onlysweetpea
Bluelighter
Somedays, I miss Ecstasy.
I can feel the first roll of it,up from the bottom of my spine, speeding to the top and busting out, through my brain, and into the air above me, every minute a New Years Eve countdown, every second, the ball dropping again and again and again in my own head.
Everyone around you. Those are your best friends. You don't remember their names. You've actually never met them before.
But they look at you and you look at them and that knowing smile on all of your faces lets you know you are all on the same plane of existence so it's okay if you open your mouth to speak to them and you sound retarded.
They'll love you anyway.
And they'll offer you candy.
The candy was never my favorite part though. I hated hard candy, but it's what you need to keep your mouth from devouring itself.
On more than one occasion,I opted to chew on a plastic waterbottle cap instead and woke up cursing my bad decision.
I made a pact with myself though, that the minute I started chewing on a pacifier in a public place was the minute I would check myself into rehab.
I would never, ever, be a godamn candykid.
My memories of drug use are vague snippets of time that all sound and smell and look relatively the same. The first thing I remember is the bass, the beat, the music louder than god, vibrating through my whole entire body, whether I wanted it to or not. The second thing I remember are conversations yelled over the din.
Conversations with strangers at these things usually start with, "Can I have a sip of that?"
Water.
It was needed and it was shared by all, because that's what people drink. The guy with the beer? He's not in. You know he hasn't got a clue what's going on.
Those were the days of the massive.
I was never quite there. I was usually in the club though.
That's where I met James.
If anyone ever told me I'd meet my first San Francisco heartbreak at the closing night of the gayest of the gay clubs I might have believed them.
If anyone ever mentioned that I'd be rolling and he'd be on mushrooms, I would definitely go tell you to fuck yourself.
Ahhh...chemical romance.
His pick up line?
He asked me my name.
It was that simple.
He asked me my name and the New Years Eve in me went off again and again, the ping ping ping of sparks beneath my skin,up and down my arms distracted me and I answered, but I wasn't quite sure if I had told him the truth or not.
I asked him his and I smiled and said something like, "Daaaave!! I looove that naame!!"
He smiled back.
I was dancing with friends and I had turned my back to the them to talk to the guy I was convinced named 'Dave'. When I turned back to check up on them, they were gone
Oh well.
That's what happens when you're a girl out with your gays. You know you're most likely going to end up by yourself somewhere.
But look at this.
I wasn't.
I was with Daaaaave whose name I loooooved and my spine had turned into a beam of light.
We were dancing-not-dancing. We were talking about where we were from. Time did that thing where it disappears for awhile and it's non-existence makes you feel like you're golden,you've got all the time in the world to fall in love and even some left over to take home with you. My eyes focused, then wiggled wildly from left to right turning everything into squiggly lines. Then focused again.
I think I spent some time forcing my mouth open. I let my jaw hang down low, my mouth a wide O like I was trying to catch flies with it. I needed to keep my jaw from clenching.
Shit. No gum. No candy. No plastic bottle cap.
I hadn't planned on doing drugs that night.
I was going to just drink and be fine with it, but the moment we walked through the front doors and passed the heavy leather curtains leading into the first room of the club, I knew it was going to be a long night. The music from the two different rooms seemed to clash right there near the entrance. My hair wilted along with my soul within 5 seconds. It was a sauna in there.
And then I, the designated drinker of the night, noticed the mile thick crowd around the circular bar and said fuck it.
I turned to Sma, grabbed the collar of his coat and pulled his ear to my mouth.
I screamed.
"I NEED TO ROLL!"
He pressed a pill into my hand and I stuck it into the pocket of my cargo skirt and waited for water. Someone was getting some.
Dave and I did the dance-not-dance for what seemed like centuries. We talked. We didn't talk. Nothing could wipe the shit eating grins off our faces.
I don't know if I tripped on my skirt or what pushed me forward, but I found myself falling into him, wrapping my arms around his neck to keep me afloat and...and...
He kissed me.
And it was New Years Eve a thousand times over, in double time, like lit roman candles behind each ear, like the whole of Times Square was inhabiting my brain, whooping and cheeing and singing Auld Lang Syne to me, to me, to me.
When we parted, I opened my eyes. He was looking, not at me as I had suspected, but off to the right of us.
I followed his gaze. Sma was standing there, grinning so hard it looked like it hurt. His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. He was holding a plastic cup and taking chips of ice out of it and shoving them into his mouth like how a two year old eats Cheerios.
He took an ice chip and placed it in Dave's mouth. Dave took it, hands free, like it was a completely normal gesture between two males.
Sma took another ice chip and did the same for me. The ice was like heaven as it melted on my dry sandpapery tongue.
Shit. We were dehydrated. Water. Water. Water is always so important.
After the kiss and the surreal ice feeding, we went out to search for our own source of water in the form of $5 a bottle.
I fucking hate clubs that do that.
Dave took my hand and held it as we maneuvered our way through roadblocks of sweaty oblivious bodies. At one particular intersection, I couldn't make it. I couldn't squish between the two large shirtless men standing between me and rehydration. Our hands were still clasped against one sweaty back and one sweaty belly. The two gay men were lost in Danny Tenaglia's remix of 'I Feel Loved'. One of them mouthed the words with his eyes closed, his face pointed up towards the ceiling.
Dave tugged at my hand and I could hear him between the two men.
"Just try!!!", he yelled. The two men danced an inch away from each other causing a tiny gap where I could actually see Dave's face. He let go of my hand and grabbed my wrist and pulled again.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath like I was about to go under a rough tide and pushed myself while he pulled and with a loud grunt from the sweaty belly on the right, I made it through.
I was already covered in the sweat of a million strangers, what was one more?
After managing that...I was exhausted.
"I want to sit down!!" I told him.
We made our way to a set of bleacher looking like things. They were full. People were draped over the benches like ragdolls. We stood there looking at the People Heaps looking for the tiniest sliver of space that maybe I could sit down in.
"Now what do you wanna do?!" he asked.
"I can LEAN!!" I answered motioning towards a spot of empty wall space. "WE can LEAN!!"
"Okay!!"
He led me over to the wall space I pointed at with my chin when I mentioned leaning and when I was about to let go of his hand to fall into the spot before anyone else could claim it, he walked right by it, my hand still in his, and yanked me right past it and out the front doors of the club.
I was not prepared as the cold air smacked me across the face, the sweat that had matted my hair down at the nape of my neck instantly froze and sent red alerts up and down my spine. I squinted my eyes in pain and in shock. He still had my hand and he was still pulling me.
"You wanna move outta the way, Miss," a deep voice that must have been security said. I couldn't open my eyes just yet. My ears were adjusting to how quiet the outside seemed to be compared to the jungle we were just in.
I felt shuffled off to the left two steps, to the right and forward a bit. He still had my hand in his.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
I pried one eye open. Then the next. I felt the blood leave my face and rush downwards like my body wanted to empty all of it out through my toes. The sun was out.
My eyes wiggled down and to the right. Gum wrappers and hundreds of cigarette butts littered the sidewalk. I spotted a shiny gold square with the corner torn among the rubble like a hidden Cracker Jack prize. It was a condom wrapper. My eyes wiggled up from the ground. People were still lined up to get in. Daylight though.
Dang.
Daylight makes the nightlife ugly in so many ways.
The you that you put on to go out for a night on the town, melts pretty quick once the sun starts to rise.
"Are you okay?" he asked again. "Jesus, you're white!"
He had let go of my hand and held my face.
"I'm not white," I mumbled.
"What?"
"I'm filipino," I answered, slurring like I was drunk. I wasn't. I felt worse. My stomach was bottoming out. My knees wobbled. I hadn't eaten in over 9 hours and had sweated an ocean without replenishing it.
"I'm outside," I said.
"I thought you wanted to leave. You said you wanted to leave."
"I wanted to leeeean," I corrected him. "Leeean, like this."
I demonstrated by letting myself fall to the right, but we were further away from the wall than I imagined and nearly went crashing into the sidewalk.
He caught me.
"Let's go home," he said. "We'll get you home."
We got into the first cab in what seemed like an endless line of them waiting for the intoxicated drugged-up, loved-up bohemian masses to go home. They all have to go home eventually.
"Your home or my home?" he asked me as I rubbed my face against the cool leather of the backseat.
"Your home. I have 8 million roommates."
He spoke to the cabdriver and I fitfully passed out.
I don't remember waking up to get out of the car or up the steps. I vaguely recall sitting in a cluttered living room on a lawnchair as he tried to rip my plastic admission bracelet off my arm. I sorta remember him feeding me water and 5-HTP capsules.
He told me something about having a brother. I don't know what that had to do with anything.
Eventually something in my brain snapped some time later.
I found myself sitting on the edge of his bed looking at my shoes, painfully aware of myself.
He was kneeling next to me.
"Are you gonna keep those on?" he asked.
Out of nowhere, I was awake and instantly concious that I was completely naked.
Except for my shoes.
I was staring at them blankly.
He went for them to take them off and I squirmed away like a child.
"Noooooo."
"You're seriously going to keep them on?" He asked, half amused, half confused.
"I'm scared," I said. My voice seemed so small inside me. MDMA. The Love Drug? MDMA. The Truth Serum.
"What is it?"
"They smell," I woefully answered like I didn't want to answer, but some higher power was making me, forcing it out of me. I grimaced in pain, not wanting to continue, but I had to.
"I smell."
I felt the roller coaster swoosh down from the heights and down into the pit, down into the weird and murky depths of what happens when you mess with your seretonin levels.
And what I will always remember about him is that great kindness.
He will never laugh at you if he knows it will hurt your feelings...even though you deserve it.
He simply leaned over, took one shoe off at a time and to my absolute horror, kissed each naked foot.
I didn't find out his name was really James till I spotted his resume on the shelving unit near his bed while he was in the shower sometime around 6PM that evening.
Shit.
Somedays I miss Ecstasy.
Most days?
Not so much.
I can feel the first roll of it,up from the bottom of my spine, speeding to the top and busting out, through my brain, and into the air above me, every minute a New Years Eve countdown, every second, the ball dropping again and again and again in my own head.
Everyone around you. Those are your best friends. You don't remember their names. You've actually never met them before.
But they look at you and you look at them and that knowing smile on all of your faces lets you know you are all on the same plane of existence so it's okay if you open your mouth to speak to them and you sound retarded.
They'll love you anyway.
And they'll offer you candy.
The candy was never my favorite part though. I hated hard candy, but it's what you need to keep your mouth from devouring itself.
On more than one occasion,I opted to chew on a plastic waterbottle cap instead and woke up cursing my bad decision.
I made a pact with myself though, that the minute I started chewing on a pacifier in a public place was the minute I would check myself into rehab.
I would never, ever, be a godamn candykid.
My memories of drug use are vague snippets of time that all sound and smell and look relatively the same. The first thing I remember is the bass, the beat, the music louder than god, vibrating through my whole entire body, whether I wanted it to or not. The second thing I remember are conversations yelled over the din.
Conversations with strangers at these things usually start with, "Can I have a sip of that?"
Water.
It was needed and it was shared by all, because that's what people drink. The guy with the beer? He's not in. You know he hasn't got a clue what's going on.
Those were the days of the massive.
I was never quite there. I was usually in the club though.
That's where I met James.
If anyone ever told me I'd meet my first San Francisco heartbreak at the closing night of the gayest of the gay clubs I might have believed them.
If anyone ever mentioned that I'd be rolling and he'd be on mushrooms, I would definitely go tell you to fuck yourself.
Ahhh...chemical romance.
His pick up line?
He asked me my name.
It was that simple.
He asked me my name and the New Years Eve in me went off again and again, the ping ping ping of sparks beneath my skin,up and down my arms distracted me and I answered, but I wasn't quite sure if I had told him the truth or not.
I asked him his and I smiled and said something like, "Daaaave!! I looove that naame!!"
He smiled back.
I was dancing with friends and I had turned my back to the them to talk to the guy I was convinced named 'Dave'. When I turned back to check up on them, they were gone
Oh well.
That's what happens when you're a girl out with your gays. You know you're most likely going to end up by yourself somewhere.
But look at this.
I wasn't.
I was with Daaaaave whose name I loooooved and my spine had turned into a beam of light.
We were dancing-not-dancing. We were talking about where we were from. Time did that thing where it disappears for awhile and it's non-existence makes you feel like you're golden,you've got all the time in the world to fall in love and even some left over to take home with you. My eyes focused, then wiggled wildly from left to right turning everything into squiggly lines. Then focused again.
I think I spent some time forcing my mouth open. I let my jaw hang down low, my mouth a wide O like I was trying to catch flies with it. I needed to keep my jaw from clenching.
Shit. No gum. No candy. No plastic bottle cap.
I hadn't planned on doing drugs that night.
I was going to just drink and be fine with it, but the moment we walked through the front doors and passed the heavy leather curtains leading into the first room of the club, I knew it was going to be a long night. The music from the two different rooms seemed to clash right there near the entrance. My hair wilted along with my soul within 5 seconds. It was a sauna in there.
And then I, the designated drinker of the night, noticed the mile thick crowd around the circular bar and said fuck it.
I turned to Sma, grabbed the collar of his coat and pulled his ear to my mouth.
I screamed.
"I NEED TO ROLL!"
He pressed a pill into my hand and I stuck it into the pocket of my cargo skirt and waited for water. Someone was getting some.
Dave and I did the dance-not-dance for what seemed like centuries. We talked. We didn't talk. Nothing could wipe the shit eating grins off our faces.
I don't know if I tripped on my skirt or what pushed me forward, but I found myself falling into him, wrapping my arms around his neck to keep me afloat and...and...
He kissed me.
And it was New Years Eve a thousand times over, in double time, like lit roman candles behind each ear, like the whole of Times Square was inhabiting my brain, whooping and cheeing and singing Auld Lang Syne to me, to me, to me.
When we parted, I opened my eyes. He was looking, not at me as I had suspected, but off to the right of us.
I followed his gaze. Sma was standing there, grinning so hard it looked like it hurt. His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. He was holding a plastic cup and taking chips of ice out of it and shoving them into his mouth like how a two year old eats Cheerios.
He took an ice chip and placed it in Dave's mouth. Dave took it, hands free, like it was a completely normal gesture between two males.
Sma took another ice chip and did the same for me. The ice was like heaven as it melted on my dry sandpapery tongue.
Shit. We were dehydrated. Water. Water. Water is always so important.
After the kiss and the surreal ice feeding, we went out to search for our own source of water in the form of $5 a bottle.
I fucking hate clubs that do that.
Dave took my hand and held it as we maneuvered our way through roadblocks of sweaty oblivious bodies. At one particular intersection, I couldn't make it. I couldn't squish between the two large shirtless men standing between me and rehydration. Our hands were still clasped against one sweaty back and one sweaty belly. The two gay men were lost in Danny Tenaglia's remix of 'I Feel Loved'. One of them mouthed the words with his eyes closed, his face pointed up towards the ceiling.
Dave tugged at my hand and I could hear him between the two men.
"Just try!!!", he yelled. The two men danced an inch away from each other causing a tiny gap where I could actually see Dave's face. He let go of my hand and grabbed my wrist and pulled again.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath like I was about to go under a rough tide and pushed myself while he pulled and with a loud grunt from the sweaty belly on the right, I made it through.
I was already covered in the sweat of a million strangers, what was one more?
After managing that...I was exhausted.
"I want to sit down!!" I told him.
We made our way to a set of bleacher looking like things. They were full. People were draped over the benches like ragdolls. We stood there looking at the People Heaps looking for the tiniest sliver of space that maybe I could sit down in.
"Now what do you wanna do?!" he asked.
"I can LEAN!!" I answered motioning towards a spot of empty wall space. "WE can LEAN!!"
"Okay!!"
He led me over to the wall space I pointed at with my chin when I mentioned leaning and when I was about to let go of his hand to fall into the spot before anyone else could claim it, he walked right by it, my hand still in his, and yanked me right past it and out the front doors of the club.
I was not prepared as the cold air smacked me across the face, the sweat that had matted my hair down at the nape of my neck instantly froze and sent red alerts up and down my spine. I squinted my eyes in pain and in shock. He still had my hand and he was still pulling me.
"You wanna move outta the way, Miss," a deep voice that must have been security said. I couldn't open my eyes just yet. My ears were adjusting to how quiet the outside seemed to be compared to the jungle we were just in.
I felt shuffled off to the left two steps, to the right and forward a bit. He still had my hand in his.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
I pried one eye open. Then the next. I felt the blood leave my face and rush downwards like my body wanted to empty all of it out through my toes. The sun was out.
My eyes wiggled down and to the right. Gum wrappers and hundreds of cigarette butts littered the sidewalk. I spotted a shiny gold square with the corner torn among the rubble like a hidden Cracker Jack prize. It was a condom wrapper. My eyes wiggled up from the ground. People were still lined up to get in. Daylight though.
Dang.
Daylight makes the nightlife ugly in so many ways.
The you that you put on to go out for a night on the town, melts pretty quick once the sun starts to rise.
"Are you okay?" he asked again. "Jesus, you're white!"
He had let go of my hand and held my face.
"I'm not white," I mumbled.
"What?"
"I'm filipino," I answered, slurring like I was drunk. I wasn't. I felt worse. My stomach was bottoming out. My knees wobbled. I hadn't eaten in over 9 hours and had sweated an ocean without replenishing it.
"I'm outside," I said.
"I thought you wanted to leave. You said you wanted to leave."
"I wanted to leeeean," I corrected him. "Leeean, like this."
I demonstrated by letting myself fall to the right, but we were further away from the wall than I imagined and nearly went crashing into the sidewalk.
He caught me.
"Let's go home," he said. "We'll get you home."
We got into the first cab in what seemed like an endless line of them waiting for the intoxicated drugged-up, loved-up bohemian masses to go home. They all have to go home eventually.
"Your home or my home?" he asked me as I rubbed my face against the cool leather of the backseat.
"Your home. I have 8 million roommates."
He spoke to the cabdriver and I fitfully passed out.
I don't remember waking up to get out of the car or up the steps. I vaguely recall sitting in a cluttered living room on a lawnchair as he tried to rip my plastic admission bracelet off my arm. I sorta remember him feeding me water and 5-HTP capsules.
He told me something about having a brother. I don't know what that had to do with anything.
Eventually something in my brain snapped some time later.
I found myself sitting on the edge of his bed looking at my shoes, painfully aware of myself.
He was kneeling next to me.
"Are you gonna keep those on?" he asked.
Out of nowhere, I was awake and instantly concious that I was completely naked.
Except for my shoes.
I was staring at them blankly.
He went for them to take them off and I squirmed away like a child.
"Noooooo."
"You're seriously going to keep them on?" He asked, half amused, half confused.
"I'm scared," I said. My voice seemed so small inside me. MDMA. The Love Drug? MDMA. The Truth Serum.
"What is it?"
"They smell," I woefully answered like I didn't want to answer, but some higher power was making me, forcing it out of me. I grimaced in pain, not wanting to continue, but I had to.
"I smell."
I felt the roller coaster swoosh down from the heights and down into the pit, down into the weird and murky depths of what happens when you mess with your seretonin levels.
And what I will always remember about him is that great kindness.
He will never laugh at you if he knows it will hurt your feelings...even though you deserve it.
He simply leaned over, took one shoe off at a time and to my absolute horror, kissed each naked foot.
I didn't find out his name was really James till I spotted his resume on the shelving unit near his bed while he was in the shower sometime around 6PM that evening.
Shit.
Somedays I miss Ecstasy.
Most days?
Not so much.
