The Book of Drugs_ A Memoir - Mike Doughty [59]
At some point I went to bed; when I came to, I found the laptop was still open. The top window said:
They: “i luv ur band :)”
Me: Uwabt u ciykde gi tge8u stib=re abd tgeb u;d byt nysekgf a e3kuidiys 370n 9 rd9rr33.
They: “ru ok?”
Me: Yteah if ciyrse ium pl. ehjsy yfp upi yjoml. o, kidy fine.
They: “hello?”
Me: nothing
They: “hey doughty ru ok? hello?”
Stanley Ray’s mother was ill. He seemed tranquil. “When my mom dies, I don’t want anybody to call me,” he said. “I don’t want anybody to make a big deal about it at all.”
A week after she passed, he was too angry to look me in the eye. “I can’t believe you didn’t call after my mom died, that’s really fucked up, you don’t care about anybody, there’s something really wrong with you,” he said.
I met a sensationally gorgeous girl in Dallas, on a radio show. She had wandered backstage without intending to; the security let her through because she was so beautiful they figured she must belong with the rock stars. She said she was going down to Jamaica on vacation in a week, did I want to go? Pretty good for a first date. I said yes.
I stayed at a rundown hotel down the beach, but I bribed a uniformed guy with a nightstick to gain my way into her all-inclusive resort, drank the watered-down beer they offered, and tried to get her high. She refused the joint, so I smoked the whole thing, and wastedly tried to make out with her as we floated in the placid water. She rebuffed me, but I kept coming on. When you invite somebody down to a tropical island for a vacation with you, you must know you’re going to fuck them, but this girl had worked out, in her mind, some accelerated, but quite proper, version of a three-dates-before-sex schedule.
That same day, I had her naked in her room, and I asked her to go down on me. She leaped up, yelling, told me she barely knew me, and get out.
There was a guy who worked at my hotel—in no clearly defined position—named Eustace. He had a fishing boat bobbing out in the water by the hotel painted with the name THE AMAZING EUSTACE. He sold me some coke, and some weed, and some stuff he called opium, but which was black tar heroin. I asked him for some aluminum foil so I could smoke it, but he had no idea what I was talking about, so I rolled it up into a joint, which will do you little good with black tar heroin. I smoked it anyway, crestfallen, because there was no way I was going to wait until I could get to a store and get some foil.
I did coke until the morning, then passed out, woke up near dusk, and bought some more coke from Eustace. I was chatting with him in my room, tapping out a pile of powder, when the door opened and the Texas girl came in. She was penitent; she smiled sweetly at me. She sat on the bed. I offered her a line, and she refused, so I sat there sniffing coke as Eustace made polite conversation with her. Finally, half an hour later, she got up to leave. She paused before walking out the door, but I didn’t follow her. It wasn’t that her earlier rejection had so humiliated me; it was that I had a pile of cocaine and what I wanted to do was sit there in my room all night and sniff cocaine.
“Why did you let her leave?!” asked Eustace, shocked.
I was there for a week, doing coke, smoking weed, occasionally going down to the beach and drinking, but never going into the water. I may as well have been in St. Louis.
One night I couldn’t find Eustace; I went out to the beach looking for drugs. This haggard guy behind a palm tree hissed, “Coke! Coke!” He whipped out a bag and named a price. I was wasted, trying to look at the bag and maybe negotiate, but he hissed, “Quick! Now! The cops are coming! I can hear them!” I gave him the dough, he disappeared in the trees, and I found myself holding a baggie of laundry detergent.
The next day I saw Eustace and recounted the tale jovially, thinking I’d get a laugh out of him, but he turned to me, fuming, “Why didn’t you come to me?! I have to feed me pickney!”
Years later I came back, sober. I went to a twelve-step meeting; it was in a church across