Acrobaddict (29 page)

By summer’s end I’d saved enough money to move in with Nick, but Nick had decided to move on. He would continue living with his parents and return to college. I was beyond outraged. How could he do that to me after I had worked so hard? I hated him, but still loved him, and kept to my plan of moving. I would find an apartment close to his new college. He was hesitant, but okay with my idea. He said he would help me move and visit me all the time. I forgave him for changing his mind. I couldn’t believe I had finally accomplished something. Darren drove me to Brooklyn to apartment-hunt and then to find a job. Most apartments I liked turned me down. I wasn’t that surprised, because I suspected my credit was bad. There was one place left to check that was close to my old homeless shelter.

The apartment was a total dump, its floors covered with dead leaves that blew in through screenless windows that wouldn’t shut. The carpet beneath the foliage was moldy and the door frames were slanted and warped. A small, dust-covered chandelier vied for attention in the center of the room, reminding me of my parents’ restaurant. The landlord didn’t run a credit check; it was reasonably close to Nick’s college and within my price range. I said, “I’ll take it.”

There was a second bedroom, and I said to Darren, “You know, we’re forty-five minutes from Manhattan. Do you wanna move in with me and split the rent?” I knew he wanted out of Virginia and was just waiting for me to ask. He wanted in, but wouldn’t be able to move until he sold his car and gave a few weeks’ notice at his job. Driving back to Virginia, we were both proud of our first apartment and amazed to spend money on something other than cocaine and pills.

I moved in November, and as I opened the door to my apartment found it dirtier and ice-cold. The lights and heat didn’t work, and there was a grimy outline where the refrigerator once stood. Nick was supposed to help me unpack, get settled, and find a job, but he didn’t show up.

I was alone in my first apartment with no food, heat, electricity, or the man I loved. I called the utilities company from a pay phone
across the street to figure out what had happened to the heat and electricity, only to learn that my new landlord hadn’t paid his bills. It would take two weeks and a large deposit to get service.

Trying to turn this around, I went to a store, bought a case of beer and some candles, and got drunk. A group of cockroaches in the bathroom found a five-course meal on my toothbrush, nibbling between the bristles. Fearlessly, they continued eating as I stood in the candle’s flame, seeing my drunken face in the cracked mirror; my life was reflected in those roaches, hard to kill and surviving on filth. Even with a heavenly glow, the apartment was a nightmare, a perfect replica of where and who I was: broken, empty, dirty, and depressing, but with a slight glimmer of hope, as represented by the dusty chandelier.

With no success in finding a waiter job in Brooklyn, I tried Manhattan. There is the world and then there is that other planet called New York City. I already hated it, and nothing would change my mind, but my love for Nick kept pushing me to try. After many failed attempts, I found an Indian restaurant that stood out with white Christmas lights around the glass storefront, making it seem cozy and warm. I walked in and a very nice woman quickly greeted and interviewed me. After I told her of my lengthy restaurant experience, she said I would be right at home here, since it was also a family business. I got the job and would start immediately, right there and then. For the next eight hours I ran beautiful Indian dishes back to tables, learned the menu, and met the other employees.

After the shift I took the subway back to Brooklyn. I went home exhausted and proud, slept, and got ready to do it all over again, in New York City.

27

PITUITARY GLAND: PART I

E
NDORPHINS ARE PRODUCED BY THE PITUITARY GLAND AND THE HYPOTHALAMUS IN VERTEBRATES DURING EXERCISE, EXCITEMENT, PAIN, CONSUMPTION OF SPICY FOODS, LOVE, AND ORGASM
. T
HEY RESEMBLE OPIATES IN THEIR ABILITIES TO PRODUCE ANALGESIA—THE RELIEF OF PAIN—AND WORK AS NATURAL PAIN RELIEVERS
. T
HE TERM
endorphin
CONSISTS OF TWO PARTS
:
endo
AND
orphin
,
WHICH ARE SHORT FORMS OF THE WORDS
endo
GENOUS AND M
orphin
E, COMBINED TO MEAN “A MORPHINE-LIKE SUBSTANCE ORIGINATING FROM WITHIN THE BODY
.” “E
NDORPHIN RUSH” REFERS TO FEELINGS OF EXHILARATION BROUGHT ON BY PAIN, DANGER, OR OTHER FORMS OF STRESS
. W
HEN A NERVE IMPULSE REACHES THE SPINAL CORD, ENDORPHINS ARE RELEASED TO PREVENT NERVE CELLS FROM RELEASING MORE PAIN SIGNALS
. A
FTER INJURY, ENDORPHINS ALLOW ANIMALS TO FEEL A SENSE OF POWER AND CONTROL OVER THEMSELVES, ALLOWING THEM TO CONTINUE STRENUOUS OR AGGRESSIVE ACTIVITIES
.

I was twenty-one years old and celebrating New Year’s Eve in my own apartment with Nick and Darren, smoking pot but not taking pills or drinking alcohol, staying within my definition of “recovery.” Darren had moved in after Christmas, and Nick, attending a new college, was visiting more often. Darren landed a great job waiting tables at a restaurant downtown.

I was happy and excited to be working at the restaurant because it was a whole different clientele than what I was accustomed to. Cross-sections of new people piqued my brain to consider different human experiences. People’s dreams created and ran the city and started fueling some of my own dreams, which had been suppressed through years of refining only my addiction. Everyone was aspiring to be an actor, model, musician, or writer, or to simply rise above where they were in their lives. That atmosphere with everyone working hard started to push me out of my long-term grave.

It was the most professional restaurant I had ever worked in, and they ran a tight ship. Mistakes with food orders were deducted from our pay, and everything had to be accounted for on the table to prevent thefts, including water. At the end of the night we pooled our tips, which made us all work hard to make the most money we could as a team. That way we cared and thought about all the customers, not just our own tables. The owner definitely knew how to run a business, and strangely enough, I loved having strict rules in my life.

I joined a gym and started working out again. My self-esteem got a little jolt, but I never spoke of my athletic past and didn’t want to have any connection to gymnastics. I had buried that love and passion and would not exhume it for anyone. I looked into attending community college, but since I owed almost twenty thousand dollars to Staunton and an inordinate amount in student loans, I wasn’t welcome to register.

My mother forwarded two years’ worth of mail to my new apartment—it was mostly a huge pile of bills from mental institutions, ambulance services, hospitals, and rehabs. The pile remained untouched for weeks, but I had to make a dent in it in order to move forward. Ripping each envelope open was like tearing scabs off old memories, a paper trail of the demoralizing things I had done to myself and others, a concrete map of where I had gone and the insanity of my actions.

A new concept crept into my now-abstinent world—credit. I had never considered the notion, especially after taking a handful of pills.
But now I needed credit. Naturally I could not get any because of my past “investments” of money. I didn’t really know what credit was, but I knew mine was bad. All those bills added up to a massive amount of money. There was no way I would ever have that much, regardless of how many tables I waited on. Doomed from the start, why should I even try fixing any of this? After reaching the bottom of the pile, I calculated I owed over forty thousand dollars. A lawyer I contacted through a number I found in the Yellow Pages suggested I file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy to cover the hospital bills—the student loans were all mine to keep.

My family sent me Christmas cards and asked me to come home and visit. After I had been kicked out of my mother’s house, we had talked occasionally, and the recovery my family heard in my voice, along with no new arrests or creations of destruction during the last few months, spoke volumes to them.

Finally, I was behaving and functioning moderately well within society. I bought things I had never wanted before, buying into the illusion that having things made me somebody. I was part of
their
world, having conversational input about VCRs, TVs, Nintendos, and other objects, rather than substances, which gave people pleasure. I wasn’t sure if my new consumerism gave me pleasure, but buying things seemed to be an acceptable way of filling the void. And the more things I acquired, the happier, healthier, and more functional I appeared to others.

A new guy from New Mexico, Stoop, started at the restaurant and we became friends. Since he couldn’t stop talking at the restaurant he was soon fired, but he quickly got a new job delivering weed. Stoop’s company only delivered pot, but it was the best pot I’d ever experienced—pure and dark with a deep, pungent odor. That weed was a rarity, the perfect, seedless kind of bud. Darren, Nick, Stoop, and I hung out and smoked all the time.

I didn’t love New York, but I did start to find some comfort with it, taking advantage of the many free things the city had to offer, like museums, parks, shows, and art. My life was slowly repairing itself.

The warm spring air energized New York’s inhabitants; flowers bloomed, and so did my asthma. After working all day, I began to frequent the city’s emergency rooms, back on the whole regimen of asthma medication I had taken as a teenager. But now, without insurance, and trying to avoid another pile of bills, I had to pay for them in real time. All my proud savings were again going to pharmaceuticals—but this time to prednisone and antibiotics, which made me break out in hives.

I would chug liquid Benadryl that would stop the hives and allow me to go to work without itchy splotches all over my body, but all the medications made me somnolent. My lungs felt like knives were lodged between them, and each breath cut in a little deeper. I was finally diagnosed with pneumonia, which demanded a long recovery time, but I couldn’t miss work. Struggling for air to soak into my lungs, I fought for each breath as I worked my shifts, pushing through the pain to keep homelessness at bay.

Another new guy was hired on at work, a tall Egyptian named Asten. Everyone disliked him—he was always late, got orders wrong, and fell asleep during meetings, and the owner constantly told him he smelled bad. I didn’t smell anything bad and knew what it felt like to be the underdog, so I tried to befriend him. I would keep an eye on his tables and back him up to keep him out of trouble. He seemed withdrawn, always looking at the ground, and I wanted to help him.

One night, while waiting for the subway, I saw him standing in line and said, “Hey, Asten, you live in Brooklyn?”

“Yeah, I’ve lived there for four years.” His achy, scratching voice was familiar, and I recognized it, but couldn’t recall why.

He seemed embarrassed when he asked me, “Joe, do you think I could borrow eighty dollars? I’ll pay you back at the end of next shift. I need to get my phone turned on and can’t do that without a deposit.”

Since I had gone through the same thing, I said, “Of course you can, man,” and handed him the cash.

He never paid me back, and I assumed he needed it more than I did; he was always kind of a mess. There was something off about
him, something almost gruesome that I could never figure out. He reminded me of a zombie—a heartbreaking, soulless man who came out of his crypt to wait on tables.

One night, Asten was in a surprisingly great mood. Looking at him, I noticed his eyes were different, dark brown with pinpoint pupils—the Devil’s eyes—so dark I almost fell into them. I guessed that he was on some sort of painkiller, perhaps Percocet or something, so I asked him to get me some pills to help me breathe. He told me he wasn’t taking pills; he was using smack.

After a month of constant, extreme pain in my lungs, I didn’t think twice about handing him forty dollars to get me some. I liked the sound of smack; it made heroin sound so somber. I gave him a ten-dollar service fee, and after the shift he came back with two bags of heroin, shoved into an empty Marlboro Reds pack. There was a smudged skull stamped on the wax paper and the word
crossbones
printed below. After all that time of wanting to be the gymnastics champion with heroic qualities, the gods bestowed upon me a powdered invitation wrapped in wax paper, bringing my “hero-in”—my crowned heroine.

Finally I held heroin in my hands, and I couldn’t wait to bring it home to Nick and Darren. Trying a new drug with friends was always exciting, the unraveling of a beautiful mystery together and discovering a new feeling. Apparently the heroin makers intensified the potency so we wouldn’t have to shoot it; we could just sniff it for the high, making it less dangerous. I wanted to stay abstinent, but I wanted to try heroin more.