canary.

so i’m seeing the girl from the speakeasy. which means, given my pre-disposition to falling for every chemical substance known to man when i’m not trying to be insanely careful, that i’m taking big risks.

so i bought a pack of cigarettes i have no intention of smoking. it’s in my shirt pocket, opened up, so i can smell the sweet smell of the tobacco. it’s distracting. but my addictions come in waves, and i know, from experience, that if i fall down one hole, i’m falling down the niccotine hole as well. so when i smoke on of these cigarettes, it’s time to move on from her. for my own health. my canary.

i’ve resigned myself to the fact that she’s not going to stop yet. she’s younger, still immortal in her own eyes, far from the rock bottom i can see staring at her. i’m juyst happy i get to know her now.

i’m not the type to save people, everyone makes their choices. she’s smart. maybe too smart for her own good – she’s tired of thinking so much she says, she’s taking this time to indulge herself and stop thinking. but she’s smart enough to own this decision.

the smell surround me all the time, interrupting my thoughts. i really want a cig.

this blog is ostensibly about sex and not drugs so i guess i’ll mention we’re fucking fairly regularly and that she’s a licker. in the mornings after we are together i wake up with my entire body’s skin covered in a fine layer of dried spit. i end up smelling like her. it’s lovely. she licks me like i were her cub. always ending up in my groin, and then we fuck.

i’m seeing her again tonight. i’m going to try to straight edge it. she won’t. i doubt she can. we’ll see how it goes. i’m not entirely sure if i’m flirting with her or distaster, to borrow a cliche.

speakeasy. three.

the girl. kissing me. her tongue in me. then my tongue in her.

tongue on lips, teasing sometimes, then giggling.

all the while, our feet at still mingling.

oh yeah, and cocaine.

she has her own stash. she does lines though. these aren’t games.

she’s used to this too. a regular weekday night.

every line brings with it guilt. she’s so smart, too smart to be getting this heavily in this thing. part of me wants to play knight in shining armor, and take her away from all this, but in truth, going down this road, taking these risks, i think it’s part of what makes her who she is. what makes me so attracted to her.

back to kissing. kissing makes the guilt go away.

her hands end up on my thigh and, ungracefully, suggest that it might be time for us to leave. she agrees.

her place is closer. that’s usually the case.

the air is cold. and flush on my cheeks. sobering.

we make it a few blocks, holding hands. looking completely sweet.

you’d think we were sweet.

she attacks me when she closes the door of the apartment. and i attack her back.

kissing her on her neck, tracing her jaw with my lips. her lips. limps, breasts, waist. it’s all fair game. and i’m getting more aggressive as she returns in kind.

i keep kissing her, because i’m not getting hard. limp. powerless.

this is new. i know i’m getting older, but i’m blaming it on the coke.

i end up going down on her, and afterwards she tries to stroke me hard. fails. but she’s surprisingly nonchalant about it, for which i’m grateful, because i’m crushed.

mortality and morality just caught up to me in a bad way.

we make up for it in the morning, when i’m reinvigorated and hard for her. we fuck until late in the morning and she’s loud and yells out supportive things about how hard i am and how i fill her.

she’s supportive. have i become pitiful?

speakeasy. two.

if you’ve grown up internalizing the worst of mrs. reagan’s anti-drug messaging it may surprise you to know that addicts are actually quite normal, tender and sweet people, provided they have the means and funds to maintain adequately.

one of them is playing footsie with me right now. tenderly. we’re staring into each others’ eyes.

also coked up.

she used to be my type. definitely trouble. definitely not someone you’d want to know six months longer down this road. but right now, she’s full of life, smart, sassy and seemingly smitten with me. maybe a bit suicide girlie, but not much.

she keeps calling me her “dirty librarian” – apparently it’s like the sexy librarian devoid of anything wholesome. i dress like a librarian i’ve discovered.

she’s not a librarian. tom-boy – but sexier. younger than me… she tells me later she thought i was five years younger than i was.

but right now i’m really concerned with our feet. and her eyes. blue. vivid.

my friend’s cut me off from the coke, but’s not happy that i’m making eyes with her. he keeps giving me an evil eye, but i’ve decided i could give a shit about what he thinks.

feet playing, toying under the table. it feels innocent and subtle, even though everyone knows what’s going on.

we’re talking, too. she likes chuck palahniuk, reads all his work. i weighed the options of ignoring this and simply moving forward in her attraction versus giving in to my contempt of him and challenging her. maybe it’s the coke, but i hope it’s me that ultimately takes her on for her fandom.

we argue/talk/tease each other about our literary tastes for a few hours, exhausting the community of the speakeasy. they leave one by one, tired of drugs, bored by our conversation. we stay.

eventually we can retreat into a dark corner. this bar has a lot of dark corners.

i kiss her, she returns the kiss.

i like her. but this is bad.

when i kiss someone i generally can imagine a future, a future i’d like to investigate. this girl would kill me. fuck, she’s likely to kill herself soon. she’s already told me as much. that’s she’s self-destructive. has been on a tear for a while now.

but i like her. she’s smart. warped. immediate.

i kiss her with a different urgency. the urgency of getting to know her while i can. before she’s gone.

speakeasy. one.

it’s not a speakeasy. or it is, but only if you strip the word of all romantic associations associated with the historical and contemporary fine cocktail bars in the better cities that call themselves “speakeasy.” it’s an illegal bar. a firetrap. if you need a bathroom, go piss in the back alley. but it has community and i’m privileged that my friend brought me here.

“wanna bump?”

cocaine. yes. of course i do, but i have rules. drugs aren’t consumed with friends, aren’t consumed with habitual users, and aren’t consumed with a dark soul.

“yes – pass it over.”

shit. at least three people at the table are on a dark road that no one should get on.  and i’m hurting.

he passes me a spoonful, carefully – not passing the stash.

i’m now high.

“dude, she was hot, she was smart, why’d you fuck up?”

“…”

“you fucked up, fucked around again, right?”

“seriously? now?”

he’s asking me about why we ended out relationship, after 7 years, without communication with friends, without the standard pre-breakup rituals. i think he’s hurt that he heard about all this in historical statements.

“did you fucked around again?”

“i didn’t.”

“so then…”

it’s not clear to me how i’ll explain this. i’ve avoided discussing it. i’m fucked up now.

“i haven’t fucked around in two years – but i broke up with her because i fucked around. she couldn’t forgive me, it just took two years to figure that out.”

“but you fucked around on her only after she fucked around on you.”

true. irrelevant. this might take explaining for him.

“she fucked around on me, but i could forgive her. she couldn’t forgive me. it’s not about who fucked who, and keeping score. it’s about what we could give each other, and she couldn’t give me forgiveness.”

“but you stayed with her for two years.”

“i wanted to give her time, and then it just took a long time to realize it wasn’t going to change. i’m not sure she believes she can’t forgive me yet, but i couldn’t go through the rest of my life feeling guilty about the past.”

i got tired of constant suspicion, constantly reminding her of her pain soley through my presence. got tired of failing to live a full life because i had to watch what significance my actions carried in reminded her of the past. i got tired of hearing the anger in her voice.

in truth, not cheating was far more exhausting than trying to hide the fact that i was cheating. i loved her, but we failed each other and rebuilding ourselvers afterwards failed.

“you’re a pussy.”

“fuck you.”

“have another bump.”

“thanks.” i reach over becoming a repeat offender on my rules.

we’re going to keep talking about this for a while now, i might need the feeling. he was one of the ones that fucked her.

i’m not sure that he knows she told me it was him. knows that i got over it. it was raw, and hard, but worth it.

i just wish he’d tell me some day. i love him, he’s dear to me, but i’d like to know he’s half the man i believe him to be, this should be his opening to honesty. tonight. i hope he will, i’m getting tired of the secrets, it hurts a little, exposing myself to this.

i’m snorting again. i’m challenging myself. risk.

i’m taking risks.

things to do while i can.

i got an email from a reader after i wrote about the artist becoming disgusted in me. it was warm and friendly and reminded me that there’s a lot of value of exploring the darker corners of my psyche while i’m alone, while it’s easier [i added the later reason].

and with that, as a model of inspiration and self-motivation, here’s a list of fucked up things, rooted in the darker side of my life, i might try to do while i can, while there’s no one who cares about me to stop me, or object. i’ve also added my pre-arranged excuses for failing to try them:

• smoke heroin, possibly also shooting heroin (fear of needles, difficulty procuring either grade of shit, trying to slow down my chemical life)
• explore, and perhaps complete, a financial transaction for sex (fear of, well, future disclosure, not clear how to go about it ethically)
• engage in (#)-some sex, preferably with someone(s) i have a long term interest in (lack of bed-mates)
• engage in anonymous group sex (lack of access, a bit intimidating)
• fuck a (cel|blog)ebrity (lack of prominence, lack of being interesting, general shyness, why?)
• sleep on the street for a few days with a camera to document the experience (lack of street edge, completely unprepared, it’s a cliché)
• slut around (check!)
• take pictures of someone that might qualify as pornographic (lack of ability, lack of anything to contribute to the genre)
• visit the real middle east (reasons too numerous to count why i’m a poor candidate for this right now)

i’m generally hopeful to expand this list as i move forward.

crack.

about 4 years ago, under the influence of william t vollmann and other sordid authors who follow me on subways, buses and coffee shops everywhere, i began a six month long effort to procure and try crack cocaine.

there are, i believe, services that will enable this quite simply, for a fee, so that you don’t have to leave white, successful enclaves you might not want to leave. i didn’t have access to these services, they are significantly different from the pot service you might use now, harder to find and more awkward to ask about.

the effort was more focused on logistics then anything else. i had a live-in girlfriend who wouldn’t approve (the emotional wall between us is worth its own post) and a highly professionalized job from which this was to be kept secret.

you need time to smoke crack in secret. time to go buy it, to find a place to smoke it where the crass odor won’t linger, and time to recover from the cranky monster you’re about to become. it’s frankly a pain in the ass.

but the high.

words can’t do this justice. i’ve tried a lot of drugs. they’re all hard to describe. but this one might be the most special. you can be god, briefly, if your brain responds correctly. mine does. you feel empowered, free from real constraints.

the high lasts seconds, maybe a minute. but the low is pretty rough. you feel spent, possibly shamed, and general wasted away.

i tried this three, four times. not much. not enough to get into trouble. but it was fun, i liked it. i’m willing to admit it was a stupid idea, though.

i mention this now, because that feeling, back in my head, that rush, is the feeling i might have when we come together tonight. drugs, alcohol and sex are a mix to me, not just as vice, but sensation. i try to separate them but i fail.

it can’t be the best association, but it can’t be the worst either.

i’m glad to have discovered that we have this in common, but you need to know, that for an instant, one split second, all i’m thinking about is that old fix. then i’ll be back with you.