It’s just like you to twist my words around. I think I’d remember, in the midst of all that automobile wreckage, whilst the paramedics were sweeping the windshield glass out of your eyes and the neighborhood was awash in a sea of swirling lights and sirens, if I had promised to stop using crack entirely. Please, that doesn’t even sound like me.

Perhaps in the heat of the moment, when we weren’t sure if you were going to walk again, or if there was anybody home inside that house the Rolls ended up cart-wheeling into, in the passion of that lucid moment I may very well have breathlessly gushed something romantic about not smoking crack any more. And though I do, in the privacy of my own thoughts, think it to be a bit tacky that you’d hold me to a vow uttered under such extreme circumstances, I am nevertheless honor-bound to fulfill that promise, and I verily intend to. No matter how much willpower it takes, and no matter how inconvenient it may be, now and forevermore I shall find other ways to enjoy my crack, other than smoking it. For you, my dear.

And frankly, after I’ve made such a heady promise, and laid such a monumental burden willingly across my own shoulders, I find it a little insulting to have to explain myself to you. Not after all I’ve done to appease your sensitive palette and allay your bourgeois concerns about the health effects of second-hand cracksmoke. Some uncouth individuals might go so far as to suggest that you’re being a bitch. Not that I’d hear a word of it, but rest assured that it has been said.

Surely you didn’t expect me to give up crack entirely. If so, it’s clear that your gains in physical therapy have made you greedy. My crack habit hurts no-one, and if they made car windshields out of candy glass like I’ve been suggesting for years, we wouldn’t have to keep making these inconvenient trips to the hospital every time you forget to wear a seatbelt or are slow climbing into the car. It would also help if you weren’t too impatient to wait for the airbag to inflate. But women will be women.

Or perhaps I’m merely misreading your response, and you’re actually just curious as to how I plan on going about my whimsical crack habit without the aid of my good friend Prometheus, the God of Fire. Perhaps this logistical difficulty has left you dubious as to my sincerity in this endeavor. If this is the case, then we shall have a good laugh over this whole affair, after I fire all the servants that have been calling you a bitch.

My dear, you should know enough to trust my resourcefulness by now! Remember when that police officer wanted to haul me off to jail after that “crack-up” at the courthouse, when I rolled the Benz into city hall? Remember how I bought up all his gambling debts and blackmailed him into gathering his family and leaving town in the dead of night? A man capable of that kind of quick-thinking under fire should be laudably capable of getting by without the same, I say.

No, my dear wife, it’s actually quite simple to powder a crack rock with a razor blade and snort it like common nose candy. Granted, it’s grossly wasteful and expensive to partake of crack in this form, but a promise is a promise. Try to remember that the next time you’re lecturing me about the cost of having one of our Bentleys fished out of the lagoon, would you dear?