Before I met her, I wanted to be her. Does that sound stupid? I wanted to be that ****** up ****** that did a bunch of drugs and always had money because she led men on and lived free and just lived life despite a daily brush with death. I was eventually, and I had an amazingly horrible experience.

I met her when I was 13. I spent a lot of time just "babysitting" her really. My other friends hated her. We'd come over and she'd literally go in the closet to shoot up and we'd just be chilling in her bedroom listening to Hole and being really confused as to why she didn't just use the bathroom. But she liked the attention and audience. This might seem cliche or mean or whatever, but it's true.

As my decent friends grew further away from me because I continuously grew closer and closer to her, I did a lot of *******, not nearly as much as I would later on in life. but enough to say, "wow I did a lot of ******* when I was 15" and at the time, it seemed like an accomplishment. Maybe I thought I was cool, I don't know, now I just think I was stupid and weak and regret being like my father.

Obviously, as time went on, I did ******. The first 500 times Natalie offered me it, I said no. I always said no, but she still always asked. If you know a ****** addict, there's something else you probably know. ****** addicts love having other ****** addicts around because you guys will work together to make money and get more. This will probably turn into what it really is and what we were really were, and that's a co-dependent platonic couple, but I didn't know that until just now.

The day I finally did it, my god. My god. My god. My god. My god.

I feel slightly guilty writing this because I don't want to glorify drug abuse but Christ, did it feel good.

We were downstairs watching Hedwig and she gave me the eye to start talking to her mom so she could go upstairs discreetly. Then her mom was like "where'd she go?" so I went to go check, even though I knew.

I walk into the bathroom, scaring the **** out of her. She had lines of ******, diesel, whatever. We called it diesel, I don't know if that's like a common name for it? Is it? Whatever, I said "let me try it."

Why? I don't know why. To this very second I can't remember what I was thinking. She didn't ask, and maybe that's why. But she put some on her hand and I snorted it. I hated the taste. Sometimes I smell it, and I don't know what it is that smells like ******, but I find myself saying out loud, when people are around, "ugh it smells like ******."

This is one of my catchphrases I think, and I am not proud of it anymore.

People always ask me what it felt like the first time. I remember not feeling anything. I remember not feeling guilty for helping Natalie remain a drug addict in her parents house. I remember her pinching me and telling me not be obvious, but oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know that it was going to make me feel like a warm pancake that just wanted to sleep wide awake.

Sleeping wide awake, that's a good way to describe how it feels.

I tell people this a lot, this process of drug use, and how I ended up shooting ****** and kind of just ignoring that I was.

I smoked *** and said "well it's not like I'm doing E"
then I did E and said "I'm not doing coke"
then it was "it's not ******"
and then it was "it's not like I'm shooting it."

Once I started shooting it, I didn't have any excuse or cop out, I was just curious as to what else I could inject into my body and became that glorified drug addict who lived free and did anything she wanted and felt like she came out of a book or a movie or a ****** up story you only hear strangers gabbing about on the train.

I was that girl. Natalie was much worse though. But that didn't come until I was about 18.

I had morals, yes even heavily addicted to ******, I had morals. I didn't steal from my family. This was one thing that would not break for me even when I was maybe putting **** in my mouth for money. But that's not even entirely true because I didn't do it for the money, it just happened that way.

So I'm probably 16 at this point in the story. I'm meeting guys off MySpace with her, guys from rich towns that want *** or coke or ******, just guys who can't get it in their towns. She's ******* them, I'm stealing from them. We don't keep friends very long because they know what we're up to after a few times.

She also sold her parents wedding rings, I didn't even know until after the fact, or I would have tried to stop her.

Her mother was so good to me. I spent a lot of time at their house. Her mom always invited me for holidays, despite the huge family they already had coming, because she knew my home life wasn't too good and she just treated me like I imagine you're supposed to treat a daughter you like. She was also very religious, which added to the blinders she had when it came to Natalie. She thought she could pray the drugs away, the way she tried to pray my gay away.

I was absolutely heart broken and completely beside myself the day her mother yelled, "she told me what you did. She told me you took the rings."

I didn't take the rings but what was I supposed to do? Try and convince her that Natalie did? She knew, somewhere she knew, but she didn't want to believe it so I just walked out of the house and never came back. I cried about that for a long time because I loved her mother, so much more than I am trying to say here. She might have been oblivious, but she was the sweetest woman in the world and I feel horrible that she had a daughter like Natalie.

I met so many characters. Chris. I don't remember his last name but it was something really white boyish. He would drive 45 minutes to us so we could get him 8 bags of ****** when he paid for 10, but we'd pocket two. We did this a lot during the day actually. We'd get drugs for people and just never tell them you get a bundle (10 bags) for 80$, and they'd tell their friends we'd go for them, and they'd think the same thing. Why? Oh, because these were very white people that were afraid of the "ghetto." And it was the ghetto, it was Newark, NJ. The corner of Victoria and Garside, what up, what up. Come see me.

I never really liked Chris. He was a musician but he wasn't that good. I think he thought he was Conor Oberst, and at that time, he kind of looked like him. But he was just some rich white kid with an inflated ego and I didn't feel bad ripping him off, or his Trust Fund Baby friends.

I did feel bad though when one of them died in front of us.

So I guess this is where I'll start writing the "**** got real real fast" stuff, now that I've hopefully explained the type of person I am and how I got to this point.


Why drug dealers cut their drugs with poison and whatever else, I'll never know. Bad for business if you ask me, but I've never been a big fan of the business world, but this seems pretty similar.

Natalie is driving Chris' car and we didn't snort any ****** yet, which was weird, but I'm grateful we didn't. We bring it back to Chris and his friends, who are waiting a few towns over for us. They get in the car and are like "just drive around for a bit so we can do this."

They all have separate bags, and I feel terrible I can't remember the girl's name that died, I want to say it was Karen or something like that but I know it wasn't. She just rolls up a bill and snorts out of the bag and within like 10 seconds she's screaming and everyone in the backseat is screaming and I turn around and there's blood pouring out of her nose and it's all over her hands and the car and her boyfriend and Chris and I think her eyes are bleeding but I'm not entirely sure if that's what was happening. And I'm like "What the **** what the ****" because it wasn't a normal nose bleed, this girl was just, flowing blood out of her face.

Natalie is emotionless as always. I'm screaming "get to the hospital get to the ******* hospital" and the girl is like screaming "it hurts oh my god oh my god it hurts" and her boyfriend is like "yo man, what the **** bb are you okay bb."

It's weird that in situations like this everyone repeats themselves but I think your brain kind of stops working and you need to repeat yourself so the rest of you can process the magnitude of ****** up that your eyes are seeing.

Needless to say, Natalie didn't go straight to the hospital, she stopped the car a few blocks away. The girl died within 15 minutes. I don't know why Natalie or I wasn't held accountable for what happened, but I think it had something to do with me telling Chris who the dealer was, and this was the only time in my life I ever gave out a name, even when I was in jail, I didn't rat anyone out. But death is different and anyone who doesn't believe in being a rat when you're faced with that kind of guilt, is a *******.

Natalie got out and started walking, Chris got in the front seat and I followed after Natalie. He did take his friend to the hospital immediately after but Natalie was being inhumane, and it was just better she got out of the car because she probably would have driven us all into a river to avoid being arrested.

I really have no idea why she got out of the car though, she had no fear, I think she was just annoyed, like this girl's death ruined her day when it ruined my life. I guess making a joke out of it makes it easier for me to deal with, but it still isn't. For me, it was monstrous, it was desensitizing, it was mortality showing itself and I was like "I'll never do ****** again." But that was a lie. I found out a week later via MySpace message that the girl had glass (!?) in her bag as well as ****** and I have no idea. I have no ******* idea what why how. I just don't understand that.

Chris still came around for ****** though. And he still brought his friends, just not the ones that were there that day.

What am I, like 17? I'm still senior in high school and I have really ****** concept of age, and I meet this other guy.

MY GOD WHAT A MAN.

Yeah, I said it. He was 38, built like Hulk Hogan, and had the sweetest smile and the most honest blue eyes I have ever seen.

He also had been out of jail for a whole year before we met him. He was tied to a car ring where people would pay him to steal cars. He was in jail for 6 years and when I turned 21, I heard he landed himself back in jail for trying to **** someone or something.

He was nice though. I couldn't figure out why he was so obsessed with Natalie. But the niceness wore out and I finally learned what a creepy ******* he was.

He used to ride his bicycle to meet up with us and he had a lot of money, he just wasn't allowed a license. He was a construction worker for the union, made like 60$ an hour and what do you know, he was a ****** addict.

He told me how they get drugs inside jail. You get a girl to come visit you and sit down with you. You kiss them, like make out kissing because that's all you need. That like 4 seconds before someone is like HEY CUT IT OUT, and they have the drugs wrapped up in their mouth, and you get the picture. Just in case you were wondering how that works.

He also told me that I reminded him of his sister, that died of a drug overdose.
He also showed me his **** one day when he was at my house alone with me.
He also ****** off on my couch and tried to get me to **** it.
Then he tried to get me just to touch it.
Then I asked him to leave.
And then some other stuff happened that I don't feel comfortable writing about but I probably will another day.

He turned out to be a ******* ****** and I don't really trust anyone with pretty eyes anymore. But he was fun. Once he started trying to impress me, a 17 year old girl, and Natalie who was like 22, he decided he'd go back to his old ways and steal cars. I can't count the amount of porsches I've been in or how many miles per hour we went or how many car accidents there were that we shouldn't have walked away from it unharmed. He never hit anyone else, just walls and guardrails, rolled into ditches.

Seat belts, seriously, wear them. I don't anymore, but I'm going to start again.

He used to give me a lot of money. A Lot Of Money, just to hang out with him and watch him ******* and ****. I don't know sometimes when I think about these things.

Natalie did something stupid, she got caught stealing from him. He didn't mind giving us money and I think that's why he was so mad. He would have just handed it to her if she asked. So he started coming to my house a lot in stolen cars, then I introduced him to my other teenager female friends and it worked out really well for me.

He was gone for good and it was better that way.

I was still only snorting ****** up until this time of my life. The taste of ****** and the amount I puked from it was becoming too much and I was losing a lot of weight and it wasn't healthy looking so I decided to start shooting. I didn't even do it for the normal reason which is, you get higher, faster and harder.

Natalie and I are in a bathroom of my friend's house whose mother is handicapped, bed bound, so we just go there all the time to get high. The mother is also diabetic so there's a lot of unused empty needles. I help her shoot. And it's scary, she would shake and tremble and it was really bad. Sometimes I'd think to myself, "it's like your body is trying to stop you from doing it."

But if you like blood, watching someone shoot up is really cool. You mix water with the powder and, ew now that I'm thinking about it, what the ****. You wrap your arm up, so your veins pop up, put the needle into a vein and you pull some blood out, I don't know the reason behind this, and you shoot it back into yourself.

I'm really uncomfortable with the whole idea of shooting so I shot into my hands because I had very prominent veins there. I eventually started shooting speed *****, ****** and coke, which was too much fun for someone as emotionally unstable as I was, to be doing something so completely unpredictable. The first time I shot ******, I never snorted it again.

I shot Jack Daniels once and never did that again either. I figured I'd get drunk really fast, right? Wrong, it burned like a ***** and I started smashing my hand into the bathroom sink screaming "WHAT THE **** WHY DOES IT BURN."

It's whiskey, Audrey. Whiskey.

I met so many more people when I was shooting. I became friends with an entire *******, all the strippers, their boyfriends, their "daddies" and just, those kinds of people, and like I said before, I'll write about that another day. But that is where I met Janelle and Kevin, aka, Jack and Sally. They were these really gothy ****** addicts and this is going to be ridiculous, but it was so beautiful when they shot up.  

Kevin would be like "okay, baby, ready?" and he'd caress her arm and she'd wrap it, and he'd kiss her and then kiss her arm, then he'd put the needle in and I'd be sitting on the bed sobbing because I thought it was so cute, in like, a really disgusting "I'm clearly on drugs" kind of way.

I didn't hang out with them for that long, Natalie ****** Kevin and that ****** because Kevin and I used to make forts inside the house and talk a lot about nothing, but it was fun and I felt like a child, and I liked feeling like I was a child and that it was okay I was acting the way I was.

A bunch of people that hung out there eventually started doing ****** and I couldn't stand it so I had to get away from a bit because my guilt came back and I felt like I was killing everyone.


Natalie started setting up drug deals so they'd get ripped off if they went without her, she started turning on me, stealing from me, she had me set up for a deal and her dealer put a gun in my mouth when I started arguing with him about how he gave me like wood chips or whatever. It was not ******, but we still ran like thieves together.

She introduced me to the next guy we were going to use, his name was Pablo. He was about 42 and lived in his parents basement. He was an outstanding artist, I mean, I couldn't figure out why he was in his parents basement with the amount of talent he had. We used to smoked embalming fluid with him and angel dust.

Now, if you ever want to know what it feels like to be Alice in Thunderland, smoke embalming fluid. I went on a 4 day drug binge that consisted of nothing but dust, fluid, her

Did you expect it all to stop at the wave of your hand?
Like the sun's just going to drop if it's night you demand.
Well, in the dark we're just air, so the house might dissolve.
But once again we are gone. Who's going to care if we were ever here at all?
Well summer's going to come; it's gonna cloud our eyes again.
No need to focus when there's nothing that's worth seeing.
So we trade liquor for blood in an attempt to tip the scales.
I think you lost what you loved in that mess of details.
They seemed so important at the time,
but now you can't recall any of the names, faces, or lines;
it's more the feeling of it all.
Well, winter's going to end. I'm going to clean these veins again.
So close to dying that I finally can start living.

"Hi, we're back. This is radio KX and we're here with Conor Oberst of the band Bright Eyes. How are you doing Conor?"
"Fine, thanks. Just a little wet."
"Oh, it's still coming down out there?"
"Yeah, I sort of had to run from the car."
"Well we're glad you made it! Now, your album 'Fevers and Mirrors'... tell us about the title. I know there's a good deal of repeated imagery in the lyrics; fevers, mirrors, scales, clocks. Could you discuss some of this?"
"Sure, let's see... the fevers..."
"First, First let me say that, this is a brilliant record, man, we're all really into it here at the station and we get lots of calls, it's really good stuff."
"Thanks. Thanks a lot."
"So talk about some of the symbolisms."
"The fever?"
"Sure!"
"Well, the fever is basically, what ever ails you, or oppresses you... It could be anything. In my case it's my neurosis, my depression... but I don't want it to be limited to that... it's certainly different for different people. It's whatever keeps you up at night."
"I see."
"And the, and the mirror's like, as you might have guessed, self-examination, or reflection, or whatever form. This could be vanity, or self loathing. I, I know I'm, I'm guilty of both."
"That's interesting. How about the scale?"
"The scales are essentially our attempt to solve our problems quantitatively, through logic or rationalization. In my opinion it's often fruitless, but... always, no, not always... And the clocks and calendars it's uh... is just... time... our little measurements, it's like, it's always chasing after us."
"It is. It is. Uh, How about this Arienette, how does she fit into all this?"
"Um, I'd prefer not to talk about it, in case she's listening."
"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize she was a real person."
"She's not. I made her up."
"Oh, so she's not real?"
"Just as real as you or I."
"I don't think I understand."
"Neither do I, but after I grow up I will. I mean a lot... a lot of things are really unclear for me right now."
"That's interesting. Ah, now you mentioned your depression..."
"...No I didn't."
"You're from Nebraska, right?"
"Yeah. So?"
"Now, let me now if I'm getting too personal, but there seem to be a pretty dark past back there somewhere. What was it like for you growing up?"
"Dark? Not really... uh... actually I had a great childhood, my parents were wonderful. I went to a Catholic school. They have... they had money, so... it... It was all... easy. Basically I had everything I wanted handed to me."
"Really? So some of the references, like babies in bathtubs, are not biographical?"
"Well I do have a brother who died in a bathtub. Drowned. Actually, I had five brothers who died that way."
Chuckles
"No, I'm serious. My mother drowned one every year for five consecutive years. They were all named Padraic, so that's... they all got one song."
"Hmm."
"It's kinda like walking out the door to discover it's a window."
"But your music certainly is very personal."
"Of course. I put a lot of myself into what I do. But it's like, being an author you have to, free yourself to use symbolism and allegory to reach your goal and, and a part of that is, compassion, empathy for other people and their, and their situations. Some of what I sing comes from other people's experiences as well as my own. It... It shouldn't matter, the message is intended to be universal."
"I see what you mean."
"Can you make that sound stop, please?"
"Yes!

...and your goal?"
"I don't know. Uh, create feelings, I guess. A song? It never ends up the way you planned it, though."
"That's funny that you say that, do you think that..."
"Do you ever hear things that aren't really there?"
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Never mind. How long have you worked at this station?"
"Oh, just a few minutes. Uh, now you mentioned empathy for others. Would you say that that is what motivates you to make the music that you make?"
"No, not really. It's more a need for sympathy. I want people to feel sorry for me. I like the feel of the burn of the audience's eyes on me when I'm whispering all my darkest secrets into the microphone. When I was a kid, I used to carry this safety pin around with me, everywhere I went in my pocket. And when people weren't paying enough attention to me, I'd dig it into my arm until I started crying. Everyone would stop what they were doing and ask me what was the matter. I guess, I guess I kinda..."
"Really? You're telling me you're doing all this for attention?"
"No, I hate it when people look at me. I get nauseous. In fact, I could care less what people think, about me. Do you feel that? Wanna dance?"
"No, I'm feeling sick."
"I really just wanna be warm yellow light that pours all over everyone I love."
"So, uh, you're gonna play something for us now. Is this a new song?"
"Yeah, but I haven't written it yet. It's one I've been meaning to write, uh, called, "A Song To Pass The Time."
"Oh, that's a nice title."
"No it isn't. You should write your own scripts."
"Yeah, I know!"