Heroin is sort of a last refuge, a final drug with the highest ante of all. One last thing to try before I move on to more worldly jobs and sensual pleasures on the physical plane. Somehow I still suspect bitter disappointment from Ms. Morphine but then again I never have thought that the deep ennui I am experiencing could ever be relieved through chemistry, prescribed or otherwise.
But tonight, watching the shocking realism of true love and a reminder of drug-addled despair akin to Drugstore Cowboy, I think I’ve been given a subtle reminder to check myself. A warning I somehow know that if I ignore, I’ll face undesirable consequences later. The music and poetry of the world is alive, but very often dirty. To truly create, I fear I will have to roll around in the corruption of life and get an honest sense of despair that a simple visit to hell could never convey, although Dante’s trip proved inspirational enough for him. People had more time on their hands back then to analyze and write volumes about the experiences in their dreams too. Doesn’t it seem as if the theologians that are most concerned with the good of the afterlife are also unnaturally captivated by the bad of the here and now?
I’m scared. While things are clear to me on acid tonight I can already see I will alienate my family. Too many regrets are coming up. I’m scared mom, I know you’ll never understand. I’m scared Jenifer, nothing I gain in wisdom will be worth losing you. I’m scared Sam, you have already embarked on this different sort of road trip, a ride much more important than you will ever know. Dammit! I may be lacking inner peace but at least most of the time I’m comfortable. God forgive me for the things that will happen. God please forgive me for making them necessary.
I just found out that Jim is moving out of our miniature Monticello after this semester and I’m kind of sad about it, even though I suspected it might happen sometime soon. I just have this sense of an overall tiredness seeping into all of our bones and a general melancholy emanating from Jim because of different things going on in his life. He’s a notorious class skipper, which leads to the eventual disappointing low grades and having to drop half his classes. It’s also pretty damn hard to motivate yourself to do boring school stuff in our house with all these distractions. Jim’s tired of being poor, tired of being hassled by his girlfriend Simone continuously, and lamentably even I get on his case about stupid shit like all his dirty dishes or other stuff only bitches like to nag about, so I’ll bet he’s tired of that too. I guess he just senses it is time to try and move on and who can blame him?
We’ve all been doing more coke, yet slowly excluding each other’s company when we do it. Jim will stay away and I’ll use the excuse of having an early class to not participate. Drug-related relationships are getting more complex and weird around our house. So in a way, even though I’m sad to hear Jim is leaving I know it’s better for him to move back to San Antonio and get his head straight. I’ll miss that bastard though. Jim’s been like a brother to me sometimes and I’ve learned a lot by imitating his casualness. My old friend James gave me the basic Bachelor degree training in slacking off but Jim helped complete my Masters.
We’re all run down and tired from school. The rest of the world looks upon college life and sees it with rose-colored glasses slightly tinted green with envy, but the actuality of doing it daily and living hand to mouth is hard. Up North where animosity gets hidden behind thickly insulated walls during a majority of the colder months, people can drive around the cities and view their ghettos with some semblance of detachment, but Texas is a nearly year long festering stewpot of aggravation. It’s getting hotter and it’s going to keep getting hotter, fuses are getting shorter and the mundane tasks of living are seemingly unbearable sometimes. Often it’s so tempting to just say, “Fuck it!” and do my own thing. I’ve got spring fever to the Nth degree.
I hope Dan and Jay are cool about Jen staying with me at the house most of the time. She’s become a fifth roommate and now when people speak about one of us, our names are invariably lumped together. Sam and Jenifer or Jenifer and Sam, the name mentioned first usually denoting whom the speaker originally intended to talk about. I like the sound of it though. Sam and Jenifer. Jenifer and Sam. Pretty nice.
Our old friend Kirk is probably going to take over Jim’s room so we won’t have to worry about extra rent, not that it would be too big of a problem. I think Kirk is cool even though he’s older (about 27 or so?) and he was there with Jim and me in the dorms and he already knows Dan and Jenifer from drinking together at the Tomato and hanging around our house. Kirk always says he wasn’t much of a pot smoker until he started hanging around Jim and me. Since I (positively!) credit Jim with helping teach me about the joys of being most mellow, he can blame Jim. Kirk likes to party too much and will do any drug put in front of him but he’s also established a set of unflinching priorities and responsibilities that keep him on track, plus I already know I can live with him.
Jenifer told me while we were lying in bed last night that Kirk is weird and kind of creeps her out. I tried to pry and ascertain why she thinks that way, but the feel of her hair on my chest distracted me as she nestled into her favorite pillow, the crook of my arm. I’m thinking it may just be one of the subtle differences that women can detect in men. Something men can’t see in other men because they are blinded by friendship perhaps? We’ll find out soon enough I guess.
For one day, Jenifer and I were members of the upper crust, true sophisticates washing out the taint of our ring-around-the-blue-collar and simplistic collegiate lifestyle for an afternoon. The basic skinny is that today was the final showing of a great Impressionist exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art. In hillbilly speak that means some high-falutin’ famous pictures were on display. The collection was absolutely amazing. The works are on some sort of tour and we had been kicking around the idea of going for the past few months but it took a deadline and some encouragement from Mrs. Lansing to finally motivate our asses. We got to dress up and be art-fags for a day, leaving Generica (that’s Generic America) with all its McDonald’s, Wal-Marts and malls behind for a few hours.
The Impressionist colors and scenes of life have always struck a power chord in me. I love the artists’ quirks, I love the museums and I loved getting to go with Jenifer. She’s one of the few people that I knew would value and appreciate the experience as much as I did. Other lovers have tolerated my off-kilter interests in the past but how many have taken the time to incorporate and embrace my oddities, learning about them out of love for me? Just her of course. I doubt I could have viewed the art with anyone else in the world and felt like it was being equally appreciated. Ours was not a snobbish grasp of the value and history of the pictures but an appreciation for the passion and intensity of the driving force behind the artists and the thrill of seeing so many quality works together. I love her so much, in part because I respect her as having an intelligence level equal to mine. I’ve met women smarter than me in certain ways and I’ve certainly met my share of stupid bimbo bitches with killer bodies but only Jenifer has a unique intelligence I identify with and love.
The vivid scenes highlighting trivialities of life and details that only artists are given the opportunity to capture captivated our minds for the afternoon. It’s rewarding to be touched by an experience but it’s hard to explain the depth of an afternoon with a mere smattering of insignificant recorded details. Let it suffice to say that today we expanded our souls in each other’s company, we got to have a date together, and I’ll remember the pleasant sunlit afternoon forever. Or at least until I get amnesia or Alzheimer’s.