Patti Again

For the few months before we played our first gig, I had been seeing more of Patti. I usually would see her during the week, when Annie was in New York, and Patti's schedule permitted. Being a very capable pharmacist, she worked a lot and her work schedule usually had her tied up on the weekends...which worked perfectly for me, because Annie was coming up on the weekends...sometimes to visit, and sometimes because her bands were at the club...and for a while there was no real conflict in me seeing both of them. Patti was pretty inexperienced with the lifestyle I had always lived, but it was exciting, and she was slowly being seduced by it, by me...and by cocaine. On the occasional weekends that Annie was tied up in New York, Patti would adjust her schedule so she could stay with me at the house, and the whirlwind I was living in meant she was living in it, too. She would also spend time with me there during the week too, since that was often when she had time off from her job. Patti had no experience with drugs, but being around me meant she was around them, and it wasn't long before she discovered that she really loved cocaine. We'd go to my house, drink some champagne, do cocaine for a few hours, and spend a lot of time making love...and the sex was good. I had never been with such a beautiful woman, and I was very taken with her.  What I didn't realize was just how taken Patti was..not only with me..but with cocaine. For her, I think it was an instantaneous addiction. I was so caught up in all the things that were going on in my life, that I guess I wasn't paying attention to that, and I was so used to using drugs, that I never thought about the fact that...she wasn't. I really regret that oversight today, because drugs were very destructive to Patti, and she has never fully recovered from them...and for a long time, I blamed myself. I'm not really clear how much Patti's desire to be with me at that time was about me...or my drugs...it was probably a little of both...but at the time I thought  it was about me. After the record was released, and our first gig was announced, Patti decided that she was going to be there, and she expected me to be with her on that day. I had no idea how I was going to pull that off, because Annie was definetely coming and expected the same thing...and the girls didn't like each other. I knew this could be a real problem for me...and I had to make a decision.