Jason Yamas - Tweakerworld

AN UNNAMED PRESS BOOK

Copyright 2023 by Jason Yamas

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Permissions inquiries may be directed to . Published in North America by the Unnamed Press.

www.unnamedpress.com

Unnamed Press, and the colophon, are registered trademarks of Unnamed Media LLC.

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-951213-70-1eBook ISBN: 978-1-951213-76-3Library of Congress Control Number: 2022948321

Cover design and typeset by Jaya Nicely

Manufactured in the United States of America by McNaughton & Gunn

Distributed by Publishers Group West

First Edition2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

A MEMOIR

JASON YAMAS

The Unnamed PressLos Angeles, CA

You are him and he is you.

Youre 4 when you ascend your first stage. Youre singing Have a Heart, by Bonnie Raitt, to Bonnie Raitt at the Mann Music Center in Philadelphia, and someone shouts that youre a star. You dont know what that means, but you know you fucking love it.

Youre 5 when you sip your first Rolling Rock and encounter the phenomenon of chemical alteration.

Youre 7 when you become an older brother to Christopher and swear that youll forever look after this tiny human while knowing in your guteven thenthat youll hurt him.

Youre 8 when you start a word-processing business and recite the word entrepreneur in the mirror, not knowing its true definition, only that its what people call your hardworking father, who through sweat and tears just purchased a forty-room hotel in Pennsylvanias Brandywine Valley.

Youre 11 when you try on your mothers bra, stuff it with cotton balls, and lip-synch to Whitney Houston.

Youre 12 when you spend your allowance on bright orange pants that make you feel like a rock star, and the kids call you faggot when you wear them.

Youre 14 when you make a small fortune selling Beanie Babies on the black market in back rooms at regional antique shops and indoor Amish markets, learning how a commodity relies on a perception of necessity.

Youre 15 when you fall in love with every one of your straight male friends, cementing the impossible as the desired.

Youre 17 when you spend summer vacation tracking down every hometown guy whos come out since leaving for college, and you realize that secrecy might be the spiciest ingredient of sex.

Youre 18 when you shoot your first film about an ambitious fool teeming with homosexual undertones, and you fail at coming out to the community through creative osmosis.

Youre 19 when your parents divorce, and you now fear youll never cultivate the intimate relationship youve wanted with your father all through childhood.

Youre 20 when youre suspended for selling magic mushrooms, and you spend a year finding your voice as a screenwriter, becoming obsessed with elevating stories of mental illness and redemption.

Youre 21 when you fall in love for the first time and immediately withhold your heart, plagued by an echo chamber of what you assume are other peoples judgments.

Youre 24 when you abandon acting and take a producer job, only to become a functional cokehead instead.

Youre 25 when you admit to a therapist that youre an addict, then never return to her office.

Youre 26 when you believe youve contracted HIV and contemplate suicide for one day.

Youre 27 when you visit your brother in California; he guides you across the Golden Gate Bridge telling you his dreams. You see him for the first time as an individual rather than a reflection of all the qualities you hate about yourself, and you discover friendship has been an option all along.

Youre 28 when you do crystal meth for the first time, a surreptitious binge that lasts two weeks, and you train your brain so well to forget it, to pretend the binge never even happened, so that this is the first time youll ever admit it did.

Youre 29 when you fall madly in love, and you know your compulsions will destroy it.

Youre 30 when this narrative begins, but your story is, of course, already well under way.

I havent slept in four days, although Ive spooned Curt each night to create the illusion, an art form Ill soon master. Ive been smoking crystal meth in my car, hidden as best as possible in normally unlit cul-de-sacs across North Hollywood that are still glistening iridescent with Christmas lights spiraling up the trunks of every palm tree. Its January 2016, and sure, Ive dabbled with this drug a handful of times in past anonymous sexual scenarios, but never to this extent, never for this reason.

Curt wants the boyfriend who will hold him, kiss him, and allow him to be low, especially in these agonizing weeks following his mothers death, but an addiction to speed insists on false exuberance and optimismnot at all what Curt needs.

Id fallen into an Adderall addiction a couple of years ago as a way to cope with a perpetually discontent boss and my chronic perfectionism. Recently, I had resolved to quit cold turkey, determined to salvage my relationship. Then Moira died, and I realized that I couldnt face the trip to Illinois to help Curt and his dad with the arrangementsnot without reinforcements. Problem was, I had run out of Adderall last week, and my 30mg prescription wouldnt be renewed for another two weeks. My dealer who supplemented my supply so I could achieve my now 120mg daily fix would sell only entire bottles. Not wanting to spend hundreds of dollars on a full bottle I had no intention of using, I considered other options. I remembered an article floating around Facebook, a pediatricians open letter to parents allowing their offspring to be prescribed Adderall, comparing its chemical structure with that of crystal meth, arguing the drugs were essentially the same. It was a scare tactic aimed at dissuading parents from making their children amphetamine dependent, but thats not how I read it. A light bulb went on.

In heteronormative circles, finding crystal meth may be challenging, but in modern gay culture, its a click away. Id used Grindr countless times as a single or part of a couple seeking a third. My profile explicitly stated No PnP. By proclaiming that I was not interested in parTy n play, Id avoid messages from men seeking chemsex: the combination of crystal meth and other drugs with high-risk, often anonymous sexual activity. (It is, I should point out, a mostly clinical termIve never heard anyone who engages in that lifestyle use the term chemsex.)

Id avoided this scene because I was certain I wanted something else: specifically, a family life in a midcentury modern designed home financed by my film career, with two children, annual globetrotting vacations, and Curt as my husband. I knew these dreams did not align with those of men who smoke meth in dark rooms, having unprotected sex with strangers for days on end.

So, you see, my decision to purchase a small bag of crystal meth was for the purpose of quitting amphetamines altogether. We would fly to Illinois tomorrow to help Curts father pack up his deceased mothers belongings. Id rise to the occasion (with one last blast to help me get through this stressful time ahead of the trip), and then Id learn how to relax, how to be with Curt, calm, complacent, unaltered. Which means Ive spent the past seven hours organizing the apartment, labeling, alphabetizing, and purging. I packed each of us a tablet loaded with the same six episodes of