Jeff's Meth

JEFF’S METH

I crawl within the assless assless chaps. Inside: nothing.

His name was Jeff. He had short, scruffy grey hair with a crop circle on the back of his skull. The air that surrounded him whispered to me who he was: he had somehow managed to maintain his inner child into the middle of his life. No wife. No kids. A virtual reality headset that he liked to watch porn on. A keyboard he used to browse his massive T.V. A mind that did not adhere to time. Wandering from one room to the next, searching, searching, for a phone or cock ring.

His house sat across from flying Trump and Blue Lives Matter flags. It was a fifteen-minute drive from my rented house along the smoggy highway of Asheville’s Patton Avenue to the backroads of a mountainous home development. It stood two stories high—decorative log paneling, yellow garage, sloping backyard, skinny trees, steep driveway. He instructed me to park in the back so his neighbors wouldn’t see me. 

I received further instructions via text to walk inside through the back sliding glass door, which I did after giving myself a pep talk. Jeff was the first older man I met alone under the premise of gay sex. Before him was Steve; his younger boyfriend was with us, which put my anxiety at ease. Through the glass windowpane, he greeted me with defined nasolabial folds and a fluffy, medium sized dog to his left. Seeing him stand there in his khaki shorts and weathered grey T-shirt softened my pounding heart. He was short, like me. Dead eyes, like me. This guy was harmless. 

Inside: two couches. One a loveseat, the other long. A wooden bar in a corner. A glass coffee table. The tiniest bong I’ve ever seen. The bag of methamphetamine.  

The methamphetamine, the drug that refuses to let you be pleased. By that, I mean the drug that refuses to let you cum. Nine hours we went at it. I threw up my empty stomach from exhaustion. Yellowed water and phlegm on the toilet seat. Three days I did not eat. 

Methamphetamine!

It started with Jeff leaned back into the love seat while I sat on the edge of the long couch facing him. We talked briefly about our lives. He worked in construction or landscaping or contracting, I told him I was going to school for creative writing.

“That’s cool. You know, I used to live in Los Angeles. Lot of artists out there.”

“That must’ve been a good time. I bet it was easier meeting gay people.” Who the fuck wants to live in Los Angeles?

“Oh, absolutely.”

The conversation drifted to Jeff’s most recent relationship with a transwoman. He said he loved her but couldn’t handle her jealousy. In my mind, images of a final battle played out: a woman a few inches taller than Jeff, threw a glass at his head. It shattered against the wall, mere inches from his body. He circled around the island in the upstairs kitchen while she chased him. “She had the wrong number, I didn’t cheat on you,” he yells in his nonchalant manner.

The images scattered when he asked me what it was like being with men as a transman. Older queer men liked to ask me this question—perhaps from the generational divide. Though I am no LGBT+ historian, I hypothesize that openly transmen were not as present in queer male spaces as they are today. I fascinated him, and for a moment I thought that maybe he was genuinely interested in the struggles of seeking romance as a transgender person. Then he threw the all-too-common question at me: How do you all have sex?  

I try my damnedest to not judge the speaker that dare utter those words, though it has become tiresome having to explain the functionality. Also, bold of him to assume all transmen fuck the same way.

“I mean, it’s the same as, you know…”

He wrangled the details from my probably flushed face. Though I had rubbed skin with a plethora of people—over twenty in the previous three months—I still couldn’t shake my shyness. I needed a drink.

The bag of methamphetamine glistened in the setting sun. Familiar sweat tickled my side.

“You said you’ve never tried it—do you want to?”

“Yes.”

Meant to stay for an hour, maybe two, stayed over twenty-four. A dog at home and two angry roommates. 

“We’ll have to snort it because I broke my bowl.”

I offered my debit card to turn the crystals into powder. Couldn’t find a straw, used a crusty dollar. Split the clump into equal lines. First one his, second one mine. Third one mine. Forth one mine. Fifth one his. 

Oozing sweat. An unquenchable thirst.

“How’s it feel?”

“Like cocaine, but more euphoric.” 

Like cocaine, but more euphoric. There was a warm tingling in my chest—it radiated out in pulses into the living room. I felt a sense of home. I later imagined myself staying with Jeff forever; maybe I could take the room on the opposite side of the long hallway from his. We could meet each other halfway in the dead of night, give each other high-fives and continue on our ways. I could wait for him to get home from work. I’d lounge on the loveseat wearing the thigh high socks he said he liked, perhaps smoking a cigarette out of a long phallic holder. I’d sit with a hand thrown seductively over my forehead. A stubbly face coated in oil.

Our warm tingling cores and sweat left us in our boxer briefs. Our bare thighs rested against each other’s on the loveseat. Sweet, sweet euphoria crashed over me in waves. I reveled in it. No more shame, no more dread, no more fear. Pink hues painted the walls. I could smell the detergent on his shirt. The insides of my nostrils were raw, as if they were rubbed with sandpaper. My head dangled in front of my neck. My eyes glued to the T.V. screen. 

“What porn websites do you like?” He lifted his hand from the keyboard to nudge my arm. 

“I don’t really know any. I usually just use PornHub.” The words came out smoothly—I didn’t choke on them. No thinking on how I should phrase such and such or scheming what answer would make me most likable. Communication became a simple thought-to-speech operation. 

“I know this one that has, like, a million different categories. I’ll pull it up. Tell me what you want to watch.”

I suggested videos of the amateur transgender variety because I believe in representation, and the professional ones fetishize transwomen and are borderline nonexistent for transmen. He handed me the keyboard and, under immense pressure from the newfound power, I clicked one at random. He clowned on me for the poor quality and took control back immediately.

He wasn’t kidding about there being a million categories. We sat there, glassy eyed and slack jawed, scrolling for a small eternity. We came across some genres that were so absurd we had to see what they were about. One category led to the next, then the next, then the next. We got so lost in the sea of pornography that we forgot about sexual stimulation. Our cackling combined when we realized that we lost sight of our goal. 

“Want to try smoking it? I’ll make a bowl out of tin foil.”

“Yes.”

My own image reflected in Jeff. In twenty years, I would probably be him. Going on a weeklong meth binge just because. Telling my guest I would be right back, only to spend an hour upstairs looking for a cock ring. Giving up and using a shoelace. Nine hours of sexual stimulation, but still unable to get hard. Or, at least, a version of that for someone without a penis. 

I sat on the floor in front of the coffee table as he sat on the couch. My head considered resting on his thigh. He crafted a bowl out of tin foil; a canoe-shaped concoction. He sprinkled some crystals into the foil, took the micro-torch to heat up the bottom. 

“I’ll tell you when to suck in.”

The rolled-up dollar in my fist.

“Now.”

Sucked the smoke up like a reverse water hose. The word blitzed seeped out my mind. Clenched jaw and the sweat, sweat, sweat. Time became weird—the minutes weren’t real, the world outside of his house wasn’t real. What was real was me and Jeff. What was real was our comical attempts at orgasm. What was real was our smiling faces—his deep nasolabial folds, my goofy sucked-in cheeks. The getting lost in porn mythos, the forgetting what we were doing. A deep sense of oh no in my gut. My ignored buzzing phone. Taking nothing seriously—open and fluent and fuck it energies.

The time I spent with Jeff only lasted that span of twenty-four hours. There are times where I wish I were still on his loveseat. In another timeline, I believe I am. In another dimension, we are sitting there cackling into eternity. Perhaps a fraction of my essence slipped out and haunts him like a ghost. This probably happened the next morning when I blacked out while walking to his bathroom. A hunger so intense, but consumption impossible. A single cracker emptied all my stomach acids.

Jeff was an intimate pit stop down an uncertain, bumpy road. Around four in the morning, we shared a shower and he looked at me so sweetly. I wanted him to take care of me. By Jeff, maybe I mean meth. 

Methamphetamine! A tick off my drug bucket list. An experience that I hope makes me interesting and worth remembering, but one others don’t like to hear. The look on my roommates’ faces. Was it hatred? Silent judgement? Disgust? In their eyes I was no longer an unassuming college senior, no longer a responsible pet owner, no longer a friend. That last part isn’t true and maybe I projected the other stuff too. Am I wrong for not being ashamed of my drug use? Should I be? Is that part of why I view myself so harshly? People like Jeff, who unashamedly partake in drugs, make me feel like it’s okay to be me. A drug user since the age of twelve. A mountain of snorted pills, complete disillusionment with reality upon LSD. Being so drunk but feeling the need to take care of my older, far drunker sister. Jeff I understood. With Jeff I felt comfort—that sense of home. I saw my future in him, a future that made me feel nothing, and maybe that was the problem. I want my future to surprise me. I want to wake up and feel grateful for my hard work and strokes of luck. I don’t want to wake up the same as I’ve always been.