Date: Mon, 19 Jun 1995 21:46:26 -0600 (MDT)
From: Andy Hawks <Hawks@colorado.edu>

About a couple months ago I met this girl at a rave in Boulder, Colorado, where I was living at the time...It was a small event called Orbit which was going to be a biweekly on Frydaze, and really gave a young fresh Boulder DJ crew (props to Ben & Mitch, Davealex, Tres Manos, et al.) the chance to shine, put em on the map....Anyway, at the second Orbit ever, I was handing out Pixy Stix (as I always love to do), and gave some to this girl who it turned out had been watching me a lot that night....

Anyway, we started seeing more of each other, and before long I had to come to terms with the fact that she earned 100% of her money by dealing, especially drugs I don't really care for, like crystal and coke....She also had an attitude towards drugs I hadn't seen in anyone since I saw it in myself when I was 17, when it almost killed me -- an unabashed *love* for the shit (different substances of choice, though). Her life revolved around drugs, no matter how much i tried to ignore it or she tried to hide it or ignore it...it was there.

In the last few months I have seen the wonderful beauty deep within her character (that she showed to very very few people -- her interior is warm and very innocent, her exterior is cold and streetwize) that kept me with her, be totally submerged behind a changed personality dominated by hyperness, huge huge mood swings, extreme stress and tension, agitation, wicked paranoia, forgetfulness, lack of attention...as she grew closer and closer to crystal. she crashes once a week now, sleeps 2 days, is up for 5 straight. she never eats. her body and mind are both like "fuck you bitch."

But I have stayed with her and tried to help her because I care about her so deeply now. I helped convince her to leave her house (a true haven for serious dealers and users in the area) and move back in with her dad. and she was going to. and she didn't. her addiction has overridden her innate *love* for her parents, now she ignores them. There's been weeks at a time I don't know where she is, what she's doing, if she's eating.....

Today, coming home from work, I stopped at her house. She had crashed, and was asleep on the lap of a guy I had not seen in quite a while. This is a guy who was just as much a big dealer as she is, and also started getting into promotions. She and this guy were good friends but had a big falling out quite awhile back when he ruined her ability to throw on afterparty for Funky Tekno Tribe when they came through Colorado. So, basically, this guy ended up isolating himself from all his friends because of that. It taught him a lot -- he's getting out of the rave scene, doesn't deal, etc. he really changed a lot after that, and when everyone welcomed him back after he learned his lesson, he had learned so much that he knew he didn't want to be a part of all that anymore.

So today I go to her house, he's there (shock and surprise in and of itself), they're good friends again (bigger shock), and he tells me that he's so worried about her that he's practically forcing her to go back to his house and stay with him for 2 weeks (something I tried a few weeks ago, but she couldn't stay away), away from drugs, away from drug *people*, away from all the strees, and he's going to take her to the doctor. and I'm one of about 5 people in the world that has both his pager numbers, 1-800 number, and his home phone, so I can keep in touch with her all I need to squelch my worries. he's the calgon, taking her away, maybe even saving her life.

In this world run by drugs where everyone you know is a dealer, they're all your friends but you're always watching your back so much that you're watching your front with the eyes in the back of your head, when the crystal you do *everyday* starts telling you that everyone around you is an informant and that the police, FBI, DEA, CIA, and the NSA are watching your house, it's so blissful to discover that underneath all that there's people you don't know if you can trust anymore that really show you their soul. they really care about you. they love you and want you to live a life created by the beauty that you create, not the temporary false bliss created by an addiction.

love to delilah,
deepest respect, gratitude to taylor.

pray that she wants to change her ways. =.)
i miss her.