These men don’t understand coke. Coke doesn’t rest. I am boundless energy when it navigates the reaches of my body. It leads to the tips of my fingers and toes. Touch radiates through my nerves like lightening down a steel pole. Everything in me moves to its rhythm. I am not my own woman. I am indentured to white powder. It erases me until it leaves me emptied.

I choose him at the end of the night. The room spins just a bit slower than it had. I don’t notice every eye watching me. I don’t see details of every other woman’s dress quite so quickly. I look for another. I clutch the arms of men until I find one that is strong. I demand he buy me a drink. I’m afraid as I begin to see the world clearly again.
I found him almost too late. He was tall with sad eyes and tussled sandy hair. The small of his back rested against the bar. Perhaps he waited for someone. Without the coke in me, I would’ve asked myself if he were the right man.

“Buy me a goddamn drink,” I told him as I caressed his lean forearm.
“ No.”
“Just one or two,” I begged a little drawing my lips close to his.
“I’m waiting for someone else.”
But he was mine. My confidence waned. The coke was leaving me. Clutching his sides tenderly, I exhaled hotly against his cheek. The tip of my nose brushed the line of his chin.
“It’s just a drink.”
“No it isn’t.”
“Where is she?”

I turned and searched the thinning crowd in the middle of the dance floor. The music had changed. Its hard, panicked rhythm softened. Now it was a slow, almost tender, lulling melody. A few girls with uncurled hair and mascara smeared in blackened crescent rings beneath their eyes stared toward me with their bleary gaze narrowed contemptuously. We were like hungry animals in a desert. Just hours before we shared a straw or a line or a mirror in the restroom like sisters. Now they hated me. I reached into his pockets. He couldn’t make eye contact with them. He caught my hands and held them still. I was a child caught stealing.

“I don’t think so.”
“Give me a try. You’ll like me.”
I leaned close to his chin. He leaned further backward and turned his sad eyes toward the bartender for a moment.
“Come on. This is a no strings attached deal,” I nearly pleaded.

Every year several obstinate leaves grip their tree branches long into the autumn. During a mild winter one or two hold fast until a red spring bud finally pushes them to the ground. Some remain that even a gusty Chicago wind can’t sweep from its branch. He was one of those leaves that hold tightly until spring.

The boy turned to face me. My gaze steadied and focused on his tiny, black pupil.
“You’d have the brownest eyes if the red veins didn’t make them seem purple. And your pupils…they’re so dilated they push the last of the brown away.”
“It was the Vodka…”
“Do you know what?”
I shook my head slowly like a child waiting for her punishment.
“I’d like it, but I don’t want it.”
“What’s the problem?”
“I can’t,” he mumbled.
“Why not? Aren’t you a man? Can’t you handle me?”
He didn’t respond. He simply gazed at his feet, the color rising in his cheeks.
“You can just f--k me. Or maybe I’ll just handle you. I can make it easy for you.”
Still, he remained quiet. I grabbed his chin and turned his head toward me impatiently.
“Give me an answer. Why won’t you f--k me?”
“Then it’s just another Friday. I want this to be a Friday night you have to remember.”

He gently moved me aside. I didn’t resist. In a sober, silent dream I watched him disappear amid the colored lights and the darkness in between until he joined two other men and a trio of women who didn’t love him. Together they walked toward the exit.

“You asshole! I was gonna take you home,” I whispered under my breath just loud enough for the bartender to cast a dubious look in my direction.

“Wait for a man that makes you better,” my mother told me after each boy I loved left me behind and ultimately leaning my head against her shoulder as I would cry.
Tonight I kept repeating those words to myself until they were trite and meaningless. My father had never made my mother better. He did as he was told. His compliance made her stronger. I could see her sitting at that bar watching me fail in capturing a man. He would sit quietly next to her. She would hate me right now if she were here. He would hate me too, whether he wanted to or not.