The first time I did angel dust steam came off my piss, it was so hot on its way out I made sure to not let any drops get on my skin to keep from getting burnt. I bounced up and down on the toilet to air dry before wiping, afraid of some soaking through the tissue. The doorknob felt like it bent to my hand, which had been numb for a few minutes. Blamed that on my chemical piss. Didn’t bother with the mirror. No one in my family bothered with mirrors when high. Some second cousin no one cares about gave himself schizophrenia by staring at his reflection on acid, he’s been in an institution for forty years now. My dad still thumbtacks a towel over his bathroom mirror before smoking anything. But in my apartment the night I did dust I did nothing to my mirror. Even sober I don’t use it.
It may not be fair to say this was the first time I used dust, but it’s the first time I knew that’s what I was taking. On technicality this would be my third time. The first two were when I took stuff laced with it. Went for molly walked out with PCP. And maybe some will call bullshit or say dust is too rare to take it accidentally. But they didn’t grow up in Long Beach and didn’t date Marco so they wouldn’t know how un-rare dust is ‘round here. Those two times were in high school when my cheeks bounced with baby fat. Stayed home from school a couple days picking at my arms like a cuticle. Couldn’t make room to do anything but dig into myself with old tweezers.
So Marco, the boy who barely made it through the ninth grade and then dropped out to work as a part time mechanic’s assistant and get his GED ten years later. He sold drugs, mostly to me and every once in a while to rich kids in California Heights. We met when he was maybe nineteen and I was sixteen. He used to say the love of his life was a lighter, the lucky white one he carried in his pocket but never used. As long as he never used it, he said, he’d never die. We were hooked together, mostly on unlaced molly, I liked it’s high best. The heightened senses. Liked it wasn’t my asscheeks crushing the couch cushions but the cushions breathing in my asscheeks. Our dates without Molly were usually smoking weed on the old lawn furniture in my backyard then fucking behind the shed.
There were times Marco cared for my body in a way I never had. Like when I took the laced stuff he spent the come down rubbing neosporin on the bloody spots of tweezed skin. Sometimes in the summer he’d check my scalp just in case any freckles had turned to cancer. When we broke up he sent me a list of other dealers.
From that list I found Owen, hard stuff for cheap ‘cause I knew Marco who he owed a few favors. Owen sold me a cigarette rolled with dust. That first night with the hot piss I listened to music feeling like I could anticipate each beat. My mind moved the hands of the DJs on my playlist.
PCP is known as an all in one type of high. A hallucinogen a sedative and a sometimes upper. It’s crammed. Stuffed. Chocked full.
When it wasn’t again like the first time, nothing is, I was forgiving. Figured dust could have an off night every once in a while, why not give it some grace. Third time felt alright, smoked one of Owen’s cigarettes out back of an old dive bar while my friends sang along to Johnny Cash inside. Told myself the next time would be Godlike. Fourth time started to get a little frustrated, spent it dreaming of the fifth.
And the fifth wasn’t bad. More like the first. Three hits and down I went. Into the floor. Puddled and leaking through the downstairs neighbor’s ceiling. All spread out I started to hear the house music in my own head, which I thought was cool. Cutting out the bluetooth middleman, straight from the source. Got solid long enough to text Marco and Owen both in one groupchat. Sent them a picture of water in a cup. Said me. Marco didn’t reply to the picture but texted me alone asking what I was up to. Replied on dust and spitting. Which I was. Onto the floor and on the coffee table. Made little pools. A little later he asked why spitting. Told him so I could be in more than one place at once. He sent back a thumbs up.
In the morning Owen texted me alone that the number he gave me wasn’t for personal use. Said I’d have the cash for the sixth time in a week. Plugs are touchy, stick up their ass is a mile long as my aunt used to say when she told her black tar stories.
The sixth time was fine, nothing to write home about. Seventh was with friends on the peninsula, eighth was a few months later alone. And that time I had no one to call, but did lay on the floor listening to the wood vibrate from my speaker. House music again. Sucker for sounds. I liked to close my eyes on dust, play dead to it. It manhandles some, brings the spins.
Picked at my bikini lines with tweezers the morning after the eighth time. Managed to send a picture of the soon to be scabs to Marco. Who promptly asked what the fuck? I said making a tic tac toe board on my pussy which made him laugh. Even if he didn’t want to admit it did.
In chicken scratch I posted a to-do list on my fridge. First up was to stop calling out sick to work and working when you’re sick. Next was to ask Owen how long his friend of a friend discount dust would last. Third was to stop texting Marco so much.
Marco and I broke a year after I graduated high school, we parted ways rather kindly, at least I thought so. No slashed tires and I took his list of replacement plugs gratefully. A few months ago his mom went to hospice and as he sorted through her stuff he found a note I wrote him when we first met. All it said was that I’d have money by Tuesday and at the bottom of the page I asked him not to forget me. He sent me the picture along with a reminder that he never did.
We started texting anything we thought was funny, mostly graffiti of dicks or garbage on the shore of the peninsula. Over the last week I was sending him pictures of street crap a few times a day. He’d answer with hardly any words, but he’d still always answer which I had come to depend on. Especially when doing dust.
The ninth and tenth times I did dust were with friends, ones who hadn’t known Marco and wanted to know Owen. Once they heard I got a discount they thought I could get them one. Told them he wasn’t really looking for new customers right now. Which Owen would be pissed about if he knew. But I couldn’t help it, he was my parting gift from Marco not theirs.
Eleventh was alone, after showering off the smell of housemade tzatziki and fried halloumi, counting tips to string together enough cash for the twelfth time. Took a long walk letting the lights blur. They two stepped to the beat of the house music played by my brain.
Back at my place I tried not to text Marco, not hard as the music was too loud to think anyway. The longer I laid down on the floor the further I felt I got from the speaker in my head, after an hour it started to sound muffled. Each seam of the rug under me became part of my skin. I texted him a picture of the pattern.
Some come downs were better than others, this one was bad. Every car’s honk or backfire, no matter how far from my window, sounded like they were bullets shot a foot from my window.The sound of my footsteps was loud enough to make me flinch.
Owen laid it on thick when he raised his prices. Telling me he did what he had to do and now if I wanted to cop I would have to pay like everyone else. As he did so he lifted his shirt to show me the pistol poking out of his jeans. Only he wasn’t wearing a belt so the gun had to be fished out from his crotch. Red faced he left and I texted Marco asking if he told Owen to charge me in full.
The twelfth time cost a couple of months worth of tips. Well spent. Alone I laid naked on my couch feeling the spins, held the cushions like handlebars. White knuckle grip to avoid falling off. Later in the bathroom, eyes anywhere but the mirror, my piss was ice. Texted Marco a picture of my lower stomach and said it was frozen in there. He replied with a thumbs down and nothing else.
