Diary of a Drug Fiend

Short Commons 145 It didn’t come off. We had a wonderful dinner; and then a horrible thing happened, the most horrible thing in my life. Cockie wanted to go to a show! You might have hit me on the head with a poker. I don’t attract him any more; and I love him so much! He went to the box office to see about tickets, and while he was gone—this was the really horrible thing— I found I was simply telling myself ‘I love him so much.” Love is dead. And yet that’s not true. I do love him with all my heart and soul; and yet, somehow, I can’t. I want to be able to love until I get back. Oh, what’s the good of talking about it! I know I love him, and yet I know I can’t love any one. , I took a whole lot of cocaine. It dulled what I felt. I was able to fancy I loved him. We went to the show. It was awfully stupid. I was thinking all the time how I wanted to love, and how I wanted dope, and how I wanted to stop dope so that. the dope might do me some good. I couldn’t really feel. It was a dull, blind sense of discomfort. I was awfully nervous, too. I felt as if I were somehow caught in a trap; as if I had got into the wrong house by mistake and couldn’t get out again. I didn’t know what might be behind all those doors ; and I was quite alone. Cockie was there; but he couldn’t do a thing to help me. I couldn’t call to him. The link between us was broken. _ And yet apart from all the fear I had for myself, there was an even deeper fear on his account. There is something in me that loves him, something deeper than life; but it won’t talk to me. I sat through the show like being in a nightmare. I was clinging desperately to him; and he didn’t seem to understand me and my need. We were strangers. I think he was feeling rather good. He talked in a