Cocaine Covered Kisses
His hands run up and down along the curves and grooves of my body. Every place he touches leaves my skin so dry and tainted with the desire of wanting him never to stop. I close my eyes, just so I can imagine his nails piercing through the layers of skin along my back. He cuts deep through my spine and I feel him connected with every blood cell in my body. He sends vibrations to my head, feet to my toes, and to the very roots of my finger tips. I’ve never been so peaceful and insecure at the same time. I’ve become overwhelmed with his presence floating dizzily throughout my blood stream. I’m losing all oxygen as he leaves cocaine covered kisses all over my face. Sweat swells up into little marbles, rolling off my skin.
Suddenly, my arms are being ripped out of their sockets and all the principles I learned about gravity are completely nonexistent. I open my eyes to find myself flying towards the ceiling, but pulled back into the atmosphere of the arms that pulled me to my feet. At first he holds me close and snug inside the cave of his herculean arms but I slowly realize he’s dragging me towards the coffee table to snort another line. He pulls out a little bag with yellowish, white powder, pours his desired amount. He carefully breaks it up with his razor, and then separates it into four equal lines. The lines weren’t entirely straight, they were like screaming shriveled up strings just craving to expand. He dips down, takes two lines and passed the straw to me. I take the straw, then inhale deeply through my nose. I tend to imagine a tornado of small sugar icebergs, accelerating up my nose to feed the binge of my sub-consciousness.
Cocaine holds a key that unlocks the brain into new dimensions so that dealing with the reality never becomes an issue. I glance up to see the man who held me so dearly turn pale white and… thump. I watched him collapse onto coffee table. Surprisingly, watching someone crumble down is quite quixotic and amusing. It’s as if gravity drops intensely on them, crushing all the joints in their body, while they have no possible ability to prevent it.
“Alex…?” I say bending down to his resting body. “Baby, are you okay?” No response. “Alex?” Still no response, not even a twitch of acknowledgment. I roll him over, so he’s facing chest up. His head is bleeding from the broken glass ash tray he fell on. Just now I realized my hands and lips are trembling uncontrollably. My body shakes itself into a numb feeling. “Alex,” I try to wipe the blood off his forehead that stained his stoical face and dampened his beautiful locks of hair, “please, wake up.” But he still just lays there, motionless.
I don’t know what to do. Is he dead? He’s not moving… I grab his hand-stiff and cold. My heart skips a beat, I can’t breathe. “What if…” I mumble, “He really is dead?” Burning tears swell to the corners of my eyes and glide down my cheeks. I can’t see, I can’t respire, and I can’t control my unstable fingers. I can’t do anything. I’ve lost all consciousness with reality. I’m so incredibly scared. I’m stuck in the depths of a labyrinth of my own imaginary world. How could I possibly save someone I love, if I can’t even save myself?
I have no choice, no will power. I’m left to watch him sleep his way into the afterlife. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be me. I want to get away and pretend like none of this ever happened; run away from all my mistakes. I want to rewind time and stop myself from ever being tantalized by that galvanizing, yellow powder. Out of all the regrets and memories racing through my mind, the worst feeling is that I can’t do any of that. I can’t rewind time, I can’t change my mistakes, I can’t run away, and I definitely can’t plunge back into the real world after spending so much time trying to forget its existence.
The room starts spinning; I begin to feel light headed. I have a feverish sensation all over while my blood is boiling under my skin. My mouth is full of brackish tears. I look down into Alex’s stiff face, even dead he’s still as gorgeous as he’s ever been. I pulled him closer to my heart, laying him on my lethargic legs. His closed shut eyelids are the last thing I see, and then everything goes dark. Goodnight, I say to myself. “Sweet dreams.” I say to Alex.
A stinging pain pulsed through my eyes when I tried to open them. A bright light shined, but I tried to avoid looking directly at it, so I stared at the off-white colored walls. “Where I am?”
“You’re in the hospital.” A familiar voice replies. I attempt at turning my head oh so slightly to the right. I see my mother, but there’s something “off” about her. She had huge, dark bags under her bloodshot eyes, her hair looked greasy and tousled, and she was wearing the hospital blanket as a coat. “You’ve been in a coma for three days.” she covered her mouth and glanced another direction. Her voice got shaky as she continued, “I didn’t think I’d ever be able to see you conscious again.” She looked back into my eyes, and somehow I started to feel queasy. Guilt hung heavily over my shoulders as I pictured every tear she shed for me, every late night she stayed at the hospital pandering to my needs while sitting by my side until morning, and every time she prayed to God as a last resort. I’ve never seen my mother like this; I’ve never even seen her cry. I’ve constantly called her heartless, selfish, and naive. I believed she was Machiavellian by nature. Realizing she spent countless hours in a hospital while I was a mindless body, made me regret those words. She gave some sort of shaky sigh, “I haven’t slept in days. I’ve been so worried about you. But I’m glad to see you’re alright.” She attempted to give a weak smile, but instead she kept talking. “I love you so much,” then tears started to fall, “oh, I love you so, so much. I hate myself for letting this happen to you. I just…” She looked down; her body structure caved in, “I should have noticed you weren’t acting yourself lately, I’m your mother, I should have know there was something wrong.” She looked back up and wiped the tears from her eyes. “But how could you jeopardize yourself-” I interrupted her.
“Wait, what happened to me?” I asked. All I remember is finally feeling loved for once. I remember his hands. I remember his mesmerizing kisses. I remember his coffee table and then it hit me….oh no, oh God no. “Where’s Alex?” I shouted with all the voice I had in me. I just wish I could rip out this IV, get out of bed and just run into his arms one more time.
“Baby,” my maudlin mother said. “He’s dead.” Dead! That word made my heart throb. ”Don’t you remember anything?” I shook my head, not wanting to remember. She got out of her chair, walked closer, then put her hand on my leg. “He died about two hours before the paramedics found him. He was found laying in your lap, while you were out cold.” At this moment, swallowing seems pretty much impossible with that huge lump in my throat. It feels like it’s getting bigger, while it’s harder and harder to breathe. My mother paused; sadness was expressed in her eyes. “The doctors said someone had laced something you both consumed. He had an allergic reaction to it, his throat closed up and he suffocated to death.” I didn’t want to hear this-any of this, and yet the more she talks, the more I seem to remember. I remember his pale white face. I remember that God awful feeling I couldn’t shake off when Alex faded into the afterlife. I couldn’t bear having to deal with that feeling ever again. My mom noticed my nauseous face. “Do you need me to get a nurse?” She asked, but before I could answer she already called for one down the hall. The nurse came briefly then everything sort of went in fast forward after that.
Hospital noises sang me to sleep. My mother left every now and then to visit my little brother at home. Sometimes I’d even wake up and see her sleeping in that little chair with the hospital blanket coiled around her body. I’m constantly thinking about Alex, with his beautiful pearly, pallid smile, subterranean green eyes, and calm, wavy russet hair. Nobody seemed so perfect; containing no foibles. Now he’s perfectly dead. There’s a little secure place in my heart, I’ve locked away just for him. It holds my regrets, my love, my passion, my venerable memories of us together, but most of all, my surplus desire for cocaine.
Sometimes, the worst things in life come with benefits. The more problems I tend to face, the more answers I’ll receive. The more I feel hopeless and depressed about my egregious past, the more thankful I am to still have a future. For the times I feel faint, and for the times I don’t think I can resist, I just remember Alex’s face, my mother’s shaky sighs, and the pandemonium cocaine triggered in my life. I can’t gain back those years I threw away to a precarious drug, but I can still live my life knowing that no matter how many obstacles I might face, or how many situations I don’t think I can handle, I’ll only get stronger if I just p e r s e v e r e .
