Crack

I remember crack.

I never really liked cocaine in the first place. I'd done it at parties and whatever, but I never understood what the big deal was. I never understood why all these folks seemed to get addicted to it. It didn't keep you high very long- not like speed or acid. Cocaine didn't really alter my consciousness all that much, either- it just made my heart pound a little faster, and I got a little rush, but...eh. I could take it or leave it. Usually I'd take it- because back then I was willing to take anything anyone offered me- but I never wanted or needed it.

But crack. Crack was a lot different. For some reason my good friend John- and yes, I will use his real name, since it is so common that it won't exactly identify him. John offered to smoke a rock with me. The first one was great- what a rush! It was like the whole world was centered around the throbbing pleasure in my head and heart. It made me want to scream "YAAAAAAH!". It made me feel strong, and above all, the pain was gone. I wanted to do some more, of course. More.

The next hit was nice, but nothing like the first one. Still, I wanted more. So I sent John up to the crack house where his dealer was while I walked around the block, anxious, shaking a little from the cold. He came back and we went to the unlocked laundry room behind an apartment complex and smoked it, using a metal tube stolen from a tire pressure gauge, a bit of steel wool stuffed in the end so we wouldn't inhale flaming rocks. We fired it up, we laughed, we were furtive like lovers in that tiny, smelly laundry room- one of us would lean against the door while the other smoked, so nobody would come in and bust us. When it was gone we wanted more. We immediately bought another bag with the last of our money. It was a quick discovery- the next few hits didn't really get us high, they just fed the craving. More more more. And more. We fought over who would scrape the steel wool up and down the inside of the steel pipe just in case there was one more tiny hit in there. There wasn't, so we had to get some more. But we'd spent all our money.

That's the thing about crack. Its main effect on the user is not to get you high. Its main effect is to make you want more. After the third or fourth hit, it doesn't really get you high at all, but the craving keeps getting bigger and bigger the more you smoke. Crack turns you into an animal in a matter of minutes. You'll do anything for it, anything to hear the crackle of it vaporizing, smell its bitter minty chemical smell, taste the numbness in your mouth. Anything at all.

So John suggested that I drop him off on a corner on the seedier part of the gay district so he could turn a trick or two. John was someone who had been my best friend since I was a teenager. I loved him, would have died for him. He was closer to me than family. But I let him off on the corner so that he could prostitute himself to get us some more money for crack.

He turned a trick, we went back to the dealer and got more crack, and went back to the laundry room and smoked it all. And started to do the same goddamn thing all over again...only I had to go home. I had a kid to take care of. So I told him, hey, let's go to my house, we'll smoke a joint, get some sleep, maybe we'll go party again tomorrow. And we did.

That was the first night. And for a while every single night was like that.

My affair with crack lasted exactly two weeks. By the end of the second week I was falling apart, jumpy, paranoid, unable to sleep or eat or do anything. I cared so little about myself that I stopped secreting myself in that laundry room when I wanted a hit. On more than one occasion I found myself smoking crack out of my little makeshift metal pipe while driving down the expressway in my car.

It had to stop, obviously. John was staying with me because he was otherwise homeless, unless he wanted to go back to his parents out in bumfuck. I'd never been introduced to the dealer personally- never gotten the go-ahead to visit him myself. And that meant that, if John was gone, the crack would be gone too. So I said to John, Hey dude, I love you, man, but you gotta go. You just gotta go, because if you don't, we'll both be dead in six months.

I drove him up to Bumfuck myself. We were both on edge, fighting over the stereo, smoking joint after joint to take the edge off. I dropped him off at his dad's and went home and I never smoked crack again. I felt like shit for at least a month. I thought about that sweet rock every day. Sometimes I even drove past the crack house where John got our shit, wondering, wishing, but too afraid that if I went in I'd end up raped or shot. And I had a kid at home, a kid who depended on me. So I stayed off the shit. That was at least eight years ago, maybe nine, I don't know.

This is so cathartic, even though it's just the beginning. I've never told anyone about this before- it was a secret shared between me and John. Most of the people I know would never believe that it was me that did this...not in a million years. But I did, and so much more...but we'll save those memories for later. This is just the first tale- not first chronologically, of course, but the first I've written, just to see if I had the courage to do it. I see now that I do have the courage. In fact, it feels fucking good. So...more later, my dear reader.