Meth, New Jersey, and Sex in the Rain

Slammed: a Memoir — Chapter 3 Part 7

Warning: Graphic descriptions of drug use and sexual situations.

I stood outside my building, smoking, watching the traffic, keeping my eye out for a blue compact.

The pavement and cement of the NYC streets, cooked by the summer sun, radiated heat. It was still sizzling in the 90s. The air was thick and swirling with the scents of car exhaust and garbage waiting on the sidewalk. The heat made my green cargo shorts feel bulky as my white T-shirt started to cling. Still, the air pressure was beginning to change in anticipation of a coming rain.

Having lived on Nagle Avenue for about 4 years by that point, I was still as much a minority as I would have been standing on a busy street in the Dominican Republic. There was the bodega to my right where the Latino with the most gorgeous set of eyes would sell me loose cigarettes half the time, half the time not, and the laundromat to my left, where I would pick up my clothes, communicating more through gestures than words since I didn’t speak Spanish.

As men at a card table a short distance away mixed their clinking dominos to start another game, I wondered if I really had to go all the way to Fort Lee, New Jersey, just across the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan, to find the play that I had been looking for. Still, at this point, I was willing to take the blind chance on just about anything, even crossing state lines.

A mid-90s blue compact pulled up in front of me. Making gestures of recognition, I walked over and leaned down into the open window.

“Richard?”

“Yeah, John?”

“That’s me.”

“Great, hop in.”

I hopped in, closed the door, and Richard pulled out into traffic.

Metallica was on the radio, “So tear me open, pour me out. There’s things inside that scream and shout.”

As we made our way over the George Washington Bridge, passing under its gray towers and connecting industrial cables, I took in my driver and host. For as blurry as his Manhunt profile picture was, it wasn’t wrong. He was a mature man, mid-40s, shaved cue ball head with a round face and strong jaw. His nose was bigger, wider than mine, and he sported a mustache that was more white than gray, as if he had gone prematurely gray in his 20s. He looked small in frame and I guessed would be a touch shorter than me once we stood up out of the car. He was shirtless, revealing a well proportioned torso. He was lean, like me, but stockier which made his chest and arms seem naturally thicker. His chest and stomach were covered in an attractive amount of hair. I wanted to reach out and run my hands over it, but thought I should let the man drive. As we chatted, I could hear the round, thick vowels of his Jersey accent.

A short drive past the bridge, we pulled into a neighborhood of five story brick apartment buildings. Unlike my neighborhood where each building was flushed to the next, these buildings were set apart from each other and surrounded by grass lawns along tree lined streets. The dark burgundy brick exteriors were black against the night. As we parked and got out of the car, I was struck by how much quieter it was. My ears were almost ringing.

As we entered his first floor apartment, I smelled immediately that he had a dog. Just as quickly, a little black and white Boston Terrier came scurrying up, wagging the entire back half of his body, happy to see Richard was home and even happier there was a new person with two new hands to pet him.

“Well hi,” I said in the silly way people talk to dogs. “What’s your name?”

“Wheezer,” Richard answered.

I scratched behind Wheezer’s ears as he pawed my leg and smiled at me with his bugged out eyes and upward turned tongue.

“Like Steel Magnolias?”

“No, but everyone always asks me that.”

To the left of the door was a small but fully equipped kitchen with brown wooden cabinets, a counter of square off-white tiles, and only enough space for one person to turn around from the stove to the sink. To the right was the dining area with a round wood table that sat four. The rest of the space was made up of the living room: off-white carpet, the couch I’d seen from his profile which sat beneath a picture window looking out on an open lawn and a few trees, and a stand up piano sat against the side wall.

“You play?”

“Not really,” he replied.

Confused, I shrugged it off and followed him through the living room and down the hallway to the bedroom.

“You have two bathrooms?” Two doors with two full bathrooms sat across from two separate closets.

“Yeah, I bought the studio next door and tore out the wall to make a one bedroom.”

“A one-bedroom, two bath. Interesting.”

His bedroom was a mirror image of the living room. A large heavy blue curtain hung from a thick rod covering what had previously been this studio’s front door. An overstuffed chair that matched the living room couch sat in one corner and a brown antique dresser sat in another.

This studio’s kitchen was different from the other, Pullman style, with cheap white cabinets, a small sink, and minifridge beneath the counter. A small tube TV sat blocking the sink while a computer monitor sat on the far end of the counter facing a bar stool.

“I renovated the other kitchen when I bought the first studio,” he explained when I remarked on the difference. “It used to look like this one.”

He took a seat on the bar stool and said, “Wheezer. Crate.” Wheezer, who had been getting all the attention he could from me, quickly withdrew and laid down in his crate on the other side of the room.

I took a seat on his queen size bed while Richard got to work. He took some Tina from an Altoids tin and carefully filled the bulb of a bong that looked to be made out of a small lab beaker, about the size of a coffee mug, round and wide at the bottom and narrow at the top. He took a good hit and then handed the bong to me. After a few rounds of taking beautifully long and full hits of that thick, sweet smoke, Richard unzipped his pants.

“Want to suck some dick?”

Music to my ears!

He had brought me over for one purpose and one purpose only. As the heat from the Tina began to flow through my body, my heart racing faster, my blood pumping harder, my skin crying out for contact, I gladly began to fulfill that purpose. I went down on him with a moaning enthusiasm and felt his hands run forcefully through my hair.

For the first time since the initial euphoria in Danny’s room, I finally jumped off the high dive into the warm pool and was engulfed by its liquid embrace.

He asked me what I wanted.

I told him what I wanted.

I pleaded for what I wanted.

His gruff voice whispered in my ear what he was going to do to me.

And he did it.

We fucked.

In the early morning hours, long before sunrise, the rain had finally come, taking the pressure out of the summer night air without ridding it of its warmth.

“Come with me,” Richard said. He had a mischievous look in his eye as he put on his pants. As I did the same, I watched in surprise as he climbed out his bedroom window.

“Wait, what? What…where are we going.”

“Just follow me.”

Hesitant, but equally thrilled, I climbed out after him. He led me out to the middle of a large grass lawn away from his building. The rain hit my overheated, ultra sensitive skin. It seemed I could feel every individual drop of cool water as it drummed down onto my body, sending ripples across my skin as it would the surface of a lake. He led us to an area vaguely lit by the yellow light of a distant street lamp. The light itself seemed to sparkle as the rain passed through it as if in slow motion.

The glorious sensation of hot skin and cool rain, the thrill and fear of being seen, being discovered, only amplified my desire and left me unable and unwilling to protest. Richard led me down onto the grass and we kicked off our clothes. I could feel every tiny blade of grass tickle and caress the length of my spine, the width of my shoulders, my lower back, the cheeks of my ass. I felt his weight, his warmth, on top of me, inside me, as our wet skin slid against each other. His heat, my heat, the cool falling rain hitting my face, his mustache scraping against my cheek, the warmth of his tongue, his teeth on my neck. Looking straight up into the falling rain it seemed as if I was falling through space. I sank deeper and deeper into that warm pool, wanting to plunge deeper still, so deep that there would be no way to count the fathoms.

I wanted to keep falling. Forever.

Back inside, we dried off and took a break for a couple more hits and a cigarette. We sat naked together in his overstuffed chair talking of sex an other things before continuing.

Finally, we were spent.

“Hey,” Richard said around 4 AM, “I have to head to work here in a few hours, I’m going to try and get some sleep. Would you mind waking me up if my alarm doesn’t?

“Sure.” I couldn’t comprehend how anyone could go to work and act like a normal person after being up all night, especially after a night like we had just had, but to each his own. While he slept, I lay awake savoring the receding high and my still sensitive skin, appreciating that Richard waited until after we were finished to fall asleep.

A few hours later, his alarm went off and I nudged him awake.

As he was adjusting a jewel blue necktie, I asked, “Would you mind if I crashed and slept here while you’re at work?”

In other words, “Would you mind if I was here when you got home and we could pick up where we left off?”

He smiled. “Sure,” and he was off to work.

I lay naked on his bed as the morning sun poured honey light though the windows. The smell of our sweat and cigarettes hung in the air. I felt the subtle weight of a crash creeping up on me. It was a duo crash of both the end of the high and blissful physical exhaustion. With a great yawn and a stretch, I reached for my phone. I had several missed calls, all from Randy. I smiled with a touch of satisfaction and turned off my phone. I lay back and fell into the darkness of sleep

When I awoke, it was mid afternoon, still a couple of hours till Richard was home. I got up, took a shower, put on my cargo shorts, and hopped onto his computer to kill time.

I noticed that next to me was his Altoids tin which I opened.

Holy fucking temptation, Batman!

The tin held, at least to me, a bountiful amount of Tina.

And his bong was right there next to it.

I could have easily taken a hit, even a few. Even without the tin, there was still plenty left in the bulb of the bong. I could have partaken without Richard being the wiser.

But I didn’t.

Richard didn’t know me from Adam. He had invited me into his home. He had gone to the trouble to pay a bridge toll to pick me up and take me back to his place. He had given me the capital “P” Play that I had been aching for. Foolishly or not, he allowed me to remain, by myself, in his home.

Moocher that I was, I did not want to insult his hospitality by sneaking a hit without his permission.

In the early evening, Richard returned home. I had to wait a little longer while he showered. I actually became slightly impatient when his shower seemed to take abnormally long. Once he was done, though, we began again as we had the night before.

Hits, head, and fucking the night through

The next morning Richard drove me back across the GWB, and we made plans to hook up again that coming weekend.

Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me.

Next Chapter

Chapter Guide

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