The Crack Essay

I read an article the other day about how young Gen Z suggest to “meet up for a workout class” more than "meet up for drinks” with their friends. As someone who is in her early 30s and a mom now, and more importantly has lived a big life—a workout class sounds great! If you were to ask me to go to a workout class anytime before the age of 28 I would asked “why, is that where you need to meet your dealer?”. No lol, that was too brash, I did belong to various yoga studios where I focused on some kind of prototype bimbo spiritually and did physical activity with my friends all the time—like play drunken kick-ball, a strange made-up game like four-square where we grilled after, and took long walks when my car didn’t work or rode a bike). But there was no center of “optimization-core” like there is now, from even the more “normal” people around me. The “normal” people still parties, a lot maybe more than me (not more than my friends), but I felt my friend group was superior because we “made art”. LOL, sure, yes?

Anyway, reading about optimization culture made me reflect on my messy and insane 20s—a mixture of ambition, dumpster diving, baking cupcakes, and having crack smoke blown in my face one too many times from crust punks living in my basement. Optimization, of really anything even music or art, was so outside of the subculture I was in. Life was truly small moments; reckless and obscure, life was supposed to end with many stories to tell. I like that culture changes and I like to change with it, but I am so glad my 20s was not in the time of optimization (and when rent was cheap). I almost assume everyone has stories like I do, but then I have my husband read this and he says “Lindsey, make a disclosure” so there’s the disclosure, readers.

When I was a child, I assumed people smoking crack were homeless, were extremely mentally unwell and also wanted a swift death, not my boyfriend who lived at the adjacent punk house next-door to mine. The night I got a job at the cupcake bakery I walked in on my boyfriend smoking crack.

I didn’t know what it was at first, but it fucking smelled. I know that smell now, it smells like a burning tire and it just smells wrong. The first weekend I moved into my new house in Minneapolis I walked to a thrift store on a very populated street with a lot of bus stops. One of my first interactions with this new city was having crack smoke blown in my face and it reminded me of this ex. Besides my husband, and not even my ex-husband, I think my boyfriend who smoked crack in my room was probably one of the only people I really loved romantically.

buy me a pornstar martini as a lil tip!

I was so excited that I got my job at the cupcake bakery, cupcakes were all the rage at this time and I was a recent pastry school dropout. Him and his unknown friend, which I later found out that he invited from the gas station, asked me if I wanted to hit and I said no surprisingly. I was very young so I was interested in any drug, but this fucking smelled. It was one of those things that people would call a hard drug, of which I had known about hard drugs, but I didn’t want whatever the fuck this was. Later on it would be reminded of this time when I was at a dirty rundown Days Inn which I thought was abandoned. One of my other exes and I were invited to a party with some crust punks during the middle of the day. They were all snorting something that was bright pink and glittery. I love everything bright, pink and glittery, but everyone was acting so weird, that shockingly to me I turned it down. And in my younger years, I didn’t turn down shit. I think it was my inner voice both times.

I reverted down the stairs to tell the only other girl that lived in my house that I got the job at the cupcake bakery. She was ecstatic for me, but she was also a bitch who stole money from me (and told an opposite story) and we parted ways shortly after. The rest of the 12 people living in my house were hanging out in the basement + others, drinking cheap beer and smoking cigarettes. They asked me if my boyfriend was smoking crack again, and all I could linger on was the again part of the sentence. Was my boyfriend a crackhead? I had no idea, but I had bigger things to focus on: I got the job at the cupcake bakery. They were all excited for me, we all got drunk, And the next day I came and hung over. What a way to start a new job, and it only got worse. No surprise.

Vaguely slippery from buttercream and the adderall wearing off one of my roommates gave to me in exchange for introducing him to my cool & hot friends, I finished my walk home from the cupcake bakery one day to find my punk boyfriend and one of my other roommates fighting in the front lawn. I watched as they repeatedly punched each other in the face and the stomach. Even at 19, I had seen many things, but I had not seen my punk boyfriend fight one of his friends. I was confused and intrigued. I wondered what he must’ve done, I wondered if it was about me, if maybe his friend said he wanted to fuck me or something— because I was very self-centered and everything must be about me!

It wasn’t about me at all, it was about a synthetic drug that all of my roommates had been buying at the gas station for the past few days. Strange synthetic gas station drugs were very popular in the late 2000s and early 2010, at least in Missouri. I must’ve not noticed what had been happening in the past week at the two adjacent punk houses because I was on so much someone else’s prescribed meth— but my entire house had been fist fighting and screaming for the past week.

I asked my most responsible and oldest roommate, 25 or something like that, what the fuck was going on. It’s that damn gas station shit he told me as he was leaving to go to his girlfriend’s place because he was tired of this.

Any normal person would confront their boyfriend or their roommates about what the fuck was going on, but instead, one of my roommates offered me some of the gas station drugs, and I snorted it. I figured why not, surprisingly watching people fist fight each other didn’t turn me off like the smell of crack or the strangely liminal glitter pink dust did. I spent the rest of the evening apparently screaming at people, and pushing the only other girl roommate there into the fridge and giving her a bloody nose. But again, this is not what stopped us from being friends, that came much later and is not part of the story.

The next day the oldest roommate came back, and we all had what I would now call as a former teacher: a restorative justice meeting. We talked about what this drug made us do, and unknowing to me even though I lived there, everyone had been fighting each other for the past week either outside in the front lawn or during shows in our basement.

Of course, fights happened, but not like this. Even though my punk house was reckless, no one regularly fist fought in the front yard with each other. Occasionally, when we would house too many crust punks, there would be fights that would break out and even one time someone’s dog attacked someone. Still, this fighting was very shocking to everyone that observed it.

Two of my other roommates broke the trampoline in the backyard, which was my favorite place to sleep at night when I was wasted, because they decided to fight on top of it and then break it apart to use the springs to hit each other with. I read an article a year later about a man in Florida biting someone else’s face off. I think this was the same drug, but I’m not sure. It made everyone violent; this drug was not for us, we liked other drugs, but this one… It was too much. We wrote another rule on our list of rules in the basement that everyone ignored: no more gas station drugs, only drugs from friends.

I went back to the bakery the next day, the same snake eater shirt with cut off high waisted black Levi’s shorts, ripped tights and my pair of cheap tennis shoes from urban outfitters that were falling apart, striped with lime green and black— longing to be able to talk to a coworker about my crazy night of apparently pushing my friend into the fridge and watching my boyfriend beat up his best friend in the front yard. I was about 15 minutes late, which was usual, because my car stopped working and I had to walk. A 19-year-old doesn’t know how to show up on time, and definitely doesn’t know how to show up on time when they are partying all the time and have to walk to work.

Instead of greeting my very normal, angry and grumpy coworker, the owner was there along with another girl that was dressed in a perfect vintage dress with little kitten heels. I knew this was a trap. She looked very perfect, reminded me of my past self. I used to take a lot of time to get ready when I was in high school, but now I was too busy doing… I didn’t know anymore. Living? Partying? “Making art”? (Partying).

As soon as I walked in, everyone glared at me. It was obvious that I had already been talked about, I was so hung over from everything that I just went to go get an apron. The owner stopped me and handed me an envelope of cash. She told me that she had a lot of complaints about me, how I smelled bad, and how I wasn’t doing my job correctly and I didn’t decorate well enough. She told me she was training someone that was taking my spot and I was fired. She asked me to never come back into the cupcake shop ever again. Like, it was very intense.

I don’t remember if I cried, I probably had too much of a headache to really comprehend what was going on. I was excited that I had a lot of cash in my hand and I walked to a nearby coffee shop and got a latte. I asked someone for a cigarette, debated calling a close friend, then I walked home. I had no quarrel with telling my boyfriend or my roommates that I got fired. Things went on the way that they did until I ran out of the wad of cash that I was paid. When I counted it prior, I realized I was paid more than I was owed. That’s how badly they didn’t want me to ever come back. It lasted awhile.

A few weeks later, my punk boyfriend and I broke up. Well, he broke up with me. I had run out of all of the adderall I had (gifted by a roommate, and bought from a neighboring punk house a few blocks away) and I started to get angry. One night we were supposed to go to a party together, but he left without me and when he called me on the phone, I screamed at him. I’m not someone that screams at people, but I was having withdrawals and I felt insane. He broke up with me over the phone, we hooked up a few times afterwards, and still remained friends—but I realize my time there was overstayed and done. Most of my roommates wanted nothing to do with me, as I was miserable to be around with when I didn’t have adderall.

I didn’t understand until I didn’t have it that I was addicted. I moved out a few weeks later and then their lease was up and they all parted ways into different punk houses or different cities for a few of them went to grad school— that of which I have no idea how they did, because I was barely functioning, keeping a job at a cupcake bakery that I was hazardously fired from and banned.

A few months later, I found myself working with cupcakes again. My ultimate clout job: I became a baker at the vegan cupcake shop where all the punks hung out. Everyone smelled bad that worked there, it was probably a prerequisite for getting the job. Since I moved into a place with a washer and dryer, I didn’t have to wear the same clothes every single day. I started dressing cute again, and that’s when I started my fashion blog. I started up college classes again, I was baking at the vegan cupcake bakery with all of the other cool punks, and I felt unstoppable!!

One of my coworkers got in a fist fight with her boyfriend on the patio, and she wasn’t fired— no, the owner sat down with her and asked her if she was ok, and I heard that they actually gave her some extra money so she could move out of his apartment.

We smoked cigarettes right out of the front door or the back door. I smoked weed with the mom of the owner multiple times in the morning before we opened. I felt so at home that it almost scared me. As I said before maybe, decorating is my main skill. I would fuck up the cookies and the bread, and the owner‘s mom would get mad at me if she didn’t smoke a joint prior to coming in, but I couldn’t be fired because I was the one that could decorate all the wedding cakes.

Eventually, I had cut down my hours so much because I found a nanny job that paid much better, so the mom of the owner and I both decided that I would quit. When I was quitting, the owner‘s mom told me that when they called my reference at the cupcake bakery, because I was a fucking idiot and put them down, the owner of the bakery told them do not ever hire this person. She said I was a crackhead.

Crack and Adderall seemed pretty close, crack is essentially the poor person‘s cocaine and cocaine essentially the fast quick Adderall that sucks more. I always preferred Adderall, I never smoked crack, but I’m sure I probably snorted it once or twice because I definitely loved cocaine. I started to wonder if I appeared like a crackhead to other people, but maybe some people just didn’t have a word for someone that was dirty and looked strung out. I definitely looked strung out at the cupcake bakery, and probably also at the vegan bakery. The morning before one of my coworkers got fired, I got a whiff of crack smoke on the patio before opening. I looked over and she was smoking from a pipe and claimed that it was weed. I knew better.

Did I say anything? No, but I was concerned. I was mainly just concerned about her getting caught, because I knew that she actually needed her job, she was virtually homeless and escaping an abusive relationship. And me, I lived somewhere where I could scrounge up enough change to pay rent so it didn’t really matter.

When my boss asked me if she thought my coworker was smoking crack at work, I said no. I said, sometimes she might smoke weed, which they were still also pissed off about. It was hilarious, because they all smoked weed outside anyway. My coworker got fired that day and screamed in my face BITCH WHY DID YOU TELL THEM I WAS SMOKING CRACK! after she calmed down, I told her that I got fired from my old cupcake bakery job because they thought that I was a crackhead, as some kind of “peace offering” or “it’s ok I AM COOL someone thought I was a druggie!!!! Please don’t beat me up”. She asked me if I smoked crack and if I had any and I said no. I never saw her again.

There was a gas station we used to call the shady shell. Years later, my friend was dating a coke dealer, and apparently he ran out of coke and went to the shady shell and bought crack. She was having a party at her apartment, honestly more times and not, and when her boyfriend came back, it was obvious that he did not have cocaine.

Much like my punk boyfriend, he invited back the people that sold him crack from the gas station. They all smoked it together. It fucking stunk, and I started to wonder why I was here and why my friend was dating this guy. Much like everyone I’ve been around who has smoked crack, they tried to tell me that it’s something different. My friend and I were not buying it obviously, and I would like to say that they broke up right after that, but it was a while later. I stopped going over there. It wasn’t that I was the drug police, but when I’m telling you, the smell… It’s the fucking smell. And someone that was growing in their 20s, I felt too old to be around crack smoke. But in all honesty, I probably went to a trash fire later that night.

The same year as my friend‘s boyfriend smoking crack in their apartment, and claiming that it was some drug that I literally cannot remember the word that he made up— I hosted a few train hoppers at my apartment. I followed one of them on Instagram, she was a photographer, and she had recently been arrested in Kansas, so I told her to come to my place to stay. Unknown to me they all loved smoking crack. They smoked it out on my balcony, but the smell came in through the old shitty windows that would never close. It was that fucking smell, I feel like I could smell that for a mile. And I did, because people definitely smoked crack at the bus stop a block away.

My neighbor’s roommate at the time came over for a drink and asked me why I invited over a bunch of crackheads to smoke on my balcony. I reminded her that “the word crackhead is racist!!!” as we were currently in woke 1 and I was all hands on deck in that shit. She reminded me that she was black therefore she could not be racist against other black people and could use that word. It was the 2010s and I didn’t know how to argue against that.

The train hoppers left, and I followed the photographer for a while on Instagram. The last thing I remember is her talking about how vaccines are evil, and how she will not be vaccinating all of her three children.

Much like all hipster-types from the 2000s and earlier 2010s, they either went one of three ways: 1. anti-vax rural landowners redpilled crazies 2. boring ass “stomp clap stompers” who go to breweries with their children and say “all new music is bad” ORRRRR are a little cooler and now sober but still do the same 3. are like me, a perfect balance of moving with the times, listen to new music and never stop creating art but also see major problems with optimization culture and hope that the gen after gen z calm down a tad. I don’t want my daughter to have an idiot boyfriend who smokes crack in her bedroom with the guy from the gas station, but damn I hope she doesn’t just go to workout classes and call it a day. <3

<333

buy me a pornstar martini as a lil tip!

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