Free I'm the One That I Want by Margaret Cho Page B

brought it back to the table. My head was spinning with joy, as I felt the roll of bills in my pocket, hard and substantial. It felt like freedom, or at least the cash to buy it. I sipped the cold, creamy melted ice cream and held my breath.
    Nobody said anything. Not for a long time.
    Then suddenly, Bob got up and said, “FUCK YOU AND EVERYONE WHO LOOKS LIKE YOU!!!!!!!!”
    He ran out of the café. I started to laugh and laugh, out of a sense of relief and gratitude and out of a strange sort of pride. I had, for once, stood up for myself and stuck to what I knew was best for me, even though I wanted to please Bob and not be the bad guy. I did not stop laughing for a long time. I couldn’t believe that Bob, who was a decade older than me, was so incredibly immature. I felt strong, self-reliant and capable. At sixteen, I felt well on my way to becoming a woman.
    Some time later, my friends and I were having coffee on Telegraph Avenue and I saw Bob walk down the street with a hippie girl. He was wearing the same tie-dyed shirt and some shorts that showed the crack of his extra-small ass. I screamed and hid behind my friends. He didn’t see me, thank God, as he was lost in his girlfriend, who had put her hand on his ass (covering the whole ass), and walked away into the heart of Berkeley.
    Years later, I worked in Tempe and one of the waitresses asked me if I knew a man named Bob _____. The name made my blood run cold. I hadn’t heard it in years. She said he was the creepy manager of the apartment building she lived in back in Oakland and he’d get the young tenants high and hang around for uncomfortably long periods of time. She told me that once when they were all stoned and watching Comedy Central, I came on and he got all misty and reminisced about how he and I used to be together. That is pretty lame for someone whose last words to me were: “Fuck you and everyone who looks like you.”

8
     
    STAND-UP AND SM
     
    With Bob out of the way, I could completely focus my energy on being a drug addict.
    POt had been a cure-all for me for most of my life. When I lived in my parents’ moldy basement, I smoked and smoked to forget my life. When I was on the road, I smoked to forget where I was. When I was at home, I smoked to celebrate. It almost didn’t affect me anymore. My head would get a little hazy and warm and my throat would get dry and I would be immediately self-conscious or hungry. For some reason, I equated this feeling with peace.
    POt is an insidious drug because it can steal your life away from you, without you even being aware of it. I had a love affair with pot for ten years. Pot was my most devoted partner.
    I Was fifteen when I met pot—back on an old railroad track behind my high school with two guys named Chris Long and Ken Datre. Ken called me “Baby,” which is astounding to a fat teenage girl, who feels invisible and sexless. We smoked a badly rolled, spittle-wet, seedy, paraquat-laced joint. It made me feel tired and as heavy on the inside as I was on the outside. I went home and crashed for hours.
    Pot got me deep inside my head to a safe place. I wanted to go back there all the time. I lived there for a decade. It got me to sleep, which I could never do with my parents fighting and screaming at each other all night. It helped me eat, drowning out the existential pain even further with entire boxes of macaroni and cheese, deli potato salad, potato chips and cereal. It was just the state I needed to live in at the time.
    When things got really depressing, I’d wake up at two in the afternoon, so far into my head that I’d almost turned inside out. I was living back at my parents’ house after the brief stab at “independence” at Bob’s. Being sixteen isn’t easy for anyone, but I had to make it harder for myself by being expelled from school, having a horrible twenty-six-year old boyfriend, and a quickly escalating drug problem. I couldn’t take the nights alone without blowing pot smoke