I needed a vacation from my adult life — from myself, really. I tried new jobs, no job, exercise, meditation, sex, food. Then I tried “molly.”

By Mary H.K. Choi
Photographs by Elizabeth Renstrom and Alex Thebez

It’s 6:30 and I’m waiting in a dive bar with a mug of hot tea. Peppermint. It’s 20 degrees out and my feet are numb. I feel like a narc and look like one and if the guy I was meeting wasn’t someone with whom I’d already attended two of the same birthday parties, I’m sure there’s no way he’d sell me ecstasy. For the record I refuse to call it “molly.”

I’m sitting in the back. He’s seven minutes late. I think about texting him but I don’t want to seem uncool and it’s not like drug dealers have a reputation for punctuality. Or maybe they do — I wouldn’t know. He’s my age, taller than I remember — better looking — and wearing a navy peacoat. It’s not J.Crew because the collar is different and for some reason it’s all I can think about. We talk about the weather and dark internet. We talk about the late Dr. Alexander Shulgin, godfather of ecstasy, and he calls him Sasha — the sobriquet by which his friends knew him — and I eat it up. As if this somehow makes him more credible.

I am a disgusting yuppie monster and I know this.