As it turned out, a prediction my English teacher wrote in my junior year yearbook came home to roost during those warm days that summer. Degeneration came, but I was too busy to notice. I thought I was having fun:
These are critical Times
Degeneration is around the corner
Watch!
M D Stremba
In retrospect, it would have probably been a smarter move to leave for Maine and miss the madness I allowed myself to get into. I had a Helluva time, but well, along with the fun, there was the un-fun that came along for the ride.
Snake and I abused drugs; lots of drugs; lots of different kinds of drugs; drugs that we shot into our arms; drugs that made us see the world melt and people turn into beings from Outer Space. We also worked 5 days a week, weather permitting. We were part of Snake's Grandfather's painting crew. We worked hard and we were paid shit.
P Street Beach at Rock Creek was a happening spot in the summer. Hippies and random groups of straight folks gathered in droves. They enjoyed picnics, played softball, tossed Frisbees, jammed with Guitars, Banjos Harmonicas and Bongo drums.
These hard charging partiers were gonna get thirsty. And many folks would seek to feed their heads. It was Snake's and my goal to help them facilitate that vision and quench that thirst. It was the 2nd weekend we set up shop at the fringes of the ball fields, I realized it wasn't just Hippies and freaks who wanted pot and LSD.
We sold a bunch of Purple Micro Dots to a suburban housewife who had two kids on leashes. I had never seen kids on leashes before. Seeing this while high on Acid caused some confusion in my brain at the time. Did she really have her kids on leashes? Were there two kids or only one. After she left, I wondered if maybe they were indeed dogs and and my mind was making up the whole thing? The next weekend, she came back without the kids /dogs on leashes and bought some joints. Nice lady. She'd pass for a Soccer Mom today.
We sold joints for a $1, ice cold cans of Papst and Schlitz beer for a $1, and LSD for $1 a hit or 3 hits for $2. The problem we ran into was, we did not know shit about selling drugs. We only knew how to abuse them. It took awhile and learning some restraint before we started to make any profit. But profit we did. Not much maybe, but there was always more cash in our pockets when we left at end of the day than when we came in with that morning.
Meanwhile we did all this high on one drug or another. The weekends became a blur of LSD trails, melting faces, or chest heaving Meth binges. I didn't come down until the end of July.
At some point in late July I became depressed. Having too much fun had some side affects. I woke up one morning after a 36 hour Meth binge. My mouth was dry and cracked. I had to pry my eye lids open, and even then, the gooey haze that had built up over the previous 36 hours took its sweet ass time dissipating. Once my vision improved, I remember I looked over at Snake passed out next to the coffee table which was cluttered with half empty beer cans, Pot roaches, and a couple sets of works laying in the ashtray full of cigarette butts.
I grabbed one of the beer cans and gently shook it. Good, Still some beer in it. I had a desperate case of desert mouth. I tipped up the can and drained it into my mouth. Several cigarette butts hitched a ride with the stale beer. I retched, spit out the butts, the beer and whatever else had been deposited in that can. I have never sucked down a stale can of beer since that day. Just writing about it makes my stomach flip.
That was when I made a decision that changed my life. I began gathering what things I had or remembered I had. I found my duffel bag and stuffed everything in it. I found Snakes and my stash of drugs, split what was left of the pot and the Acid in as close to half as I could and stuffed it deep down in the duffel also. I left the Meth. I was done with Meth.
Without saying goodbye to anyone, I went out to Old Georgetown Rd, stuck out my thumb and hitchhiked back to Maine. Took me a day and a half, but man was I ever happy to see my old room in the attic, the same attic that is above me right now as I pound out this tale.
I said hey to my parents. They briefly quizzed me about my reason for coming home. I lied and as soon as possible, I went up to my attic bedroom, fell on my bed and slept for 24 hours or so. For the next week as I detoxed, I only came down to eat, shit and piss. After that first week was up, my father decided I wasn't going to lay about being useless. He hated useless. He dragged my sorry ass out of bed at the crack of dawn one morning and put me to work in the yard. I will always be grateful he did that. With clearer eyes, I was now ready for my next chapter.
Neither my dad nor my mom ever mentioned my experience again. They must have understood I had been through some kind of emotional stress. They treated me like an adult and respected my silence on the matter.
I know that I was my own savior that summer. I removed myself from the junkie lifestyle we were all slipping into. I ran into Snake the next Fall at a protest march in in Washington, DC. He had fallen deeper into the junkie lifestyle while I had escaped it. Our friendship only lasted another year or so.
______________________
I had no problem deciding what song to dovetail into this post. It is a song Snake and I considered one of our anthems that summer. Playing it over and over let us delude ourselves we were real players in the world of drug dealers. Yeah, we were legends in our own minds alright.
Please enjoy "The Pusher", by Steppenwolf.
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