by mcdavis3
A hush had come over Shorewood: coke. You had no idea who was doing it, people were disappearing at parties. Bathroom doors were getting locked. Lines were being drawn and best friends had to pick sides. I was vehemently opposed from the beginning, I’d promised myself long ago to never do coke. I’d stuck to my guns this time, I rolled my eyes at all the “first time” stories. Coke these days wasn’t even real, I’d read about all the cheap chemicals like horse dewormer, paint thinner and dentist numbing agents that were mixed in with the “coke.”
So when Jeff and Justyn would mysteriously reappear at a party, I’d joke wildly, “Mmm how was that horse dewormer guys? Was that paint thinner bomb?” They never said anything back, their dismissive silence was enough of a response. They were doing fucking coke.
I flipped sides in the middle of Social Psych. I was staring at George Gerald, a goober I’d grown up playing tennis with. He was blazed, eyes barely open, with a big obvious grin on his rectangle face. His bright braces shinned proudly. He wasn’t even hiding that he was high. How could the teacher not see? It was infuriating. It wasn’t just him, lots of kids were getting high now and throwing their own dweeby parties. It was staring at George Gerald in social psych that I realized I needed to get inside those bathrooms.
When the period ended I found Jeff and said, “Come on Jeff, I want to get blown.”
He gave me a poker face. “Are you serious?”
“Yep, I know you’re holding. Very exciting day Jeff. Big day,” I playfully mocked.
“No way.” He lit up excitedly. “Alright. Wanna skip 5th?”
I offered my failing progress report as a tooter and we did lines off my science book. As an experience it wasn’t great. It made me feel so weird and flighty that I had to smoke a ton of weed to balance it out. The best part by far was the actual act of snorting it. The idea of being on coke, the glamour of all the movies and songs. I had some hilarious coke jokes too.
“Cut me up a shamu line, dawg. Aw ya gimmie some of that nose candy.”
Then after I’d snort the baby laxative I’d shout out, “Hallelujah! Praise Jesús, Mary and Joseph!” or “I can’t feel my face! I can do anything!” Laughs every time. Coke was far from my favorite, but it got me into the bathrooms, with Mia, Mike, Loren, Jonsen and the rest. A member of the secret society within the secret society.
30. Rehab (Spring, 2006)
I woke up to the ruffling of my step-dad, Allan, going through my jeans on the floor. I kept pretending to sleep, but I was chainsaw awake. Did I leave anything in my pockets? A lighter?
“Good morning Allan.” I pretended to groan irritably. The oaf didn’t respond. He looked pissed. The jingle of my keys signaled his aim, once he had them he stormed out of my room. In an attempt to appear innocent and relaxed I lay in my bed for an anxious ten minutes before taking my blanket down the hall to my mom’s room.
Leaning up half way against her make-shift recliner of four or five pillows my mom’s eyes were closed but she was never fully asleep. The Sunday paper was lying open across her feet.
I crawled into the bed and moved the pink spit/vomit bin that was always by her side. Her pituitary gland didn’t work because of the steroids so she was always spitting out phlegm.
I cuddled up next to her, draping my arm over her pot belly. Her thin greyish hair was her most human feature. Her whole body was bloated because of the steroids. None of her glands worked right anymore. She was so full of fluids her legs leak tears. Her face was puffy and swollen.
Her bug eyes opened to my touch, “Hey sunshine,” she said, reaching her arm over to pat my arm. I looked at the air tube sticking in her nose. I hated that air tube. I’d come home one day a year ago to find a big bold letter sign reading, “Caution Oxygen in Use: No Smoking, Sparks or Open Flames” taped to our front door. I was so angry I’d it first from that stupid sign.
“Allan took my keys,” I complained.
“He found some weed pipes in your car, Marco,” She said. It was the worst case scenario. They weren’t just weed pipes, Eric’s 3 foot bong, Kim Bong-Il, was in my trunk. My double-perk bubbler, Kunta Kiefte was in the dash.
“Are they yours, Marco?” She asked compassionately. Her love for me had no bottom. Her sons were the reason she was living. The reason she’d fought so hard for 14 years.
“No, of course not,” I snapped defensively, “They’re Eric’s.”
“Come on honey, you can tell me the truth.”
“I’m honest to a fault mom, that’s my nature, you know that. I’d tell you.”
“Allan and I were talking and we decided we’re taking your car until you take a substance abuse evaluation.” It was bad, but surprisingly my usual desperate, feverish outbursts weren’t taking over, I was dull. I’d been so careless lately how could I not get caught? This was the moment I’d built my life around preventing, for 4 years, my parents knowing I smoked pot. The thought of life without the burden was both liberating and terrifying, the duality of it caused me to twist in the bed, searching for a cool spot of fabric to comfort me.
“Ok I’ll go, but I have to get that bong back to Eric, mom. It’s 300 dollars, it’s called Kim Bong-Il.” I told her the name hoping she’d laugh and get how cool naming a bong was. To my frustration, it didn’t elicit a reaction.
My mom called to Allan, he stomped in the room and fumed while my mom instructed him to give the bong back.
“No. I’m gonna break them.” He taunted me. My step-dad and me had been playing this game for some time, he was always overly suspicious of me. His own sons had taught him some hard lessons. And now the silly fool was glaring at me like he’d won. I’d stopped trying.
“No honey, he’s agreed to go to the evaluation. Give them back.” From my mom’s side I glared like a fox at the red-faced blowhard.
How quickly can I get my pee clean? I planned. I’ll start taking Niacin today.
We’d been losing people to rehab since middle school. The goobers who’d AP, who’d do Adderall a month straight, or 20 e pills in a week, overdose on coke. [14] Kids who didn’t have their parents in check. Some with potential. Only a couple had been to rehab and made it back, most were forced to transfer schools and never seen again. We’d laugh at their memory and joke, “Rehab’s for quitters.”
[14] One of Duncan’s friends, Ivar, AP’d drinking with us in 8th grade. We’d decided to hide him in the bushes at the beach to sleep it off. When Duncan went back for him later—despite my adamant reassurances that he was fine and we should leave him until the morning—Duncan found Ivar at the bottom of 15 foot ravine tangled in blackberry bushes with his own vomit all over him. Duncan immediately called an ambulance and took the fall with him. Ivar got sent away after that. The doctors said Duncan might have saved his life.
I had two weeks. I started a Niacin regime. I broke out in a rash the first day and spent the night in front of two fans. I stopped smoking pot, but coke and the other stuff only stayed in your system a few days. I was doing good, completely on track, until the day before my test.
It wasn’t even on a weekend. I was sitting around bored at the beach with Jon at 5pm on a Tuesday when Jamilee pulled up next to us.
“Hey guys.” As a senior, Jamilee’s personality was so genuinely warm and friendly it was as if that snobbish 11-year old look I knew from the park never existed. I knew it was still somewhere deep down inside her though. Jamilee drifted in and out of the Shorewood’s scene. She was one of the hard partying beautiful girls that spent most their time with older guys.
“There’s a storm coming in.” She pointed to sliver of black on the horizon. “I just got a bunch of free blow from this homie and I’m about to do hella of it, you want in?
Jon looked over at me.
“F-it.” We hopped into her car.
Each line made me more anxious about failing my test the next day, feel more gross, like I needed to run off in five different direction. Every line was a toast to the memory of Jamilee’s 11-year-old perfec
tion. Destiny had brought us down the same path, back together. It all fit together so perfectly. As the blackened sky grew closer we walked to the edge of the beach’s biggest bluff. The storm clouds stampeded towards us like a sublime rolling chimera until we were face to face, close enough to touch it.
The next day I begged the counselor not to give me a UA.
“Look, my mom is very ill, she’s probably dying. Hearing the news that her son has been doing drugs might kill her. You can’t tell her, you really can’t.” She told them anyways and I was enrolled into the outpatient program.
The whole way home I kicked the back of my mom’s chair violently. This would cause Allan to slam the car to the side of the road and threaten to kick me out.
“Your mom’s very ill, you little punk. Her spine’s degenerating. She’s had a shoulder replacement and she needs a hip replacement. What are you thinking?”
When he’d start driving again I’d kick both their seats even harder.
“You’ll never understand. You’ve never been as cool as I am. You’ve never walked into a party with the most popular kids in your entire school. It’s the greatest feeling in the world.”
I was the oldest kid in my outpatient group. Most kids were in middle school, with snide looks implanted on their faces and crazy fucking-up-with-a-purpose war stories. I took the less-time-for-good-behavior approach and sneered at the trouble makers. I never had any intention of quitting drugs, but I retained a lot of the information. I still got kicked out. I wrote a bunch of nasty things in my “journal” about the fat counselors. How eating was an “addiction,” and sitting in front of the TV was an “addiction.” How being a controlling B counselor was an “addiction.” Everyone got kicked out eventually. By then my mom was back in the hospital so no one said anything. The same night I got kicked out I was right back to doing what I was doing.
31. No Worries (Spring 2006)
Inside Desean’s car I could only imagine the howling night wind roaring through the ferry terminal. I was with two of Duncan’s friends, Marquis and Desean. They were using the downtime on the ferry to start cutting up lines on a cd case on the center console.
Shorecrest’s party scene was much more gangster than the Shorewood’s. They used heavier slang and acted harder. But the wannabes were always a step behind the drug trends at Shorewood. My drug steez let me fit in with Duncan’s friends without having to add a single “cop that,” or “stuntin” to my vocabulary. Tactfully drop “being blown” enough in stories and you’ll eventually get a mild mannered call from some g’s asking you to “hook them up.”
I’d hooked them up that night, after over charging them–and feeling damn good about it. I hung out with Duncan and his friends every three weekends. It was the perfect ratio. When my Shorewood friends annoyed me I just dipped out to the Shorecrest scene for the weekend. I loved being able to switch between the two “rival” groups. It was social genius stuff. That night the big Shorecrest party was at a cabin across the sound.
My spread eagle arms and legs took up the empty backseat. While their ID’s busily went about the never ending work of preparing the chunky flakes for inhalation, I got a great idea for a joke. I leaned in and started sweet talking the shiny powder.
“Aw ya, you’re some dirty coke aren’t ya? You want all up in my nasal don’t ya? Ya you do. You want deep up in there.”
I got chuckles but then Marquis said a little too seriously, “You a foo.”
The kinda-diss caused me to shoot Marquis a mean look but I ran into Marquis’ even colder face. Man, everything is always so serious with these guys, I thought. Why don’t you make a joke, Marquis?
“Oh come on, that’s funny.” I had to use my bad-joke back off line. “Yo Desean, cut me up a fatty.” I immediately commanded, to take everyone’s mind off the whole thing.
“Aight.” These kids thought they knew about blow. He lined up a daunting gob.
I did it and then falling back in my seat I put two peace signs up in the air and start waving them, exclaiming, “I’m not a crook, I’m not a crook.” I didn’t even wait to see that one land, cockily I turned out the window. They laughed, but not hard enough. They didn’t even know who Richard Nixon was. Avi would have gotten the brilliance of that joke. F-ing douchebag.
I felt the familiar raw edginess of the concoction rushing on. Then, watching one of the tied up lifebouy’s thrashing in the wind, time froze, for a millisecond, it completely froze. Dread hit me like a child in the pitch black. Detergent bottles and big green yuck faces flashed across my mind. What did I just put into my body? I was so unnerved that I dropped all charades of being cool and grasped out for comfort.
“Hey, you guy feel alright?”
“I don’t know, I feel kind of sick. I’m gonna hold up on it for a minute.” Desean answered.
“I’m posted dawg,” Marquis said defiantly.
I fell into dead silence, but my thoughts were pounding. Desean is sick too, this is definitely some bad coke. Oh god. I deserve this. Ok, it’s ok. How many times have you been through these exact scary sensations on drugs? Coke only lasts a half hour, that’s nothing compared to some of the bad trips you’ve been through. But what if this is an overdose? Desean’s sick, and I did twice as much as him. What if I’m dying? I can’t call 911, I’d rather die than face the social disgrace.
By the time we reached the cabin I was trembling like a tuning fork. All my senses were pointed inward as we entered and began greeting people, I didn’t even say hi to anyone. The kitchen was nice, 70’s appliances. I perched up on the first open space on the counter top and silently resumed panicking. The evidence was too great, the inexplicable sensation, how shitty I felt, I was overdosing. I couldn’t call 911, I could only tough it out. Duncan finally came over to me.
“Yo Marky Mark, you alright? You look sick. You wanna smoke a blunt?”
“I’m not feeling well.” I felt feverish, this is what it must feel like to die. I waved him off. Duncan was busy, he was co-hosting the party and he was already party OCD.
I’m so sick I don’t even feel like smoking, I panicked. How sick do I look? Oh god.
I sat there, stuck, for an hour, until some ghastly whim caused me to bolt for the deck. I needed some last fresh air before I died. On the deck, my behavior caught some people’s attention.
“You okay, Marco? You’re shaking? You want a cigarette? Someone get him some water.” I didn’t respond, I just shook until they were all looking at me, my arms frozen across my chest. The smothering crowd of concerned faces caused me to flee again. I had to get away from people.
I pushed through the crowd until one of my nudges produced a halting bark, “You better step back bitch.” I turned around to face Janae, Shorecrest’s Janae, Janae James, one of the coolest girls at Shorecrest. She was surrounded by a circle of her girlfriends. There was just something about that name. When I was younger I was fascinated with this coincidence. The best explanation I had was that parents who named their daughters Janae around 1988 must have been more likely to foster those perfect conditions that created super popular kids. But this type of analysis didn’t register when I was in middle school, I’d settled on the conclusion that Janaes were just meant to stand out, Marys may never understand.
“Excuse me,” I said. We’d been introduced a half dozen times and there was still no hint of recognition in her face.
Her bunched up nose and eyebrows weren’t nearly as scary as they used to be. A memory hit me from when I was a foot shorter, in 7th grade, looking up terrifyingly at her big hoop earrings as I’d stood next to Duncan in a circle of Kellogg kids. Someone had asked her about a popular boy she’d been flirting with. “I only date ballers,” She’d decreed with a retarded squint. I’d trembled then.
“Keep walking,” Janae answered to my apology.
“I only date ballers,” I said back, softly. It’s funny the offhand things that end up staying with you forever.
“Huh?”
“Noth
ing,” I smiled creepily and scurried along. The run-in took my mind off my desperate predicament for a few moments, but the terror rushed back as fast as a thought. I scampered downstairs and crawled on top of a bunk bed I found inside a dark bedroom.
God get me through this and I will start volunteering at a homeless shelter, I promised. I sunk my head into my hands until kaleidoscopes of light and perler bead visions began tormenting me. A hint of green light from my pocket flashed in the dark, I pulled out my phone, it red “home calling.” I hadn’t given them an excuse for tonight, I’d just ignored their calls. They’d called six times straight earlier.
I answered it, “Hi.” I started scrambling something together. I’m sorry for not calling you earlier, I thought this cabin party would be so cool, but it sucks. I really regret coming.
“Oh Marco… Hi honey, how are you?” My mom’s voice doesn’t sound right.
“I’m good mom… How are you..?”
“Well dear, I had something important to call you about, but now I.. I.. I just can’t remember it. How funny is that? What a thing?”
“Oh, ok.” She got like this sometimes because of her pain meds.
“Oh, now I remember. The remote. I can’t find the remote. Have you seen it?”
“Did you check the cushions mom?” She sounded preoccupied, I could imagine her at home in her pajama once piece, hobbling and propping herself around our Purell smelling living room searching for the remote.
“Yes, I checked the cushons… Oh Marco,” She paused to laugh at herself. “Here it is. It was under my seat. Can you believe that?”
“Funny mom. Glad you found it. I gotta go, love you.”
“Ok, love you my dear.” I hung up the phone and reburied my head into the pillow.
Amidst the hundreds of thoughts jerking at me a deep notion of life crossed my mind, disappearing before I could wrap my head around it. Life’s like a filthy house? Like the crack shack? A Mexican slum? Mushy? Something about garbage… Trying to recall the train of thought that led me there made me feel sickly dizzy like trying to solve a huge math equation. I spent the rest of the night crashing in and out of sleep. Fluctuating between resigning myself to die and mustering all my strength to keep living.