American Junkie Page 13

  “Yes, he is,” my mom replied.

  “Pretty soon he won’t need help.”

  “When can I use the wheelchair?” I asked.

  “Soon, maybe,” Nick replied, “the problem is that sitting...it might not be good for your wounds.”

  “Can’t you put some kind of pad down or something?”

  “Well....”

  “Come on, man,” I said.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he replied.

  I was feeling stronger, hadn’t had any weepy episodes for a while except occasionally in the shower but I’d been getting used to that too, as if my skin was getting tougher, getting used to water, changes in temperature, weather, things that normal people don’t even think about, things that until recently had all been too much for me to bear. But weren’t we supposed to feel things? Feel everything? No. There was supposed to be some middle ground called normalcy, called being well-adjusted, where we felt things but were able to deal with them, forget about them if they were too painful. I had never been able to find it. I’d always been wide open to feeling everything, like a broken tooth, an exposed nerve, an open wound.

  It was late in the day and I was out on the deck, smoking. It wasn’t too cold. I enjoyed my daily trip out onto the deck, the cigarette, the fresh air. The deck overlooked the back parking lot. I could barely hear the street sounds from Madison, on the other side of the building. It was peaceful and quiet. The whole place was that way, actually. I’d never seen any of the other patients on my forays into the hall or out to the deck. I knew the place was almost full, Greg had said as much, there was even some kind of waiting list to get in. Then where was everybody? Maybe they were all stuck in their beds, like I’d been. Maybe they were all dead, or dying, like I’d been.

  [1983]

  The little plastic syringe glinted in my hand. It was filled with black tar heroin, the liquid like dark tea. I pointed the needle up and removed the excess air. I put the syringe in my mouth and held it with my teeth, like a swimming pirate with a knife. I pushed up my sleeve. This was supposed to be some kind of big deal, a major mistake, some dangerous thing, starting down the slippery slope or some such, but it didn’t feel that way. It hadn’t felt that way when I’d started drinking a lot, when I’d experimented with pot, taken Percodans and booze and gotten sick, hadn’t when I’d gotten shots of Demerol from the hospital, and it hadn’t when Jak shot me up with MDA. And it didn’t feel that way now. There was a feeling of rightness, like it was simply the next step in a natural progression.

  The last six years had proven something to me, confirmed something I’d suspected my entire life. I just didn’t know how to live, in any way shape or form. I simply didn’t know how to make my life move forward. The evidence was all over the place. I’d been in a few bands and each successive one I’d worked harder at and each had been better than the one before, yet each band was less successful than the previous one. I’d never even gotten close to the small bit of success I’d had with my first, when I didn’t know shit and could barely play guitar. The same type of thing had happened with my girlfriends.

  When a relationship started to fall apart, I worked harder to save it but it had always just gotten farther away. And it was the same with every job I’d had. I would make a goal, set my sights on something, buckle down for a while but when I looked up something had changed and I couldn’t see it anymore.

  I knew that life wasn’t going to be a piece of cake. I knew that it wasn’t fair. I knew about obstacles and setbacks and that things took time. I understood the theory of work and how it could save a person, counter some of their negative traits, idle hands, the devils workshop and all that. I understood the theory of coming up against a wall, then finding a way around it, over it, through it or under it, and by doing that bolstering your self-esteem. I knew about persistence, but somehow, I had never been able to get anywhere. I’d never been able to make life happen, the way it was theoretically supposed to. Every time I took one step forward, with whatever I did, I somehow ended up two steps back. It seemed to be different for most people. They set their sights on something, worked towards it and eventually they got there, or at least closer rather than further away.

  For me the world seemed to work on some kind of paradox. I could reasonably predict the outcome, or close to it, of say, reaching for a pack of cigarettes, but beyond that it all got twisted backwards somehow. It went against everything I had been taught my entire life, that I could do whatever I wanted to do, be whatever I wanted to be, but the evidence was overwhelming. The only other explanation was that there was some fundamental flaw in the way I saw the world. Was I delusional? Was I cynical, or just realistic? I understood the theory of focusing on the positive, but a person can only stare at a dead leaf on the ground and marvel at the intricate beauty for so long, eventually they have to raise their heads and face the madness. At any rate, if it were true that I was delusional, then I would have to turn my free will over to someone else. But who? People couldn’t be trusted. God? My mom had put her faith there and all it had gotten her was a pile of misery. I wasn’t about to go down that road. No, this was my life, my free will. One thing was certain, I had exhausted every avenue trying to live like other people. I’d been a dishwasher, busboy, a student, musician, dockworker, house painter, boyfriend, and yet I’d been unable to feel good about defining myself as any of those and financially they had gotten me absolutely nowhere. I could assume those identities for short periods, but in the end it was just play-acting.

  Now I would find out who the real Tom was. I’d been pulled in another direction my entire life it seemed, and resisted it for years, waiting for something to happen, and now I was going to let go. From this point on I was going to stop banging my head against the wall, I was just going to take what was in front of me, stop thinking about the past or the future. I would still do bands if someone asked me, but I was going to stop thinking I could make my life go where I wanted it to, stop thinking I could make it go anywhere. I would stop waiting. Stop dreaming.

  If I couldn’t become something or someone, I would become nothing, no one. I would just disappear, vanish so far off the grid I would never find my way back, even if I wanted to, even if I could. Better to die a slow death on my terms than live a half-assed life on theirs. Better to be free than a slave. Shooting heroin was just the logical next step, there was no reason not to anymore. It went directly to my heart, probably the source of all my problems. There were no detours through a lung or a stomach. It reduced the waiting to the smallest possible amount of time, the most effective way of hitting the target.

  Bulging veins snaked down my arms. I laid the tip of the needle on top of one and stuck it in. I stuck it in. It was easy. I barely noticed it penetrating my skin. I held the syringe in my steady fingers and pulled back the plunger with my thumbnail. A thread of blood spiralled into the liquid. I moved my thumb to the back of the plunger and pushed down until it was empty.

  [1984]

  Davy slammed on the brakes. The ‘69 Impala skidded to a stop, throwing me forward in my seat. A full moon peeked out from behind some clouds. The engine of the Impala wound down to an idle and rumbled, shaking the car. We were on 15th Avenue East. Off to the left, across the street, a tall wrought iron gate guarded the entrance of the Capitol Hill Cemetary. I looked over at Davy from the passenger seat, trying to figure out what was going on. He was quiet, staring out the window, up toward the top of the hill. Jak and Lissa looked at me from the back seat, and I shrugged. Davy was on Southern Comfort and there was no telling what he might do next. The last time had been in Vancouver, with our band Crotch Rockets. We’d run out of heroin, and thinking I was holding out on him, he’d come storming into the after party wielding a sledgehammer, determined to use it on my head. Yogi, the other guitarist, had jumped up from the couch as he was preparing to bring the hammer down and tackled him. They spent the next fifteen minutes kicking the hell out of each other. It went on and on until
eventually someone called the Vancouver Police. They caught us trying to escape in the van, searched it and found empty bottles of booze, syringes and burnt spoons. Somehow we didn’t get arrested. They just told us to get the hell out of their country, quick.

  I leaned over and tried to see what Davy was looking at. There was nothing out there. Nevertheless I had a feeling. Something was going to happen. At the top of the cemetery, mausoleums and large crosses were silhouetted in the glow from downtown Seattle. I was drunk and not thinking and I opened my mouth. “Jimi Hendrix is buried up there, ya know.” Someone had told me that. It seemed to shake Davy out of his trance. He put the car in gear and crept down the street to where the wrought iron gate ended and gave way to a high chain link fence topped with razor wire. Lissa, a chatty blonde that Yogi had been dating, started babbling. Jimi Hendrix this, Jimi Hendrix that. It was a bad idea, and I thought about trying to shut her up, but gave up. She didn’t have the nickname Chatterbox for nothing. I sat back, lit a cigarette, and waited for the inevitable. Davy slowly backed up the car and turned the wheel until we were perpendicular to the street and aimed right at the top of the cemetery. The Impala’s V8 roared, the tires squealed, and I was thrown back into my seat.

  The Impala hit a small dirt bank where the sidewalk should have been and it launched the front end into the air, the car partly crashing down on the fence. Davy jammed the Impala in reverse, and after spinning the tires, he gained traction and backed the car across the street and tried again. Lissa was freaking out. Eventually after about ten tries, Davy finally gave up and, fuming, drove down to Lissa’s apartment by Broadway to get rid of her.

  When we got there, somehow she had changed her mind and didn’t want to get out. It was then I noticed a row of about ten small, bushy and newly planted trees on the sidewalk strip. I opened my mouth again. “Hey Davy, look at those trees.” He’d already run over dozens of stop signs that evening. It seemed to be what he was into on this particular bender, running things over. It was generally accepted that something would get destroyed when he was on Southern Comfort. He looked at the trees for a second, then the Impala’s engine roared, and suddenly we were halfway up on the sidewalk, speeding toward the trees. They fell under the car’s bumper one by one. Fwap! Fwap! Fwap!

  I came to slowly. There was a ringing sound in my ears, and my vision was messed up. The horn was honking on and off. The fan was dinging on something. I couldn’t seem to focus. Looking hard, I saw there was black oil and lime green antifreeze all over the broken windshield and the wipers were going, smearing it all over. My head throbbed. I touched my face. There was blood. I could barely make out the bent up hood through the windshield, and the telephone pole the hood was partly wrapped around. It had been hidden behind the trees. Davy came to and put the car in reverse. The motor was making a loud grinding noise, but he managed to back up into the street. He put the car in drive, hit the gas and drove the broken smoking car kicking and screaming straight across Broadway through a red light, his head hanging out the window. Now the stoplights were speaking to him too. Smoke was pouring out of the engine. I heard sirens approaching. The once sleek and fast Impala had changed into an Angry Wounded Donkey.

  [1985]

  The midday sun drilled into my back. My fist seemed to be moving in slow-motion as it knocked on the door. I’d been up for a couple days, another coke binge. I’d been doing more and more drugs lately and less and less of anything else. My whole body ached, and I was tense and stiff, doing my utmost to just hold on, stand there and keep moving my hand. I waited, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. I could swear my joints were creaking, like they always did when I was coming down. I knocked again. I watched my fist hitting the door and the fear seemed to lessen a little. Lupe finally opened the door and I walked in out of the light.

  It was just like every other dealer’s apartment I’d been in, stuffy from the windows being closed, dark from the drapes being drawn, and hot from the heat being on full blast and the smell of Spanish cooking. Cheap furniture was scattered around. A Catholic shrine had been assembled along one wall, red velvet cloth draped over some sort of wooden crate. On top were candles in cylindrical glasses with religious figures painted on them. Saints, or something.

  There had always been Mexicans and Latinos selling drugs in Seattle, but the last few years it seemed like they were everywhere. There were still the old places, like Second and Pike downtown, but now there was also the Pike Place Market, which had turned into a sort of drug drive-thru. All a person had to do was cruise through slowly and nod at the right person. They would hop in and that was that. It was even easier than getting bananas. That required stopping and getting out of your car. Dealers also hung out at the Victor Steinbrueck Park at the end of The Market or one could walk into any number of bars in Belltown, Pioneer Square, The University District or Lower Queen Anne where dealers sold drugs openly. Charlie’s Tavern on 8th and Pike was my favorite. They’d filmed some of that movie House of Games there. I’d walk in and instantly get swarmed by four or five dealers chanting ‘coca-chiva, coca-chiva,’ and I’d walk out two minutes later with everything I needed, usually good quality. If the bars were closed there was also The Seattle Apartment Hotel, right around the corner from Charlie’s, across from The Paramount Theatre, a notorious three-story drug hotel where you could score 24/7. Every single one of the rooms had the doorframes nailed back together, splintered countless times by the cops.

  I sat down in a chair across from Margarita. He was Cuban I’d heard, but beyond that I didn’t know what he was. He toyed with a long thin cigarette, occasionally gazing across at me. Lupe, his weird girl/boyfriend, was doing something in the kitchen. I heard the sink turn off and on and dishes and pots clanging.

  “What do you want?” Margarita asked.

  “Some coke,” I said. Margarita calmly puffed on a cigarette and made some feminine hand gestures.

  “How much?” he asked.

  “A quarter gram. But I don’t have any money.”

  God, I hated this. But whenever I did coke I got totally out of control, I had to have more and more. The come down was especially bad. If I was lucky I did heroin until I passed out. Not so lucky I would drink. I’d guzzled vermouth, even mouthwash once to knock myself out.

  “You already owe money,” Margarita said.

  “I know,” I said, hanging my head. He paused and seemed to think for a minute. Then he stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. He walked over next to the chair where I sat and put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Maybe we can work something out.”

  The bathroom was cramped, lit up by a bare light bulb above the mirror. Margarita sat down on the toilet. I closed the door so I could stand in front of him. His face was six inches from my crotch. He looked up at me and smiled. There was a weird gleam in his eye and his face was sweaty. I don’t know what his motivations were, probably just some weird power trip. I’d seen it before from drug dealers, how they used their power to make people do things. He undid my belt and unbuttoned my pants. I watched with a strange detachment, like I was watching something on TV, as he pulled down my pants, and then my underwear. This was, at least, not as humiliating as begging for drugs.

  I felt his hands on my legs. Then I felt his mouth. It was wet, sliding all over me. I looked down, but my emotions were somewhere else. He tried to arouse my cock with his mouth, but it was soft, like a big slug. His mouth pushed it around. The stubble on his face scraped like sandpaper on the inside of my thighs. I stopped looking and stared at the wall, waiting for it to be over. After about five minutes he gave up. He stood up, and reaching into his pocket, handed me a bag of coke.

  [LATE 1985]

  After three days I had finally gotten into Detox. I’d had to show up every morning at 6AM, then wait for up to three hours to see if they had a bed available. It was their way of weeding out the ones who weren’t serious about quitting. It would have been much faster if I’d poured a bottle of b
ooze over my head and then pretended to pass out on a downtown street. Then the detox van would have probably picked me up within an hour.

  The holding tank was long and narrow. Benches lined the walls and everything was bolted down, so it couldn’t be made into some kind of weapon or suicide device. A little light shone down from stained fluorescent lights on the ceiling. There were no windows, just a steel door. It’d been painted a thousand times from the looks of it, as had the walls. Drunks in various stages of consciousness were sprawled out. Some completely gone, flat on their backs on the floor. Others sat on the bench talking to no one. These were the ones who were conscious. Most were stuck somewhere in between and couldn’t talk but sat there mumbling. Occasionally the mumbling would gradually taper off, I would look over, and sure enough they were tipping over onto the bench or the floor.

  After about two hours, they called my name and took me upstairs. I was nervous. I had quit before, but each time had gotten progressively worse. The first time had been fairly easy, like I had the flu for three days. But each time I kicked, my brain caught on a little more, and eventually it recognized that I didn’t have to wait in misery for days until this sick feeling was over. It could all be over in a flash, I could feel better with just one shot. Better than better actually, not covering up the sick with something else but having it removed completely. Gone in an instant. I had acted on this enough times now that my brain was getting hooked too, not just my body.

  An old crony at the desk assigned me a bed. Meds wouldn’t be for a few hours so I wandered around. The place was dingy, the air heavy and stale, like the toxic sweat coming off the drunks and junkies had been trapped in there for a century. The old carpet looked like it had been puked on a thousand times and a sour smell was coming off it. The walls in the hallways were smeared with streaks of something, and had that thousand coat of paint look. In the smoking room, the walls were even darker. Coffee cans full of butts sat on the floor next to chairs. There weren’t any junkies that I could see, just drunks. Now the alcohol was leaving their bodies and being replaced with weird drugs. They would shuffle around aimlessly, some of them mumbling but not forming words. I sat out in a makeshift day room and tried to read a magazine. One of the drunks came shuffling by with his head bowed, not quite far enough to tip over but close, the tiny spinning gyroscope in his head still working somehow. Occasionally a thread of spittle would leave his open mouth, stretch down toward the ground, swing, then break and fall. It would reach for the floor but never quite make it. If he noticed something, he would stop, and turn his hunched over body toward whatever it was he thought he noticed, and attempt to lift his head up and see whatever it was, usually nothing, and he would slump over again, rotate back and shuffle on.