by Megan Boyle
sam and mira read things aloud from other parts of the website. the website was so hilarious and perfect. we couldn’t find an area on the website that described exactly what ‘smartdog services’ was or what service they’re providing, but there was so much information about how they provided it. sam said ‘this is exactly it, this is what smartdog is, this website is exactly the joke about smartdog.’ i was laughing really hard, reading the things, the ‘awards and accolades’ section. found a section called ‘partners’ with pictures of people. zoomed in on a man’s face and showed it to mira and sam, laughing so hard i was crying a little and they laughed too. took a screenshot of the zoomed-in face of the ‘smartdog partner’ (wasn’t laughing mean-spiritedly or condescendingly, just ‘couldn’t believe’ the website was real, it was so perfect, the way it was aligning with my formerly non-actualized idea about how the world sounds like it’s running on business jargon, continuously surprising me with perfect examples of this).
tweeted ‘any partners? i’m looking to invest. rethink dog,’ ‘i’m looking to invest : rethink smartdog #smartdog,’ then ‘any roof bombings?’ i said ‘this is…i’m destroying my twitter account.’
mira said ‘wait stop, listen to that noise.’ heard something squishy, slow-moving, and maybe close to the window. i said ‘what the hell is that.’ mira said ‘i don’t know, i have no idea, it just sounds like this sometimes.’ sam said ‘if there actually was a smartdog it would be the size of your phone, oh my god, and it would be pink and have that face too, and its legs would be boneless and they’d make the squishy sound.’ felt momentarily frozen/awestruck by the unexpectedly complex creativity of the image. decided to go to sam’s apartment and smoke crack. i said ‘i don’t want to wear my jacket, can i wear one of yours?’ mira said ‘yeah, of course. we should all wear my jackets.’ picked a black one with a furry hood. sam looked at the jackets and mira picked one for him.
drove to 7-11 for gas and beer. there were maybe five cop cars in the parking lot. mira said ‘there’s always a lot of cops here, getting stuff, i don’t know why.’ watched mira and sam buy beers while i filled car with gas, then drove suspiciously around a parked cop car to an open parking spot, which turned out to be blocked by a hidden car-leaning cop. drove suspiciously to less-favorable parking spot between two cop cars. brought two ‘crazy stallion’ 24oz beers to cash register that could only give $10 cash back. walked to ATM to withdraw $40 for crack. waved to mira and sam. the little circle cartoon guy with arms and legs did somersaults on the ATM screen. i said ‘i love that guy.’ sam said ‘me too.’ took money and walked out and everyone got in the car again.
mira had bought ‘sour straws’ (sour gummy candy strings, forget what they’re really called, don’t think it’s ‘sour straws’). she said something about this 7-11 only being good for having this brand of ‘sour straws’ and gave me one. tasted strongly of something. i said ‘it tastes like the moment you discover you’re gay.’ i said something about how we were eating candy on the way to smoking crack, that this was…something. earlier sam had texted his dealer, who lives next to him. the dealer texted back something about prices and ‘~WORLD FAMOUS~’
APRIL 23, 2013
12–3:00AM: seems to be taking forever to type all of this. it’s 6:46AM april 24, typing this now. also this is where i start to remember less. rapidfire list of everything i remember happening in this time frame in the order i remember it:
• sitting at sam’s kitchen table and waiting for response from crack dealer, either sam or mira was on the bed
• mira saying ‘i keep having to pee, i’m peeing so much tonight’ and me bending over to touch my feet and saying ‘that’s what happens when you drink water, you pee. classic cause and effect. classic.’
• leaving apartment to meet dealer and sam saying something dad-like, referring to an earlier joke about how it would be good to try to act like a dad. sam said fatherly things and made faces like ‘stern guidance, kindly acceptance, soon you will know the way, my son’ as we walked out the door. he said ‘does anyone have to pee? i don’t want to go back because someone had to pee, so make sure you pee now.’ i made an urgent child-like ‘oh no, i have to pee, i’m in trouble’ face. he said ‘you better do it now’ in a threatening voice. i continued the ‘in trouble’ thing, started to walk to the door, then went ‘back to normal’ and we walked down the stairs.
• smoked five pinkie-nail-sized bags of crack using aluminum foil/dollar bill method that had been ‘honed’ by mira and sam, since the last time i did it with them.
• listening to lightning bolt, mira saying something about liking lightning bolt or knowing them, me saying a misguided story about how i almost saw them play in an alley once, but i didn’t, but it was raining so…‘lightning bolt’…bad story.
• mira said she wanted to listen to rap. i said to put on chief keef. think the only song sam had was ‘that’s that shit i don’t like.’
• something about biggie smalls…actually becoming smaller…shit, this actually happened in the car on the way there but i don’t feel like going back to type it there. someone said something about there not being space for their legs, then something about biggie, then that it would be good if biggie had surgically reassigned his limbs to different ‘outposts’ on his torso. i said ‘would he have gotten gastric bypass, to be smaller, if he was still alive, so he could be both big and small?’ then there was an interesting silence.
• talking and giving examples about how people can be ‘endearingly depraved’ or ‘annoyingly depraved’ (this was in the car on the way to sam’s, and the word wasn’t ‘depraved,’ can’t believe i’m not remembering this, we were saying ‘ED’ and ‘AD’ or ‘UD’). the ‘depraved’ quality was another way to describe ‘itchiness’ (term sam and his friend ralph invented to describe people who act eager to garner attention for ‘being themselves’ and seem equally unaware of saying things to indicate wanting attention, which often draws the opposite kind of reaction/attention desired…like, people who would abruptly change the subject of a conversation to an unrelated thing about themselves, then kind of squint or stare at their ‘audience’ like they must be either ‘considering this very important thing that has just been brought to their attention’ or ‘not there at all.’ that sounds funny. it’s more annoying than funny when it happens in real life).
• pretty much solely concentrating on/talking about the process of smoking the crack as we were doing it, saying like, sports-commentary things. everyone would watch ‘the smoker’ or the crack very closely. remember saying ‘teamwork’ and ‘what i’m doing right now is fiending, actually fiending, i can’t think about anything else but wanting more,’ and mira saying ‘yeah it’s the only thing that makes you want instantly more, even more than cocaine.’
• looking at each other after the five baggies were smoked and sensing we all wanted more. sam or mira said ‘i want more’ and i said ‘let’s just get more’ and sam texted dealer
• dealer texting with regular frequency all night, then turning off his phone as soon as we got to sam’s. sam said ‘this is what he does.’ dealer texted something vague which i think meant ‘don’t ask me how much it is, say how much you want.’ remember thinking mira and sam understood text or felt more interested/amused about it than me.
• after inhaling sam and mira made the same faces. seemed hilarious, how consistently exaggerated their faces would look, and how they’d ‘maintain face’ as we’d silently exchange matter-of-fact ‘masculine’ nods every time. i said ‘let me take a picture, you have to see’ and got sam’s face but at not the funniest angle/maybe slightly post-face.
• walking fast to pizza place where there was an ATM, walking slightly behind mira and sam due to high heels
• the first time the dealer wanted to make exchange inside sam’s building and mira and i waited outside, the second time it was just going to be sam but then mira and i wanted to come, dealer said ‘let them inside,’ i said ‘
yeah be a gentleman’ quietly, mira and i exchanging looks as sam let us inside, dealer didn’t have change for $20 and sam gave me $6, i said ‘what’s his name,’ surprised when sam didn’t know
• saying ‘world famous’ a lot
• all of us saying ‘i’m just drinking from all the beers on the table’ and ‘it’s okay, we’re all doing that’ at some point
• mira excitedly saying ‘do you know how to do a headstand?’ and following her onto the bed, to use as a headrest and prop feet on wall, picking a spot by the window and falling over/somersaulting into large gap between bed and window, switching to a wall space and mira switching to floor, sam taking pictures then doing a solo handstand and mira taking a picture
• something about belly-buttons
• sam and mira calling the first hit ‘greens,’ saying ‘who wants greens’ or ‘let’s give megan greens’ a lot, i said ‘should we call them ‘whites,” sam said ‘greens’ seemed funnier because of pot, group agreed ‘greens’ seemed funnier
• re-entering apartment with second round, sam saying ‘i don’t know what to listen to,’ me finding/playing ‘schism’ by tool on youtube, mira saying ‘you guys never went through a ‘tool’ phase,’ me repeating ‘i just like their videos’ maybe three times, feeling a little out of control
• standing near the table before we left for ATM and doing a short spontaneous freestyle rap, hearing someone say ‘you’re good at it’
• having same extreme focus on last three baggies, talking about ‘where does he get baggies so small,’ feeling like i was fiending big time, like i wasn’t getting any smoke and…like, very unseemly greediness…sensed mira wanting to ‘give me greens’ more because i paid for it, maybe, which made me want to deny greedy impulses and give everyone things equally, but definitely felt extreme greed
• talking about how it felt similar to cocaine but more calm and euphoric and like the effects lasted significantly shorter, i said something like ‘i don’t even know why i want to feel it again right away, not sure what it’s doing exactly’
• unanimously/effortlessly deciding to sleep after last baggie
• distributing 1mg xanax, going to bathroom to change into pajamas, emerging from bathroom and asking if anyone wanted another xanax because i was going to eat another one, seeing mira and sam sitting on the bed slowly saying things like ‘what time is it’ and ‘how many milligrams,’ then deciding they each only wanted half, saying ‘are you sure’ and felt willing to give more, half-thinking it would be ‘making up for crack greediness’
• mira using the bathroom and sam and me sitting on the bed, sam taking out a piece of gum with ‘startling comic unexpectedness’ and saying ‘i want a piece of gum, this gum is shitty,’ me saying ‘i want one too, give me the whole thing,’ getting entire mostly-full package shoved in mouth, laughing, trying to chew it, eventually it became chewable, mira coming out of the bathroom, showing her ‘the wad,’ seeing two pictures she took of me chewing ‘the wad’ and saying ‘oh gross’ (about me more than ‘the wad’)
• using bathroom again to brush teeth, hearing mira say ‘do you want the middle or the end’ a few times. asking where toothpaste was and, while brushing, thinking ‘cool, someone else’s toothpaste,’ sam saying he had work in the morning but mira and i could sleep
• falling asleep easily, spooning mira in ‘oddly un-awkward way i tend to spoon mira, but that might be awkward for mira, should maybe check about this with mira, feel similar to alvie kneading on my arm when i have done this, this is the first time this is being acknowledged publicly, i’m laughing a little’
4:10pm: woke to sounds of Mira moving around, making coffee I think. Mira emerged from bathroom and we sat at the kitchen table. Sam had left for work much earlier, I think. Mira said ‘I made coffee, I put it in the fridge,’ and took out two white mugs of coffee. Was happy/interested that she had put them in the fridge, I like putting ice in hot coffee. Remembered being at her apartment in march the morning after we made a ‘how to figure out people’ chart and ordered thai food and putting ice cubes in my coffee, feeling moved that she had maybe noticed this.
Things we talked about at table: crack and Xanax being a good combination/not regretting saying things the next morning like how cocaine can make you regret, confusion about a reading Scott mcclannahan is organizing, how we’re both bad at responding to emails, how I’m moving there soon/going to look for jobs at nursing homes, liking old people, relationship things a little. I’m leaving NYC to mail books from Baltimore and returning Thursday for the interview with the apartment committee people. Mira said I could stay with her again/anytime and I said something like ‘thank you’ and ‘I don’t want to be like [person who overstays their welcome]’ and she said I wouldn’t be and I believed her.
5:20pm: driving back to Baltimore. Wearing Mira’s big black coat (left mine at her apartment last night). Man in car said ‘hey baby’ and I stared at/‘ogled’ him back with an intensely neutral, slightly-deranged-in-its-display-of-zero-reaction face. Continued staring as I drove away, then turned head to continue aggressively neutrally staring.
6:50pm: passing Delaware. Sky is starting to be sunny again. Feel encroaching emptiness, imagining arriving at one of my parents’ apartments. Mira is at work. I’m not sure where Sam is. Seems daunting to fill in details of hanging out with them last night. It was good to see them and be reminded that soon I’ll have a place to live, a life. Sky looks simultaneously oppressive and indifferent. Keep having memories and wondering what I should do. Read Sam pink’s captions on a photo of Mira reading at the MOMA, thought ‘shrimp’ and ‘perceptive ass person.’ A little worried about not having my period yet.
7:09pm: skimmed march 21-25 to see if I had gotten period. I am still ‘safe.’ listening to ‘ruins’ by aloha to see if I still felt moved by it like how I did in march, and I do, big time, the lyrics—hoo, big time. Goosebumps. Cried tearlessly, more like a ‘what the fuck’ helpless laugh/shuddering thing. Want to type lyrics. Resisted typing them before, you know how to skip shit, skip it if you want:
The cupboard is bare
I’ve been watering the fields
That I should be harvesting
Treatments come, I never turn the page
Months are a mistake, it’s like 29 days
Keep my daybook clean
I’m never ready to leave
Keep my calendar clear
I’m not going anywhere
(One moment goes by)
I walk in the stagnant sun
A chemical reaction if there ever was one
(One moment goes by)
I fought the tyrannical sun
I try to forget but your memory won
(One moment goes by, by, by, by)
I walk among the ruins
I tried to forget but I couldn’t do it
The cupboards are bare
I’ve been hunting things
When I should be gathering
Weekends are a waste, I never leave the grounds
The weekend can break me, it’s like 24 hours
Keep my good days free
Keep my eyes closed, please
To everything, everything
I’ve been seeing the signs of my surrender
I’ve got it backed up and nobody can send it
I’ve been seeing the end
I’ve been seeing the signs of resurrection
Got it backed up and nobody can send it
I’ve been seeing the end, seeing the end
We were giants on a plywood stage
In evenings I was your household name
And for a little while, I knew all the words you’d say
Cut me from the movie
Pull me from the credits
I was just beyond camera
Right outside the frame
Waiting for a getaway car that never came
At the end of the story I was just beyond camera
R
ight outside the frame
Waiting for a getaway car that never came
Waiting for a getaway car that never came
Waiting for a getaway car that never came
7:36pm: experimenting with sunglasses to see what makes sky look less depressing. It’s starting to look prettier now.
8:10pm: have been listening to ‘ruins’ on repeat, reading lyrics to add ‘sight’ to sensory experience of song…seeing + hearing song…now…
8:14pm: undecided about eating adderall. Tolerance is higher, I don’t want to stay up all night again, have seven left and one vyvanse. I bought it so I could eat it, why conserve it all of a sudden? Feeling drained. Nothing I want to do right now and no matter what I’ll be doing something. Getting on exit for mom’s house. Humorless dread, no funny ideas, unable to readjust mentality to be like ‘you’re fine, consider how much worse other people have it, better things are on the way probably.’ was just passed by screaming ambulance. ‘ambulance’ is a pretty word, sounds like it would mean ‘inspirational lighting, similar to the lighting of Oprah’s colon.’
9:08PM: talked with mom. said i had fun in new york and expressed similar things as above few updates. she said ‘i think it’s spring fever, it’s so hard to make myself do anything right now.’ thought ‘mom understands, i think.’ she said dad called a psychic last night who said it was ‘a bad year for libras.’ mom said ‘it’s something about your saturn, uranus, i don’t know. i don’t know about these things, they’re interesting to hear though.’ i said ‘yeah they’re interesting to hear.’
washed kale, halved cantaloupe, combined in blender while mom said vague consoling things about how it didn’t seem ‘right’ that i was feeling this bad for this long, and that she also had been feeling directionless. finished blending and asked what she was reading. she said ‘i don’t even know, it’s some crappy mystery, i couldn’t even tell you the title or who it’s by. sometimes those things are just good.’ i said ‘yeah, crappy stuff is good sometimes, i like it.’ she walked to the kitchen and moved plates in the sink as i drank my blended thing. the corned beef from a few weeks ago was in the sink, in a plastic container. i said ‘how about that bad boy.’ mom made a face and said ‘oh i know, it’s really, you know. don’t open that lid.’ i smiled. she said ‘oh i’ll take care of all this later, you’re using the kitchen, i’ll get out of your way.’ i said ‘you’re not in my way at all, i’m just drinking this.’ she said ‘well, i’ll just wait’ and hesitated. she said ‘i’m starting up that sensa powder diet thing again, which seems fruitless.’ i said ‘well, not unless you put it on fruit.’ she said ‘haha, fruit, get it?’