My coke habit

This goes way back but I definitely think it is worth re-telling.

In 1984 I traveled in a group called The Come Alive Singers. There were seventeen of us--nine guys and eight girls--traveling around the country. Every night sleeping in a different place, almost always with host families.

Early in the summer we were in Upstate New York, I mean way upstate. At the time, I didn’t know there were still places like this in America, least of all in New York. We were singing at a church in a little town called Williamstown. Some if the church members didn’t even have running water and it was rumored that one lady did her dishes in the bath tub. All of us were hoping we didn’t get put in one of those homes.

At the end of each concert, we were faced with the agony of where and with whom we’d be staying that night. There were some scary looking people in this congregation. Since I was at the top alphabetically, I usually got called first. And on this night, I got placed with a seemingly normal young couple. And I got place alone, which was always nice too, not having to stay with someone else in the group. That way you could break the rules. For example, you could say, "I don't eat breakfast."

It was a Sunday night and this had been our second concert of the day. I was tired. My feet were killing me and I had a painful ingrown toenail on my left foot. I couldn’t wait to get to bed.

We drove several miles out in the country and came to a big, square field surrounded by forests. It was beginning to storm. All that was in the field was a lone house trailer. As we got out of the car, the man said, “Yeah, we had a tornado out here last year.” And I was thinking, “Great! I’m staying in a house trailer and we’re going to have a tornado.”

But we got into the house and I went through the necessary good houseguest duties of making small talk and not immediately going to bed like I wanted to. But it wasn’t long until they must have been tired of me too and it was made clear that I could retire. I couldn’t wait to get those cruel shoes off.

I had this little manicure set. It had two clippers, a file and two other little tools. One of the other little tools was, I would later learn, a cuticle pusher. It was round and flat on the end. The other little tool was sharper and I used it to dig relentlessly at my ingrown toenail. I got some relief and then went off to sleep. I remember in the night feeling an object under me in the bed and even realizing that it was that little cuticle pusher. But when I made the bed up in the morning, I must have overlooked it.

At this point in my life, I hated breakfast, especially eggs. I mean sometimes it took all of my will not to throw up if served eggs. But the rule was that we were to eat what we were served. This couple seemed cool enough that I thought I could get by with breaking the rules and tell them I wasn’t hungry and didn’t want breakfast. They seemed fine with that. And we were rushed as it seems we’d overslept a bit. But just as we were going out the door, I asked for a glass of water to take a Sudafed. I told them, “My nose is kind of stuffy this morning.”

That morning we headed back toward Cincinnati, stopping every night to do another concert. By the next weekend we had a few days off in our home-base, Cincinnati Bible College (now Cincinnati Christian University).

It was heaven to be back in our own rooms and to be able to completely let our hair down before facing the rest of a long summer.

We had a couple of free days and I was catching up on my sleep. Early Saturday morning there was a knock on my door. It was the director of the group. He came in and sat down and he was acting very nervous.

He said, “I don’t know how to tell you this.”

I thought someone must have died so I said, “Just tell me.”

He said, “The people you stayed with in New York say they found a coke spoon in your bed.”

I replied “What’s a coke spoon?” (I truly didn’t know.)

He explained that it is used to freebase and snort cocaine. Suddenly, it occurred to me what they had found in my bed and I started laughing. He went on to tell me that he had defended me when the minister from the church called and assured him that I didn’t have the financial wherewithal to support a cocaine habit nor would I be able to hide such a habit from the group.

In the end, I was asked to write a letter to the couple and to the minister explaining everything to them and in a few weeks, my coke spoon, I mean, my cuticle pusher arrived in the mail.

But I love to imagine the couple putting two and two together . . . a coke spoon, lack of appetite and a stuffy nose. “This guy was using coke in our house!”

I used to see the minister from that church from time to time on campus. When I’d pass by him, I’d always hold one nostril shut and snort a little through the other.