This essay was solicited in 2016 by an editor about drugs and violence. This made him uncomfortable and this is the way I wrote it and he gave it back.
I love speed. Fine Mexican pharmaceutical prescribed by a crooked doctor and chased with black coffee. It was so good. No meth skin picking or crackpipe lip burns. No bad burning plastic smell. Just a smooth shiny capsule and graciously intensely supported zoomies.
I have a theory about my years of drug use..
Some of us go in for the sugar tit. We want to put that shame or crazy under a cozy blanket of sedation. I heard this from Jerry Stahl years ago and it stayed with me. It makes the same kind of sense that the idea of an oversized slightly weighted hoodie makes sense to me.
Others of us turn it all the way up. Feed crazy speedy things and you’re mean and skinny. Find the right one and you can do it all while you’re paranoid and shaking but damn you look good. This makes sense to me the same way it makes sense to smoke a cigarette while chugging a Monster and going to work the days when I’m so exhausted I want to drop dead.
During my speed years I hung around with party Queers who liked to do fun drugs, dance and fuck. My people. We loved to each do our substances of choice, flip a coin about which club we were going to hit or open the local weekly to see what DJs were spinning and off we’d go. Except when there was a party.
At one of those parties my favorite party queer led me into a tiny bathroom and put two fat lines of coke in the counter and told me it was time to get glamorous. One line for me to start to see how I liked it then I went ahead and had the second because I had two nostrils so why not? And my DARE officer wasn’t there to tell me to just say no.
Cocaine, that White Bitch tickled me then lit my fucking fuse. Tina grabbed me by the short n curlies and said, bitch let’s go.
Everyone who has ever liked to party has known this guy. He’s greasy. He’s creepy. He’s never hot and often has a penchant for young girls. He’s tolerated because he always has good drugs. The right kind of older girl will warn you about him, the right kind of party boy will be the ones standing between you and his dirty gaze. That guy.
That night, that guy decided I was the lucky girl he’d offer free party favors to in exchange for a piece of my sweet young ass. Or at least a handjob in his shitty Jetta. He cornered me in the kitchen of some house I never found or went to again and used his size and manhood to try to intimidate me into going along to ride him.
I stayed at the sink pretending to look out the window while he approached. I remember his hands on my hips and the hint of his half hard dick against my ass. I knew when I saw his reflection coming it was going to be some bullshit. Cocaine told me, Tina said, and I quote, “let me take care of this.”
My pussy twitched not because of his dick because I saw a dirty knife in the sink and I knew without a doubt that I was about to stab that mother fucker in the gut. I knew he was too tall and the angle not right for me to get a good shot under his ribcage, even in my platforms I was too little to jam the blade under his chin, it had to be his gut. I was calm, Tina was calm, he was about to see his innards.
The rage rolled around inside me as hot as fuck lust and it felt good. I was ready for it, ready for him and prepared to find out.
That rage was so fine and so perfectly the real me I dream about it sometimes now and smile.
When I am a breath away from committing an act of violence my voice gets clear and cold. I speak softly. I warned him. I told him I was going to fucking gut him if he didn’t leave me the fuck alone.
My queers were fetched while I was herding that guy into a corner and somewhere in my brain I understood the truth of my apex predator nature. That was the first time I understood the difference between the kind of aggression I’d experienced at the hands of other people, that what I felt was not the same thing I felt when I got bullied or when men frightened me. I was so clear and cold in that moment I saw the actuality of how I am as a person.
I turned on this man and using the knife prodded him towards the oppositte corner where he wouldn’t be able to get away from me. I positioned myself so when he fell, I could move so he wouldn’t fall on me, I was ready. I threatened to vivisect him and steal his car while standing close enough that he could keep looking down my shirt at my tits.
He was rescued by my queers. My very large muscle queen date was recruited, he swooped in and grabbed me. He held me under his arm like some coked out toddler, bicycling my legs and trying like hell to get away. I was carried out one way and that guy was escorted out the other.
I was put on the couch, made to smoke some weed, sip some booze. The best post near murder moment came when somebody’s gorgeous Puerto Rican boyfriend from Brooklyn so he told me, draped himself across my lap, put his cheek on my boob and said, “are you from Brooklyn baby? I love you.” I told him I loved him too and we kissed, then I was kissed by several others and petted and told what a good job I’d done. If you want to call me a good girl, the moments after I’ve been about to commit an act of violence is a great time.
I have always been thoughtful about my drug intake, I sat myself down to figure out what happened. Was it an after school special level oh shit you’ve fucked up your whole life with two lines of blow, type situation?
Was it that I was grumpy to begin with because we’d missed our window to go to Arby’s beforehand?
Had I just had some coked out freak out?
What cocaine does to me is strip away my civility programming. Cocaine releases the Shannon inside who is 6’7″ of muscle and rage. Coke punches my apex predator button and if anyone oversteps, I just want to tear them limb from limb. With booger sugar, I am Deebo. I am Brock Lesner. I am that mother fucker.
As an experiment a few months later, I tried again. Just to test my hypothesis about how the girl affected me. I had a good day, I felt really pretty, I was really excited to head out dancing and then after hours and then a promised breakfast feast at 6 AM. I was ready.
My hopes were dashed. After a civilized quiet warning about not touching me to some other dude, my murder button was pushed. I threw punches, I may or may not have broken some of the bones in the top of his foot because I was wearing boots and stomped on the tops of his feet. I made a lot of noise and went for shock and mother fucking awe. I didn’t win, I didn’t come out unscathed, but I bet homie thought twice before trying something like that again.
I looked this guy dead in his eye and told him if I ever saw him again or if he tried to touch me, I there would be fucking murders on sight. He believed me.
Outside of the problem of me not being the hulking man-beast I imagine myself to be there is one other issue. I loved it. I felt like the whole wonderful complete me. I felt confident and unhinged in a way that borders orgasmic.
It was just too good.
I’ve not done cocaine since then. It has been on offer many times and I always decline with a polite smile and little shake of my head. Inwardly I quote Cyprus Hill, Here is something you can’t understand-
How I could just kill a man-
And answer it with a certain surety.
With a pile of cocaine and a dirty kitchen knife and a smile on my pretty ass face.
