And Your Little Dog, Too, by David Sedaris

"There's a place in Portland, Oregon, that sells these doughnuts I like, and I was walking to it early one afternoon when a dark-haired man twenty or so feet ahead of me turned to shout, "Why are you following me?" "I'm not," I said, and I pointed past him, farther down the block. "I'm following that guy in the blue sweatshirt.""

"I have done a mountain of drugs in my lifetime, and not just recreational ones. At twenty-one, I was seriously addicted to meth. Yet I managed to quit-not through the strength of my character but because my dealer moved to Florida and there was no one in Raleigh, North Carolina, to take her place. After withdrawing, I prudently stuck to pot, acid, mushrooms, Quaaludes, and Ecstasy."

Two small unleashed dogs rushed the narrator, snarling, and one bit the left leg just below the knee in an instant. The narrator was walking to buy doughnuts in Portland when a man ahead accused him of following; the narrator clarified he followed someone else. Longstanding visits to Portland since the late seventies reveal frequent encounters with people who appear drug-dependent or mentally ill. Since 2020 decriminalization of small drug possession, public dealing and visible injecting increased, with people bent in the "fentanyl fold." The narrator recounts a past serious meth addiction but later shifted to other drugs and abstinence.

Read at The New Yorker