A UKC STAFFER
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This month, our cover feature is about using drugs without having them use you. One member of the UKC staff recalls an encounter with someone who wasn't so lucky.
The park near my home is a fertile cruising ground. Day or night,
men saunter along the paths, oh so casual, all hands in pockets and laser
glances, like village cats patrolling their territories.
I said "Yeah, sure," when the young guy came up, introduced
himself as Steve, and asked if I had a place to go. Mid-20s I thought.
He had a hollow-cheeked, stary appearance that I at first put down to
anti-HIV drugs, but the scally Adidas-and-baseball cap appearance promised
rough delights.
So we get home. He strips off, no muscle boy, but lean and hard, and physically
eager. But there's already something a bit wrong. He's eerily mechanical,
relating to me with a demanding, cringey politeness. "Can I just
do this? Can I have a cigarette? Can I try that on?"
Then "I just need to do this," and he drags out a lump of crack
and a pipe made from a small glass jar. He lights the rock and sucks down
white smoke, hard, in a pop-eyed caricature of desperation.
Then he gets really strange. I've never seen anyone come up on a crack
rush before.
His personality imploded. It was like the drug pulled him into a black
hole. His eyes glazed. He lost his hard-on. He started wobbling round
the flat uttering a "mmh,
mmh" sound. He started picking up and examining tiny scraps of paper, flecks of dust, invisible things.
