The Damage Done - 1. Story

The Damage Done

By Menzoberranzen

Warning: This story contains details of explicit drug use. Gay Authors does not condone the use of illicit drugs and recommends that users of such drugs seek expert assistance to help them quit.

My name is Lachlan Grey, and I am 25 years old. In my 25 years, I have seen and done things most people never will – that most people simply cannot imagine. I have transcended the bounds of normal human awareness; I have witnessed the depths of depravity and despair. I have seen profound human tenderness, and I have seen the ugliness of the human condition. I reached for heights undreamt, and in doing so fell to depths unfathomable. I don’t ask for absolution, and I don’t want pity. I took what I wanted – and I have paid for it in spades. I –- I have seen the needle and the damage done.

~Lachlan Grey

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.

~Anaïs Nin

I lit the joint, reclining slowly in the chair as I tilted my head back and exhaled the pungent smoke. A cough ruined the effect I was going for, and I blushed slightly as my roommate snickered. He was older and more experienced than I was, but I always tried to keep up appearances. I passed the joint to my left where it was awkwardly grabbed by the trembling fingers of my long-time friend and confidante, Kalen. He managed a quick puff before he exploded in a fit of hacking and choking.

“First timer?” asked Jon, my roommate. Kalen – whose face was beet red – merely nodded as he tried to rein in his cough.

Kalen and I had grown up in a small town in relatively comfortable homes with relatively stable parents. Pot was rare, and the only people who smoked it were ‘those kids’ from the other side of the tracks. Neither of us had ever smoked dope before leaving home. Halfway through my first year I moved in with a friend of a friend from school and got my first introduction to marijuana. After much convincing, I had finally managed to get Kalen to try it.

“Since we’re in experimental mode, have either of you ever tried coke?” Jon asked, pulling out a small bag of rocky white powder.

“Wow, man,” I said, sitting up straight. Kalen’s eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his head.

“I’m out,” Kalen said. “Be careful, Locky.”

“Fuck man, pot’s one thing, I’d never do hard drugs!”

*****

I met Dominic on April 12^th of my freshman year, and I remember that because it was one of those days that irrevocably changed my life. I’ve never been able to quite pinpoint what first attracted me to him, but I do remember being fascinated with him from the moment I met him. I had managed to drag Kalen out to a gay bar, mostly because he always made me go to straight bars, and I didn’t really have any intention of picking anyone up.

Dominic was older than I was (I found out later by nearly fifteen years), and he exuded a calm confidence that immediately set him apart from the crowd. He was a head taller than I with jet hair that covered the tops of his ears. Steel-grey eyes peered over a strong nose, and it was those eyes that caught me. They weren’t particularly intense or piercing, but they bespoke a quiet wisdom.

Infatuation was immediate -- on both our parts. I made hasty apologies to Kalen for stranding him alone in a gay bar, and then I went with Dominic back to his apartment. That night will forever be etched in my memory as one of purest happiness. I don’t believe in love at first sight, but that night was as close as I could imagine.

“Do you do coke?” he asked me as we were sitting on the bed talking.

“No,” I said. I was already drunk and suddenly trying it with Dominic didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

“Would you like to try it?” he asked.

I hesitated for a moment. “Sure, let’s do it.”

He placed a large piece of glass on the bed between us and dumped the dime baggie out. He asked me for a card, and I handed him my student ID. My heart was already racing; I was about to do something I’d only ever really seen in the movies. I was entranced by the rapid motion of his hands as he crushed the rocky cocaine into an innocuous looking pile of fine white powder. He cut two lines out of the pile and handed me a pen that had been cut down until it was just a small, hollow tube.

“Hold one nostril with your finger and sniff through the other,” he said. “And for God’s sake, don’t exhale!”

Nervously, I leaned over the glass and followed his instructions. It burned slightly as it went up my nose, and I handed the sniffer back to Dominic as I waited expectantly.

Cocaine has never been my drug of choice, but in that moment I felt something that I can’t really put into words. I won’t say that I felt like a god or that it was pure ecstasy, but it was incredible – indescribable. And it fundamentally altered my view of life.

We lay in bed for hours, cuddling and talking. One of the primary effects of cocaine is a tendency to be extremely talkative, and I poured my heart and soul out to him that night. I told him things I’d never told another human being. We fucked, and did more drugs, and cuddled well past sunrise. We turned off our phones, I called in sick to work, and, for a brief period, everything else in the world ceased to matter.

Life is complicated, and one quickly learns that life as we live it is rarely the same as life as we dream it. But that night, I had an ephemeral moment of absolute clarity. I knew, for perhaps the first time, what it meant to be happy. When I look back on that evening, it saddens me, for I know that no matter what else happens to me in this life, never again will I feel what I felt that night.

*****

Dominic and I quickly became inseparable, and those early days of our relationship are the highlight of my life. I fell in love, and for the first time, I felt as if there was another human being who understood me exactly. Everything else except Dominic ceased to matter. We went from perfect strangers to living together in a few short weeks.

After my first experience with cocaine, I began to experiment with other drugs. Dominic wasn’t a heavy drug user – at least not at that time – but he knew all the right people to get them. It began as him introducing me to things when we partied on weekends, but it quickly devolved into a hobby for me. I would try just about anything once and indeed made every effort to do just that.

“Hello,” Kalen said stiffly, taking his seat beside me in the lecture hall.

“Fuck, man, I’m exhausted.”

“It’s your own fault.”

“I know,” I said testily. “Jeez, I was just looking for a little sympathy.”

“Well, look somewhere else,” he snapped. I opened my mouth to respond, but the professor walked in before I could.

I woke up at the end of the lecture as the students filed out. Kalen was nowhere to be seen.

*****

I groggily looked over at my bedside clock. Shit! I’d missed class again after sleeping through the piercing sound of Dominic’s alarm. My distress was short-lived, however. I wasn’t sure when school had taken a back seat to partying, but it had. I padded quietly through our apartment, careful not to wake Dominic as I left our bedroom.

As I walked into the bathroom, I turned and stopped to stare. I looked at myself in the mirror and was suddenly transfixed by the reflection that stared back at me. I adjusted my focus and looked down to the small high-school graduation photo of me that was tucked into the corner of the mirror. The face that stared out of the photo was not the one that stared out of the mirror.

Large dark circles limned sunken eyes that no longer held the glint of innocence. My cheeks were hollower now, and any traces of excess flesh had long since vanished. I reached a reticent finger out and lightly brushed it against the photo. Letting my hand fall, I forced myself to look away. My robe dropped to the floor and I stepped onto the scale sitting next to the vanity: 120lbs. Standing at 5’9, I looked emaciated and gaunt. I heard footsteps, and I pushed the door open.

“Look at me, Dominic!”

“We need to talk, Locky.” He had a pained expression on his face, but he grabbed my head gently and kissed me.

I grabbed my robe from the floor and followed him out to the living room. I tried to ignore the mountain of glasses piled in the sink and the similarly conspicuous absence of plates. I simply didn’t eat anymore. I could go an entire week with two eggs, some yogurt, and a bowl of ice cream. Cigarettes, drugs, and lots of caffeine took care of the rest.

“I love you, Lachlan,” Dominic said quietly. He looked ready to cry.

“I love you, too, babe. What’s up?”

“I am a terrible person. Look at what I’ve turned you into! You had everything going for you.”

“I still do have everything going for me,” I replied cautiously. The worst part was, at that point, I truly believed it. “I’m in school; I have a job; I’m in love. I have you. What more could I ask for?”

“You just said it to me five minutes ago. Look at yourself! You’re beautiful, baby, but you look like a goddamn junkie. All you’re missing is track marks on your arms. How’ve your grades been lately? When was the last time you saw Kalen? I love you, Lachlan, and I can’t hurt you anymore.”

“Dom, Dom... you haven’t hurt me in the slightest. Yeah, I’ve made choices most people wouldn’t agree with. I’ve sacrificed a straight-A transcript for a different lifestyle, but that was my prerogative. I don’t regret it, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. You’ve taught me so much about myself; you’ve shown me a world outside my own.”

I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around him as tightly as I could. I whispered in his ear: “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” And then, so quiet as to be almost inaudible: “May God forgive me.”

In for a Penny, in for a Pound

Reality is a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs.

~Lily Tomlin

“Hi, Kalen,” I said tentatively as he opened the door to his dorm room. He shocked me by grabbing me and pulling me into a hug.

“Switching teams?” I asked, attempting humour.

“Keep dreaming,” he laughed. “I...I wanted to apologize.”

“For what?” I asked.

“For being a jerk. You know I don’t agree with your... habits...but that’s no reason for me to be an ass. You’re my best friend, after all.”

“Wow,” I said, stunned. “Thanks, Kalen, that means a lot.”

He invited me into his apartment, and we sat down to smoke a joint (I’d at least made a pot smoker out of him) and watch a movie. It was the first time in months we’d hung out like this, and it felt good. It was a nice reminder that there was more to my life than just drugs and all-consuming love affair.

“I’m worried about you, Locky,” Kalen said after the movie was done and we were just sitting around his tiny room.

I sighed. “I’m worried about me, too. I’ve had some incredible experiences, but sometimes I look back and think, ‘what the fuck was I thinking?’ You know we’ve spent over a thousand dollars in a single weekend? I used to drop two pills in a night, now it’s like eight or ten.”

“You guys are fucked, man. Well, I guess it’s not just you. Some girl I’d never met before tried to sell me meth at the bar last week! Fuckin’ crystal meth!”

“Tell me you didn’t say yes!”

“What do you think, asshole?”

“Hey,” I laughed. “You never know.”

“Buying meth off a stranger is more up your alley than mine,” he said with a smile.

“Fuck that,” I said. “I’ll sniff coke ‘til I’m blue in the face, but I’d never do meth.”

“I thought you wanted to try everything once.”

“Even I do have limits. I’d never do meth, or crack or heroin.”

*****

The first time I did meth I bought a quarter gram from a friend who had previously sworn up and down she would never sell it to a first-timer. She made me swear I wouldn’t tell Dominic where I’d gotten it. A quarter gram of cocaine doesn’t last very long. It’s a few lines if you’re good about it, or, if you are like Dominic and I were by that point, it made two lines.

So, my first inclination when I brought home the baggie of greyish crystals was to cut it out into two lines, one for each of us. I dumped it out onto the small marble slate that had become part of our ritual and brought it over to the coffee table in the living room.

“Jesus, Lachlan,” Dominic snorted. “Tell me you didn’t pay money for that. It doesn’t even look like coke.”

Here was the part I’d been dreading. “It’s not.”

He gave me an inscrutable look and then looked back down at the small lines of greyish crystals. “Tell me that isn’t fucking crystal meth, Lachlan. Tell me that you have some sense left in that head of yours.”

I mentally rehearsed my spiel.

“Try anything once, babe. You know that’s my motto. I promise I’ll never buy it again. I just wanted to try it. To know what it’s like.”

“Jesus Christ, Lachlan!” he roared, jumping to his feet. “This shit ruins people’s lives. You’re fuckin’ insane to do this. I want no part in this.”

He stormed into the bedroom and slammed the door. I sat on the floor and vacillated. I knew the right thing to do was flush the meth and go talk to Dominic, but I also knew I might never get another chance to try it. I did keep my promise, though, and never did it again.

Once I’d finished rationalizing (a skill that was second nature by now) I rolled up a five dollar bill and sniffed one of the lines.

Uppers have never been my drugs of choice. I did a lot of cocaine and ecstasy, because that was what was around and at the clubs, but I always preferred ketamine or painkillers when I could get my hands on them. Meth is the ultimate upper – a drug unlike any other.

I would describe this in more detail if I could, but it is simply too blurry to recall accurately. What I can tell you is that one line of crystal meth made me feel as if I could do anything. I was expecting something like cocaine, but meth was totally different. Cocaine lasts less than half an hour, but meth can last for twelve hours, and the side effects can last for days.

I didn’t sleep that night, but after much apologizing and explaining, I finally convinced Dominic to forgive me, and he stayed up with me. The next day I looked slightly haggard and I was still totally wired, but I was sober enough to go to work. The shift flew by. I was everywhere at once doing twice as much work as usual. Where I normally avoided talking to customers, I chatted with them until my mouth was dry.

When I got home from work, I broke another promise and decided to smoke the rest of it. I fashioned a pipe out of a light bulb and put about half of my remaining meth into it. It tasted awful, but felt much better than snorting it. I smoked the rest of it throughout the night, to Dominic’s disgust.

All in all, I was awake for six days. By the time I finally went to sleep, I felt as if I was going insane. I had been so tired for so long but completely unable to sleep. I screamed at anyone who talked to me and then launched into long, incoherent rants. I became paranoid and was convinced that people were trying to punish me for smoking meth. I shivered uncontrollably, and then suddenly I would be drenched in sweat. I didn’t eat a bite in five days, and if I drank anything other than water I retched violently.

And when I woke up after finally going to sleep, I wanted more.

*****

Everything changed in December of my second year at university. A friend of ours from whom we occasionally bought ecstasy came to us and said he knew a guy who had top-notch pure MDMA for a wicked price as long as we bought enough. MDMA was hard to find, so we agreed to try some, and he was right: it was amazing.

Dominic and I together scraped up $800 and bought a bunch of it, knowing we could easily double or triple our money if we played our cards right. The following weekend we did over 50 capsules of MDMA by ourselves. We still managed to break even on the investment and decided we’d try it again.

The next weekend ended up much like the first but with much graver consequences. Dominic was still wrecked on Monday and didn’t go to work. He lost his job the following day. I only worked part time while I was (nominally) in school, and I certainly couldn’t afford to pay for our apartment. So we decided we would buy another $800 worth of MDMA and actually sell it.

The third time was the charm for us. We made over a thousand dollars’ profit and still were able to party. We knew all the right people, selling drugs just seemed sensible.

*****

It’s ironic to think that selling drugs would make us use them less frequently, but that’s what happened. For a while, at least. It was easy, tax-free money that basically allowed us to party for dirt cheap and still turn a profit. We intended to sell the MDMA until Dominic found a new job, but the weeks dragged on, and soon we found ourselves selling cocaine as well.

Within a few months I had quit my job, and we were making more selling drugs than we ever had made working legitimate jobs. We got to a point where our cost was so low that we could party almost as much as we wanted, and we never had to worry about not making enough money to cover rent. We even moved to a nicer building in a better part of town. I finished my second year of school with very mediocre marks (I even flunked one class), but I didn’t care in the slightest.

My drug use declined significantly during the summer, mostly because I was bored with the drugs we sold. The more I did cocaine and ecstasy, the more pronounced the negative effects were. Now that we were dealers, though, we had connections that could get me the stuff I really wanted.

I tried everything from DXM (the active ingredient in cough syrup) to crack cocaine to designer drugs most people have never even heard of. I took Valium to come down from coke at night then took speed in the morning to get me through the day. Special K was my drug of choice on a daily basis, but my Achilles heel, when I could get my hands on them, were opiates.

Dominic hated it when I did painkillers, because he saw that they pulled me like no other drug. I could sniff cocaine all night and then just say ‘no’, but not so with opiates. When I got painkillers, I did them until they were gone. And unlike club drugs, there was no awful comedown.

“Have you ever done heroin?” I asked Dominic one evening as we were cuddling on the couch watching TV.

“Why do you ask?” he replied sceptically.

“Don’t worry babe,” I laughed. “I don’t have any hidden in my pocket. I was just curious.”

“Once. A long time ago. When I was about your age, actually. I’d say it was a mistake, but it may well have saved my life. I woke up in a bathtub covered in vomit. I stopped doing drugs and joined the military for five years.”

“Did you bang it?”

He sighed heavily. “Yes, I did. I won’t tell you that you can’t try heroin, but don’t you fucking dare stick needles in your arms. Promise me that much, at least.”

“Of course, Dom,” I said, kissing the back of his neck. “I would never do intravenous drugs.”

What Was Taken, What Was Paid

Take what you want and pay for it, says God.

~Spanish Proverb

I got the idea from the internet. I learned that ketamine, which was pretty much my drug of choice anyway, was best done by intramuscular injection, like a flu shot. From what I had read, it was an experience that didn’t even compare to sniffing the drug. In addition, it is almost impossible to overdose on ketamine, you simply get knocked out before you’re even close to a fatal dose.

I knew what Dominic’s reaction would be when I brought it up, but I also knew how hard it was for him to say no to me. The way I looked at it, it was a hell of a lot safer than an intravenous injection that still repulsed even me.

“You want to do what, Locky?!”

“It’s not intravenous, it’s intramuscular,” I said tactfully. “As long as we use clean needles, there’s less risk than drinking GHB.”

“Is this one of your try-anything-once things?” he asked with a sigh. I knew I had won.

“Absolutely,” I beamed.

“Fine,” he said. “But I’m going first to make sure it’s ok.”

“Hah!” I chortled. “Who’s corrupting whom now?”

“You rotten little bastard.”

*****

As it turns out, I was pretty much right on all accounts. It was safe (or at least had no noticeable negative effects) and it certainly was an experience unlike any other. The first night we injected ketamine was one of those singularly spectacular highs that I could not forget even if I wanted to. Most of my drug experiences blend into a single, blurred memory, but there are a few which stick out like beacons in a fog. That was one of those experiences.

What I had not anticipated, however, was the way it changed my opinion of needles. No longer were they something relegated to junkies; they were simply another means of administering drugs.

Our drug use had tapered off when we began to sell, but after a while we began to fall into a vicious cycle where I would do cocaine because that was always Dominic’s drug of choice, and then the next day he would do whatever I wanted to do.

When we bought needles for injecting the ketamine the first time, they came in a pack of 10. So we used the other eight. Then, since it all seemed so reasonable to us, we bought another pack. And another.

*****

I was vaguely aware of a feeling of shame somewhere in the back of my mind, but it was drowned out by my building anticipation. I had crossed every line, broken every taboo – except this one. I had sniffed, eaten or smoked just about every drug under the sun. Hell, I’d even put pills up my ass just to see what it was like. Now I was crossing the final boundary. I was about to do something even druggies scorned.

I held the twine around my arm, opening and closing my fist until I could see the veins in the crook of my elbow. I watched Dominic dissolve a small pile of cocaine in some water in one of our soup spoons. He drew the liquid through a cotton ball into the needle and flicked it until he was sure there were no air bubbles.

“You ready, babe?” he asked. I took a deep breath, and nodded.

It didn’t hurt at all, in fact the most painful part was the twine around my arm. When he pulled the needle out of my arm I stood up and waited for a few seconds.

They say you hear ringing in your ears when you bang coke, but I didn’t quite understand what that meant until that moment. It wasn’t ringing like a far-off telephone or a dull buzz, it was church bells right inside my head. I gasped and lay down on the couch. I’m not sure how long it lasted – no more than a few minutes I’m sure – but to this day I sometimes ask myself if that was the most pleasure I’ll ever feel. It was better than sex, better than an orgasm. It was, simply put, outside the realm of normal human experience.

“I think I finally understand how someone could become addicted to coke,” I said, breathing heavily, once I finally stopped hearing the bells and was able to sit up straight.

“Yup,” he said, passing me his needle. “And we’re not going to be doing this again for a long, long while.”

*****

“Get out of my way, Locky,” Dominic said, hands on his hips.

I looked at him for a moment before replying. “Fine.” I stepped aside and watched with pity and revulsion as he reached into the waste paper basket and pulled out a discarded needle.

“I want you to take a good long look at what you’ve become,” I said. “You thought I had a problem? This is what junkies do.”

“Well, maybe that’s what we’ve become. I notice you weren’t complaining about reusing needles last night.”

I walked over to him and grabbed him tightly around the chest. “I love you, Dominic. Please think about this before you do it. Please.”

He pushed me gently aside and walked to the table where the cocaine and spoon were sitting. I shook my head sadly.

“Alright, then. Do up one for me, too,” I said, grabbing another needle out of the garbage.

Drugs might be addictive, but relationships can be too. And like the drug addict, we never see we’re trapped in an unhealthy cycle until, somehow, the cycle is broken.

*****

I woke up, still high, to the sound of Dominic’s phone ringing. Ignoring it, I stretched and walked into the living room. A nearly empty bottle of Dilaudid was lying on the table next to a handful of dime baggies and the small container we kept our Special K in. I remembered doing the K intravenously for the first time. After that we’d mixed the Dilaudid with the coke into a speedball.

I stared at myself in the mirror and slowly traced my fingers over the bruises on my arms. Thin bands marked my upper arm where I’d used twine as a cheap tourniquet. My eyes looked lifeless, and I must have lost another 15 pounds. I didn’t just look like a junkie, I realised: I was one. And I didn’t care.

Dominic’s phone started ringing again, and I went to see who it was. It was a customer, of course. I looked at Dominic lying on the bed, and something seemed out of place. His eyes were open. I broke into a sweat and started shaking.

“Dominic!” I called sharply. No answer.

“Dominic, wake up!” Still no answer. I knew.

I couldn’t process that. It was worse than my worst nightmare. I was the responsible drug user who researched his drugs and dosed properly and didn’t go overboard. That almost made me laugh as I looked at him lying in our bed staring lifelessly back me. I didn’t cry, because I wouldn’t admit he was gone.

I truly wished I hadn’t woken up. I grabbed the needles and what was left of the Dilaudid and started slamming them, wondering just how many I could do. I woke up a few hours on my bathroom floor. I started laughing. It all seemed so surreal. I looked through my phone and realised there was nobody I could call. All the good advice that I just didn’t take tumbled through my head. I heard Kalen’s voice; I heard my mother’s.

I looked in the mirror again and saw the junkie staring back at me. In that moment I knew, for perhaps the first time, what it meant to be completely alone.

*****

I still think about Dominic every hour of every day, but I know he wouldn’t want me to have regrets. He died peacefully in his sleep, doing something he enjoyed, beside someone who loved him unconditionally. And that is more than most people can say.

I don’t regret the things I’ve done. You may find that strange, but so be it. I am who I am because of my experiences. I’ve loved, and been loved. I’ve felt things beyond what I’d imagined to be possible. I shattered ego boundaries – and found happiness. I will never go back there, because I’m not sure I would survive, but when I die, I will be able to say that I have lived.

To Tyler.

Thanks, as always, goes to rec for editing this piece.

© 2010 Menzoberranzen

Story Discussion

There are many website available with information to help those dealing with substance abuse. The following is only a small subset.

General

Overcoming Drug Addiction

U.S.A.

Teen Drugs - Teen Help Websites

The National Alcohol and Substance Abuse Drug Addiction Help and Information Center.
Ph: 1 800 390 4056

U.K.

National Drug Helpline. Ph: 0800 776600

Australia

Lifeline. Ph: 13 11 14

How to get help: Victorian Drug Services

Canada

Drug Addition Help Line. Ph: 1-877-748-3971

Drug Rehab & Drug Addiction Treatment. Ph: 1-877-801-5475