Feed Me Drugs, Tell Me You Love Me

 His dick was in my mouth when he asked me if I wanted any drugs. He already knew that was the only reason I let him come over, and the only reason why I let him cum inside me without a condom. He rolled a joint after and pretended to be interested in the episode of South Park I put on, waiting for Uber prices back to Jersey to go down. 

It’s all interconnected in my mind and in my soul: These dudes I’ve met at parties, raves, long after the 1AM hour in which my therapist says nothing good happens. The drugs I’ve been given in an attempt to win my affection. It always works. Jesus fucking christ, it always works. I remember my friends in high school gaped at me when I said I would absolutely let someone pay me to have sex with them. I did it for free for years. How else am I supposed to get a leg up in this capitalist society? I guess that theory doesn’t really matter. Doing lines at 6AM with some asshole who doesn’t know what foreplay is isn’t getting me anywhere. The drugs are free but the dick will cost you. His coke was shit, adding insult to injury. 

We’re going skiing, a fellow raver yelled in my ear as the DJ made the room shake. A few more drinks at the bar, bumps in the bathroom, and we did my favorite dance of the night, our movements softly suggesting sex but not wanting to mention it outright. We make out on the way back to his place, knowing what comes next. When he fell asleep after we fucked I sat at his desk listening to techno and doing lines before switching to bong rips and walked home in my club clothes, mostly naked and shivering in the night time air that still softly whispered of winter. He made me cum just enough times to leave me wanting more. I fell asleep with my vibrator in one hand and a burned out joint in the other.   

It hasn’t always been this way, me going home with random guys, me doing the kind of drugs that leave a lot of dead bodies in their wake. I was anesthetized by weed and internet drugs like kratom and research chemicals for so long I never got to know what it feels like to spend time with people that make you feel infinite. I’m making up for lost time, I guess. Trying to, at least. Weed made me sluggish, stupid, silly but boring. I was the same person, just stoned. I couldn’t move from my couch because I was stoned, so my only option was to get more stoned. 25-i made the room surge and pulse with an energy I did not know how to access with a clear head, but the comedown was so horrendous I would spend the next few days holed up in my room, nursing my existential dread with a constant feed of old episodes of the Kardashians with the sound off. I spoke to no one and floated through the streets as the sun went down, hitting a dab pen and wearing oversize tee shirts covered in mysterious stains and pants that didn’t fit around my dangerously skinny waist.  

I abused drugs the same way the first guy I ever fucked abused me. It wasn’t consistent, at first, there was love and trust there. I put my faith in bottles of cough syrup and cans of disgustingly sweet, cheap alcohol. In return I got a subtle break from reality. I got a chance to breathe without feeling like I was drowning. I always seemed to come to during the parts that I wanted to forget the most, naked and sweating on the floor of my ex’s dorm, waiting for the part where he gets what he wants so I can be left alone with my shitty TV shows and dab rig. He would punch a wall, say he was sorry. He pushed my head down while I gave him head, said the only way he could cum is if I was gagging. He bought me a teddy bear, a seemingly innocent gesture that meant something much more sinister to me. I knew what he wanted and I was willing to give it up, partly because I was scared and partly because it gave me an excuse to keep getting high. The drugs are free. It’s the dick that will cost you. 

Whether you’re being abused or abusing drugs, it all comes down to one thing: the desire for intimacy. Is it love or lust? I wrote on a piece of art I made in rehab. My ex lusted after me, he fetishized me, he traumatized me. I thought that was what love looked like. The most recent guy I dated made me cum so fucking hard so fucking many times in a row I felt like I had reached nirvana. He was the first guy I fucked sober who I actually liked spending time with. I thought that was what love looked like. I collected empty bottles and little baggies and made them into art, putting them proudly on display on the walls of my apartment. I thought that was what love looked like. I lust after experiences I want so badly to be intimate, confusing them for the fantasy of love that I don’t yet know the real meaning of. I want innocent, flirtatious banter while I’m floating through the clouds on MDMA. I want 6AM conversations where the coke is flowing freely and our thoughts are uninhibited, every sentence containing the answer to the most complex secrets of the human condition. I want to blow bong rips into my lovers mouth before he licks my face out of sheer delight in having me near him. 

Instead, I wake up at 4PM in an empty bed to a text that says “u were fun.” I buy plan B and hope he texts me back next weekend when it’s socially acceptable to do drugs. Instead, I lose my guy of the night in the crowd while I sweatily make my way to the bar, dripping in drug-induced euphoria and alcoholic panic that the bar is about to close and I’m not drunk enough to convince myself I’m in love with this moment, this music, this guy that I don’t even know. I make him stop at the CVS for a bottle of wine on the way back to his hotel. I wanna party. I wanna dance. I wanna fall in love. Let’s do it. You and me. Right here. Right now. I somehow ended up back in my own bed in my dad’s condo and when I woke up I noticed he unfollowed me on Instagram. There is no goddess here. There is no desperate search to return the glass slipper to the girl who got away. There is no lust. There is no love. Just a quick hit, a good time, memories that aren’t even powerful enough to last once the sun comes up. 

Kanye once said he was never much of a romantic. He couldn’t take the intimacy. I lust after intimacy, but I’m not in love with it. There are parts of me that are ugly, shameful, gross, dirty and sloppy. I lied when someone asked me what my greatest fear was, said spiders scared the shit out of me. I fear being known, being seen, being unable to hide behind anything. I crave intimacy, the knowledge that you’re taken care of and handled with care. I fear intimacy, knowing that someone is so close they could hurt you, or at the very least scare the shit out of you. That’s what happens when you’ve abused your body. That’s what happens when someone else has done the same.  

People ask me why I didn’t leave my ex sooner. I was afraid of him, afraid of what he could do to me because he knew too much about who I was as a person. He could send me to the hospital, yes. He also could destroy my entire personality in less than 15 seconds. I didn’t wanna test him on that. People ask me why I didn’t stop doing drugs after I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I was afraid of life, afraid of what it could do to me once I learned who I am as a person. I want too much and know very little about how to get it. I’m one month sober to the day. What happens next is up to me to decide. I delete tinder, phone a friend, text back this guy who is teaching me the different shapes love can take when you’re still getting to know who you are as individuals as well as what you mean to each other. There’s no guarantee, but there is intimacy. That’s more than I could have ever hoped for when I almost drove my car off a cliff a month ago. 

A monk in Myanmar slices an avocado, offers me a piece. A friend in South Africa carries me up the stairs, shoves his dick in my mouth. A guy comes up to me at a club in Berlin, asks if I have any ecstasy. When the coke wears off and there’s none left to do, I check myself into rehab and stare at the distant lights of Boston, wondering why it is that life can be so magical, so beautiful, so cruel, so devoid of meaning and so full of possibility.