Polaroids in the Darkness

I returned to my sleepy little town after New Years feeling refreshed and renewed.
The bad date -which I guess was a rape- didn't matter , getting kicked out of a party didn't matter.
What mattered was that I had -against all odds - found someone I could relate to, a real friend and someone who seemed to be doing what i wanted to do. Cory was like the epitome of the sort of rock n roll junkie I had dreamed of for so long. She was like Keith Ricjhards with a needle in his arm and a bottle of Jack in his hand - only blonde and prettier.
So when I next bought cocaine in Guelph, I didn't bother doing lines in the bathroom at the Scummy Spazz, our local watering hole, anymore, and instead rushed home with it and cooked it up into crack, The recipe for which I'd gotten off the internet.
I was in the process of transitioning from male to female at the time, and that was still new and I was really reinventing myself in many ways.I felt Toronto was a bigger and more challenging blank canvas to work with. I wasn’t just reinventing myself as a woman, but rather reinventing a whole new persona that was all wrapped up in this rock n roll junkie heroin-chic thing.

I even managed to turn a couple of tricks in quiet little Guelph - one completely by accident.
I was hungry late one night and the only place serving food was the pizza place downtown that had slices so, drunk as all hell, out I went to get pizza - on the way a trick stopped and when I approached the car where he'd stopped and rolled down his window I got the shocked and offended "you're a guy" that I was to hear many times over the next few years and he drove off.
In the few minutes it took for me to have gotten my slice he was back. Whether to do me harm a la the crying game I didnt know - so he rolled his window down again and again I approached only this time he was nicer "so how much for a blow job then" and I hopped in the car we drove top the church parking lot right near my house and I did him for 50 bucks.-
that was added to the kitty so that when I went to to Toronto at the end of the week I'd be able to buy drugs - not only did I want it for myself but I wanted to make my new best friend Cory happy.

The week went by in a rush and a haze and I talked non-stopto my friends and to my coworkers at the cafe about my new friend. At weeks end, I finally got a couple of days off in a row and headed by bus to the city and there made a beeline straight to Cory's. When I showed her the crack pipe I'd made to smoke my homemade rock she laughed and said "Oh no I'vcreated a monster" she had no idea how true that was.
We got some crack and in a rush to smoke it right then and there, did a couple of quick tokes in a streetcar shelter since it was raining. While we were smoking, a business woman - or at least a woman who appeared to have a life - came by and was too disgusted or scared once she saw us that she chose to stand in the rain rather than in the shelter - as Cory was melting the final stone she smiled and said to the woman
"don't worry about us - just a couple crackheads doing a toke -you can have the shelter bacjk in a minute"
Cory had this way about her - she made friends easily and when she flashed that smile few could resist.
We made it back to Cory's and she went out to work - she had a heroin habit to feed after all.
I waited amongst the carnage that was her room, and when she returned this time she had a packet of junk with her.I asked if I could shoot it instead of snorting it, because if I was going to do something i might as well do it all the way, and so Cory gave me my first shot of junk, I still remember it like the first time falling in love. It was beautiful.
I thought "this is it! this is what Ive been looking for!" and I wondered why I'd ever bothered with all the drinking and smoking pot. This, this junk is what I'd been looking for all along
We bought another 40 piece of crack and continued to rampage for three days until I had to return home to my University town again to go to work.
My boss at work, a wonderful woman, who'd been like a mentor to me in life as well as the kitchen, commented to me one Day
"I think it's so good you aren't drinking as much these days . Good for you"
one of my coworkers - Janelle - muttered under her breath
"yeah now you're a junkie, good for you"
I wasn't a junkie yet - but I was well on my way..
Cory left or rather lost her place and moved to the Roach Motel (yes, gentle reader, the selfsame one that Lisa and I were to stay at years later,) I started missing shifts now, which I'd never done, and doing more and more drugs. Finally I lost both my job and my apartment and on my birthday I ran into my old friend Nancy, who was visiting her hometown from Montreal and we sat in my empty apartment with no hydro and shot cocaine.
Once the apartment and the job were gone there was nothing keeping me in Guelph and I packed up what little I had and joined Cory at the Roach Motel.