The Short Road
I had done my share of snorting coke back in the day. I lived with a woman everyone in the house called “Ma”. Ma always had plenty of everything; acid, coke, pot, whatever anyone needed. I was young, stupid and looking for fun. I felt so lucky that I never had to actually pay for any of the drugs as, well, seeing I was Ma’s ‘daughter’ and all. I’d watch people come over on a regular basis to get their fix. There was always plenty of laughter and fun. Roy lived there too. He was a sweet, southern man who had a penchant for cocaine.
Roy was one of Ma’s bodyguards. He also fancied himself my boyfriend. You know, that would have been fine had I not been witness to his descent from humanity due to his drug habit. When I met Roy he did a line of coke every once in a while, but as time went on, he was doing it every day. Not only that, but more and more every day. In the two years I hung around there I watched his life disintegrate into nothing. He began to get paranoid and hear things. With a house full of people it is downright dangerous to be waving a gun around because of noises that are drug induced. When he wasn’t on coke, Roy was so much fun. When he was on coke he was overactive, paranoid, and dangerous. Although I’d never seen him inject any coke, I suspected he was doing that too. Roy started getting a little too dangerous and then the arguments began. Ma would scream and yell at him and he would say nothing, but storm out of the house to cool off. Eventually, Roy had the gun taken from him. There were just too many close calls for comfort. I eventually left the house and went on with life, but Ma was arrested for dealing and Roy was reduced to living on the downtown streets trying to earn money anyway he could for his next fix. He had definitely hit bottom. He was sleeping in doorways of downtown businesses and had just become a shell of the man he once was. Roy moved to Chicago, last I heard. Maybe he thought he could score more cocaine there or maybe he decided to get help, I’m not sure. I’ll always remember, though, watching what a short road it was to average guy to broken down shell of a man.
