The ballad of the smoke
"Baby, this town rips the bones from your back. It's a death trap, it’s a suicide rap. We gotta get out while we were young. ‘cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run.”
("Born to Run", Bruce Springsteen)
I smoked the first cigarette when I was fourteen, in Berlin, on a school trip. It tasted good, of Rolling Stones and hotel room. We were five that day in the room, three males and two females.
"Want some?" they told me.
"Yes", and I wanted it.
It tasted of lungs opening, it was the unknown finally known, and I suddenly became stronger, accepted, part of a group. I felt grown. I also immediately fell in love with Berlin. Come on. I instantly liked the Postdammer with its colourful lights and the unreal fountain. The beautiful museum of cinema, the beer, that I’d never tasted before, the zoo with the stories of young girls on the run and Nefertiti, small and badly lit in a museum where you could get lost. Thanks to smoke and makeshift friends I could withstand even the teachers and the tourist guides.
The first joint, instead, came shortly after that, at the concert of Ligabue, Olympic stadium, summer. I had already failed the year at school, and my father had looked at me with the dry face he puts on when he's angry. When it happens, his face stretches and it seems that he’s ready to enter the gas chamber at Auschwitz. God, how I hate that face. Only Liga makes me forget it. He has a determined, fighter face, and jeans that tastes of rock.
Music, only music is life. And hashish follows in its wake. There and then I didn’t even understand. He passed me this thing and I took it. His name was Giorgio and he touched my tits. We sang "Certe notti" at the top of our lungs, with a bottle of beer in hand. The smoke and you are already into "Happy hour and vivere costa la metà". I love Liga, he’s my calm after the storm. My father is only able to send me into a tailspin. If he said just a word, gave me a real punishment. Shit, he’s only able to wear that fucking face and send mixed messages. He condemns me as if he were the Holy Inquisition, then turns into worker-priest, and gives me absolution. But maybe he hopes to become the Pope, who knows. When I was ploughed in school, after swallowing and meditating for some time on his bad luck of failed architect and father, he said the epic phrase: "At least next year you have to pass."
He actually said that, I remember it very well. I was almost about to laugh, or spit on his shirt. Fuck Dad, life is now. Here and now. However he can’t complain, I was able to pass the following year. It is true that I have been given a lot of debts, but eventually I made it, and Debby made it with me, because we march together, we are that generation, the one "born to run", says Bruce, who is terrifically cool and has the physique of a biker to drool over. It’s true that he’s short, but guys, you can’t have it all. And then I will never meet him and I will not even finish high school. Enough, for me the race is over.
Some nights you smoke joints, the smoke gets inside you, you feel your legs growing smaller and more powerful, all in one second, and I feel big. After the first joint I even felt revolutionary, ready to send them all to fuck off. Me like Che Guevara. With Debby we smoked a lot of joints in my house, especially on Sundays when the housemaid is not there. We got up and smoked. We had a crazy face, that of when your eyes become small and the world suddenly seems possible to accept. I did everything, as always, with her. She was my shadow, unable to think without me.
Too insecure, I was her strength. But she was fat and everyone made fun of her until I came and defended her. Now no one tries to say even a word to my little friend. They know I’d beat them, I can, and I can make a super joint. I use only soft Camel. First you remove all the tobacco from the cigarette, then burn the piece of smoke and mix it all in the palm of your hand, carefully. Finally you roll it and light it without inhaling, or Debby lights it. The joint. The trip doesn’t start immediately. It starts after a while. And immediately you smoke a butt. So the trip is better. And you smoke in company, because it's better.
And anyone who smokes with you is a friend. Who doesn’t smoke is an Eleonora, thus a spy and a swot. Well, no. You can say everything about Eleonora except that she ratted. Kudos to her, but this didn’t save her. God, if only I could have a joint. Here and now. Immediately!
Sex, instead, I had it for the first time in a bathroom, during a party. Losing my virginity was a decision I had taken long before, I just needed the right guy, one who didn’t get on my nerves with fussing. I have no time for fussing, neither time nor desire. Mom taught me. Take only what you need, don’t make bonds, don’t become attached. It’s only you that counts. Only you are worth. This one, the one who came inside me for the first time, was a cute kid. Especially, he was in a hurry to finish, while I just wanted to know what was there behind the gasps you see in movies. Why women cry for pleasure, in other words. How it feels to let go. It seems the coolest thing of all times. I've seen a thousand times those scenes in movies or on television. When I was little I thought they sucked, I was ashamed, I thought it wasn’t right to show it all like that. Then, growing up, I started to feel like I wanted to be the star of that intercourse. My legs shook, I got enfeebled, I wanted to scream like that too. Well, his name was Pietro and he was a PR for parties in the clubs. He was seventeen, he was so cool, and every girl queued up to have sex with him. It was a sign of success, a recognition of one’s charm. Fucking with the PR of the party means you are at the top.
I was glad that he drooled on me. After all he was fast, fast like a gag from Ridolini. He lowered his pants, lifted my skirt, slammed me against the wall. I didn’t gasp, I didn’t like it, I have to say it was terribly painful, and we couldn’t even roll on the floor, in a half-dirty bathroom. Come on, movies say a lot of crap. Afterwards I even threw up, but I guess it was because of smoke and cocaine. Yeah, cocaine. I also have a lot of Bayles, I love coffee. Pietro has a lot of sex, if you say yes he jumps you like a man possessed. I like to feel desire, it kindles in me too the urge to click. I've had more sex, with a guy in the third year of the high school, Francesco, who had goofy hair, an emo fringe, and who played the guitar like a god. An emo, he said he was an emo, fragile and sensitive. Sometimes he cut his arms to see if he could suffer better. Like Deborah pulls off her hair. They look all crazy to me. I think it's best to avoid suffering, if anything to harm others, but hurt yourself... come on. That's really for crazies.
Francesco was languid and knew fussing. At first he used to say he loved me, that's right, he said he loved me. I was silent and he scared me. Love is not for me. It's a game from which I’ve been excluded. Mom taught me. I'm out of this bullshit. However, I admit it in a whisper, I liked that affair. With him, everything seemed different, almost normal. I could become a little girl like any other, in love and happily reciprocated. Science fiction. We were together for three months, then he dumped me. He said I was too thin and too angry, he always said that my anger spilled from my eyes. I must admit that he knew me like few others. Not even Debby ever understood me so well. I am the anger. The anger has no boundaries and if it explodes you’re fucked. The anger doesn’t stop, doesn’t forgive, doesn’t come back.
I'm in bed and I think about it. I think about what I could have become if the anger hadn’t been there. A good student who studies like Eleonora. Instead I killed her, because it made me angry that she was so perfect. She was exactly like I wanted to be. If I could, I would have been different, but it would have been another story, another Silvia, in another world. Joints are better. Massimo, my pusher, gave me the smoke, Pakistani. He wanted sex too. Some nights I had to pay him in kind. I didn’t like him, but it just took closing my eyes and lowering my zipper. He does everything by himself, he plays and he sings. Either me or someone else is the same, as long as he enjoys himself. Massimo is really spoilt, he has money coming out of his eyes. Now he's in Thailand because smoke is better there – at least so he says – and he has tattoos on his chest. Terrific stuff, he has drawn life on hi
s body, it looks like a fairy tale; he has a dancer, a cobweb, a sword piercing a heart. But the best is the carabineer he had immortalized under his foot. He says that so it crushes him when he walks. What laughter. Max hates the police, or better he must be very careful, because if they find him with the stuff they put him in the cooler.
I owe much to my pusher. He gave me the package. A red and yellow scarf with something heavy inside. He pulled it out of his backpack and said – with the tone reserved for great occasions – that if I kept it stored for him, hidden, he would stock me with free smoke for one year.
"You are clean, you can keep it."
I thought there was a lot of smoke or some terrible acid to guard, so I said that one year seemed too short. My father could have found it – he doesn’t rummage in my closet, but Massimo can’t know that – not to mention Neli, the Filipina, who instead puts her hands everywhere.
"Listen kid, that’s not the danger. The danger are the carabineers, and they are not coming to your house. There is no reason."
"Okay, but if I have to become an outlaw you have to pay me more."
I tried, I had the right to.
"Ok, chick. Smoke and cocaine, when you want, even when I am not in town. Until I take the package back. Are you in?"
"Come on. I am."
He also gave me two mobile phone numbers. Those of the friends from whom I get the stuff now. Then he left, after fucking me for good, long, angrily, as I like it. God if I like it. Maybe it was the story of the package, maybe the adrenaline in my body or the joints I had smoked, who knows, but it was the most beautiful fuck of my life. We had sex furiously in the parking lot of a shopping centre, hidden between the columns. I was scared to death that someone could arrive, and at the same time I was wishing it would never end, ever, ever. When I cried, Massimo put his hand over my mouth so I could not be heard.
"You're a real bitch", he whispered in my hear. And I was happy, until, at home, I opened the package.
I’m not entirely dumb. Come on. There were two guns. Nice, clean, and I thought that piece of shit had me fooled. I don’t want to end in jail. I hid the package in a box in the closet and I thought I would take my revenge for that trick. Except that... the next day I saw Eleonora, and it was then, only then, that I blessed Massimo and his fuck. He had given me the trump card.
However, since I am good and I care for friends, the day before the slaughter I deleted his number from my phone, and also those of his accomplices. If the inspector knew he would kill me with his hands, but I'm not stupid, my dear Dr. Pascucci. You will never have the evidence you are looking for. No one will ever know my secret, no one will find out where the guns came from.
Fuck it. All the time I spent reading newspapers and books. I have learned.