From the Other Side of My Bed

18. Party Girl

               *No Type by Rae Sremmurd*


We cruise around at 2:26am throughout the freeways with music blasting through the large, multicolor LED speakers in the back as Jaxon drives in demon speed. The homies are in the back, Chino and Jovanni are smoking a blunt while I'm in the passenger seat with my head sticking out the window.
"Bad bitches is the only thang that I like!" I scream out the song as I'm so high out of my mind. My long black hair floats in the wind as it rushes furiously and slaps me in the face all the time, but I don't mind.
Jaxon sometimes looks sideways at me, smiling at how I'm having fun while we are about to go drop off ounces of weed to his "people".
I could have careless in those days and in fact I never gave a fuck.
He got me so I was good.
Who remembers when a gram was 10$?
Good old days.
Now shit is like 25$.
Anyways that's how much a gram used to cost in Arizona, and it was a good deal so that's when weed wasn't legalized. But that's not the only thing that people bought. They often bought carts when they were fairly new in dispensaries, which we called "Dispo."
Sometimes they bought two oxxys for 15$ or a gram of heroin for like 30$.
That's when heroin wasn't laced with fentanyl.
I remember when I questioned Jaxon why he did the shit he did and he just shrug.
Most of us kids in 8th Ave or all over Mesa, we didn't had a choice but to sell or be consumers to shit because our parents never gave a fuck. Always busy or throwing us money to shut us up or some didn't have money for clothes or food, so we had to sell.
Jerome used to be a "plug" in fact.
But I never knew of him.
When we met it was during my relationship with Nik. He was in the same friend group as my friends, so I was cordial with him.
I never expected him to become major for me.
Anyways...

When Nik left my life, I felt I couldn't breathe anymore without pain.
From the moment I woke up, to the moment I fell asleep at night, I felt like I didn't know who I was without him. I started to cry regularly, even at school. At some point I just stopped going to school, because he started dating that one bleached blonde bitch Peaches I told you about. God, it broke my heart.
She made my life so impossible. It was as if she enjoyed causing me pain for no reason. Having him taken away by her hurt, what hurt was he did things for her that looked like the things he did for me. Shit, he even took her to prom.
It burns in my mind that picture of them together.
I know I was dating Jaxon, but Nik was my person.
I used to think he was the love of my life.
Now he just holds a special part in my heart.
Now when I think of him, I smile.
When before I just used to cry, endlessly blaming myself for what happened. The trauma of losing my mom and him was considered by me as two of the lowest blows God could have had done to me. I hated him fervently for being so fucking cruel.
I used to lay on my bed at night after taking NyQuil straight from the bottle, waiting for it to take effect, and I would just watch at the moon, hoping, almost in a prayer, that my end would come fast. It was the first time I experienced suicidal ideation.
I was raised to think and believe suicide was the most sinned and forbidden thing you or anyone could do. It meant you could never go to heaven. My mom would tell me also cutting your body was something God would never forgive. So, imagine how hopeless I was.
I couldn't put me out of my misery because I wanted, not because I cared about heaven, to see my mom.
I know she is there.
She must be somewhere, and I need to see her again to apologize.
I must!
And I don't know why I'm crying when writing this.
I'm not a crier, but it hurts to remember my past.
Because she was alone (my inner child).
All motherless.
All loveless.
All alone.

-

One time Jaxon and the homies took me to Kleiman park, by the basketball courts.
And they pulled out sprite and a bottle of a pharmacy made cough syrup, and they poured equal or more of cough syrup and then each one made a cup and started drinking it, eventually I did too. It tasted weird, yet the effect was very soothing, so calming and if you forced yourself to stay up, the cough syrup (I believe) made your mind travel into a "trip" to your subconscious.
In my trip, I had walked into a memory, of Nik and me.
I remember I gasped so hard when I saw myself and him walking through the food court of Arizona Mills, and my shoelaces became untied. I watched how he noticed them, and he told me to stop, eventually kneeling to tie my shoes. I looked around as people were just in awe about this and they pulled their cameras out and quietly took a picture of us. I kept following Nik and the version of myself, and I watched from a far how we would run around the mall, eating ice cream at the shops, kissing in photobooths, riding the carousel together and eating popcorn while trying to laugh. I made my heart small.
Then the memory banished as I was laying in the backseat, of the car of a man I never loved, who had his arm wrapped around my neck and kissed my head once I woke up. I felt disgusted with myself and my neediness.

-

Nik was like, my last string that kept me sane.
After him was just a... rollercoaster of self-destruction.
I didn't know how to live without him. I didn't know what to eat, how to exercise, how to maintain myself regulated, because I had left it to him to decide every aspect for almost a whole year. So, when I got with Jaxon, he taught me his own way of... dealing with unwanted thoughts or feelings.
Drugs.
I don't know why it was so impactful in my earlier life, but it was. He first would give me from his small stash in his bedroom he shared with his foster mom and foster siblings. Then when we would go to get-togethers or parties, I would be randomly given tabs or oxxys. Psychedelics weren't a fan of me, and I wasn't a fan of them, some made me have worrying trips to lands I have never been before.
You call it "trip" when you are in a "high dream".
You take a "trip" to your subconscious, and you get lost in weird loops and places. The first time I took tabs I was tripping bad. I thought that the sky was water, and it swirled around in small circles with white foam which were the clouds. And the birds were half bald falcons, so huge then so small you could barely see them. And the people had pig heads. I remember I was with Lacey this time I saw the pig heads, and I was so terrified of them that she hugged me and kissed my forehead and said it was just the drugs.
It was only until I tried meth that things changed.
I was fully awake for two days.
Running around the streets at 2, 3, 4 in the morning, windows down as my head was out, taking in the feracious cold wind flowing by as Jaxon and the homies drove to different locations to sell merchandise.
Always Jovanni in the back, staring at all happening.

When I used coke, it was in a trap house I had gone with Jaxon, and he warned me not to do anything with these people because their shit was too pure for me. And I didn't understand what "pure" meant.
The house wasn't what you thought it would look.
Some trap houses can be in disguise as normal houses in Dobson ranch or in Mirabella Street. And this one was in Dobson ranch. Not so fancy and glamorous as the ones next to it, but that's why it was the perfect spot.
No cop comes to Dobson ranch to find drugs.
In fact, they never come at all.
It's a rich people's spot.
I remember the house had matching beige sofa and love seats, and the carpets were brown, the kitchen was semi small and when you walked in, it looked empty, as if he had nothing to hide, up until me and Jaxon were guided to one of the three bedrooms in the house, which was transform into a flower shop.
He had dozens of marijuana plants, and along with them, there were other plants with had off colors and I just never bothered to ask. As the dealer and Jaxon with Jovanni talked, I wandered around the room looking at the plants, until my eyes caught thousands of small brown bags. Like quarter size.
It turned out to be heroin.
Back then, nothing really scared me because I was numb.
And people say I was just naïve to things, too innocent.

I wasn't.
I was just a baby.
I was only 14. What can you expect from a baby like that?
Deep in me I never understood anything back then, which led me to try heroin and later meth. I don't remember much about those times while high because it was eclipsed by my pain of losing my mom and then nick.
I just missed them so much.
Back then I never thought of my mom, because... it was just too much.
The absence, the lack of communication, the lack of support I was getting, it was stupid to me that no one had empathy.
I was a victim too.
But no one treated me as one.
They thought of me as unfeeling, cold blooded and unkind because I couldn't cry.
I was simply naturally stoic, but I had a heart.
Deep in that façade of being tough, no one cared to see my heart.
And it's whatever, fuck them. You know?
I know myself now, and I know I was in pain back then.
I grieved differently.
And God, did I grieve.
Then nick left...
Oh God, it was the biggest blow.
I loved him, I loved him, God knows I loved him, and I was lost without him. I was made fun of the first days of our breakup by his new bitch. She taunted me and bullied me, telling me at school that "if you ever saw him, that's mine now."
Gosh, I was so angry.
I was angry at him too for being fake.
For letting her speak to me that way.
But I knew he now owe her loyalty and not me.
So, I endured all of that, and went back into dating Jaxon and doing drugs at parties.
Reckless behavior, all the dancing and partying, the dining and then wining with the homies as we were high in the skies, living the best life.
All the money they made was mostly to be partying and us girls, we enjoyed it.
Most of the men in the group were... well, men.
They were 18+ while we girls were 14, 15 or 16 at max.
Jaxon was a bit older, just 17 when we dated, and I was 14.
No one talks about how creepy that is. But that's how it was back then.
Men have a weird fascination with the youth of kids, a weird obsession with our innocence, and sadly I was a victim of it. The grand satisfaction they get when you tell them you are only a kid is perversive, disgusting. But because you are groomed into thinking being sexualized is good, you rejoiced on it.
Then you grow up and feel disgusting, feel isolated from all the kids who play in the playgrounds and you, in the corner, with older men who sometimes stick cash in your bra strap because you flirted with them.
That was my reality.
A reality of many kids in 8th ave.
The worst part is, they don't call you a party girl.
They call you a whore. Even if you never slept with anyone.
Even if you were a virgin.
They called you a whore because you weren't a goodie girl who stayed at home doing homework. And the funny thing it was other party girls called you a whore too, as if we weren't all in hands of stranger danger.
I wish all the partying and the drugs would have had erased my existence off this earth, and it did for a while. Until the worst happened.
Of course, it always takes the worst to happened before you open your eyes.