Meth Made Me a 36 Hour Vampire

Slammed: a Memoir — Chapter 1 Part 4

Warning: Graphic descriptions of drug use, sexual situations including sexual violence. What you’re about to read is not fiction. It happened to me.

I was in the back of a car speeding down the West Side Highway.

I sat between Jerry on his phone … “Listen, I’ll get there when I get there, ok? But I’m not getting there before two. You call me again I’m not coming at all,” … and Ben, who seemed to have put the lid back on the pot. He sat silent and still like he was holding his breath.

I felt the press of their bodies on either side of me, the movement of the car. I watched lights like jewels streaming by, of passing cars, passing buildings, glinting off the Hudson River. Everything looked new, brighter, more alive.

In the movie Interview with the Vampire, Christian Slater asked Brad Pitt what he saw after he was turned by Tom Cruise. “You might as well ask Heaven what it sees. No human can know.”

I remember… fragments.

An apartment in Chelsea. Darren’s apartment. Danny’s friend. Exposed brick. Fresh white paint on new drywall. A blue couch.

I’m sitting next to Jerry. He holds a glass pipe to my mouth, heating the bulb, rolling it back and forth. I watch the smoke build and roll with erotic thirst. I wait for his command.

“Ok,” he says in my ear, the heat of his breath on my neck.

I take the hit.

And another.

And another.

Another.

Another.

“I think he’s had enough,” Danny says.

“No,” I bite back. A dog protecting his food.

I beg.

Another.

I’m behind Jerry, my arms wrapped around him, my hands running under his shirt, feeling his skin, his heat, the hair on his stomach and chest, kneading him, needing contact.

“Someone’s feeling good, aren’t ya boy?”

I’m sitting cross legged on the hardwood floor. I’m staring at a laptop open in front of me, a blank email.

I’m trying to write.

Words come.

All at once.

I sit there.

Not writing.

Staring.

For a long time.

Danny closes the laptop and pulls me up onto the couch.

I’m in the bathroom.

My urine is something between apple juice and Gatorade.

“I’m peeing orange,” I bellow.

I watch the unnatural color stream out of me.

I hear laughter.

“That’s normal,” someone answers.

Jerry, Danny, and our host Darren step out, leaving me sitting on the blue couch with Ben.

The top comes off.

“Suck it. Suck my cock. Suck my fucking cock!” He stands, pants down, and forces his dick into my mouth before I can react.

He’s ferocious.

He’s hurting me.

He pistons my face.

I can’t breathe.

I take it.

This is what I’m meant for.

This is my purpose.

He releases.

I taste his cum.

He’s gone.

I’m pacing the living room while others watch me and don’t watch me.

“This is what it’s like. This is exactly what it’s like.”

This is exactly what it’s like to be turned into a vampire.

“How…much have we done? Smoked?”

I want more.

I look at Jerry.

I’m biting my lip.

“About $300 worth.”

How much?

No clue.

I want more.

Jerry is talking, showing off, “This is why.”

He flashes a roll of cash the size of a baseball.

How much?

No clue.

He’s a dealer.

I want more.

“Don’t become one of ‘Jerry’s kids,’” Danny says.

Is that funny?

No clue.

I want more.

My jaw hurts. My lower lip hurts. I feel my lip. It feels swollen. I look in the bathroom mirror. It’s fat, swollen, like someone’s hit me. I’ve been biting my lip. All night. I’ve chewed my lower lip fat.

I watch my jaw move side to side in the mirror. I don’t feel it. But I see it.

My eyes are wide. It’s hard to blink. My eyelids seem to be straining to fully retract.

I can’t drink enough water.

My jaw hurts.

The morning sun lights up the apartment windows.

I sit on the blue couch.

Danny stands in the doorway to the kitchen.

I look at him.

He looks at me.

Words returning, climbing off each other, into speakable thoughts, forming sentences.

Jerry was gone. Ben was gone. Darren was gone.

Danny was there.

Finally, I said, “The good news is I’m all packed and ready to go,” for my flight the next morning to Hilton Head.

My jaw hurt. My lower lip hurt.

“The bad news is my bags are still up at the apartment.”

Danny and I rode the A train back uptown. We sat silent and tense as the car swayed side to side. It was so fucking bright. My body was still buzzing, but the euphoria was long gone. I felt parched and rigid like an old dried-out dish sponge.

We arrived at the apartment and Danny walked decidedly to his room while I stopped in the living room to find Henry on the couch. He had been crying.

“I…”

“Read that,” he cut me off, pointing to his laptop which I could see through the open door of our bedroom. He was clutching Teddy for warmth or comfort or protection.

I went to the laptop.

The overhead fluorescent light was blinding.

I sat down and looked at the screen. While I had failed to type a single word just hours before, Henry had filled his computer screen full of words. Many, many words. Words undoubtedly filled with hurt, filled with pain, filled with accusations, filled with sadness.

But I couldn’t read any of them.

My eyes went from one word to the next, but I could not get them to connect to each other, to make any kind of sense. I could no more process the sea of letters staring at me from the harsh, bright screen than I could the din of a thousand conversations happening at once. I took his mouse and clicked familiar buttons. “I can’t read this right now. I’m emailing it to myself and I will read it later.”

I stood up, grabbed my packed bags, exited the bedroom just in time to follow Danny out the door, and I left.

I left him there in that brightly lit room.

I left him sitting on the couch clutching Teddy.

I left his words unread.

I left him.

I left.

Back down in Chelsea, as night fell, I was welcomed to crash on the blue couch till my flight the next morning.

But I couldn’t sleep, which amazed me since I had been up for well over 36 hours. All I could think about was “Tina.” All I wanted was more of that white smoke. As the night trudged on, it became clear that the previous night’s festivities were not going to be coming to me. So I found Jerry’s number and gave him a call.

“Come on over.”

I walked seven or so blocks trying to ignore my stinging lip. He buzzed me into his building and I climbed a very long, slightly leaning, wooden stairway. At the top, Jerry opened the door and welcomed me in.

With no lights on at this time of night it was impossible to tell how big the apartment was, but his bedroom was little more than a large closet. There were high mounted shelves filled with books and CD’s. A small desk sat below with a TV and VCR/DVD player. A small desk lamp provided the only source of light for the room. There was no desk chair because the bed took up what little floor space remained.

On the bed lay another guest, white, with thick wavy hair and a clean-shaven, angular face. Shirtless, he was quite skinny, borderline unhealthy, no real muscle anywhere. Not grotesque but certainly not my taste.

Jerry got out his green-necked bong and started loading the bulb, talking rapid fire about how he was there when this shit was “cooked,” how “pure” it was, that he only deals the “good shit.”

All I could think was shut the fuck up and light the damn thing!

Finally, he did and I took a hit of that sweet, thick smoke.

I felt my body reinflate with the delicious heat from the previous night. My clothes came off. Hands began groping. Skin met skin, mouths met…

Jerry fell asleep.

“Jerry?”

I looked at him for a minute, saw his stomach and chest rise and fall. “Jerry?” He couldn’t possibly be asleep. “Jerry?” I shook his thigh.

Jerry inhaled with a snort and mumbled. I rubbed his chest, “Jerry?” The other guy just laid there on his side and did nothing. “Jerry!”

“Yeah,” his eyes fluttered open, “Yeah…why don’t you…,” he fell back asleep.

The top was off, the water was boiling, and there I was with a passed-out drug dealer and a skinny guy with wavy hair who seemed to be otherwise dead inside.

I sat up, frustrated. I looked at the bong. I turned to Wavy-Hair, “do you know how to work this thing?” My jaw was tight.

He looked at me for a second, “yeah, but…”

“Jerry,” I lightly shook him again and spoke to him like he was a senile grandparent. “Jerry, I’m going to head out. Would you mind if I took one last hit?”

He grunted what I took to be an affirmative. I handed the bong to Wavy-Hair. He helped me take a couple of good hits while taking a couple himself. Then I put my clothes on, told Wavy-Hair and the sleeping Jerry to have a good night, and headed back out onto the street and back to Darren’s.

I lay the rest of the night on that blue couch, jacked up, wide-eyed, trying to ignore my sore lower lip. My body was stiff like it was bracing against a cold wind.

In the morning I grabbed my bags, hugged Danny goodbye, and headed for the airport.

I had no earthly idea how I looked as I made my way toward the gate. I was exhausted, beyond tired, yet still forcibly awake and alert. My body ached from the continued tensing and bracing. My jaw hurt. My eyes were tired from being constantly open wide which hadn’t yet stopped. My lower lip really stung. In fact, the entire inside of my mouth hurt because I had been chewing my cheeks.

I was thankful when we boarded and the plane was finally in the air, though not thankful at all to have to sit still for the next few hours.

The flight attendants came down the aisle with the drink cart. “Something to drink?” one asked.

“Coffee please,” I said.

The other attendant leaned over the cart and whispered to the first, “Decaf.”

Well. I guess I looked a mess.

Next Chapter

Chapter Guide

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