Once, after I shot up in a pizzeria\u2019s bathroom and the owner glared at me as I walked past him, I went outside, lit a cigarette, took a drag. A late summer wind whipped the smoke away; the hot breeze felt pleasant\u2014as did everything: I had nowhere to go, nothing to do\u2014except to find ways to get more dope.<\/p>\n
I walked past convenience stores, restaurants, cafes. Sitting at a sidewalk table, a girl with brown hair sipped coffee with a friend. Some urge came over me, which I decided would be inadvertently shielded yet enhanced by my high; and I walked up to the girl, said, \u201cI just want you to know that you\u2019re one of the most beautiful girls I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d I wasn\u2019t sure what kind of reaction I\u2019d get, but I wasn\u2019t expecting the obvious one: the girl looking down in discomfort, annoyance, pity.<\/p>\n
I attempted to hold up my head as I walked away, though I was only able to do so because of the dope swimming through me. Stopping to light another cigarette, I told myself that I\u2019d forget the girl. Decades later, I still tell myself that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Once, after I shot up in a pizzeria\u2019s bathroom and the owner glared at me as I walked past him, I went outside, lit a cigarette, took a drag. I had nowhere to go, nothing to do\u2014except to find ways to get more dope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1809,1831,3047,520],"class_list":["post-18320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-drug-addiction","tag-heroin","tag-heroin-addiction","tag-young-men","writer-s-f-wright"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18320"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19100,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18320\/revisions\/19100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}