Dandelion

Doing crystal was fun.

You could stay up for days at a time, convince yourself you were having deeply intellectual conversations, rapidly lose weight, fool yourself you were getting shit done, drink like a sponge and lie and steal with remarkable success. Oh, and the lists were legendary.

Being “spun” was exciting. The sense of sheer and absolute power, numbness and the ultra sensitivity that first “bump” evoked was outrageous in every sense of the word. The world was, for a moment, perfectly still and finally, everything was a possibility. What I loved most about being “tweaked” was that everyone around me knew, that it was obvious that I was 'on something'.

The insipid chatting, the surreal places you’d end up, the hours you didn’t keep and the people you slept with when you were high. Three in the morning was my afternoon. I loved being awake when the sun rose but not for it’s serenity and color but because I had defied the laws of my anatomy, pushing myself to the edge, burning the candle until there was nothing left of me but the wick. I didn’t know who or what I was and wanted to die. I thought I’d do speed, starve myself, drown myself with liquor and, eventually, merge with the infinite. I wanted to hit “rock” bottom and I thought methamphetamine was the the most punk rock way to do it.

There’s nothing interesting about being strung out. Anyone who was remarkable did it years ago to much more theatrical and iconic effect. I just wanted to be liked and I was… I think… but back then it was for all of the wrong reasons.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

In the ‘90’s it was hip to do “rails” with close and not- so- close friends- at parties, bars- during the Simpsons- whenever and wherever. Crank lasted way longer than blow so, in effect, everyday was the weekend. I spent a lot of time walking around, trying to be exhausted enough to sleep but mostly searching for a place to rest, being essentially homeless. I carried a change of clothing (including shoes, and inexplicably, moisturizer) in my bag, always ready to crash a party and pick up stakes, of which I had none. I deliberately drove my friends away with blackouts or ‘episodes’, of which I remembered little. For the most part folks dug having me around. I wasn’t the life of the party- I was the party.

I had this hidden place in Golden Gate Park where I would stow stuff I needed like Crest, Band-Aids and small testers of cologne but I never went to a shelter or told anyone how I lived. In the morning I would go to the library, brush my teeth, wash my face, change clothes, look at want-ads (for jobs I was in no shape to apply for) devour back issues of Vanity Fair and later, in Washington Square Park, I’d sob puddles of tears, glistening down my hollow cheeks. I maintained this charade for months, sleeping in abandoned cars, riding the bus, living on Jim Beam, cigarettes, bagels, Mountain Dew and candy bars. I had family and friends in the area ( my Mom lived on Nob Hill!) yet I still felt like I had nowhere to go.

During that time I thought a great deal about theology, creationism, the Big Bang theory, reincarnation, cremation, and what I thought must surely have been the cirrhosis of my liver and tooth decay. I found the concept of manipulating my own mortality fascinating. I’d attempted suicide once when I was sixteen by swallowing a liter of SA8, a laundry detergent and an Amway product. I took myself so seriously then. Pretty pathetic, really.

I began volunteering with a non-profit HIV services organization in 1996 after eleven people I knew died. I volunteered at the Names Project, Community Thrift Store and finally the AIDSRide and began to sense the power in doing good and the presence of something greater than me and it wasn’t powder or partying anymore. Maybe it was God or the universe. I don’t know. A sense of purpose and direction began to form in my life. I learned to smile again somehow and the right people noticed. I realized that the only thing that made me feel whole was doing for others and that is when I decided to quit crank for good. This is also when my crackbuddy, Roy and I clashed.

My friend, Monique, had a plan for me to ship out with her to Southern California to do an interior installation job for a company affiliated with Urban Outfitters. Anyway, it was great money, they put you up in a semi- fancy apartment (unfortunately in Long Beach, where I got a jaywalking ticket) where you lived dorm- style with other creatives and worked everyday until the job was done. It was just what I needed.

Shortly before I escaped to Santa Monica, I bunked with the newly single Roy and had agreed to pay a portion of his rent in Hayes Valley. I needed to dry out- to detox from the months of drugging- with my friends in Oakland. This was my chance to make something of my lame existence and I wasn’t going to screw it up. So I gave Roy a couple hundred dollars (at that point I was working) and left for a long weekend with my friends Renne and Devin, seemingly the only stable people I had in my life then. For a few days we played Scrabble, went shopping, ate cheeseburgers and watched movies, and, when no one was around, I cried. It was the calmest I had felt in months and I was thankful to have them in my life.

When I returned to the city from the East Bay, I checked my voicemail to find eight successively irate messages from my Mom on my service. She was pleading with me to call her, that she was told something terrible had happened to me and that she needed desperately to reach me. I finally called her and she was relieved to learn I was alive but still pissed!

The story goes:

The night I gave Roy the rent money, he went out and got a speedball and began three straight days of serious partying. He literally went nuts and was so paranoid that he’d convinced himself that I was being held at gunpoint on the roof of my mother’s Nob Hill apartment. I told him I was going to Oakland to chill out but he’d forgotten and apparently not knowing where I was had freaked him out.

I had never known Roy to shoot up let alone do smack but when I told this story to some other folks they were not surprised but shocked- that I was so naive- that I hadn’t seen this coming. Roy didn’t drink or at least I’d never seen him do so which I thought was the coolest! Sharp, observant and protective I always thought of Roy as strong; infallible.

The cops told my Mom that they had received calls from payphones every 20 minutes from Roy as he made his way to Stockton Street where my Mom lived across from the world- class Ritz Carlton Hotel. With her fabulous apartment (with views of the Transamerica Building, Coit Tower and the newly built Marriott clearly visible from her living room) there was scarcely a reason for her to leave home. Mom was never one for visitors and if you just dropped by without calling there was no way she would buzz you up.

Like most Taureans (and like Roy) she was big on protocol and preparation when it came to guests and I wondered why there wasn’t a doorman in her building. I always felt like a prole squatting at her place, when I got up enough nerve to call her, desperate for a place to stay and a bite to eat.

After an hour of increasingly manic and frightening calls to the police, Roy arrived at her place and begged to be let in. I don’t know WHAT he told her but she buzzed him up and served him tea and they smoked a jay because he seemed rattled. Roy then left for God knows where and my Mom made the first of the calls she made to try to find me and share his story which must have been a doozy.

What we didn’t know was that the Rolling Stones AND President Clinton were both shacked up at the posh hotel across the street. There were battalions of Secret Service, cop cars, limousines and armed gunmen on three sides of Mom’s place. Heads of state and movie stars were common on her block but Clinton and the Stones made it a breeding ground for groupies and paparazzi.

It was supposed to be a secret that Clinton was there but Keith Richards was a bigger draw than Dollar Bill so there were fans lumbering around hoping for a glance at the fossil himself. Naturally when the SFPD heard that someone was being held at gunpoint on the roof across the street from where the president was staying, the S.W.A.T. team stormed my Mom’s apartment looking for Uzis and closed circuit tv and nearly gave my very private, somewhat fragile Mom a coronary! They found nothing of the sort but questioned her for an hour while they literally scaled the building. Mom was pretty cool about it but I was sorrier than I had ever been about anything and now I was royally pissed off at Roy.

I found Roy after a day of searching at his old haunts (dealers, thrift and record stores) on the psych ward of SF General Hospital. He looked horrible, was mildly sedated and had obviously been crying. Roy was my best friend but what he did or rather what I’d allowed to happen to us was the last straw for me. It was okay to get fucked up when we were together but to involve my mother in crackhead bullshit like that was for me unforgivable. I know now that Mom was a comfort to him and if only for a moment the mother he never had and maybe he felt deserted. I should have supported him when he needed me most. But I didn’t need him the way that he needed me.

I don’t know what happened to Roy, what became of his life or if he’s still drawing breath but I think of us as dandelion. Lonesome dandelion on a hill, the last ones left standing after a cruel summer in San Francisco. Instead of making a wish and blowing it out you let it sway in the breeze.

Like wildflowers and former lovers.