Chapter 18: Toughening Up

I had been with Rosemont Publishing, a small academic outfit in bumfuck NJ and my first job out of school, for about a year when my colleague and object of lust, Ben, found a new job. I must have applied for a job with the same company without realizing who they were because one day I came back to my apartment in Highland Park and discovered a message on my answering machine for an Editor position with LexisNexis. It took me a few conversations with Ben to realize it was the same place he was going.

It must have been another instance of right place, right time – because I was hired instantly. The major legal publisher, once a stalwart of midtown Manhattan, had just relocated to downtown Newark owing to soaring New York rent prices. In the process, they had lost a lot of employees and were hungry for new hires. On paper I more than fit their criteria: I had earned a BA on a full scholarship, and already had 1 year of publishing under my belt.

I took the job at $35K and commuted from Highland Park for the first couple of months. But I was already severely behind on my rent and still unwilling to do something like fuck my landlord – “one hand washes the other”, as he put it, and even though it didn’t register that he was importuning me for sex I knew it was something bad and that I had to get away – so I decided to move to Newark.

Newark had already become a running joke among me and Ben and his LexisNexis crew, mostly guys he already knew; it was shoddy and debauched and sad in a very unbecoming way, and we only went there because we worked there, and we rarely if ever descended to the street, and we ventured only from the train platform and through the enclosed bridge that led to the building where we worked.

But I wanted to be close to the job and was excited at the prospect of saving $300 a month on rent and resolute that this choice served to bolster my career, as well as my newfound mission to affirm my independence.

“I need some toughening up!” was my ebullient retort, in the face of one and then another and another’s shock when I told them of my decision to move to Newark. But mostly I laughed at people’s response to my news; I thought it was downright funny that I had elected to move to the apparent pit of hell, this charmless butt of my colleagues’ mockery.

Maybe I was cavalier – or maybe I was just mentally ill, as a therapist would suggest decades later.

I moved into a room on the bottom floor of a brand-new home in a suburban neighborhood not far from the Lightrail. My roommates were 2 Indian chicks who were unrolled at UMDNJ, the medical school not far from there. I didn’t explore the area before I moved in, I was just psyched to save money on rent and the room was clean and the landlord and his wife seemed kind and seemed happy to have me, and I met their good-natured welcome with goodwill and positivity.

But I was precocious and adventurous and within a short time at my new job I made friends with the janitor, this scrawny White dude named Jimmy, probably because he was a smoker too, and quickly sized him up, and let him in on my big secret: I wanted fucking blow.

All he needed was $200, he said, and we could get a piece uptown Manhattan and then sell it and make some dough. So I gave him the cash and he and I and his scrawny brown friend hauled ass in a an old boat of a car to Harlem. I wasn’t privy to the transaction itself but they got it while I waited in the backseat of the car and we headed back.

We hadn’t quite reached the outskirts of Harlem when we got pulled over by an undercover cop. As we pulled to a stop Jimmy turned halfway around the driver’s seat and thrust a bag full of weed into my hands and told me to put it in my bra – not that I needed to be told where to hide my drugs, after all that’s where I hid my stash when we went to Detour, but I took it and felt inside my shirt, and stashed it inside the right cup of my bra, where the slit was. He and his equally diminutive copilot started to panic but then quickly ascertained that the best place to hide the bag of coke was inside the piece of plastic that housed the interior light of the car.

Everything had been adequately hidden by the time the plain-clothes cop came up the driver’s side window. But a car full of mostly white people in that neighborhood at that time was suspect, and they made us step out of the car.

“Where are the drugs?” The cops demanded.

“We don’t have any drugs, officer,” Jimmy and his buddy responded. I was quiet, just happy to oblige the cops’ questions.

“What are you doing in this neighborhood, at this time of night?”

I’m sure I backed up Jimmy and the other skinny dude’s story, whatever it was.

Then they turned to me.

“I saw you put something in your bra, what did you put in your bra?” they demanded.

I didn’t put up much of a fight, just apologized profusely as I shoved my left hand down my shirt, retrieved the bag of weed from my bra, and chucked it onto the ground.

“OK, where’s the rest of it?” The cops demanded.

“That’s it, that’s all there is.” My story corroborated Jimmy’s and his friend’s.

“You better tell us or we’re calling the dogs!” the cops threatened.

Their threats to call the dogs on us went on for several minutes – but we didn’t give in.

They turned to me and asked me my name and where I worked. In my disrepute I tried to keep my voice steady, and I told them and produced my business card. When they saw I had a good job and was, by all outward appearances, a contributing member of society, they started to back off.

Finally they retreated, got back in their black Lincoln and sped off. Jimmy waited until they passed then walked over to the gutter and retrieved the bag of weed I had thrown on the ground. I guess that’s not what they were looking for, and the fact that they had driven off without it was fucking hilarious.

I didn’t know these scrawny dudes from a hole in the wall but we were all in fine spirits like we were old friends when we got back in the car and drove off. I was on the outskirts as always but I reveled in the shared mirth, maybe I had earned my place among their ranks as someone who could be trusted, someone who hated the cops too and lived just outside the law and, more importantly, wouldn’t rat them out.

“They just wanted the drugs!” Jimmy and his friend commiserated. Except this time I was in on the joke, and was party to the shared merriment. I hadn’t caved to the cops, and that made me cool.

I didn’t question why their opinion mattered so much to me, or why I needed their acceptance so badly, or at all.

Being “cool” didn’t make me a profit but Jimmy gave me a sliver of the 2 hundy piece when he dropped me off. I did a bump in bed to chill out and amazingly fell asleep. I never saw any return on my original investment or got any of it back – or saw any more of the product.

But I quickly forgot about it; this was new territory, and as much as the dark-skinned denizens of my neighborhood sneered from behind their ratty window curtains and doors half-ajar, and the yellows of their eyes were smirking and dull, life peeking through like weeds in the sidewalk cracks, alive despite the elements, and all hope had long since withered before the fetid sun, I soon discovered the sad secret that would take me down – coke was fucking everywhere.

That bump Jimmy gave me the night we had the run-in with the cops was my first taste in years; but, as he had proven basically useless, I was compelled to explore my options. So I got bold, and one afternoon I walked up the street.

At the nearest intersection, the strip of new homes where I lived the gave way to dilapidated, run-down standalone houses, some ravished by fire, and then to the projects, at the other end of the block. It was bleak and signs of human life were disparate and people walked without purpose, maybe they were just counting down the hours till death, or maybe they were already dead in a sense, but anyway it creeped me the fuck out; but at the end of the day all that mattered to me was that it spelled fucking opportunity.

One afternoon I ventured up to the nearest street corner because I saw someone was there. It was a young Black kid, and he was holding a baby. I would have been concerned for the younger child if I didn’t have bigger problems, like how to feed the now-raging fiend in me that had been on slow-kindle for years and had ripened into a raging physical ache. So I turned on what I figured was my best street-charm and went up to him.

“Hey buddy, can I ask you a question?”

“Yeah, wassup?” He looked at me sideways at first, but only slightly awry; and I gauged that I had his ear, since he didn’t shift his stance, or turn away, or look offput in any way.

Not like that would have stopped me.

“Do you know where I can get some…you know, smoke?” And I made the universal gesture for smoking weed, putting my thumb and forefinger together and touching them to my lips.

“Yeah, yeah, I can get that.”

“That’s great, thanks man. But actually I’m looking for something else…”

“Like what?”

“I’m actually trying to find something, you know…” and I patted my nose with my right forefinger a couple of times.

He wasn’t fazed.

“Yeah, I can get you that.”

“That’s fucking great, I have fifty.”

“Stay right here, I’ll be right back.”

“OK, thanks.”

So I hung out on the corner, waiting, pacing in place and shirting my weight, smoking, trying not to act too eager.

Shortly into my second cigarette I saw him motion to me from up the street, in the direction of the projects. I practically jumped at this gesture, turning on my heel and walking quickly – but not too quickly – in his direction, giddy with the anticipation, but furrowing in dread, this was bad, this was bad, this was too fucking easy.

My heart was racing and I could almost feel my blood pumping and my fingers were numb and cold, and I stepped with trepidation but it was too late now; anyway my need was excruciating and I couldn’t fucking help myself.

When I reached him he said he only had 20s.

“OK, give me three.”

I ruffled through my pocket to forge 60 bucks and handed it to him without any effort to conceal it. I held out my right hand and he poured the 3 plastic vials into my palm. I was expecting baggies and was confused at first but mostly thrilled that I had finally found it and could go back to my own little room and do my shit in peace. So I clumsily put the vials into my left hand and put my hand down the neck hole of my shirt, down into the right cup of my bra, searching for the familiar slit.

“Thanks buddy,” I said, barely containing my indiscriminate glee, and the uneven lilt in my voice, and turned around to head up the street, back to my apartment.

Before long I knew a few guys who had it and did business with them on a regular basis. I didn’t have many phone numbers – not that anyone ever answered, or even had a phone – but I knew who was on the block and when.

Once I found it I needed it every day and since I was downtown in the office from 9 to 5 or so I needed to get it before I left for work. Mornings were the most critical but also the hardest time to find something. For the most part my street was a wasteland at this time of day but I was not at all shy about striding up to the first dude I saw and importuning him. It was a little easier by this point because I knew a few people’s names so I could just say I was looking for so-and-so, and had you seen him? It was the perfect way in, even if they didn’t know who I meant – I was confident and they acted like they knew who I was talking about, even if they didn’t.

Sometimes this worked but often I couldn’t get shit. I’d drag ass into work late after combing the streets by my apartment, and I’d be completely out of sorts.

My psychological addiction predated my physical dependence and within a very short time I reasoned that I couldn’t function at work without it. Ironically, it wasn’t long before I was hooked in every sense and literally could not do my job without it. I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t concentrate. Sometimes I couldn’t even stay upright because I had been using into the wee hours the night before and would take refuge in my supervisor Jim’s office when he wasn’t there and take a nap under his desk.

Eleanor was in charge of the Editorial department where I worked as an Editor on these fucking legal publications about bankruptcy, and I’m pretty sure she knew I was using drugs. But I was affable and eager to learn and came in on weekends – not like I had anything better to do – and she must have had a soft spot for me. Or at least she didn’t know what to do with me. At a meeting one day Jim made an offhand joke about some theoretical person using drugs, as in, “What, was he on drugs? Haha,” and I laughed most likely a little too hard, while everyone else got quiet and looked down.

I saved all my empty vials and put them in a makeup box with a latch and pink camouflage design that I brought with me from a previous life. It wasn’t long before the box was overflowing with empties.

I thought it was funny.

One evening I was wandering down the street where I lived, up by the projects, and couldn’t find anyone so I ventured off the familiar route down a side street. I was probably at least a little drunk and seriously agitated and, when a car full of young Black guys pulled up alongside me and tried to get my attention, I engaged.

I don’t remember exactly what they said but I wager that they had no intentions beyond just cat-calling, maybe enacting some mild intimidation, after all it was unusual to see a young White woman on those streets, especially at that time of day, and what was up with this bitch?

But in my semi-stupor, in my resentment and grief and desperation – where the fuck was everyone? – I made nice with them, told them what I was looking for, and cajoled them into taking me back with them.

“Yeah, yeah, we got that,” the guy in the passenger seat said, he was the one who was closest to me.

And I got in the car.

I don’t know what I drank before that, or what I drank when I got there – but I was more or less in a blackout. Maybe they came through on their promise of coke, but whatever they gave me it wasn’t enough to sober me up, or maybe it was just too late and I was too fucked up. But I have little recollection of that event, except for the memory of some guy rubbing himself on top of me and trying to deep-kiss me, and I dug deep for a sliver of lucidity and was mumbling to him.

“Please, please, get off me, please, please, I want to go home, please…,” I slurred in a continuous loop.

I must have freaked them out because the next thing I remember I was being shoved out of the car, and I recognized the door to the house where I lived downstairs and stumbled toward it. I fumbled my way in and through to my room, where I collapsed on my back on the futon. I was missing a shoe.

Even having no bills, just my $400 rent every month, and making $35K a year, I was persistently broke, so I often had to get creative to find ways to eat. On paydays I would get a huge salad from the deli in the downstairs of the building where I worked, scarf it down at my desk, and casually saunter down the long hall from my cubicle to the handicapped bathroom just off the floor’s lobby, and crouch before the toilet and spew it all back up.

Late at night when the coke ran out I was always starving. I never went food shopping or had anything in the house so I would dip into the food my roommates had made themselves for the next day. The dishes they made were authentic and layered with spices, and I would take a little off the top and sides of each portion, devouring it not without remorse but my body was hungry and deprived. They were young and nice and probably on a tight budget and called me on it more than once, that was all their food for the next day and they needed it, and could I stop eating it?

I lived in what was basically a food desert but I needed to feed the bulimia monster so I would bring hearty meals back to my apartment from my office downtown, which is where all the restaurants were. Sharing a bathroom made me apprehensive about puking in the toilet, so most of the time I couldn’t bring myself to venture outside of my room. But I needed to puke so fell back on my old method of puking in garbage bags.

One day this guy I was dating, Chris, drove me all the way home from the club were at in the city; it wasn’t the first time he had done that but it was the first time he asked if he could come in. He was pretty insistent but I turned him down several times in succession until he gave up, because I had 3 huge garbage bags in my room that were bursting full of takeout containers and dripping plastic pouches of puke.

This is part of a memoir-in-progress. Read the next chapter published on Vocal here.

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