The Coke Head

The Coke Head - ***disclaimer: this one is quite lengthy and a little sad... it'll be the only one that's sad, though, trust and believe!***

Sexy.

(I’m not changing his name because he’s an asshole – He is Eddie Henderson (NOT pictured above) of Chattanooga, TN)

Background info:

My age: 18

His age: 26

How we met: while working at Office Depot in Brentwood, TN

Our first date: On 12/20/01¹ we went to see Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise (a terrible movie that I have since never watched again). I drove because he had no vehicle² and lived with his sister and brother-in-law, who worked as an assistant minister at a local church³.

My drug of choice at the time: Smirnoff Ice⁴, Tom Collins’ via a dorm room sink⁵, the occasional puff off of a “marijuana cigarette”⁶

yummy.

His drug of choice at the time (and probably still today): cocaine

Length of relationship: 2 months, but ask anyone involved – it seemed WAY longer

Why it started (because, clearly, he was a loser): I was a freshman in college at MTSU and still worked at Office Depot during school breaks⁷. He was the first and only guy to ask me out on a date….. that’s…. that’s basically it.

1. For some reason, I thought that this date was significant. Something to do with the fact that it could wrap around in a circle, perhaps a ring for example, repeating on itself…. Errrr….. nevermind. I was eighteen, a product of Dawson’s Creek and Lifehouse ballads. Give me a break.

2. What self-respecting twenty-six year old man doesn’t have his own vehicle – and is okay with that fact?

3. Probably would have been the “Christian” thing to do to perhaps warn the naïve eighteen year old girl standing in your living room looking at your brother-in-law with googley eyes that he is a thieving drug addict. Just a thought.

4. Vomit

5. Double vomit. How did I not get meningitis or hepatitis A or die??? Sick. 

6. I definitely inhaled. Eddie taught me the art of inhaling properly- isn’t that romantic? 

7. Which still goes down as my all-time favorite job ever. I was the ONLY girl amidst all men, most of them being in their early twenties. I was greeted daily with “hello, beautiful” as I walked through the door and hung out with all the guys every Friday night at Cross Corner and laughed until I cried as they all ate hot wings and drank pitchers of beer. If you’re not convinced that it was the best time ever, then you’ll just have to trust me – it was!

 The Story: 

I was lonely and eager to have a “real boyfriend.” He realized that and took full advantage. He apparently was really into cocaine, although I didn’t know it at the time, or have the wherewithal or life experience to notice it. Looking back, I’m sure there were signs. But I would have ignored them, as I would have ignored anything that anyone I loved would have said to me that was negative about him. I “loved” him. Right. So he took the big V, of course. You all saw that one coming. Don’t get me wrong, I willingly gave it. But he knew what he was doing and that makes him guilty of being an asshole. So, naturally, after that I believed everything that came out of his mouth. We smoked a lot together. We had to go to hotels since I lived in the dorm with Ty, so as not to drive her crazy with our canoodling⁸.

8. She was major grossed out constantly. Apparently, almost everyone got a weird, uneasy feeling about him, but no one told me until it was over! Not that I would have listened…

I knew that he was up to no good in my head, but I had such trouble convincing my heart of that fact. I let him drive the GrandAmmit around while I was in class⁹, doing God knows what with his riff raff acquaintances in Nashville. We went home to visit his parents once and when we came back the next day, my key ring and wallet were missing. We looked everywhere, but to no avail. They turned up a few days later in some of his bags from the trip and he returned them to me. One night we were at my dorm room and he left and said that he was going to visit a mutual friend of ours from Office Depot, who was apparently a thugged out drug dealer (he shall remain nameless). He lived nearby and we had been to his apartment several times, taking both a left and a right turn out of the dorm parking lot. I say this to establish the fact that he knew how to get there using several different routes. He called three hours later and said that he had made a wrong turn and had ended up in Smyrna but was on the interstate and headed back now¹⁰. He then calls an hour later and tells me that he had gotten on the wrong interstate in Smyrna¹¹ but was now on the correct interstate and coming back to my dorm room. This is the kind of shit he said and I knew it was all lies, but I just ignored it.

9. But my dad put a stop to that real quick, when he passed me on the road one day and discovered that I had gained one hundred pounds and grown a beard. Whoops. Sorry daddy.10. I asked him how he knew he was in Smyrna – was there a giant sign out in the middle of the woods on some weird back road that said “WELCOME TO SMYRNA!!! INTERSTATE RAMP TO THE LEFT!!!” Douche.11. Is there a part of Smyrna that I don’t know about, that is so large that TWO interstates run through it???? Douche.

We went to a hotel in Murfreesboro one night to stay, and we had smoked several times that day. I remember feeling very, very strange and not knowing why¹². He made me split the hotel room with him¹³ so being the smart and savvy “adult” that I was, I gave him my debit card, along with my PIN number, so that he could go to the ATM and withdraw the money that I owed him and bring us back some White Castle. He left… and was gone for five hours. I called. Repeatedly. It went straight to voicemail. When he finally got back to the hotel he told me the following story:

       
 “I was driving to the ATM when I got pulled over by the cops. They smelled weed and    found my roach. They took me to jail, but I bailed myself out with your debit card. I’ll pay you back¹⁴.”

Whatever. I “believed” him. This was on a Thursday. The next day, Friday, I was walking around campus and the left side of my abdomen was absolutely killing me, I was doubled over and it hurt to move. I went to student health where they did an abdominal ultrasound¹⁵ and found that my spleen was enlarged and swabbed my throat and tested my blood and told me that they would call me with the test results. Drama all around. I was petrified. But of course, everything was negative. They’re clueless as to what has caused my spleen to swell. Not to worry. Carry on. My mom called that day, too, to ask me to come home that Saturday and take a physical for some life insurance that they were going to purchase from my sister’s boyfriend at the time. Having no clue about marijuana and how it is detected in a person's body, I’m happy to oblige, thinking nothing of it. They take a urine sample and a blood sample, and I'm on my merry way.

12. I thought that maybe I had just never been high before… turns out, I had never been high on cocaine before. That’ll get ya every time. Douche.13. Who says chivalry is dead? Douche…. Okay, I’ll quit.14. Having never been arrested and/or in jail, I was clueless that this was bullshit. CLUELESS.15. Let’s talk about how scary THAT was for an 18 year old who had just traded in her V card. I mean, I was on birth control pills, but still… I nearly had a heart attack.

The following week my sister calls randomly in the middle of the day. She asks me, point blank, if I had ever smoked weed. I was scared that I would get in trouble so I immediately told her no¹⁶. She goes on to tell me that the only reason the claim would be denied would be if they found evidence of illicit drug use or some sort of terminal illness, and that mom and dad knew that. So, naturally mom assumes that I’m dying of cancer or something. Awesome. So we all wait to hear the news, even though I know what it’s gonna say: you had traces of marijuana in your system and thus we denied your insurance application. Gonna be in trouble. Suuuuuuuper.

The next week, I am practicing for All Sing with my sorority when I notice that my throat is terribly sore. I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket so I naturally assume that I have caused irreversible damage to my vocal cords at my attempt to serenade MTSU’s campus during the nightly rehearsals. Back at the dorm, I look at my throat with a flashlight and notice large BLACK patches on my throat. Well, this can’t be good. Matter of fact, this is probably pretty f**king bad. So I go to student health the next day. My throat is swabbed by the most unprofessional nurse I have ever come in contact with in all of my days¹⁷, and they take more blood. And I wait again.

16. To which she immediately replied “I mean it’s okay if you did, it’s not a big deal, nearly everyone has tried it.” Damn. Well I had already committed to the lie, so I just went with it.
17. She swabs the black gunk off of my tonsils, which I realize is thoroughly disgusting, but she proceeds to screw up her face and hop around from foot to foot while waving said throat swab in the air and screaming “eeewwwww, eeeewwwwww, eeeeeewwwwwww.” I wished her a slow and merciless death right about then. Come on, woman! Handle your shit!!!!!

        
The next week I notice that I am particularly winded, pale, and drenched in sweat while walking up the ONE flight of stairs in the BAS that led to the English class that Ty and I were in together¹⁸. Turns out, Mononucleosis will do that to ya. Who knew?!?! I went home that weekend to my parents’ house, where Eddie was also staying¹⁹ for the weekend. I was tired, ill, and didn’t want him touching me. At all²⁰.

18. Shout out to our weird-ass male teacher who enjoyed wearing denim kimonos to class… uhhhhh…. Someone is marrying you? And it’s female?? I mean… okay.
19. My parents were very generous, letting mine and my sister’s boyfriends stay at the house with us on the weekends. Of course, they slept in a different room from us, but they were there all weekend. My parents really liked Eddie. Which pissed me off even more. Don’t be f**kin with my family, asshole.
20. To this day, I wholeheartedly believe that my head was so tired of trying to convince my heart that this man was poison to me, that I had to physically become ill in order for me to push him away. It finally worked.

        
That Sunday, I had to go back to Murfreesboro for a sorority meeting, but we were meeting at a restaurant instead of the chapter room, which was pretty unusual. Eddie usually came with me on Sundays, but I had told him not to come that night. He was confused. When I got to the dorm room, I noticed that the door was unlocked, but Ty wasn’t there. I called her and asked why the door was unlocked. She said that Eddie had called her and asked her to leave the door unlocked for him, which we did from time to time, because we were stupid²¹.

21. We also routinely slept with our window and door WIDE OPEN all through the night in order to escape the Sahara Desert heat that was Deere Hall in late Spring. In reality, if someone had abducted me, they probably would have changed their mind pretty quickly once they witnessed my incessant talking and all around bitchy attitude.

        
On my way to meet him, I stopped at the ATM to withdraw some cash and printed a mini-statement while I was there. The statement listed three different ATM withdrawals from the date of the hotel disappearance. I’m sorry, THREE DIFFERENT ATMs?????? I’m pissed. I dial Eddie and he picks up immediately with a “hey baby.” I asked him what he was doing, and he said coming to see me. I said, “Why? I told you that I didn’t want to see you.” He said he had wanted to surprise me and had asked Ty to leave the dorm room door unlocked. I told him that I had locked it back and that I still didn’t want to see him, but he insisted. He suggested we meet at Demos’s after my sorority meeting. I agreed, as I did have some questions for him. Our conversation went exactly²² as follows:

22. I remember it, verbatim, along with his facial expressions and my level of anger. The no bullshit Courtney that you all know and love today originated with this conversation.

        
Me: “Tell me again how you got out of jail the other night.”

Eddie: “I told you already, I used your debit card.”

Me: “Oh… they just had a card swiper right there on the desk?”
Eddie: “Yeah.”

Me: “Oh. So… why are there multiple ATM withdrawals from my account on this statement from that night?”

Eddie: “Oh… they took me to the ATM.”

Me: “Three different ATMs??? THREE different times??!”
Eddie (becoming defensive): “I already told you about this-“

Me (interrupting out of sheer rage – and leaning forward over the table towards him with my fingers steepled in front of me, blinking wildly while my eyes were narrowed in disgust - the very picture of Gordon R. Norman,  thankyouverymuch): “You know what this looks like, to people on the outside? It looks like you’re using me, F**KING ME, and STEALING MY MONEY!!!”

Eddie: stares blankly and stutters while attempting, unsuccessfully, to speak.

Me (smiling my sweet sarcastic don’t-f**k-with-me smile, used frequently in my ED nurse days): “But we both know that isn’t how it is, right? You love me, don’t you.”

Eddie: complete silence

  I left after that, and I never saw him again. I didn’t hear from him for the next few days and became worried, because I apparently still “loved” him. I called his sister to see if she had heard from him. She asked me if anything had been missing from my house. Although I'm not sure how it was possible at this juncture, but I was absolutely flabbergasted. I asked her what she meant and she said that Eddie was gone, that he had a cocaine problem, and that I needed to check my house to see if anything was missing. Immediately, things began to click in my mind. My dad had been missing a handgun for several weeks, and thought that the employees at a body shop had stolen it while fixing his car.

My two best friends, Ty and Jessica, went to the bank in Murfreesboro with me to help me close out my bank account so that Eddie couldn’t steal any more of my money²³. After the bank, we headed to my parents’ house in Nolensville to tell them about all the recent developments. When we got to the house, our dog, Cassie, a German Shepherd, was acting really strange²⁴, pacing and running around in circles, and the house just felt weird, there's not other way to describe it. When mom and dad got home, I told them about everything, while sobbing hysterically. I was humiliated and heartbroken. I was so embarrassed that I had trusted this fool of a man with literally everything and he had done this to me and my family. My parents had trusted him. When he had been “sick” a few weekends before, with a giant scab covering the base of his nose²⁵, my mom had gotten him settled on the couch and brought him medicine so that he would feel better. I could have killed him, I was so blindly furious. My dad went to check on his things and discovered that his prized AK47 that he had brought home from his time in Vietnam had been stolen, among other things. He was livid, which made me cry even harder.

23. We learned that the balance had to be zero before the account could be closed. He had taken all that I had and I had not told my parents about all of this yet, as we were headed that way after the bank. Ty and Jess were along for moral support. It took every cent that each of them had in their own accounts to bring my balance to zero. Let me reiterate that point: every cent, to the penny, in both of their accounts (which brought them both to zero), combined to equal the EXACT amount, to the penny, that I needed to make my account zero… Let that marinate for a minute. How’s that for a little help from the Man upstairs?24. Eddie was the only person in this world that she ever bit. Excellent judge of character, Cassie.25. Apparently from incessantly snorting cocaine - DUH!!!

       
 We left my parents house and headed back to Murfreesboro, where I was going to pack some things and my dad was going to pick me up later that night to come stay with them for a few days, and Ty was going to her parents’ house for a few days as well²⁶. On the way back to Murfreesboro, Jessica (who had also broken up with her then-boyfriend that day) played me sappy Boyz II Men songs while I cried my eyes out in the back seat. We were pulled over by a Murfreesboro police officer who asked why we weren’t paying attention (we had changed lanes in an intersection) to the road. Jessica told him that we had all had a really bad day. In a smart ass, arrogant tone, he asked us to please clarify our terrible day. Jessica did… and he said, “Oh. Damn. That is a bad day. I’m sorry. You girls be careful, now,” and he let us go without even a warning. So there’s that.

26. Afraid that he would come to the dorm room, as he had clearly copied my keys on my key ring when I had “lost” them the weekend we visited his parents, our parents wouldn’t let us to stay there. I feel strongly that if he had shown up, I would have maimed him with my Compaq desktop PC, or large metal floor lamp to the best of my ability, but it was probably not a risk worth taking.

 Later that week, I go to my English class to receive a grade on a paper that I had written several weeks before. The assignment was to detail an Amendment to the US Constitution. I had chosen the Flag Burning Amendment, and had become quite passionate about this amendment while working on the assignment, and was pretty excited to see how I had done. However, my jackass of a teacher decided to give me an F on the paper, as the Amendment had not actually been passed yet. I asked him why he had let me continue to work on said paper (we had been required to clear our topic with him prior to turning it in) only to then give me an F. He had some smart ass response that has since escaped my memory. What I do remember is that, with an extremely straight face that probably bordered on psychotic, I told him that if he did not give me at least a B on this paper, then I was going to jump off the top of the BAS. He believed me, and I got a B on the paper on the spot. Guess I got it like that.

That probably would have left a mark.

On Friday of that week, I went to a fraternity party on campus with some of the girls in my sorority including my big sis Chrissy, whom I have known since I was fourteen, and who had been made aware of all of the unfolding drama in my life. I was attempting, unsuccessfully, to let loose. Of course, I had parked illegally at fraternity row (I believe it was the Pike house) and Chrissy saw a campus police officer giving me a ticket. She ran up to him and asked him to please not give me a ticket, as I was having a terrible week and she just didn’t think I could handle it. He challenged her and she told him what had happened. I did not get a ticket. But I did get drunk, which was unfortunate, since I had to get up early and be at the post office in Nolensville as soon as they opened at 9:00am to pick up my certified letter with the reasoning behind my denied life insurance application. Awesome.

So, Saturday morning I woke up, promptly vomited, and drove home to learn that I was a coke head. WHAAAAAAA?!?!?!?!?! Yes, apparently the “marijuana cigarette” that we had partaken in was laced with cocaine. How thoughtful. I told my parents that I didn’t know how it had gotten in my system, although in that moment I realized that I knew exactly how it had gotten in my system, and they probably did too, as it was now common knowledge amongst everyone that my ex-boyfriend was a coke head.

That was the last nail in the coffin of my first love. What a terrible experience. I learned so much, though. Dad eventually got his gun back, but to my knowledge, Eddie never served hard time, although he was guilty of a felony since he had stolen a firearm and was also in possession of narcotics at that time. I have no clue how many times he gave me cocaine without my knowledge, but I know he did at least once, most likely more. I’m thankful that I learned what I did about him when I did, because more time spent with him could have ended much worse. Several years ago I was using the computer at my parents’ house when I got a message on facebook from his mom’s account. It was Eddie. He said “Hey. It’s Eddie. Do you remember me?” No, asshole, I forgot how you completely f**king ruined my life. I ignored him, obviously. Someone asked me once if I was mad at him. Of course I was, at first. Then I realized that because of his addiction, he will never have a real relationship with anyone, because he is simply not capable. His own mother sleeps with her doors locked and her purse by her bed. No, I’m not mad at him. I feel sorry for him. He ruined his life, and mine just keeps getting better and more entertaining. He’s going backward, and I keep on truckin’ forward.