It was a perfect day with Led Zeppelin playing on the Miata's stereo and the volume turned up and the outside air warm but not too hot, the sun on us just right. Jan next to me, not Lori Mellon who I had not been out with for a few months. With Lori the magic of driving with a pretty girl next to me was transcendent, both of us being aware of the other's presence as being vital to the open road experience. This had changed. Both the girl's and my attention was focused on the crack pipe.

"Can you put the top up?" Jan asked just a little too politely as if I had much choice. The words flow out nice and polite but you just know that if you come back with something like...."No, I'd rather not. It's too nice outside. Convertibles are meant to be driven topless," the gal is going to bail. First will come the argument with the harsh words. Then...she's off and you are driving off somewhere by yourself.

"I thought you liked the wind in your face," I replied.

"Someone's going to see me like this. As in the police. And they are going to know what I am doing, then they are going to stop us." Jan was on about her third pipe full of crack. For the past half hour I had been driving essentially alone. Sure....I had a blonde sitting next to me but it was a matter of form over substance. Her eyes had changed as her face looked straight ahead. Practically all conversation had stopped. Then just as soon as she started to come down and to become aware of everything around her..which included me, she'd start filling that damn pipe again.....nervously, compulsively, mindlessly.

So I put the top up, thinking-------"There is no way this gal's making up for Lori. This is crazy to put the top up on a sports car like this and run the air conditioner on a perfect late afternoon." I had the Miata lowered an inch with much stiffer springs than stock and was running larger wheels and tires for better handling. And that was just the beginning of the improvements over stock. The car also had a supercharger that gave it an extra 50 horsepower. She was as quick as thought both in acceleration and turning ability and here this twenty-one year old girl was having me put the top up.

We drove out to Platinum Showclub II out in Centreville where I knew some people but had to wait ten minutes for Jan to come off her high. Then stayed there only for a few minutes because Jan got bored. The excitement was back in the car. The crack she had left there. It was getting to be an all too common experience-----Jan selfishly withdrawing into her self induced coma while leaving everyone else behind. Which started with me.

Earlier we had agreed to go to a little roadhouse bar only four miles from Platinum and now found ourselves driving around aimlessly, both our attentions focused on that crack pipe-----Jan intent on refilling it as often as possible while I was anxiously anticipating her running out of the crap.

Finally she came down just enough to go into the bar with me. The weekend before I had been at Platinum, then gone to this bar where I ended up shooting pool against the locals. Gotten very lucky, beating every man who challenged me. Now Jan might have been a drug addict and one who preferred not being around a lot of people but when she was everyone seemed to like her. We found ourselves soon talking to several people in the bar, then sitting at a table with a guy and his date.

She only lasted for two beers after having several shots of tequila for herself. On the bar scene I had gotten to the point of measuring time in beers with approximately fifteen minutes being represented by one beer. Every five or ten minutes Jan was downing another shot. I had started thinking of her as the kamikaze drinker. She didn't drink to socialize the way I did but to get drunk...the sooner the better. While doing it she'd be very talkative with everyone around her while her good natured banter would endear her to those meeting her. But she always ended up wanting to leave----either to get more drugs or to go home to watch television. So She'd end up drinking shot after shot--until the buzz started to get to her along with the urge to split.

I already had the engine going with her next to me out in the bar's parking lot when several men and women started to come out. "Hey, anyone got any weed?" I heard her call out.

"Sure", one of the guys said back as they all started to come over. Which kept us in the parking lot for another twenty minutes that I could have been spending back in the bar. Grass.....now that's a worthless drug if I ever saw one. Makes me sleepy. Or it makes me want to crawl into myself....to get away from the people around me. Me....I want to be with people.....I want to have fun. I want to be a catalyst...to entertain or be entertained. To talk or to listen. Weed makes a person want to be a rock. How boring. And to think people actually pay money for that shit.

Crack's far worse. People will do practically anything for it. Just look at Jan. Ever hear the expression "Crack Whore?" which is exactly what she was...a crack whore posing as a dancer. For her the prime goal was the next high...which found its expression in her kamikazee drinking...not as a social lubricant but as the means to an end. And she was a glutton for crack, taking each dose as soon as she had come off what she had taken before.

Driving now down highway 157 close to Centreville, the sun long ago gone down and night fall upon us, Jan started fumbling around in the seat next to me looking for something on the floor. "Can you help me find that pusher?" It was a little rod she used to service the pipe that she called a pusher. We couldn't find it.

"A little twig will do. There's some trees over there," she pointed out.

Right. Just off the road in someone's yard. Pulling the Miata off to the side of the road, the two of us got out of the car and walked up to a tree where we started peeling little branches off. Finally she found what she wanted. "This one's just about the right size. I can use it."

Back in the Miata she used the twig to reposition the packing inside the crack pipe. I kept driving towards the motel where I'd get what I wanted, which was the only reason for fooling around with this idiocy in the first place.

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