Black Market.
Shelley and I are going out tonight. She comes to my house around seven. I’m all out of ecstasy so I go out and buy some more before she arrives so we can drop immediately (they’ve got ‘no deal’ on the tablets; from the game show). We want to go and see a movie before heading to our favourite music venue. She comes over and is a bit speedy because she had a work report due that required the focus amphetamines offer on a short-term basis. She’d mainlined that morning and spent the day at her computer. ‘The problem with working on speed,’ she says at the door with pupils like dish plates, ‘is that you get too much done. You can complete a weeks’ work in less than six hours.’
The movie is great. It’s a feel good piece and we laugh and sigh our way through it – not that we need to feel good, we feel awesome. The two lead characters bicker through the first half of the film – although it’s obvious that they like each other. And it’s only when their two equally hilarious flat mates spike their drinks with MDMA that they find true love.
After, we head to see a band and catch up with Patrick who’s had a little too much heroin. He keeps rubbing his nose and his eyes droop closed on more than one occasion (more than five). I have a crush on Patrick. Shelley knows this and leaves us alone for a while. I took a little more ecstasy after the movie and I’m pretty tactile, I keep putting Patrick’s hands on my body; over my breasts, but he’s too smacked out so I give up after a while.
The band is awesome and Shelley and I dance up front whilst Patrick buys a Coke and then drops it, his hand makes a circle where he was holding it. Buys and drops, buys … and drops. The soft drink vendor laughs at him. ‘You took too much, man,’ he says, pointing. Patrick swipes at the extended finger missing it continually. The bartender plays with him for a while, like a puppy, then gets bored and serves someone else.
Around midnight we jump in a cab and drop Patrick home. Shelley and I continue on to my place and we stop by a convenience store to pick up a couple of joints and a handful of Xanax, so we can sleep. We both have to work the next day. Shelley always stays at my place. She still lives with her family, with the exception of her father who is in prison. You probably read about it in the papers a couple of years ago, when those two trucks were involved in that police chase along the Hume Highway going from Sydney to Melbourne. He was the driver of one of them and was caught with five hundred cartons of beer.
The street value of a can of beer is about twenty-five bucks. Times that by twenty-four it equals about a five hundred dollars. Times that by five hundred and you’ve got at least a five year stint in maximum security.
Shelley’s family have stood by her father and that freaks me out a bit I guess. I once caught Shelley smoking a cigarette. She was staying at my place for a couple of days and I came home from work early. When I opened the door I immediately smelt tobacco. Shelley was on the couch and she hurriedly stubbed something out in the ashtray. I asked her what it was, she said a joint, and we left it at that. But if it were to happen again … I suppose what I’m saying is that I do not want to be a part of criminal activity. I wouldn’t give her in to the police or anything; she just wouldn’t be welcome at my place any more. And that would be a shame.
We lounge around on my couch still feeling really good. We’re chatty and our conversation dives deep into themes of the heart, and soul. I talk about Patrick the lovable junky lawyer: Always on, but hard working and a vigilant prosecutor. He only ever has too much on the weekend, and I’ve never had to poke him with the shot of adrenalin that users have to carry at all times, so essentially he’s a big tick for me. Shelley agrees and feigns jealousy. I feel really close to Shelley right now. I know I can tell her anything and she won’t judge me. This is due to her family’s plight obviously, but I think it’s a good example of how positivity can come out of a bad situation.
Shelley starts talking about the government. We’ve never openly discussed her family’s situation and I really hope that she’s not leading us there. It’s … I’m not comfortable with it. She asks me why it’s okay to smoke pot and not tobacco. ‘They both grow naturally’, she says, ‘why is one okay and the other taboo?’ I shrug my shoulders and quote the ad that we both grew up with, ‘Dope will make you feel great, tobacco is weed fuelled hate: Cancer!’
‘I barely understand what it means,’ Shelley says. I begin to explain to her what we’ve all read on the pamphlets a hundred times, but she interrupts me, ‘Yeah, that’s what they say, but all the politicians smoke and drink.’
‘They do not.’ I say, shocked.
‘It’s well documented.’
‘Do we have to? I mean, I’m still high.’
‘We’re all high. Everyone’s high all the time.’ Shelley’s arms are waving. ‘Tobacco just sort of calms you down and alcohol makes you feel positively giddy. They want us on psychotropic’s or painkillers so we don’t kick up a stink about the state of the world.’
‘You can die on a couple of beers. Or you go crazy and fight everybody. You’ve seen the footage.’
‘It’s all staged. Tell me you know that they’re actors.’ Shelley folds her arms and waits.
‘Well … yes, I know they’re not real, but they’re examples of what’s …’
‘Lies.’ Shelley’s interrupting me now. ‘It’s all bullshit. They want us munted. They want the entire population fuck-eyed.’
‘This is an illegal conversation. I don’t want to talk about it.’ I can feel anger and fear pierce the bubble of my ecstasy high. I light up a joint to ride the wave.
‘You should try beer.’
‘No!’ I say, sputtering on the joint. ‘Please Shelley, stop talking about it, we’ll get in trouble.’
‘You can’t tell me lots’a people don’t.’ Shelley says this pulling something out of her bag. Emotion rises up in me and I can barely keep a lid on it. The ecstasy is making a come back.
‘It’s like Animal Farm. They’ve learnt to walk on two legs and drink liquor whilst we’re still working on the windmill.’ Whilst Shelley anecdotally jams, she holds up what I know from the television is a six-pack. ‘Well I’m not going to take it anymore. If I want a drink I’m going to have it.’
I am lost for words. Shelley is peeling the plastic layer off and extracts a brown bottle. Within my horror there is a fraction of disappointment. In government messages the image of the beer is ominous and coupled with music that I still hear in my nightmares. In real life it looks harmless. Like it could’ve been bought at a store.
‘You have to leave. And take that with you.’ But my words sound hollow: Too much reverb.
‘Will you call the police on me?’ Shelley winks and takes the lid off the beer. It makes a fizzing sound. She holds it in front of her mouth.
‘Don’t do it, Shelley. I’ll call, I will.’ Due to the high impact nature of What I Am Seeing, nothing is registering. I am frozen.
Shelley slowly brings the bottle up to her lips and rests it there. She looks at me, and throws her head back. I watch, stuck in the headlights. She finishes the half the beer and I am beside myself. I’m expecting her to drop dead instantly. She wipes her mouth and a rumble emerges from her. She covers her mouth as she burps and then she laughs.
‘Oh my God!’ I say. ‘Shelley, we have to call an ambulance.’
But Shelley won’t have any of it. She waves me away as she pulls another bottle out of the six-pack. The fizzing sound again, and she holds it out to me. I recoil.
‘It’s okay. I feel great.’ She nods at the bottle in her out stretched hand. ‘Just have a sip, it’s not gonna kill you.’
‘No way.’ I stand and tower above Shelley who is smiling and still holding the beer out to me.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ she says, ‘you don’t have to drink it. Just hold it.’
Slowly I sit again, but I’m still agitated. I take the beer off Shelley and I’m shaking as I hold it. It feels cold, but not cold as in temperature-wise, it feels cold like it’s emotionless and waiting to kill me.
I don’t know if it’s the ecstasy or the pot or what, but I have a sip. I’m not expecting the bubbles and I cough a little. Shelley laughs. She’s taking the top off another and she starts drinking. I take a deeper sip. My face is grimaced as I wait for my heart to stop. Or a blinding headache to kill me on the spot, but nothing happens. I drink again and grimace a little less. Then I gulp and something warm and friendly is bursting inside me.
All of a sudden I’m on my second. I am laughing and talking now, and everything I thought is going out the window.
Then the six-pack is gone and Shelley produces another. This time I don’t protest. In fact, if I’m to be honest, it was me who asked for it. After my fourth Shelley pulls out a couple of cigarettes from a packet that you would buy from a store that usually holds joints. I don’t even frown; I pull one of the slender home rolled cigarettes out of the packet and light it. A part of me expects to choke on this ‘poison fuelled stick’ but nothing happens. The smoke is warm and invigorating and it doesn’t taste half as bad as the amphetamine-spiked joints you can buy from the corner store.
I’m on cloud nine. I feel liberated and I tell Shelley exactly this. She smiles. I can see in her face that this is nothing new to her, but I also recognise that she is not hampering my experience with what she already knows. We talk about her family, and the difficulties she has gone through, and the stigma that has been attached to her that she is reminded of by people on a daily basis. I apologise for not being there for her more but she stops me and says that my friendship has been very much appreciated. We hold each other whilst our cigarettes burn away in the ashtray. We look at each other dead in the eye and something important passes between us. Our already strong friendship fortifies even more and it’s a powerful feeling.
‘People die all the time,’ Shelley says, ‘and it is acceptable because they’re dying within the boundaries of our rules.’
I love the music that’s playing over my stereo at the moment. It’s a song by a shock band from the early 90’s, and their once subversive drinking songs now carry a sense of truth that is really hitting home for me.
‘And if they legalised booze, there would be no crime.’ As Shelley says this she hands me my fifth. I hungrily open the bottle and swig away listening intently and agreeing with it all. I’m feeling like Shelley’s student, and a euphoric state falls over me. But not in the drugged out sense, it’s knowledge and understanding that is making me high.
And the beer.
It’s hard to explain. But it’s like I’ve been reborn. Rules and regulations that had been drummed into me from infancy seemed superfluous - more than that, ridiculous. What right do these fuddy duddy politicians have to tell us how we choose to relax or even escape? I feel angry that I’ve been blind for so long, that everything I thought was right is actually wrong, and I vow to do something about it. Somehow.
The door breaks apart and 6 men in SWAT uniforms enter. One holds the door open whilst the others enter in formation, checking each passageway before continuing forward, with their guns leading the way. Shelley makes a feeble attempt to hide the contraband but it is too late. They are screaming at us to put our hands above our heads, and soon we are cuffed and heading to the station, and all of a sudden, I can’t look Shelley in the eye anymore.
I did not like testifying against Shelley, but my hands were tied (or … they would’ve been if I didn’t). The lying wasn’t fun: My lawyers said for me to say that I thought the alcohol was mescaline in fake beer bottles. I had no prior convictions so it wasn’t hard for the judge to believe I had never tried beer before. Shelley didn’t take it well, but there was no point in both of us going away and she supplied it so … I suppose one must lie in the bed that one has made. I was vulnerable and she exploited it. Hopefully her time away will teach her what is and isn’t appropriate, and although she’s not in the same prison as her father, the fact that she has been incarcerated might bring them closer together (preferably not too close, for her sake, but still).
I’ve had to undergo alcohol counselling which can be trying at times. They make me feel like a criminal and although I know what I did was wrong, I don’t appreciate the looks I get in the street when people recognise me from the paper. I am not like Shelley. I strayed for a minute but now, with the aid of a healthy regiment of morphine and selected uppers I am back on track and feeling … well not much at all.
The movie is great. It’s a feel good piece and we laugh and sigh our way through it – not that we need to feel good, we feel awesome. The two lead characters bicker through the first half of the film – although it’s obvious that they like each other. And it’s only when their two equally hilarious flat mates spike their drinks with MDMA that they find true love.
After, we head to see a band and catch up with Patrick who’s had a little too much heroin. He keeps rubbing his nose and his eyes droop closed on more than one occasion (more than five). I have a crush on Patrick. Shelley knows this and leaves us alone for a while. I took a little more ecstasy after the movie and I’m pretty tactile, I keep putting Patrick’s hands on my body; over my breasts, but he’s too smacked out so I give up after a while.
The band is awesome and Shelley and I dance up front whilst Patrick buys a Coke and then drops it, his hand makes a circle where he was holding it. Buys and drops, buys … and drops. The soft drink vendor laughs at him. ‘You took too much, man,’ he says, pointing. Patrick swipes at the extended finger missing it continually. The bartender plays with him for a while, like a puppy, then gets bored and serves someone else.
Around midnight we jump in a cab and drop Patrick home. Shelley and I continue on to my place and we stop by a convenience store to pick up a couple of joints and a handful of Xanax, so we can sleep. We both have to work the next day. Shelley always stays at my place. She still lives with her family, with the exception of her father who is in prison. You probably read about it in the papers a couple of years ago, when those two trucks were involved in that police chase along the Hume Highway going from Sydney to Melbourne. He was the driver of one of them and was caught with five hundred cartons of beer.
The street value of a can of beer is about twenty-five bucks. Times that by twenty-four it equals about a five hundred dollars. Times that by five hundred and you’ve got at least a five year stint in maximum security.
Shelley’s family have stood by her father and that freaks me out a bit I guess. I once caught Shelley smoking a cigarette. She was staying at my place for a couple of days and I came home from work early. When I opened the door I immediately smelt tobacco. Shelley was on the couch and she hurriedly stubbed something out in the ashtray. I asked her what it was, she said a joint, and we left it at that. But if it were to happen again … I suppose what I’m saying is that I do not want to be a part of criminal activity. I wouldn’t give her in to the police or anything; she just wouldn’t be welcome at my place any more. And that would be a shame.
We lounge around on my couch still feeling really good. We’re chatty and our conversation dives deep into themes of the heart, and soul. I talk about Patrick the lovable junky lawyer: Always on, but hard working and a vigilant prosecutor. He only ever has too much on the weekend, and I’ve never had to poke him with the shot of adrenalin that users have to carry at all times, so essentially he’s a big tick for me. Shelley agrees and feigns jealousy. I feel really close to Shelley right now. I know I can tell her anything and she won’t judge me. This is due to her family’s plight obviously, but I think it’s a good example of how positivity can come out of a bad situation.
Shelley starts talking about the government. We’ve never openly discussed her family’s situation and I really hope that she’s not leading us there. It’s … I’m not comfortable with it. She asks me why it’s okay to smoke pot and not tobacco. ‘They both grow naturally’, she says, ‘why is one okay and the other taboo?’ I shrug my shoulders and quote the ad that we both grew up with, ‘Dope will make you feel great, tobacco is weed fuelled hate: Cancer!’
‘I barely understand what it means,’ Shelley says. I begin to explain to her what we’ve all read on the pamphlets a hundred times, but she interrupts me, ‘Yeah, that’s what they say, but all the politicians smoke and drink.’
‘They do not.’ I say, shocked.
‘It’s well documented.’
‘Do we have to? I mean, I’m still high.’
‘We’re all high. Everyone’s high all the time.’ Shelley’s arms are waving. ‘Tobacco just sort of calms you down and alcohol makes you feel positively giddy. They want us on psychotropic’s or painkillers so we don’t kick up a stink about the state of the world.’
‘You can die on a couple of beers. Or you go crazy and fight everybody. You’ve seen the footage.’
‘It’s all staged. Tell me you know that they’re actors.’ Shelley folds her arms and waits.
‘Well … yes, I know they’re not real, but they’re examples of what’s …’
‘Lies.’ Shelley’s interrupting me now. ‘It’s all bullshit. They want us munted. They want the entire population fuck-eyed.’
‘This is an illegal conversation. I don’t want to talk about it.’ I can feel anger and fear pierce the bubble of my ecstasy high. I light up a joint to ride the wave.
‘You should try beer.’
‘No!’ I say, sputtering on the joint. ‘Please Shelley, stop talking about it, we’ll get in trouble.’
‘You can’t tell me lots’a people don’t.’ Shelley says this pulling something out of her bag. Emotion rises up in me and I can barely keep a lid on it. The ecstasy is making a come back.
‘It’s like Animal Farm. They’ve learnt to walk on two legs and drink liquor whilst we’re still working on the windmill.’ Whilst Shelley anecdotally jams, she holds up what I know from the television is a six-pack. ‘Well I’m not going to take it anymore. If I want a drink I’m going to have it.’
I am lost for words. Shelley is peeling the plastic layer off and extracts a brown bottle. Within my horror there is a fraction of disappointment. In government messages the image of the beer is ominous and coupled with music that I still hear in my nightmares. In real life it looks harmless. Like it could’ve been bought at a store.
‘You have to leave. And take that with you.’ But my words sound hollow: Too much reverb.
‘Will you call the police on me?’ Shelley winks and takes the lid off the beer. It makes a fizzing sound. She holds it in front of her mouth.
‘Don’t do it, Shelley. I’ll call, I will.’ Due to the high impact nature of What I Am Seeing, nothing is registering. I am frozen.
Shelley slowly brings the bottle up to her lips and rests it there. She looks at me, and throws her head back. I watch, stuck in the headlights. She finishes the half the beer and I am beside myself. I’m expecting her to drop dead instantly. She wipes her mouth and a rumble emerges from her. She covers her mouth as she burps and then she laughs.
‘Oh my God!’ I say. ‘Shelley, we have to call an ambulance.’
But Shelley won’t have any of it. She waves me away as she pulls another bottle out of the six-pack. The fizzing sound again, and she holds it out to me. I recoil.
‘It’s okay. I feel great.’ She nods at the bottle in her out stretched hand. ‘Just have a sip, it’s not gonna kill you.’
‘No way.’ I stand and tower above Shelley who is smiling and still holding the beer out to me.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ she says, ‘you don’t have to drink it. Just hold it.’
Slowly I sit again, but I’m still agitated. I take the beer off Shelley and I’m shaking as I hold it. It feels cold, but not cold as in temperature-wise, it feels cold like it’s emotionless and waiting to kill me.
I don’t know if it’s the ecstasy or the pot or what, but I have a sip. I’m not expecting the bubbles and I cough a little. Shelley laughs. She’s taking the top off another and she starts drinking. I take a deeper sip. My face is grimaced as I wait for my heart to stop. Or a blinding headache to kill me on the spot, but nothing happens. I drink again and grimace a little less. Then I gulp and something warm and friendly is bursting inside me.
All of a sudden I’m on my second. I am laughing and talking now, and everything I thought is going out the window.
Then the six-pack is gone and Shelley produces another. This time I don’t protest. In fact, if I’m to be honest, it was me who asked for it. After my fourth Shelley pulls out a couple of cigarettes from a packet that you would buy from a store that usually holds joints. I don’t even frown; I pull one of the slender home rolled cigarettes out of the packet and light it. A part of me expects to choke on this ‘poison fuelled stick’ but nothing happens. The smoke is warm and invigorating and it doesn’t taste half as bad as the amphetamine-spiked joints you can buy from the corner store.
I’m on cloud nine. I feel liberated and I tell Shelley exactly this. She smiles. I can see in her face that this is nothing new to her, but I also recognise that she is not hampering my experience with what she already knows. We talk about her family, and the difficulties she has gone through, and the stigma that has been attached to her that she is reminded of by people on a daily basis. I apologise for not being there for her more but she stops me and says that my friendship has been very much appreciated. We hold each other whilst our cigarettes burn away in the ashtray. We look at each other dead in the eye and something important passes between us. Our already strong friendship fortifies even more and it’s a powerful feeling.
‘People die all the time,’ Shelley says, ‘and it is acceptable because they’re dying within the boundaries of our rules.’
I love the music that’s playing over my stereo at the moment. It’s a song by a shock band from the early 90’s, and their once subversive drinking songs now carry a sense of truth that is really hitting home for me.
‘And if they legalised booze, there would be no crime.’ As Shelley says this she hands me my fifth. I hungrily open the bottle and swig away listening intently and agreeing with it all. I’m feeling like Shelley’s student, and a euphoric state falls over me. But not in the drugged out sense, it’s knowledge and understanding that is making me high.
And the beer.
It’s hard to explain. But it’s like I’ve been reborn. Rules and regulations that had been drummed into me from infancy seemed superfluous - more than that, ridiculous. What right do these fuddy duddy politicians have to tell us how we choose to relax or even escape? I feel angry that I’ve been blind for so long, that everything I thought was right is actually wrong, and I vow to do something about it. Somehow.
The door breaks apart and 6 men in SWAT uniforms enter. One holds the door open whilst the others enter in formation, checking each passageway before continuing forward, with their guns leading the way. Shelley makes a feeble attempt to hide the contraband but it is too late. They are screaming at us to put our hands above our heads, and soon we are cuffed and heading to the station, and all of a sudden, I can’t look Shelley in the eye anymore.
I did not like testifying against Shelley, but my hands were tied (or … they would’ve been if I didn’t). The lying wasn’t fun: My lawyers said for me to say that I thought the alcohol was mescaline in fake beer bottles. I had no prior convictions so it wasn’t hard for the judge to believe I had never tried beer before. Shelley didn’t take it well, but there was no point in both of us going away and she supplied it so … I suppose one must lie in the bed that one has made. I was vulnerable and she exploited it. Hopefully her time away will teach her what is and isn’t appropriate, and although she’s not in the same prison as her father, the fact that she has been incarcerated might bring them closer together (preferably not too close, for her sake, but still).
I’ve had to undergo alcohol counselling which can be trying at times. They make me feel like a criminal and although I know what I did was wrong, I don’t appreciate the looks I get in the street when people recognise me from the paper. I am not like Shelley. I strayed for a minute but now, with the aid of a healthy regiment of morphine and selected uppers I am back on track and feeling … well not much at all.
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