Chapter 36: Drug Dealers Are People Too

I was deep in the throes of active addiction when I moved into the 1 bedroom in Prospect-Lefferts. Getting my shit was tricky, and I often took “lunch” at work to Uber it back to my old place and see Brenda. I still had Joe, but he became stolidly cash-only. It wasn’t long before I established 2 new connects in the neighborhood and was getting drugs on consignment again—and running up several-thousand-dollar tabs.

I had been there maybe a year when I looked around and noticed that my world was unremarkably small. Comfortably, but not contentedly, small. I kept my circle tight. Since I cut out the party pals and casual hook-ups – and became a stay-at-home kind of drunken addict – I had left to my name a total of two friends, both of whom lived on the other side of not one, but two rivers; an oft-distant boyfriend, who, though I cherished him dearly, was easily distracted by his own rich inner life; one sister who resented me, though she couldn’t admit it; one sister who was appalled by me, and had firsthand knowledge of me at my worst; and one sister who, despite her determined easygoingness, her apparent positivity – was just trying to get through the day.

But my world gets even smaller when I drink. And because I subsisted on conversation and derived energy from everything from small talk to existential debate, I would probably wither and die if I saw no one at all. So I channeled my need into any interaction, and ended up forming strange, desperate bonds with the only people I saw.

These people were my dealers.

Most days – that is, weekdays – when I was left to my own defenses and didn’t have to worry about shaving, showering, or being emotionally available, all I had to do was make sure I looked halfway presentable when I sat down at the computer for my morning video chat meetings and that I finished my work on time and that I didn’t overlook anything egregious when I was editing a marketing piece. On these days, the man I nominated as my go-to dealer that week was my instant best friend.

When I had no cash, or didn’t feel like paying until my next check, Wiz was my number one. I think his real name was Eric, but since I had met him on the street and imagine he couldn’t quite figure me out – whether I was po-po, or maybe just a lunatic? – Wiz was the name he gave me. I only ever called him “buddy” to his face, so it didn’t really matter.

I had been clean for 2 days shy of exactly 5 months when I called him. Actually I called him 7 times.

I could have fought the compulsion but it was easy to rationalize with myself and make promises to God. It was scary but I tuned out the red flags and the voices of experience and just steered into it.

More than one person who has known me, or still knows me, has insisted that I am impulsive, that I don’t think before I act, that I don’t rummage through the possible – likely – consequences of my ill-informed behavior. But I have and will always protest on my behalf: I do, in fact, think things through. Sometimes for hours, or days, or weeks. But I just can’t seem to help myself.

I have never understood why this conversation always turned into a fight, especially when my explanation seemed so much worse. I knew which side of the line between “flighty” and pathology I stood on, and it aggravated me that no one believed me.

I always thought my next relapse would be more glamorous. Maybe I would get dressed up, set up shop at a local bar, and just chat, sip, and sniff. Just get out.

But all the bars were closed by now, so I pictured it at home, with a decent bottle of white wine, which I would drink from a glass and not from the bottle, and I’d have everything laid out and finely crushed, so I wouldn’t have to run out when I was on the way down and tweaking. And I’d paint, and consume with control, and ration my stash.

But relapse only happens, in fact, when your accounts are all in the negative, your boyfriend is basically incommunicado, you’re restless and agitated and yet movement is like drudgery and the body is listless. And I was going crazy trying to find a way to subsidize my bulimic way of life – until I remembered that drugs were easier to get on credit than food. I told myself I’d stop fucking around the day I got paid; after all, it was the stress of not having money that had set me off, I reasoned.

Before I called Wiz that day, I picked up the phone, put it down, over and over; stared at the TV, stared at the computer screen. Typed a text, tried to work, then decided to hit “send”.

5 minutes, no answer. I called 3 times. Still no answer.

I tried Joe. He had given me credit a few times last year, but insisted he didn’t do credit. I hit him up anyway.

“Maybe as a welcome back kind of thing?” I suggested via text.

I still hadn’t heard back from Wiz or Joe after a few minutes, so I texted my downstairs neighbor, Jeanine.

“Hey, do you think your guy would do a little bit of credit?”

We had recently forged a rapport when I ran into her on Flatbush Ave, we were going in the same direction and I wasn’t in a hurry so I took my sunglasses off and engaged her in conversation. She said she sometimes did what I did, and at first I didn’t understand; until she lowered her head and looked into my eyes, “You know…”, and it clicked. I was still doing OK and ecstatic to report that I had been clean for almost 5 months. She gave me a high-five and said she partied too sometimes, and how many times did she want so badly to knock on my door and ask if we could hang. She had 2 young kinds, had done coke while she was pregnant with at least one of them, and she took care of her elderly mother. She had dubbed herself “clean” a minute before asking me if I wanted to join her for some bud behind the building.

“I’m down there every night, like 7:30, 8 o’clock.”

When I texted her she said she would hit up her connect, Jay, and get back to me.

Then I got a text. It was Wiz.

“Who is this”

Wiz didn’t know it was me; I guess he had never programmed my name into his phone and had forgotten who that number was. I was disappointed that he didn’t seem particularly delighted by my call, especially considering that, during my hiatus, he had called multiple times to “check up” on me and had even suggested we have an alcohol-free meal together.

Without missing a beat, I text back that it was me, was he around?

I had gotten Wiz’s attention so I didn’t even care when Jeanine texted back that yeah, maybe Jay could hook me up, and was I OK? I said I was, I was going to be good, I decided in the end, and she seemed happy about that. I pined for a friend or even a partner-in-crime but I knew Jenneen liked to talk and I wasn’t sure I could trust her, so lying just seemed safer.

I was expectant, eager. I stared at the phone, then at the computer screen, dropped in on the TV for a minute, then right back to the phone. I saw the text from Joe as it comes through.

“C’mon baby. I miss you but these aren’t ideal times for credit”

My apology was breezy. At least he wasn’t pissed, I thought.

He followed up.

“How are you, are you still on Fenimore”

“I’m OK! Yes, I am. How are you??”

“I’m good. Hope to see you soon”

“I’ll keep you posted”

“Definitely”

But I didn’t need Joe – because when Wiz realized it was me, he called me.

I had less than a dollar to my name and had already ripped through borrowed money at just a week after being paid. So I hit him up for credit.

I was diffident at first, but I was already committed so I pushed through the embarrassment.

“When do you get paid?”

“The 15th, so like a week.”

He made a sound that suggested that probably wouldn’t work for his connect, like an extended, “Ohhhh.”

Then, “OK, gimme a few.”

I was doing literally nothing when he called me to come meet him. I jumped off the couch and put on my coat, sighed with worry, and hauled ass up to the parking garage. He was insistent that I go to him, and that he didn’t have time to make the walk up to my apartment, at the opposite end of a long block just off Flatbush, where the parking garage was.

He saw me coming and met me on the street. I wasn’t usually happy to cop in broad daylight, on the street like this – unless I was drunk – but Wiz made it easy. It’s not that he was careless; it’s not even that he was defiant. It’s that he knew what I knew – instinctively, and on cue – that it wasn’t suspicious behavior if you didn’t act like what you thought you were doing was in any way illicit, or worthy of a second glance. If you didn’t just act like you didn’t fear the authorities, but actually didn’t, in that moment, there was absolutely nothing criminal about a clumsy hand-off cloaked in an easygoing hug between old pals.

“Do you know what your most redeeming feature is – I mean, you have many redeeming features but your most redeeming feature is that you don’t get mad at me when I blow up your phone,” I slurred, instantly invigorated by his presence. It was one week later and I had already earned the privilege of house calls.

It was 7 pm. By this time, last week, I would already have mourned the last few hours of daylight, crawled into bed, and been fast asleep with brownie crumbs on my face.

“It’s OK sweetie.”

Wiz was notoriously good-natured for a man who had, early in our relationship, professed to have killed someone; a man who routinely partied until dawn and carried hard-time amounts of hard drugs; and had face scars, a wife that he kept on the side, and God knows how many kids.

But he never got impatient with me. He put up with my incessant early-morning calls, my agitated follow-up calls, my importunities to bring cigarettes. And he never even grimaced when I hit him up for beer money.

I persisted in my avowal of appreciation.

“I know I’m a pain in the ass, I’m sorry.”

“No, no, it’s OK.”

This was the second time I saw him that day. The first time I saw him, he asked 3 times if I wanted more than a 60, and I had insisted – with only a vague skepticism – that yeah, 60 was enough.

“You know why I do that, right? I’m just trying to not go nuts and keep shit under control and then I’m like, OK, I can fuck around for a little bit longer.”

I touched his arm playfully and laughed with half-feigned ardor as he nodded, said he knew, he knew. I was flirting but still called him “buddy” – it was a trick I had established years prior, my way of sustaining distance. Even then I must have perceived, on some level, the pitfalls of getting too close. And, of course, my tendency to seek out that intimacy.

“Don’t worry about it baby,” he insisted, his body language suggesting he was being straight. I liked Wiz; he had never hit on me, per se – though he had told me at least twice, before I had gotten sober last time, that he was going to make me his girlfriend.

The first time he said it was in the Chinese food spot, where we had often conducted our public hand-offs. Wiz was pretty prompt but I had gotten there early, waved to the girl at the counter to curb suspicion and so she’d leave me alone, sat down at the greasy table, and cracked open a 22-ounce light beer I got on credit at the deli I can’t go to anymore because I never paid my tab. Alcohol helped quell the anxiety of a public hand-off; but, more importantly, coke felt all that much better when I already had a buzz on. Plus I needed to kill time and there was nothing else to do with my hands.

Wiz had come in, slid into the booth on the opposite side. His arrival lifted my spirits and even sobered me up a little – even as pockets of dread flared up like little spontaneous fires across my mind’s eye.

“Hi buddy!” I sang with glee, through the stupor.

“Hey baby, how you doin’.”

He slipped the tiny, folded strip of tinfoil into my hand from across the table, not really trying to conceal it.

I mumbled something about my boyfriend, or maybe he was my ex-boyfriend at that time, and Wiz was attentive. I capitalized on this, venturing into a murky, philosophical assertion of my distress and refuge in drugs, and he nodded. He proffered his assurance, that maybe I wasn’t as fucked up as I thought. I was flattered but I protested.

“I mean, look at my nose! It fucking caved in from the all the shit, I have no fucking septum left!”

“No sweetie, that’s from your sunglasses.”

I was touched but alarmed by his consolation. I reached across the table and cupped his hand, said that was very sweet but no, it was from this shit.

“You know, I’m going to make you my girlfriend one day.”

I raised an eyebrow, poised to speak, but he spoke first.

“I am, I’m going to make you my girlfriend.”

I was strung out and I thought it was kind of cute, but was troubled by the possibility of this version of myself taking over. I knew I was somewhat at the mercy of my compulsions and had an appetite for poison, and pleaded quickly with God that things wouldn’t get that far out of control. A quick peek into my life as his girlfriend seared across my brain and I felt sick. Another silent prayer, and my heart dropped into the pool of bile burbling in my stomach.

Anyway Wiz had a girl. He alternately referred to her as his girl, and as his wife. It took me a while to realize they were one in the same.

I had met her on Halloween night, not long before I had gotten sober. Drunk and distraught, like any other weekday evening, I had bumbled my way up to Flatbush Ave to meet Wiz. I didn’t often leave the house after 4 or 5, but I had a taste for trouble, and a panging for connection. He didn’t say he was there, but I had been waiting for the call for a long time and was worried he forgot about me so I went up to Flatbush to look for him.

I found him not far from the Chinese joint, leaning up against a car in front of the deli where I usually bought my beer. I pushed through a loosely assembled crowd of people who appeared to have zero misgivings about hanging out on the street with a cop car hovering just one short block away.

Even as I slurred, “Hey, I found you –,” I registered the kind of alarm that momentarily superseded the urgency of my quest. His eyes were filmy, and when they looked at me they were too far apart – like his right eye was set on something behind me, just over my left shoulder. It triggered a fear of something akin to death, as numbed out as I was.

He had clearly forgotten about me, and now I wasn’t sure if I still wanted it.

“Dude, are you OK?” I asked, smiling, attempting mirth. There was a line somewhere between the intent to convey my concern, and actual concern, and it kept moving between them.

“Yeah, yeah, sweetie, I’m OK,” he garbled, wobbling against the car.

“Are you sure?”

He seemed fairly lucid despite outward appearance, and he assured me he was OK.

“What the fuck did you do tonight?”

Everything, apparently.

I felt strangely at home, loitering out there on the street – although less so when another White girl rolled up. She talked to some guy next to Wiz, while a beefy black girl in a half-shirt talked at them and played with the white girl’s hair. There was an intimacy about their association, like they were close in this moment but otherwise strangers, and that was OK. I imagined they would make easy enemies.

Wiz introduced me to the White girl, who seemed confused but not altogether offput by my presence. I summoned a good-natured “hey, what’s going on” through the haze. The response was minimal, dismissive, but I barely registered the offense and turned back to Wiz.

When I noticed people were drinking, it sparked an idea, and I went into that same deli, where I kept my tab. I bought myself a 22-ounce Coors Light, and I bought one for Wiz. I instructed the clerk to put each one in a paper bag and asked for a straw for mine.

I went back out and handed one to Wiz.

“Oh you didn’t have to do that, sweetie.”

“It’s OK, you hook me up with beer money all the time!”

It took effort to maintain a conversation, but I wasn’t going anywhere.

“Shit, shit, my wife’s coming with my daughter.” This was the third time he mentioned it.

“Oh yeah? That’s cool, what for?”

“I don’t know, it’s Halloween or some shit.”

It registered that maybe that’s why there were so many people out that night. And that some of them were in costume.

“Like, trick-or-treating or whatever?”

He was pretty far gone but that seemed to be the idea.

In the thrill of the moment, the only white girl by now and drinking with the cops still parked right up the street, I almost forgot to get what I came for – almost.

I hit him up with a gentle reminder, “Hey-you-got-that-for-me” and he stalled and led me into the liquor store just a few steps up the block. I thought maybe he had stashed it in there somewhere, like maybe he had an arrangement with the clerks, like I figured he did with the guys who managed the parking garage.

At the liquor store, there was no line, per se; some people appeared to be waiting to go up to the window, and, as it turned out, some were just hanging out. Wiz took a spot more or less behind the person at the window, sort of swaying. I kept asking if he were OK, if he were sure he wanted more liquor, that maybe it wasn’t a good idea.

I was a little confused – did he not have the stuff? But I was ecstatic to be around people, especially men. Some of them even had the spark of charisma, or at least I gauged they did, in the thrill of the moment. Sometimes circumstances render the most uncharming and disproportioned man attractive, and it stirred me somewhat back to life. I even gave one guy my number because he was so persistent in his flattery and interest in hanging out with me even though I had no makeup on. I was banking on his sincerity and pretty hungry for it and was, sadly, easily charmed. I still have him in my phone, though I never answered his texts.

I was worried about Wiz but I was getting a little impatient, so again I inquired gently into the status of my order. We went back outside and he finally slipped it to me, only sort of trying to be discreet. Ordinarily I would have shot back to my apartment to do it, but he straightened up a little suddenly and said that his daughter was here.

I paused, forgot about the coke and followed him as he stumbled over to a little black girl standing in the middle of the sidewalk, seemingly unattended. She had on a bright red wig that had slipped off slightly to the side, and a black mask over her eyes that was likely fit for an adult. The print on her shirt was a ladybug, and her tights were red-and-white striped.

I woke up quickly to something that felt very real. And I was stunned, fascinated, as I watched him bend over to her, talking sweetly, familiarly, swaying and trying to adjust her mask, which had fallen down onto her nose and was obscuring her vision. But he couldn’t master his movements, and failed. The little girl was unfazed; in that moment I couldn’t own up to the reality of why that was.

I started to reach out to help him and fix the mask for her, but stopped and pulled my hand back. I suddenly realized I was intoxicated and had been doing cocaine all day.

“No, no, go ahead D, fix it for her.”

I was moved by his insistence, and needed to help her, needed to nurture and be needed. I reached out again and pined on her behalf for the naivete of girlhood that time would outgrow, and tried to adjust the mask but then pulled back again as I remembered that I was a piece of shit.

I didn’t even notice a woman standing a couple of yards behind her. The woman was tall and bore the accoutrements of what I guessed was a witch, but she was utterly nondescript and it didn’t register that she was with the little girl – until Wiz turned to her briefly and then to me briefly, and introduced her as his wife.

I said hi and smiled a genuine smile; she acknowledged me with the same, and wasn’t especially brusque or anything but didn’t seem to particularly care that I was there, and turned away – not to the little girl, but to Wiz.

Her tone changed abruptly as she addressed him. I was within ear shot but couldn’t quite follow, or didn’t want to, though I could infer from where I was standing that she had kicked off the conversation by launching an offensive. She did most of the talking, and from what Wiz actually said I could discern that his tone was acquiescent. For some reason I figured her issue was not, in fact, his current state, but something else entirely.

When payday finally rolled around, I woke up a little beat-up, but optimistic I could abstain. I texted Wiz that I had the dough but didn’t need the 80 I had said I wanted, when I saw him the day before. We were supposed to meet late morning, but I couldn’t get him on the phone. When I finally did, it was almost 3, and I had changed my mind again.

“You know what, bring me a 60.”

“No problem, I’ll be right there sweetie.”

“No, no – I have a meeting at 3.”

“OK, what time is it over?”

“3:30, can you come at like 3:40?”

“OK, OK. No problem sweetie.”

I considered my greasy coif in the mirror, lit up a cigarette, put it out and slapped on some discount-store lipstick. Then I signed into my video meeting, a mandatory kind of team-building exercise intended to keep people connected during quarantine. It was a hit-and-miss, but I feigned interest and tried to play along. That is, until 3:28, when I started to get agitated. The call was scheduled for 30 minutes and there was no sign of it wrapping up.

Then the phone rang. It was Wiz.

I ignored it, silenced the ring and turned back to the computer.

I had given up on trying to engage in the video chat, and had already put my microphone on mute when the buzzer went off. I practically jumped out of my seat but decided to ignore it.

Then I heard the rattle of the elevator come up to my floor, and the gate open. My meeting wasn’t over yet. Was that Wiz, and why the hell was he early? I remembered to exit the video call before I got up, and went over to the door to look out the peephole.

I opened the door and he stood there for a second. I motioned him in with some impatience.

“I’m sorry, I had to come, my brother died today.”

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry, are you OK?”

“This coronavirus shit…” he said as he handed me the product, shaking his head, and started back toward the door.

“Oh I know….”

“Yeah I’m sorry I had to come up but I got shit to do, you know, I’m runnin’ around.”

“No, no, it’s OK….”

I walked him to the door, with an eye on the cat, who had a habit of making a b-line for the exit.

“Sorry I had to come up–”

“Oh it’s fine, it was the most pointless meeting I’ve ever had,” I said, and I closed the door behind him.

I got hit with a last-minute editing job not long after he left, which was fine because I had time to kill until 5, when I could safely sign off and run up to Duane Reade to stock up on amenities and laxatives.

The job would have been pure drudgery, save for the manufactured motivation of a brand-new coke buzz. It took me longer than planned to edit the piece, but I still had it wrapped it up by 10 to 5.

It’s hard to leave the house when you’re high. It’s ironic, because I justified getting the stuff with the notion that it would “help” me run errands. But by the time I got up to Flatbush, beer had become a priority; I was twitchy and tense and needed something to take the edge off.

I walked all the way up Flatbush to Duane Reade, but the line was longer than it was in the morning, and even longer than it was at lunch. I decided I couldn’t wait, and crossed the street and headed to the dive deli where I knew they had 22-ounce Miller Lites and face masks.

I got back without running into Jeanine, who I knew would know right off the bat that I was fucking around. I pissed away the evening and I pissed away the 40 piece, and just poking around the internet for buy now, pay later, no-credit-check merchandise catalogs. I wanted to shop but my money was already getting low.

I started to dip into the 20 piece but soon after even that was gone. It was already past my cut-off time for these things, but after 30 seconds of deliberation I called Wiz/Eric again. And again. And again. I sent a humble yet deliberate text.

“I’m sorry to do this to you, but are you still around?”

Finally he picked up. I apologized but asked if he were available. My tab was clear at this point, anything else I got would have to be paid out-of-pocket or put on a new tab, which would cut into my rent money.

“OK but what you want? You got the cash ‘cause I’m runnin’ around.”

“Yeah, I got cash, bring me a 40.”

“You sure that’s it, though? Whatever you want, you got it.”

“No, 40 is fine, I gotta sleep.”

“You sure though? I’m not gonna be around tomorrow, you want something for tomorrow?”

I assured him I didn’t, I’d end up doing it all and being up all night. It took some convincing but he said OK, he was on his way.

Half an hour later I started blowing up his phone again. I was out of coke, and almost out of beer. I was out of cigs, too, but had just discovered a smoke shop/deli on Seamless that would bring them to me, so I knew they were on the way.

I just wanted to get right – and write.

He buzzed me not long after. I wasn’t sure if it was Wiz/Eric or my cigs, but either way it’d be something I needed. I stood at my door, my eye pressed up to the peephole. I knew the creaky sounds of the old elevator as it pulled up to my floor, and heard the gate open. Wiz/Eric knocked and I scooped up the cat.

“C’mon in,” I greeted as I opened the door for him, Tommy cradled in my left arm.

Wiz/Eric kind of sidled up along the wall as he walked past me and into the living room.

“Oh shit, he’s not gonna scratch me, is he?”

“Oh no, he likes you, he’s knows you’re good people.”

There was something a little frenetic about Wiz/Eric this time. Not like in a dangerous way, but his distress was ostensible.

He took a black plastic shopping bag out of his pocket, picked out a folded tinfoil 40-piece and handed it to me. I had no recollection of this later but I know I gave him the 40 cash.

“How are you holding up, by the way?”

I might have been too tweaked and laid off the chit-chat if I hadn’t just snorted 4 mg of my antipsychotic to mellow myself out – I was really low on beer and unwilling to venture back up to Flatbush.

“Oh man D, it’s no good.”

His eyes were a little milky and a little too far apart.

“I gotta go deal with my family, everybody’s crying. Fuck this, I’m gonna OD tonight, look at this, look at what I got, I got like a thousand dollars’ worth of shit on me.”

He pulled out the plastic bag again and showed me what was in it. There was a time when the sight of a bag full of 20s, 40s, and a gumball-sized plastic-wrap baggie of coke would have set me into overdrive. But that was like a decade ago and I wasn’t impressed, I had got mine and soon would be doing my drugs in solitude, the way I liked to.

Instead, I considered the possibility that he might actually overdo it.

“Dude, dude. Put that shit away. Please, please don’t do that.”

“No, no. Why do they always take the good ones, it’s not right, it’s not right. I’m gonna do all this shit tonight.”

“I would really prefer it if you didn’t. Listen, listen. Let me tell you something important—”

“My boy’s waiting for me downstairs, can you break this up for him?”

He handed me a 20 piece. I sat down on the sofa and closed my work-issued laptop, the one on the sofa cart where I sat, where I worked. I dumped the stuff out onto the top.

“Wait, what are you doing?”

“I’m crushing it!”

“Can’t you just, like, do it on the outside…?”

“Sorry, duh. Let me just crush it and I’ll scoop it back into the tinfoil.”

I took out my debit card and proceeded to crush the pile of powder with the flat side of the card. I tried to push it into a little pile and scoop it back into the foil, but with little success.

Wiz/Eric, who had never stopped moving, sort of shuffling and putting his weight on one foot and then the other, moved in and leaned down and thrust his head down onto the laptop. He pushed his nose up against the surface and snorted up half the pile.

He shot back up and brushed his nose off.

“Dude!” I remarked.

“You-know-I-never-done-this-before.”

“What, really?” I was shocked. The time I saw him on Halloween he looked like he had indulged in everything along the spectrum of recreational poisons.

“No, no, I drink and smoke weed, that’s it. This is my first time.”

“OK but dude, take it easy, don’t go nuts. Here, let me give you the rest,” and I started to scoop it back into the tinfoil again before he leaned in and inhaled the remainder of the pile.

“What the fuck, that’s it? What is that? That’s it? Everyone’s says this shit’s so great but it’s nothin’.”

“OK well you’ve already got a lot of shit in your system, dude!”

“What’s that, what’s that shit on the top?” he asked with confusion and maybe even alarm, as he pointed at the white residue that was left behind and smeared all over the surface.

“Oh it’s just leftover coke. Listen, listen to me—”

And I motioned for him to sit down on the ottoman in front of the sofa, with insistence. He sat, still shifting his weight, shuffling his feet. He was still there, sort of, but he was already on his way out.

I tried to speak, trying to organize my thoughts. I had two major points I wanted to make that I was sure would make a difference and thwart his intentions. But he kept interrupting me, he couldn’t deal with women crying.

“And you know me, you know, I respect women, I like women. But I can’t handle that shit, I can’t handle that shit.”

He had told his family – which I think included a wider collection of friends, as well – that he had something to do and couldn’t be there that day. He couldn’t face them. But tomorrow he would have to.

“Why is it always the good ones D, I’m getting fucked up tonight, all this shit—”

I cut him off, told him he could go a little nuts tonight but then, after that, he had to—

But I never got to finish my thought, and then I forgot what I wanted to tell him: that I held the solution, that he needed to sober up after tonight, and then find gratitude for life, and then the pain would subside.

“I’ll pray for you, I’ll pray for you, OK?” That part I remembered, at least, before it dissolved in my muddled brain. It wasn’t just the beer and the coke; it was the somewhat frenzied and anxious pace of the conversation. Every time he cut me off, I lost or almost lost what was on the tip of my tongue.

“I’m a fucking addict, OK? I pray all the time, I mean the fact that I’m still alive, that I never caught some serious shit…. I’ll pray for you.”

This seemed to pique his interest but not inspire much confidence.

“I like you D, you know, not like that but I like you, I respect you.”

“I know dude, I like you too!”

And then I remembered the other thing I wanted to tell him. It took effort to get it out – he was heading for the door.

“I don’t know if this helps you but I’ve been writing about you.”

He didn’t believe me at first but I confirmed it was true, and that one day, when I got that shit published, he could read it.

He stopped in his tracks and fist-bumped me. I could tell he had faith I could make that happen.

“I mean, I don’t know if I can actually pull it off but it’s all I ever fucking wanted.”

“Wait, so you care about me?”

“I do! I like you, I respect you. Not like in a sexual way but I think you’re a good dude, you’re just kind of troubled. I have a soft spot for that sort of thing.”

“OK, OK, that’s cool.”

I motioned to the large canvas leaning up against the wall, turned backwards so the work I had done wouldn’t drive me crazy.

“Do you want to see what I drew?” I asked, bursting through the stupor with a glimmer of hope, enthusiasm.

“No, no, my boy’s downstairs, I gotta go.”

And he was gone, and I sat down to write this.

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

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