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Lost in the K-Hole
By the time you read this, I will be thirty years old. And to be honest, I didn’t realize it would be happening so quickly. But I don’t regret a thing. I’ve done a lot of too much of everything all at once. I’m still healthy, married, happy, sane, fully functional in every way, alive, alert, adept, adroit, a douche, and of course, I’ve got excellent credit. But I’m a very bad example for the kids because I’ve done drugs. Lots of drugs. Piles of drugs. I’m not bragging. I’m sure as shit not embarrassed about it, as you’ll soon read. But I want you to know that there are still a lot of drugs and other things that I’ve done that I can’t write about until most of my relatives pass on or I can think of a good pseudonym and an appropriate venue.
I just heard a statistic (and it was on CNN, so it’s gotta be true) that said 6% of the U.S. population used illegal drugs last month. Finally, as an oppressive, white, male, city-dwelling, middle-class, wired, weird and wonderful heterosexual, I finally can say that I’m a member of a minority. And I’m damn proud. Hell, if they ever had a big druggie parade down Fifth Avenue to celebrate the fact that we like drugs, well, I still wouldn’t go, but I’d be there, in spirit.
In “My Best Friend Is A Junkie!” in Negative Capability #1, I gave a little bit of my history with drugs, but because of the structure of that story, large chunks were omitted, and unduly, I feel. I’m not here to tell you that drugs are bad, because they’re not. Like everything else currently available to alter your state in any way, drugs have their pros and cons. And like all indulgences, at some point, you have to outgrow them or you’ll end up in a rut. Or you end up being the old guy in the drug den, and there are few things more pathetic than overstaying your welcome. You have to move on, with everything, or you’ll be as stale as the beer in the open cans from last night’s party.
I guess my 30th year would be as good a time as any to stop taking drugs. I’ve not converted to Islam, gone straightedge or enrolled in a credible rehab program. I just stopped. And why not? I’ve done enough.
I’d like to talk about my experiences with drugs because I’m at a milestone in my life and because I think that by examining my drug use in its totality, I might actually gain some insight. If not, at least I can tell you about the people I’ve met, shared drugs with or had some of the best times of my life with. I’m not ashamed or embarrassed, though some might suggest that I ought to be. I don’t like to regret things, so I live my life as best I can and avoid passing judgement over my past. But from time to time it’s useful to examine your life, especially if you do a zine and think it might make for some spicy and entertaining content.
I love drugs. I love having drugs. I enjoy buying drugs, if I’m buying from the right person. I definitely enjoy experimenting, discussing and dissecting drugs and drug experiences. I’ve seen almost every drug and done almost all the ones I’ve seen. I enjoy watching drug movies and quite often I make drug references in my writing. So, without further ado, here’s how I started and stopped most the drugs I’ve ever taken.
I had my very first drug experience before I ever started nursery school. My mom stayed home to raise me, my older brother Ben and my younger sister Jenne while my father worked. Even though my mom probably tried to keep me away from drugs, eventually the pressure was too much and she exposed me to the most addictive drug in the world, just to shut me up. I probably started with Sesame Street and Zoom, then progressed to cartoons and nature shows. I have been pretty much hooked on television ever since. I’ve seen tons of shows taped including Wonderama as a kid, and everything from Gimme a Break to Cheers to The Tonight Show as an adult. I’ve even made that great leap to being on TV a few times, mostly as an audience member. I’ve been on TV as a contestant on MTV’s awful game show Idiot Savants, and asking dopey questions from the audience at the old Phil Donahue Show. I doubt I’ll ever be able to kick the TV habit, so I’m sorry to say that this drug is a keeper. In fact, I am no longer afraid of getting old because every year there’s at least one new show for me to enjoy and the more channels there are, the more likely it is that there are shows I will love that haven’t even been made yet. I don’t want to die, just so I can check out the new season of The Simpsons.
I smoked a joint for the first time when I was 14. I was at a party with some other skaters and someone had a joint. I had never really thought about drugs before, but I was probably just young and naive. I remember being very interested in pot as soon as I smelled it, but I was afraid my mind would go wacky and never come back. I feared ending up in a drooling academy, strapped down and whining for my meds. Ah, what the hell. At first I felt a little dislocated and then I was calm. I felt like my friends weren’t such losers (which means, I guess, that I was thinking that I, too, must be a loser). It was fine, though. I liked pot, but not enough to spend my own money on it. I wish I could say that I’ve stopped, but at this point I feel like it is reasonable to smoke a little once a month. Or once a week. Or right this very moment. Hypothetically.
I’ve even mixed pot with almost every other drug and it never hurts. I’ll come back to that issue later, but I wanted it out there. Weed goes with everything, just like the color black in your wardrobe. So, again, another drug that I started with early and have no plans to give up any time soon. That might change, but right now, that’s all I’m willing to commit to.
I had a beer about a month later. Yeah, that’s right, says my man David Putty. Pot first. It was my gateway drug. Tee hee! But I’ve never liked the taste of liquor. I mean, I love Midori, but it’s as much for the flavor, as the color, as the bottle, as the girlishness of it all. And it’s Japanese. But I’ve never really enjoyed beer. Actually, when Juli and I go to Canada I sometimes get a real Labatt’s Blue or some other local brew. I’ve had three Zimas in my fridge for about seven months, and I’m not sure who brought them. Two months ago, I had an impulse to get some beer to have in the house. I thought I might want to have an ice-cold beer one day. And then Peter and his lovely girlfriend Lisa came over one night and we got a six-pack of Rolling Rock. I figured they’d drink both their beers and mine, and maybe I’d move some out of my fridge. But I couldn’t get into drinking that night, so I skipped it. So now I have two Rocks, three of whatever I got (I think it may be Labatt’s, but like I said, I’m not into it), the fucking Zimas, oh, and I have a bottle of Absolut Citron missing maybe two full shots. It’s pretty sad, I know, but I feel like I gave up drinking a long, long time ago. Which is probably a very good thing.
It wasn’t until I’d been in college for two months that I first got to try acid. And I didn’t even know the dude that had it, he was actually a friend of my sister’s from high school, I think. My first two months in college were godawful. My roommate Dan Lee, whom I expected to be cool because he’d actually grown up in the West Village and drew a comic strip, was not cool. The day he showed up he was wearing cowboy boots and hat, wore a Knicks tank top and smelled really bad. After he took the hat off, I noticed that he had one of those hair-lid things where a mass of hair was compacted, sprayed vigorously, and folded over another part of the head. It was the first thing anyone ever saw when they looked at him because it was shocking. I mean, it looked like he’d literally stapled a cluster of black felt onto the top of his head. I have nothing against bald people, but, and this is a very big but, just fucking deal with it. Pay for a good transplant if you can’t deal with it, but stop with the fucking combovers. It’s JUST FUCKING PATHETIC. Let it shine, Charles Grodin! Beam that Tribble into the light, Shatner! Goddamn, Chuck Norris, who are you kidding? Baldness is kicking your ass, right through those skin-tight Wranglers, dude. By the way, acid has caused me to wander very quickly away from my point on more than one occasion. Just say no to acid, kids. So, here’s the point. That night I had to go out and get stoned, just to cope. It never got any better. The first night we got our phone installed (finally) he spent six hours on the phone with a guy going over their own personal NCAA picks, which he had spent two weeks compiling in a notebook. He had all the rounds, in order, by name, college, etc. It was ill. I kept thinking it would end, but it just went on and on. He had reasons for everything. He wanted to discuss and debate his choices. He felt it was necessary to speculate on their potential salaries as well as predicted statistics for their first years in the NBA. I really should have shoved an ice pick into the side of his head, but instead, I found comfort in drugs.
I headed home for Thanksgiving weekend glad to escape Dan and his rampant B.O. My step-monster had taken my adopted brother and sister to some tropical island, so my real sister and I were unsupervised. My older brother had been permanently ejected from the house a few months earlier, and I was headed in that direction, too. I was pretty sure it was going to be my last time in the house before I was told not to come back. It wasn’t even that I’d done or not done anything. It was just a better idea to get out. I guess this explains a little about my mental state at the time, but I have never thought about it in this context before. I mean, it was the last time I was ever there, but at the time, I wasn’t really sure how the story was going to end.
That’s all of the story that I’m going to give away for free. The print version is the longest story in NC3 and so far, it’s the breakout hit. Below is a picture of me doing whippets from the machine I have because that’s the next drug in the story. Later you can read about my experiences with mushrooms, mescaline, acid, banana peels, morning glory seeds, ecstasy, cocaine, heroin and of course, Special K or Ketamine, a popular animal tranquilizer.
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