CHAPTER 8 HERE WE GO AGAIN

CHAPTER 8 HERE WE GO AGAIN

Now it was time to get over Layla, grievously it was still too soon, I was too unstable. I should of just stayed sheltered and kept overworking. But it was too hard to be good. Every time I would be at home I would start to get lonely, every time I got lonely I thought of her and every minute I spent thinking of her felt like an eternity of misery. I felt like there was no headway, absolutely no progression in my life. I found myself asking the question. Was I living or just simply existing? Time itself was standing still and the only thing I could feel change was my feelings of depression succeeding as the days passed. So I decided fuck it, I need to be back in the scene and out partying. And once again my thoughts became my actions. Of course working at a restaurant leaves you with a lot of access to party supplies. So as I start going out more and hanging out with some of my old boys (you know those crazy single friends you seem to lose touch with when you’re in a relationship) I start to drink heavily and for the first time in a few years I blow some coke, and slowly but surely this is the path I follow. Like I said when you’re working at a restaurant you pretty much have access to every drug you can think of because there are at least two part time drug dealers at every restaurant out there, whether it’s the local diner or a fancy expensive joint.

If you don’t believe me please ask someone who has worked or still does at a restaurant. Anyway the point for now is at work I could pretty much get as much coke as I wanted and being a manager has its perks because the drug dealer servers and bartenders will always need a favor from you. Well I really took advantage of this and while we’re on the subject I also took advantage of a few other perks and I mean the female kind. Included with drugs, restaurants are also usually stacked full with hot young girls, specially a restaurant that had me in charge of the hiring. Within the first three months of the final breakup I slept with 2 servers, a bartender, the owner’s (totally hot) daughter and I had a young hostess give me a blowjob in the manager’s office. Ya I know it sounds grimy but at that point I was a grimy dude, but none of these girls meant anything to me they were just bad attempts at a rebound. This is when I really start to turn to coke. I was working long hours and partying even longer, a perfect combo for my reacquired vice. So I start getting back into the club scene with a few of my Persian friends, Whats funny about these guys is that they had a completely different and probably more dangerous combo of a lifestyle, which ultimately led to the same conclusion as me. They had too much money and too much time on their hands. We were a big and deep seeded group but the main trio consisted of me, my boy Ali and his cousin J.

They came from a very wealthy Iranian family that was spread throughout the Northern Virginia, DC and Maryland (the DMV). So they had great connections through out the whole area. I had known Ali since high school and he went off to Virginia Tech but came back home when him and his girlfriend of five years broke. He decided to drop out of school, he never said so but I know he just figured who needs college when your filthy rich. Well I guess we had that bond of both of us trying to get over our ex’s. Sadly though we had something else in common and that was the fact that we both loved to dance dance dance to the yeyeo. So thanks to their hook-ups we roll through DC like kings, we always get VIP tables and always party like rock stars. Life was a big blur of drugs, work and clubs, and for a while this was the ultimate vacation from my thoughts of Layla and really anything else in my life. I was completely caught up in that spectacle, on Tuesdays it was SPANK (the upper level of twelve twenty-three) , on Wednesday it was ummm well shit I don’t even remember the name of it, on Thursdays K-Street Lounge was the hot spot. As for the weekends, forget about it, we would hit up so many different spots there’s no point in recalling them all. And not so slowly our intake of the devils dandruff was increasing, we used to get a gram or two for the night and next thing u know it’s an eight ball or two. If you knew me during this time you could see the wear n tear I was putting my body through just by looking at my face. But I didn’t care I was living large and it felt good even if it was probably killing me.

Well speaking of killing myself, me and the boys were also getting into a new trend of adding sleeping/anxiety pills to the nightly mix to kind of even us out a little bit. I know it sounds crazy to do Xanax, Klonipin or Valium to calm me down from all the cocaine I was blowing up my nostrils but these are the rationales of a druggie. Now this toxic combo is supposed to be extremely bad for you if not deadly but it sure felt good. Plus the best benefit was that I could actually get some sleep at the end of a night. So to sum it up I was becoming a coke head with a pill habit that works all day and parties all night, and yes it was as tiring as it sounds, but when you’re young and on the rebound you play now and worry later. And so I did just that, I kept on playing the game. Through the clubs I met a lot of girls but none even worth mentioning. By this point in my life I have completely given up on the idea of a monogamous relationship. I heard Bill Maher compare it to communism once saying that they both only looked good on paper. I’ve never agreed with someone more. I guess it could have been the girls I was meeting, you know they say you can’t meet a good girl in a club, or maybe it was my attitude and mind set, hell it could have even been the drugs. I’m not totally sure what it was but I did not come close to any kind of connection with any girl. There was what seemed to be an endless sea of meaningless sex but definitely no sparks out there. So I stay true to the white girl (cocaine) and more and more my habit was getting worse. Eventually Ali found us a great hook-up for some amazing almost completely uncut coke and we would just buy an ounce at a time, then we would sell gram by gram at the clubs. And you would be surprised how much you can sell a gram of good quality cocaine in a club in DC at one in the morning.

I mean everything in the District was at least twice the price it was in Miami if not more. From then on things changed, instead of spending a boat load of money on a bag every night we were actually making a profit. I’m using the term profit very loosely because most of the extra coke was just going up our noses. I wouldn’t say we were drug dealers because this was no full time thing; we were more like party suppliers. We were the guys that you would see in the club once you’re completely hammered and you think “hey a huge bump of coke sounds like a good idea”. Yup we were the guys you go to in that situation. Things were just so crazy and every night seemed to blur together in a hazy conglomerate of fuckedupness, that is definitely not a real word but trust me this was a real feeling. I can remember one new years eve, well the next morning actually, just sitting in a hotel room with Ali and J and the little table in the room was just covered with coke (not like Tony Montana in Scarface, but more like in Lord of Wars when Nicholas Cage’s brother has a yeyeo outline of Yugoslavia or someplace like that). Anyway the night was over long ago, the sun came up hours ago and the three of us were just snorting away. That night was a hazy blur like the rest but I can distinctly remember Ali taking a huge Hollywood and then asking me I wonder how much of this stuff do we have to do until we overdose. It’s not just what he asked me it was the way he asked it, he meant it, he really wanted to know because he really was trying to overdose. I’ll never forget that horrible decrepit look in his eyes. That was the first time in a long time I actually took a step back and a look at my life. I realized how bad and dangerous my lifestyle was becoming. Unfortunately realizing that something is bad for you and doing something about it are two completely different things. After my bingers I would always say I’m done, that’s it, it was very easy to not want any coke when the party was over and I was hung over and strung out of my mind, but eventually I would get over it and either go to work or go out and both of those would lead me back to drinking and drugs. Here’s a little tip for anyone trying to get sober. DON’T WORK IN A RESTAURANT. So this cycle continuous for a while, until something odd happened, something that would make this bad situation even worse.

But first a little poem I wrote in the middle of a 60 hour binger, I call it DEVILS DANDRUFF.

SNIFF SNIFF DRIP DRIP DAMN THATS GOOD SHIT; Woooo I just felt that first sweet kiss; see my boy you wanna hit this; and yes ignorance is bliss; once again I take a big dip; SNIFF SNIFF DRIP DRIP DAMN THATS GOOD SHIT; random thoughts come out of me like little kids; what where when why and who with; there’s a pool of answers but I haven’t taken a dip; what will I do and where will I live; when will I go; and why can’t I know; but before that who will I be with; I’m thinkin to much, guess I need a hit; grab sexy single chic; SNIFF SNIFF DRIP DRIP DAMN THATS GOOD SHIT; if I wasn’t so yaced up I would try to hit; but I’ll drink much more and be ready in a bit; I’m nice now the whole night is a skit; I do what I do and I’m with who I’m with; but with a lie; I might just die; though if I’m right; I will take flight; another girl another night; one more hit just one last night; SNIFF SNIFF DRIP DRIP DAMN THATS GOOD SHIT; too much of this and I could get bit; don’t care if my book is not a hit; crazy but not psycho I won’t slit my wrist; not so fast ill do it bit by bit; get it not the whole yard just inch by inch; maybe ill change and from this game ill slip; but what about the pool I still haven’t taken a dip; wait that’s not the future just that bitches grip; my last line I’ll take it in the whip; SNIFF SNIFF DRIP DRIP DAMN THATS GOOD SHIT.

Theres a second part but I cant seem to find it… Oh well back to the story

One night at work, towards the end of my shift, while I was on my fifth glass of wine I start asking around if anyone was holding. For the laymen that means if anyone had drugs to sell. Well soon enough one of the bartenders pulls me aside to tell me he has some very strong pain killers. SWEET, by now I was not oppose to getting some pills when there was no coke or even better a combo of both. The only thing was that I never found a pill I truly loved and more importantly one that I was willing to divorce my white girl for, again for the laymen I liked cocaine much more than any pills I had ever tried. So I ask him what he has, I assume to get the regular answer of Percocet or Vicodin but he tells me he has something different and by different he meant much stronger and way more expensive. He tells me he has something called Oxycontin, I didn’t know much about this drug so I ask him a bunch of questions. He had 80 milligram pills and that they went for about a dollar a mg on the streets he says. I instantly think to myself well if that single pill costs 80 dollars it better come with some weed or maybe a blowjob from a hot chick. The Barkeep proceeds to tell me that for my first time the one pill is more than enough to keep me zooted all night. So heres a shocker…I buy one, he helps me crush up about a quarter of it and makes me two tiny little lines. There is a whole process that involves in turning an oxy pill into powder form but we’ll get into that later.

After I see the lines I look at him and ask if that was it. I was used to blowing huge Hollywoods and these two little cunt hairs of lines seemed insignificant, but this guy tells me to forget about Hollywood were going to OC (which was a nickname for Oxycontin). So I toot both lines up and spend the next twenty minutes complaining about how these pills sucked and I probably should have done more but on the advice of my friend I wait it out. Then all of a sudden a euphoric sensation ran through my body, making me kind of tingle from head to toes. It’s extremely difficult to explain how I felt but it seemed for now at least this drug had all the good qualities of coke without having some of the bad ones. I became more social but did not talk a mile a minute or grind my jaw every other second (which was a bad habit I had whenever I did too much yac). I could eat food and hell at the end of the night I could actually sleep. Once again I’m using another term loosely because in the beginning the sleep was more like being in a coma while waking up every other hour and for some reason laugh a little bit but nevertheless I hung out with deaths cousin more than usual. From that night on, once again, things started to slowly change. I did less and less coke, but more and more OC’s. I even start to get out of the club scene; Amir and the fella’s did not seem to share my passion for this newly acquired party treat. Besides they were much deeper in the grip of that bitch (coke) than I ever was. But don’t get me wrong I still went out with those guys and partied like a rock star, just less often and the main difference was that in my off time I was doing a bunch of oxy’s. At this point in my life I wasn’t a fan of mixing the two drugs the way I would with coke and Xanax for example. I had heard a lot of bad rumors about the oxy cocaine combo, supposedly a kid I went to high school with died of mixing the two. Besides I was fine just doing one or the other…well for now at least. Sometime passed and my life was a cloudy haze, days seemed to overlap. Their was just a lot drugs, work and random sex.

But things were not as great as they sound; my life was on a steady decline. I was spending all of my income on drugs now and pretty much stayed broke. I made descent money managing the restaurant but like I always say some people have kids to support and some have bad habits to support. I remember hitting my financial rock bottom when I had my car repossessed. I had a nice Acura and I missed a couple of my payments, then when I finally sent in a check it bounced. And bam all of a sudden my car was gone, it was official I was a loser. But the funny thing was that I didn’t even care I was so caught up in myself that I was completely apathetic to everything around me. I ended up buying some old crappy Honda from some guy I knew who really needed the money (probably for drugs). Like I said it didn’t matter what I was driving then, I was still sleeping with hot girls and sadly this was how I perceived my life as still being ok. Besides I had something much more important than some stupid car to worry about. My 25th birthday was coming up so I call up Amir and the crew, we decide to get a couple of tables at LUV which at this point was a fading club but my cousin worked their and Ali was close with the head promoter. So we get the tables, a bunch of pills, and handfuls of coke. The rest is as they say “history”.


They say history is written by the winners, well in this case they were wrong. Because as I write this I realize what a loser I was around this time. My thoughts bring a funny sense of irony with them because I'm about to tell you about six of the most fun months I ever had, yet as I reminisce I get a horrible empty disposition deep inside me. Ok so lets remind you and maybe more importantly me the wild and impelling times I was about to encounter.

Oh wait I just realized we have hit that point in the story. You know the point where the first (usually futuristic) scene is finally reached. Like the restaurant robbery scene in Pulp Fiction or George Clooney and the horses in Michael Clayton. This is where the anecdote is suppose to come together. “Like a simple puzzle” I said, if I recall correctly. Well maybe this puzzle, very much like life, isn’t as simple as expected.

CHAPTER 9 LUCKY NIGHTS AND LONELY DAYS