The Wilderness Years - Hazardous Chemicals pt. 2

Looking back on this time the most telling sign of my almost certifiable insanity was this... it was all fucking cool cuz i was only 26, you understand why right? that i was 26 and not 27? because at the time i thought the 27th year of my life would be the most dangerous 365 days i'd ever have to live through, the age of Morrison, Joplin, Hendrix, and Cobain when they died, not that i was all that into any of those people but what i was into was believing my ass was some wasted genius and the last thing i wanted to do was off myself before informing the world of what a genius i was, i wasn't delusional or anything now was i? of course not just look at the popularity of the lounge for the last decade or so, what a fucking numb nut...

And so began a pattern of erratic and risky behavior... imagine that? what ever could have led me to do stupid and dangerous things? there are whole cell blocks filled with motherfuckers like me, i was just lucky and they were not, i had begun to violate one of my own rules which was to learn from the mistakes of the guys around me and don't repeat them and here i was walking merrily along the same path as Hippie Jack, rolling around fucked out of my gourd with enough grass to get me a decent stretch in county or state, this was the mid-90's when the Slick Willie fella was putting more people in jail for grass than any president before or since, not to mention grass usually wasn't the only thing John Q. Law would have found on me in those days if he just so happened to have me cuffed and rifled through my pockets... but i was invincible, what the fuck did i have to worry about...

Now what exactly constitutes a drug problem? not having any? well of course that's always a problem but what is the equation? what are the numbers that when plugged in and tallied up equal to a serious habit? most of the time it's money that presents the problem to the habit but what if you have the money to get what you want? is there even a problem then? the questions pondered when one has finally removed their feet from the fire, and so it goes that maybe what i really qualified as was a functional basehead, i was still going to work and making the rent so what was the problem? none far as i could tell...

Some days i'd wake up and take a hit first thing, on the days i didn't do that i'd walk the city block home for lunch and smoke up and go back to work, the whole time believing no one could tell, sometimes i'd stop home on my work deliveries and fire up, sometimes i'd stop at Hippie Jack's on my work deliveries and smoke up, the whole process of mixing up a new batch became my new favorite ritual, at the time i was listening to a lot of Sublime, their singer/guitarist Brad Nowell was another guy dead at 27, still i was only 26, i remember returning to the warehouse one fall afternoon, a grey and shitty day, i had gotten back five minutes late, everyone else had punched out except one of the indie rock kids i worked with, a bass player, he took one look at me and laughed then told me that i looked fucked out of my gourd, i was, i dropped off the keys and grabbed my shit and ran home to smoke more, it was Friday fucking night after all...

If ever an example could be made for how absolutely fucking wonderful the brief moment of exhaling cocaine and baking soda out of your lungs could be (of course it could also kill you) it was this one afternoon spent at Hippie Jack's place with two young ladies... Angela was tall and thin and looked well on her way to any number of drug habits but her friend Ursula was sex and drugs and rock and roll, she was a stripper of course, tiny with big boobs and long curly blond ringlets, even through the rock she could practically give you a hard-on which is saying something, i happened to roll over one fine late afternoon to re-up and found Jack and these two lovelies sitting there with a big old plate of rocks in front of them, Hippie Jack was forever trying to get laid and so was playing the gracious host/ hot shot player part, he introduced me and it was there that Ursula realized she knew me, the father of her twins, a kid who cooked in a bar with my roommate had scored grass off me and she had once met me briefly in passing, it was a busy night and her man was summoned back to my chambers while she hung out in the living room with my roommates and various other customers, Jack chimed in that i was his #1 mover, a comment designed to show the ladies who the boss was and who they should be thinking about sleeping with, poor guy had no idea the girls were here to get as much free gear as the could, buy a little more, and then get out as graciously and expeditiously as possible...

And so i entered the fray and they all moved over and i sat down and Jack and i got business done quick and then we got down the to real business of smoking coke, the pipe went around and as soon as Charles took hold it was a free-for-all motormouth gab fest, i immediately set about tossing subtle hints at Ursula that i would be a marvelous fuck all while trying to remain cool, of course as the pipe went around again and the motormouth gab fest ratcheted up i realized that i could care less about banging either one of these girls and that what i really wanted was the fucking pipe... you see every time someone got it they suddenly launched into some assinine story, it was like Bilbo's ring, once the precious precious was in your hand you felt free to yap away knowing that the next hit would be yours, all the while the other three would sit and fidget and wait and give the "you gonna hit that or talk all day" motion until finally after a few rounds of that we just got to the point of saying to each other, take the hit and then talk, or more blatantly, just hit the fucking thing and pass the pipe, we all wanted to fuck that pipe, we could care less about the other people in the room, had one of us keeled over it wouldn't have been shocking to hear applause and someone say, good one less fucking asshole i have to listen to, then the flick of a lighter and the smell of basehead dreams...

Oh what magical times they were, now and again it dawns on me and that old no one here gets out alive theme comes popping back into my head, none of us do, some of us just manage to enjoy the ride a little longer, my new roommate used to let me drive his Plymouth Fury over to the Hippie's place sometimes, mainly cuz i was the Alpha Dog and he didn't want to wait in the dry cleaner parking lot next to the Hippie Jack's apartment, so he began letting me take his car, it was on one of these trips, after smoking some shit, i came blasting down the street trying to make the red light in this fucking old metal beast of an auto, i was going fast enough that i didn't even attempt the turn i needed to make but blew straight through a solid red light to the cacophony of car horns and screamed expletives, there was two pounds of grass on the seat next to me and pocket full of rocks in my jeans, i eased the breaks of the beast and slowed down and took a deep breath and laughed like Mark Renton, fucking lucky bastard, things were going swimmingly... to be cont...