HIGH

(Content warning: drug use, sexual assault)

Once, I walked in the rain, opened my mouth to the sky, yearned to be changed. But each drop was a small knife, cutting away my hope. So, I closed my mouth, and I swallowed my blood. 

*

I spent the better part of one summer drunk and high on cocaine. I walked from bar to bar with new friends made for the sole sake of going out. We stayed up all night, snorting lines and bumps of white powder until sunrise. I walked home to my apartment while other people walked to work, slept until the afternoon sun was too bright to ignore. I hardly ate and when I did, I frequently threw it up. The circles beneath my eyes were as sunken as the hollows of my cheeks. 

It was more than that summer, it was a year or so, truly. I’d love to say it was just a summer. I’d love to lie. About a lot of things. About how many nights I couldn’t go home with only myself, about how many nights I slept elsewhere, said yes when I wanted to say no, said yes enthusiastically, said yes for money, until being was nothing but a body. I’d love to tell you I was just having fun. Just young and restless, or however the cliché goes. But really, I could not contain my sadness inside the trunk of my body, I was sick with it. I wasn’t having a good time. I was clouding my mind into carelessness, a drawn-out attempt to disappear, to erase myself from the narrative, something like that. 

If you ask me today, I’ll tell you honestly. I was just trying on a new self, acting as if I were already me, following a path, seeing only white powder and dark night lit by neon bright, trying to illuminate my lightless mind, stopping only briefly to right myself in dizziness. 

*

There is a heaviness inside the body that leans down, but does not touch me. You are the darkest shadow my mind has ever seen. You are the greatest weight I will ever know.

*

Two things were certain that summer—the sun would rise, and the sun would set. Most everything else was up for grabs. 

One night, when the sun was on its way back down, I was itching to get high. To go out and get drunk, to laugh with the people I called my friends, to seek adventure in the neon of bar light. I was grinding my teeth, staring at my phone, waiting to find out where a party would be held. Just grinding my teeth and waiting. Grinding my teeth and waiting.

*

The Antisomnolent: Where are you going, the night asks. Shades of violet across her face. She paints the street with hazy light. Around here, we don’t ask that kind of question. We could answer, everywhere, but really, we mean, anywhere. We, the sleepless. We, the wanderers.

*

A key of bright white light screamed into my skull, at an hour in which I should have been asleep. Instead, I made awake with sour magic, a bitter spell. The birds, they were all sleeping, not a single one cooed. Not that I could’ve heard a bird song over the lightning energy sparking between my ears.

*

All those hours given over to basking in the neon glow of an imagined future, white powder keyed into my nose, of being carried away in streams of promise by a storm of energy so strong that I felt altered forever and convinced that even the smallest particle of the surrounding world was charged with purpose of impossible grandeur. I looked up into the winter worn trees, and was thrilled by their nakedness, by their icy jewels, and the melodious singing of fellow night followers. Sparks in my heart, like fireflies, sparks in my brain, like fireflies, sparks all inside me, lit up, then grew dark, only to light up again, and again, and again, until night’s end.

*

I called it early one night. By early, I mean three am, instead of five. The man whose attention I’d been after, whose validation I’d sought, had drifted towards another girl. 

Outside on the street, I wrapped the dark around me. Gathered it close as I walked towards home. Took it straight into my heart. Let it have me, like I would have let that man. Let it take me over. Better to let me be what I should be. Enveloped. Othered. Small. 

The shadows didn’t care what I wanted for myself. They inched across the sidewalk, teased me, tangled their fingers in my night-knotted hair. 

*

Too much coke the night prior, too bright like over-whitened teeth. Too much to bear, so I sat down in the tub, a slimy dim lit riverbed, let the water gesture over my shoulders, let the droplets bounce off like birds in flight. Pigeons cooed outside the grimy window, under cover of devastating clouds. They were my song. 

I swallowed my own heart and spit it up into the drain. I grabbed for it and swallowed it back down again. Still, it wanted to crawl out of my mouth and escape the things I’d done to my body, the things I’d let loose in my mind. It made a scratching sound in my throat, that’s my song now, and I know you know where the sound is coming from, truly. 

*

I thought cocaine was a more than adequate distraction from the war I was fighting inside myself. But really, it wasn’t. We were all dying, my so-called friends and I, but some more than most. 

*

At a party, my friend Patti stood beside me for years, or was it a moment? I cannot remember. Maybe I loved her, maybe I didn’t. There was an apartment, and then no apartment. There was a train, and then no train at all. When no one remembers, was it there? You, whose moments are gone, who drifts like smoke in the afterlife, tell me something, tell me anything.

*

On the roof of my building in Chinatown, tenants hung their laundry along two stretched lines, two of the ends tied to a satellite dish, the other ends attached to random metal stuck out from the stairwell enclosure. I liked to sit up on the roof in the afternoons, to soak up the hot summer sun, to dry out my hang overs. I liked to watch the clothing dance on the lines in the roof top breeze. I liked to imagine the pants and socks, blouses and nightgowns, were dancing just for me.

One afternoon, after a particularly late night, I laid on a towel in only my underwear and bra. Sweat trickled down my temples, the back of my neck, collected in the undersides of my bent knees. My stomach swayed back and forth, like the clothing lines, threatening to tip over. As I watched the lines swing from side to side, two children’s shirts, one yellow and one white, took their wings and caught the wind, breaking free from the grasp of their pins. 

I stood up fast, ran to the roof’s edge where the little tees had caught on the rusty fire escape. I reached out to grab the shirts, only to miss them as they took flight again. I watched them land across the street atop a van, and then I vomited onto the sidewalk below. 

*

When I would walk home in the morning from an all-night-out, the daylight-people would stare, and I would wonder if I was truly hollow inside, if they could see right into me, if they could see right through me. 

*

Soho, a party in someone’s apartment, I told myself not to fall asleep. Keep everything close. In pockets and cradled veins. The back of my throat was slick with my early moves. Just rock on your heels, I told myself, until one feeling passes and a new one spins you right out the door and onto the streets. Whatever happens, just don’t fall asleep.

*

In a bar downtown, fifty bodies cut the room’s air by half. I conserved my oxygen, taking small sips of beer humid atmosphere. I saved my allotment for the nearing future of sharp nasal-based inhales, the kind to come when Patti finished her cigarette, found me where I was standing, grabbed my hand and dragged me along to the bathroom. She didn’t have to drag, really. 

All this reminded me of the story of my birth, how I was born without a single breath in my lungs. How unappreciative my behavior was in that bar, ready to waste precious breath on quick cut blow.  

*

I want to tell you this story without having to confess anything. I want to tell you this story without having to be in it. Mea in nighttime clothes when the sun burns brightly in the morning, Mea at a party, high again. Mea in the headlights, blue like a lighter flame. 

You covered my body with your body and now I am marred. The minutes don’t stop. They tick and tick and tick and tick. 

I want to be thrown over, possessed, to tell you this story. I’m surprised to be telling you anything at all. 

*

I told Patti, I did not want to speak about the beginning of this story. Were my face made of mouths, were my palms open lips, still I would not have wanted to give it voice. You made my body punishment for itself. 

Is it vulgar to think of my space between my legs as a gash, is it cliché to call it a wound. What is the origin of my injury? 

*

You opened my mouth and filled it with stones. Once I could say I’d never kissed anyone. Once that was true.

*

There was a man I especially liked to be around—Jacob—because he always had coke and always shared it. Always bought more when the baggie was licked clean and never wanted to be asleep. He was sweet mannered, called me babe, always made sure I was having a good time. He comes from money, lots of it, the absolutely uncountable kind. His father was some big shot TV CEO, something like that. 

One night, Patti and I were having dinner, discussing where to go, sending out texts, looking for the first of many night moves. Jacob rang, told me he was in the Hamptons, said Come. I said, We have no ride. He said, I’ll send a car. He did, and off into the night we went. 

The house was beautiful, right on the beach, designed by an ultra-famous architect, didn’t belong to Jacob. Belonged to his friend’s grandfather figure. A real estate mogul with almost uncountable money. 

The second Patti and I arrived, it was all champagne, and white powder, everything sparkled. We ran, all four of us, Jacob, his friend, Patti, me, into the ocean, not even bothering to strip off our clothes. In the ocean, I was as young as I would ever be. 

It didn’t last. As it never does. Someone always wears off first and drops back into their honest age. Jacob’s friend headed off to bed, Patti and Jacob escaped the beach breeze to light up in a guest bedroom, and I stayed out on the porch, my head still swimming. 

Then the grandfather figure came out, the crab from his cave. I could see he had ideas for me, desires made obvious by his leering. This was his house, so I played polite. Chatted with him, smiled when he called me cute, then pretty, then sexy. Demurred when he offered me a round blue pill, called it oxy, said I should try it, said it would feel good, insisted. Didn’t I want to have fun? Didn’t I want to accept his gift? Told me he had just taken one too, said it’s no big deal, so I took it. Then the grandfather figure put his hand on the inside of my thigh and said I’d like to kiss you, can I kiss you, and then he kissed me without waiting for an answer. At least he asked. I pulled back, faked a giggle and a blush, scooted away, sighed when Patti and Jacob reappeared, sighed again when the grandfather figure slinked back into the house, the crab wary of seagulls.

And then I felt euphoria. I swear it was the truest meaning of that word. Every pleasure-seeking nerve in my body was lit up with electricity—no—was made of sugar—no—was vibrating and jiving. Every bone felt happy, even the marrow felt joy, every pore in my skin sang out hallelujah. I was wildly high. I was floating, I was on the roof, I was a plane, I was an astronaut, I was never ever coming back down ever again. 

Patti and Jacob talked about music and movies. Must have been talking for a while, but I didn’t see time passing. Patti wanted to sleep, said the weed made her sleepy. We three traipsed up the steps to the guest bedroom, three fish flopped on the king-sized mattress, one fish fell asleep. She snored small snores beside me. Jacob on my other side asked, Are you tired? I said, I’m so high, but yes, I think I’m tired. He said, Shh, let’s go to sleep. 

So, I tried to sleep. Then I felt his hand slither between my thighs, like the grandfather figure outside, but no, the grandfather was gone, I was confused. I twisted my legs some. Jacob said, Shh, let’s just go to sleep. My eyelids were so heavy, the blue pill made them heavy now. The euphoria was fading. Jacob slid his hand between my legs, I twisted them again. 

Come on, Jacob, take the hint, my mind said only to itself. Shh, let’s go to sleep, babe. Let’s go to sleep. He kept his hand there, started moving it back and forth. I did not want this. Did not want to stay awake, did not want to be touched, did not want to wake Patti. His hand moved my leg for room, his fingers found their way into my body, I tried to stir myself from the heaviness of the blue pill, surprised by the density of the feeling. 

But I couldn’t. So, I stayed heavy. I let him have his way. I let him force himself inside me. Submitted to his heaviness. Planned to wait it out. Until Patti, sleeping in the bed beside us, began to stir. And my adrenaline finally kicked in. I was afraid for her. More afraid for her than for myself. Afraid she’d be afraid. What a chaotic thought. But I was still high and nothing made sense and that was where my mind went. So, I dragged myself out from under him, pushed him off me. When he began to protest, I grabbed his hand and led him to the walk-in closet so he could finish and let Patti remain asleep and unknowing. 

I still hate myself for that sometimes. Still hate the whore who had sex with the man assaulting her. Hate myself for hating myself instead of hating him. I do hate him too. But I still also hate me some as well. It’s a complicated memory. I am not a perfect victim. 

*

There are so many things I want to tell you. That this skin is not my skin, these hands not my hands. I don’t sing in the shower anymore, don’t sing anywhere at all, not like I used to. In the shower one morning, I let the water shine down, dance on me, like a rain drenched waterlily in a pond. I was the shadow to the lamplight in the bathroom. 

*

So, I threw alcohol on my emotions like gasoline and watched the flame ignite, fed it over and over and burned inside. My breath was a guilty verdict. My palms made of sweat beads that trickled down my wrists as I held them up to starlight. I tried to snort myself into erasure, so all these lines would never exist, so that I would be more lyric forgotten than written, something more forgettable than memory. 

*

Everything has a price, my body knew it well. I was a beggar, on my knees. I watched through the keyholes of my irises, my life becoming smaller, my daylights growing shorter, my nights longer, my skeleton more prominent through my skin. Even my name was shrinking inside me.

*

I used to watch the people walking to work, doing the things that living people do. While I dragged my corpse home to sleep, per chance to dream, like the living people do. 

*

Chinatown, walking home from work, still hungover from last night. I thought about getting high later. I was uncomfortable with that thought. 

A few blocks from my apartment, I unzipped my skin, peeled it over my head, down past my shoulders, and folded it over my hips. 

A young girl on the street must’ve been watching me. She screamed. I wondered if she could see what I’d done in my mind. 

*

I am not a child of God. Not anymore. I am misbehaving. I am trying on sins like costumes. I’m loving the look. 

I am not a child of God anymore. He has ripped my name from his book of children. The ones he takes time to look after. I am a jagged-edged shred of paper, dragged along the sidewalk by the current of feet. I lift in the passing wind of shoes, I fly recklessly about, it is so cold.