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Me and Sally

In my day, all drugs were named after girls names starting with the first letter of the drug name, so coke was Cassandra, acid was of course Alice, MDA was Mary, and crystal or speed was called Sally. For many years, my life and that of most of my friends revolved around Sally.

Friday nights we would meet at my place and get high before going to the Twilight Zone to dance all night, getting home around dawn. Saturday nights we would meet at my place and get high before going to Stages to dance all night and got home around dawn. Because we couldn’t sleep, someone would inevitably have a coming down party which would last from dawn till noon. Some grass and beers usually helped us come down gradually, slowly, smoothly and by noon it was possible to have a nap.

Every weekend was pretty much the same thing and we loved it. We looked fabulous. Lots of dancing and little food gave us great bodies without having to go to the gym. Sunday nights were special as we would drink all afternoon and then have our first real meal of the weekend. There was Lipstick on Parliament, the Fiesta, Empire Diner, and Cosmopolitan on Yonge, which is now Alibi formerly Trax, lots of cool, trendy restaurants to choose from and man the food tasted good after not eating much for two or three days. The big meal of course brought me crashing down so I could sleep and get to work Monday morning

Mondays were kind of a blur; I was always really tired and out of it and kind of pretended to work, spending most of the day staring at my desk, drinking coffee till I had the shakes and trying to avoid people. Mondays were also full of anger. I hated my life. I hated my friends. I hated everything.

On Tuesdays the depression would set in. Many times I had to coach friends who were new to crystal. Mondays you hate the world and Tuesdays you hate yourself. I would spend Tuesdays reminding myself “it’s just the drugs; you’re not really this depressed.”

I remember my friend Samuel had just moved back to Toronto and at a house party, I introduced him to Sally. Well, he had the time of his life and had so much sex at the baths afterwards that his dick was literally raw. The problem came on Tuesday when I had to spend the day calming him down, trying to convince him not to kill himself. He cried like a baby, hating everything about his life. For this reason, Wednesdays we usually did a small amount to pick us up and go out for drinks, knowing that we just had to get through Thursday and Friday before it was party time again.

They used to call crystal “poor man’s cocaine.” We called cocaine “wimp’s speed.” Cocaine was a joke compared to crystal. And the sex was amazing! I’ve heard the expression “crystal dick,” when you’re high and your dick shrivels up to nothing, a frightened turtle in a bush, I always called it.

Once I started to come down, once the rush was over, it was like every cell in my body was so sensitive and alive. Even the touch of a hand was a thrilling experience, I would feel more alive than ever before, and warmth, another body was so warm. I liked to mix acid with my crystal for a truly exciting evening and learned that everyone else doing these drugs would arrive at the baths around 4 or 5 a.m.

Once you finally get a hard on, you’re hard forever and your dick has no feeling so you don’t cum. We didn’t have Viagra. We tied it off real tight. I remember waking up one afternoon and my dick was purple because I had broken all the blood vessels in it. I was proud showing it off. It was perfect.

I stopped going to coming down parties and started spending all my late evenings at the tubs. I didn’t practice safe sex and didn’t care, because all that mattered to me was that I was desirable and desired. I could have wild sex like I had never had before with men I assumed to be out of my league. Men who wouldn’t look at me on the street would line up to have sex with me at the tubs while high. For the first time in my life I was wanted. I was desirable and I was popular.

I remember thinking many nights that if I die tonight, I will die a happy man because I just had the best night of my life. I remember one early morning in the middle of an orgy in the back hall of the Cellar, thinking that the man whom was fucking me was rumored to have AIDS and I suddenly felt that he wasn’t desiring me, but rather giving it to me. Did this guy really want ME or was he angry and somehow getting even with the world? This sent me into a terrible depression, but did not stop me.

I do not believe that crystal made me HIV+, I believe growing up in a world where I was ridiculed, made fun of, ostracized and not loved made me yearn for affection and acceptance so much that I was willing to do anything and risk anything including my life, to be touched, to be loved.

As my friends began to get sick and die, my crystal use increased, but it wasn’t fun anymore, it was an escape, I just wanted to be numb, especially because I was ignoring my own health and denying my own status. I felt that if I got IT, I would simply do crystal until I passed away. I mean imagine not having to worry about anything ever again, just stay high until the end.

My friend Lance, who by now had become a dealer, was getting sicker and sicker, but by this time he couldn’t stop doing crystal. Friends would sneak it into the hospital for him so he could have some energy, because he could no longer face the truth, he was dying. In many ways his death saved my own life, as I watched him deteriorate further and further and closer to death, I realized I had to get off this shit.

My friends had changed. Everyone now was arguing and fighting and doing horrible things to each other. We used to call ourselves the chosen family, but we were becoming this self-destructive group of people all peaking and freaking about the world we were living in. I read somewhere that they call it tweaking, when your nerves are shot from so much crystal. We called it turning, and that’s what it was, we snapped exploded, fought and became nasty.

Broke, sick and exhausted, I moved away from the downtown area and took a cheap basement apartment in the Beaches to start over. This worked for a while until I fell in love with, you guessed it, a crystal user. Again, I just wanted to be loved so bad that I was willing to do anything, and he was fucking hot! The sex was amazing. After three years in a dysfunctional relationship with this man, he up and left and I finally quit crystal, Tina, speed, and Sally. It has been about seven years since my last line of crystal, and it’s taken a lot of therapy to put me back together again, but here I am, alive and healthy and sometimes still wishing I had a line to do.

I recently visited my friend Samuel, who you may remember I introduced to crystal, and is again, not living in Toronto anymore. He is living in rural southern USA, where it is not just a problem in the gay community; it’s a problem in the State. It was everywhere, and I could smell it on people and in cars. To my horror he is still using and is so thin and so sick, I fear he will not be around much longer. Although it seemed to be everywhere in abundance, I resisted. Finally, maybe I have kicked the desire.

- Stan