Smoking Crack and Shooting Dope

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After graduating high school, I didn’t know what to do with my life. I didn’t get good enough grades to go to a four-year college, I didn’t want to join the armed forces and the job market was shot. I worked part-time as a lifeguard at a local pool but ten hours a week wasn’t’ enough to cut it. I graduated high school in the spring of 2009, in the middle of one of the worse economic downturns the United States has ever seen.

I decided community college was the path I would take. Get the gen-eds’ out of the way then two or three years down the road figure out what the hell I would do with my life. And to be honest, I had no fucking clue what I wanted to do.

I was still immature at that age. Spent most of my free time at drinking with my best friend Worm at this dad’s house. Worm’s dad was a bad alcoholic and would let us drink and party with him. It was a fun time. Never a dull moment. Never a sober one either.

When I wasn’t hanging out with Worm I was either partying with other people or pissing my parents off. I had a rebellious spirit at that age and my parents didn’t take kindly to that. In general, three thirds of my free time were spent in Worm’s room drinking.

Worm’s room was dingy. It was a small room with a bed, a computer and a couple of chairs. There was a bookshelf on the wall filled with Stephen King books and a few movies. Filled ash trays lined the computer desk along with empty bottles of malt liquor and the occasional Busch Light his dad left. Bottles of piss were shoved under the bed and a pile of dirty clothes were stacked at the end of the bed. Empty packs of cigarettes were thrown on the floor.

Worm and I would spend our free time drinking malt liquor, smoking weed and fucking around on the internet. When the weather was nice we would have a fire and party outside. There was always music playing in the background. When I decided it was time to pass out I would sleep in Worm’s bed. Worm would stay up due to his insomnia and sleep when I was at community college. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and he would be so far gone listening to music or watching a movie. It was crazy to me how little he slept.

We were both single at the time and spent a lot of time messaging random chicks on the internet. Most of the time I think they thought we were weird but occasionally some would want to meet up with us. Both Worm and I were broke at the time so we couldn’t take girls on nice dates or anything like that. Instead we just took them back to Worm’s room to hang out.

Thinking about that in hindsight, taking nice girls back to Worm’s room was probably the wrong move. If I was in their place I don’t think I would have been too impressed given the empty beer cans, 666 marks etched everywhere, and ash trays stuffed with cheap cigarettes. Though, we did hide the piss bottles.

Most of the time when we brought chicks back to Worm’s room, we would smoke weed then awkwardly try to make conversations. Ninety percent of the time we wouldn’t hear from them again.

One night we were scrolling through Myspace and found a chick named Nancy. Nancy was a punk rock chick and listened to the same music we did. I decided to reach out the her and see if she wanted to chill. She responded back quickly telling me she was at a music club in a town 45 minutes away. She told us she was bored and if we came to pick her up she would chill with us.

We decided to make the drive to pick Nancy up. Back then gas prices were around $4.20/gallon and working ten hours a week barley paid for my gas, let alone anything else I wanted to do. Worm didn’t have a job and resorted to pawning random stuff in his room to buy weed. This was an expensive trip for two broke kids.

After hitting a bong, we took a drive out of nowhere town to another nowhere town to meet up with a pretty girl. We blasted Rancid and sung along to “California Sun”. Eventually we made it to the music club. I texted Nancy and she told me she will be out in ten minutes. Worm and I decided to smoke a cigarette and wait outside of the car.

When the cigarette was halfway done Nancy came out of the club. Nancy was short with jet black hair. She was wearing black tights, a black Leftover Crack hoodie and had tattoos all over her body. Her eyes stood out to me as unusually big and blue. She probably weighted around 100 pounds and was half my height.

Nancy isn’t the kind of girl you bring home to your parents for dinner. I could tell that about her the first time I met her. She seemed sketchy. I guess anyone who listened to Leftover Crack and had tattoos on their neck were sketchy, including myself and Worm. When she talked to us the first time she sounded high. Had a slow way of talking where words were slurred. When you looked into her eyes a blank cold soul looked back at you. Later I found out she was loaded on Xanax and a handful of other pills.

Nancy asked us if her 14-year-old cousin could hitch a ride back with her and chill with us for a while. I told her that is fine, and she went back into the club to grab her. We then headed back to Worm’s place to chill.

On the ride home Nancy told us that Rancid was her favorite band and she was glad we were listening to them. Worm lit up a joint and we smoked it. Nancy and her cousin didn’t smoke with us. Ten miles from Worm’s house we got pulled over for running a red light. “Shit”, I thought. I was certain we were fucked. We had just smoked a joint 30 minutes ago, and I was freaking out. Nancy was also loaded given the way she talked. She told us she was high on Xanax and some other pills when the cop was checking out my license plate. Luckily the lady cop told us to be more careful with our driving and let us go.

I thought Nancy could have been a decent chick to go on a date or two with, but I found out quickly that I didn’t want to mess around with her. After we got back to Worm’s room she started talking about all these dudes she was fucking at the same time and the drugs her brother was doing. We asked her if we could film her brother shooting heroin and she laughed saying she would have to ask him.

After that night Worm told me we had to be careful around this chick. I agreed with him. She is the type of girl the law follows, and you would catch something from. We hung out with her a couple more times then stopped talking to her after her boyfriend got pissed she was hanging out with us.


It had been around 6-7 months since the last time I talked to Nancy. It was the summer of 2010. Haiti was just devasted with a massive earthquake the previous winter and in 11 days President Obama would declare an end to combat operations in Iraq. I still spent the majority of my free-time with Worm. In the fall I would meet my future wife at community college. My life would be forever changed.

I was sitting in my room and got a ping on my Facebook from Nancy. Myspace was officially dead, and society transformed into the new social media dimension. She posted on my wall asking how I was doing.

I told her I was good and asked her how she was. She told me that she started to do heroin but was clean for now. I knew her older brother was a junkie and wasn’t too surprised that she followed his path. She then told me she broke up with her boyfriend and that I should come hang out with her and her brother at a summer festival the city puts on every year. It was my birthday and I wanted to get drunk, so I decided to go.

I told my parents I was going to stay at Worm’s house that night. For some reason they never cared that I stayed there even though they knew his dad was a bad drunk and it was a poor environment for a kid with angst. But I’m not complaining, it gave me more of an opportunity to get fucked up.

At the summer festival I wore plaid yellow and red pants a punk kid who listened to “The Causalities” would wear. One leg of the pants was yellow and the other was red. I donned a “Leftover Crack” shirt that said, “Kill Cops”. I just caught a misdemeanor in the spring and had to serve a day in jail in a few days. I looked and acted like I was a pre-convict with no future. I was ready to get fucked up and forget about my troubles with other punk rock kids.

I met Nancy and her brother on a bridge over the river. The bridge was cloaked in trees that made it look like a tunnel into a different world. The river was flowing from rains that summer and it was around 90 degrees out. Nancy was holding hands with a punk rock dude I skated with a couple of times. I knew he did hard drugs and was certain Nancy was either back on them or will be back on them soon.

Nancy’s brother, Sid, was as short and skinny as Nancy. He had a cut-off t-shirt showing off his full sleeves, tattoos on his neck and a buzz-cut hair cut with an 8-10-inch rat tail. Sid and I instantly hit it off and became friends. We walked to the nearest liquor store and Sid bought some 40s for us. I wasn’t 21 at the time and still needed someone to buy me booze.

We spent the rest of the night drinking beers on the bridge and talking about music we liked. After the festival was over we walked back to Sid and Nancy’s parents house to crash. I was drunk off my ass walking back, and cops were all over the place. We took a back way to their home, so we didn’t get stopped by the cops. If they stopped us, I would have gone to jail given my age and due to the fact, I was on probation.

When we got back to Sid and Nancy’s place we went to their basement where Sid sleeps. Nancy and her boyfriend followed us but left after her boyfriend started to get dope sick. I passed out a few hours later.

A few days later Worm and I were hanging out looking for someone to buy us beer. Worm’s dad was out of town and the fridge was empty. I told Worm we could see if Nancy’s brother would buy us some beer. Worm hadn’t met Sid yet and I only hung out with him on the bridge during the summer festival.

I texted Sid and he told us he would buy us beer only if I would drive him to the city to pick up drugs. Worm and I didn’t think twice. We thought driving to the city to pick up hard drugs would be an adventure and something new to experience. We were adrenaline junkies looking for the next journey and decided to get some hard drugs.

We picked up Sid and Nancy at their parents’ house. Sid and Nancy were ecstatic and ready to get loaded. They planned to pick up some heroin and crack with the forty bucks they had. We blasted punk rock on my shitty stereo on the way to the city.

Our first stop was to pick up heroin. We picked it up in one of the worst areas in the city. This was my first time driving through the hood.

The house we stopped at was run down. Siding was falling off the house. Rusted out cars lined the driveway. Beer cans covered the stone porch. A guy was sitting on the lawn in a long-chair smoking a cigarette. He looked like he was about to pass out, holding the cigarette to his lips for dear life. You could tell he was a seasoned junkie.

Sid began telling Nancy he didn’t want to go grab the heroin. He said the black guys in there made fun of him for his hair and tight pants and made him feel uncomfortable. Nancy said she would grab the heroin.

It seemed like Nancy took forever. I was paranoid and kept checking the rearview mirrors to look for cops. I started to feel like this was a bad idea but kept my cool in front of everyone.

Eventually Nancy walked out the door. After she got in the car she told us the guy selling her the heroin told her to come into the bathroom to get it. She followed him, and he pulled out his dick telling her to suck it. She said she grabbed the heroin and walked out. Sid got upset and told her he didn’t like her going in there. I thought Sid was a coward for putting his little sister in that situation.

Before grabbing the crack, we headed to a McDonalds, so they could shoot it up. I asked them if they could wait to get home to do it, but they refused. When we got to the McDonalds Worm and I kept lookout while they prepared to shoot up.

To prepare the heroin Sid pulled out a spoon and put the heroin on it with some water and a piece of a cotton ball. Nancy pulled the needles out of her bra where she kept them for safekeeping. After sucking the heroin up in the needles, they tied their arms off with the safety belts in my car.

Worm and I both watched with fascination. I think they both thought it was weird how interested we were in watching them shoot up. To Worm and I, it was a new experience, a different type of adventure. It was exciting.

Immediately after they shot up they changed. Became a type of zombie with slurred speech and eyes that looked like they were falling asleep. Nancy got way higher than Sid. I could barely understand what she was talking about. She wined and bitched about life. Sid was still coherent and was ready to buy crack.

Buying crack was a better setup than the heroin. To get crack you drove your car into a car wash the dealers owned. You would then give the dealers your money and they would give you the address of where to meet them in ten minutes. We met the dealers guy in a sketchy van down an alley. Sid went out and grabbed the crack. Before we knew it, we were back on the highway.

After getting off the highway Sid and Nancy lit up a crack rock at a red light. Crack smoked filled the car. I think Worm and I got a contact high, but it could have been all psychological. After they were done smoking crack a cop pulled up next to us at the red light. My knuckles turned white gripping the steering wheel. When the red light turned green the cop went one way and I went the other way. A breeze of relief ran through me.

Eventually we made it back to the nowhere town in nowhere land. Sid bought Worm and I some beer and we dropped Sid and Nancy back off at their home. It was quite the adventure to get the few beers we could afford. Adrenaline ran through our blood the rest of the night.

I haven’t talked to Sid or Nancy in years. The last time I checked Sid was clean and has a kid. Nancy is in and out of jail and hops from shitty boyfriend to shitty boyfriend. Nancy is still a junkie and will likely die one.

A very short time in my life was spent with Sid and Nancy. I created some interesting stories with them that I will likely write about in the future. Feel free to follow “Ad-Venturing” to keep up with my writing.

Until next time,

The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man


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