Dark Places

54 | it's not a boys' club, baby

❝go hard, young, go hard.
they let you in the game,
better play your part.
go hard, young, go hard.
and if you in the game,
might as well play smart.❞

☽

THE LAST TWO DAYS ease the impact of inevitability. It feels like an extended pregame, spiraling into a series of bad habits, a second skin, a person I remember being in Portland.

I don't even hesitate when Drake offers me an impeccably rolled joint on the short ride into the underbelly of the Old Port. His Volvo clunks and lurches over a strip of cobblestone, swerving back into a cramped spot on the far corner of Milk Street. I don't get out immediately.

Inhale. Exhale.

Cough.

I sputter as I pass it to him, choking through the burning sensation, dizzied by the soft, simmering haze that settles between us. It's thick and hot against my skin. My throat is tight. It's a warm up. He hits it harder, but slower, and stubs it in his broken ashtray, before slumping in his seat to shoot me a grim smile. "It'll help."

Because Drake Medina knows how to help me?

"Help?" I let out a dry laugh. "Um, someone beat the shit out of a girl I just slept with, Drake, and I don't know why." I don't think a bit of bud is going to help me feel less shitty.

Jess, I remember, used to go through eighths daily. Self-medication, she'd say, a quiet, careless explanation. It helps.

Withdrawals. Benzos.

Maybe it would help him.

Absentmindedly, I snag the stubbed joint and slip it into my pocket as I climb out of his Volvo.

The Purple Caterpillar is another dark dive in the Old Port, tucked away, hidden in a basement on Exchange Street. I shiver when I slow in front of the purple-trimmed door, lowly lit, struck by how many memories its iconic signature triggers. It had always been hit-or-miss, an unpleasant invitation to run into people from Portland fucking High after I'd graduated, which was... the opposite of what I wanted. I'd only ever gone with Drake Medina.

"It's been a while, hm?" he murmurs in my ear, nudging my hip gently. "Vamos."

Despite its flaws, Portland always had aesthetic. Winslow Homer-esque aesthetic, stripped down to a sea breeze off a jagged, rocky coastline, never failing to be beautifully simple. Maine Coast, in 1896, from the cliffs of Prouts Neck, churning waves and milky foam, hulking in the height of a storm, permanently displayed three hundred miles away in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Underground Portland is another animal.

It's less Winslow Homer, more... Lewis Caroll.

Wonderland. Chaos.

The Hookah-Smoking Caterpillar.

I take each step of the run-down staircase so fucking slowly, chased by his heavy footfalls, echoing, echoing, echoing, right... behind... me. Down. Down. Down. Until I'm drenched in a thick, sultry heat. It's foggy, yet familiar, clotted conversations, mellow music, and filmy fumes. Deeper. Deeper. Deeper. Until I'm wading through a grungy time capsule of trashy Friday nights and hungover Saturday mornings, remembering that I can't remember half of the aforementioned Friday nights.

It's just like I barely remember—a homey set-up of tables, hookahs, and back-to-back couches, to the far wall, every fucking wall, coated in a waxy purple shade, illustrations and quotes from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.