November 27

Before we moved into the apartments Linda lived in I have one last blowout night with our house roommate, David.  His girlfriend, Denise, was out of town so we had a boys night out.  We stopped at 7-11 and I picked up a bottle of Mad Dog.  I think it was grape flavored.  We cruised up and down the Bowie loooking for chicks while I drank.  At one point I passed out drunk and when I woke up an hour or two later we were still driving around.  Eventually we stopped and talked to a couple of girls and followed them back to their apartment.  We played strip poker and some sort of drinking game.  All I can remember about myself is being very horny but very awkward.  I was totally inexperienced at the standard method of achieving casual sex.  So before too long David and one of the girls were fucking in the bedroom and me and the other girl were sitting half-naked on the couch.  Eventually we were all four on the bed together but the second girl was shy and unwilling so nothing much happened.  But at least it’s a fun story to tell.

After we got into the apartments Philip wasn’t around much.  I saw him usually at least once a day, and I would often spend a small amount of time with him at Linda’s apartment, usually involving a bit of weed.  Weekends I would get invited along for parties and such but there was no guarantee so I was regularly on my own.  I remember spending a lot of evenings alone, just listening to the radio, sitting in a chair, my legs propped up on the back of the couch, smoking cigarettes and drinking Dr. Pepper.  I left the balcony door open so I wouldn’t miss anything that might be going on around me and so I could blow the smoke out and get a bit of fresh air.  It was odd.  It was so different from the life I was used to.  No changing diapers, no wife to deal with.  Above all, it was peaceful.  It was also lonely at times, but I didn’t mind so much.

When I started working at the auto dealership I ended up in the car detailing/prep building.  Scott was cool and married.  The other three workers were brothers.  They were also pure native american.  One was a bit heavy, one was thin, the other was just big, as in taller and broad-shouldered.  For some reason they adopted me in a way.  The first week I worked there I went out for lunch with them.  On the way back they stopped by the side of the road in a sparsely inhabited commercial area and lit up some fire weed and passed it around.  So I smoked the peace pipe with my brothers and all was good.  The thin one liked speed as well as did Scott, but we rarely did any sort of business with each other.  Usually it was limited to Monday afternoon ‘bumps’ – a little bit to get you through the first day after a long sleepless weekend.  One afternoon we played basketball after work and at one point I attempted to make a move around one of them.  He planted a leg in my way and my thigh collided with his knee.  A portion of my leg went numb and I rolled around on the ground for awhile.  As hard as it is to believe that part of my thigh is still half-numb and tingly twenty years later.

Part of our job was to take cars over to the nearby car wash which was owned by the dealership.  I always cranked the radio up, especially if there was a good song on and the check-in person was a girl.  I think of that dealership every time I hear Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me.”  It was one of my favorite tunes to blare.

At some point I evidently mentioned something to the guys about this one girl who worked the cash register at the car wash, something about her being cute or some such.  I guess they were trying to hook me up or something because they told HER about this, and she and I ended up having a few awkward conversations.  One day I went with her and a friend to her apartment and spent a lunch hour there.  Nothing happened, but it was a bit thrilling, especially when I found out she was married.  But I got the impression things weren’t too good, or that maybe they were even separated.

One night we arranged for her to come over.  At this time Tammy was staying over as a roommate.  She was a friend of Linda’s and was in-between apartments and/or jobs.  I have often regretted not being more aggressive with her.  She was cute and had a very nice body.  Instead I just fantasized a lot.  She didn’t show overt interest in me so I never made a move.  So there I was with two women in an apartment.  Eventually she and I went to the bedroom and had sex.  At one point she asked me to do something and I wasn’t sure I heard her right so she repeated:  “Spank me!”  So I did.  I wasn’t really sure what sort of spanking was appropriate but I did my best and she seemed to enjoy it.  I was getting sex so I certainly wasn’t going to complain about it.

Later we were just lounging around in the living room with Tammy, watching TV and chatting, when I heard a strange noise outside.  We certainly weren’t in the classiest apartments in town but still it was unusual to hear any one yelling or making noise.  This person was doing both, banging on doors.  He was moving between doors on the first floor and asking for someone.  My new girlfriend said, “It’s my husband!”

And those are the words that no man wants to hear.  As it turns out she had told him she was going to a friend’s apartment.  He asked where, and she gave him a name and a building number.  I’m just glad she omitted the apartment number!  By the time he came to our door I had made sure it was locked, and just in case I made sure my brother’s Mossberg pistol-grip shotgun was loaded.  We were as quiet as church mice until he finally left.  I don’t think I even looked out to see what he looked like.  My luck he was built like a tank and covered in prison tattoos.  I don’t want to know.

I only saw her one more time after that.  She came to see me and brought one of her kids along.  As it so happens I was about to leave with my brother and a bunch of friends for an outing at the lake.  I really did not want to miss this event, and I wasn’t too keen on continuing the affair, so I basically blew her off and left.  For some reason my brother’s friends all found this highly amusing.  In retrospect, I can see the great humor in it.  At the time I was just tucking my tail between my legs.

On more than one occasion I came back from lunch rather stoned.  I would start work on a car and look around and every one I saw looked at me and laughed and acted like I was about to get busted by the boss.  They were just fucking with me which really is pretty fun to do when someone is totally chinese-eyed.  I remember one day hearing a honk and being startled out of a stoned coma.  I was sitting in a car.  The car was running.  The car was in the detail shop’s car wash.  I could see headlights behind me.  My heart started racing.  How long had I been in there?  I just knew it was one of the managers behind me.
As it turned out, it was just one of my co-workers again, fucking with me.  I gave them a lot of opportunities for such.

I developed a friendship with a guy across the hall from us.  As it turns out he was fond of the meth as well, and I occasionally bought some through him.  He got his from someone at the Texas State Technical Institute near Waco.  For a time it was a hotbed of meth lab activity, or so it was rumored.  I believed it.  One night me and my new buddy stayed up all night doing speed and talking.  We talked about his days in the navy and we talked about Christianity and the Bible.  If the buzz ever wore off or seemed to be waning you just pulled out your little baggy (and I do mean little) and sprinkled a bit on a smooth surface, preferably a mirror or glass or polished metal, and chop it up finely with a razor blade.  The finer the better.  Beyond that it was all ritual.  The way you separated it into lines was ritual.  The way you snorted it was both ritual and told others how familiar you were with the practice.  Only rookies breathed out and moved the powder around.  You could also tell the pros by their creativeness.  Rookies thought of mirror and razor blade and straw only.  Pros could use most any hard surface and any reasonably thin-edged stiff material for chopping (like a credit card).  Pros were also most creative regarding straws.  Those are rarely available and, most importantly, carrying around a straw, a small mirror and a razor blade basically advertised that you were a drug user.  I typically used either a rolled up dollar bill or part of a ball-point pen.  It was all about guiding the maximum amount of meth powder from the surface to your sinuses without losing any along the way.

There was also an art to judging the quality of the product.  The typical street stuff you could get cheap and easy was also the most unstable.  It absorbed moisture easily, sometimes had a pink tint to it, and was most likely made in small quantities in a bathtub.  This bathtub meth was most commonly referred to as ‘crank.’  It’s hard to explain, but you could taste the difference in the back of your throat, or perhaps it was the smell in the sinuses.  Crank also stung more.  Really nice meth stung less and had no particular smell once ingested.  As a show of bravado it was customary to shake your head and say something like “That was some good shit!” when you felt the burn of crank.  Either one worked just fine for me.

On more than one occasion I would go home with Linda for lunch and we would be joined by one of the new car salesmen.  He was a black dude and always had a TON of cocaine.  The first time I saw this in action there was a dinner plate full, all cut into lines, and there wasn’t room for one single extra line of coke.  The plate was full.  I had my share, but like I said I’m not a big fan of coke.

One day I was approached by one of the used car salesman about hooking him up with some.  I think Linda had referred him to me.  I made a call to Gary and he was holding so the salesman put me in his car and off we went!  It was during the work day.  I worried about what my boss would think but this guy said he would cover for me.  So we went and picked it up and as a bit of reward for my help I got some and also smoked some with him.  It was the first time I’d seen it done and it seemed simple enough.  Just get some foil, make a flat spot for the speed, roll up one end to help channel the smoke and then put a lighter under the foil right beneath the speed.  As soon as it started smoking you started sucking and turn off the lighter.  Rinse and repeat.  It worked ok for me but I decided I would stick with snorting.