recollection from an old club
Eyes that could never be more awake, pulled wide to the point of vibrating in their own straining sockets. Forever searching, fluttering around the room like a chipmunk in desperation for its next meal. And a smile so constant and broad it clenches every muscle on her face, as if she’s filled with more excitement than she’ll be able to express in her whole lifetime. She thunders around the room with brutal, unending vigor, bringing energy to the whole crowd, raising the spirits of everyone she touches, spreading a kind of carefree euphoria out around her.
There’s a sudden squeal and I realize she’s found me, and is next to me. She grabs my wrists with the strength of a lumberjack, bouncing in joy at my discovery, and yanks me toward her to embrace like a woman who’s just found her lost love.
I’ve met this before. This is a personality that no one could maintain. Yet she will, late into the evening and probably won’t ware down until late tomorrow. It makes her seem and surely feel like, the most attractive, extraordinary person in the club.
But just like a similar woman I’d fallen for long ago, she’s only a little girl swimming in the bliss of a magnificent drug - riding on the wondrous overdrive of crystal-meth.
I don’t want to be here when the type of man who can see through her, and knows how to take advantage, finds and destroys her for his own twisted pleasures. I don’t want to be here when her inability to see danger, makes all this beauty crash down around her.
I could try to show her, but it won’t work. She’ll only learn by going through it herself now, and there’s no way I’m getting caught up in that kind of madness again…
All I can do is smile and return her warm hug, hope she’s strong enough that it won’t go too far, and be one of the few friends who will stay to help when it’s time to give up on chemical charisma.