Coke

The first thing you need to learn about anything, the first thing that your parents should teach you is that love isn't real. It's a chemical reaction in your brain. I say that to say this:

A few months ago I met someone.

A girl.

My brain started. My pupils dilated. My palms got sweaty. My breathing became quicker as did my heart rate, all the sure fire signs of love. Love at first sight.

Love is not real. Love is a chemical reaction in your brain.

She was tall. Brunette. Gorgeous. Quiet. We didn't say much. At least not to each other. A few of us were smoking cigarettes in my friend's apartment's sun-room, getting ash all over, well, everything until somewhere close to four o'clock in the morning.

My ride leaves and I'm stranded with this beautiful girl in her bed.

This is not my forte. I'm good at holding hands, paying for dinner, meeting parents. I am not good at this. I didn't sleep with her that night. I kept going over there until we did.

In the process the chemicals in my brain told me I was in love. I tried to ignore it. I was getting laid, but she was quiet. I knew there was more to her than her bird tattoos on her calves or her septum piercing or her long brown hair. I knew there was something beneath her skin.

There were chemicals that regulated her breathing and her heart rate. Chemicals that told her she was not in love with me. I told her I wasn't looking for anything more.

But I was. And I did. My chemicals and her chemicals didn't agree.

This is not a love story because love isn't real. Love is a chemical reaction.

I chased though. I wanted it to be love. I wanted it to be real. I had never been with someone like her. I had been with girls you could bring home to meet your mother. But she was so different.

One night, in that sun-room I came to know so well, I watched her do a line of coke off a silver tray.

And then two lines off a book of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.

 Four through a hundred dollar bill.

A few bumps in the bathroom.

Off her desk when she woke up.

I watched her begin the slow, steady degradation of her life. I tried to distance myself. It didn't work.

We made love while she was high. We went to dinner while she was high. We watched movies while she was high. She met my parents while she was high.

She couldn't do anything without it. She couldn't be around me, or anyone, without it.

She was adding chemicals to parallel mine. Elevated mood. Dilated pupils. Increased heart rate. It was all there. Her chemicals matched up with mine. True love it would seem. Finally.

Love is just a chemical reaction in the brain.

You can't believe it. You can't trust it. Because those chemicals can stop reacting, and those "feelings" can and will pack their bags and leave just as quickly as they arrived. Turns out you can't trust coke either.

Because one day she sobered up and she left.