Soma de Noche

Graduation Day

"Forever" suggests time however infinite in some form of recognizable measurement. I traveled through the hours, days, and weeks as though they were one giant, asymmetrical, and gelatinous hamster wheel. Each nausea encroached dawn was so like the previous as to be virtually indistinguishable from any that had come before, and each evening would end in the same drug induced coma whose nods would give birth to the repetitive bad dream that was the following day. My undergraduate commencement had finally come to pass and. for reasons of efficiency, I will just say it felt like forever before the day eventually arrived.

During the weeks leading up to graduation, my "waking" life was divided among working out in the field finishing my senior thesis; a seemingly impossible, lonely and never ending Chinese garden; making the two hundred mile round-trip drives in to the city to cop my dope; and nearly routine, though each time terrifyingly urgent, trips to the local hospital emergency room in various stages of coke-fuelled, asthma induced respiratory arrest. Ironically, each of these miserable but equally important activities was absolutely essential in order to affect the occurrence of the other two. It is amazing how clearly I can remember it all now, since I could not perceive it at all clearly at the time.

My mother had come from California to help pack up my enormous apartment. It was a duplex loft renovated from a converted gymnasium. It was attainable by the one fact that it was located in Ilovit, New York and the rent was ridiculously cheap. The décor was heroin-inspired Venetian, church yard sale, and plaster. I will never forget the piece de resistance: a giant statue of St. Vincent De Paul.

When not slaving in the Tao garden, copping dope, or suffocating to death, I divided my "non-waking" time between sniffing a speedball concoction, and "resting." Rendering myself less than useless, my poor mother had to pack up the entire place by herself, which of course, she did. In retrospect, the entire lot should have been returned to the venue from which it had come and recycled in up state New York's yard sale market. Practically speaking, with the exception of "Vinny" (and he was stolen some years later), the whole thing could have been dumped on the corner with the rest of the garbage. What actually happened was quite different though far more traditional. We packed everything into a U-haul truck and drove it to midtown Manhattan, where we dumped it in my dead uncle's apartment for safekeeping. I, of course, was out the door to score before the truck was even unloaded.

I can remember floating through the tent, heavily sedated and scantily clad on graduation day (having been six months at least on a diet of heroin, cocaine, and snickers bars. I weighed about 95 lbs., and let's just say it wasn't only my interior decorating that had been touched by my drug kissed aesthetic). The setting was made all the more surreal by my unenthusiastic classmates wearing their own tormented expressions and individually tailored brands of apathy and sarcasm (one person donned a wolf man mask, another with a t-shirt reading "Braird Graduate-Want fries with that?"). Before I could even reach the alphabetically assigned seat I felt my lungs tighten and my breathing become desperately shallow. Allowing for a moment of panic, the dope haze temporarily cleared. I quickly looked around the procession trying to recall who on that line may have an inhaler with them. Because there were no pockets in my white lace bell-bottoms, I did not have a pump on me.

Fortunately, I spotted someone, a mutual acquaintance of a recent fling. His last name started with M, so he was seated close enough to communicate with. Andy was just arrogant enough to humorously acknowledge the desperate need for his cooperation and just cool enough to deliver the goods with the subtlety and expedience the situation required. He passed his inhaler up through multiple pairs of hands. I grabbed it and inhaled on the nozzle, deeply grateful for the brief reprieve and the opportunity to say good bye to Braird without a dramatic closing incident.