If we’re gonna be truth-telling, then let’s tell the truth: I saw something shiny and pretty at AA , he wanted a ride , and my dick said “yes.”
I knew better.
And, yet.
I picked somebody up at an AA meeting, he was cute I guess but he’d be a lot cuter if he wasn’t on the shit.
I could tell he was still going through it, he wanted me to take him home with me and I was like sorry dude… we’re sitting in my home right now. I don’t have anywhere to go.
He asked me where I was going, and I told him.
I was going to go to Monterey to stand out on the coast and try to relax.
He asked if he could come with me.
Or could he come to [I don’t want to name my next destination.] ?
I asked him if he knew anyone there or what he’d do when he got there.
He had no idea.
I asked if he had clothes or belongings or anything. You want to go … just like that?
Nope.
I drove around and talked to him a little bit and we exchanged stories.
Then I saw his hands: They were bright red like a steamed lobster all the way down to his knuckles.
I said “shit dude this isn’t good you’re malnourished and dehydrated.”
You need to give yourself a break from the drugs, eat, hydrate, rest.
“I’m not saying you have to stop forever and ever and ever but you .. need a break.”
I don’t have facts to back me up but if your hands look like that you probably have some inflammation in your brain. And you’re not giving your heart any nutrients and you’re making it work that hard oh my god. I’m not going to tell someone that if they’re tweaking though.
I stopped and got him a pizza and some stuff to drink.
For a little while he grabbed my other phone and picked the music.
I liked his selection and taste.
And then ….
He grabbed a container of bug spray and leaned out the window and started wiping my car with it.
He started smearing it all over the inside of my windshield.
Okay, here we go.
“Uh please don’t do that on my side, I need to see the road.”
He started rubbing the bug spray all over his hands.
*pause*
“Hey… do you … put a lot of bug spray on your skin? I’m wondering if you’re poisoning yourself.”
No answer.
Oh fuck is he huffing BUG SPRAY?
Mentally, I latched on to this question about why his hands were so red and so dead looking. What is wrong with his health? What does this mean?
He grabbed the wheel and rocked it a little bit and I asked him to not do that either.
He asked me if he could drive.
I said absolutely fucking not.
(Okay we’re done here: I did a U-turn.)
Then he turned on my dome light and started staring into the back of my car.
Paranoia.
I turned on the master switch for all the interior lights.
He stared at me and said “you look old now.”
I sighed. I was drained at this point.
Fergie’s “Big Girls don’t Cry” came on the radio.
I said “you know Fergie was a tweaker right?”
“She was?”
I know a thing or two about MasterSketch Theater.
Tina talks a lot of shit.
She’s a bitch.
I read him an excerpt of this interview:
In the early Noughties, Fergie’s vice was crystal meth, an addiction she beat before finding fame with Black Eyed Peas.
“At my lowest point, I was [suffering from] chemically induced psychosis and dementia. I was hallucinating on a daily basis. It took a year after getting off that drug for the chemicals in my brain to settle so that I stopped seeing things. I’d just be sitting there, seeing a random bee or bunny.”
Her hallucinations became so severe that she thought the CIA, FBI and a SWAT team were tracking her. She eventually sought solace in a church, probably on some level, she thinks, because of her Catholic upbringing.
“They tried to kick me out, because I was moving down the aisles in this crazy way, as I thought there was an infrared camera in the church trying to check for my body. I bolted past the altar into a hallway and two people were chasing me.
“I remember thinking: ‘If I walk outside, and the SWAT team’s out there, I was right all along. But if they’re not out there, then it’s the drugs making me see things and I’m going to end up in an institution. And if it really is the drugs, I don’t want to live my life like this any more, anyway.’ I walked out of the church; obviously there was no SWAT team, it was just me in a parking lot. It was a freeing moment.”
“The drugs thing, it was a hell of a lot of fun… until it wasn’t. But you know what, I thank the day it happened to me. Because that’s my strength, my faith, my hope for something better.”
Not everyone would have turned themselves around, and then go on to become a super-successful singer. “It’s so incredible, I know. I think I must have guardian angels.”
We rode in silence for awhile.
He started arguing with … I don’t know what … about a “transfer” and how he’d been cloned and they were having sex with his body and fisting it right now.
He kept asking me about the “transfer” and I said I’m sorry but I don’t know what that means.
He asked me if I wanted to score drugs with him.
I pulled over and said okay I’ll take you back to where I picked you up but you’re going to stop this right now.
I started driving again, a little more apprehensive now.
He started punching the pizza box and yelling that he wanted to see my dick.
“Uh, that’s not happening.”
He punches the pizza box even harder, emphasizing every word with another punch:
“GET YOUR FUCKING DICK HARD FOR ME. RIGHT NOW.”
“Not happening and that’s definitely not how you get my dick hard.”
He repeated what he said and I said I’m going to treatment, I don’t care what you do but I’m not getting high.
He says “I just want to score some crystal.”
And I’m like ok cool you have choices about how to end or spend tonight, we’re going back to where I picked you up and you can do that.
Sad part is , out here in San Francisco or Los Angeles these guys will encounter someone in this condition and pump you full of even more drugs and fuck you — looking at you, Ed Buck.
He started rambling about how we’re going to get some stuff and a cheap seedy hotel and how he’s going to find three guys to fuck me.
“It’s just what you like, don’t fucking lie. You’re going to a do a shot!”
Fuck I am, not with my blown up and trashed ticker I’m not. There’s a reason I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks about me or what I have to say anymore.
He says “great, thanks for making me fall out of love.”
Wat.
I was already about 0.2 seconds away from stopping the car and telling him to get out when he dumped the pizza all over me and started clawing at me and punching my window trying to break it.
“Let me the fuck out!!!”
“No problem.”
I came to a halt on the 101 and he couldn’t figure out how to unlock the door. He was kicking the door frantically and screaming and clawing at me like a feral cat and I was like “please just let me unlock the door for you that’s all I’m doing I’m not going to hurt you.”
He spit out the thing he’d been chewing on the whole time:
I got the door open and he darted off onto the 101 like a startled deer.
He’d upended pizza and soda all over my car.
I pulled off at the next exit and got on my knees to thank God I was safe, and to pray that dude doesn’t get hit by a car… or attack someone else… or get tazed or worse.
I didn’t see the accident happen… but I learned the next morning that a northbound SUV swerved to miss him and killed two or three of its occupants.
Okie dokie God, I just put in a good word for you all but a few hours ago and I said that your fingerprints are all over everything. Where are we going with this one?
I looked up from where I’d knelt down and I was kneeling in front of the sign for the hotel chain I usually stay at.
*mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, long pause*
I was done with my car and I was done with this trip.
[The vehicle, too. I took it over to my cousin’s and gave him the keys and title and told him I never wanted to see it again.]
I was told once that “insanity” is not “intoxicated behavior,” if you give Grandma enough crystal meth she’ll hop up in a sling and get gang banged or let you fist her and peek out the windows and take apart the lawnmower, too.
“Insanity” means “I want to use that shit even though it’s doing all of these horrible things to me.”
I was staring at that tonight.
This guy was in this condition and he was like “I want to score some crystal.”
That is the “insanity” we “come to believe” will be removed from us.
I want to live. I want to go watch the ocean from the coast in Monterey today.
