It's 1998, I'm 17 years old, a junior in high school.. the availability of drugs in my high school was insane.. The town I lived in had a population of about 2,000. It was very close to the capitol of the state as well as several college cities.
If you weren't listening to Eminem or Marilyn Manson.. you probably weren't my friend. We all had gel-spiked hair, baggy kikwear jeans, and a lot of drugs..
I could get anything I wanted as far as drugs.. In my time there I had seen cocaine, heroin, ketamine, ecstasy, LSD, mushrooms and of course weed come through.. I never really got into the harder stuff, mostly weed.. I had a group of friends, one of which was the dealer. When you're a high school drug dealer in the 90s, you end up with a lot of friends..
I on the other hand, liked it quieter.. most of the people in my life were using me just like the drug dealer was used.. I just didn't have much.. I had a car, a real job, a girlfriend.. and a couple of very close friends. This story involves my girlfriend, and my best friend since 4th grade along with a lot of drugs and alcohol.
We'll start with my best friend, for the sake of this story we'll call him Mark. I moved to this town in the 3rd grade, a year later he moved to the same town from northern Illinois.. I was born in Southern Illinois, and I don't know if that's what brought us together, I really don't remember.. I just know we had the same home room class in 4th grade, and sometime later we were having sleepovers and getting in trouble together.
He was tall and scrawny, he used to pick on me for being chunky.. and I always thought he was too fuckin skinny.
We both liked Ninja Turtles, video games and stealing cigarettes to go smoke in the woods.
Despite our petty bickering over kid stuff.. we were pretty tight.. we stayed that way all the way through until 1998..
Next there's my girlfriend, we'll call her Jamie.. I always referred to her as my first love, although back then I'm sure I didn't know what love was, considering that now I'm 35 and still haven't a clue.
I had known her since elementary school, but she was never in any of my classes. The summer after I turned 17, her and I started hanging out through mutual friends.. I was quiet, calm and somewhat reserved, she was a loud, aggressive trouble maker. Opposites attract so to say, was the way it worked out.
She was cruel to me at times, cheated on me.. and just made me feel like shit about myself once we were dating. It was a cycle of abuse that becomes very familiar in my relationships. When something bothers me, I tend to let it go until I explode. So we had our ups and downs obviously. At that age I tried very hard to hold on to what I had, despite how unhealthy it was for me. Difficulty in letting go is a huge theme in my relationships.
As a group of friends, we spent a lot of time driving around. Parents for the most part, wouldn't condone the stuff we were up to, therefor we had to be on the go. We travelled as far as the gas money we had would take us.. smoking bowl after bowl the whole way there. I remember getting into arguments over where we were gonna go. Nobody ever had any suggestions, so I ended up driving in circles, in my chevy Corsica with 2 to 4 passengers on any given day..
As we got older, Mark started having a lot of problems.. not that the rest of us didn't.. it's just that his seemed to be more apparent.. I remember one time in particular, he had gotten very drunk with a friend of his that wasn't part of our group. He had drunkenly started screaming and raising hell in a small unincorporated town he lived in.. Eventually somebody called the cops, and he parents came and got him, took him home and sobered him up.
He hated his stepfather.. Looking back, I'm not sure why, he was actually a very nice person. I suppose at 16 though, you'll take your teenage angst out on the most convenient adult. His stepfather was that person.
Over time I had gotten the sense that Jamie had a thing for Mark. She would go out of her way to be alone with him.. On one occasion, she jumped outta my car and walked up to his place to go get him, and walked back with him much later in the evening.
There was one night, I was tasked with picking up weed from a few towns over. We were all hanging out at my house, as my parents weren't home that night. Jamie and I got into an argument because she insisted that I go alone, and leave her alone with Mark for the good 3 hours it was probably gonna take me to pick it up.
There was no way I was gonna leave them alone in my house, just for safety's sake.. there were a lot of valuables in the house.. Plus, I had that sneaking suspicion she was intentionally trying to get rid of me, to be alone with him.. after arguing for a good half an hour, she finally gave up and they both went with me. Needless to say she wasn't very happy with me.. but that was becoming the norm.
Which brings me to "the night in question."
Jamie and I had been spending a lot of time over at her mother's apartment. Her mother would let us get away with ANYTHING. I do mean anything. We spent the night there several times, and her mother would let us have the bed. She would let us smoke weed, and she would buy cigarettes and alcohol for us.
This particular night.. Jamie, Mark and I went to Jamie's mom's place. She knew all of us very well. Mark had been there several times too. The last time he had come over there with us, her mom disappeared for 15 minutes, and came back out wearing a sleeveless blouse and some very tight jeans.
Her mother was somewhat attractive for her age, she was 36.. very petite, with long dark brown hair.. You still got the trailer park vibe from her.. but at that point, she still had all her teeth.
We teased Mark after that night, about her mother's little wardrobe change while he was there.. she was obviously trying to impress him, which was very creepy for a woman her age to do for a 16-year-old boy.
That night, we asked Jamie's mom to pick up a bottle of southern comfort for Mark, some smokes all the way around.. we brought the weed to share with everyone. That's when things started to get a little fuzzy. At that point, I wasn't much of a drinker... I didn't like the feeling of not being in control. I felt like I had a lot to lose, and did everything I could to keep my wits about me.. I was never above smoking copious amounts of weed though.. and that night, I did.
Jamie's mom had recently bought a Chinchilla.. we all thought it was so cute. She kept it in a cage up in her bedroom. Her bedroom was a loft that overlooked the living room.. up at the top of a decent sized flight of carpeted stairs. I had no idea what a chinchilla was until that night. Now the word chinchilla always sparks my memory.
Jamie's mom returned with our underage order for liquor and smokes.. Mark immediately started laying into the bottle of SoCo. Her mother had also bought herself some beer, we all settled in and started smoking bowl after bowl, we were all feeling pretty good.
After downing the better part of a 12 pack of beer, Jamie's mom went up to her loft, she said she was tired and wanted to go to sleep. We had also been passing the bowl around for a couple hours, so I'm sure she was pretty fucked up.
Mark had polished off 3/4 of that bottle of SoCo, along with the weed.. he was fucked outta his mind. He stood in the living room, laughing with us at the tiniest little things.. He was a riot when he was drunk. He stood by the steps leading up to the bedroom, where the only adult in the house was leaning over the railing and complaining that she couldn't find the chinchilla.. she had lost it.
Mark was stumbling around the living room, as she yelled from the upstairs.. "hey, kid! come help me find my chinchilla." She couldn't even remember his name..
Being completely blasted out of his mind, he began the climb to the top of the stairs.. at one point I thought he was gonna fall down the steps.. but he held onto that railing for dear life and made it to the top of the steps.
Silence ensued.
Jamie and I jokingly said she was gonna fuck him.. We figured any minute now, Mark was gonna come stumbling down the steps, having saved the day by finding the chinchilla.. ready to come back and join in our stoned foolishness. But I started to think in this case, finding the chinchilla was a euphemism..
The silence continued.. it had been probably 15-20 minutes, Jamie and I were both afraid to go up there. I mean, given what was probably going on.. we really just didn't want to. I finally gained the courage to climb the steps.. Jamie followed.
At the top of the steps, there was a bathroom straight across.. then to the right was the bedroom area. I looked to the right to see Mark's bare ass in the air, thrusting.. Jamie's mom's legs hanging out to either side. We wanted to stop them, but we didn鈥檛 know what to do.. I wasn't going anywhere near them..
We were just kids, so we started throwing stuff at them.. I threw a towel at them, Jamie grabbed a large cup of water and threw it at them.. We screamed for them to stop, all to no avail..
Jamie and I went back downstairs and she started yelling at them from the living room, they finally started responding. Jamie said something to the effect that she was in big trouble for what she just did.. all you could hear was laughter from the both of them.
Jamie started trashing everything in her mother's house. Her mother had received a vase full of flowers from a male friend, which she smashed against the wall.. pulled every dish out of every cabinet and smashed them on the kitchen floor. She took the liquid dish soap and covered the walls..
That finally got her attention.. She came running down the stairs, calling Jamie a bitch, and a little slut and telling her...
"It's not a big deal!! You knew I liked him!"
At this point, I stood out in the hallway.. where I didn't have to deal with what was happening inside. The screaming continued, and Jamie came storming into the hallway and said we had to go.
I left Mark there that night.
The next day, I had to work. I worked in a little bakery in the same town that Jamie's mom lived in. Halfway through my shift, I get a call from Mark asking me to pick him up after work, I asked him "do you remember anything from last night?
He replied "Yeah."
I asked him "what do you remember?"
He said "bad things."
After work I picked him up and took him home. On the way, he didn't say one word. I talked the whole way back, I feel guilty about this because I lectured him about what he did. It wasn't my place to do so.. but I threw it in his face that he had probably just lost Jamie as a friend, and that what he did was pretty fucked up.. I really don't remember specifics.. but that was the gist of it..
He had me drop him off a few blocks from his house, he got outta my car without saying a word. That was the last time I ever saw him.
In Mark's absence, the rumor went around the school fast. It eventually caught the attention of school administration. The county Sherriff鈥檚 department came into school and interviewed Jamie and I.. we were 100% honest with what had happened.
The detective told us that after I had dropped Mark off, he had attempted suicide by drowning himself in the tub.. Which didn't make much sense to me.. how that would even work? He moved back to Illinois after all of this went down..
Jamie's mom ended up spending a month in jail for sex with with a child under 17, and supplying alcohol to minors. I remember thinking that if it had been a guy in that situation, and a 16 year old girl, he would probably still be locked up today..
In the following weeks, Mark had talked to mutual friends of ours. He told them he blamed me for the entire thing. He told them that I should have stopped him, that I knew he was gonna do it.. and I let it happen.
For some time, I believed that. I blamed myself for not doing more. I should have pulled him off of her.. I should have done something to make them stop, I was fully capable of picking him up.. I could have.
Ultimately, I believe it was his decision to get drunk, it was the adult female's decision to supply us with the alcohol, and then take advantage of him.. so I feel no blame for any of this..
A few months ago, I ran into Mark's stepfather.. Mark is married now with his first child on the way. I'm very glad to hear this, he made a big mistake but he learned from that mistake at a very young age. I hope he has as good a life as I imagined after talking to his step dad..
I really missed out on what could have been a lifelong friendship.. that was 18 years ago..
I still miss my friend.
