first impressions

there was a beginning to all of this.  like most stories on the subject, it starts when i was a bit younger.
It was the last few days of summer, and school had already fired it's warning shot across the bow...
At this age, we clung to the daylight like our last breaths before drowning in the dismal abyss.  Every firefly, bead of sweat, and scraped knee were cherished like we were being shipped out to war at the ripe old age of 12.
The last of my innocent days...metaphorically speaking...i was no ideal child.  i'd already had an arson charge the previous summer for turning the outhouse at the park into an escape-pod-sized-defecation-bomb during a baseball game, setting the nearby tree up in flames, and splinters of wood from the surrounding enclosure violently hurled into the playground like the biggest pipebomb you've ever seen.  i didn't stick around long enough to see who got hurt.

On Friday we had an hour and a half of school.  So that we could find the classroom we were assigned to, and get our curriculum, paperwork, blah blah blah...needless to say, those 90 minutes left the impending-doom cloud looming over head for the last 2 free days of summer.
I knew not a SINGLE person in my class this year.  So during the "oh my god" orgy of bffs cluster-fucking it's way around the classroom [from new hair-do, to summer tan, to "OMGGGG....lip piercing!!!! i didn't know you were so cool!"]
**which brings up a side note - how any human being who went through YEARS of schooling to be a teacher in his/her field of choosing, doesn't start popping a .357 round into the mouths of teenage students so vigorously yelping about the assanine shit that makes up the "rich" fabric of their lives............i do not know.

i sat and thought to myself, rarely glancing about the room.

After the orgy was over, and we were free to enjoy our last - now tainted - days of summer, we were all set loose in the halls.  like a pack of fucking dogs.  some limping, some yapping, but mostly just fucking...the little dogs waiting for a tossout from the cool ones.  fucking disgusting.
Luckily in the wings i spotted a friend.  Andy
Andy was cool.  Not to everyone else, but cool as shit to me.  He was new last year, and we became quick friends over our love for hockey, and doing all around stupid shit. Paintball, skateboarding, trying to jump bmx bikes over his moms cars...you name it, we'd try it AT LEAST once.
I shuffled through the mob to Andy, and he introduced me to 2 friends of his Charlie and John.  Funniest 2 kids on the planet i swear to God.  Nice too.  I'd never met these people before in my life, but i could tell they'd never make fun of me for the music i liked, the clothes i wore, or how i talked.  John and Charlie said they were going to their friend John's house tomorrow night to get high and drunk, have a bonfire, and most importantly, the carnival was in town this weekend, and John lived right across the street from it.

I told 'em i'd think about it, and went home for the day, played street hockey with the neighbors, and contemplated whether or not to make an appearance at John's house tomorrow.


The next evening i called Andy to see if he was going over to the carnival [my chicken shit way of asking him to go to John's with me] and he said he'd meet me over there later.  So i hopped on my bike and headed over to John's house...There were kids EVERYWHERE...it was like every kid in town had converged on this one block of over-priced food, and rigged-games.  Luckily i showed up and Charlie and John were already there...sitting on a park bench they stole and put under John's carport, eating handfuls of trix cereal from the box.  We sat there for a while just watching dusk slowly creep over John's street, but with darkness came no cold...just hot, sticky, and humid night. A few more people showed up and John ran inside to grab his grab bag-o-drugs.  I'd never seen anything before, and this duffel bag he brought out looked like the EMT survival kit.  Every color and shape of pill i could imagine, weed, pipes, little bags with smiley faces all over em full of powders i'd never seen.  My eyes would've lit up like fucking christmas had i known what half the shit was.
So John packs a bowl [also new to me...blown glass] and starts passing it around...everyone knew it was my first time, but no one made fun of me for being the new guy.  and i liked that.

So i guess this is where i'm supposed to convey the magnitude of "my first hit", and say something like "this fortuitous moment changed the landscape of my life....forever..."  but really, that's all bullshit.  We were all curled up in this grassy ditch on the side of John's house, and I must've hit that bowl a fucking dozen times and felt NOTHING...it tasted different than the cigarettes we'd steal from the gas station. [at this point in time, they weren't behind the counter yet]  John packed me another bowl, all for myself...and i smoked right through that one too.
Everyone stared at me in disbelief and i looked at them like they were fucking crazy..."what the hell" i thought...THIS is what i've been missing.
So, since no one else wanted to waste weed on the new kid who apparently was immune to it, we started walking over to the carnival....well, to say WE started walking is a bit of an overstatement.
Everyone stood up and began walking down the sidewalk, i just stood up and stood.  I couldn't fucking believe it.  Whatever it was that i felt, i wanted more...MUCH more.  Hot blood slowly making it's way from my shoulders to my feet.  The sun was almost down, but everything was warm...fucking bliss, that's what it was.
So for the first time, i was high out of my goddamn mind - and wandering around this carnival with 4 or 5 other guys, just staring at the lights, going in and out of the funhouse, laughing my ass off, touching shit just because it felt good.  It was like everything was brand new again...and i never once thought about what had been on my mind since the beginning of summer...the END of summer.  Perfect, i thought.

We quickly realized that the carnival was not as fun as John's vacant - house just hundreds of feet away, and made our way back.  Sitting in the screened in porch off the back of John's house, the bowl was passed again, and a box of 40's was placed in the middle of the table.  Someone tossed me one, so i cracked it open and started sipping on it like everyone else.  I'd had the ends of dad's beers many times, but i never liked it as much as this stuff...or was i just high?  Lord knows i didn't care, and i downed 2 of em before John returned with the duffel bag.
THIS, was that fortuitous moment...the weed was goofy, the malt liquor was just a magnifier for the weed [although trying to play basketball was more fun than ever] but this shit was what I wanted more of.  John opened up dozens of the orange childproof medication bottles on the table and combined what was left of the unused-prescriptions.  ALL vicodin and oxy.
Since i was the new kid, [and they were all quite impressed i was ingesting as much as i did] he smashed up 2 pills into this neat little pile, handed it to me on a tray, and then put 3 more pills in my other hand.
"put those 2 up your nose, and those 3 down your throat" he said smiling.  I looked at him, looked at everyone else around me, all smiling like we were best friends.  And so far this had been the best night of my life, so i put the straw down in the pile, exhaled as hard as i could, and breathed in until all the powder was gone.  Being brand new to snorting drugs up my nose, i got that taste in the back of my throat [the one i'd grow to love...i can still taste it every now and then] and it took a few minutes for my sinuses to re-equalize, but my God i didn't care.  I Looked down at my hand and tossed the remaining 3 pills into the back of my mouth and washed em down with a sip off of Charlie's beer.
I don't remember a word of conversation, but i do remember feeling hot as hell, and moving from the screened-in-porch to somewhere in the middle of the yard, laying down and staring at the slightly orange sky for a minute, while the late summer crickets cheered the moon into the sky.

When i woke up, i had this burning, warm sensation on my forhead, and immediately opened my eyes to a blazing fire.  I rolled back in the grass and sat up on my knees.  I took a quick, very stoned glance around me and abruptly noticed that i was in the middle of something very different, and completely foreign to me.
For starters, it was dark out...and when i fell asleep the sun was still up.  There was a raging bonfire erected in the middle of the backyard, with dozens of people running around it, and talking to eachother.  And no sign of John, Charlie, or Andy for that matter.  At first thought, i was terrified...then those fears slowly subsided, and i just sat in some raggedy ass lawn-chair for hours, staring at the fire, mentally notating how i felt, and what i thought, and how things looked...

Eventually i just got my bike from the side of John's house where i had started this night hours previous, and walked it to the Walgreen's near his house.  Got myself a bottle of juice or something...and quickly realized i couldn't make it home.  One phone call, and an extremely awkward car ride with my dad later, i passed out on the living room floor. 

When i woke up the next morning, it was as if nothing happened...no one treated me different at home, still had to wash the car and help dad clean out some shit in the garage...really the only residual from the night before was some dried blood on my nose [which i assumed was from the drugs, but turned out to be from "laying down" so gently on the floor the night before]  and my clothes reaked of bonfire and beer.

I left the house later in the day to go hang out with Andy [who'd been smoking weed and taking pills for years now] and told him what i did the night before.  He went fucking nuts.  in a good way.  He was ecstatic that we could start doing shit together now.
I spent the next month smoking weed, getting drunk, and snorting any kind of pill you'd give me in Andy's basement - with new people every day.  His mom would bring home valium, coedine, dxm, whatever she could for "the kids"....2 months later i got bored of feeling the same way over and over again.  i wanted something more exciting...something that would make my skin fucking crawl, and wouldn't be the same high i'd been chasing for months now.  Bob Marley live in Santa Barbara, and the same Doors VHS got old really fast...i'll never understand how stoners are content with that shit.

That's when i met my drug buddy.  My drug buddy and me had a mutual friend he knew from grade school, and shared the same affinity for getting fucked up fast, on stuff we'd never done before, having fun, and running all over the city sharing these experiences with eachother.  More importantly, escaping the lives we led. 
His opressive family [and i mean OPRESSIVE...military dad, religous mom...childhood killing-combo], and my constant need to be free of mine, only made us better friends.  I'll always be glad we found eachother.  And shortly after both of us declaring our mutual boredom with smoking weed, we found a world of things that made us higher than we'd ever dreamed about.

That was my first time getting high or drunk....and the short 3 months that followed.
I met my first running mate, found my place in a new school, and before halloween that year was snorting china white heroin.  Life was fucking great.