Category : Books-Non-Fiction

Sub Category : Biography

     June 2009

     There was no summer breeze this year. The stale air stood still while the brutal sun rays hurtled down and reflected off the cracked sidewalk. With the temperature still above a hundred degrees, this wasn’t just the hottest summer, it was a record heat for Texas. 
     I could only think about being in my cool apartment that I keep like a freezer as I walk the drag with Josie. Josie was a drag-rat about a few years younger than I. Her cherry face and shoulders were badly burnt from constantly walking around. She was homeless like the rest of the drag-rats, but since she inevitably helped me out with copping dope, I let her stay at my place a few times. She’d shower, take a nap, or let her phone charge when she came. 
     It was nice having somebody over. It had been a few weeks since I had even talked to Brianna. I knew it was her that went through my things when I was gone. She was the only one with a key I had given her to feed my cat, Nookie. 
     Nookie was a cat I had found at the town shelter. He was all white with one blue and one yellow eye. With his schedule being seldom busy, he liked to lie around all day, sometimes on the couch, or sometimes in front of the TV. His favorite movie was “Milo & Otis.” 
     Before he stayed at the shelter, he had snuck into a house and laid in bed with some family. They had named him Bubba. I didn’t like that name at all, so I had to changed it to Nookie. I had no idea the name Bubba would come back to haunt me and I would soon come to hate it with strong passion. 
     Josie would cop dope from this Mexican guy with a lazy-eye. He went by the name, Bubba. I had never met him. Whenever Josie and I went to get dope, she would run and get it and come back. Until, she came to me, asking if he could stay one night. I should’ve declined and made something up like my parents were coming to visit. Anything to have him not come near my place. 
     The fact that Bubba was a “hardcore dealer,” according to Josie, intrigued and excited me. I knew he would have drugs galore with him and would give me some for letting him stay. Josie had affirmed that, too. All this outweighed my lying and not letting him stay. 
     

I had still been attending school, but was doing poorly. After Bubba had stayed that one night and never left, my grades started to drop, as well as my attendance. He was seldom out of drugs and if he was, it was only for an hour or so due to his dealer trying to get more. 
     Bubba was a straight-up, heroin dealer, but he always had Xanax on him, too, but it was for his personal use, which he shared with me. He continued to stay at my place and started paying rent with dope. He had plenty of it. The most I had seen was about the size of a brick. It was the best black tar I had ever had. 
     I also helped him package it in tiny balloons while he dealt with his customers who started coming to my place. One guy came over and stayed for a while, which I didn’t like at all. Until, he pulled out a straight, glass cylinder. I knew what that was. 
     It had been a while since I had smoked crack. My heart began racing. I could feel my eyes dilate and my mouth water. We each took a hit, which felt wonderful. It was something I had seriously missed. After that, he reached into a black backpack he had brought with him. 
     I thought to myself, What goodies does he have in there?
     What he pulled out confused me and disappointed me. It was a glass bong with a cool design, but I wasn’t in the mood to smoke any weed. I had quit about a year ago. I didn’t like the high anymore, especially after I know what other highs there were out there. 
     He then stuck the glass, crack stem into the hole of the bong where the weed stem went. As he hit it, I could not stop staring. I was in complete awe at the thought of hitting crack from a bong. I had to do it. There was nothing I had wanted more, at the time, than hitting that bong. 
     When it came to me, I hit it like a normal bong with weed. But when after I blew the smoke out, my head felt an electric shock. It was a smooth vibration that went from my head all throughout my body. An alarm was going off, it sounded like, ringing my ears until it started to fade away a minute later. It was like shooting cocaine for the first time. I stayed on the couch and became pretty chilled out, but I couldn’t stop talking. The two others guys simply laughed at me since I normally wasn’t much of a talker. 
     I had to take a shot of dope to shut me up, as well as kill the intense craving for more. It took some time to hit with my hands still shaking. When I found the vein and pushed on the plunger, the black liquid entered my arm no problem, but then started to burn, so I stopped as quick as I could. It starts to burn when you miss the vein and it isn’t in there anymore. It stays in your skin and begins to itch like crazy. It then becomes a bright red rash. The dope stays there but eventually gets into your system, getting you high. It’s just not the high you wanted with a rush. 
      I had to come in at a different angle before I hit again. This time, all of it went in.