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Vice Blog

NEW YORK - BEGRIMED TOKENS

The big excitement of my first high school trip to New York was the eager buzz concerning who would be the first to find a crack vial on the sidewalk. I don't think I saw anything but ground the entire time we were supposed to be admiring all the civilized fuss. On the bus, heading back home to West Virginia, this one gal continuously trumpeted having found that empty vial. She failed to cough up the evidence though, pleading that if she procured the sacred curio, she'd be facing some stone cold jail time. And we were all like, Bitch, you know you'd be dangling your vial on a necklace string if you had the shit. Despite all the cool things I had seen, and the energy, lights, and people, I still felt completely gypped by my New York experience not rewarding me with true druggie grit. I wanted to smash my new Hard Rock Cafe shot glass in brutal disillusionment!

If I had found a crack vial then, on that trip, my fingers would have traced the memory of its user like a slow kiss on a lover's forehead. What was this crack smoker like? Had he been scorned? Was he terribly missing someone? Where is he from? Who does he love? Or did it formerly belong to an old woman? Is she lonely? Did she smoke it by the kitchen window, ashing into her plant box? Maybe she was a despondent crust punk from Vermont who let her puppy lap up beer in a dish?

Now, many years later, living in New York, I am still looking and still never finding those elusive, coveted diamonds of some sweet, wicked city shit. I had a halfway similar experience when I found a tiny plastic Homie in a potted plant. But eh…not seedy enough! He may have been the wheelchair Homie, but his injury could easily have been from tennis lessons… or maybe he slipped on some Finesse while assisting his gramma taking a bath.

When I think of all the really good reasons we abuse drugs, they are all symbolically trapped like a trillion vapors within that cool little bottle: loneliness, love, depression, guilt, desire, regret, heartbreak… If I am ever asked for my hand in marriage, the right fella will hopefully know that a diamond ring is kinda played, but a crack vial ring would be the truth betoken of a love forever, never gonna be lonely again, keepin' our crack vials empty because we got each other.

ADRIANE SCHRAMM