I despised him in every way I could. He was truly the most vile man I have ever encountered. Although you sit in judgment on me now, that is only because I have not had the opportunity to tell you my story. You have not afforded me the opportunity to explain to you why I had to do the things I did.
I first knew him at the mere age of 9. We struck up a friendship immediately in the classroom. We played together every lunchtime and we mocked the teacher’s twitch together. We were the Kings of the School.
But things quickly changed when, only a few months into the year, Sarah Lomax walked into the room, oozing beauty from her pores. Our jaws dropped in simultaneous awe. I knew that she would be mine one day. He knew that she would be his one day. One more thing that we agreed on. We were after all, such good friends.
At lunchtime that day he told me of his love for her and his determination to … well he wasn’t quite sure what it was you did with girls when you loved them but he was sure that he would work it out if he had the opportunity. I sat and listened quietly. Tension was beginning in our friendship. Yet he did not realise it. As he extolled his emotions, I did not speak a word of my identical feelings. I could feel the tension bubbling away inside me. At first, but a tiny sensation, but with every word that he spoke, my anger grew.
I stared intently at him as he continued his oration. He thought it a sign that I wished him to continue, and so he did. But it was the gaze of someone whose fury was so strong it boiled the water in my tear ducts until it felt as though steam was protruding from my cornea. I felt that my pupils must have turned red, and yet still he took this as a sign of intense interest. My fury grew so much that I felt as though any second my line of vision would burn a hole in his head and send him up in flames, leaving the girl for me. But he remained unaware.
This was fortunate because later I was to deal with the situation much more stealthily and usefully. We were, as I have said, the coolest kids in school. It wasn’t long before my friend had procured what he had desired. She joined in our games and went everywhere with us. I developed my charm and we became good friends. When she found him annoying or was having trouble with him, she would come to me to unload and I always provided a supportive shoulder. I hoped that this would soon lead her to realise that he made her unhappy and that she should instead be with me. But alas, it did not. I could see that more drastic measures were going to be necessary.
If I have not told you it before, we were the coolest kids in school. We had a reputation to maintain. After some time it was noticed that I had not yet procured myself the necessary status symbol of a girlfriend. This was of course not out of a lack of ability, but because I was focussed on one girl in particular and had no interest in any others.
It was then that I developed my plan. It would not only maintain my reputation, but it would eventually lead me to my goal. There was a student in the year above us who was quiet, strange and unpopular. Not many knew why. Except me. My mother was a social worker and would often come home and talk about her day at work with my father while I lay supposedly sleeping. In reality I listened to almost every word, fascinated by the lowlifes and fiends she worked with. She talked of magical places. Not ridiculous Peter Pan-like magic, where prissy little fairies threw about wonderful dust to make everyone happy and youthful. The dust was of a different, more lethal kind, and the fairies were thugs. The dust gave the users the temporary sensation of being more youthful, but in reality it was depleting their bodies and turning them into haggard old men. The imagery of it all excited my young mind.
So I knew that the aforementioned student was quiet because he was severely traumatised. His mother had died of lung cancer when he was only 5 years old. She had been a heavy smoker. His father had met his mother at an AA meeting. He had not dealt with his wife’s death easily and had been prescribed various drugs to help him deal with the depression. He took sleeping pills and Benzedrine in the morning so that he would be awake enough to take little Smithy to school. Sometimes the father would hallucinate on the way to school. One time I heard Mum talking about how Smithy had missed a day’s school because his father had diverted from the usual trip and driven all the way to Cairns to avoid the FBI car that he claimed was hot on his trail. In order to deal with his anxieties, he took more pills. The kid was living a nightmare. It was a nightmare that I would soon make seem like a dream to my best friend.
One day at school, when the bell rang, I accosted Smithy. I made him come with me to the bike yard. Every time he protested I simply belted him one. His mission was simple. I know what you are thinking, but I am not an unnecessarily vindictive person. I asked Smithy to get me two packets of cigarettes from his father while he was doped out. Smithy was an intelligent boy and tried to arrange a system of payment. I did not give in to him.
The following day Smithy delivered and so I went to work. That lunchtime I shared my first cigarette with my two best friends. We all thought ourselves delightfully rebellious. We huddled away in a corner, away from the view of the teachers and lit up. I took the first disgusting breath. I soaked up every molecule that I could into my lungs and held it there for what seemed like minutes. I then let it out in one foul grey cloud. I smiled with smug pride. Not even a little cough. I took it in my manly stride. I passed the poisonous stick to my friend. He eyed it nervously and I encouraged him. He knew that he could not refuse after my demonstration. To do so would make him look weak in front of his girlfriend. So he sucked on it like he was drinking from a poppa. He took the smoke into his mouth and then blew it out. He look displeased by the taste but surprised at what little effect it had had on him. I congratulated him but told him that he needed to take the smoke into his respiratory system. I repeated my demonstration. A slight look of fear crossed his visage, but he looked at Sarah and he quickly hid it. He took the cigarette once again and breathed it into his lungs.
“There you go. That’s the way.”.
He exploded in little coughs immediately. My plan was underway. We spent the rest of the recess trying to increase our lung capacity for the poisonous smoke that we inhaled. Sarah told him that it made his mouth taste … interesting. Alas, my plan had not entirely worked. Yet.
The next day I suggested that we needed to act more casually with our cigarettes. It was no good to be so focussed on them. One didn’t hear adults continually discussing the vile habit. They simply went about their usual business whilst holding the cigarette in one hand. This allowed us to smoke more cigarettes. We finished the two packets by the end of lunchtime. We smelled as though we had been rolled about inside the Winfield factory. This was our status symbol that let the other children knew what it was that we were doing. Soon other children began approaching me, all eager to try the habit out themselves.
I told Smithy that he had done well, but that it was not going to be good enough. I needed a much larger supply to meet my demands now. Smithy admirably met my demands. I agreed to give him a percentage of the money I was making. By the following year, at least half the grade smoked the occasional cancer stick. Few of them inhaled. Few smoked more regularly than once a week in order to look cool. But it was always enough to maintain my position at the top of the social ladder. I decided to take a girlfriend. She was one of my best clients, and as such I found her repulsive. The habit did not excite me in the way that it did the other children. For me it was all part of the larger plan. I took the girlfriend only to increase my status above my friend. No one knew where I got my supply from and no one questioned me about it. Of course, it was not long before the teachers realised what I was doing, but I managed to assuage them by selling them cigarettes at a cheaper than market price. I even approached the principal to get him to start up the habit in order that he could relate to the other teachers.
But I saved the majority of my supply for my best friend. There came a time when we could not get a big enough fix during one lunchtime. Although I could tell that he was content not to smoke at all, I made sure that I regularly increased my pace and so he followed suit such that he would not be seen to be outdone. He grew to love nicotine so much that he bought nicotine patches and nicotine gum in order to supplement his 50 cigarettes a day. His teeth soon turned a bleak grey, akin to the colour of the skyscrapers in the city. His eyes paled. It was as though a haze of smoke still surrounded him, even when he was not smoking. His skin developed a blotchiness. Sometimes he would have seemingly interminable coughing fits in which his entire body seemed to erupt with bile. His veins ran thick with poison.
Another year passed and little had changed. Sarah was still his and it infuriated me. I decided there was to be no more Mr Nice Guy. I told him that the cigarettes had lost their taste to me. He breathed a sigh of relief before I whipped out another cigarette.
“But…” he objected.
I silenced him. This was no ordinary cigarette I told him. This had ten times the amount of tar in it and would provide an even more strongly relaxing feeling. We had a new drug of choice. It was not long before we were drinking alcohol too. To get the teachers off my back I simply started baking them muffins with the help of my mother. When Mum wasn’t looking, I would tip in large quantities of marijuana. The teachers became too dopey to notice any of my activities.
But I grew impatient. We went through the early years of high school and still Sarah and he were inseparable sweethearts. Albeit drug-addled sweethearts at my mercy. And then it occurred to me. They were at my mercy. I smiled. Why had I waited for them to split up of their own accord, when I could order them to do whatever I wanted. One afternoon, we all walked home together. We went to my place first, and I sat inside and waited patiently in my room. Half an hour later, I snuck out and went to Sarah’s house. I crawled around the side and into their backyard. Sarah’s bedroom was on the second floor. I climbed the drainpipe and clambered in through the window. She jumped with fright, but was too fatigued from the drugs to yelp. I smiled confidently and told her the purpose of my visit. If she wanted to get her fix, she would have to provide me with little favours. We were not children anymore and I told her it was only natural that we would have desirous feelings towards each other. She admitted to liking me but said that she didn’t think it was a good idea. I told her he would never have to know. He wasn’t here now. Still, she protested. I asked her what she thought he did on weekends when he would visit me. Did she really think that he had not experimented with other girls? At last she acquiesced. We kissed. A bitter, tobacco kiss.
Yet strangely it did not fulfil me as I had expected. I left.
We continued this ritual for several months. Always I felt as if she were but going through the motions. I did not feel the love in her kiss that she seemingly reserved for him.
He was becomingly increasingly useless at schoolwork. He was usually drugged out of his mind and was beginning to develop paranoid tendencies. He even accused me of being with his girlfriend. I told him he needed to alleviate his anxiety.
Smithy was only too happy to oblige. My business provided lucrative profits for him which allowed him to buy his way into popularity. It was a welcome distraction from the realities of his home life.
First Valium. But it did little to help, naturally. So I suggested Ritalin. I knew little of whether these drugs could help or not. I hoped that they wouldn’t. I told him that perhaps if he could apply himself better to his schoolwork that he would feel happier. I suggested various stimulants which led to insomnia problems and psychosis in which he often attacked other students. He was expelled later that year for his violent tendencies. He saw this as a sign that he should stop using drugs altogether. I laughed at him in an attempt to discourage him. I told him he couldn’t do it. He did try. But it only led to physical pain and he often complained to me he felt as if he was suffocating.
I could have preyed on his problem. But instead I decided to regain some more of his trust. I supported him in his anti-drug stance. I refused to provide him with anything. I ceased contact with him in order that he might be free of temptation. Of course, this meant that I had no reason to continue my activities. I announced that I was retiring and that Smithy would be taking over my Drug Empire. Smithy was delighted.
Later that year, my best friend turned up at the school yard spluttering and buckled over in pain. His breath was a dull wheeze. He had dark blue circles under his eyes. He begged me for drugs. I told him there was nothing I could do, that I had ceased business. But he had an inquiring mind. Much to my delight, he found out from the other students that Smithy could provide him with more drugs than I had ever bothered to. I resumed my friendship with him and Sarah. I told him repeatedly that he should quit. He told me he knew and that I was a good friend for telling him so but that he simply couldn’t. I suggested he try a natural substance from the islands. Called kava, it reputedly had the same relaxing effects usually associated with marijuana, without the side effects. Of course I knew that using it in combination with alcohol would cause severe liver damage, but as I had washed my hands of his drug activities, I was unaware that he was using alcohol. Of course I was.
By the summer break of Year 11, he was hospitalised with hepatitis, caught from using dirty shared needles. I told Smithy that he had gone too far, but Smithy denied having any access to heroin or any other injectable drug. Of course, my friend had not been able to satiate his appetite from just Smithy. He was now frequenting many of the drug dens and alleyways that I had spoken of to him after hearing the fantastical tales from my mother. The hospitalisation was enough to scare him into checking himself into a methadone clinic.
It helped him little. While he was able to rid himself of his heroin addiction, the hospital strength cleaning agents became his new poison of choice. He sniffed methylated spirits or whatever he could get his hands on. Upon checking out, he began sniffing and eating glue.
He was a mess. Half his hair had fallen out by the time he was to have finished high school. He looked about thrice his age. A doctor told him that his arteries were hardening rapidly and that he had to give up smoking or serious consequences would arise. His liver was enlarged from the combination of alcohol and psychotropic drugs. His spleen was swollen. The sight of him was unimaginable.
He died later that year. I consoled Sarah in her grief. And then she kissed me. But it wasn’t like the time before. This time I felt as if she were kissing me with the passion she would bestow upon a thousand clones of him. She undressed me wither teeth. She poured a line of cocaine down my chest, leading to my genitals. She snorted it off me. We shared a pre-coital cigarette. Tobacco had always remained my favourite drug. Sweet, sweet tobacco. With ammonia, sulphuric acid and one quarter moisturising cream it’s the most revitalising drug around.
At last I had won. My patience had been stretched, but she was mine. My plan had gone to plan, even if it had taken longer and more drastic measures than I had expected.
The more observant among you will have noticed a specific ambiguity in my story (if not more). I, of course had used the drugs from the same day as he had. You may be wondering what I resembled. Well if you imagine Elvis Presley as he must have looked when he was found dead and so unrecognisable that a positive identification was impossible, you’re partway there. Now imagine Judy Garland lying in her toilet, drugged up to the eyeballs on the amphetamines that helped her forget her troubles. Imagine her going to Elvis’ bathroom and having sex with him in his dying moment. Suppose that Garland was impregnated but died near the end of her gestation period. I look like the unborn foetus that would lie in Garland’s womb. And that is what Sarah told me as I died in her arms.