the biro, bottle, foil and fag ash

This is a crackpipe belonging to a friend of a friend of friend [Fofafoaf].  A piece of tin foil covering the top of the bottle would have a bed of cigarette ash placed in it, the crack sitting on top and the smoke drawn through it.  Fofafoaf says he really likes it a lot, it cuts through his moods, it works where other drugs don’t any longer.  Fofafoaf has been trying many different drugs over the last years; in fact he says he’s been a junkie since he was 12, starting with inhaling gas, glue, petrol fumes, anything.  Fofafoaf started to develop a taste for heroin recently; he’s good company so he can always find someone willing to share his tastes, someone generous enough to share with him their tastes.  Smack doesn’t really do the trick though, the crack does.  Fofafoaf is covering something up with all this he says, he’s hiding from his own mind, forgetting who he is, numbing his thoughts, dulling his anxiety, escaping from this world.  The trouble is that the world keeps coming back at him.  He needs to eat.  He needs to sleep.  He needs to see his children. His friends.  And they are still there.  Like his other world, the one that meets at the end of the biro tube.  He can throw it away but biros are cheap and he is good company.  Plastic bottles are cheap too. Tin foil and fag ash.  These affordable props will become ever more luxurious as Fofafoaf’s backdrop becomes ever more sparse.  Until one day, there is just the biro, bottle, foil and fag ash.  Family and friends, as Fofafoaf knows, are more complicated.  They are the theatre in which the props, the scene and even the play take place.  They’ll remain when the drama is over.   He’s good company though. Not a bad bone in his body.  The residue inside the neck of his bottle can be scraped off and smoked, if needed.

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