Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [50]
By the time I left the hospital, though, cocaine seemed to be everywhere. In fact, I rarely had to seek it out. It came looking for me. I found that plenty of people coming to the restaurant were into cocaine. In fact, every so often I found that some regular customers would offer to tip me, not in cash, but in cocaine. At the end of the meal, the happy customers would simply ask me to share some lines with them.
At first I was cautious. It was a pretty public place, after all, just down the road from my parents’ home. But gradually, as time went by and no one tried to stop us, I became more and more relaxed. Just as I had begun to recognize the good cash tippers, so too I began to know who did coke and who didn't. There seemed to be so many who did! First it was an occasional line just for fun. Then it became a daily event. Then gradually cocaine became a regular part of my life.
Soon I began to get friendly with the people I knew who did the drug. Often I would see a big-time drug dealer, a man I knew had been in and out of jail for dealing drugs, sitting at the bar. Often he'd call me over from across the bar and invite me to do some lines in the bathroom. I liked it when people shared. It was cheaper and easier than getting cash. When a customer tipped in cash, I just mentally calculated it for my cocaine fund. When one passed me a quarter gram, however, it was much more valuable. I got to do more of the stuff, and I got to do it right away.
All I was trying to do was to feel better. Those medications they gave me in the hospital were useless. I took them because people told me they would make me better. But lots of times I didn't know why I bothered. The only thing those fistfuls of stupid pills did was make me feel fuzzy and disoriented, as if I were at the bottom of a swimming pool. And the Voices still raged away at me, mocking the drugs, the doctors and me.
Cocaine, on the other hand, helped me ignore the Voices. For as long as it lasted, cocaine made me feel alive. It made my senses feel sharp and clear again. When I did a line, I felt good, I felt real, I felt vital in a way I hadn't since long before the Voices entered my life. Cocaine directed my attention outside of myself. As long as I was high, I had enough strength to ignore those Voices calling me back into their world.
So for a while I found the relief I wanted. When the crash came as it always did, I went back for more. When the crashes came closer together, the search for relief began to consume more of my time and my life. Before too long, the search for cocaine— and of ways of getting it—began to be the single-minded focus of my existence.
Eventually, it was cocaine that brought me to Raymond. Then Raymond brought me cocaine. Then Raymond and cocaine became so intertwined with each other that I could barely tell them apart, and I couldn't do without either one of them.
I met Raymond through one of my fellow waitresses who lived in his building. Nicole and I had become friendly, and liked to hang out with each other. Raymond was her friend. At first I would go over to see Nicole. We would talk, listen to music, and I would watch her put on her globs of makeup. And then we would both go down to see Raymond. Raymond always had cocaine. If he didn't, he knew where to get it.
For a long time, we had a friendly threesome. Nicole and Raymond and I would all get high together. But as time went by, I slowly found myself bypassing Nicole and going straight to visit Raymond.
Like drugs and music, Raymond took me away, for a little while, from all the pain. For before too long, he fell in love with me. And I guess I fell in love with him. He wasn't exactly the kind of guy my parents would have picked out for me. But I liked him. He was cute, a black man with light brown skin the color of chocolate milk. He was over six feet tall and had a smile that would melt a brick. He had a great in-shape body, not rippled and bulging like a bodybuilder,