Chrysalis

Chapter 7 - Happy Little Pill

Chapter 7 - Happy Little Pill

It was happy hour. Friday. Alex was already pregaming with his usual crowd in his apartment. I was there, already having blown two grams and a few shots. There were pills broken up on the table but my hands were clean. I had promised Alex I'd be his mom friend for the night. We were going to a club... again. IDs were never an issue for me. At first, Alex' bouncer friends were my way in, but I got to know people over the months and so lines became a thing of the past completely. Some bartenders knew my name. Some knew my number. And shamefully, some of them knew how far my throat went.

"We're thinking of hitting some bars first. There's three dollar beer at Buck's. You down?" Alex asked.

"Do I have a choice, babe?" I sighed.

After the week I had, I needed to be heavily disrespected by shot glasses. Here's the playback:

Monday. Mr. Lechno told us we were skipping the poetry unit for the semester. He wanted to focus on Shakespeare instead and have us write our own elizabethan works to show we understand Shakespeare's style and language. Mr. Yuki wasn't here, so we got a bitch-ass sub. Hannah ditched me at lunch for French Club. She promised it was only once a week. Greg stole my bag of chips at lunch.

Tuesday. Pop quiz in Lechno's class on his own life, just to make sure we were paying attention when he ranted about his nine-year-old daughters. I blew out my voice in Yuki's class while trying to write. Greg said I sounded like a man. Got home, and my mom thought it was from smoking weed. I joked and said it was from sucking too much—

Wednesday. Lechno gave me detention for writing that his prolonged rants about him meeting his wife was to compensate possible homosexuality. I argued it was just a theoretical observation. He called me a bully. Fair. Spent lunch in detention. Greg came in, stole my chips, and left. I got a second detention for the disturbance my 'friends' caused.

Thursday. Alex forgot to pick me up. Was late for Lechno's class. He almost gave me another detention but I lied and said my dad was having kidney stone problems that morning so it slowed the whole family down. He offered his well wishes. Had writer's block during Yuki's class. Am fucked for the first project.

Friday. The day was good, until I checked twitter when I got home. #Whereisshe filled my timeline periodically, tagged with a photo of a trash can, or 8-mile, or a zoo, or some other bullshit. I knew what it meant. I was kinda flattered that even months later, I was still on their minds. I tweeted "Love my fans <3". Selena and Elora favourited it, and Melissa tweeted me back with my signature from the sophomore yearbook. It made it all just a little bit. Elora texted me and asked if I would come to the next slam. I said maybe.

And by this point, I had reached Friday night. I was in short shorts and a lingerie-like bodysuit, drinking bud light from a sippy cup. This was my rock bottom for the week. I only drank Heineken or Corona, and if I settled for any medium it was a can at most. Perhaps me drinking this cheap beer from a sippy cup was life's metaphor for the fact that I have lost most of my ability to function as a responsible human.

"Let's get it, nigga!" Alex suddenly yelled.

"Alex for the last time YOU ARE WHITE," I replied.

"Yeah but we're friends! You know I'm joking."

This is something I've thought about often. Being with or even around white boys comes with a level of baggage and trauma I am losing the energy to deal with. The closer I got to a white guy, the more comfortable they seemed to become in their stereotypical thinking. Ignorance was an itchy sweater that one grew into; it didn't matter if it started to fit, the sweater was ugly as fuck.