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In A Hole

Terri Muuss

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. The music is drilling a hole into my chest. It runs through me, waves of sound that bounce against my spine and move my body without consulting my brain. Sweat is pouring down my back. The music is so loud it hurts, but I throw myself at it like a rubber ball. My arms are elastic and I can’t feel my face. My heart is pounding in the same rhythm as the thump, thump, thump of the dance floor. I just know it will explode and I don’t care. Music crashes into walls as I fall into someone’s arms I don’t know. They slowly kiss me and I linger, cradled in arms that seem to have me securely for an instant. Gradually, I am brought back to standing, but my heart continues beating so fast and so hard I feel it is likely to rip itself out of my chest and fall onto the floor. My head tells me I need something else to quell the storm brewing in my body.
With effort, I make my way through the sea of bodies to the bathroom. Everything is unusually sharp and emphatic, as though I must remember it all for a test later. As I stumble across the dance floor, I pass some guy in tight black pants, with no shirt on and a red feathered boa clinging to the sweat on his arms and back. He shakes his long black hair in time to the music and I watch as it becomes a smudge of black charcoal before me in the air. I am instantly soaked in his sweat. It hits my face like pin-pricks of ice.
In the bathroom, I gently push my way past drag queens in tottering heels and pretty boys in chains and leather to find my place at the sink. In the metal basin, I see the remnants of someone’s sick along with a half-smoked cigarette, some ashes and a lipstick mark. Resting my arms at the edge of the filthy basin, I draw my eyes up to find a vacant-eyed, hollow-cheeked, pale version of myself in the mirror. My pupils are enormous and I see with fascination that they have blotted all the color from my irises. I scan for any trace of sea-foam green and find nothing but a circle, so shiny and reflective. I remark to anyone who might hear me that I have black beetles for eyes. I turn on the water and gently dab my cheeks and forehead, careful not to smudge what remains of my elaborate eye makeup. I take my hands, still wet with water, and drag them along the desert of my tongue. I am thirstier than I have ever been, but having spent the last of my cash on two tabs of X, have no more money for the $7 bottles of water they are selling at the bar. The owners here at Twilo are smart enough to know that no one comes here to drink their crappy, watered-down alcohol, so they overcharge us for bottled water, knowing how dehydrated the drugs we take will make us. I shrug, carefully tilt my head to the side and drink from the grimy spigot. The water has a metallic quality to it, like blood in my mouth, but I don’t care. I need it. I stumble back from the sink in my pleather boots and search for an empty bathroom stall, but here there are no single user stalls. Clumps of legs huddle behind bathroom doors, their owners deep in the negotiation of shared drug use. I am about to leave when suddenly, from behind, an arm links with my own and a smiling face appears next to mine. It is Trevor. He is a friend of my friends. We came here together tonight en masse and his friend Charles is friends with my friend Dan. I know very little about him except he is an amazing dancer and, ironically, works as a drug counselor in his other life. He strokes the inside of my arm with a dreamy fascination until one of the overcrowded stalls opens and empties. He quickly tugs me into the stall with him and locks the door behind us.
“You are X-ing too hard, girl. Here, do a bump of K,” he says as he places the tiny spoon under my nose.
I hold one nostril closed and use a quick intake of breath to take my medicine. I feel the tiny burn of it enter me and a slow buzzing sensation begins growing in my mind, like the feel of vibrating dental equipment in your mouth. I close my eyes and see strange patterns and lines. I can’t help but smile. Yes! THIS is what I needed. How did he know?
“Thanks,” I say and my mouth lingers a bit too long on the S so that it sounds as though I am hissing like a snake. After doing his own bump, Trevor and I exit the bathroom, arms still linked, and suddenly it dawns on me: I feel... happy. I have been chemically chasing this feeling for months, perhaps years, and I smile again to myself, knowing that I will follow this feeling wherever I need to. The music sounds so amazing to me now, time feels frozen and I think to myself that this moment feels amazingly like clarity, that this is what infinity must feel like. A newfound energy controls me now, a calmer force. This, I say to myself, I can manage. Ecstasy has only taken me so far and now I know what I need to take me home. This combination is perfect and offers relief from the faceless, addling voices in my head. But I will need more. This small feeling of happiness must be magnified. If one bump is good, then two will be better and I can exponentially grow my happiness in perpetuity. I lean into Trevor and ask him to sit with me on the large sofas off to the side of the dance floor. I don’t want my supply of happiness to go off dancing somewhere without me.
“Sure, honey,” he says and we look for a place on the crowded couches to sit. Already I feel the bitter drip of the K in the back of my throat and I sniff it back quickly, knowing I need more right away. We sit down and I do another bump. And then another. Then one more for good measure.
“Slow down, sweetie,” Trevor drawls at me with dreamy eyes, “we have all night.” I lean back into the crushed velvet sofa and run my hands along the underside of the loveseat and the perfect red fabric there. Yes, we have all night. And I am gone.
Sometime later, I awake from my trance, slightly sick and dizzy. I have no idea how long I have been lying here. With intense effort, I try to bring myself to sitting up, but it is no use. I can not move. The sickening thump thump thump of the music is back in the core of my chest and I think I must be having a heart attack. I realize suddenly, and with alarm, that someone’s face is in my face. It is Dan. He is talking to me. Asking me if I am okay. Am I okay? His question travels slowly through the canal of my ear into my brain and once it is there and registered fully, I try to speak. In my brain the words echo, “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” but nothing comes out. I try again to speak. The words in my head are physically unable to exit my mouth. I am mute. I can not move. There is something sickeningly familiar about this... I have been here before. This feeling of being gone, immoveable, of being lost. It is almost too much to bear. This is too familiar. I need to shake this off. I need to be able to move.
“You can’t speak, can you,” he smiles. “You are in a K-hole, darlin’.”
In a hole. Yes, I am. I am lost and sick and I have no idea how long I have been here. I need to get out. Please, God, won’t someone help me. I have fallen into holes before and I often worry that the fabric of my mind has such rips and tears that I will fall through one day and never be found. I have to get out of here. Please help me get out of here.

*originally published in Over Exposed (JB Stillwater, 2013)

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