The Things I Lost at Raves

 I think I was overcome with what the Irish refer to as the fear when I woke up alone in my bed in Miami. I could not find the hat I have discussed before on this dumb blog that has all the pins on it that I’ve collected at raves over the years. It’s a purple bucket hat I got at a party in Brooklyn. I always wore it to festivals with my giant yellow sunglasses just to remind people I once took so much Molly at a rave my eyes were buzzing and I was covered in sweat even though it was 20 degrees outside. I will never forget the assholes name who I went home with on that fateful night in Miami only because he stole that fucking hat. Without that he’d just be another nameless face I remember from time to time when I’m trying to keep track of the people I’ve slept with. I guess the hat wasn’t the only thing I lost on the trip.

I came home around 6 or 7am every day that I was in Miami for a horrible music festival that I will never return to again, and that isn’t just because I can’t show my face in that city anymore. I slept until noon, rudely awoken by the blistering sunshine. I was covered in sweat and felt like Jack Kerouac in Big Sur, “fooling myself all my life thinking there was a next thing to do to keep the show going and actually I’m just a sick clown and so is everybody else.” I smelled booze wafting out of the cup I left by my bedside for moments like this. Drink more and maybe you can forget what it feels like to not know if you’re hallucinating because you’re still drunk or you drank so much you have delirium tremens. I am indeed a sick clown and so are all the people I went home with in my short time in that horribly disgusting city of rented Mazeratis and 30 dollar lobster rolls and those massive sugary drinks with two beers stuck in them that you don’t wanna share cuz then there wouldn’t be enough for me. When Miami sinks due to rising sea levels, I hope everyone I came into contact with in the years I’ve been going there for a week long bender sink with it. Then I don’t have to feel guilty about all the people in clubs I terrorized so deeply the bouncer had no choice but to kick me out while pee was running down my legs. 

Some heady Instagram account I follow to keep up to date on the goings on in the world of wooks once said the best groundscore we found at festivals was the friends we made along the way. I wish I could say I’ve made friends with the people who hit me with a “u up?” text at 5 in the morning. I wish I heard them say one sentence while sober so I could realize they suck just as hard as I do when I’m coked out. I don’t make friends easily but I’ll suck your dick if you pass me the bag. These are not the friends I’ve made along the way. The best groundscore I’ve found to this day was a bag of Molly I had dropped at the bottom of a snowy mountain in Aspen. It still counts as a groundscore even if it was yours. I paid more for that Molly than I did for that fucking hat. It was the bag that kept me up until the sun rose, hanging out with assholes who are good for nothing except another round of drinks and a couple lines in the bathroom. Someone said music sounds better with you but I’ll forget about you once the drugs run out. This is what life is all about, isn’t it? Living hard, living fast, spiraling out of control like Lindsay and going to court for a DUI with broken nails and stolen sneakers like Amanda Bynes. I don’t need friends cuz I just refilled my cup. The next round is on the bartender. 

I’m getting to the point where I know myself just as well as Eve Babitz knows LA. I’m able to look at who I was when I was on a lot of drugs and also drunk and think to myself that poor girl. It’s a good thing all the people she partied with didn’t know her. They would have fallen in love with who she was in the brief periods when she was sober and they would hate her even more for who she was when she was using. If that happened, then I really wouldn’t have made any new friends. Party girls, party boys, party people. We shared a lot of dances. We shared a lot of joints. They shared the bag with me so they could sleep with me. We shared nothing in common. I shared none of who I was with any of them. Party girls don’t have personalities. These are not my people. I won’t reference Bassnectar cuz he’s a rapist, but I think it’s okay to quote Nelly Furtado even though she did a song with him. “Not everything in this magical world is quite what it seems.” Who I really am is getting uncomfortably close to the person I become at parties. I’m not really having much fun anymore. 

I left Miami for the last time like a bat out of hell. I threw all my rave clothes into my suitcase and lamented the loss of my hat but didn’t think much at the time about the dignity and sense of self that was also lost. I didn’t really have it to begin with anyways. I think I left all that behind when I took mushrooms when I was 16 and forgot where I lived and sent Facebook messages to people I barely even knew from my high school telling them how high I was. Anyways, let’s go back to Miami. I tossed a huge wad of 20 dollar bills that I begged my dad to give me in my carry on and called a cab cuz I maxed out my credit card at some stupid club that I stayed at for 12 hours so all I had was that wad of cash. When I got back to New York I stayed in bed for a week watching psytrance videos on YouTube and drinking Miller High Life and contemplating suicide while getting stoned off edibles I bought at a bodega in the East Village. 

Now that I’m taking my mood stabilizer and antipsychotic and am among the world of the mentally stable, I would like to propose a toast to the douchebags and the scumbags. Every one of them that I have known and every one that I have become when I started using cocaine 10 years ago are a part of my story and I no longer resent them for it. Just a few short months after the Miami trip I ended up where I am now in Massachusetts, clean and serene as they like to say in the NA program that I don’t participate in anymore. The other day I looked back on photos I took when I went on my first Miami bender when I graduated college. I was wearing dark eye makeup that made me look like Jenny in the second season of Gossip Girl. I was so fucking skinny I couldn’t stand up when I took a shower. I shoplifted in the kids section of Zara. I got kicked out of clubs and threw up on tables. It wasn’t the beginning, and it wasn’t the end either. For me, Miami was always just a stop along the way. The beginning was a desire to drink my emotions to death. The end has yet to be decided. It won’t be with you. And I love myself for figuring that out. What happens next may not always be cute, but I’ll do it with my people. I guess that’s what life's all about, isn’t it? Losing your hat and finding a new one that fits. Look me in the eye and you can see the colors Eve Babitz found when she was on acid. I am the journey. I am not just a stop along the way. I’ll see you out there *kiss kiss.*