumpled papers and arbitrary miscellany. I climb out of the backseat and make my way towards a payphone, where I dial the familiar number with tremulous fingertips.
“Hello?”
“Blake. Where are you?”
“At the Co-Op parking lot in Bratt.”
“That’s where my car is!”
“I know. I’m staring right at it.”
Relieved that my car had not been towed during its three-day occupancy in the parking lot during a snow emergency, I thank god that I had given Blake my only spare key.
“Meet me at the Barnes and Noble near the Holyoke Mall.”
He hesitates for several seconds. “I’ll be there,” Blake replies. “I gotta go back to West Dover first, take care of some things, explain to my boss that I can’t work this evening, and then I’ll be on my way down.”
The conversation ends, and I hop back into the pickup truck without acknowledging the continued presence and inculpating stares of the unidentified passenger. As the driver finishes filling the tank, I lose touch with the immediate surroundings and return to the microcosm of my purse’s depths, still in search of a pen. Upon attainment, I pull a crisp twenty from my black leather wallet and, in purple ink, scribble down the name and phone number of my lawyer
[xxxi] from memory. Just as I finish writing down the final digit, the driver reenters the vehicle, and I hand him the twenty-dollar bill as my contribution towards gas, explaining the information that the currency contains.
“If you get into trouble, this is my lawyer. He’s good. He knows his shit,” I remark.
“We aren’t in that deep, Sweetheart,” he replies.
“Oh. Some of us are.”
All conversation concludes there, at which point my newfound associates become more suspicious of me than I of them. Jaded and strung out, it is obvious that this beat being whom moves amongst them conceded defeat in life some years ago and now seeks a place of solitude in which to hide from the truth, but until then I shall opt to focus my dwindling energies on the elaborate attemp
t to escape from the past by rewriting the future.
CHAPTER V: ON CRESCENT STREET
“I did things that I’m sorry for; I lived to have my fun, but now the world that once was bright is empty and bare, and if you wouldn’t be ashamed of me, I’d still be there
[xxxii] .”
OCTOBER 3, 2005. IT’S MONDAY, and the new moon absorbs all shadows as I make the familiar drive up I-91 towards Brattleboro and away from my previous, although short-lived, place of residency.
Greg
[xxxiii] , Rosemary
[xxxiv] , and Leslie
[xxxv] welcomed me into their two-bedroom apartment in Northampton nearly three months prior to the current moment. The interior resembles a typical college dorm room. Colorful collages, created by Rosie and myself, plaster the walls with unusual images, such as giant grey squirrels juxtaposed by neon DNA coils. Ashtrays overflow with cigarette butts and half-smoked joints, and the coffee table displays a three-foot bong as its centerpiece. Dirty dishes and unfinished bottles of Magic Hat mar the surface of every table and countertop. Dominos’ boxes and McDonald’s wrappers litter the floor because no one ever empties the trash. A stack of unread books, yellow with age, sit in the corner, and the television is perpetually set to CNN.
Always filled with an eclectic mix of diehard individuals, Apartment 6 on Crescent Street becomes a haven for all those feeling apathetic towards the pressures of life: drug dealers, who speak in code over their cell phones but never really carry much weight beyond a few ounces ganja; potheads, who wait like hungry sewer rats to get a puff from someone else’s stash; gay men, who hit on Greg with Rosie’s approval and encouragement; Leslie’s coworkers from Starbucks, who reek of burnt coffee aromas despite the constantly lingering cloud of marijuana smoke; gangsters, who wear backwards hats and matching hundred-dollar sweat suits, yet have never seen a gun in their lives; hippies with dreadlocks and patchwork skirts, who hover over ashtrays in search of a forgotten roach; neighbors, who constantly bitch about the landlord and their own inability to make rent; and, of course, myself, who hides in corners and waits for people to turn their backs for a split second so I can slip another Adderall or K-pin into my mouth without notice and subsequent reprimand.
Given the daily influx of marijuana, however, people rarely notice the extent of my own chemical forays. Greg purchases an ounce of weed every morning, sometimes more, and, as if equipped with some sort of hidden radar, a dozen people suddenly appear, cramming themselves into the apartment‘s modest living room, as soon as that lighter first ignites and sparks the bong. I always partake in the ritualistic smoking circle that congregates in Apartment 6 throughout the early afternoon, but after several hours pass and the bag is empty, I still feel the need to consume, so I relocate to Packard’s
[xxxvi] with one or two other burnouts, and we switch over to the sweet comforts of alcohol.
As with most of the chemicals I ingest, I rarely pay for my drinks at the bar, for Greg and Rosie entrust me with their Visa Card under the assumption that they, too, will eventually join up with the crowd later, but they never arrive. They remain trapped within each other’s melancholic agoraphobia, following the general principle that they need no one other than each other to be happy
[xxxvii] , and, subsequently, they maintain the opinion that nothing beyond the apartment’s walls holds any consequence.
Conversely, I need to roam in order to find happiness, for I certainly am not going to discover it just waiting for last call to come and go and leave me stranded at 2:00 a.m. with no substances left to consume. I hit up an associate, a regular who drinks only coffee and plays always pool, for some K-pins. He pulls a prescription pill bottle from his coat pocket and graciously pours a stream of pale green pills into the palm of my hand.
“Um, but don’t you need these?” I question.
“Oh, I’ll just tell my psychiatrist that some asshole stole ‘em from me.”
“You’re the best,” I say as I shove a few pills into my mouth and the rest into my purse. “The best.”
“I do what I can, Hun.”
With another chemical in my system, I feel prepared to rove outdoors and away from the clusterfuck of people congregated at the bar, refilling the last of their drinks before closing time. I light up my Camel the instant my foot hits the sidewalk and turn sharply to my right in order to check out the domestic dispute taking place across the street. To my surprise my eyes meet instead with the chestnut irises of a fellow bar patron also in need of a nicotine fix. His blond hair falls to his shoulders, stylized in tight dreadlocks with wooden beads for ornamentation.
“Whaddup?” he asks casually.
“Nada. Just waitin’,” I reply.
He raises an eyebrow. “For what?”
“Someone to break the monotony of my daily existence.”
“Well, I think you found your match.” He flicks his cigarette butt to the pavement.
“Got anywhere we can go?” I question.
“Yeah, but I have no way of gettin’ there.”
“Good, ‘cause I got nowhere to go and a car to get us there.”
“Let’s ride.”
Packard’s becomes a miniscule reflection in my rearview mirror as my newfound companion directs me to his apartment, where I spend the remainder of the night and subsequent dawn eating K-pins and having casual sex. I allow the drugs to fracture the reality of ordinary existence and pretend that I have not compromised my capacity to make rational decisions. As the stranger falls asleep by my side, I concoct a lie to perform upon my return to Greg and Rosie’s apartment tomorrow in the late morning. Although very nonjudgmental, I feel the compulsion to lie to these people regarding my whereabouts, and as my stories move farther away from the truth, I realize that the secret to lying resides in the details.
I scan through hundreds of false scenarios inside my head before choosing which to present to my friends. It is not simply a matter of who, what, where, when, and why; it is about the miniscule facts that bring the story to life — banana-flavored rolling papers, purple nail polish, coffee rings on the end table, an unfinished game of chess, Dark Side of the Moon playing in the background. The more insignificant the detail, the more realistic the story becomes
[xxxviii] .
In order to avoid the topic of drinking and driving, I will decide to start my tale with the fact that I hitched a ride with an old high school friend, who just happens to live in the greater Amherst area, to his nearby apartment in order to reminisce about the past, discuss dreams of the future, and play catch up over the past three years in between, all amidst the verbally persuasive influence of Captain Morgan. I will mention that he drives a forest green Volvo, and, although I cannot place the model, its body resembles a typical station wagon manufactured in the late 1980s. Then, in order to avoid the topic of one-night stands, I will also choose to reveal the information that this particular individual has been like a brother to me since the ninth grade, and, given the nature of our relationship, to sleep with him would be borderline incestuous.
I will continue to misrepresent the details of the prior evening by declaring that I and my longtime friend discussed the visually artistic values versus the inadequately inferior diction of various comic book series, including Watchmen and Preacher, which will inevitably lead to a debate regarding the cinematic representations of the entire genre of graphic novels. The conversation will rapidly devolve into an irresolvable argument where my cohort attempts to defend the aesthetic values of Sin City as I allege that although certain stylistic choices appear acceptable in the printed form of comic books, they simply do not translate coherently into an appealing nor entertaining cinematic arrangement.
But despite the beauty behind such minutiae, Greg and Rosie, nonetheless, soon commence the process of passing judgment on my overall character based on the various actions that they do happen to witness firsthand, for beyond the attempts to conceal broken laws and careless decisions lies other damning evidence of my
deteriorating self, the most obvious being the scabs and scars that stain the surface of my skin. With upwards of 100 mg. of Adderall XR surging through my central nervous system on any given day, it seems nearly impossible for me to abstain from picking at non-existent blemishes nor to refrain from digging my nails through several layers of flesh, all in an effort to extrude any imaginary insects that might be borrowing underneath. Deep purple bruises line the calves of my legs, and when questioned about their origin, the answer does not come readily to my mind, for I honestly cannot recall what piece of furniture or other inanimate object I crashed into the prior evening. Meanwhile, as stockpiles of various prescription pills, mainly benzos and stimulants, disappear from Greg and Rosie’s dresser drawer with a greater frequency, the abrasions on my body appear to multiply, and as I recognize the depleting desire of others to tolerate for presence and subsequent melodrama at Apartment 6, I choose to leave before anyone has the opportunity to confront me or, more likely, just plain kick me out.
* * *
With the entire Atlantic Ocean separating myself from Greg, Rosie, and Leslie, who are currently on a weeklong vacation in Amsterdam, I utilize their extended absence to take advantage of the apartment’s vacancy. As the rising sun struggles to burst through the overcast skyline, I flip through leather cases filled with hundreds of CDs and remove those of interest to me. I search through the minimal DVD collection and make some choice selections from there as well.
I then make my way into Greg and Rosie’s bedroom and fling open the closet doors. I toss various dresses and blouses into an empty laundry basket before raiding the bureau for any designer jeans. Within minutes the laundry basket overflows with their garments, but before exiting the bedroom, I make sure to check the cigar box on the nightstand for any pills unknowingly deserted and, much to my surprise, find a handful of Concertas