Crack to the Future

I think I finally know what�s missing from my life. A crack habit. Oh, I joke and kid with family and friends every time I walk out the door with a casual, �Be right back, just gonna go snatch me some crack,� which is so much more effective now that I�m working in Manhattan. First time I used that on my two favorite bosses (bosses is the wrong word, lets just say Big Important Peoples), the elder BIP said without so much as a hint of humor in her voice, �Do you know where to get it?� while the other suggested 3rd avenue and beckoned me to bring enough back to share with the class.

I think it was a sign, I think I�m meant to smoke crack. Do you smoke crack, I don�t even know. Besides cigarettes, coffee, and vodka, the only drug I�ve ever had was marijuana, which I smoked out of this happy little pipe, so now I imagine all drugs are ingested through happy little pipes. Alas, I absolutely hated marijuana. Every time I tried it I had to get drunk enough afterwards just to escape that creepy someone-slowed-down-the-rotation-of-the-Earth feeling.

So who knows what crack would do to me. But hell, it can�t hurt to give it the old college try, you know? I�ve been too depressed for going on a year now to write anything in this diary, and I�m thinking, maybe it�s been due to the lack of crack.

I really don�t know what the problem is, besides the missing crack. I have a good job, I live in a big beautiful house, I love my boyfriend, I�m healthy, but I�ll be damned if the lack of crack isn�t making me more and more depressed by the day.

Something strange and seemingly totally insignificant happened to me a year ago, and I can�t figure out why, but it seems as though I haven�t been able to get a grip ever since. It was my first day of work in Manhattan. I went out to lunch with 4 guys from the office as kind of a welcome to the company thing. We had a nice lunch, we all had beer paid for by the company, and I felt like I was really hitting it off with them. And this was a major accomplishment for me, not since I was 6 years old have I sat with 4 boys my own age and actually made them laugh and talk with ease and feel comfortable with me. Four girls my own age, no problem. Four boys 10 or 20 or 30 years older than me, no problem. But elementary school permanently destroyed my chances of being friendly with boys my own age.

So, we�re laughing and joking and getting along great, when one of the guys at the table says, �You know Bill, the secretary at work, the gay one, or should I say, the I�m-going-to-get-AIDS-and-die secretary.�

Oh, and I thought I was going to shrivel up. As each person around me laughed harder than the person before him, I felt like screaming but I didn�t. I held it in, and felt my face turn red from anger and shame as I stared into my plate of linguini.

That was the first day at work. Every day since has been high school all over again, where I�ve got this horrible secret and the popularity squad has rejected me, not because they�ve discovered my secret and hate me for who I am, but because I turn red and quiet every time anyone of them tries to talk to me and I end up looking down at my shoes whenever they approach so they can�t look into my eyes and guess who I am inside. Now I�m just the awkward guy who no one wants to talk to.

Of course, just like in high school, I�ve found my niche, but I still feel out of place, tripping over my own feet and stumbling over my own words because I�m so afraid of people judging me that I end up acting like a freak, guaranteeing that they will.

I thought 30 years old would feel so different than this. I thought someday I would get over the conviction that everyone around me hated me, but I�m starting to realize that the only thing likely to make that feeling go away is probably a big, steaming, healthy portion of crack.