State: unaltered

Today I had dinner with Óscar. He was supposed to come at 21:30 but he was running late, so I decided to walk Nina to make use of the tolerance time. I encountered him outside his home, he had just arrived. We walked Nina and then set to have dinner.

I bought two sandwiches, one for me and one for him, but he was engrossed in his conversation and was barely touching his sandwich. I was already three quarters done, and he hadn’t even given the first bite. “You already had dinner, didn’t you?” I inquired, but he denied it and said that he was just distracted.

After dinner we went outside to smoke a cigarette, and he told me he had drunk tea of one of the datura plants in the neighborhood. He prepared tea and had it in his bedroom. He said that he “seen” Ninel Conde and the neighbor naked with the help of the plant (I read in wikipedia that in medium doses it has an aphrodisiac effect. I pleaded with him to be more careful, datura is toxic and that he could have a bad trip.

But as he was telling me all this I observed a strange tic-like movement of his jaw, and it hit me like a ton of bricks:

He was late because he was out looking for drugs. he wasn’t hungry because he was drugged. He was so enthusiastic because he was drugged.

I narrowed my eyes and accused him of having had coke before dinner. He conceded. I was a bit let down, why? I want to put him on a storyline which makes it easier for me to dedicate time to him, and drugs were not part of that storyline until yesterday.

But it is not Óscar whom let me down, it is my own storyline, for Óscar never pretended (and I can’t even pretend) to be someone who he is not, but I saw a young man with many handicaps who wanted to improve himself and seek out friendship (which he still is), but the cocaine part will be like a hole in an inflating air mattress, a loss of resources lessons and attention.

And at the same time I see my hypocrisy. I came back home after the cigarette to write this up, and as in the last few days of writing at night I wrote “state: weed” at the top of the day’s account, and I saw my own mistake, for I am seeing the shadow in the other and not in myself.