ThrillenCutt

Tying roses to ideas made of light & filament,

Make it thrilling make it cutting into my own sacrament.
Put the Pom upon the Yankee planted in the cameo,
And the dice will roll themselves in continental rodeo.

Then when the bulldog starts to cry,
You’ll see the vultures circle high.
Ought not to question his good deeds,
His word is half supposedly.

Claiming sisters for ourselves not thinking of anyone else,
Sending signals to our mother while she watches from the hills.
Put their names upon our foreheads read them back with poisoned lips,
And we’ll roll ourselves together into our own sacrilege.

Why? Why! Must she not be my kind?
Roped off, she’s soft & warm inside.
True tales are spun without the fringe,
False ones are tall because of Him.

Tying roses to a coffin made of vital ornaments,
Make them thrilling make them cutting into separate accidents.
Put the Bull onto the Rider make them swim in indigo,
And we’ll roll into a transmogrification blow by blow.

Drugs & Me: (Pt 3): My Own, Personal Friday the 13th...

Click Here for PART ONE

Click Here for PART TWO



I grew out of crystal meth like a toddler grows out of his Oshkosh. “Uppers” were substances I found I could walk away from semi-easily. I didn’t like the comedown, the strabismus that seemed to plague me each time (I’d nearly always have to cover, or keep one eye closed whenever I would try to read anything while on tina), and I plainly grew tired of it.

                I went back to getting stoned off weed and drinking alcohol every night. At 22, I had still not had major run-ins with the law, or participated in criminal activities besides illicit drug use, but what was about to happen to me, set me up for the introduction to the love of my life: opioids. 
                I had finally moved out of my mom’s house into an apartment with a roommate named Vaughn. It was a fantastic setup, and I enjoyed being on my own. Vaughn worked as a bartender at a very, very classy joint, making more in one night shift than I would make in an entire week at my regular, full time retail job. We lived behind the Greene, going to happy hours often, and because Vaughn made so much more than me, he typically footed the bill.
                I had a routine schedule for how I drank. I worked first shift, and when I would come home to the apartment, and if Vaughn & I had no happy hour plans, I timed how much I drank, or I would make sure I had consumed X amount of beer in X amount of time, to ensure I had the proper buzz I wanted to feel. Usually this was one beer every 15 minutes for the first 60 minutes, and then two beers every 15 minutes for the next hour. By doing this, I steered clear of any hangovers, but maintained just the right level of inebriation. My taste was not discriminatory, and I savored quantity over quality: Milwaukee’s Best was my beer of choice; cheap and effective. After I finished with the beer every night, I’d retire to my bedroom and smoke pot until I passed out. I did this every single week night, and most certainly was always alone.
                Weekends, that ritual went out the window, and normally I’d be with friends. And on Thursday, March 12, 2009, my friend Lillian & I went out drinking at a local bar in Kettering called the Shroyer Inn. I gravitated towards low-key bars instead of the fancy lights and throbbing dance music of the clubs I went to as a teenager. I traded Top 40 Pop played by a DJ, for Guns & Ruses from a jukebox; places where moonshiners lurked in the shadows, and your friends were liquor bottles on the shelves behind the bar. 
                My drink was Long Island Iced Tea, and the Shroyer Inn made them strong. I was well on my way to double digits when I came up with the brilliant idea to buy some heroin. The twisted thinking I had told me, Hey! It’s not meth, so it’s cool!
                Lillian knew somebody, who knew somebody, who knew someone else, and I had syringes from my meth days, and a short while later, I was back at the apartment, alone in my bedroom, the syringe full of dope in my palm.
                I was incredibly, incredibly drunk, and I am unaware how I was even able to take the shot, and in fact it would have been so much better if I would have missed, or flat passed out first. But I didn’t miss, and while I did go unconscious, it was not because of the Long Islands.
                When I next opened my eyes, it was morning, and I could not move my body. My heart beat an allegro in my ears, and while I was thoroughly confused, I knew something was definitely wrong. I could barely breathe. It was labored, and it felt like trying to suck in oxygen from a tiny straw. And the only way I can describe how my body felt, was that it felt like the circulation was cut off everywhere. Imagine laying on your arm and it “falls asleep,” and you have to shake it to get the blood flowing again. Now apply that to every appendage, down to the tips of your phalanges, except when I tried to “wake” my body up, it was not working.
                Vaughn came into my room. He had heard my strained breathing and was concerned. I’ll never forget the look on his face; he was in shock because I was laying there in a mangled mess of limbs, contorted into a pile that human beings should now be contorted into. 
                He came over and helped me untangle my body, but I still had yet to gather the strength to lift my arms or legs on my own. Vaughn asked me what happened, but all I could muster between gasps of air was that I desperately needed water, and when he brought a red Solo cup to my lips, I almost couldn’t drink it. I saw his eyes look to the ground beside the bed, and then he asked me, “What drugs did you do last night?”
                I traced his line of sight, and saw what he had seen, what made him ask that question of me, and that cloudy confusion parted to let in a brief moment of clarity. It came rushing back to me as I looked at the syringe on the floor, a touch of blood at the base of the point. I had shot up heroin.
                I was taken by ambulance to the hospital on Friday, March 13. I remember telling the nurse when I first arrived that I needed to get well in a couple days, that I had to work on Sunday and I could not miss. Her answer was simple enough, and I quote her verbatim. Her words are ingrained in my memory: “You are very sick, Christopher. You are going to be here awhile.”
                I stayed in the hospital until I was discharged on April 10. I had never done heroin before, and because I was opiate naive, when I shot the dope, with all that alcohol in my system, it caused me to pass out. I had fallen onto my bed, with one of my legs tucked up and bent underneath my body. This cut off blood flow, causing my muscles to break down and release toxins into my blood stream. These toxins were too much for my kidneys, and they had shut down. The official diagnosis was Acute renal failure due to rhabdomyolysis.
                I was put through medical tests every single day. I was so swollen that I could barely even bend my arm to feed myself; my mother or a nurse often had to spoon-feed me like an infant. I felt like a sausage casing injected with too much meat. I was put on a liquid restriction, and only allowed a very small amount of water to drink per day. I don’t know if I can accurately convey how wretched it is to be thirsty, and denied anything to quench that impregnable thirst. My dreams were filled with images of waterfalls and swimming pools.

                And the dialysis was the worst of it. As silly as it may seem, all I knew of dialysis was that the character Shelby from Steel Magnolias was put on it, and her arms looked like hell. My catheter was not put in my arm, however, but ran directly into my heart. Three times per week, for four hours per session, my blood was siphoned out of me like a gas tank, and filtered through a machine to be cleansed, then pumped back into my chest. It was a nightmare.

                When I left the hospital, and my kidneys had—thank God—started back up again, I had to return multiple times a week to participate in physical therapy, to basically learn how to walk again. The foot I had passed out and was laying on had severe nerve damage.
                I was on so many medications, it looked like I was eating a handful of PEZ each morning, afternoon and night. I had my first taste of narcotic painkillers those few months, as I was prescribed 120 Percocet per month.
                When I was taken off the Percocet, I reverted back to drinking alcohol, but this time around, I did it in secret. I had moved back home with my family after my stint in the hospital, and even though my kidneys had restarted and I was off dialysis, I knew it was stupid to put another drop of booze in my system. The key idea here is that I knew it was insane to drink again. I had nearly died, had to file bankruptcy due to $188,000 in medical bills, and I was now drinking alone, and in clandestine. I had every reason and then some NOT to drink, but knowledge alone will not keep me sober.
                I drank at work, gulping wine from a thermos starting after my lunch hour, and chewing dozens of pieces of gum to cover up the smell. I drank at home alone in my bedroom. And one time, when my sister & I went to the movie theater to see The Lovely Bones, I had been drinking during the day as was usual, but then kept sneaking off “to the bathroom,” instead going to the bar to order double shots of vodka. I remember thinking, I don’t know who had the bright idea to put a bar in a movie theater, but praise Jesus they did!
                At that point I blacked out, and the events that followed are snapshots of what I can recall. I was belligerent in the theater; I scared my sister out of her wits. She didn’t know what was wrong with me, and after calling 911, I was carried kicking & screaming out of the theater to a waiting ambulance. In the ER I regained partial coherence. Surrounding me on all sides were doctors and nurses. The bright examination light above me shone like a beacon and stung my eyes. I had to squint to make out my mother standing beside me as well.
                Streams of salty tears ran down her cheeks from the islands of her eyes, and I thought of the song “Islands in the Stream.” She mouthed words I could not hear; the wetness on her face spoke enough.
                I shouted over and over that they should just “let me die,” that I “didn’t want to live!” My mom muttered more silent words. My hearing was closed off to all but my own sobs.
                And then... I vomited everywhere...


Click Here for PART ONE
Click Here for PART TWO

things under Heaven

If I am a thing under Heaven, most assuredly you are a thing more resplendent still. The charm in your countenance, the hazel in your eyes; these are the glimpses of Heaven afforded to me by a God of Divine Commodity. Is there an affection as balmy that can swathe me in amorous embraces, cradle me in velveteen arms, succor with kisses warm & fervent?
                If I were condemned to die one hundred days from now, I would long for nothing than to spend them with you. For those 100 days we could lie, two creatures mingled into one. Let them call “Blasphemy!” Even so, we will be as a single entity, savages tethered together at the waist, a maelstrom of testosterone, a whirlwind of grunts, a paradise of lurid dominance & honeyed passivity…
                And in the exquisite interludes of rest, between all the bucking, and all the pumping, there is you: your skin, fleecy & unyielding at once, those orbs of your eyes again, your lips beaming (and mine locked to them), the small of your back (and my palm resting there upon), your downy legs (tangled with my own)… these are your gifts to me, these are the quickest of glances of the realm above, permitted only in fleeting instances.
                But for one hundred days, I would know bliss. I would have you in a sepia world, on an altar of stars, canopies of satin in whorls around our private galaxy. Only you. Only me. Only us. Things under Heaven.

-CAS 10.19.15

THE JEALOUS HEART

Click Here for The Iron Heart (THE HEART SERIES)
Click Here for The Secret heart (THE HEART SERIES)

THE JEALOUS HEART

And is there a notion, as vehement as the throb of a jealous heart? Caught in a jarring cascade of lachrymal effluence it wonders, Do I rush angrily onto the battlefield of love—or is it lust?—armed with an offense of histrionic moves? Do I charge forward with haughty intentions, aiming bow & quiver at the spot in your own heart where I once resided—the space now claimed by another?
                The suspicious lover rolls over, like a submissive bitch in heat, to the very suspicion which causes it to glower. On the one hand, there is revenge, pledging vengeance (oh so sweet), and retribution to the ultimate degree. The price to pay for such delicacies is the loss of a wholesome conscience, in fact, decay of it is an almost guarantee.
                But on the other, you will find acquiescence, not to be mistaken for that bitch in heat. For it takes a more developed wisdom to step into a state of grace, and let whatever might be, be, than to simply raise the torch to an effigy of a greener beast.
                In short, listen: though it be gratifying to get what you would call ‘even,’ at what cost are you willing to submit? It is a cold, damp lair where one procures an eye for an eye, and even colder, a tooth for a tooth.
                The jealous heart is a wild one. You must tell it to lay dog, lay.
-CAS 10.18.15

It's Alive.

The moment where, with your eyes closed, and the music resonating like a specter through the headphones and into your ears, your heart stops beating—or is it beating too fast, beyond recognition of singular beats?—and you lose your breath… because the sound takes your spirit to a place that you cannot consciously, fully grasp, without having to give up some type of Earthen function… but it doesn’t matter; the beauty in the music more than fills the gap where your breathing must stop and your tears must shed. Is there a place in the world where anything tangible can take you, like where the notes take you: traveling—or am I floating? It feels so much like I am floating—on an immense wave of emotion so intense, so ethereal, you wouldn’t care if the world ended in the next moment, as long as you were able to hear the music first, for it in itself is life. It is the beginning, and the end, and somewhere in between is the Light of myself, a soul desperately aching, desperately yearning, for it to go on, and on… and on… CAS 10.18.15 03:32PM

TIME - Hans Zimmer

Soul-Reading...

*For those of you who may have read my Autobiographical substance-abuse entries thus far, this piece is loosely tied into Part 2.*

SOUL READING

Last night, you told me stories,

In a tongue I do not speak.

Tales of miserable wretches,

Full of sorrow, and oh so weak.

The words you used, described a place,

Empty and unwhole.

The destination you spoke of,

You professed, was my soul.

I let you in without realizing,

The havoc you might wreak.

Loosing a thousand canyons,

Made from polluted tendencies.

Life-lines mixed with Love-lines,

Mixed with suicidal bouts.

But what about the Sun-ones,

Tracing maps across my mouth?

Hearken to the sewage, 

Spewing from the cradle’s breadth:

Tantamount to savages,

In orbit, more or less.

The fluids birthing sepsis,

Plumed beside a precious veil,

Derive from jealous spirits,

Left inoperable and frail.

For its jealousy, that makes the bane,

That makes the carbon cut,

My soul into a million shards,

Cloaked in blood & lust.

Cursed am I, to want the bone,

That I can never have,

But given to, Diana’s moon,

And waxing in his hands.

The Longing starts, as brothers two,

But no, nothing more,

Shown to you, in weeping parts,

Wounded on the floor.

What you took, I did not give,

At least not by intent.

Last night, you read my soul to me,

And I, hate you, for it.

Drugs & Me (Pt 2): The Crystal and Monte Years

Click Here for PART ONE
Click Here for PART THREE




At a nightclub, I met a man. A man with whom I hit it off pretty well. His name was Monte, and without going into extraneous detail, I will just say we hit it off exceedingly well. When I think back to that particular moment, I sometimes want to slap myself in the face for not realizing what I subconsciously knew I was getting into: the taste of lighter fluid & industrial chemicals on his breath, masked by a scant trace of butterscotch, betrayed a habit he would reveal to me the next weekend. He lived in Columbus at the time, and invited me to come to his loft that coming weekend.
                Seeing as how it was Saturday night, I had the entire weekend to ruminate over how spending the night with Monte was going to go. He was 35 then, 17 years my senior, and he was absolutely beautiful. He had sleeves of tattoos on his arms, and a Bohemian style that I could totally dig. With brown hair & brown eyes, he was the dark-featured rebel cowboy, right down to the snakeskin boots he wore on his feet. His whole essence screamed urban hipster chic, long before the days being hipster was hip.
                And his place in Columbus was just as keen. He lived in an area called the Short North, on High Street. The irony of this is not lost on me. When I arrived, he was not home yet, and when he called to let me know he was picking up some beer for us, I thought, Good, that will go perfectly with the weed I brought.
                Monte pulled up in a jeep. He was even more handsome than I had remembered, wearing a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, exposing the artwork I had admired when we first met. Nine Inch Nails blared through the speakers, and when he opened the car door to step out, Trent Reznor sang in his not-forgettable but not-spectacular voice, “I wanna fuck you like an animal.” I could see Monte smirking.
                You could be wondering how I remember minute details like this, down to what Monte wore ten years ago, and the songs playing in the background. My answer to that would be, it’s hard to forget the first person you really, really become enamored with. Also, I am painfully observant to begin with, and I saturate myself in my surroundings, and give life to my memories though words. A more relative reason would be that my meeting Monte led me down much darker pathways than meeting people at smoothie bars, and it affected my future in many ways.
                I fell in love with Monte’s loft at first sight. It spanned from the front of the building to the rear, and you could see all the way from one end to the other; there were no doors except to the bathroom and entryway. Remember, I disliked doors, especially closed ones? Here at Monte’s on High Street, there could be no closed doors, literally. I didn’t bother to think that a closed off mind could be hundreds of times more hurtful than a simple piece of wood.
                Monte didn’t have a television, he preferred music only, and when he turned on Tori Amos’ “Blood Roses,” my heart leapt. Tori Amos was, and still is, my favorite artist, and to hear the baroque notes of the harpsichord bounce off the walls of that high-ceilinged place, to get chills listening to Tori sing about “when chickens get a taste of your meat,” I longed more & more to find out all about this man. I could feel that the stratification of his soul ran deep, and I wanted to excavate each layer, one by glorious one.
                We drank and shot the shit, and I pulled out the pot I had. He told me he hadn’t smoked reefer in years, and I gained a little pride knowing I was the one to get him to do it again. But things turned a tad more serious.
                “Do you mind if I mix things up a bit?” he asked me. How could I deny him anything? He could have asked me to join him on a dive into an active volcano, and I would have said, When & where? So after I told him I didn’t mind, he went to the bedroom area of the loft and brought back a metal lockbox, smaller than a shoebox, but of the same general shape.
                When he opened the box, I saw there were a few stray tablets strewn about, a baggie containing something of a shard like substance, and a pipe, the likes of which I had never seen before. I was accustomed to bowls for marijuana, bongs, steamrollers; this was a basic looking object, with a long stem and a bulbous end resembling a gumball. The first thought I had was, Ohmygod, its crack! And if it had been crack, I was going to pounce out the door like grease popping in a frying pan.
                But when I asked him what it was, and he replied, “crystal meth,” I untensed dramatically. Pretty stupid, right? Why run from crack, but not meth? Truthfully, I knew very little about meth, but enough about crack to avoid it.
                I’d be lying if I said my interest was not piqued, and my eyes watched in rapt attention as he loaded the pipe with the tiny crystalline shards using the cap of a pen. He used a butane torch and let the pipe hover in the space just about the flame. He took a hit, and when he exhaled, the plume of thick smoke rushed out of his mouth like steam out of a locomotive.
                It was my turn. He handed me the pipe, but not the torch. “Here,” he said, “I’ll light it. It’s very easy to overheat and burn it all up. Just put your lips on the stem, and when I say so, gently inhale, and twirl the pipe in your fingertips.”
                I nodded in acknowledgment and, trying not to shake too much, I waited while he heated up the drug, until he indicated with a quick arch of his eyebrows, it was time for me to breathe in. The feeling was instantaneous. It was an absolute envelopment of seemed relaxation that overcame me entirely. As I let the vapor escape my mouth, that wondrous sense of peace continued to caress my whole body, and as I sat back on the sofa we were on, which now felt like a magic carpet from a fucking Disney movie (!), I noticed the poster hanging on the wall. It was a vintage looking diagram of the anatomy of a silkworm. I remember this, because that’s what everything was for me just then: silken.
                I smiled at Monte. We smoked much more of the meth together. We shot gunned it into each other’s mouths, and again I was reminded of how he tasted when we first met. Ah… so that’s what it was, that almost bittersweet flavor. It felt like we were reading each other’s souls over those hours. It’s arduous to try and explain the intense emotions I had for him. Imagine everything you ever desired, everything you ever believed would ideally complement you, and make you whole, all rolled up into a perfect package of physical form.
                We decided to go dancing, and before we left for an insanely busy and popular club, he gave me one of the tablets I had seen in his box of treasures: ecstasy.
                It was an evening of sweaty gyrations and more drug using, and I was experiencing a high that every drug I had done before could not begin to touch. When our night out had drawn to a close, our night in was just beginning, and since I did not set out to make this my Autobiography of Depravity, I will leave to the imagination what took place between those two satyrs that early, early morning, ten years ago.
                                                                                 *****
                The feelings I had for Monte were a one-way street: they were not reciprocated. It was heartbreaking to read an email from him several days later, after I had written him asking him when we could see each other again; in his message, he told me he was not available for anything, that he was addicted to crystal meth, and was basically, a big, hot mess.
                This did not deter me, however. In fact, while it killed me to find this out, I was determined to get close to him. This manifested itself into two entire years of abusing crystal meth. It may be a bit confusing, because it is just as taxing trying to explain it, but in my mind, how I was going to get to Monte again was by partying. I believed by venturing into his world, eventually serendipity would bump us together at some P&P gathering, and I could make him fall in love with me. Any shrink would tell you, I was just using Monte as my excuse to get high.
                P&P stands for “party & play,” the key letter in “party” being t and t standing for “tina,” which is slang for meth. I would log onto adult chatrooms, find men in Columbus who partied, and they’d come to pick me up in Dayton. Total strangers would scoop me up and we’d head back north, where I’d participate in raucous orgies of sex & drugs, with even more strangers. Some of the acts would make Bacchus blush. Inhibitions were nonexistent as the meth was smoked, the GHB was drunk, and the ecstasy was swallowed.     
                At bathhouses I reveled in the attention being a young buck brought me. There were free drugs everywhere, and there was nothing—and no one—I would not do. I remember one time when Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” came over the PA system, and I strutted down the hallways, wearing only a black jockstrap, high out of my damned mind, and completely loving every single second of it.
                Mind you, though, I still wondered about Monte incessantly. His image was never far from reach in my thoughts. He became a sort of sapient constellation that fueled my fervor, and my efforts to get closer to him were not totally fruitless. I found out about him in tidbits through others, gathering information like so many grains of sand. Everybody I encountered who knew him found him to be beautiful as well. His eccentricities did not end with banning television, no, I was told by one man that he once went to Monte’s loft and found that Monte had painted a picture using his own blood on a section of his wall. I was told I should forget about him; he was unreachable.
                The deeds I did while in my “meth years” are likely unspeakable to most. I hopped, skipped & jumped from house to house until the drugs ran dry, then hopped, skipped & jumped to the next. When I first injected meth, it felt like a ghost had passed through my body. It took my breath away, and at first I thought something had gone wrong. But no, that diminished quickly, and the buzz went straight for my groin. I would leave my house for weeks at a time, blitzing myself beyond recognition, then return to my mother’s accusatory questions: What were you doing up there for so long? Have you lost weight? I’d answer that the shirt I’d be wearing was just too big.
                I saw Monte two more times after the night we spent together. I will sometimes talk to him on Facebook. The exchanges are few and far between, and certainly always brief, but often they are poignant. Sometimes I think he may realize the profound effect he had one me, other times I believe I was just a blip on his radar. He lives in Georgia now, and is partnered with a man he’s been with for many years now. I have thoughts where I wonder where I’d be if I had never met Monte, or if I had told him I was not interested in him “mixing it up a bit”…
But these thoughts are  not lasting, for I know that the paths we walk are destined well before we are even aware we are travelling on them. If there had been no Monte, there would certainly have been an Austin, a Blake, a Mario, somebody there with the butterscotch breath and the crystalline looking-glass.


Click Here for PART ONE
Click Here for PART THREE

Drugs & Me: How to F**k Up in XX Many Ways: A Mini-AutoBio... (PART ONE)

Click Here for PART TWO
Click Here for PART THREE

               Do I begin with the usual bunkum? I am born to a mother, from the loins of a father; I weigh such-and-such pounds; I am so-and-so inches long…
                Do I start at that climacteric moment, when I first ingested a chemical, setting me along on a railroad bent for fervid self-destruction?...
                Or perhaps we can meet in between…
                My declivity did not initially spring forth overnight, rather it was a sluggish obstacle course of feckless profligation, where the starting line was not my picking up, but long before then, as an early teenager.
                I’ve always been told in 12-step programs, that the problem lies not in the bottle, or the syringe, or the baggie. Instead, the problem lie within myself. The drugs were a minor peccadillo compared to the larger issue of what was wrong in me, inside me.
                My formative years were plagued by long episodes of chronic awkwardness, and heady attempts to be, in the most unadulterated of terms, cool. I felt I was shorthanded in nearly every aspect of life. My parents were divorced, neither were wealthy, and my father moved my sister and I all around, into homes in neighborhoods I deemed not good enough, or rather, as good as everybody else’s. I was scrawny and not athletically inclined, I didn’t have the right clothes, either. I was habitually protean, constantly trying to find out where I fit in, shifting shapes, like a puzzle piece that could not find his place in the cosmic jigsaw of life.
                I had popular cousins in school with me. Popular and attractive, and all that I was not. My skin felt like a shell made from camouflage. I may have been noticed, may have had a few friends, but I was noticed for the wrong reasons, and didn’t have the right acquaintances. But what was this scale that I measured everybody and everything against? And who calibrated it? Who crated these expectations that I was having such a difficult time reaching?
                It was me. I made a profession out of hammering myself down before I even had a chance to begin.
                It did not help that I struggled with diagnosed depression on top of all the internal madness. And it should come as no surprise then, despite all my efforts to titivate all I was given to work with, that my self-confidence, my self-image, and my self-worth, quickly deteriorated into deleterious shrapnel, sunk deep into the tissue that was my teenage career.
                I could go into specifics. I could chronicle instances and characteristics to portray a more vivid image of what all this chaos looked like, but for the sake of brevity, let me say that, very far back into my memory, I can recall most finely, that I was the epitome of uncomfortable malady. Volumes could be written on: what happened to me this, or what happened to me that, but what’s important to know bears repeating once more; the problem was me.

*****

                A sort of salvation came when my best friend, Clara, and I were invited to a party, and not just your typical high school soiree (although I should note I wasn’t invited to many of those, anyway). No, we were going to a college party. And at 15, we were to be the youngest in attendance.
                It was during this occasion that I got drunk for the very first time. Extremely drunk. In the past, I had drank the odd beer, oftentimes even feigning inebriation to come off as—that word again—cool. But this time was different; I didn’t need to fake it. Nope. Not one, tiny bit. I chugged the beer like it was an antidote for the faulty hand the word had dealt me, from a deck of cards made up entirely of Jokers.
                The alcohol filled me like an empty reservoir. Each beer went down quicker than the one before it, and the fervent warmth that is so unequivocally alcohol’s, began to course throughout me like an oil slick. I could feel my face flush with the potion, and abruptly, just like that, it clicked. No, not just it… it all clicked. Suddenly, I had resolve. Suddenly, I knew the answers to all the questions I had ever asked. Suddenly, I had the answers to questions I hadn’t even thought to ask yet.
                I drank, and I talked & socialized. I drank, and I danced. I drank, and I was ok. I drank, and I didn’t care, I drank, and I wanted more. I never wanted the feeling to go away. Hours later, greasy cheeseburgers and so many “Oh-I-love-yous” later, that feeling did go away, and it went away hard.
                The next morning, I had the pleasure of being graced with my first hangover. I felt, quite literally, that my brain was playing at fisticuffs with my stomach, and the price to pay for the loser would certainly be death. Well, I was half right, and my penalty was death by vomit into the porcelain pee-hole.
                I foreswore, then and there, huddled over a spot meant only for bare asses, retching what I thought looked like the contents of a sack of rotten meat from a slaughterhouse, that I would never drink again…
                I drank the next weekend. And the weekend after…
                I can remember, at one of these parties, there was a closed door. I did not like closed doors. They felt like so much more than mere doors. I saw them as barriers between me and the certainly (or so I believed) fantastical goings-on behind them. Closed doors were Great Walls of China, and I positively had to know what happened on the opposite side.
                On this instance, I asked someone nearby what they were doing in that bedroom, in that bedroom behind the Great Wall. Several people were in there, after all, and all my thinking told me, was that something important was going on, and I was not wanted.
                You see, I would come to find out later on, that all these thoughts and voices in my head, all the varied lines of one-way conversation that reigned supreme, were called “committees,” and together they formed a lecherous chorus that constantly filled the caverns of my mind with verse & codas of uncertainty.
                I had found out that they were smoking pot in that bedroom, and since I had never been stoned before, it probably would not have been the brightest of ideas, to have then and there be the first time I toked. That moment came a short while later, and the story behind it is an ironical one.
                I had volunteered to work at the smoothie bar of a café of sorts, sponsored by a local church, where Christian rock bands came to play. I had become a pretty steady drinker by then, and had little by little started to break out of my cocoon. After all, as I stated previously, booze had been an antidote to my standoffishness, so I felt comfortable enough to be able to work at this gathering ground, and blend up fruity concoctions for teenagers wearing studded bracelets and tees splashed with the image of Christ on the front, with slogans like “Jesus is my homebody,” emblazoned on them.
                While working one night, a boy and girl came up to the “bar” and struck up a conversation with me. The two didn’t seem so different from anyone else, with the exception that their shirts didn’t bear crosses or silhouettes of the Holy Ghost. They asked if I wanted to hang out for a bit after I was done working, and I said I could actually leave then. So left we did, and in Willy’s (the made of the duo) car, they pulled out a pipe with marijuana in it. I was half-exhilarated, half-terrified.
                When they asked me if I had smoked before, I tried to think of some quick repartee to disguise how unsure I was of how I should tell them I hadn’t, so I just blurted out, “Yes! Of course I have!” Well, there was no going back now. I thought, I’ll sound like a moron now if I confess I really have NOT smoked pot before, and I am going to LOOK like one when I try to use that god-forsaken glass contraption!
                I was relieved, though, when I was not expected to take the first hit and, focusing on what they did, by erudition I was able to light the damned thing myself, and I inhaled the first skunky cloud of what would be many to come.
                I didn’t think I had done it correctly, but very quickly, I was downright stoned, completely geeked out on the sticky green stuff. Any lover of ganja can attest to how I felt my laughter could not be stopped. I remember how tingly my body felt. We went to a park, and despite it being Midwinter, with snow on the ground, I recall not caring at all that I was playing in the snow in nothing but flip-flops. I was having the time of my life.
                I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what happened next, but I will anyway: I began to feel a hunger growing in my belly more ravenous than any hunger I could being to memory. Just like I had gotten a hangover after drinking the first time, now, after smoking pot for the first time in my life, I had the munchies. If ever Dracula lusted after a virgin’s blood, I was going to eat.
                And it was at Krispy Kreme that I consumed the best donut I ever had. Actually, the best half-dozen donuts. Each bite was an ambrosia that my taste buds cried out for. My stomach seemed bottomless, and even after my new friends dropped me off at home, I gorged myself further on anything I could get my paws on: I was a pig at the trough.

*****

                The following day, I felt revivified. I was completely relaxed, I was completely free, and I completely just did not give a fuck. And so began my foray into the stoner, hippy culture.
                I grew my hair long (yes! believe it or not, I used to have a full head of shoulder length hair back then), and I started listening to classic rock like Led Zeppelin and the Beatles, although I’ve always been a Rolling Stones kinda boy at heart. I wore braided hemp necklaces with pendants of tiny little mushrooms embedded into orbs of glass. I spent weekends traipsing around Yellow Springs, perusing the head shops for Nag Champa incense, and yes, every stoner’s requisite scent: patchouli oil!
                All the while, I was getting high every day, and drinking as much as I could. I immersed myself in an attitude of not really caring about anything: schoolwork, rules, etc. I totally abandoned any disputatious tendencies for a more “by-stander” stance. The only things that mattered were getting stoned, and hanging with my friends (with whom I now had a plethora; potheads all seemed to have that open-minded, carefree cadence I had adopted, and it seemed if you were “a joker, a smoker and a midnight toker,” you were always welcome to join the group.
                So while I blossomed into a fairly social butterfly, all else fell by the wayside. I had great difficulty in balancing the various areas of my life. I had either too much, or too little. While I Was reveling in allowing my tegument to fall away, by going out more and more to party with friends, seeing how much trouble we could get into, other aspects of my life suffered. I cannot say how many times I’ve heard the phrase, “If you would just apply yourself…” and looking back, I see how true that was.
                During the summertime of my 16^th year, Clara (still my best friend) and I dove headlong into cocaine abuse. With Willyfromchurch and our other companions, we spent every Friday & Saturday night snorting up the insalubrious substance. I had gotten my first job, and every paycheck I received, went straight up my nose.
                For years I dabbled with omnifarious drugs: more cocaine, acid, benzodiazepines, cough medicine, always smoking pot and drinking alcohol. But it was at 18 that I picked up what some would consider one of the harder drugs: crystal meth…


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Goodbye, HEROIN

To Heroin –

As I compose this letter, I’ve no doubt you are swimming freely throughout the veins of yet another victim of your ruthless, lethal and bittersweet harmony. I’m sending word to you, that we are done, finished, our love affair kaput. I will not keep airs, however, and place all the blame on you. No, in truth, it is quite the opposite. I chose freely to pick you up that first time. There was no gun pointed to my head, held cocksure at my temple, as I put you into my body and allowed you to permeate my every layer. I welcomed you in with open arms, like a soulmate much too grand to be called anything but.

You & I soared higher than I could have ever envisioned with sober sight. When we were together, our time spent was the perihelion of my existence. Every breath I breathed was for you. Every action I took was done as a pledge of devotion to your promised numbness. I built you up as a ship of paradise, and sailed your brown waves to a utopia more sacred than Consumption of the Holy Host, more alluring than fruit borne of forbidden trees, and deadlier than lies spat from a sycophantic devil.

In the beginning, you taught me powerful lessons on how to survive by nothing greater than the hairs on my chest. You revealed a doorway, which led to a me who could do absolutely anything, without any self-doubt or fear, and you pushed me past the threshold with the simple thrust of a plunger into a plastic barrel. I didn’t know what life meant, until I saw it seeping like a ruby vine out of my arm.

But then you commenced to teach me things from a curriculum I never signed up for. You schooled me in the art of deception, and your greatest trick was to make me believe that at the root, I was the devious one. You bestowed upon me how to lie and how to cheat, how to rob my brothers of their goods, and my sisters of their wares. And you painted a mask onto my very face, so when I peered into a mirror, a stranger was beholden to me: a doppelganger who may have shared my features, but whose eyes were not mine.

What was once a warmth that gushed straight for my heart, broke into parasitic tentacles, reeling as far as the ends of my toes. The golden throne I placed you on decayed into a funeral pyre, lurking in wait for the one inevitable injection that would finally spark the flame. The happiness you provided was uprooted, and supplanted with dolorous & shame.

Still, I cannot put all the blame to you alone. I invited you to lay claim and take control of everything I felt, everything I did. Possessed, I became, when you were in me, and possessed, was I, without you.

But now, beloved, BRACE YOURSELF. For it is time to evict you from the premises, and exorcise you at the last. Your kiss was tender, and your lips sweet, but sweeter still is the kiss of freedom, and more tender the gift of family, who I forsaked when I scooped you up in spoons of silver-kind. Riches I experienced when you were with me, but at the end of the day, it was but a pauper’s life you could give. NotagainNotagainNotagain.

You may have left your mark on me, impressed a classic tattoo that cannot be erased. But if, and when, I pass you on the street, I will not know you. You will not be given the dignity of a single glare. And when I come across other innocents in your wake, you can be most assured that my hand will be there to extend offers of help, of hope, of escape. The pit you gifted is refilling perpetually, and onto your tombstone, my spirit will etch:

HERE LIES THE LIFE,
AND THE DEATH OF A PAST,
THAT WILL ALWAYS STAY BURIED,
FOREVER & AT LAST.

Yours no more,
Christopher Alexander Sommers

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GONE

This crown of thorns don’t bear no fruit,
While Adam is split by a rigid root.
What does the soul of a living man weigh?
More than a dead one on any given day.
And your smile – the part where wonders align,
Is torn in half by the tears you cry.
You say you don’t want to believe it, but then,
They all went and auctioned your best ones again.
I’m GONE to the world, to the touch of his silk,
Can you taste the bitter of my thick, sweet milk?

For thine is the Kingdom, the Power, the Glory,
All over in one Holy Ghost of an orgy.
Captured in fractals from looking glasses,
While writhing around with unsavory masses.
With caution I swallow your one true confection,
Behind closed doors, and within my confession.
You say you don’t want to believe it, but then,
You cry from the other side of the Mountain.
I’ve GONE to the north, to the south, to the west,
Chased cowboys and Indians and silhouettes.

My compass draws nigh if I’m not mistaken,
As I bend to the ground to feel on your snakeskin.
Lassoed & damaged & lost & alone,
I’d go where I left but I haven’t a home.
A sick king am I, as I go for that crown,
Which bears no fruit and levels me down.
A rigid root, that splits my Adam,
And beckons me still, with or without it.
You say you don’t want to believe it, but then,
My soul goes from living to dead once again.
You say you don’t want to believe it, but then,
I’m GONE to the world, from beginning to end.

Origami Tigers

Stallions of a blacker hue, wait for my arrival,
While I differentiate, that stable from the bridle.

Outside gates, strung with hearts, from every love I lost,
Are wicked, cruel things, tempting all my thoughts to fill with frost.

Only certain kinds of gentlemen, can make it to the brink,
Because running to the edge, is more trying than you’d think.

That certain kind of gentleman, most assured could not be me,
I always end up turn back, when nothing’s what it seems.

The holly & the ivy grow, without a destined fate,
And atropa belladonna, packs a punch I cannot take.

While simple minds subvert the most lethal femme fatales,
A conduit, like the sunset, I rose and then I fell.

I’ll mine for diamonds, deep inside the Life-giving Spirit,
And leave my earthen body behind, as He has so proclaimed it.

This body, raised imperishable, then will make a change,
and turn up many flaxen masks, failing to masquerade.

Where, O death, is your victory, then followed by your sting?
When the Kingdom is inherited, and all the trumpets sing?

The sting is you, and the power of It, can only be the Law,
My stallions are resurrecting, in the ruins of Camelot.

Heavenly bodies, strung up with each & every love I lost,
Onyx temples, cooling in the fires of my frost.

Knights in armor, melted down, from my unfiltered rage,
Origami Tigers, roaming free of paper cage.

Blossom, child, hear my calls, and beg for grace in vain,
A banshee never left me in the womb, without a name.

My howling joins a chorus of decrepit harmonies,
But when I hum with Medusa, it forms a symphony.

Questions raise more questions, and only shatter on the wall,
And learning all the answers, does more pushing than it pulls.

I loved you, then I loved you, and then everything ran dry,
And you left me without reason, not so much as a goodbye.


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