Free Girlvert: A Porno Memoir by Oriana Small Page B

them for five dollars apiece. They’d take them and always come back for more the next week saying, ‘Whoa, that shit was so good. We were wasted, do you have any more?’ So I’d go, ‘Let me go see.’ And I’d just go dip some more stamps.”
    I remembered buying a twenty-dollar bag of oregano when I was thirteen. “No Tyler, it would be weird to take money from our friends. I’d rather just give them away.”
    “Ori, it’s easy. It’s not brain surgery. Lots of our friends will buy them if we just take them with us and pull them out when we all want them. How many times have you heard someone say ‘I wish we had some ecstasy right now?’ Almost every night. We’ll go to Colby’s house or to a party and everyone will want one. I’ll take the money from people. Come on, we’ll make all of our money back and still have some for ourselves. Don’t you trust me?”
    I gave in. It wasn’t like he was going to stop bringing it up if I said no. I decided to try it out before judging the idea too hard and putting it down completely. Ultimately, I didn’t care, as long as I could do some, too.
    Jay-Jay sold us fifteen pills for eleven dollars each; a perfect amount, because we already decided not to get too caught up and become drug lords. We were quiet about it. Someone might set us up. We were ecstasy dealers now.
    When we got home, I went ahead and took a pill. It was my obligation as a supplier to test my own product. Tyler did two pills with me. It was customary to split each pill in half, take a half first, then, thirty minutes later, take the other half. The process solidifies the high. You want to peak as long as possible. When you start to peak, swallowing the second half will keep it going. An hour went by, and I didn’t feel anything. Something was wrong with the pill. I hadn’t done coke in hours, so the feeling of the ecstasy should have been stronger than usual. “I’m not feeling it at all. Let’s take more.” I never thought about the risks of overdosing. My mother and my father were drug addicts. Drug abuse was in my DNA. Nothing was ever going to kill me. I was built to withstand any kind of self-abuse possible. Overdosing never crossed my mind for even a second.
    “Let’s split one more, I still can’t tell if it’s working.” The only change in my body was a slight stomachache from my cocaine and cigarettes diet. Two and a half hours after we first started, we were lying on the bed, feeling weird. What was in these pills? Not ecstasy. Maybe it was mescaline or speed? No. We felt wretched and tired. I wanted to go to sleep. Our pills seemed to be duds.
    We got under the covers and turned out the little green lamp at the foot of the bed. It was totally dark except for a small nightlight in the bathroom. That light stayed on because I was scared of the dark. Things got even weirder on the pills in the dark. Oddly, I couldn’t close my eyes. They would only blink for a split second, snapping open again. What the hell? The room wasn’t still. It was quiet, but things were moving on the ceiling. I couldn’t tell if what I was seeing was just the normal blobs that are present while adjusting to darkness.
    “Can you sleep?” I asked Tyler.
    “No, I can’t. I’m wide awake now,” he sighed. Then he started laughing.
    “Tyler, why is the ceiling moving around? And the walls! Do you see that?” I was pointing at the fragments of foam insulation dancing above our heads, and laughing too. But it wasn’t funny.
    “Yeah, I see it. Oh hell,” he busted up with laughter. “I think what we took had a little bit of white blotter, or something like it.”
    “What do you mean, like acid?” I spoke up in a loud voice that sounded like someone else’s. Who said that? Fuck! I didn’t want to take acid!
    “The ecstasy must have been mixed with it. That’s why we felt so different from the last times. It’s all right. It’s not too strong.” Tyler had lots of experience with this drug,