Another Substitute for Sober Days Walk to Brueger’s for lunch, walk past small weedy houses that look more interesting in the rain and today, alas, it was banally clear. I like to wander down among them in bad weather, imagine someone calling to me from one of the comfortable looking stucco porches, offering me a couple drags off a thick blunt, sticky, practically oozing resin through the heavy paper and trailing heady green smoke. Standing on a porch, smoking a cigarette and watching the rain, maybe with some light-skinned black guy looking not unlike Weldon, or maybe a dark, dark round-headed Cuban. Just standing there smoking a menthol in that kind of slow companionable silence. God I love to smoke. I cut back to quitting just so I can feel like I’m cheating when I have one. I don’t tell my boyfriend I love him ‘cause I don’t know yet if it’s really true, but in my head I think those words a lot—‘God knows I love the boy but why can’t I sleep with other people’—sentences like that.
Lines of coke, the taste in the back of my throat and the hum in the front of my head. Speed, more painful but less unpleasant tasting – the curious impetus it gives my tongue. I wouldn’t mind having a line or two before I try to tell this story. I’m not sure why I think about drugs like this, cigarettes, pot, amphetamines. Don’t use them all that often. Would likely think of them less if I used them more. Sometimes writing is another substitute.  ¶ 2:46 AM