i was sent to an inpatient rehab in los angeles. after being there for about 7 months, the place went out of business, so i was transferred to a halfway home about 10 miles away. since there was a mass exodus of criminals and junkies from this rehab, a few of the people i became friends with accompanied me there. in this halfway house is where our quick story begins.
at the time i was 19, with multiple felonies on my record, all being from this arrest, and california likes to act like they’re the all-inclusive, liberal state, but i didn’t find it to be that way at all, because i couldn’t get a job to save my life. i must’ve applied to about 100 different jobs while i was there, anything that was walking distance, i was there filling out an application. i didn’t even get a call for an interview. it was about 2 months of eating ramen noodles, and turkey stuffing every day, and i thought to myself, “i should sell drugs again,” and immediately decided that i would.
i didn’t know anyone in california who would sell me good drugs for cheap, so i had someone i knew from new york mail them to me. this is where i ran into my first problem, because the halfway house manager checks everyone’s mail before they open it. so i started off with just selling acid tabs because lsd would be very easy to conceal from the guy, also acid does not show up on a drug test. so i had them sent over and every time i got close to running out i had him send over another. things were going well for a while. i was selling them to people inside, and outside the house. all of us that weren’t staff inside the house were tripping at least once a week.
one day, 5 of us decided to go to santa monica pier and trip there. thinking back on it, this was probably one of the most fun days of my life. the 5 of us were deniz, a tall, rail thin turk with extremely long greasy girl hair, brad, a typical cali heroin and meth junkie who at one point in his life accidentally cooked his foot, tim, a goofy redneck from st. louis, will, the son of the owner of sabrett hot dogs, and i. all of us packed into deniz’ car and we were on our way, already starting to trip on the way there. i had one of the hardest laughs of my life on the ride there, i won’t bother to explain that here though, because i’ll never be able to, but brad was laughing so hard i thought he might suffocate, God i miss these times. i had eaten 2 tabs and so did deniz. brad ate 4. will and tim took 6 each, they were the most daring ones.
as soon as we had arrived at the pier, brad thought that he wanted to have the trip of a lifetime i guess, because he asked to take 2 more tabs, making it a total of 6, matching up with will and tim’s dosage. santa monica pier was an amazing place to trip, let me tell you. we all kind of split up, i don’t exactly remember how or why, but we did. i was with brad, and the other 3 were somewhere else. brad kept complaining about how he wanted to eat, even though i wasn’t hungry, i agreed to go to the johnny rocket’s with him to appease him.
on the walk there, i could see that he wasn’t doing so hot. the acid was really getting to him. he was making very intense faces and it seemed like he was switching emotions every few seconds, from happy, to terrified, to carefree, to worried. it was actually very scary to see, looking back on it now. at one point he laughed out loud in a child’s face, realized what he was doing, and sped-walked away, embarrassed. once we got into the johnny rockets, he asked me to order for him because he couldn’t bring himself to do it, i said ok and asked him what he wanted, but he couldn’t seem to figure it out. i ended up getting frustrated and walked out, leaving him in there by himself. as i walked outside, i saw deniz, tim, and will standing there. i told them about brad and we all stood there staring at him through the glass like a monkey at the zoo. he sat on top of a table and had been staring at the menu since before i walked out of the store. i eventually went in and grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him
one of the guys had bought a pack of cigarettes, and he gave each of us one. the idiot however, did not buy a lighter. so we are walking down the pier, looking for someone who is smoking or someone who might have a lighter which is more difficult than you think because smoking isn’t as popular in california, as you’re not even allowed to do it outside on some streets. i eventually lay eyes on someone with a cigarette in his mouth, some biker couple, i ask him to lend us his lighter for a moment and he agrees. i remember him seeming annoyed but that could’ve just been the acid. we all light up, and i give the man his lighter back, thanking him. this is when i noticed that brad was no longer with us. not dead, just no where to be found.
we start looking all over for him, calling him incessantly, no answer. after about an hour of this, he eventually picks up the phone. i say, “brad?” all i hear on the other end is maniacal laughter, like a raving madman. i keep trying to talk to him but he just keeps laughing as if i’m not
we must have walked up and down the pier about 15 times before we gave up looking for him. we get in the car to go back to the halfway house, as soon as we’re all seated, i get a text from brad’s phone, these guys from georgia are telling us that brad gave them his phone and he won’t tell them the passcode. they tell us he’s acting crazy, i tell them that i know. they’re not from the state, so they don’t know how to describe where exactly where they are, and they can’t send us their location because they don’t know his passcode. they say that he won’t tell them the exact passcode but he says it’s his birthday, so they ask me if i know. i check his facebook account to see if i can find it, “september 23rd,” i tell them. a few seconds later i get a text back, “this nigga lying.”
so now we are left with a dilemma. we have to go back to the halfway house and explain to the house manager, and officer of the court, that we just lost an adult human being, and if any of us get found out we will all likely go to jail. so it was stressful to say the least. i luck out though, because will, son of the hot dog king, ends up getting in a fight with the guy for all of us. he screams and raves about how brad’s grown man, and it’s not our responsibility to hunt him down if he runs away. the manager eventually agrees and calms down.
about 2 weeks later, i get a facetime call from a random phone number, i answer and i see brad, in a motel room, twirling a meth pipe around his fingers, silently. i tell him that he should be careful, and that if he drops and breaks his meth pipe, he won’t be able to smoke meth. he tells me that he doesn’t fucking care because he has another one. i still haven't seen brad in person again since that night in santa monica.