Guest Writer: Francesca Crumpton
It started with a text from my roommate, delivered the second I left my job interview. How perfectly timed. Casey was about to get off of her shift, when she texted me “Isn’t it such a beautiful day to like drink or get dinner or something?”
It was absolutely a beautiful New York day, 75 degrees and sunny in October, thank you global warming. It was a Monday, and I hadn’t planned on going out because I was unemployed and exhausted from a crazy weekend of partying. But I felt good about my job interview and needed a distraction so I wouldn’t spiral about the chance of not getting the job. So, like always, I rationalized going out for drinks with my best friend on a weekday.
We walked to Abe’s Pagoda near our Bushwick apartment, but they had a measly “Closed Till Tuesday” cardboard sign on the door. As we walked over to our backup spot, a girl behind us began to scream bloody murder.
“No! No! Nooooooo!”
When we asked her if she was okay or dying, because it genuinely sounded like she was dying, she told us that she went to Abe’s as well and couldn’t believe they would be closed on a Monday. How dare they!
We ended up at Alphaville, just in time for their happy hour deals. We each ordered a beer and burger combo for $15 and caught up on life. Casey discussed her boyfriend and I discussed my lack of a love life.
After another round of beers and shots of Fireball that the bartender definitely judged us for ordering, I was starting to get sleepy. The greasy smash burger saved me, but my head was still pounding with the doom of unemployment.
Then I received a text from one of my old coworkers, Snow. “Come out!” and then, “Having a few at West currently, then going to Ontario to play pool!”. Snow was my newest drinking buddy, and she was the ultimate cool girl. She was always dressed in vintage designer clothes, always ready to party, and always holding a bag.
West was a coffee shop/bar that one of her boyfriends worked at. She always called him one of her boyfriends because she claimed that she had a roster of nine, but based on their chemistry and how often she would visit him, I knew he was her favorite.
Casey agreed to come with me, so we took a short train ride on the L and walked two blocks over. West was not me or Casey’s typical vibe. We usually frequented grungy dive bars or Irish pubs. West, with their folk music and slam poetry open mic and the bartender sitting on top of the counter playing sudoku instead of serving the line of customers waiting to order, felt like the hipster nightmare that Fox News makes fun of.
We met up with Snow, who was already drunk and begging for a cigarette, her mom, and her best friend Gigi. Snow’s mom had been a teen mom stuck in her hippy phase ever since giving birth. We sat in the bar’s backyard smoking skinny cigarettes and drinking the champagne of beers while she told us about her job as an art teacher in Houston.
Gigi was a younger fashion student who served at a high-end french bar. Her hair was blonde and curly, giving young Carrie Bradshaw in The Carrie Diaries. Her eyes were glazed over and she was extra bubbly. Me and Casey speculated in hushed whispers that she had taken shrooms or something.
After a round at West, we walked over to Ontario, where we immediately wrote our names on the chalkboard to play pool with the single stub of white chalk that was left. We ordered beers and shots at the bar while we waited. Gigi flirted with the bartender and asked him to charge her vape.
Casey and I listened to Snow’s mom tell us about her struggle with a coke addiction, which ended when she found out she was pregnant at eighteen. Not five minutes later, we watched her sneak into the gender-neutral bathroom with Snow to do a bump.
She rambled about her students and their creative talents. Casey and I debriefed my birthday party the previous weekend. Snow passed around a bottle of poppers, the brain cell-killing inhalant that feels like a nicotine rush to the extreme.
We went to the bathroom with Snow, who proceeded to fill her acrylic with powder. She inhaled and refilled, passing it to Casey. After her it was my turn.
My experiences with drugs have only been bad, watching so many of my friends struggle with their addictions and become scary versions of themselves. I normally had a rule: I don’t do blow. Snow knew this about me, but I had gone into the bathroom so I wouldn’t be left out, and I had put myself in the situation to be offered.
I shook my head no, but her nail remained below my nose. Casey chimed in, “She doesn’t do that,” but Snow stood her ground. Eventually I gave in, knowing that I would regret it in the morning. I had succumbed to the peer pressure they always warned me about.
We watched Snow play pool with a group of bearded men in the back of the bar. The way she bent over the pool table to shoot, her back arched and her boot heels lifted. She shook out her curly hair as she studied the angles of the cue ball. She was mesmerizing to everyone in the room.
From there, Snow convinced us to hop into an Uber and head toward a bar in Greenpoint. We piled in and took the quick trip. Me and Casey entered the bar, stunned by the seedy vibe. It was completely dark, the walls and ceiling painted black and lit by a few low voltage bulbs.
Snow and her mom stood out front for a cigarette break that lasted an entire round of beers, we wondered why we were even tagging along still. Then Snow’s mom came back inside, and explained that she was there to buy more coke.
It made so much sense, this was the pickup spot. Casey and I were just being dragged along for the ride. While everyone else snuck off to do another round, we debated religious upbringings and the political brainwashing we experienced from our parents.
After a final Fireball shot for the road, I was hungry and full of regret. Drugs are unavoidable in New York City, everyone I have met has an experience with them. I had been lying to myself by trying to pretend that I could stick around it and not feel the urge.
Me and Casey Ubered back to our favorite local deli and ordered quesadillas. We ended the night watching The Office on our couch, shoveling our meals into our mouths in between laughs. The night had taken many unexpected turns, but we weren’t super surprised. In New York every night out creates a new story.
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