On the subject of drugs.

I never had money really.  She somehow always managed to get my paychecks.  She was really good at this.  If I ever got a couple of bucks, alcohol was first thing on the list.  Sometimes we would drink before school.  We didn't care about anything really regarding school.  The clique I was trying to get into didn't go to high school.  In high school it was only the jocks I had to worry about, and the others associated with the clique.  I had to worry about them saying something that would discredit my rep.  I was going into this blind, but I knew the basics.

Moving around a lot as a kid taught me things about socializing that a lot of others didn’t learn.  I always had to pay very close attention to the entire goings on between the cliques and within the cliques.   Always being the new kid this information is vital or one risks being permanently outcast.   Ultimately it was a tradeoff because I lacked a lot of information all the other kids had.  I do not have the experience of actually being in a legitimate clique so to speak.  I do not have long standing memories with long standing friends.  I have the exact opposite.  There is only one situation in life where I do not feel socially awkward, and that is when I am around those raised like me.   JoAnn kept us on lock down, me especially.  I was ignorant about so many things.

I smoked cigarettes for a couple months when I was thirteen until I got caught.  It is a powerful drug.  We just wanted to be cool.  I smoked a bit in the seventh grade too.  We would sneak into the government building and buy them out of the vending machine.   Living in Fulton with her again, I started smoking.  It was cool.  I wanted to seem tough.  I wanted to impress girls.  They laughed at me when I coughed at this party.  I wasn't used to smoking.  It gave me such a head rush.  I cannot stand to be laughed at.  I went and bought a pack of Camel no filters.  Two packs later I no longer coughed when I smoked a filtered cigarette.  Girls weren't going to laugh now.  

This should make it painfully clear the affect my parents’ ignorance had on me.  Not only them, but the entire culture really.  Only an idiot kills himself to impress girls.

I finally got a joint.  I was a sophomore in high school before I got my hands on some cannabis.  When you are sheltered like I was it is not easy to just get drugs, but a friend sold me a joint.   It was a very negative connotation to be labeled a pot head back then, but I finally scored.  That sweet intoxicating smell.  Oh how I love that smell.  It's a tragedy too, because if one smokes for any length of time they lose the ability to smell it.  From the very first we were in love.  I took the roach to school with me the next day.  I kept it in my front shirt pocket all day so that I could smell it constantly.  I just sat around in school high as a kite waiting to get high again.

I was doomed from birth.  People all the time wish to label those who do drugs negatively.  They are bigots just like the racist or the sexist.  It is no different than labeling gay people negatively.  They have no choice in the matter.  Causing others to feel negatively about themselves when they cannot help who they are is an extremely destructive thing.  At fifteen I did not stand a chance at fitting society’s definition of good.  Give me something that would take me somewhere else and I had no choice but to want to do it.  None at all.  Might as well say I am bad because I wanted breast milk when I was a baby.  At fifteen I was getting black out drunk already and regularly.  I would go and go and go.  Just like now, but at fifteen I had no control of myself whatsoever.  It is the difference between doing something when one hates one’s self and when one loves one’s self.  These two stories show a clear distinction between the two.  Back then, deep down in my heart, I wanted to crash and burn.  I wanted to go away and never come back.  The pain and energy perpetually burning away inside me made me want to die.  The problem wasn't drugs.  Drugs just speed the process up, whichever process it may be. 

My very first job was at a Little Caesars Pizza.  It was weird for me.  I was jumping from crazy intense dysfunction to this sterile performance driven bright light machine.  Certain things seemed to simply be understood and I did not understand them.  It was disorienting.  Awkward.  I was embarrassed to work there.  Once it was no longer challenging I moved on.  I ended up in a Golden Coral.  This seemed to be the perfect place for me.  I got to do something I love to do and I was surrounded by equally fucked up people.  No social awkwardness at all.  I could write a book about the craziness of just working there if I remembered it all.  Far too many drugs between then and now for all of that.  Working there was very important to me because that is where I met the ex-wife.  You will meet her soon enough.

I am like a Native American; if you give me whisky it gets really sketchy.  A powerful drug.  No adults have ever seen me drunk on it.  Nor do they want to.  I don't allow it to happen.  Every once in a great while I will do a shot of Crown.  That's it.  When I was fifteen I would get Evan Williams 750 mL at a time.  It's cheaper than Jack and honestly I think it is smoother.  Half way through a bottle of Evans and I am generally blacked out.  It was a thing to see how far into a bottle Ben could get before shit went sketch. I've always been a light weight.  It has never taken a lot to get me drunk.  Everyone has always known this.  On whisky though, I take it to a whole new level.

Chris and I broke up.  She found me out.  I was cheating.  I didn’t really try that hard to hide it.  I had to be the one to fuck it up.  Like all immature boys do, I clung on afterwards anyways. I love her after all.  She was supposed to be at this party.  Some of the clique was there too.  The party was a mix.  The goodies and the badies, the yuppies and the toughs, this made for a rare scene back then.  These two almost never mixed.  Remember I had friends on both sides, but I wanted in the clique more than anything. 

I was in angst because of the girl situation.  The clique was bored.  Yuppies throw terrible parties.

They decided to go get a bottle of Evan Williams.  They knew if they got me drunk entertaining shit would ensue.  Broke just like me and yet they spent their money to see me crash a party.  They really were bored.  Needless to say, they partied hard.  Twenty minutes later Stacy, he was one of the main ring leaders, showed up with the bottle.  Hour later I am drunk off my ass.  Belligerent is not the word.  Because the clique was there none of the goodies would stop me.  I was making people drink it with me.  Shoving people.  Someone shoved me on the shoulder and I just punched them.  They didn't do anything back.  At one point someone was holding me up by my belt loop and I would just punch people.  They never did anything back.

I finally went outside to take a piss.  When I walked back to the door a guy was trying to keep me out.  I can't remember what he said but he was trying to get me to go home.  He was standing up to me because the other guys were not around.  He failed to get the door latched before I got to it.  He was pushing against the door trying to keep me out.  I shoved the door open.  He went with the door so that he was standing with his back against the wall.  I hit him right in the mouth.  His hat flew up and his glasses kind of popped off his nose.  It was quite comical because he just slid down the wall just like it happens in the movies.  I’m serious.  A part of my mind was like, that really is how it happens.  When he sagged to the floor I kneed his head into the wall a couple of times before his girlfriend saved him. 

I was blacked out.  It took me awhile to put it all back together again.  I was told they made everyone leave and my friends got me out of there so I wouldn't go to jail.

The next day I was at work.  I was so hung over.  When I had to go in early I would drink pickle juice.  The manager of Golden Coral came back to the cook line to tell me that someone was here to talk to me.  I flushed.  All the blood rushed to my brain.  Flight or fight.  They told the cops.  Time to go back to jail or time to run like hell?  My boss said it wasn’t the cops.  Whew!  That was close. 

I turned the corner only to see the guy I wrecked at the door of that party the night before being towed in by his girlfriend.  She informed me that what I did was wrong and that I should apologize to him.  I could not not smile.  I told him I was sorry.  On the inside though I was laughing so hard.  He had braces so his lips were just shredded.  He was standing there in his hat and glasses, lips shredded, looking at me like, please don't do it again.  His girl was pissed off.  She stomped out.

Everyone was looking at me.  I just laughed and went back to work bragging about my drunken escapades.  If you give drugs to a fucked up person, fuckedupedness is what you will get.  My friends didn't give a fuck about me.