Crazy Enough (18 page)

I put the straw in my nose and quick snorted the first line up one side and went to do the other when a searing pain torched through my face. “OOOOW!” My hands slapped to my face. I was instantly tearing, drooling, and a sick funky flavor soured the back of my mouth. My friend was out of the bathroom. “Wha' the fuck kinna coke izzat? It fuckin'
hurts
!”

“It's not coke . . . it's dope.” Looking down, “Whoa. You did a lot.”

Dope
??? I was already drunk and now I've horked up a junkie-sized line of smack? I am
fucked.
Maybe she'll have actual coke to keep my heart beating; maybe she can take me to the hospital, or just hold me while I fucking die?!

She floated to the front door and opened it. “You better go,” she said flatly.

“Raaafff! I'm dying, Raaafff!”

I barely made it back to the Alcatraz. I had puked twice, somehow getting some in my own boot. My knees had turned into wet, warm cotton, and my body just wanted to soak into the ground. And as soon as I trudged into the bar it did.

“What the fuck happened?” Raff was pissed.

“I thought it was coooke. I did fuggin shmack. I'm gonna die. I'm sorry,” I keened from the spitty gum-stuck bar floor.

“Shit.” She grabbed the phone and called my apartment. My roommate, a petite feminist NYU student, was home and ready for me downstairs when the cab pulled up. I had a handful of classmates from the academy who lived in my building and all came out to help my pint-sized roommate trying to haul my wasted ass up the stairs.
We all hung out in our place, me fading in and out like a radio station, everyone else taking turns putting ice cubes on my face and neck, slapping or shaking me awake periodically. It was great fun.

What I remember of the vigil was coming to now and then, hearing
The Wizard of Oz
on television, and telling everyone in the room, repeatedly, “I feel soo amazing,” then falling back into sweet absence.

Everyone was pissed at me.

The mess I would've left behind, had I expired, was so huge, that even I hated me for being so stupid, among all the other things I hated me for. Not to mention how hard it would be on my dad to know I went out just like mom had always wanted to. And Mom? Well, you can never get over the death of a child, they say. And she
would
say, repeatedly, “You never get over the death of a child,” and everyone would stop what they were doing to help her up or down some stairs, make her tea and ooh and aaah over her sadness. My dying would have sucked for everyone.

I apologized to everyone profusely, all those who kept me alive and dealt with my nonsense. I swore that I was done drinking and partying and was going to focus on my schoolwork. Whatever was going to be my final vocation, acting, singing, teaching, or whatever, I was at least going to ace the two-year program I had earned a scholarship for.

I was so determined to clean up my act, I even swore off sex. My desire to be desired had been the cause of so much humiliation and self-degrading behavior that I called a cease-fire on my self-esteem and hung a “closed” sign on my epiglottis. No booze, no drugs, no boning, no problem.

Funnily enough, my grades improved over the course of the semester. I took a job at the New York Roxy, a big, mostly gay, dance club on the West Side, answering phones and signing for packages during the day and going to school in the evening. I missed all the fun that went down in that club at night, but just about every day I would get a personal call from some simpering weirdo, “Can I be your slave?” For a while I humored him, asked him what he wanted, specifically. He just wanted to be bossed around and if he got hurt while the boss was bossing, then booya, basically.

I don't know who he was, if he was kidding or completely deranged, but I heard from him nearly every day. Until of course, I told him to stuff five C notes into an envelope, with his address written on, and stick it through the Roxy's mail slot,

“. . . and tell me what time to be there and I'll come kick your pussy ass 'til you pee your pants, you piece of shit,” I said jovially. Of course I wouldn't have gone to some dickweed's place by myself, but I would have taken the money.

Never heard from him again.

Despite my fun, yet failed, phone dalliance with the fake slave, the dam of my libido was bulging, cracking, and threatening to destroy the city should it break.

Rumor has it that women hit their sexual peak in their thirties. I was supposed to go crazy in my twenties. I was twenty, and maybe not at my sexual peak, but something was spinning and burning out of control inside me. I hadn't had sex in about eight months and even masturbation started to lose its luster. I needed more stimulation, more intensity. Orgasms were great, but orgasms with a little risk involved, like when one might, I don't know, masturbate in public, were just the ticket to get me over the . . . um . . . hump, as it were. At school, on the subway, at lunch, I could get myself off deftly without
a soul catching on, as far as I knew or cared. And I didn't care. Maybe I
was
crazy.

Spring began to warm up the streets and evenings in New York. Sweaters turned to T-shirts, pants and boots to jean shorts, miniskirts and, well, boots. School was out for a week and I was just killing time in the city. I got a cab from work at the Roxy to go see Raff at the Alcatraz. We were going to have dinner, maybe see a movie.

“Avenue A and St. Mark's Place, please.”

The cab driver looked like a Jabba the Hutt made out of burnt Naugahyde. His lips were thick, and his heavily lidded eyes drooped over his wide black beard. Middle Eastern music crept out of the radio like incense smoke. He looked like he tasted sour. I was tingling.

Jerk off. Do it.

The cab smelled like sweet woodsy oil and curried body funk. It was hot and sticky in the back seat. Jabba watched me in his rear-view mirror. At first, I didn't think he knew what I was doing, maybe he thought I put one foot on the seat because I was going pull a fast one and jump out of his cab without paying. He'd glance at the road, then back at me. His face betrayed neither titillation nor disgust, maybe he was scared I was nuts. I was a pulsing, prickling glandular exclamation point of need and the heat and the weird and nothing in my head told me to give a fuck, so I didn't. When I realized he was aware of the goings on under my miniskirt, I just stared back at him in the mirror. “I know you know. Just drive,” I wanted to say. But I was quiet, staying focused on his eyes and my fingers thrumming subtly across the front of my underwear. I realized he hadn't turned on the meter as we pulled up to the Alcatraz. I put my foot down and slid to the curbside door.

“Thank you?” I opened the door, looking at him.

“Havagooday-yuh,” he nodded. Free ride.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Raff half laughed, half spat. “Jesus
Christ
will you
please
have sex with someone? I'm sick of hearing about this. You could've gotten yourself killed.”

“Nah. He was fine. Who's that?” Sitting across the horseshoe-shaped bar from me was a pretty young eyeliner pirate. He stared at me, I stared back, he bought a shot and a beer. I hadn't had a drink in months, but the cab ride set my heart knocking, so when the eyeliner pirate handed me the shot, I pounded it.

“Take his ass home or I'm never speaking to you again,” Raff jokingly hissed at me when the boy went for a wiz.

The warm air, the booze, my friend's ribbing, and my throbbing pelvic hunger turned the afternoon into a slick, red yes.

Back at my place he pushed me through the door onto the floor and we rolled into my room. My room was technically a hallway, but wide enough for a futon and a few crates for my stuff. We snogged and bit and rolled around, his hands everywhere in a fury, pinching and grabbing. It was grand. We were tearing each other's clothes off as if there were cameras rolling. I didn't care about his flair for the dramatic, just so long as he would not be disappointed that I had no dick, I was happy as a clam.

As he yanked off my pants, I suddenly remembered, out of my boredom and obsessive masturbating, I had shaved my pubic hair into a trim valentine's heart and dyed it pink.

“Cool!” he roared as he pounced on it with his face.

Cool.

It was lovely, though he kept up the drama with fairly inane dirty talk. It sounded like he was straight-up parroting bargain-bin porn tapes, totally distracting. I took to shoving parts of me in his mouth, which worked great, until he turned me over. In doggy style his mouth was free to let loose all his red hot zingers.

I was biting my own hand trying to “Oh yeah!” and “Ungh!” away the giggles that were threatening to drive away the only erection I had enjoyed in nearly a year. I'm sure he thought I was just overcome with the moment as I shook beneath him.

“Oh . . . oh . . . yeah! Oh, yeah, baby! Here comes the hot sauce!”

His coup de grace came in a plosive burst, a punch of breath as he was getting off. He had clearly said it one thousand times before, but it would be the first time I had ever laughed openly at a man still inside me. The guffaw came so suddenly from my diaphragm, I shot him out of me like a bar of soap out of a wet fist. “Dude,
what
?” I cackled over my shoulder at him.

His face fell from snarling gladiator over a slain foe, to that of a fourteen-year-old with pee on his pants. “What?”

I'm sure I utterly ruined his orgasm, but I was suddenly picturing my ass crack filled with taco meat and shredded iceberg lettuce and I wasn't feeling so sexy either.

“Fuckin' hot sauce. Hot sauce?” I chortled, shaking my head as we dressed. I tried to stifle my giggles, because I didn't want to hurt his feelings any further, but it struck me as so hilarious. When I saw bright pink heart shaped stains on his tummy from my pubic coif, I lost it again.

“Heh-heh. Okay, okay, stop now.” He was trying to let himself in on the joke and subtly let me know he was getting a little weary of the bwaaah-haaa-ing.