Dark Days

really, i'd only come by san jose on my weekends. and almost every weekend i was back, there was opium to be smoked or coke to be sniffed. i'm not sure why i joined in-- perhaps the adventure of curiosity, or perhaps to just get on the same level as my intoxicated friends. i don't know. but i was in it for a few months. i never got into needles or sticking the damn thing up my nose, but i'd free-based it plenty.

i think, deep down, we all knew the entire thing was bad news. i rested easy knowing i would only experience that dark world two times a week and the rest of my life would be spent working or going to school. not having access to it, and having an actual life outside of it, was what made me worry less about trying it on weekends.

but each weekend i returned to a worse world, darker and more demented than the week before. friends were losing the ability to have conversation without being reminded what the conversation was initially about. drama ensued, small thieves, anger, anxiety. horribleness.

my mom told me i was on drugs one night and i told her i needed to talk to her about it later. i held the wall as i stumbled to my room to collapse and vomit on my floor.

the next morning, i was offered a ride to san francisco-- a friend needed to get some goods and i needed to get back to college. it was an interesting thing. i remember hitting the city in under thirty-five minutes and being so happy the 95mph car-ride was nearly over. i had never seen someone so anxious and so desperate to get somewhere in my life-- and so angry.

"we need to make a quick stop in the t.l.," he said.

"okay," i said. i needed to get back to my dorm to finish up my midterms, but i couldn't really argue with my ride-- especially not with his fiending mood.

we were buzzed in by a scrawny black man who called himself the d-o-c, and wedged a 2 x 4 against his door handle so no one could get in without being welcomed first. his room was small: perhaps the size of a luxurious san francisco kitchen, or two walk-in pantries. i don't remember even seeing a bathroom in the place. the floor was covered in trash, perhaps laundry, and burnt spoons. the walls had books covering even the windows-- all except one tiny spot, which had a 12" television that played 3:1 gang-rape porn. 98.1 kiss fm old school & today's r&b played monday motown and i just stared.

"who's he?" the d-o-c asked my friends.

"he's our friend," one said, "he's cool."

i'm right here.

"you fixin?" the d-o-c asked me. i could tell he thought i was some kind of cop or informant, or something other than an art student just trying to get back to his dorm to work on midterms.

"am i what?" i asked.

the d-o-c looked at my friends disapprovingly. i had somehow failed. one of my friends looked at me and bulged his eyes in a manner that reassured me i had just said something stupid. i was, admittedly, not prepared to find myself in a tenderloin studio trying to pretend i know much about the heroin scene.

"do you want some," my friend translated, "are you fixin?"

"oh," i said, feeling like an idiot, "no. i'm good."

more eye-bulges. i'd messed up again. how could i not want some? everyone wants black tar heroin running through their veins. that's why we got to san francisco in under 35 minutes-- because we were fixin.

the d-o-c was not having it. if i wasn't fixin i shouldn't have been in his danger cave.

"you've probably done this more times than you can remember," my friend said half to me, but much more to the d-o-c, "right?"

"yeah," i said, "i guess that's true."

it was true-- i hadn't realized it till he said so.

i watched one friend heat the little black rock on a bent spoon and fill his trusty syringe. he had the entire set up neatly kept in a school-box that might have been used for his color pencils when he was a kid and that depressed me a bit. he'd belted off his bicep and had no issue finding a vein.

my other friend was struggling and missed his vein enough times to have blood trickling down several parts of his arm and i could tell he was frustrated. he was frustrated that he couldn't get his fix-- not that he was bleeding.

"let me do that for you," the first friend snapped, with his belt held in his teeth.

"no," the other yelled back, "i can do this myself."

the worst part of it was how good the first friend was; he could argue and give advice while shooting up and hitting the vein with precision. it was almost disgustingly artistic.

"here," the d-o-c said to me, while forcing a pipe toward me.

"what is it?" i asked, hoping it might just be weed.

more eye-bulges. i knew what it was. i didn't want to smoke any opium. but the rape-porn, the spoons, the blood-- i felt in my gut i had no real choice and no real way to just stand up and walk out of the room. there are times for voicing your opinion and there are times when you need to look around and say, "i am in the tenderloin with my friends who've got needles in their arms and i need to smoke this shit because i need to get out of here in one piece."

so i smoked the damn thing. and the d-o-c watched.

he stuck more black tar in the pipe and gave it to me again. i told him i was good and he told me i was not. he just kept staring at me.

so i smoked it, too.

afterward, he seemed able to accept i was not a cop and sort of shooed us all out just in time for a prostitute to step in. my mind was floaty and euphoric despite the setting-- but in amongst the dopey haze, the real happiness came from walking out of the room without a knife in my side or a tussle.

the thing with opium, black-tar, heroin, what-have-you, is it feels like everything is going to be alright. everything is the most comfortable thing to ever have existed and everything bad can wait for another day. but when that tar wears off, the bad is back and it is back with a mind for business. the silk is itchy, the air is dry, the people are in your way, and your friends need to shut the fuck up because you can't think when they talk.

it turns the best people into grungy beasts who swear allegiance to a dirty needle and a dirty rock. that dark thing is all they can understand it's the only thing that understands them. and they frolic into a filthy corner away from the world.

when i got back to my dorm, i smoked a cigarette and passed out on my bedroom floor. the midterms would have to wait for the horrible morning that would be coming soon.

that was the day i realized-- quite directly-- that my friends were in trouble and i needed to escape again. it was around then that my trips to san jose grew less frequent.

this was all years ago and i'm not sure what reminded me of it all so suddenly, but i suppose it needed to get out.

on the bright side, everyone is fine now (mostly.)