I Was Tricked Into Snorting Cocaine
Never trust a person who asks you to smell their mirror.
My parents made me play sports growing up, even though I’ve always been more of a tortured artist with a flare for dramatics. I was on the Swim team, the Volleyball team, and the Softball team in my hometown of Fairbanks, Alaska. I was always being told, “You’re so tall; I bet you play basketball.” Hell no, and don’t give my parents any ideas. There’s so much I hate about basketball; the sound of sneakers on the court, elbow jabs to the face, gymnasium lighting, and dribbling a ball while running. The only thing I have in common with basketball is traveling.
The one sport I hated more than all the other ones was swimming. In High School, we had two practices a day; once at six in the morning and again right after school got out. I always prayed someone would shit in the pool, and we’d get to go home early. Alaskan pools are exceptionally frigid, it didn’t matter if it was forty below zero outside or a balmy twenty above, the water was always cold.
I’m a talker, and swimming is not a sport for extroverts, storytellers, or social butterflies. I get my words in the same way people get their steps in. If I don’t say at least forty-thousand words a day, then I am not living my purpose. I need to talk, which is why swimming wasn’t good for me. How am I going to get my words in if my head is underwater for several hours a day? I still get triggered when I see a lap pool and lane lines.
Swim practice was about a ten-minute walk to Gottshalks, the only department store in town. I’d skip practice a few times a week and go shoplifting there with my friends. None of us had cars, so we would walk through blizzards and sub-zero temperatures, whatever it took, to get there. I loved fashion. I loved it so much that I was willing to steal for it. I’d put on ten shirts in the dressing room, then put my parka on and walk out. I’d head back to the pool just in time to get my hair wet in the sink, so when my Mom picked me up, it looked like I had been in the water. She’d ask how practice was, and I’d tell her it sucked, and I’m sure it did, even though I didn’t go. My shoplifting days didn’t last long because an undercover clothing store detective eventually caught me, and I had to plead guilty in children’s court and was sentenced to thirty hours of community service with two child molesters who ran the local soup kitchen.
When I wasn’t swimming or stealing from the man, I was playing volleyball. We had to share the gym with the women’s basketball team, which was made up of the tallest women in school except me. They looked at me like I was a traitor, like I was gifted the miracle of height, and it wasn’t being used to throw balls into a hoop. My interests in high school were more like fashion, pop culture, Britney Spears, and gossip. I didn’t want to play sports after school. I wanted to go home and watch TRL with Carson Daly.
When Volleyball practice ended, I’d have to wait for my Mom to pick me up in the waiting area of my high school. My parents had five children, and I was the lowest priority on my Mom’s pick-up list. I had to sit in the waiting room with all of my fellow loser car-less classmates. God, even Lucas from math class got a purple PT Cruiser for Christmas. I just wanted the freedom to leave when I was ready to leave.
One day after Volleyball practice, as I was waiting for my Mom, two girls on the basketball team came over to talk to me. We weren’t friends, but we weren’t enemies either. We went to school together since kindergarten.
“Hey Lauren, do you want this mirror?” Krista asked me. I looked down, and she was holding a cute little mirror compact from Clinique. I grew up ugly, so I never liked looking in the mirror, but when I got hot in high school, I’d look at my reflection every chance I got, just to make sure my glow-up was real and not a dream. “Sure!” I replied.
“Okay, but you have to smell it first.” Weird, I’ve never heard of scratch-and-sniff mirrors before. “What’s wrong with it?” I asked, trying to figure out what the catch was. “Nothing, it just smells really good,” Krista promised. That was a good enough answer for me. Krista handed over the mirror, and I ignored the white powder sprinkled all over it. “Now smell it,” Alexis said. I used to be friends with Alexis, but she got really into Marylin Manson at some point, so we drifted apart over the years. I put the mirror under my nose and took a little sniff. I didn’t smell anything, so I inhaled deeper. Suddenly, I was feeling on top of the world. Smelling this mirror was like nothing I’d experienced before; I felt light, and fun, and funny. I was grateful they asked me to smell that mirror. “You can keep it. Gotta go!” Alexis said, and they both ran off.
I put the mirror in my backpack and waited for my Mom. She was only an hour late picking me up this time. I saw her gold Yukon XL turn into the pick-up area, and I started the frozen walk over to her car. I passed a few police cars that were parked in front of the school. I saw a cop with a German Shephard in the distance smelling people’s backpacks. Drug-sniffing dogs would show up randomly sometimes. I wasn’t worried, though, because I didn’t do drugs.
It wasn’t until I moved to New York City in the summer of 2004 that I put it all together. I’d go to the gym or brunch and see people sniffing coke off mirrors all the time. Alexis and Krista tricked me into snorting cocaine and framed me with their drug paraphernalia. And I learned a valuable lesson; when someone asks you to smell a mirror, it’s because they’re offering you free cocaine.