E

October 15, 2006, 2:57am: I found myself out on the Strip, at a pay phone, using my calling card to call Mack. His phone was still utterly lacking in the reception department, so once again I called Buddha.

He picked up.

"Hey man, what's up? How was the strip club?" Buddha, as always, sounded chipper and happy and upbeat.

"We didn't go. The guys wanted to go to sleep! Can you believe that?"

"Aw man, that sucks. Isn't it supposed to be a bachelor party?"

"Yeah, but I guess they partied so hard during the day that they blew their wad, so to speak. But then again, I had a feeling that Down Low wasn't really interested in going to a strip club..."

My gut feeling was based not upon the fact that Low was loyal to his wife-to-be, even though he is faithful to her (as far as I know). My instinct was based upon the knowledge that if we had gotten him a hooker instead, he may just as well taken us up on the offer.

Maybe I suck as a bachelor party host. Maybe it's some time-honored secret tradition that the Best Man and the groomsmen pool their resources and give the groom one last chance to fuck some pussy other than his fiancee's, and maybe thousands of marriages continue to this day without the subject having ever come up.

Maybe.

Call me old-fashioned. Call me square. Call me whatever, but Low was not interested in getting teased at his bachelor party. A stripper would've been nice but now I think that maybe he thought, for a split second, that we'd arranged a rendezvous with some mid-priced skank we found in the LV Yellow Pages. And as I look back on it, maybe that's why he and the others called it quits for the evening.

Either that, or they were still paranoid about getting kicked out of the hotel.

I tried to hype them up one last time before heading out to the MGM, where the Missing Digits crew said they were headed after the show. Mack had the E, and my night was far from over.

My efforts were met with tired indifference. Low insisted that he was having fun, but the cocaine, the endless alcohol and the seemingly endless weed dulled their collective edge. Low had done well in the casinos with the money we all threw at him, so he was content to call it a night.

Plus, I think they were all apprehensive about riding with me in the rental, since the tags were missing. They probably thought I was a madman, driving around Vegas in that car, with coke on my person and in my system.

I didn't care. The minute they started figuring out who would sleep on which bed, I piled the last of my coke on the hotel coffee table and invited whomever to help me kill it off.

Wolf and Fornicati indulged, but everyone else politely declined.

"All right," I said, pinching my nostrils. "I'll be at the MGM. I will probably just kick it at the Jockey Club with the band until the morning. I'll be OK. Good night guys."

Within a quarter of an hour, I was on the street talking to Buddha on a public phone. Stragglers and hangers-on were drifting like litter in the near-empty, brightly lit streets. I did not look out of place.

Buddha said to me, "Mack says that we'll be at Studio 54, in the VIP Lounge."

"Will I be able to get in?"

"Call us when you're in the casino. Mack will come out to get you."

They assumed I had a cel phone. But with my calling card, I could use a phone from the lobby... Or better yet, sweet-talk a receptionist into letting me use the concierge's phone. I could pretend I was calling someone's room or something like that.


*/*


October 15, 2006, 3:28am: A dusty black mechanic's jacket; Torn jeans that used to be black but turned a curious grey over the passage of time; Ankle-high boots made by Sketchers; and a black pajama top that could pass for a long-sleeved collar-and-button-less shirt... These are the things I was wearing when I pulled up to the MGM and parked the rental car.

I had a change of clothes in the trunk, but all I did was swap the nylon-cotton jacket for the leather jacket and take off the sweat-soaked pajama top, replacing it with a stylish (and more traditional) dress shirt. I rolled up the sleeves, popped the collar and left the top button undone.

I found a phone next to the MGM main lobby elevator and contacted Buddha. He had to shout over the loud techno music blaring in the background. He assured me that Mack would be waiting for me outside of 54.

It seemed to take forever to get through the casino to where 54 was located. After a while, the inside of every single casino in Las Vegas begins to look the same. Running on coke fumes and spent adrenaline, I began to make perceptual mistakes, such as making a left at a corner then realizing that I was thinking of another casino I'd been to earlier in the day.

That's how they get you in Sin City. You get worn down until you cannot trust your own judgment anymore. If I was spending money instead of searching for my friends, I probably would have lost it all at a Blackjack table.

I spied Mack in the distance. He was grinding his jaw, scanning the throngs for any sign of me. Then he spotted me and tilted his head quickly, motioning for me to get my ass over to him.

I raised my hand upon approaching him, ready to high-five him and give him props on his smoldering performance during our gig. As my hand came into contact with his, I felt a strange sensation, as if his missing index finger wasn't enough to unnerve me for the brief instances when we shook hands.

"Take it," he said. No greeting, no 'hello' or 'ayyy mengh' or anything-- just a command. The tablet was in my palm, and he wanted me to take it.

I didn't hesitate. I popped it in my mouth after entering the club, but before I swallowed it I inspected it. Most likely it was cut with something-- it probably wasn't pure E. The only time I'd ever had pure E was the first time, up in San Francisco, at the one and only true rave I ever attended.

That MDMA was in a capsule, with tiny numbers on the side. Since then, all the E I've ever done has been in pill or tablet form. Sometimes they have funny shapes and colors. But none of them were as pure as that first time in SF. The stuff that the majority of people purchase is combined with speed or heroin.

I placed it on my tongue and immediately grimaced: This shit tasted awful! Salty, vinegary, bitter and plastic.

"This is good shit," Mack said to me. I could tell he was already gone.

"How do you know?" I asked.

"Trust me, I know..."

I saw that dark side of him making an appearance. It was in his eyes. It's the darkness that is always in my own eyes. I look at myself in the mirror enough to know it, and often times people looking at me mistake it for intensity or moodiness or annoyance.

When we sat down in the lounge next to JJ, Buddha, Roy and Carrie, Mack handed me another.

"Dude, I just barely took one." I didn't object to the generous offering so much as I objected to having to endure that nasty taste again.

"Take another. I took five. So did JJ."

"Five? You're fucking crazy!"

But really, it made sense: These guys are tall and their respective physiques are solid. One or two of these babies would barely get them buzzing.

"How about the others?"

"Roy took four. Buddha and Carrie aren't rolling though."

JJ saw me and gave me a spine-crushing bear hug. He was flying like a squirrel in the trees. He smiled and patted me on the back in that brutal, painful way that big guys like him so often do, without meaning any harm.

On the E, JJ was like a big kid, in awe of everything and wide-eyed. Roy, on the other hand, was a complete mess, staring off into space with that Ray Liotta look on his face. Mack was slurring his words like Elvis in the early Sun Records years.

Buddha had a beer, so he wasn't completely sober. Carrie was drinking too, but as soon as she saw me she started hinting that we should go smoke somewhere.

I told her to wait until the E kicked in.


*/*


October 15, 2006, 5:17am: "How strong is it?" Carrie asked me as she packed a bowl into her pipe.

I was fiddling with the stereo controls, trying to turn the music down so that I could hear if any security personnel approached us.

"It's cut with heroin."

"Really?"

"Yeah, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I can still feel the E. It's pretty good. I took two, so I am FUCKED UP right now..."

"Will you be OK to drive?"

"Oh yeah, sure... No problem."

Carrie searched for her lighter. I pulled out mine-- a red Bic.

"Oh no," she said, nervously. "Not a red lighter."

"Oh, that's right. You hate red lighters."

"I don't hate them. It's an irrational fear. And not just lighters. Anything red."

"That's so silly, Carrie."

"I know. I have a lot of irrational fears." She finally found her lighter, a baby blue Bic, the same size as mine but with a butterfly sticker pasted onto it to designate her ownership.

As she smoked, I felt a euphoric wave of Exstacy wash over me. "I'm just messing with you. I have a weird phobia of my own."

She was too busy trying to hold in the rich marijuana smoke to answer, so I continued.

"I'm afraid of snails."

She almost coughed up a lung from laughing. The smoke exited her mouth in brief puffs. Finally, after a minute of gagging, she regained her composure.

"Dude, that's way worse than mine. You're joking, right?"

"I wish I were."

"I can see how someone could be disgusted by them. They're gross. Icky. But afraid?"

"Hey, at least I have an excuse. Snails are weird. They look like nothing else on earth. They could be alien beings for all we know. They're just... abnormal." I shuddered at the thought of it.

She passed the glass pipe to me and I toked from it. I coughed out an ungodly cloud of hazy smoke and passed it right back to her.

As I choked and struggled to tame the tingling in my throat, Carrie said, "You guys played so well tonight."

"Thank you. We couldn't do it without your support."

She smiled. She began searching my eyes for any telltale sign of how high I was at the moment. She hit the pipe, this time without calamitous hacking from her chest. Then she said, "Ever since you joined the band, the music has gotten so much better. And I mean that. The Digits were around for three years before you joined. I was there for half of that, and even though I supported and encouraged JJ to keep on going I always hoped that there'd be... progress."

"Progress?"

"Yes, progress. Improvement. The other guys in the band, the drummer and the bass player... They had bad attitudes. They were always negative. You and Buddha, though-- You guys are positive, and it shows in the music you guys make."

The E wave that overtook me subsided along with my coughing fit. "I appreciate your kind words, Carrie, but at the same time I have to disagree on one thing."

"What's that?"

"I'm not a positive person. I'm not overly negative either, but I can't say that I am a positive person. I guess I'm more of a pragmatist."

"What's a pragmatist?"

"Someone who goes with whatever works the best. I'm a realist, I guess you can say. Sometimes I'm idealistic, but then reality brings me down to the ground. Other times I'm a pessimist, but then my life reveals something to me that takes me out of my funk and cheers me up."

"What gets you down?" She studied my body language. She was curious as to what I could possibly be down about, and she adjusted herself in the shotgun seat so that she could take all of it in.

"The reality of my situation. Knowing that I can never be a normal person like everyone else."

"Oh, come on, James. What's normal nowadays? There's no such thing."

"I've heard that argument a million times, Carrie, and it doesn't help me at all. What I think of as 'normal' really means 'ordinary'. I wish sometimes that I could be an ordinary person. I wish I had the ability to conform instead of going against the grain all the time."

"That's terrible," she said, as she placed the pipe in my hand. "Why would you wish for that? You're a unique person. You're an individual. So am I. We all are. How could you entertain the thought of wanting to throw your personality away just to fit in?"

"The reason why I wish for it sometimes is because I am so tired of being different. It may seem like fun to people on the outside looking in, but it can be a pain in the ass. I can't turn it off. It's not a costume or an affectation. This is who I really am. I can't help it. Just once, I'd like to do the usual, not the unusual."

"But you'd get sick of it. You'd want to be different once you became like everyone else."

"I suppose... But what about you? Do you feel like you are like everyone else, or do you feel like you are different?"

Carrie paused. No one had ever asked her that question before. "I don't know. I can fit in if I have to, but I can be a big weirdo too. I definitely feel, though, that I have been marked."

"Marked?"

"Yeah. Tagged, tainted, set apart from others."

"What makes you feel like that?"

"Things."

She wasn't ready to open up like that yet, at that particular moment.

I wanted to tell her about the "things" that set me apart from others, such as my issues with my father. Normally I am not shy about bringing it up, but the E had me feeling emotional and I was afraid of opening up too much.

There is such a thing as opening up too much, right?

"I know what you mean. Believe me, I do. I believe that being a woman nowadays is tough. I often feel marginalized like a woman, but since I'm a man I can do something about it. Women have to take so much crap from this world, and they seem to do it in stride."

I took a pipe hit and passed it back to her.

"That's what we do. We're real good at it, I guess."

A moment of silence. She smoked. I clenched my jaws together. The E was starting to rise up inside me again, another euphoric wave.

"That's why I think I'm so hung up on Eve," I blurted out.

Carrie knew about Eve. When Eve and I were dating and she would show up at the shows, Carrie met her. They never really talked to each other-- I don't think Eve wanted to know who Carrie was, even if she was dating JJ and therefore not a threat.

"What's up with you two anyway? I've been meaning to ask."

"She dumped me. Again. She made up a bunch of excuses, but I know why she left me."

"Why?"

"Because she doesn't love me as much as she loves her ex. All she ever does is talk about him. She won't shut up about him. She claims she is past it, but she's not. And he was an asshole to her, too. He beat her up, guilt-tripped her into giving up her acting career, played mind games with her... and then to top it all off, he cheated on her. She gave him a decade of her life to him. And I try to respect her, treat her well, encourage her, and all she can give me is a few months before she decides that I'm beneath her and moves on."

"How long have you known her?"

"Since high school. Then we broke up, and shortly after that..."

I told Carrie about what happened to Eve after we broke up, and how it sent her spiraling downward into drugs and depression.

"James, she's got issues. When something like that happens to you, it fucks everything up. Don't blame her for it."

"I don't blame her for it," I said. "It'd be so much easier to bear if I was able to say 'well she's like this for a reason' but instead I keep thinking that somehow I can make it all better for her... and I can't. I can't save her, or anyone... not even myself. What kind of fucking world is this anyway, where women like Eve get screwed over so badly that they can't even tell that someone loves them?"

"James, stop saying that."

"Why do I care? Why do I even give a fuck? She left me. She's with some guy who has money and good looks and a future... What do I have? Nothing. I don't have shit. Why should she settle for shit? Why did I ever think that she could have ever loved me more than she loves her fucking ex? I think she should just drop the charade and go back to him-- break up with the guy she's with now and just go back to that fucking prick, because she fucking deserves him!"

"James, listen to yourself--"

"I wish I never met her..."

"You don't mean that."

"Yes I do. I am so fucking miserable. I have been miserable since April. I can't do anything to make it better. Nothing I do seems to work."

"You have to give her time, James. She's hurting. I know. I was raped three times by three different guys."

I froze. The shock was heavy, like weights at a gym. I looked at Carrie, trying to see if this was some sick joke she was pulling off. She was serious.

She turned around and exposed her lower back. "See this tattoo?"

It was a Japanese character. I'd seen it before, and thought nothing of it because she is Japanese after all.

"This letter means 'survivor' in Japanese. I am a survivor. I'm fucked up. That's why I smoke so much fucking weed. But I won't give up. I won't let it take me down. I survived those times, and I'll survive any more that are headed my way."

I was still speechless.

"Eve is a survivor too, and that's why she is doing what she's doing. It's fucked up, yes, but it's what she has to do. It has nothing to do with you."

I finally managed to eke out the words, "I'm sorry... I didn't know..."

"So am I, James. So am I. Not a day goes by when I don't think to myself, 'God, why me?' But I'm lucky-- I have JJ. He understands. He knows. He accepts it. He has such patience. I can't believe he is still with me after all this time. I don't know how he does it, because I know I must drive him crazy."

And suddenly everything fit into place: Carrie's seemingly flirtatious nature, JJ's detachment and reticence, his occasional frustration and vocal displeasure with Carrie's quirks and eccentricities.

After I let her words sink in, I decided to confide in her about my father, and the things he did, and how it has fucked me up, and how I am dealing with it.

We sat in my car and smoked pot and talked for almost an hour. Then, he both realized that the rest of the crew was probably wondering where we were, so we finished the bowl and exited the vehicle.

My head began to spin, from another euphoric wave of E in my system, jarred loose by my body movement. I looked at Carrie, whose face throughout the entire conversation had not wavered an inch. She possessed excellent Asian repose.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the tinted window of a parked Lexus. I looked like hell, with my hair disheveled and my face as pale as a tan boy's face can get.

She and I did not say a word to each other as we walked back into the casino.