A Recollection of Insanity

Recollection of Insanity

At fifteen years old I sniffed my first line. One breath later, I was here. Minneapolis, winter, it was cold, but my desires knew no bounds. My entire night depended on getting this batch, and I was willing to freeze my ass off for it. The "scene", as it were, took some serious guts to be around this time of night. The homeless were about, and if you got on their bad sides that whole cliché to the tune of 'those with nothing to lose fear nothing' comes true in the form of a frozen fist to your face.
I'd been standing out side of some rundown old movie theatre for an hour. Now this wouldn't seem too long for some people whose habits dictate, other, worse, forms of payment, but for crist sakes it was cold out here.
My contact arrives. At some point I bet they'll call me an intelligent person, and of course, the mandatory;
"If only he wouldn't have done all those drugs..." will follow.
But that’s perfectly fine, I enjoy meeting people. Even if those people aren’t the type normal folks would take time out of their days to meet. Without other humans around, are we really people? Everything in the world in some way shape or form has been influenced by humanity, so meeting them is one way to see and do new things, or so it appears in my head.
So when the drug dealer walks up to me with eyes glancing in every direction but to my own, I can't help but get exited about the coming conversation.
"You need something'?" Contact says, his eyes and head still pivoting to make sure no one sees us.
"I'd like to get some bread, ya." I say, trying to force a conversation out of our rendezvous.
The drug dealer, finally satisfied with our surroundings looks up to my face. He's a good head shorter than me and has scruffy but stout features. His face is dotted with growing hairs and appears not to have shaven in days, if not weeks. The eyes in his head seem to search mine as if he could sense if I was a narc by peering into them.
Satisfied he looks around one final time and opens the palm of his hand face up to reveal a small zip-lock bag with a fine powder in it.
“This was going to be a good night.” I thought
My rebuttal was to open my hand in the same fashion, only slower and more mockingly paranoid. If he got the joke he didn't show it, but I'm sure he was simply too fixated on the 200$ in folded twenties sitting in my hand to notice.
We lock hands and shake, an old druggie-to-dealer move, and switch his merchandise into my hands, money into his. He turns around and walks away, while counting my money. If there’s one thing that I can count on, it's druggies not trusting one another. Maybe it's because deep down they don't trust themselves, hence, they can’t trust anyone else. Who knows, it's a moot point in the end.
I propose in my head walking up to him and trying to start another conversation, but dismiss the idea as suicidal. Noting how paranoid he was acting earlier, and the bulge in his pocket, I doubt I'd be coming home in one piece if I followed through.
Now came the worst part of any transaction, walking back to the transport. Mine happened to be a block away in an old lot outside a small family run clothing store for women. The windows were adorned with the usual holiday garbage. After much thinking it came to me that there are two types of people in this world; those that fall for the Christmas advertising crap, and those that aren’t Christian.
The reason it's the worst part of a transaction is the overwhelming need to use the product you just bought. I could feel the sandy substance in the bag just falling and making the slightest sound against plastic, it was calling to me, in its own elevating way, but I also felt a sincere unwillingness to whip out a line here on the icy sidewalk. So I was screwed, for the time being, which only made me walk faster towards the red '87 Buick Town Car idling a hundred feet ahead of me.
I looked around one more time, just to make sure the contact didn't have any momentary lapses in morality, and got into the car.
"How'd it go? You got it, right?" Johnny asked. Johnny was a friend of mine, one that I would even go as far as to calling my closest friend. He was a little shorter than me, only about 6 feet, but could use every inch of it to force his will onto people if needed. Johnny served two purposes in my current career as a rebel-with-a-drug-habit. He A) Had a car and B) Would be willing to use said car to drive me to a hospital should something happen while using said drugs. To some, they’d think me using him. But I consider using to be with only one person getting the benefit. Without me, Johnny would have no drugs, he wasn’t from a nice suburb, and didn’t have a job, a position which limited his monetary earnings greatly. On top of those things Johnny was horrible with people. His face might be warm, and appeasing to look at, but when he opened his mouth the only thing you could think about was getting away. This spell of fear that his words formed seemed to lose their effect on me, because I thought him to be a great person and friend. It’s not that he swore all the time; it’s that his mind was only and always on drugs. Years and years of daily coke and meth indulging had reduced his social abilities substantially. Johnny new and accepted this about himself, and mostly kept his mouth shut because of it. He drove, I got the drugs and the money, and we were perfect together.
"Shitty." I said, my voice disappointed, but anxious to use the coke in my pocket.
"Why?! You didn't get it?! Where's the money? You did get it right?!"
I turned my head so I could look into his eyes.
"No, I got it; he just wasn't the talky type."
"You dirty son of a bitch," Johnny said with a sigh of relief. "Lemme see."
All that stuff about Johnny being a great friend was true; I just forgot to add point "C":
While I may be a habitual coke and other drug enthusiasts, Johnny was a true addict if I've ever seen one. Which meant that not getting his bread was a serious problem. I reminded myself of a boy who put a treat on the ground in front of his dog, but every time the dog would try to get it, the boy would pull it away. Yes it was mean and sadistic, but it was fun.
I guess I never realized how insane it was. Refusing life, getting high, running from everyone and everything that I knew. I only did this because I was scarred .Too late would I figure out that fear was the ultimate motivator.