work day

he would come over early, before i was even awake, and be sitting by my bed when my eyes finally opened. it was never startling, for a person like him this was typical behavior. he probably hadnt slept the night before. to be honest, i dont remember how i would get to sleep each night, with all the crystal meth we were doing at the time. i suppose i drank myself to sleep. maybe i took a pill or something. i cant remember. i know i didnt eat though.

id get out of bed and stand and stretch in my underwear and he would be sitting there leafing through my records anxiously. before i could even rub the sleep from my eyes he would point to a cd case where a few rails were already lined up. id take one half up the left nostril, the other half up the right, and snort down the burn and swallow the drip. it was such a familiar sensation, pleasant at the time, that im sure it wasnt just the amphetamines that woke me up, but the excitement of the process that got me going. back then there was no such thing as bad speed, even the most unsavory of or friends could find some proper glass.

i would grab a towel and head for the shower and while in the shower get a good narration going in my head. a fury of words and phrases that sometimes stuck but mainly just rolled by. when i would get back to my room he would be on my decks, the sun just emerging from the early morning fog and the light spilling onto all the ash and dust, letting two records collide into a clever third song. id do another line and get dressed for work. without speaking he'd rail up a few more. fuel for the wicked before the doldrums began.

his car smelled of old beer and perfume. i couldnt smoke in it because he didnt smoke, so when we would stop at a store to grab a few forty ouncers id just give him my money and stand on the corner, sucking down nicotine until he came back. by the time we got to work a reasonable buzz was going we were ready to begin the day.

id sign in and then do some early paperwork. i was the export manager to the warehouse so i had to get all my packages out by two o'clock. at noon we would take a lunch break but we would never eat, we'd go get a couple more forties and then park on a hill overlooking the airport. id sit on the hood of his car taking heavy swigs from the bottle and chain smoking as the planes took off and landed at SFO international. when the hour was almost up we'd do a couple more lines off of a cd on his dashboard and then drive back to the warehouse more buzzed then before.

he would tell me about the old days of clubbing in new york, back when the big clubs were fraught with drugs and the djs took their craft seriously. we both agreed that san francisco was where it was at but that soon new york would reclaim its title as the place to be. i believed every word he said, even the most absurd stories, because i knew he was capable of anything. he was a god damn nut case, consuming every drug in sight and letting the world know he didnt care what it thought. it was surprising that he had such a belly, considering all the drugs we did. i was about ten pounds underweight and no amount of beer would ever gather up to give me pudge. he though, wore a heavy armor of fat on his body and face, it just made him all the more unstoppable.

at the end of the work day we would meet at the parking lot with an armful of stolen records in hand. id smoke a cigarette before i climbed in and then we'd do another line before taking off. when we got back into the city we would get another round of forties but he'd just drop me off and go home to his girlfriend. i forget what i would do. i just know it would all start again the next morning.