‘Tara, stop it.’

‘Ugh, Mom. Do I have to?’

‘Yes, beta. She specifically called and asked when you’d be in India and organized her dates accordingly.’

‘Fine, fine.’

It had been seventeen months since the brownies. I didn’t remember most of it.

That moment of falling prey to addiction is a funny one. It sneaks up on you in the middle of a coffee run, and splashes burns on to your fingers because you can’t hold them steady. It hurts. It hurts like crazy, and you hope no one saw it happen.

Hell, I didn’t see it happen.

You realize that when you stood drunk outside a party and, hopped up on American acceptance and full of self-imposed existential angst, declared between drags of a cigarette that ‘I could really use a line right now’, you were full of all kinds of shit.

But I could really use a line right now.

Everything I’ve ever loved is battered, cracked, used up. A Little Princess is splintered at the spine, the margins are bleeding conversations with Burnett, and almost every page has a dog-eared indentation. The Row’s black leather leggings are worn to their thready bones. My knee is shredded from too much Lock & Key, and bruises bite the terrain along my neck and breasts and stomach. My body has been touched, hurt, burnt, stretched, shunned, loved. I inhabit this decaying shell, and because I cannot save it, I use it.

As if on cue, David texted me:

I keep taking bong rips so big that I stop breathing and my body freaks out coz it thinks it’s dying. How fucked up is that?

I replied:

It’s beautiful. Use your body; there’s no sense in preserving something that’s already dying. ☺

Glitter in the Blow

December 2011

I was writing in my room, waiting for Button and Cookie to make requisite token appearances at their respective homes before heading back over. I was in India only for two weeks and in Calcutta for a mere fraction of that, so we had to make the days count. The rest of my last winter vacation at home was to be spent in Delhi, attending Nitwit’s roka and spending time with the relatives I’d happily ignored for the better part of three and a half years.

Polo walked in, his dog, Roger Fedora, wagging beside him. ‘I want food.’

‘Me too. Button and Cookie should be coming over any time now. Let’s go to Blue China?’

‘Yeah, Bozey should be here in a few minutes too.’

‘Why didn’t he just come straight home with you after school?’

‘He’s at some coding competition.’

‘What’s coding?’

‘How are you so dumb?’

‘Please. You’re illiterate.’

‘Balls.’

‘Name four books you’ve read.’