Cedric Con't

     Before rehab, Cedric would have never thought of himself as an addict. He just enjoyed getting his party on, even if it meant waking up on the last stop of the N train in a puddle of his own urine. And so there were addicts and there was him, the responsible meth user.
     He hated that Renata and Billy were beginning to catch on. They’d both seen enough cautionary after-school specials that ended with the valedictorian OD’ing on stage at his high school graduation. They didn’t want Cedric’s story to become fodder for hack TV writers.
     “Where were you last night?” He remembered Renata asking four years earlier, when it all began to crumble. They were waiting for Billy to arrive at Quaint, their favorite Sunday brunch spot. Cedric hated when it was just the two of them, it increased the chances of her having one of her very special talks. They had all gone to a party the night before and Cedric disappeared to hook up at a sex party and smoke meth.
     She’s lucky I even made it to brunch, he thought. He was only there because the party had run out of meth and he didn’t feel like fucking anymore.
     “I was sick,” he sheepishly replied. Renata has worked as a drug counselor on Rikers Island and had a bullshit meter that was even more accurate than a polygraph test.


“Sick?”


“Yes, sick. I’m aloud to get sick, aren’t I?”


“There’s sick, Ced, and there’s sick. Which sick are you? She looked at his arms for track marks, scared that he’d begun injecting the drug. He noticed her stare. Bitch, I’m not a fucking junkie, he thought.


“I had a stomach bug, but I’m better today,” he said as Billy entered the restaurant.


“You look like shit,” were the first words out of his mouth.


“He’s sick,” Renata she said making air quotes and snapping open the menu. “Very sick.”


Thinking back, that was the first of many times Renata tried to intervene. He hated her for it then and sometimes he even hated her now. But he’d made many amends to her over the last four years of his recovery. He knew she cared. And he wished he’d listened to her sooner.


What made Cedric enter rehab came in a messy package of a patient named Jake Bloom, a gorgeous 28 year-old aspiring model/actors/spokesperson who both intimidated and intrigued Cedric. Gorgeous clients always made Cedric nervous – he wasn’t bad looking, but a model he was not. He just couldn’t understand how creatures like Jake could even have problems. When you looked like him, didn’t life get handed to you on a silver platter?


Cedric made up for his own self diagnosed short comings with a lithe and lean body and an ass that benefitted from a squat heavy workout regimen. It was the only body part he ever concentrated on. If he was going to be a power bottom, the ass needed to look as fuckable as possible. It didn’t matter that he’s just finished his PhD in psychology and had published a book. He knew what guys wanted. It wasn’t brains, but an ass like a shelf that you could stack books on. In an online profile once he even invited men to “put their library books in his shelves”


Cedric opened a small private practice on 34th street at The Institute of Wellness that budding therapist’s referred to as the Therapy Whorehouse because of its hourly rates. If he saw even a few patients he could charge enough to pay rent and have enough left over to support his meth habit.


Cedric had worked with Jake for several sessions but the session that was underway felt oddly more intimate than he remembered. This sometimes happened in therapy and he thought it was simply because they were doing good work together.


“I just found out I’m positive,” Jake said. “And I think I’m a meth head.”


Jake hadn’t mentioned meth in their intake. Cedric shifted in his chair, a fine mist of sweat formed on his upper lip.


“I see. You tested positive when?


“Two days ago."


And when was the last time you used meth?”


“Two days, ago. Doctor. You don’t remember.”


“Now why would I remember,” Cedric said, immediately understanding this new found intimacy with Jake.


“I last used meth with you. Before I fucked you.”


Jake reached into his wallet and handed Cedric a business card: it was familiar to Cedric because it was his own.


“You told me to come see you if you wanted a therapist. You were so fucked up, you didn’t even know it was me, you just begged to get fucked.


“Get out.”


“Fuck you! You’re supposed to help me! Fucking help me! How the fuck you gonna help me? Look at you!”







With a slam of the door, Jake was gone.







Cedric slumped to floor. He needed to get on the HIV morning after pill, but he only had 72 hours. He knew he last used on Sat and partied with a number of men. With a shaking hand he called the nearest clinic and made an emergency appointment.







***

With-in a moth, he closed up his private practice, said goodbye to the few remaining friends who would speak to him and went to a month long rehab at The Pride Institute in fucking Minnesota and another year in a sober house while he got better. It was there that he did part-time work in a LGBT homeless shelter. And it was there that he felt most connected to his clients for the first time in his professional career.


After he left Minnesota it was back to NYC where he floundered a bit, but didn't relapse. And then he found his dream job. For the last 3 years Cedric had been a junior psychologist and counselor at The Addictions Clinic in Midtown Manhattan. He ran the LGBT unit and was a skilled and respected lecturer on trauma and this community, his community.







Each morning he had rounds on the addictions unit and then a group. He didn't have to run a group, but this was special to him and so he didn’t as a silent gesture of giving back. The group was called Man 2 Man and it was for gay black men in recovery.







These were boys like him. The outcasts, the freaks, the trannies and the kids who worked the runway at The Christopher Street piers. He had a similar life in Chicago, trolling public bathroom for sex with anyone who'd give him attention and drugs. Since he got clean all he wanted to do was give back to the men he saw as brothers, friends and sons. It was the first time in his life that he felt parental. He even wondered if he might adopt, provided he and his boyfriend had enough cash to adopt a child. He was thinking Malawi but was hoping Madonna would start adopting children from places that had cheaper airfare – she was often his barometer for what to do. Since becoming sober, he was far more responsible with his money.


Remembering the boys at the clinic in Minnesota reminded him he needed to make a meeting. This was always the struggle, between self-care and self-destruction. He shrugged and figured it might always be that way. At least now, my self destruction is Mountain Dew and online gaming. He logged off of WOW and slipped into a pair of boxers.







***


"Hey Ronnie, I'm returning your call. I know, it's been a few days. I need to make a meeting. I'm okay, minor World of War craft diversion, but I'm feeling a little alone."


They decided on the open meeting at the 46th Street Clubhouse and then brunch.


What he didn't tell Ronnie was that for the first time in months he'd thought of using. He’d seen an episode of Breaking Bad and then another, until he’d watched the entire first season. He wanted to step through that TV screen and sit in the room with the characters as the made meth. He could smell the acrid smoke as it wafted through the air. He even reached for the screen, convinced he would be transported to this alternate universe where he could act the part of the addict. He had sense enough to know that this fantasy could be trouble and so he made a call. He had done enough acting in his life already.