This is a chapter from my life when I was at the worst of my drug addiction. I want to write a book based on my experiences, so critique on this is welcome, let me know whether you think this sort of thing is publish-able.
[Some names have been changed]
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October 7-8, 2000: “Karl”
He wasn't the type of guy who asked for your attention; he commanded it. He didn't walk behind you and he didn't walk beside you holding your hand; he marched confidently ahead and without him having to say a word, you knew you were expected to follow. And when he held you to him, you knew not to pull away, because you couldn't; as soon as he touched you, your body ceased to be your own and become an extension of his.
I knew him as Karl. And nobody fucked with Karl. Guys wanted to be him, girl wanted to be with him, but I just want to forget him. I wish I had never met him, for now I can never leave him. His face will forever be on every guy I ever know.
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"Let's get some blow this weekend," Nikki says to me.
"Alright," I say.
Why the fuck not? I'm free to do whatever I want and how dare anyone else try to tell me how to live my own life. They don't know me, they have no right to judge.
"But we can't tell anyone," I add. "You know how they'll just bitch me out."
"Oh for sure," she says.
"Promise?"
"It's our secret," she assures me.
I smile at her and she smiles back. And I feel a strange sense of security. She won't judge me, she won't yell at me, she is the only one that truly knows me, that knows how much I need this and won't try to take it away from me. She is the only one that really cares.
We meet them on the corner of Yonge and College, early Friday evening. Donny I've met once before, he sold us crystal on one of our week-long binges. He's our dealer, he's our god, and he's the one Nikki wants to fuck. Tonight he's brought his friend, the one with the coke. He's tall with short blonde hair, spiked of course, as if he were the one who invented the style.
"Walk," he says.
And so we walk.
West on College and he makes perfect small talk, cool, calm, controlled. I feel his eyes on me without looking, so I turn and ask "What?" but he just shakes his head at me and shrugs. I smile self-consciously- what do you say to that? And then he says, "You have a very pretty smile- I'm just admiring it." Words slide off his tongue like smooth Old Baileys over ice. Stirred once and then held up to my lips for me to drink down without a second thought.
North on Spadina now and I don't know where we're going or if he knows where we're going, but when I ask the only reply I get is "just a little further". And then he smiles, just enough to show off his two front teeth, uniquely crooked. The one and only awkward feature about him, but it is strangely inticing instead of repelling. And I still don't know what to make of him.
West on Bloor a couple of blocks and now we're at J.J. Muggs near Bathurst. He opens the door for me and I walk inside, Nikki and Donny a few short steps behind us.
No sooner are we seated at the bar than he's already charmed the pretty bartender into rye and gingers for all, double shot of rye if you please miss. I pull out my wallet but he gives me a funny look and says, "I've got it sweetheart" and casually shrugs my thanks away. "Drink up," to me, and "Go cut us some lines will ya," to Donny, and then he turns to me again.
"Well aren't you two going to go do yours?" he asks. I turn to Nikki and she smiles at me; we've got a gram of blow and three caps of crystal and they're burning a hole in my pocket.
How many bathrooms have we done drugs in? I wonder as I walk through the restaurant with her. The bathroom in our minds has become synonymous with railing lines off the back of the toilet. Are there still people that actually only ever piss in bathrooms?
I pour a generous pile of the snow white powder onto the toilet paper dispenser and proceed to cut two equal lines, then stand back and admire their perfection. Nikki hands me a rolled up five dollar bill and says, "You first". This is the best part, holding the bill to my left nostril and preparing to indulge in forbidden pleasures. Instant gratification in powder form. This is life. This is what it's all about. Blasting the lines with the practiced perfection of an artist, the chemical rush up my nose and into my bloodstream, on its way to pleasantly altering my state of mind. The numbness creeps through my nose slowly taking over my entire mouth. My entire being. And it's done. I hand the bill to Nikki: "Your turn".
But somehow that one line isn't enough, nor the next or the one after that. And I've still got the crystal in my pocket. I swore I'd never do crystal again, not after the last time I nearly ODed but it's right there- how can you NOT? So we split the first cap in neat equal bumps of our hands and decide to ration the rest.
Not time to go yet. Every trip to the bathroom must end with the make-up ritual. A minimum of ten minutes much be spent in front of the mirror reapplying eyeliner, eyeshadow, lipstick and strawberry flavoured lip gloss. We must look beautiful. If we look beautiful and the drugs make us feel beautiful, then we will be beautiful. Won't we?
I never used to care so much about how I looked; five minutes in front of the mirror in the morning and I was set for the day. Sometimes I wonder when it stopped being about who I actually was, and started being about who I appeared to be. See Nikki has this way with guys, a certain feminine charm that she fully utilizes to get whatever she wants. Her boys are the lock and she has made herself into the perfectly cut key to open whatever Pandora's box of treasures she sets her heart upon. And she knows it. A flip of the hair, a sideways glance through rapidly fluttering eyelashes, a slight brush of delicate fingers on another's well-toned arms, and they are hypnotized. Under her enchanting spell and they will jump off a cliff for her, if she so bids it. I admire her power, her carefully composed smile, her manufactured perfect face and body, and so I ask to borrow her lipstick and apply it the way I see her do it. And sometimes I wonder when I stopped being me...and started to become her. But then the first rush of dopamine to the brain kicks in and I forget my thoughts. We turn to leave the bathroom, together the definition of beauty.
We rejoin Karl and Donny at the bar where another round of drinks is waiting for us. Soon I'm drunk as well as high and Karl's hands are moving up my thighs. And I don't push them away because he's looking at me again, his cool baby blue eyes piercing into me in that way. That way that forbids me to say no. Then he's kissing my neck and whispering in my ear how beautiful I am and it's sending chills rushing through my body, although I'm not sure whether it's him or the drugs, or maybe both.
A few drinks later and suddenly I find myself in a cab with Nikki, Donny and Karl, driving back to Karl's apartment. Karl kissing me impatiently in the back seat. Then we've arrived and I'm climbing up a steep narrow iron staircase, my legs wobbly and I laugh at my disoriented efforts, to make it seem alright.
The apartment is the second floor of a house, not exactly nice and definitely not clean. The living room coffee table shows evidence of weed, powder residue, half-empty beer cans and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. Along with several hundred-dollar bills carelessly scattered on its surface. I raise my eyebrows in surprise and glance over at Nikki, who is eyeing the money with a gleam in her eyes. I know she is thinking the exact same thing that I am- who leaves hundreds of dollars in cash lying on their coffee table and thinks nothing of it? Bigtime drug dealers.
Karl lights up a smoke and the rest of us follow his lead. “My landlord’s going to kick me out,” he announces, “I just know it, he’s onto us.”
“Where do you work?” I ask curiously.
“Oh, I don’t,” is his casual reply. And I know not to ask any more questions. Karl isn’t the type of guy you question, I can tell.
He puts out his smoke after only three pulls and it’s time for another line. I cut two generous lines for myself and Nikki and that finishes off our supply. Karl cuts two lines for himself and Donny, at least a gram of pure cocaine in each. I stare in awe as he takes his in one polished snort as naturally as one would take a breath of air. Impressive.
Then he takes my hand and says, “Come with me.” It’s not a request. Maybe it’s the coke going to my head, but I don’t see it as audacious and intrusive, but rather seductive and compelling. And I don’t know what it is, but I can’t say no to him, I can’t say anything to him. So I do as he tells me and let him lead me down the hall into his bedroom. Is this something I want? I don’t know, I can’t think right now, everything is moving so fast. The room spins in front of my face but I don’t try to make it stop, I don’t try to make him stop.
And it’s like a dream, nothing is real, I’m not real. I’m not even myself anymore, I’m this other girl and I watch her take control of me, full of confidence and power. She is beautiful, she is sexy, she is every man’s fantasy. She tells me to relax and smile and kiss the lips that hover above my face. She is everything I always wanted to be and never could be before now. She tells me I am liking this, this is what I want, this is what makes me alive. And I believe her, because it’s been so long since I felt alive. And I’m loving every minute of this.
Thirty minutes later she’s gone. So is Karl. Out and up and off to the living room for the post-sex triumphant cigarette. And I am left alone, scrambling to find my scattered clothing. Feeling nothing but cold and naked and empty. Lifeless. Who sucked all the energy out of me? Was it Karl? Was it the girl? I don’t know.
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The sun is coming up, I can see it outside Nikki’s bedroom window. We have been here all night in her room after leaving Karl’s. Sitting, whispering, too wired to sleep. Sleep isn’t even an option, we don’t need sleep, we have more crystal. Karl threw two more caps at me before I left- was that supposed to be my reward? My payment for fucking him? I didn’t ask him for it but I’ll gladly take it and think about it tomorrow.
Nikki’s parents are sleeping in the next room; we have to wait until they wake up before we can leave the house, pretending we’ve slept all night and are going out to eat breakfast. The clock reads 9 a.m. and neither of us can take it anymore. We’ve been sitting here since 2 a.m., only able to write letters back and forth and the crystal’s wearing off and we’re starting to sketch and we need to get the fuck out of here very soon or we’re both going to go insane. We have showers and brush our teeth and apply a fresh coat of make-up and mumble to her parents that we’re going to my house to do homework and we’re gone.
Step out the front door and a flood of sunlight assaults our eyes, Friday night turned into Saturday but it’s all the same to us. Light up a cigarette and talk as loud as we want, walking down the street towards Bloor, still feeling good and we’ve still got two caps left. Smile a smile of freedom and god bless our caps of life-giving crystal. Go to Second Cup where we sit outside and drink coffee and chain smoke and talk sketchy talk for another three hours. Call into Nikki’s work and pretend I’m her mother, tell them she’s got a rare blood disease and won’t be able to make it in for her shift today but surely she’ll be better by tomorrow. They say tell her not to bother coming in tomorrow, or ever for that matter. There’s a moment of panic as I tell Nikki she’s just lost her job, then a pause, then we both burst out laughing. “Oh well!” Because it’s funny. Nikki just lost her job but it’s funny and we still have two caps of crystal.
My cell phone rings. It’s Karl.
“Hi babe,” he says. “Come over to my place.”
As soon as I hang up the phone we get up to leave, as if subconsciously this was what we had been waiting for all along. Waiting for Karl to wake up and call.
So we go, because he told us to, but not before splitting a cap of crystal. Now we’re down to one. And it’s not enough, we’re coming down, and these few bumps give us a little boost but not enough to ward off the sketchiness. The edginess and the paranoia starts to kick in. Take the subway west from Bathurst to Ossington but Nikki refuses to take the bus, she says the people stare at her. So we have to walk up Ossington from Bloor to St. Clair, I don’t know how long it’s supposed to take but takes us hours, or so it seems. Karl calls when we’re around Davenport: “Where the fuck are you? Oh and pick me up something to drink.”
Back at the apartment where we were only hours before, except everything’s different today. Karl’s watching TV with Donny and neither bothers to get up and say hello.
“Do you have any weed?” I ask timidly. Karl barely acknowledges me but rolls up a nice fat joint, sparks and passes it to me, his eyes never leaving the football game.
Ten minutes later and we’re both still standing when Karl orders, “Sit down, stay awhile!” Grabs my legs and pulls me onto the couch next to him. His hands wandering up my shirt, now down my pants, but the thrill that I felt last night is gone, leaving only a dazed uneasiness in its place. I don’t want him touching me like this, Nikki and Donny sitting three feet away, Donny just staring at me, his eyes following Karl’s wandering hands. I wiggle away from him, try to casually ease his hands away from me, but he only holds on tighter. Now he’s looking at me again but it’s not that seductive stare that enchanted me last night, it’s a cold piercing glare, as if I’m trying to deny him something that belongs to him. And how dare I? The answer: I don’t dare.
And so I stop resisting and resign myself to being clumsily fondled the way a six year old boy feels up his little sister’s Barbie dolls. But why should it feel any different? That’s all I am anymore, a beautiful doll for boys to play with and then toss away when next year’s model comes out. Sometimes I pinch myself to make sure I’m still here and haven’t turned into plastic, but I don’t even know what I’m made of anymore because I can’t feel anything anymore. So I’ll do anything that will make me feel alive, even for a moment, and fuck the consequences. Feeling something, anything, even pain, is better than feeling nothing. I gave up on trying to feel happy a long time ago.
Karl gets up abruptly, drops the right breast clutched in his hand and walks away down the hall to his bedroom. I gratefully re-arrange my shirt to cover myself up, away from Donny’s burning eyes and sink deeper into the couch, dazed and high. Hoping the couch will swallow me up and make me disappear in its cushiony folds. No such luck. Donny taps my knee and from the force he’s using, I think he’s been tapping it for awhile but I’m only noticing it just now.
“Karl’s calling you,” he says.
“What?”
In my confused, disoriented state of mind, I hear the voice down the hall but whatever it is saying doesn’t register in my brain. I look blankly at Donny, unsure of what to do. He looks back at me as if I am an idiot, then in my silence says, “He wants you to bring him some juice. Christ, smoke another one, would ya.”
It seems like forever before this last piece of information is ingested, processed and understood, even longer before a response can be formulated. Last night I was in tune with the fast-paced world, no…better! I was two steps ahead of it, I controlled it! Today it moves too fast, spinning out of my control and beyond my comprehension, and I want it to slow down and stop for just a minute, until everything makes sense again.
“Are you going to bring me that juice or what?”
Karl’s impatient voice jars me out of my sketchy oblivion and returns me to the pressing issue at hand. The juice. Karl must have the juice and I must bring it to him. But I don’t want to, maybe something in the way he orders it, demands it of me. I don’t want to go into the bedroom with him because I know what he will demand of me there. I don’t know why but I can’t say no to him, I don’t know how, it doesn’t seem to be an option, and so I do as he tells me and carry a bottle of juice down the hall in my shaking hand and deliver it to his.
He closes the door behind me and without a “thank you”, takes a sip of the juice, sets it on a shelf and turns his attention to me. Pulls me down on the bed beside him, runs his hands roughly over my body and forcefully attacks my lips with his. The electricity that ran through my body when he touched me last night is glaringly missing, replaced by sharp needles that pierce my skin at every brush of his calloused hand. I cry out as he thrusts himself rudely inside me, a knife tearing me all the way up into my heart. But he doesn’t stop at my outburst, doesn’t open his eyes and look into mine. Doesn’t even notice. And why should he? Does it matter to him?
I try to laugh it off and wiggle up the mattress, out of his grasp, pretending that I’m flirting and playing hard to get. I’m not sure how he’ll react if I say no. I didn’t say no last night. It didn’t even enter my mind last night.
Karl stops and looks at me, expecting me to say something I guess, so I giggle, “Oh, I’m too high baby, I’m so out of it right now.” Whose words were those? Did they come out of my mouth? He doesn’t say anything back, just looking at me in that way, that way that has changed since last night. I smile awkwardly and I guess he takes that as a cue to begin kissing me again, this time roughly yanking my hair with one hand. I let him kiss me some more, all the while hoping he’ll magically stop, but still not saying no. Why can’t I say no?
But now he’s inside me again and it hurts so much that finally the pain overcomes my fear and I push him and move swiftly away from him. He sits up and stares at me, but I can’t read the emotion in his face. Maybe there is no emotion.
“I’m too sore honey, I just can’t,” I say apologetically, still trying to hold onto a bit of the girl from last night, talk with her feminine charm.
Karl says nothing, still staring at me, trying to take in what has just taken place, deciding how to react. He says nothing. Gets up off the bed without a word to me, readjusts his clothing. I stand up, not looking at him, walk past him rather shakily, still dazed and high, and as I pass him, he pushes me forcefully so that I stumble and fall sideways onto the bed. I giggle nervously and pretend he’s just playing around because I hope he’s just playing around but I’m really not sure at all. And that scares me. Because I don’t know if he’ll push me back down again and force what he wants or if he’ll let it slide and let me walk away. I don’t have any control over which he’ll choose and I don’t know what I’ll do if he takes the first option. I brace myself for a moment, stand so still and shut my eyes, and then he’s walking away from me, out the door, into the bathroom, and I exhale, not realizing I’d forgotten to breathe.
I want to find Nikki and leave. But when I walk out into the living room to collect her, I interrupt her and Donny fooling around under a blanket, him lying on top of her on the couch. I want to tell her to stop, he’s probably just like Karl, but I don’t because she’s been telling me for weeks how much she wants to fuck this boy and it’s obvious that’s finally going to happen for her. She’s a big girl, she can do what she wants.
Back down the hall into Karl’s bedroom, hoping that Nikki will hurry up and finish fucking her boy so we can leave. When I reach the bedroom, I notice that we are not alone, another boy has come to the apartment and he’s sitting on the couch, talking to Karl.
“You don’t have any crystal?” he asks, a note of slight desperation in his tone, which I immediately identify.
I know exactly how it feels, to be fiending for more and running to your dealer, your god, in hopes of a few drops of manna, only to be disappointed upon finding out he has nothing to satisfy your craving. I flash him a sympathetic knowing smile but he doesn’t even look in my direction as he fidgets nervously, clasping then un-clasping his hands. He’s tall and skinny, his face has that drawn, aged appearance that crystal-heads have, his skin stretched taut over protruding cheek bones as if it would surely burst should he lose any more weight. His left eye is strangely shrunken compared to his right one, the eyelid droops much lower down and it twitches at irregular intervals. I realize I have been staring at it so I abruptly look away and focus on lighting a cigarette instead.
“Fresh out,” Karl replies. “Sorry dude. I’ll smoke ya a joint though.”
The crystal head (whose name I don’t know because no one bothered with introductions) appears to hum and haw over this concession and finally accepts as a kind of consolation prize.
“I’m picking more tonight,” Karl continues, inhaling deeply on the joint. “But I don’t usually sell less than an ounce at a time.”
The two of them talk drugs, prices and quantities while I lay on the bed, propping myself up with one arm, smoking one cigarette then immediately lighting the next. Neither of them pays any attention to me and the only acknowledgement of my presence is when one of them distractedly passes me the joint. Karl talks about how much it would cost to pick up 25 pounds of weed but I’m only half-listening, I’m so high and I don’t really care, I’m just glad Karl’s attention is directed elsewhere for the time being.
Then he abruptly turns to me, grabs my cigarette out of my hand, half-smoked, and butts it out.
“Hey!” I protest.
“You smoke too much,” is his disdainful reply.
So I sit some more, not saying a word, not daring to light another smoke, but now my hands are unoccupied and I don’t know what to do with them so I settle for clasping and un-clasping them, over and over, in rhythm with the crystal head on the couch.
In the middle of his conversation, Karl suddenly turns to me again, leans in and kisses me long and hard on the mouth, messes my hair roughly, then abruptly drops me again and returns to his conversation. I feel like a whore. His whore. Lying on his bed, looking pretty on the outside, feeling dead on the inside, there for him to grab, fondle and do with as he pleases, regardless of my embarrassment or resistance. I want to scream, I want to leave, but I am frozen. A beautiful china doll glued to a shelf, beautiful to look at but cold to touch. His china doll, on display.
I don’t remember when the crystal head leaves, a gap in time that I can’t account for, and then Donny burst into the room, pants around his knees, cock hanging out in full view!
“Dude, the fuckin condom fuckin broke dude!” he exclaims.
“Man that’s fuckin disgusting, why the fuck you showing me that? Get the fuck outta here!” is Karl’s reply.
“Hey babe, here ya go,” Donny throws 4 caps of crystal at me. “Split that with your friend, she sure as fuck earned it!” he laughs at his own wittiness.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. What is this, the triumphant I-just-bagged-that-bitch announcement? Us the conquered, them the conquerors?
I go into the living room to get away from Karl, Donny, and Donny’s exposed cock. Nikki’s lying on the couch under a blanket, self-consciously fumbling with her pants while scanning the room for her missing bra. She barely looks me in the eye when I walk up to her, her cheeks flushed and her perfectly styled hair all a mess. She hardly resembles the girl in the restaurant bathroom last night, the glow in her face and the confidence in her eyes- gone. All I see now is a sad, lost, pathetic girl, in way over her head. A fucked-up little 17-year-old girl, caught up in the tragedy of her own beauty.
I retrieve the bra from a neighbouring armchair and hand it to her.
“Come on, sweetie, let’s get outta here.”
And so we go, more crystal in our pockets and less life in our souls. But it’s not good-bye; we know we’ll be back for more.
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~*~kimmy~*~
[Some names have been changed]
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October 7-8, 2000: “Karl”
He wasn't the type of guy who asked for your attention; he commanded it. He didn't walk behind you and he didn't walk beside you holding your hand; he marched confidently ahead and without him having to say a word, you knew you were expected to follow. And when he held you to him, you knew not to pull away, because you couldn't; as soon as he touched you, your body ceased to be your own and become an extension of his.
I knew him as Karl. And nobody fucked with Karl. Guys wanted to be him, girl wanted to be with him, but I just want to forget him. I wish I had never met him, for now I can never leave him. His face will forever be on every guy I ever know.
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"Let's get some blow this weekend," Nikki says to me.
"Alright," I say.
Why the fuck not? I'm free to do whatever I want and how dare anyone else try to tell me how to live my own life. They don't know me, they have no right to judge.
"But we can't tell anyone," I add. "You know how they'll just bitch me out."
"Oh for sure," she says.
"Promise?"
"It's our secret," she assures me.
I smile at her and she smiles back. And I feel a strange sense of security. She won't judge me, she won't yell at me, she is the only one that truly knows me, that knows how much I need this and won't try to take it away from me. She is the only one that really cares.
We meet them on the corner of Yonge and College, early Friday evening. Donny I've met once before, he sold us crystal on one of our week-long binges. He's our dealer, he's our god, and he's the one Nikki wants to fuck. Tonight he's brought his friend, the one with the coke. He's tall with short blonde hair, spiked of course, as if he were the one who invented the style.
"Walk," he says.
And so we walk.
West on College and he makes perfect small talk, cool, calm, controlled. I feel his eyes on me without looking, so I turn and ask "What?" but he just shakes his head at me and shrugs. I smile self-consciously- what do you say to that? And then he says, "You have a very pretty smile- I'm just admiring it." Words slide off his tongue like smooth Old Baileys over ice. Stirred once and then held up to my lips for me to drink down without a second thought.
North on Spadina now and I don't know where we're going or if he knows where we're going, but when I ask the only reply I get is "just a little further". And then he smiles, just enough to show off his two front teeth, uniquely crooked. The one and only awkward feature about him, but it is strangely inticing instead of repelling. And I still don't know what to make of him.
West on Bloor a couple of blocks and now we're at J.J. Muggs near Bathurst. He opens the door for me and I walk inside, Nikki and Donny a few short steps behind us.
No sooner are we seated at the bar than he's already charmed the pretty bartender into rye and gingers for all, double shot of rye if you please miss. I pull out my wallet but he gives me a funny look and says, "I've got it sweetheart" and casually shrugs my thanks away. "Drink up," to me, and "Go cut us some lines will ya," to Donny, and then he turns to me again.
"Well aren't you two going to go do yours?" he asks. I turn to Nikki and she smiles at me; we've got a gram of blow and three caps of crystal and they're burning a hole in my pocket.
How many bathrooms have we done drugs in? I wonder as I walk through the restaurant with her. The bathroom in our minds has become synonymous with railing lines off the back of the toilet. Are there still people that actually only ever piss in bathrooms?
I pour a generous pile of the snow white powder onto the toilet paper dispenser and proceed to cut two equal lines, then stand back and admire their perfection. Nikki hands me a rolled up five dollar bill and says, "You first". This is the best part, holding the bill to my left nostril and preparing to indulge in forbidden pleasures. Instant gratification in powder form. This is life. This is what it's all about. Blasting the lines with the practiced perfection of an artist, the chemical rush up my nose and into my bloodstream, on its way to pleasantly altering my state of mind. The numbness creeps through my nose slowly taking over my entire mouth. My entire being. And it's done. I hand the bill to Nikki: "Your turn".
But somehow that one line isn't enough, nor the next or the one after that. And I've still got the crystal in my pocket. I swore I'd never do crystal again, not after the last time I nearly ODed but it's right there- how can you NOT? So we split the first cap in neat equal bumps of our hands and decide to ration the rest.
Not time to go yet. Every trip to the bathroom must end with the make-up ritual. A minimum of ten minutes much be spent in front of the mirror reapplying eyeliner, eyeshadow, lipstick and strawberry flavoured lip gloss. We must look beautiful. If we look beautiful and the drugs make us feel beautiful, then we will be beautiful. Won't we?
I never used to care so much about how I looked; five minutes in front of the mirror in the morning and I was set for the day. Sometimes I wonder when it stopped being about who I actually was, and started being about who I appeared to be. See Nikki has this way with guys, a certain feminine charm that she fully utilizes to get whatever she wants. Her boys are the lock and she has made herself into the perfectly cut key to open whatever Pandora's box of treasures she sets her heart upon. And she knows it. A flip of the hair, a sideways glance through rapidly fluttering eyelashes, a slight brush of delicate fingers on another's well-toned arms, and they are hypnotized. Under her enchanting spell and they will jump off a cliff for her, if she so bids it. I admire her power, her carefully composed smile, her manufactured perfect face and body, and so I ask to borrow her lipstick and apply it the way I see her do it. And sometimes I wonder when I stopped being me...and started to become her. But then the first rush of dopamine to the brain kicks in and I forget my thoughts. We turn to leave the bathroom, together the definition of beauty.
We rejoin Karl and Donny at the bar where another round of drinks is waiting for us. Soon I'm drunk as well as high and Karl's hands are moving up my thighs. And I don't push them away because he's looking at me again, his cool baby blue eyes piercing into me in that way. That way that forbids me to say no. Then he's kissing my neck and whispering in my ear how beautiful I am and it's sending chills rushing through my body, although I'm not sure whether it's him or the drugs, or maybe both.
A few drinks later and suddenly I find myself in a cab with Nikki, Donny and Karl, driving back to Karl's apartment. Karl kissing me impatiently in the back seat. Then we've arrived and I'm climbing up a steep narrow iron staircase, my legs wobbly and I laugh at my disoriented efforts, to make it seem alright.
The apartment is the second floor of a house, not exactly nice and definitely not clean. The living room coffee table shows evidence of weed, powder residue, half-empty beer cans and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. Along with several hundred-dollar bills carelessly scattered on its surface. I raise my eyebrows in surprise and glance over at Nikki, who is eyeing the money with a gleam in her eyes. I know she is thinking the exact same thing that I am- who leaves hundreds of dollars in cash lying on their coffee table and thinks nothing of it? Bigtime drug dealers.
Karl lights up a smoke and the rest of us follow his lead. “My landlord’s going to kick me out,” he announces, “I just know it, he’s onto us.”
“Where do you work?” I ask curiously.
“Oh, I don’t,” is his casual reply. And I know not to ask any more questions. Karl isn’t the type of guy you question, I can tell.
He puts out his smoke after only three pulls and it’s time for another line. I cut two generous lines for myself and Nikki and that finishes off our supply. Karl cuts two lines for himself and Donny, at least a gram of pure cocaine in each. I stare in awe as he takes his in one polished snort as naturally as one would take a breath of air. Impressive.
Then he takes my hand and says, “Come with me.” It’s not a request. Maybe it’s the coke going to my head, but I don’t see it as audacious and intrusive, but rather seductive and compelling. And I don’t know what it is, but I can’t say no to him, I can’t say anything to him. So I do as he tells me and let him lead me down the hall into his bedroom. Is this something I want? I don’t know, I can’t think right now, everything is moving so fast. The room spins in front of my face but I don’t try to make it stop, I don’t try to make him stop.
And it’s like a dream, nothing is real, I’m not real. I’m not even myself anymore, I’m this other girl and I watch her take control of me, full of confidence and power. She is beautiful, she is sexy, she is every man’s fantasy. She tells me to relax and smile and kiss the lips that hover above my face. She is everything I always wanted to be and never could be before now. She tells me I am liking this, this is what I want, this is what makes me alive. And I believe her, because it’s been so long since I felt alive. And I’m loving every minute of this.
Thirty minutes later she’s gone. So is Karl. Out and up and off to the living room for the post-sex triumphant cigarette. And I am left alone, scrambling to find my scattered clothing. Feeling nothing but cold and naked and empty. Lifeless. Who sucked all the energy out of me? Was it Karl? Was it the girl? I don’t know.
****************************************************
The sun is coming up, I can see it outside Nikki’s bedroom window. We have been here all night in her room after leaving Karl’s. Sitting, whispering, too wired to sleep. Sleep isn’t even an option, we don’t need sleep, we have more crystal. Karl threw two more caps at me before I left- was that supposed to be my reward? My payment for fucking him? I didn’t ask him for it but I’ll gladly take it and think about it tomorrow.
Nikki’s parents are sleeping in the next room; we have to wait until they wake up before we can leave the house, pretending we’ve slept all night and are going out to eat breakfast. The clock reads 9 a.m. and neither of us can take it anymore. We’ve been sitting here since 2 a.m., only able to write letters back and forth and the crystal’s wearing off and we’re starting to sketch and we need to get the fuck out of here very soon or we’re both going to go insane. We have showers and brush our teeth and apply a fresh coat of make-up and mumble to her parents that we’re going to my house to do homework and we’re gone.
Step out the front door and a flood of sunlight assaults our eyes, Friday night turned into Saturday but it’s all the same to us. Light up a cigarette and talk as loud as we want, walking down the street towards Bloor, still feeling good and we’ve still got two caps left. Smile a smile of freedom and god bless our caps of life-giving crystal. Go to Second Cup where we sit outside and drink coffee and chain smoke and talk sketchy talk for another three hours. Call into Nikki’s work and pretend I’m her mother, tell them she’s got a rare blood disease and won’t be able to make it in for her shift today but surely she’ll be better by tomorrow. They say tell her not to bother coming in tomorrow, or ever for that matter. There’s a moment of panic as I tell Nikki she’s just lost her job, then a pause, then we both burst out laughing. “Oh well!” Because it’s funny. Nikki just lost her job but it’s funny and we still have two caps of crystal.
My cell phone rings. It’s Karl.
“Hi babe,” he says. “Come over to my place.”
As soon as I hang up the phone we get up to leave, as if subconsciously this was what we had been waiting for all along. Waiting for Karl to wake up and call.
So we go, because he told us to, but not before splitting a cap of crystal. Now we’re down to one. And it’s not enough, we’re coming down, and these few bumps give us a little boost but not enough to ward off the sketchiness. The edginess and the paranoia starts to kick in. Take the subway west from Bathurst to Ossington but Nikki refuses to take the bus, she says the people stare at her. So we have to walk up Ossington from Bloor to St. Clair, I don’t know how long it’s supposed to take but takes us hours, or so it seems. Karl calls when we’re around Davenport: “Where the fuck are you? Oh and pick me up something to drink.”
Back at the apartment where we were only hours before, except everything’s different today. Karl’s watching TV with Donny and neither bothers to get up and say hello.
“Do you have any weed?” I ask timidly. Karl barely acknowledges me but rolls up a nice fat joint, sparks and passes it to me, his eyes never leaving the football game.
Ten minutes later and we’re both still standing when Karl orders, “Sit down, stay awhile!” Grabs my legs and pulls me onto the couch next to him. His hands wandering up my shirt, now down my pants, but the thrill that I felt last night is gone, leaving only a dazed uneasiness in its place. I don’t want him touching me like this, Nikki and Donny sitting three feet away, Donny just staring at me, his eyes following Karl’s wandering hands. I wiggle away from him, try to casually ease his hands away from me, but he only holds on tighter. Now he’s looking at me again but it’s not that seductive stare that enchanted me last night, it’s a cold piercing glare, as if I’m trying to deny him something that belongs to him. And how dare I? The answer: I don’t dare.
And so I stop resisting and resign myself to being clumsily fondled the way a six year old boy feels up his little sister’s Barbie dolls. But why should it feel any different? That’s all I am anymore, a beautiful doll for boys to play with and then toss away when next year’s model comes out. Sometimes I pinch myself to make sure I’m still here and haven’t turned into plastic, but I don’t even know what I’m made of anymore because I can’t feel anything anymore. So I’ll do anything that will make me feel alive, even for a moment, and fuck the consequences. Feeling something, anything, even pain, is better than feeling nothing. I gave up on trying to feel happy a long time ago.
Karl gets up abruptly, drops the right breast clutched in his hand and walks away down the hall to his bedroom. I gratefully re-arrange my shirt to cover myself up, away from Donny’s burning eyes and sink deeper into the couch, dazed and high. Hoping the couch will swallow me up and make me disappear in its cushiony folds. No such luck. Donny taps my knee and from the force he’s using, I think he’s been tapping it for awhile but I’m only noticing it just now.
“Karl’s calling you,” he says.
“What?”
In my confused, disoriented state of mind, I hear the voice down the hall but whatever it is saying doesn’t register in my brain. I look blankly at Donny, unsure of what to do. He looks back at me as if I am an idiot, then in my silence says, “He wants you to bring him some juice. Christ, smoke another one, would ya.”
It seems like forever before this last piece of information is ingested, processed and understood, even longer before a response can be formulated. Last night I was in tune with the fast-paced world, no…better! I was two steps ahead of it, I controlled it! Today it moves too fast, spinning out of my control and beyond my comprehension, and I want it to slow down and stop for just a minute, until everything makes sense again.
“Are you going to bring me that juice or what?”
Karl’s impatient voice jars me out of my sketchy oblivion and returns me to the pressing issue at hand. The juice. Karl must have the juice and I must bring it to him. But I don’t want to, maybe something in the way he orders it, demands it of me. I don’t want to go into the bedroom with him because I know what he will demand of me there. I don’t know why but I can’t say no to him, I don’t know how, it doesn’t seem to be an option, and so I do as he tells me and carry a bottle of juice down the hall in my shaking hand and deliver it to his.
He closes the door behind me and without a “thank you”, takes a sip of the juice, sets it on a shelf and turns his attention to me. Pulls me down on the bed beside him, runs his hands roughly over my body and forcefully attacks my lips with his. The electricity that ran through my body when he touched me last night is glaringly missing, replaced by sharp needles that pierce my skin at every brush of his calloused hand. I cry out as he thrusts himself rudely inside me, a knife tearing me all the way up into my heart. But he doesn’t stop at my outburst, doesn’t open his eyes and look into mine. Doesn’t even notice. And why should he? Does it matter to him?
I try to laugh it off and wiggle up the mattress, out of his grasp, pretending that I’m flirting and playing hard to get. I’m not sure how he’ll react if I say no. I didn’t say no last night. It didn’t even enter my mind last night.
Karl stops and looks at me, expecting me to say something I guess, so I giggle, “Oh, I’m too high baby, I’m so out of it right now.” Whose words were those? Did they come out of my mouth? He doesn’t say anything back, just looking at me in that way, that way that has changed since last night. I smile awkwardly and I guess he takes that as a cue to begin kissing me again, this time roughly yanking my hair with one hand. I let him kiss me some more, all the while hoping he’ll magically stop, but still not saying no. Why can’t I say no?
But now he’s inside me again and it hurts so much that finally the pain overcomes my fear and I push him and move swiftly away from him. He sits up and stares at me, but I can’t read the emotion in his face. Maybe there is no emotion.
“I’m too sore honey, I just can’t,” I say apologetically, still trying to hold onto a bit of the girl from last night, talk with her feminine charm.
Karl says nothing, still staring at me, trying to take in what has just taken place, deciding how to react. He says nothing. Gets up off the bed without a word to me, readjusts his clothing. I stand up, not looking at him, walk past him rather shakily, still dazed and high, and as I pass him, he pushes me forcefully so that I stumble and fall sideways onto the bed. I giggle nervously and pretend he’s just playing around because I hope he’s just playing around but I’m really not sure at all. And that scares me. Because I don’t know if he’ll push me back down again and force what he wants or if he’ll let it slide and let me walk away. I don’t have any control over which he’ll choose and I don’t know what I’ll do if he takes the first option. I brace myself for a moment, stand so still and shut my eyes, and then he’s walking away from me, out the door, into the bathroom, and I exhale, not realizing I’d forgotten to breathe.
I want to find Nikki and leave. But when I walk out into the living room to collect her, I interrupt her and Donny fooling around under a blanket, him lying on top of her on the couch. I want to tell her to stop, he’s probably just like Karl, but I don’t because she’s been telling me for weeks how much she wants to fuck this boy and it’s obvious that’s finally going to happen for her. She’s a big girl, she can do what she wants.
Back down the hall into Karl’s bedroom, hoping that Nikki will hurry up and finish fucking her boy so we can leave. When I reach the bedroom, I notice that we are not alone, another boy has come to the apartment and he’s sitting on the couch, talking to Karl.
“You don’t have any crystal?” he asks, a note of slight desperation in his tone, which I immediately identify.
I know exactly how it feels, to be fiending for more and running to your dealer, your god, in hopes of a few drops of manna, only to be disappointed upon finding out he has nothing to satisfy your craving. I flash him a sympathetic knowing smile but he doesn’t even look in my direction as he fidgets nervously, clasping then un-clasping his hands. He’s tall and skinny, his face has that drawn, aged appearance that crystal-heads have, his skin stretched taut over protruding cheek bones as if it would surely burst should he lose any more weight. His left eye is strangely shrunken compared to his right one, the eyelid droops much lower down and it twitches at irregular intervals. I realize I have been staring at it so I abruptly look away and focus on lighting a cigarette instead.
“Fresh out,” Karl replies. “Sorry dude. I’ll smoke ya a joint though.”
The crystal head (whose name I don’t know because no one bothered with introductions) appears to hum and haw over this concession and finally accepts as a kind of consolation prize.
“I’m picking more tonight,” Karl continues, inhaling deeply on the joint. “But I don’t usually sell less than an ounce at a time.”
The two of them talk drugs, prices and quantities while I lay on the bed, propping myself up with one arm, smoking one cigarette then immediately lighting the next. Neither of them pays any attention to me and the only acknowledgement of my presence is when one of them distractedly passes me the joint. Karl talks about how much it would cost to pick up 25 pounds of weed but I’m only half-listening, I’m so high and I don’t really care, I’m just glad Karl’s attention is directed elsewhere for the time being.
Then he abruptly turns to me, grabs my cigarette out of my hand, half-smoked, and butts it out.
“Hey!” I protest.
“You smoke too much,” is his disdainful reply.
So I sit some more, not saying a word, not daring to light another smoke, but now my hands are unoccupied and I don’t know what to do with them so I settle for clasping and un-clasping them, over and over, in rhythm with the crystal head on the couch.
In the middle of his conversation, Karl suddenly turns to me again, leans in and kisses me long and hard on the mouth, messes my hair roughly, then abruptly drops me again and returns to his conversation. I feel like a whore. His whore. Lying on his bed, looking pretty on the outside, feeling dead on the inside, there for him to grab, fondle and do with as he pleases, regardless of my embarrassment or resistance. I want to scream, I want to leave, but I am frozen. A beautiful china doll glued to a shelf, beautiful to look at but cold to touch. His china doll, on display.
I don’t remember when the crystal head leaves, a gap in time that I can’t account for, and then Donny burst into the room, pants around his knees, cock hanging out in full view!
“Dude, the fuckin condom fuckin broke dude!” he exclaims.
“Man that’s fuckin disgusting, why the fuck you showing me that? Get the fuck outta here!” is Karl’s reply.
“Hey babe, here ya go,” Donny throws 4 caps of crystal at me. “Split that with your friend, she sure as fuck earned it!” he laughs at his own wittiness.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. What is this, the triumphant I-just-bagged-that-bitch announcement? Us the conquered, them the conquerors?
I go into the living room to get away from Karl, Donny, and Donny’s exposed cock. Nikki’s lying on the couch under a blanket, self-consciously fumbling with her pants while scanning the room for her missing bra. She barely looks me in the eye when I walk up to her, her cheeks flushed and her perfectly styled hair all a mess. She hardly resembles the girl in the restaurant bathroom last night, the glow in her face and the confidence in her eyes- gone. All I see now is a sad, lost, pathetic girl, in way over her head. A fucked-up little 17-year-old girl, caught up in the tragedy of her own beauty.
I retrieve the bra from a neighbouring armchair and hand it to her.
“Come on, sweetie, let’s get outta here.”
And so we go, more crystal in our pockets and less life in our souls. But it’s not good-bye; we know we’ll be back for more.
****************************************************
~*~kimmy~*~
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