Man Crack and Other Health Hazards
Crack is nasty stuff. Everyone who saw “New Jack City” would basically agree on that. Highly addictive morsels, one small taste that can hopelessly hook the user. Crack heads will do anything to get a fix, and sacrifice everything. “Just say no,” they say.
Yeah right. Not so much.
But there is a much more dangerous form of crack than that being sold in the inner cities (and living on the beach, I think we have a law that keeps inexpensive drugs away, so I wouldn’t know where to find crack anyway), Man Crack is in LA in abundance. Man Crack is That Guy. You know he is bad for you. BUT YOU CANNOT FUCKING STAY AWAY. Maybe it’s the sex, maybe something more. It certainly goes against your best judgment, your friends’ advice, common sense and anything else rational and healthy. You just want it. You need it. You have to have another fix. And it will absolutely break you.
Man Crack, in this case is a character we have visited before, STD, aka “Man Whore” extraordinaire. This is the story of how a normally sane, beautiful, rich, smart girl like myself can find herself crawling on the floor, begging for another fix, and the slightest glimpse of the junk can cause a fatal relapse.
He was sitting behind me and I could feel him looking at me. “That guy behind you, he is STD. Biggest whore here” my girlfriend says quietly. She was leaning in close wrapping my scarf around my chest, creating a top. Since we were sitting in an empty cabana with STD and his companion, it wasn’t surprising that he was looking. Very rare to see a complete stranger changing clothes, in the open, in front of your face, but there we were.
I glimpse behind me and the blue eyes are there staring. He is attractive, but different looking. Not the conventional hunk literally surrounding us (she plays a little ball and so, there is an abundance of attractive, half naked men). Being the good friend that I am, I of course, spent the day there cheering her on, while also saving some choice images for later if I can’t sleep. I don’t say a word to him that weekend. Watch him a little from a distance, more out of curiosity than any real desire.
I didn’t see him again until months later (scratch that… I saw him in passing while running a few times). I was coming out of a restaurant with my friends and he was standing there. Having a healthy cocktail flush and laughing as we were moving onto the next spot he was RIGHTTHERE. “Hey what’s up?”
That was my chance. I should have said nothing. Shot him that withering glance that I use whenever some moron thinks I will give a “what’s up” the time of day. Do it! Fight it! Resist! My friends (a married couple) pause because they think we know each other, and they both begin to quietly evaluate him the way married couples keenly gauge who their single friends are chatting up. “Not much. Going for a drink.” “Where you off to?” “No idea.” Conversation ends and I bounce off. Married couple asks who it is. “Oh, a baller I met at the last tourney, but a HUGE manwhore.” I answer before we continue on. But I looked back. He was gone.
The next morning I decided to run early (unusual) and far (even more). I reward myself with a Strawberry Powerade Zero. And there, while I am all sweaty, is STD. Again. Less than 24 hours. “Hey you” I say. He asks for my number. Maybe we will catch up for a drink that night while out with our sundry crews. He never calls. The next night (a Sunday), I get a text apologizing but claiming a broken phone stopped him from calling.
I ignore it, sure, phone issues, I have used the same line. I know better. Those Saturday night phone issues like “It’s a Saturday and I don’t need to bring sand to the beach”. You can’t pay me to call a guy on a Saturday. Phone issues like the Futon Sparrow he probably took home took his phone. I ignore the text.
But then my phone beeps. Voicemail. STD. He is apologizing, saying he wasn’t blowing me off and isn’t that line. I look around the room to see if he was watching me. He sounds sincere, almost pleading. I call back and leave a message. We have lunch. He is nice. We have some things in common. He jokingly invites me back to his place, but I gamely laugh it off. He attributes the gossip that swirls around him to the local coconut wireless (the gossip mill that runs based on fact, suspicion, hunches and innuendo when you have thousands of good looking singles all living within moaning distance from each other). Meet at another tournament where he pops by several times to say hi. We have dinner, talk more. I really like him. A goodnight kiss becomes more heated after I decide that his tongue tastes slightly better than that second glass of wine.
Neither of us are amateurs and when I intentionally sink my body in a little bit to his, the gloves are off. Hands flying under clothing, leaning against my car, skirt sliding up around my waist and my hands heading beneath his waist band. Uh oh. Standing at the brink of a black hole about to have very hot sex on the roof of the parking garage.
I shake my head literally out of it. Pull myself back from the brink I was leaning over. I stop. His eyes were glazed, heavy lidded, wanting. I had him. He was hooked. I knew it. I have plans that Saturday night, so we can’t go out. But my date ends early. I walk into a bar and there he is at a table of ladies. Hmm. He leaps up and I do notice that they are much older, and unattractive, and married. He says they are friends, etc. He won’t let me leave without clearing the air. He isn’t what I think! It’s not! He swears. His face is so sincere it is almost pained, chasing me out of the bar begging to talk.
We end up having a repeat of the rooftop, this time in an alley. I won’t stop now. I stepped out of my panties, and his shorts are down and its go time leaning on a rail, greedily ready for the ultimate indulgence. I want to fuck him here, but he is the one glancing around nervous. Oh, yes, we are in public. Tsk tsk. Not that I minded one little bit. Coward! The next week goes by, and a text chat becomes a sexting session on my run. Oh well, exercise does get the heart racing.
Finally, I pull the trigger. Dinner, his place.
Forty five seconds later it was over.
I was speechless. Are you fucking kidding me? Stud Boy! Man Whore! He says he hasn’t had sex in a long time. Duh, I guess not. This will be the topic for my girlfriends’ amusement for the next two months. STD was over ASAP. Ha ha. But crack is dangerous, you think you are in control, but you’re not. Instead of grabbing my clothes, disdainfully looking at him and going “are you fucking kidding me?” I wait.
We lie in bed waiting for round two. I am uncharacteristically uncomfortable. His place is making me nervous. I feel too exposed, too out there. By now he knows me. He knows my personality, my story. This isn’t some random piece of meat anymore, and something just shifted, and I am lying here after bad sex, waiting to see if round two gets better. It does, but barely. But that subtle shift is now a total loss. I feel weird. Awkward. Naked (well, duh, because I was), but it isn’t the same naked that I usually use to my complete advantage. And then he speaks. He is giving me the “expectation management” portion of The Game. I’m in shock. Wait, a total of less than 3 minutes of sex gets me a five minute discussion of how cool and desireable you are? Huh? This wasn’t even B-game sex! It was MC (mediocre cock) at its worst. I dress and drive home irritated and mystified at how could it have been THAT much of a dud.
I see him out nightly that weekend, and his halo is slightly bent. I get texts claiming he is tired, didn’t get the message, etc. But then there he is at 11 and the club is going off. The highlight was watching him take home some lost twentysomething with the practiced skill of a pro, and all I felt was irritation at the whole damn disaster. By then it was already too late. He was Man Crack, and I was the one who got hooked.
