A long time ago, I tried crack.  I had been living in the city by myself, and had reconnected with a high-school friend who was also living in the city on her own.  All my other high school and college friends were living in the suburbs so it felt a little lonely at the time, and I was happy when I bumped into Cathy at the grocery store.  I had actually not been close to her in high school; she was better friends with my best friend Sam.  In fact, when I saw her, I still harbored some annoyance from the time I had asked her if she wanted to go to the mall, she declined, and then I bumped into her in front of The Limited with our other friend Kristy.  There were a few other things that had bothered me about her, namely her heavy drug use, but – what the hell - I decided to let bygones be bygones. 

We exchanged numbers and said we should do lunch sometime.  She called me several days later and asked me over.  She was living alone in one of the nicer parts of the city, and told me she had recently moved out from her ex-boyfriend, Ryan’s, place.  I soon found out that one night the previous fall, Ryan had sent her, stoned, to the store alone for beer one night and she had been raped.  The guy came up from behind, grabbed her hood and pulled it over her head and raped and sodomized her.  For two hours.  It was so tragic and heart-wrenching that I erased all my past issues with her and decided to start fresh.  She showed me some drawings on her fridge.  They were calculus formulae made into art.  Over the next few months, we hung out more and more and I gained an appreciation for this girl’s intelligence and her strength.

Well, they showed up and looked a lot different from how I expected.  These guys were big-time ghetto: I’m talking inner-city ganstas, with gold teeth, gaudy jewelry – the works.  They also seemed really nice.  Their names were James and Cam.  We sat and chatted with James and Cam over beers for a few minutes and then James took out an apparatus, which, to me, looked like a bong.  I was fine with that.  No biggie. I had not smoked pot for a while, but whatever, I thought.  I found a new friend and I wasn’t going to insult her by not participating.

They passed this thing around.  I noticed that the “pot” didn’t look like weed but more like powder.  I did not know hard drugs and honestly did not even think to ask what else it was.  I mean, I went to high school with this girl – I could trust her, right?

So we passed this thing around.  It was not long before I figured out it was not pot that we were smoking.  Unlike pot, which gives one a laid-back high, crack sucks the life out of you and essentially paralyzes your body and mind.  It is pure, unmitigated evil.  It is noxious chemicals coursing through your veins with only one goal: to kill you.  I sat there, fucked out of my mind, thinking with the few brain cells I had left: if these guys wanted to rape us they could.

I’d always been a bit of a risk taker, but that situation was all risk and no reward.  It was pure stupidity: I had put myself in danger in order not to offend my “friend.”  It was the type of thing you hear about happening to young kids, but I was in my twenties, working in a responsible position, financially independent, and an adult.  It was absurd.

We sat there, all of us fucked out of our minds.  We were so messed up that we weren’t even capable of talking… with crack you just sit there like a vegetable and, in my case, wait for the shit to wear off so you can get the fuck out.

I left that night unharmed.  The guys had been drug dealers only, not rapists, which I thank God to this day about.  Apparently they had been Cathy’s drug dealers.  I later found out that Cathy was a hardcore drug addict, and what we did – a huge deal for me, which I was pissed off about for a long time – was a daily routine for her.  Hence the constant tremors which I noticed but hadn’t registered until later.  I decided that I was not in such great need of friends that I had to hang out with people who would put me, and themselves, in danger.  For months after our little escapade, I had episodes where my mind would reel forward or backward in the strangest way… a little reminder of how strong that shit was that I unknowingly ingested into my body.

Years later, I was talking to my best friend, Sam, from home, who was still friends with Cathy. She was telling me about Cathy’s boyfriend, Ronny, who was HIV positive.  He was a well-known guy in the community and a real asshole.  He passed his infection along to his first wife and child and they both died.  Then he started dating Cathy.  Sam told me Cathy wasn’t using protection.  We were talking about this and I was telling her about how I learned in a public health class that the new drugs can take your viral load so low that you may not pass it, and that this had become a serious problem in the gay community because gay men were becoming sexually careless again and no longer using condoms to protect themselves.  I was freaked out but said it was possible she might not get it.  Then Sam said, and I’ll never forget this,

“Cathy has HIV.  She told me a few weeks ago.  She’s had it for years.”

“What?” I screamed.  “What did Ronny say?  What a fucking asshole!”

“They’ve never talked about it.  She said the only thing that changed was that there are more prescriptions on her side of the medicine cabinet now.  He never even asked.”

“Asshole.  He should be shot.”

“Yeah.”

I am still at a loss for words that my high school friend has HIV.  She is from a “good Jewish family.”  We went to an affluent high school.  Neither of our families were rich but they valued education and wanted better things for us, so they scrimped and bought houses on the outskirts of the school district.  Cathy’s parents were nice, and so were her brothers and sisters.  Somewhere in her genetic makeup, there is something, some gene, that allowed her to become addicted to drugs, and I attribute that to be the reason for her utter lack of self-protection, her instinct to seek out asshole boyfriends who not only don’t care about her, but put her in danger.

I emailed Cathy recently.  I was sending out a group email about a local up-coming book reading that I thought she might be interested in (she works in the arts).  She emailed me back, saying,

“I have not seen you in so long.”

“Yes,” I replied, “It’s been years… since Kristina’s wedding, I think.  How are you?”

“I have a daughter now.  Her name is Wendy.  She’s two.”

“Yes, congratulations!  Sam has kept me updated on everyone.  I am so happy for you.”

“Thank you.  You should meet her.”

“I would love to.  I hear she is beautiful.  We should all get together next time I’m home.”

“Sounds good.  Take care.”

"You, too, Cath.  You too."