Nice People Take Drugs

The laughter would have felt real, if my head wasn’t being gripped by an unseen vice. I curled up on the bed and looked down at the electric-blue shirt stretching to contain my naked breasts—across them, in large, friendly letters, it read “NICE PEOPLE TAKE DRUGS.”

Quick flashes of light darted across the letters, until my eyes began to rattle. The end result of mixing drugs, alcohol, and a lack of sleep.

I resisted sleep as if it might stave off the sun’s fast approach.

I turned on “The Man with the Golden Arm.” The jazz beats picked up with the tempo of my pulse as I lusted after that deep euphoria—sipping on every sweet detail as if to conjure it into existence.

Without a sound my eyelids slowly fell, and then the room began to spin around me. I popped them open and the walls froze, before lowering them once more.

The jazz began to creep up. It ran through my arteries and veins until it gathered up in my chest. A wave of contentment hit me.

I never slept.

At 10am, I ripped myself off the damp sheets and checked my face in the mirror, before heading outside.

The first drag on my cigarette was delicious. I sucked the menthol smoke down, followed by another three. My self-indulgence knowing no bounds until all possible routes of pleasure have been exhausted.

Now it’s almost 10:26 and all I can feel is a deep seated loathing for the week ahead. To spend another hour behind the pharmacy counter, makes a lobotomy sound palatable.

Mosquitos are swarming my chair. As I study one attempting to land on my left leg, I see the scabs and deep scratches from the uncontrollable urge to tear off my own flesh. They dot my calf and spread across the tattoo on the top of my foot. Once more, my hand reflexively races to claw at my ankle and rips off a thick scab. 

As my neighbor walks by with her dog, and we nod politely, I realize how I must appear:

Last night’s makeup smeared on, with scabbed and bleeding legs, chain smoking, with a shirt that proclaims “NICE PEOPLE TAKE DRUGS.” The shirt’s writing is now unnecessary. I might as well walk up and introduce myself with a nice anecdote like: “Hi! One time I was shooting up, but I wasn’t fully in the vein, so I shot the mixture of water/blood/oxy back into the spoon, then I reheated it into a greenish ooze (not sure how that might help my aim), tried and failed to hit my veins multiple times, then finally gave up and shot the concoction of fetid blood and drugs down the back of my throat. Now, granted, I was 16 at the time. That’s how I got this scar,” as I unfurl my left arm. “It’s no wonder I developed that fucking abscess. There aren’t enough alcohol swabs in the world that could make that sterile. I used to lick the tips of my needle to get whatever residue clung to it. But I don’t do that shit anymore. Mostly due to the notoriously hard veins to hit on my right arm (ask any phlebotomist I’ve been to) and now the twisted mass of scar tissue running through my left one. No more needles for me! Anyway, I’m Lucy! What’s your name?”

Unlike one of our neighbors, who has loudly announced his deep abiding love for cocaine multiple times during our outdoor conversations, I prefer to keep my past and present habits to myself and a select group of friends. I mean, I love cocaine too, but I don’t think it’s necessarily what I want to let everyone in the building know.

Even at the party the other night, a fleeting trace of disgust would flicker across the faces of the drunken people opposite me. But I continued talking; Amphetamine and alcohol working together to spring my mouth so wide I couldn’t shut it. 

An overwhelming desire to sleep is moving in to overtake the receding traces of last night. And with it, maybe it can wash away the growing embarrassment over the night before.

Regardless, I stand by my shirt.

Lucy

P.S. If you’d like to leave me a comment, it would make my day. Who doesn’t love a little small talk with new friends?