Experience Review: Zack Overdosing and then Coming Into Work, 8/13/13

** I found this while going through my email outbox earlier today. It was written more than 4 years ago. Sorry to anybody who might be offended by my bringing up the past. I hope That One Day, and That Call never come.

Yesterday after work Zack and I were gonna go to Bobs Pizza because the first Chargers preseason game was on after what seemed like the longest off-season ever. KP, Mark, and Sarah had a table reserved and were gonna be there at 6, so we could have just gone there straight from work and that's what I wanted to do. From where our office is located, we could have made a straight shot down Jefferson to the complex that Bob's is in. But there was still another hour before the game started, and Zack had been bitching for several days about going to the mall to buy new shoes. Dustin's mom had given both him and Spencer $100 gift cards to the Promenade, leftover money from what we had raised at the memorial show.
   So we went to the mall to find some shoes, which he did actually need pretty bad because there was a fatty hole on the bottom. First we went to Zumiez and Vans but both of those places had prices way out of the range that we found to be reasonable, so went down the hall to Pay-Less. There we found some Airwalks that looked exactly like the shoes that we were looking at in the other stores but for only $20. It just doesn't make sense to make any other decision.
   Upon getting back to the Heath house we got to taking our ritual post-work shots and gravitys, with Spencer and Aaron on the couch watching "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" like fucking always. The game was gonna start in like 20 minutes, and the plan was still to go meet up with the buddies in a bit, but we were both in full-time lag mode and I kinda wanted to eat something before we went there. Even though we were going to a damn pizza place. Spencer needed Zack to take him to the liquor store so I used that time to cook up one of their frozen dinners.
   Although I'm a notoriously slow eater, they still weren't back by the time I was finished. I had watched an entire second episode of "It's Always Sunny" and they still weren't back. The liquor store isn't that far away. I legitimately started to worry that either Zack had crashed the car or that he had gotten pulled over and given a DUI. We had just been talking about it the day prior because the car is uninsured, the windshield is cracked, there are chains and bats and open containers of alcohol constantly strewn about; even if Zack wasn't perpetually wasted even more than I am (homeboy drinks like a jug of vodka almost every day) that car is just like auto-jail. So I was kinda tripping. 

   Partway through the third episode they finally came back with Spencer's 2 tallcans and a brand new jug for Zack.To my relief and surprise Zack came in all wide-smiled and told me that the reason they had taken so long  was because he had bought three winning scratchers in a row. He bought 2 at the liquor store, one of which had a $5 prize and the other one granting a ticket for another scratcher. I guess you can't redeem a prize ticket at the same place you bought the original scratcher, so they had to go to the Shell gas station to get his third scratcher, and on that one he won another $2. The question that suddenly comes across my head is, 'how cheap are these things if $2 is considered a prize? $1?' But that's besides the point. Their lag had now been explained.

   I (joked) about my assumption that he had got a DUI and Spencer confirmed that Zack had been driving far too fast and taking the turns a bit hastily, which soured my thoughts on having him drive me across town to go get more drunk. I called KP and it was just him, Mark, Sarah, and Nicki hanging out; we had assumed there to be like a whole grip of heads there and Zack was particularly disappointed by the amount of girls he could wantonly hit on, so the list of present characters swayed us further against the idea of driving out there.
   Almost by serendipity, David called me up to see what I was doing for the game; he had planned on going to Bob's as well but was just gonna stay in and watch it at home where he could blaze and not spend money on unnecessary beers. He said I should cruise over if we didn't end up going out to the spot and that suddenly seemed way more relaxing and responsible than our previous plans. It had been nearly an hour since they returned by the time I finally decided that that was what I wanted to do, so when Zack offered to take me home I wasn't as apprehensive because he seemed to be back to his normal just-a-little-faded state. 

   Mom had made tacos but I was still full from the dinner I stole from Zack so I didnt's eat, but I felt really bad because tacos are like my favorite thing and mom knows that, that's why she makes them. But I just ran upstairs, took some more gravitys, and had dad drive me to David's.

   David was in his basketball shorts, fully chilling, and we went into his downstairs living room to watch the game. His parents got new couches recently that we can lounge back in all comfortably so that was cool. The Chargers fucking suck so we kinda didn't really watch the game too much (it's just too painful) but we caught up with what each other had been up to recently. Just work. That's the answer for both of us. "I've been working alot." It's strange that David and I used to spend almost every single day together and now we maybe see each other once or twice a month, needing to make appointments with each other just to keep our friendship healthy. I guess we're just becoming adults. It's fucking depressing.

   His dad came out and talked to me for a little bit, which was cool, but I don't really remember anything that we talked about. Probably just a bunch of bullshit. He made the point that we can't keep blaming Norv Turner anymore, he's gone. Philip Rivers had better do the damn thing now. David and I smoked a bowl, watched the rest of our pitiful loss to the Seahawks, and called it a night. His house is located right beside the trail that runs beside my house, behind Nicholas Valley Elementary, and then back around, so I jumped the wall from the end of his cul-de-sac and walked home.
   

   The next day at work was the same as things always are. We were all sleepy and nothing is funny at 9am. Zack seemed a bit more pale-faced than usual but I assumed that they just had another shit-show at the Heath house after he dropped me off. He was slumping a bit ridiculously and got up several times within the first half hour to get water and/or go to puke so when he came back on the fourth time I looked at him and motioned like, "WTF?" He looked at me deep in the eyes and kinda stuntedly said "I hung out with Luigi last night and I did something really stupid." I already knew what he meant but I asked for further explanation, to which he responded with hand signals indicating "we will talk about it later." It wasn't too much later, however, when he under-his-breath told me "I relapsed and overdosed and went to the hospital."

   A call came into my headphones like right as he said it so I just looked into his eyes and let him know how I felt.
   

   "Hi this is Ian I'm calling about your electric bill, is this the homeowner I'm speaking with?"

   I was immediately filled with a mixture of rage and despair that I couldn't even hide. My voice was stilted and I wasn't focusing on my script. My sentences sounded stupid because I was stuttering. I wasn't even seeing red, it was like dried-blood purple-black. I paused my dialer and got up to go to the bathroom so I could cry without anyone seeing me. I looked at myself in the mirror angrily, like, why am I upset about this? It's not me. It's not my girlfriend or my brother or anything. It's just my friend. It's just my closest friend who I spend all my time with and who I've been trying to help get better. Why should I care.

   I came out of the bathroom and just did not want to look at him at all. He looked all dry and concaved and deathly. He was slurring his words and nearly falling asleep. He had to throw up every time he drank any water because he was suffering from dehydration sickness so bad. 

   At break he told me that he woke up in the Wal-Mart bathroom with paramedics above him; Luigi had left him there to die. I asked him the obvious question, "Why did you do this??" and got the obvious answer, "I WAS WASTED MAN!!" His main concern was that he was going to get billed by the hospital and those bills will be sent to the house, where maybe Spencer or worse yet, Paris, might see them. That wasn't my main concern whatsoever. My main concern was the burned-into-my-brain image of him blacked out next to a toilet with a tourniquet around his arm. That's what I was concerned about. I didn't want to talk to him. 

   The day went so quickly and strangely that we didn't really have time to talk about stuff. Elaina took us out for lunch so that timeframe went to waste; I wasn't able to tell him how upset I was. Our boss, Jay, came in the office to announce new solar clients we're gonna be working with and to introduce a new bonus structure that rewards people who have to run around all day verifying other people's leads. He looked over at me when he said that. I didn't even care. Elaina drove us down the street when the day was over and smoked us out. Me and her laughed about how similar we are, right down to our reliance on spiral notebooks. She was hugging her notebook as she talked about it and I believed her. 

   When we were finally heading back to his house I finally told him how I felt. It boiled down to this: "You can never hang out with those people ever again and you already knew this. I can't believe you would do this to yourself. I can't believe you would do this to ME. You know how much I love you and you know how fucking fragile I am. The next time this happens you're going to die, and if you survive I am never going to talk to you ever again. You can't keep putting me through this and I am the only person who seems to care if you die. You don't want to push me away."

   He already knew. He didn't challenge anything I said because I was in the right and I deserved to be upset with him.

   We went back to the house where Sam and Spencer were going over stuff on acoustic guitar. Zack and I split a ham sub, adding some pastrami and salami and all sorts of good shit to it from their fridge. I had my first day of work release at the new work site the next day so I started to get anxious and wanted to go home. Aaron was going home so I gathered all my things and hurried out the door with him. As I was pushing open the screen door, Sam hollered down the hallway at me. "IAN! I never get to show you my song," referencing the song he wrote like 3 months ago and wants to give me as a Gravitys song but I still havent made the time to hear. I felt really bad because it was clear that he felt shafted, "like I don't wanna be friends. But I do. I still love you, although I know I don't show it at all. Everything that once was close is sprawled. I'm sorry that I put you through The Fall. I hope you're doing okay, considering it all. We're dropping like flies."

thank you to Courtney Grimshaw for the picture.

   I went home and sat alone in my room without music playing for 4 hours. I didn't want to talk to anyone.


   *** Follow up note: I didn't hold true to that ultimatum I gave to Zack. We still talk from time to time.

I still haven't heard Sam's song.

Philip Rivers still hasn't done the damn thing.