A few months ago, I was dating a single mom. This was a first for me, and also the fact that she was 45 and I'm only 26. We met at the library, of all places, where I was working as a reference assistant. I helped her with her research (she's a biologist,) and we got to know each other pretty well.
She asked me out, which surprised me, and I said yes. She asked if I would mind if her son came along too, in case she couldn't find a babysitter. It was weird for me, but I said sure, why not.
The date went well, and we agreed to see each other again. After a few dates, and a few nights together, the subject of drugs came up. I smoke weed now and then, and tried a few harder things when I was a teenager, so I said yeah, I party sometimes.
So she goes to the cabinet and pulls out a little bag of white rocks and a straight glass pipe. At this point we were at her place, and her son was asleep in the next room.
I had snorted coke before, but I had never considered smaoking crack. I was kind of scared, but decided I wanted to do it. I put a few crystals at the top of the stem and puffed. The feeling of immense pleasure was completely unlike snorting, it was like floating in an ocean of pleasure. We smoked all night, passing the smoke back and forth between our mouths, fucking lazily and inconclusively, savoring the rapture of the smoke.
When I woke up, I told her that I couldn't do that anymore. I was too afraid of the pleasure, afraid of needing cocaine every day for the rest of my life. You can't know that pull, unless you've smoked it yourself, felt the sweet chemical taste on your tongue, the incredible lightness of the world. You want it to stay that way, forever.
We broke up, but every now and again, I still find myself fantasizing about smoking cocaine, and I miss what should not have been.