"Write on, my man.": I think i didn't "just say no" to crack once in 1985

I was 15, it was in a club called the Red Zone on 54th street near 8th Avenue. It closed so long ago that i can't even find any links for it. It was mostly house but back then that meant the crowd was a bit on the "streety" side. Not the rave club white kids you would see at a house place these days. House music in 1988 was acapella R&B set to thumpy bass beats. House shows came on after the hip-hop djs on the radio and the people who liked it ranged from gangsta all the way to skin-heads.

It was a crowded night and i remember it was very hot because people were shooting water at each other on the dance floor with bright plastic water guns. other people were blowing on whistles and there were hot girls dancing on the go-go platforms. I even remember what the song sounded like that was playing. it was that long old house song set to the sounds of a women having a long slow orgasm. the song was one of those playful house songs that slowed down its pace until the beat basically stopped and then suddenly picked up again. I remember being there with Ages, Lefty, Debt, and Self. We were out in the middle of the dance floor trying to avoid getting mixed up with the large crew of skin-heads from S.H.A.R.P. (skinheads against racial prejudice) and on the other side it looked like a large gang from uptown.

I remember these particular guys who were standing next to us. they were all looking kind of Miami Vice-ish with pastel suits and Capri shoes on, and they were passing around something that looked like a pipe. I saw one of them look my way and i gave him the thumbs up. I really don't know why i did that, mostly because i "approved" of weed smoke by then and thought people might give a fuck what i approved of. when you're really young, doing stuff like this seems "bold".

I guess they did care, because the guy aims the back end of what looked like a glass pipe to my mouth. without even blinking i put my mouth to it and inhaled. well, my peoples, i had never tasted anything like that before. it wasn't weed. it was cool on the back of the throat and when i exhaled it tasted more like chemicals then any kind of natural weed like substance. i remember thinking to myself "uh ohhh WTF. thats some potenzia shit" because of the instant way it hit me. what happened next is all the evidence i need to support my belief that the stuff was crack. suddenly i was like extra juiced. i jumped up on the go-go platform and started freaking a woman who was completely out of my 15 year old league. i was sweating like crazy, the lights were streaking and popping in my eyes and i was totally a part of the music. i remember seeing my friends below looking up at me like i was crazy. first of all, dudes aren't usually supposed to jump up on a go-go platform at a tough crowd club. maybe soft fluffy foo foo clubs are alright, but not the Red Zone. that was a red light in a scene like this. the only thing that saved me from ridicule and pointing was the fact that this bikini clad twenty something go-go girl didn't throw me off the platform or kick me in the balls.

then right as the song was ending, i felt like my body slow down drastically, i weighed like 40 pounds more and needed to go hang my head somewhere. i ended up going to the bathroom and just sitting in a stall for 20 minutes trying to get my head out of the fog. then my friends came and found me, Lefty had drank too much so we needed to make good our escape. 10 minutes after that we were in a cab who was driving like 70 miles an hour because Lefty had his whole upper body out of the passenger window and he was retching all over the upper west side. i remember i was still very foggy, too foggy to deal with Lefty spastic foot kicking me every time he convulsed. I also noticed that the wind was streaking his throw up across the whole back outside of the cab, the window, and the trunk were laced. So at that time, I actually thought that i was the least cracked out person in the cab. until i really thought about it years later.

to this day, i can't say with a definite evidence that i had smoked crack, but from all the descriptions, and the way these guys looked and how i came down a few minutes later in the bathroom of the Red Zone, all the clues point in that direction.

As for House music, well i still love it, with or without Crack. It has changed a lot over the past 20 years but it still appeals to my sense of deep rhythm. I was lucky enough to have a roommate in college, Basic, the guy who chases people in Fleuvog Clogs. he was friends with two djs in Chicago who were bringing back house again after 8 years of a lull. Mark Farina and Derrick Carter. we used to crash at their apartment and record mix tapes for the parties we threw back in Madison Wisconsin. I remember one weekend I only slept for a few hours on a hard wood floor and the whole weekend i never once took off my Timberland boots. not once. I believe this picture is from that weekend.