Excerpted From Pulling Taffy

Everyone else is ready to leave, and I know I should go too but it's been months since I've had a cocktail and one just isn't going to do it. At least once a day, I crave cocktails so badly that my eyes roll back and I know that really I need to eat. But tonight I've just eaten, so I think what the hell. I bring organic blue corn chips into the bar with me so I'll stay grounded. But after that first cocktail, I want to get to that point when I can't do anything but lean against the wall and feel my head moving diagonally upwards and back. I get another cocktail; this one's literally clear, and when I take the first sip I get that rush like here I am. But thinking sip it, drink it slowly, savor it. And eating my blue corn chips.

Then I start thinking about drugs, waiting for someone to offer me a bump of something. Knowing I'll regret it afterwards but thinking I just want to be high. Then I get a third cocktail, still sipping it and thinking this is so fucking delicious. Either I need sex or drugs, and sex is safer—sex will get me out of here and then I won't think about drugs. But I'm so incompetent at cruising bars, I get all worried about whether some guy's really cruising me or is he cruising that empty space right next to me?

I finish my cocktail and sit down on the sofa by the wall. This guy sits next to me and he isn't really cute but we start making out. He tells me his name is Javier and he's French and last night he tried coke for the first time but mostly he just likes drinking because alcohol makes him happy. I say I don't usually do drugs— anymore—but I want to say GIVE ME SOME K. Javier buys me a drink and then asks me to go home with him but I'm thinking here I go again sleeping with some guy who I'm not attracted to because I'm too scared to cruise someone who makes me hot.

I say I need to dance, do you want to go to Life? I'm trying to decide whether I actually want k or whether it's the alcohol and it doesn't really matter because I've just finished my fourth cocktail. And once I've had four cocktails, it's over for me. I sip at the ice and convince myself that I'd definitely decide to do drugs even if I hadn't had anything to drink.

I'm out of money, and Javier offers to pay for Life, but I need k so we take a cab back to my apartment in Williamsburg and I get money. Javier keeps trying to grab my dick and by this point I'm not into him at all. I don't want sex anymore; I just want to walk out of the bathroom stall after doing a bump and go onto the dance floor when the music gets three times louder and I start sinking into the ground and my mouth hangs open and my eyes keep shifting in and out of focus and all I can think is yes.

We get to Life, right as we walk in the door I see Ivan, I lean over to kiss him and he says I'm out of my mind. I say I'm looking for k, he says you and everyone else, and then he runs off somewhere. Javier leans over to kiss me and I say I think I'm going to wander around.

I look for who's got that dazed k-ed out look in their eyes or who looks like they know the sources or who just looks friendly. First I ask the ravey boy with the lycra camouflage shirt and the wrap-around sunglasses—but he's from out of town though he's got acid and he'll throw me a hit if I find k. I end up sending out four or five scouts, but they keep circling the club and not finding anything.

Finally I ask someone by the bathroom and he laughs and points to both of the guys next to him. I get a forty-dollar vial and rush into a stall to do a bump. I find the boy with acid and I say I've got k. I give him a big bump and he gives me a tab of acid, which I put right under my tongue. Then I find this boy Stephen who was looking out for me, and we go into the bathroom. He says do you want a bump of coke, and we trade. Then I'm standing by the dance floor a little bit out of it, but not high enough, dancing with this woman who seems fun. I lean over and say you look like you need a bump of k. She smiles and we go into the bathroom. She says do you want some tina? and I say you don't have coke, do you?

Then I end up doing a tiny bump of crystal and that's a mess. Now that crystal's hitting New York, I always say they might call her tina over here but she's still not coming near me. But tonight I do the bump of crystal and then I can feel the k hitting (or is it the acid) and then the woman says I'm Naomi and we go over to the sinks to look in the mirror. We go back onto the dance floor and I'm high but not euphoric and I'm looking at the lights to bring everything up.

I can't really dance because pretty soon everything's fighting it out in my head, and Stephen and Naomi and I keep going back to the bathroom. I've still got my backpack with me and I pull out this aromatherapy oil blend called Energize and I'm passing it around the bathroom and everyone's loving it. This guy Hector hands me his card and says come to my place afterwards and Naomi and Stephen and I are studying the design on the card and looking at our eyes in the mirror and smelling Energize. The woman who gives out paper towels is smiling at us and I offer her the oil but she says no thank you honey and I wonder if she thinks it's poppers.

Then Naomi and I go out to the dance floor and Naomi's smiling and I'm trying to smile but feeling like my head's filled with cotton then gelatin then those rubber balls you get in the machine for twenty-five cents. We do some more k and then the club is closing and we're looking around for Stephen who's supposed to give us a ride. Stephen runs up to us and we go outside and it's absolutely freezing but light out already (I can't believe it). We walk to Stephen's car; he's got a black Mercedes and Naomi and I give each other looks like is this really happening?

We start driving and I relax, listening to the music and watching the buildings move by. The streets are empty and the sun's all bright and the music's loud and everything's okay. We get to the apartment and Hector isn't there, so we go to the convenience store and Ultra Naté is singing feels like I'm going in-sane, which is way too obvious, but sometimes that's how it is. Naomi and I start dancing in the back and Stephen's looking for something. I get a gallon of water and we go to Hector's apartment and this time he answers.

We go up and it's one of those k-holes on the stairs, only not so severe because of the rest of the drugs. It's six flights up, though, and by the time we get there I'm fading. We walk in and I sit down on the sofa and I'm stuck but I have to go to the bathroom. I get to the bathroom and the acid starts hitting hard. I can see the tree branches climbing in the window; I'm peering out into the air shaft to see who's there, waiting for someone to look in at me, but it's just me and the trees. I sit down on the toilet to piss and I feel like I'm giving birth. That's an acid moment if I've ever had one.

Then I go back into the room and Hector is passing around this one-bump-at-a-time vial of k. I do a tiny bump and whoops I'm somewhere else. Everything is kind of vibrating and the music's louder and someone's cutting lines of coke and I don't want any more coke but I do some anyway. Stephen, Naomi, and I are on the sofa. Then there's this woman Loli cutting coke with I guess her boyfriend, who reminds me of this guy Kevin who used to deal in Boston because he's got that vacantly focused and confused look on his face. Plus, he's wearing a vest with no shirt and he's all sweaty and hairy like Kevin.

Then there's Teddy who's probably Hector's boyfriend. And that's all. I go to the bathroom again. I'm drinking glass after glass of water but I still feel dehydrated and every ten minutes I have to piss. Loli looks me in the eyes and says this is amazing, it was so magical when we met at the club. This only happens once in a while. I'm thinking wait until you crash, but I just smile.

Hector brings out some nose drops and he won't tell anyone what's in them. He says just use one or two drops and then sniff. It feels like liquid e because all the sudden I've got that hello and I get up and start dancing. But then my body hurts too much so I sit down again. Hector's passing around purified sea water—I swear—I take a teaspoonful and it tastes so salty I want to vomit but it does kind of clear things up.

Three other guys arrive and they're coked out of their minds, pacing around the room and the room's not big. Naomi and I keep exchanging looks like what's going on?, and then Hector starts reading from some new-agey techno book, and when I come back from the bathroom, Naomi's talking about how she used to live across the street until her apartment building burned down. She woke up surrounded by flames, but got out with her drugs and her money so it wasn't that bad.

I can't tell if Naomi's lying but Hector says it was a sign. Hector's trying to have a spiritual connection with everyone, so he keeps looking Naomi in the eyes and saying you were saved for a reason. Then Hector asks me what I do and I can't even talk so I just smile. It's 9 a.m. and I want to go home and crawl into bed but I don't want to get there before noon because then Jon might be there and he's never done drugs so I don't know how I would explain.

At this point I'm having a nervous breakdown but I don't want to show it. I want to call someone up and say HELP ME, but there's no one in New York I can feel that vulnerable with. I think of calling Andee in Montana, but he'd freak out about me doing drugs. Mostly I just want to lie down in the bathtub, but I don't want to leave Naomi alone in the living room because Hector's getting kind of creepy and the nose drops are gone.

Hector and Loli realize they're from the same neighborhood in Colombia, that they know the same people in the Cali Cartel or maybe this is just a k-paranoia moment or more like an acid, e, k, coke, crystal shoot-out. Someone brings out some pot and that calms me, but now my throat's even more dried-out. Stephen says bye; he needs to go to business school in an hour and we're all confused. I go to the bathroom again and the air's better. I just want to go into the air shaft and cry but I don't know how to get there. I'm thinking maybe I need this world of drugs because I don't have anything else.

I take out my contacts because I'm afraid they're going to stick to my eyes and when I come out of the bathroom I can't see anything and the music's all soft or maybe I can't hear anything either. I want to scream HELP but instead I just collapse on the sofa next to Naomi and look at my pager: 10:30. Naomi's got some German science magazine and inside there's an ad that says Ketamin, which is what k is. In the ad, there's a computer-generated person with one eye in three dimensions and the other eye inside a triangle. It's an advertisement for a k-hole. Hector says does anyone here read German?, and I can't believe what I'm seeing, I keep saying is this real?

Hector starts flaking out about the meaning of all of us being there together and the way we learn from sharing what we know and one of the cokeheads starts laughing and says that's fucking bullshit and they go into the other room. Finally it's 11:30 a.m., and Naomi and I decide to leave. She lives in Williamsburg too and I'm grateful because we can share a cab and I'll actually get home.

We get outside and the sun is so bright I have to squint and there's all this dust on the street or is that snowflakes and I can't tell which cars are going which way. Naomi flags down a cab. We get inside and I feel like we're driving through a tunnel but it's just the street. I tell Naomi I'm on acid too and her eyes widen and she says oh. We get on the bridge and I'm sure we're on the wrong bridge but Naomi says it's definitely right. Then we get onto Broadway in Williamsburg where the JMZ train is elevated over the street and it looks like night outside.

I've still got a half-vial of k in my pocket, but I don't ever want to do another bump of anything in my life. I want to sleep for at least twenty-four hours though I'm worried I'll just lie in bed wired. I'm thinking what should I do with the k, should I throw it away or should I give it to Naomi. We get to my house and we exchange numbers. I give Naomi a kiss and then I say wait, press the vial into her hand. She looks at the vial and her eyes light up and I know it was the right thing to do.

I get into my apartment and immediately I feel more relaxed. My apartment's so dark and sometimes that feels bleak but today it just feels like so much calm. I strip off my clothes and run into the shower. The shower gets me horny; I start flexing my muscles and opening the shower curtain so I can watch myself jerking off in the mirror. I smack my tits until they pop up and get red, lick my armpits and grab my ass and stand away from the water stream so I can smell my sweat.

I'm wired and I need to come, but I don't want to do it alone. I get out of the shower and call a phone sex line, talk to some guy who wants to suck my dick and doesn't mind driving over, so I figure I can't turn down the opportunity. No one ever wants to come to Williamsburg. I put on sweatpants and a tank-top and I'm looking all butch. I really want to get fucked because drugs make my asshole relaxed and then getting fucked doesn't hurt. I'm hoping the guy's hot but I'm not expecting anything, since the first thing he said was do you like older guys?, and then, I just want to service you.

I'm fantasizing anyway. I'm all wired, thinking I'm never going to sleep, and grabbing my dick to stay a little hard and pacing around the room, looking out the windows and then shutting the curtains because it's way too bright. Then the phone rings and the guy's downstairs. I let him in and he's this short, skinny middle-aged guy with a potbelly and a Yankees cap. I sit down on the sofa and he gets on his knees to suck my dick. I put his hands on my chest and I caress the back of his head and I'm hard.

Then I stand up and start fucking the guy's face and he moans but then pulls away to do poppers. Then he takes my dick all the way in his mouth but starts gagging so he takes a break and says am I doing okay? I say yeah, feels great—and it does feel great but already I realize that after I come I won't feel so good. I sit down and he goes back to sucking my dick and this time he's deep-throating and I pull my shirt up and he grabs my tits and then I stand up and grab the back of his head and push my dick all the way into his throat.

I start pumping and grabbing onto the guy's head and then I'm groaning and I can feel myself getting close and then my dick starts spasming and the guy's moaning and I'm gasping and I pull my dick out and then I shoot right between his eyes. He reaches up to rub my come into his hair. He says I'd love to do this again but I say I think it was a one-time thing, thanks. He walks out the door with a thin coating of come that spreads from the bridge of his nose, but I'm too wired to think it's funny, looking through all my jars of vitamins for some kind of tranquilizer. I used to have Valium for emergencies, but now the closest thing I can find is a melatonin. I take one, get undressed, and believe it or not the melatonin works.

 

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