Filing on meth is interesting. Filing without meth is not. For three years, I have worked a nine to five job as an office assistant at a law school. I work in the dean’s office. My supervisor’s name is Carol. Everybody loves Carol. She is so nice. I think she is annoying. But Carol has MS, so you have to be nice to her. Carol also never questions why I go to the bathroom and the file room so often. And why, when I do go, am I gone so long?
“Oh Carol, it’s the meth. Don’t worry about me. Everyone on meth loses track of time.”
No, that wouldn’t do. Like I said though, she never asks. This makes up for her annoyance. Sometimes I even bring her a chocolate chunk cookie from the Tea Room. That’s what the cafeteria is called. The Tea Room. Much more fancy sounding. Which it should because this law school is in the old Bullocks Wilshire where the Hollywood stars used to shop. It’s a deco building and from the outside it looks beautiful, but inside, sitting at my desk in my windowless office, there is nothing beautiful about it. Sometimes when I’m sitting there, I like to imagine all the stars walking in with their furs and silk gowns. Marilyn Monroe winking at me, as she hands me another dress to add to her tab. But all those stars and gowns are gone now and no matter how hard I try, I’m always brought back to Carol and filing.
As long as I have meth, though, none of this matters. I can file all day long.
“Be there in two minutes,” Kasper texts.
Kasper, my dealer.
With a stack of file folders, I turn to Carol. “I’ll be in the file room.”
“Don’t forget the key,” she says.
She really isn’t that bad. Maybe I’ll get her a cookie later.
I run off campus carrying the stack of folders. The parking lot of Jack in the Box. Two blocks from MacArthur Park. The park where a woman was attacked just last month. What was the woman doing in the park? What am I doing on a hot weekday afternoon, running to Jack in the Box to meet my dealer, Kasper?
He’s sitting there in his big black truck, a Playboy decal on the back window. Looking around, I walk toward him with my file folders. Heart racing, sweat above my upper lip. The last time. How many last times have there been? Furry dice hang from the rearview mirror. He’s wearing a wife beater, it’s white. Not one stain on it. How does he keep it so white? And how does he manage to be on time? An on-time drug dealer. Kasper is okay. I even slept with him once. Well, not really. He couldn’t get it up. Too many drugs.
“Like it?” he asks.
He’s got a new tattoo. A big black rose on the side of his shaved skull.
“Nice.”
“Still gotta get the leaves inked in.”
I know the drill. Wait until he pulls up to the drive-thru and orders his shake. Oreo. Something about a man ordering an Oreo shake is a turn off. But Kasper, with his skull rings and tats, it makes him more likeable.
Every time he asks if I want one.
“You sure? They are the best.”
“I’m good,” I say.
I used to meet my old dealer at Taco Bell. And the one before that at IHOP. Ross Dress For Less was the worst. Lisa with her owl eyes, the last time I saw her was in the bra aisle. The next day she went to jail. Lisa was never on time, not like Kasper.
After Kasper pays for his shake and the Jack in the Box girl goes off to make it, he hands me a beautiful full dime bag of crystals. Eighty dollars. Plus twenty for delivery. Six years of dealers and not until Kasper had I heard of a delivery fee for meth.
Kasper drives off with his shake and furry dice and I run back to the law school with my meth, forgetting all about the file folders that I left behind.
I take the elevator up to the fifth-floor bathroom. The only bathroom with square metal toilet paper dispensers, the best kind to crush lines on. The other bathrooms have round dispensers. Not good.
Sitting on the toilet seat, I take the Kasper stash out of my wallet and half a McDonald’s straw from the bottom of my purse. Sticking the tip of the straw into the dime bag, I fill the tip with crystals. Then I take out my driver’s license. Expired. Picture taken five years ago. Smiling, teeth white. I run my tongue across my front teeth, feeling the eroding of my gums. Now I barely smile. Sullen girl.
Through the cracks in the stall, two young women walk in. One chooses the stall next to mine. Why did she have to do that? She’s too close. As if being in the stall next to me would give me away. She could sense what I am doing. I wait for her to pee. She doesn’t. What’s wrong with her. She’s taking too long. I’m irritated. I want to be alone. I hear the other girl pee then the girl next to me pees and I feel better. Move it along ladies.
They wash their hands. Law students. Backpacks. One has a long, silky ponytail, like a horse. I feel like pulling on it, it’s so stupid and long. The other girl wears shorts, her legs bare, smooth, shaved. Her calves look like calves that are going places. Strong, thick-skinned. I look down at mine. My Marshalls polyester gray skirt just above my knees. Dry, stubble, pale calves. Calves that used to dance. Ballet, jazz, tap.
“What class do you have next?” calf girls asks ponytail girl.
I hate them both. I want to be them. Anyone, I want to be anyone but me. These girls are taking too long. Flushing the toilet, I crush the crystals with my old smiling driver’s license. Straw up my left nostril. Right nostril crusted, infected. I flush again. Sniff, sniff. The burn, the drip down my throat.
Ponytail girl has gone. Calf girl, the girl who is going places, leans into the mirror applying gloss to her lips. No one else in the bathroom just us. She’s maybe twenty-four. I used to be twenty-four. What was I doing at that age? I can’t even remember, but now I’m thirty-six, locked in the bathroom with a McDonald’s straw up my nose.
Calf girl turns around, looking toward the stall. All the other stalls are empty. She seems to see right through the stall door, right at me sitting there on the toilet. My face flushes. Does she recognize my feet? Red flats. I imagine her, “Aren’t those the feet of the girl who works in the dean’s office?” She leaves. I can breathe. I won’t wear the red flats again. That’s that girl who is in the bathroom forever. I know everybody knows. The dean’s office assistant, something is wrong with her. At the same time, I imagine nobody knows. I wear glasses I don’t need. Smart. Girls in glasses don’t use drugs. Neither do girls in pantyhose. Pantyhose without holes. Especially beige. Only I don’t wear pantyhose anymore. Three years ago, for the first week on the job I did. I also wasn’t doing drugs that week. I had quit. Forever. But that was only because I thought everything would be different. Different with a job. A five-day-a-week job. A suit job. Tahari.
“I found two new suits for you at the Hadassah,” my mom had said. “Tahari, do you know how expensive Tahari is? Your momma loves you. Just have them dry cleaned and wear Little Grandma’s NYU law school pendant. I’m so proud of you.”
Tahari. Stockings. NYU pendant.
Things will be different.
And they were, for a week.
I’m still in the bathroom stall. Look at my watch. 1:07 p.m. Forty minutes I’ve been in the file room. Reasonable. I take out a pocket mirror. You can pick until 1:15 p.m. Fingers to scalp, I feel for bumps. Bumps that aren’t there. I think of the law school girls. They pee, wash their hands, reapply lip-gloss, and then they leave. They leave the bathroom. When was the last time I walked in and out of a bathroom in a timely manner? 1:18 p.m. 1:27. Leave the bathroom. 1:55 p.m. and I am still in the stall.
It’s a decent job. I hate it. How could I have not been fired yet? Yearly employee evaluation poor. Very poor. But three years later, I am still employed. So many days missed, so many calls into work, so many deaths that never happened. My grandmother, aunt, grandfather. I started keeping a list, so the same family member didn’t die twice.
I can’t take it anymore. Not one more day. There’s no one left to die. No excuses to call in. After an hour, I leave the bathroom, go to the Tea Room to get Carol a cookie, and return to the windowless office.
***
Rumpus original art by Ian MacAllen
Voices on Addiction is a column devoted to true personal narratives of addiction, curated by Kelly Thompson, and authored by the spectrum of individuals affected by this illness. Through these essays, interviews, and book reviews we hope—in the words of Rebecca Solnit—to break the story by breaking the status quo of addiction: the shame, stigma, and hopelessness, and the lies and myths that surround it. Sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, adult children, extended family members, spouses, friends, employers or employees, boyfriends, girlfriends, neighbors, victims of crimes, and those who’ve committed crimes as addicts, and the personnel who often serve them, nurses, doctors, social workers, therapists, prison guards, police officers, policy makers and, of course, addicts themselves: Voices on Addiction will feature your stories. Because the story of addiction impacts us all. It’s time we break it. Submit here.
