What do you get when you do a bump of 4mmc and a four-day — scratch that — month-long Pride bender? A trip to Trillium Hospital because your hypochondriac mother thinks blood in your phlegm is a major concern. I now, for the second time, own an inhaler.
Sitting in the ER shaking my leg for the nth time as she says “stop shaking” I consider telling her that it was the burn of what felt like pure meth from a key. Or maybe it was exhaustion, or maybe it was the karaoke on Wednesday after hacking darts with M on a mini yacht. It mostly is my smoke intake increasing by 60% when the weather is particularly delightful.
I was told to cut down on smoking for the third year in a row.
Who knows. Now I sit here in Mississauga, smoking a cigarette I stole from her purse, hit the Belmont and the inhaler one after another. I promise you, I love her. I am basically her, and funnily enough, many of you remind me of her. She’s not a hypochondriac either; she just worries.
The past six months have been blisteringly blurry and hard to piece together. I stopped writing, stopped actively watching those around me and focused on getting as plastered as possible under many things that I don’t remember doing. I’ve forgotten important conversations and dates, left behind a string of emails and conversations that I have yet to reply to and sunk into my floor mattress so deep there’s a dent the size of a hell hole.
Freddie Party, June 14th. Photos by Julia.
Over the weekend, I visited and we spoke about the exhaustion of nightlife. I remember they said something along the lines of “most people who write about it are mostly watchers, but it’s exhausting when you’re the participant who’s also trying to watch.” Give or take. How do you watch while being watched and trying to watch others you participate with?
I have been critical of The Cuts' “It Girl” issue, more so for the insinuation that influencers are in the It Girl category. However, I found myself rereading Debi Mazar’s piece where she spoke about working at Danceteria and The Mudd Club. She told the story about what she said, not a 30-year-old NYC work-from-home journalist who goes out on a whim.
“Did Debi Mazar really serve at Bowery Bar? Was it even Bowery Bar? No wait! She worked at The Mudd Club!” Maybe just ask fucking Debi? And they fucking did. She told the whole story. No “According to Debi,” or some reimagination of the writer's perspective of her life, she just told it herself.
I tried to watch to hone in on both; do the line while watching the line? I tried to look back at the last six months in a way that Debi wrote those 15 years (give or take).
Pride really started working door at Money Is Tight. Slamming my head on the table, screaming for stamps, asking people to lie to my face better. What way to enter Pride than with exposure therapy a la the young queer community. “Older siblings can be bossy,” S said at an afters.
“I don’t think I’m bossy,” I replied. They just smiled at me and said, “Hey! Where’s your stamp?! Gimme your stamp!”
He was right.
Then came the Freddie party. 10:30 PM was the end of the open bar, the lines to what I assumed to the bathroom were the bar instead. We’d text our orders in and loiter by the side, bypassing the line of mostly twunks in tanks and the freebie Freddie hats glued onto their heads with sweat. “Detox loved L’s bob,” someone said the next day.
Three words from that night: ravagings, injuries and the quest to keep a bag full.
“Who’s your favourite diva?” MTU asked. I said Madonna, but then asked, “Is Lana a diva?” Apparently, she is.
While S and J found themselves APing in a shop in Chinatown, I prepared myself for 24 hours of no contact sleep, trying to naturally emulate a sleeping pill using my mind. First, I ran through all the bags S and B procured till 8 a.m., and then I rested.
Overnight, I had a dream where all of you were at my funeral. I particularly enjoy dreams like these because I get to 1. See a reality I may not ever get to 2. See a bunch of you vulnerable. The worst part was, one of you decided it would be smart to play an emotional montage to me of fade-in and out images and videos. Don’t even think about doing that shit to me.
Don’t even consider it. I will make them myself to my favourite songs and my photos of choice, and if I’m dead before…don’t.
The worst worst part was that I had a daughter who looked just like I did when I was 6 years old. Some yuppie spiritual site told me it was about healing my inner child. Sure. What made me freak out of my body was when S put it through ChatGPT and it told me the same thing but in more depth, that I got scared me how intuitive it was.
“Did you just put my inner psyche through AI?” I replied. The most memorable part was B sitting next to my child, or me, I guess.
I met B through C on a four-day bender. It started at the Eagle at Club Ferret, where we smoked on the rooftop together briefly, and ended on the Saturday of DoWest 2024. “My nightlife angel!” I told her that night, crammed between the tables of a trillion mixers (or whatever they were).
Through the kismet of living with T, we’d become universally latched. Not just myself, but most of my friends as well.
Sitting on the wooden flat crates behind the club, B says she found an old stash of speed. Every person I ask about speed as a particular frown grows on their face that is just disgusted in a clownish way. Here, I drew a photo for reference:
Regardless, I adore it…in moderation, of course. I remember the first time, it slipped its way out of the craft's drawer onto the phone's black screen. It burns, then eventually feels like Natalie building assembling her room on 50x in Me, Natalie. We’ve done business meetings quite efficiently this way.
Patty Duke in the only image I can find of her room that represents the euphoria of speed and mephedrone. (via CinemaRetro)
I have yet to understand the lineage in creation and relation between speed, methadrone, mephadrone or 4mmc. 4mmc is mephadrone, and methadrone might not even be real and is mistakenly used to label 4mmc. Speed is just…well, there. The reality is, I don’t care. On most of them, I’ve been able to throw myself into helicoptering my hair on the dancefloor like Kyle Richards and feel biblically invisible like Goliath.
However, we know how it ends with Goliath. The comedown is balls, dick and piss-shittingly shitty. What movie could I refer to the comedown? The last 30 minutes of Light Sleeper or the entirety of Home Alone. You’re so stressed out through the entirety of it, it becomes physical pain.
What irks me yet piques my curiosity is none other than 4mmc. I’ve done variations of it and been told certain things are similar to it. But doing it at 8 p.m. to start the night with nothing to cushion the blow was pure brutality.
Sitting at Bambi’s with my head in my hands, I looked back at what I had done since 8 p.m.: A few big sips of molly water, an unprecedented amount of coke, 6-8 tequila sodas, I don’t know how many shots, maybe a bump of ketamine and the dreaded 4mmc. Usually, mephadrone doesn’t send my body into a state of shock, but that night, a lump formed in my throat that has remained ever since. Imagine a dick that decided to never leave your mouth and you had to eat with it still in there.
Pride has been rather methy, which is not a shocking statement given what the Gay Mafia tends to generally get up to. While sitting at E.L. Rudy, A tells me about the $50 million drug bust that happened in Brampton earlier in June. “Didn’t the coke feel methy to you?" He asked.
“I mean, is that ever going to stop us from doing it?” I replied. We did clear the bag, regardless of how much it stung. This explains a lot. The behaviour this Pride has been especially heinous in a lovely way, and if your doing any drug your most likely doing meth anyway. But, having to chop it up in a DIY sense, where your dealer is doing the best they can to provide you with what you want under stressful circumstances…well, it starts to show in all of our faces.
The day before, he texted his dealer, complaining rather politely about the bag. All his dealer replied was: new batch, seems fine to me.
“I think I just got gaslit by my dealer…”
The overcast of Prideful behaviour also found us hiding behind a dumpster on Church St, passing around two bags between 8 people. Cleared in 15 minutes or less.
B has seen it all during the year we’ve known each other. I stumbled into her home with what felt like a wine bra stitched into my brain, and declared, “I’m not here for you, I’m here for the cat,” and proceeded to grab Prada and fall asleep on the couch at 3 a.m.
The department store party was a functioning alcoholics' paradise. Informational, I’m sure I believe so, but my hand was never empty. At one point, N and I ran to the bathrooms and came out a little bit more jaw-twitchy. The overhead lighting didn’t help either, nor did I spill red wine on T’s suits.
“Dab don’t drag!!” I yelled.
We also found ourselves dancing for the first time in a long time together, in what is usually coat check. For Lyrix, E had turned our safe haven into a den for DJs and a poppers infused sauna that still smells as you read this. "How do we get the smell out," asked G. Good fucking question! You pray really fucking hard.
OGQT, Prince Batrick and Ard!n played through out the night, but I made it up to the sound of Sorry For Partying Rocking by LMFAO after my shift was done. "This is the kind of music Rhea would listen to," S told B. Then, in the haze of whatever smoke machine filled the room, or just the pure sweat, I emerged. I. Fucking. Ran.
Two tequila sodas spilt on me as I heard the transition into that song that goes "Emergency!! Paging Dr Beat!" Miami Sound Machine?
Budots. BUDOTS!
Brit at Freddie Party, June 14th - Photo by Julia
Aside from frolicking to the same events and yes manning eachothers lives, B and I also disagree on things too. One night, we all went to one particular party that I had been avoiding going to for a long time. I don’t remember getting in at all. I remember L saying later on, “You kept screaming, 'I CAN’T PAY!” while the host watched me fumble.
Never go to the East End after midnight. I don’t give a fuck about the cultural resurgence of nightlife in the east. If it’s not in some dungeon that was formerly a staple nightclub or A’s idea of doing a live show and party at Mezzes, I don’t care for it.
“Molly at Mezzes, M&M,” she had said.
B and I mostly agree on everything but this one thing. One day, she may win by dragging me there, and one day I might enjoy it.
For now, making eye contact with the Hare Krishna at the east end was enough to kill my spirit.
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