Fast Friends

 An alien cat beaming up onto the moon lives on my right upper thigh and will live there until my body decomposes because of him. He picked it out on a random Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday. Could have been any day, really. Every day with him was phantasmagoria. 

Long before that tattoo existed, on another random Sunday, I could hear his car coming from all the way down the street when he came to meet me early in the morning. Vroom vroom! Hot. 

I hadn’t slept in days. I was coming down from an acid trip and still entirely drunk. I drove for hours to see him, coming from a friend's house in Connecticut. I’m not quite sure how I made it there without killing myself or someone else. I guess I live without the fear of God in me.

Last time I saw him I was wasted in Miami at a music festival and had taken mystery drugs some random sprinkled into my mouth during a Carl Cox set that made my behavior unsettling and erratic and completely wiped my memory. My mind fills in the blanks after a blackout, and all I could come up with was that I was looking rough and acting atrocious. I couldn’t believe he had hit me up years later to kick it again. 

I left my car in a park near his house and got into his all black Mustang. He smelled like weed and expensive cologne. I knew I was about to get myself into a lot of trouble, but because I was a lot younger than I am now months later, I thought the more trouble I could get into the better. I did it for the plot, for the danger, for the possibilities that open up when I’m in a situation I have no business being in. There’s something about hot boys in hot cars that gets me excited about my own self-destruction. 

We drove up the street to his house and he brought me to the basement where his whole setup was. He brought over some vodka, some wine, some Twisted Teas. Then came the cocaine. He dumped a pile on the screen of his laptop and started cutting lines. I poured myself a drink and tilted my glass at him. Let’s get fucked up. So we did. 

It had been a long time since I had felt as comfortable around him as I did around other men. Usually my guard is up. I’m suspicious by nature, being a trauma ridden scorpio and all. I always wonder what men want from me other than to fuck me. I was at a point in my life where I just wanted to dick around, mostly because I was not confident in what I had to offer to a partner besides a fun time. I do a few lines and get a little more drunk and now I’m feeling like perhaps he is my soulmate. I am nothing if not delusional. We’re talking faster now, apologizing to each other for what happened in Miami. He felt bad that he had left me behind to fend for myself in a massive club with a huge crowd. I felt bad that I got as fucked up as I did and killed his vibe. Little did I know months later I would continue killing his vibe due to my drug use. It was nice to exist in that little bubble in his basement for a while, learning more about what an amazing person he is and how much he has to offer the world. He made me feel safe and desired in a way that I hadn’t felt before. Sure, he wanted to fuck me, but as the night went on I could see that desire fading away. It’s not that he wasn’t interested. I think he was recovering from a breakup and got excited about meeting a cool girl he didn’t want to just fuck and leave behind. He wanted to give me a place in his life. He wanted to be best friends. I am embarrassed I couldn’t see the signs. I’m angry with myself for forcing something more onto him. I am delusional when it comes to men I like. Cocaine doesn’t help with those delusions.

We continue on with our Sunday, staying inside in the dark doing lines and drinking. We had some pretty hot sex, some of the hottest I’ve had in a minute. The connection was there. It just wasn’t the connection that I thought I wanted. Friends are better than boyfriends. But a boyfriend sounds like a cute thing a girl should have at 28 years old. How wild is it that I was thinking that way about a person I had just barely reconnected with? Part of my downfall is that I don’t let things just exist the way that would be healthiest for me. I needed a new friend. I wanted a husband. I thought I had found it. Silly Lizzy. Silly, silly, delusional girl. 

The party continues on during that Sunday. We bought another ball of blow, which is a few grams for those who don’t know. We’re doing line after line but somehow the bag isn’t getting any emptier, or at least that’s how it felt at the time. More where that came from, but we didn’t need to get anymore. We had enough to last us through the week.

I caught feelings for him in less than 24 hours. I just felt so connected to him. I felt so seen. I felt respected, cherished, like I was a bright light in his world and he was in mine. Then comes the first sign that I am no good for him relationship wise. 

He leaves me alone briefly on Sunday to go to this family thing. I accidentally left my phone in his car. My sister blows up my phone suddenly freaking out for no reason and calls the cops because she believes I’ve been kidnapped. The cops show up at his family's house and his mom lost it with good reason. I am still furious with my sister for doing that. The whole incident made me look like a complete psycho. He didn’t seem to mind. He knew that I was worth it. So he looked past it. That alone shows what a great friend he is, and how much he genuinely cares for me.

Let’s get one thing straight: you don’t ever call the cops on a drug addict. We were rocking through the day with a ball, meaning we could have both caught a felony charge if the cops showed up to his parents place and we were there railing lines with tons of drugs in the house. I have a lot of love for my sister, but she is ignorant about what safety looks like to me. It certainly doesn’t look like the cops putting handcuffs on me. 

At any rate, with the cop incident came a decision from his mom. I was banned completely from their house, which is where he was living. So we got a hotel for the night where we could continue hanging out, fucking, doing blow, falling in what I thought was love. I was so grateful for him giving me another chance after the cops were called. 

We part ways the next day as he had to get to work. I cried on the way home because I couldn’t wait to see him again. I cried because I was coming down off all the blow, coming down off the acid, recovering from a hangover, recovering from feeling like I finally found the fun and love and laughs and traumadumping that I had been severely lacking in Boston. A new lover was in my midst. There is nothing in this world that gets me more excited about life than cocaine and a new lover. 

From that point on I’m in NYC every week to party with him. We’re zipping through the streets of NYC doing whippets while driving. We’re jumping from party to party to party to dealer to dealer to dealer. We’re dumping blow out onto his Ipad screen and getting lit because what else is one to do during summer? I’m lying down in the backseat of my car cutting up lines while he picks up some more friends. I’m hitting up dealers at 2am, 7am, 10am, 2pm, for more because the party just doesn’t stop when we’re together. We’re doing poppers on the Upper East Side. We’re stopping in Bodegas in Brooklyn, LES, UES, and everywhere else for white claws and napkins so we can blow our nose. We’re in a club for 12 hours, go home to do more lines and share more secrets and yap for a long while and then sleep for a few hours before we go back out. We’re drinking martinis at a bar we drank at for free. We’re always out buying more, dancing more, searching for new music, searching for the best drugs. We were fast friends.

I take a different turn than he does, start doing a ball a day and going back to my old habit of sucking dick just to get free blow. I’m starting fights in clubs, I’m crying for days after my last hit. I’m depressed, anxious, hearing rude things people are saying about me that aren’t actually being said. I’m saying fuck you to him in the middle of the day at a party in a park where I’m coked the fuck out and drunk. I’m telling my other friends I’m doing just fine. I’m lying and I’m killing the vibe and I’m fucking up and I’m not ready to go back to my lonely apartment in Boston where I don’t know anyone so I keep lying and killing the vibe and getting coked out and drinking an obscene amount just to put me to sleep and throwing tantrums and freaking people out. I’m not having fun the way he is anymore. I no longer know when to call it and say that I’ve had enough. I’m alienating people and humiliating myself at parties and I’m still not ready to call it. Finally I did, to drastic results.

I lose my shit on that friend I spent all that time describing in the first few paragraphs of this story. I fucking lost it. We had been fucking, then we stopped, and I didn’t give myself time to heal. So I kept going out with him to try and heal myself. I kept doing drugs in a dangerous way to hide from the pain. I kept telling myself it was enough for me for us to be best friends and the whole time I knew I wanted more but knew I couldn’t admit that to him. I didn’t want to lose him, so I kept hanging onto feelings that were there on my end but weren’t on his. Disaster finally hit when he starts sleeping with other girls. That’s when I became someone I don’t recognize but know exists within me. She only comes out when I’m high. Anger came out, hideous drug-induced, mentally ill anger. That’s all I want to say for now.

I’ll see you next time, Lizzy, the door guy said to me as I walked away from the club I almost got kicked out of for starting a fight.

I hope things get better for you, Liz, another one said after I blew up on him.

You’re the coolest girl at this party, one said before unfollowing me on Instagram.

I want to fuck you so so bad, another one said while we were making out at an afters before he ditched me.

Let’s go to Gabriela, one says on a random Thursday night.

How about Gospel? Another one says before I blow him off.

You’ll never lose me, I promise, my bestest, closest, most real and genuine and fastest friend I had said to me after I got really sick after a terrible combination of ketamine and alcohol. I blew that one up, too. Just the same as I did the rest of them. The call is coming from inside the house.

I never saw any of them again. 

I think about every single one of them all the time. I think about the fun, the parties, the youth we all shared. The desires, the longing for love, the rejection, the healing, the addiction, the humiliation, the comedown. I don’t wish to relive any of it. All that I wish is that we could go back to that void my best friend and I shared for a brief moment. The void where all we were looking for was a fun time so a ball of blow would last us an entire week.

I hope to bury that ball-a-day cocaine snorting party crashing atrocious and hideous and scary version of Lizzy that I don’t recognize. She’s part of me, just like all of those boys I mentioned are, but she isn’t meant for me. That’s what all those boys thought, too. And I hope I can reconnect with the version of myself that attracted all of them to me in the first place. That girl is one down ass bitch.