By Steven McCauley

This neighbor of mine, all he does is get high and get laid. He doesn’t work; he doesn’t go to school. He doesn’t go to the gym, to the supermarket, or even leave his house really, except maybe to go to a bar nearby. But for all that being in his house, he only sleeps maybe every three days, only when his body gives out from all the cocaine and cigarettes and sex.

An uncle died and left him a small pot of money. Nothing extravagant, but enough. Instead of investing it, saving it, or buying a three-bedroom in Harlem, he keeps a steady supply of liquor, weed and coke delivered to his apartment, where he sits around playing Xbox and picking up women on Craigslist.

If his postings sound familiar—“Snowman looking for a ski bunny,” for example—that’s part of the trick. “It’s scientific,” he says. “You want to be a newbie, keep it strictly platonic. I had to school myself.” That sets the women at ease, he says, and never gives them a reason to think twice. There is never, ever any mention of sex. They come over for some free coke and a half-sane, harmless good time with a well-mannered Jewish boy.  “Once I get them here,” he says, sprawled out half-naked on his unmade bed, “then I mack them.”

He makes sure the posting is searchable—words like “snow,” “ski,” “party”—then drops a line in all the “personals” sections, everything from “platonic” to “casual encounters.” He picks through the responses with the sort of sick confidence that comes from years of easy scoring. “They’re lucky if they’re smart enough to come see me,” he boasts. He responds via e-mail. Eventually, when it’s clear she’s on the level and he’s not a murderer, they trade phone numbers. No pictures are exchanged because there’s no need to; this is strictly platonic. All along, she stays relaxed and he keeps it casual. The drugs are enough to bring her to his apartment. 

The nice neighborhood in Manhattan is important, he says, to establish his bona fides. His place even has a mezuzah on the front door. But inside, bags of garbage and a week’s worth of unread newspapers pile up inside the door. Improvised ashtrays, empty Marlboro Red packs and empty cognac bottles cover every flat surface. Judging from his coffee table, his breakfast was delivery french fries. 

The only bare spot in the apartment is a foot-long slab of Formica on top of the dresser, where thousands of dollars worth of coke has apparently been scraped and snorted. But when a woman’s coming over, he picks the place up, takes a shower, makes sure that anything worth stealing is shoved away in a drawer: “That’s a fiend issue,” he says. Otherwise, once she’s in his apartment, the woman is welcome to whatever she wants. She feels safe, comfortable. She’s hanging out with an easygoing guy, and an unlimited supply of cocaine and liquor are at her disposal. After five hours and a couple of fifty bags, things just tend to happen.

One professional masseuse went straight for base and getting her freak on—for free. “Once she starts smoking,” he says, “the terms of the negotiations change.” That’s why the only condiment in his fridge is baking soda.

A well-educated  woman’s husband works and she’s young and bored. Another upper-class woman came by at 7 in the morning on her way to work at a glossy magazine. She’s engaged, but that didn’t stop her from coming by for one last party. Another professional woman comes over on her lunch break. 

He even picked up a deaf woman on Craigslist. When he called her number, he got to talk to an operator on a service called “Relay.” The operator would listen to my neighbor’s casual drug slang, then type the conversation out to the deaf woman on the other line. Within an hour, she was at his apartment. They wrote back and forth in Microsoft Word documents. 

One woman went missing. She was a blond model-type, and came by his place on Christmas Day to shoot cocaine and hang out. After she left, he didn’t hear from her again. That’s nothing out of the ordinary, but a few weeks later a relative called up looking for her. No one had seen her in a month, and someone needed to tell her that her husband had overdosed in New Jersey.

My neighbor doesn’t lie in his posts on Craigslist. As horny as he is, what he really wants is company. Staying up for days on end by yourself, plowing through piles of coke and watching porn on your computer, after all, can get lonely. Maybe at some point he’ll find a more legitimate way of meeting people—or at least one that’s less expensive. 

But as I walk past his door on my way to work each morning, he’s sitting in front of his computer, staring at the dull-lit screen.