Needle (39 page)

On October 20
^th
Perry left a message on my mother’s answering machine, saying that he was about to be discharged from the hospital and that he’d be calling me back on the following day. I hadn’t heard from him, however, and was beginning to get concerned. I was suddenly down to my last few bags of dope, very little cash, and only about 60 milligrams of methadone. Then, at about 8 p.m. on October 23
^rd
, the phone rang and it was Perry.

“Hey, what’s happening?” he said with slurring jubilation.

“What’s happening with you?”

“I finally escaped from Gina’s.”

He sounded fucked up. Typically, even when Perry was completely annihilated I could rarely, if ever, detect it—so if he was slurring his words he had to be close to comatose.

“What the fuck were you doing at Gina’s?” I asked.

“Withdrawing.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah.”

“Then why do you sound so fucked up?”

“Because I’m completely wasted. Meet me at the Polish diner.”

I caught the 8:53 express train into the city and met him at the diner just before 10 p.m. Apparently, the moment his regimen of antifungal medications had run its course, Perry was ejected from the hospital by administrators who saw him as nothing other than a continued flight risk and a dangerous liability. Completely broke and with nowhere else to go, he managed to weasel his way back into Gina’s good graces and her new apartment in Sunnyside. I’m sure he assumed that, as usual, she would lend him some money until he got himself re-settled. Unfortunately, Gina had decided that she would no longer be an enabler, and seized the opportunity to exact her brand of tough love upon his broken junky spirit.

During his stint in the hospital, Perry had been doing between
three and six bags of dope per day, which he managed to pay for by selling his methadone on the street or by crying about recording costs to Catherine. As a result, for three days he went through a horrid detoxification and no matter how much he begged, Gina refused to give him a penny or even a chance to step outside the apartment. She even confiscated his beeper, which, in the most painful example of poetic justice doled-out so far, prevented Perry from getting that all-important page from the cop, as well as several bundles of dope that were promised in exchange for his treacherous testimony.

Gina had taken two days off from Barry’s Bagels to closely monitor Perry’s activity, and then before returning to work she had phone service temporarily suspended. She then left him stranded and penniless in her Queens apartment to enjoy one final afternoon withdrawing on the bathroom floor, confident that he was in no condition to leave—let alone score. Unfortunately, she underestimated a dopesick junky’s will to survive.

“After she left for work this morning I found a bunch of change under the couch cushion and paged Winston from a payphone,” he slurred.

Winston ended up driving into Queens to pick-up Perry, and then delivered him to Catherine’s where he secured the funds necessary to become whole again.

“Where’s mine?” I asked.

“Winston only had five bags to sell,” said the voracious junky. “Let’s go uptown and get some more.”

It was just before 10 p.m., and though I was a bit reluctant to venture into Harlem at night, the fear of getting murdered uptown was trumped by the fear of getting busted downtown—so I decided to take my chances. However, at this hour it would be difficult to camouflage ourselves as commuters waiting for transit connections at 125
^th
Street. With that in mind, we hopped on the #6 and headed to 110
^th
Street as Perry had recently stumbled upon a dope dealer working out of a condemned building on 111
^th
.

After ascending from the subway I was immediately struck by how deserted the area was. We took a right turn at 111
^th
Street as Perry then led me to the middle of the block and what
appeared
to be a completely abandoned brownstone. Then, through a doorless doorway I followed him down a long hallway as I could see the light of a candle flicker in the distance.

Before we reached the end of the corridor, a head suddenly
popped out of the darkness from around a corner and then vanished as quickly as it appeared. Perry immediately moved in the direction of the vanishing head which belonged to a dope dealer who’d set up shop in one of the building’s decrepit rooms.

“You sneakin’ out of the hospital again?” the dealer asked.

“No,” Perry responded. “Give me a bundle.”

“You is one fucked up white boy…sneakin’ out of the hospital and shit…
crazy muthafucka
!”

As I came into view and the dealer caught sight of me for the first time, his demeanor changed from amusement to paranoia.

“Who the fuck is that?!” he asked.

“Don’t worry about him,” Perry responded.

“You a cop?” the dealer asked me.

“He’s the furthest thing from a cop,” Perry explained before I had a chance to giggle. “Here’s the money. Give me the fucking dope.”

At that point I knew we
had
to be crazy. Neither of us was even dopesick and yet we still found ourselves buying heroin in the bowels of a condemned Harlem building after dark.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here before we get killed.”

We headed out into the darkness and toward the subway when Perry suddenly descended to the lower level of another deserted brownstone. Initially, I thought it was a bad idea, but when I saw the expression on his face it wasn’t long before I was joining him at the bottom of the staircase to tap a vein.

The next thing I recall was my seemingly lifeless body being dragged back up the stairs and onto the sidewalk. Later, Perry would tell me that for a moment he was certain I’d died. But of course, I wasn’t at all dead but had merely returned to the womb right there on 111
^th
Street.

“Come on, dude,” Perry tried to rouse me. “You better get up before this gets ugly.”

Unfortunately, by this point it was already ugly as I was much more an observer than an actual participant in the events surrounding me. Certainly, I was aware of what was happening—but unable to move, speak, or react in any way. Although my consciousness still lingered it had in some way become detached, and though at no point did I leave my body to hover over it all, I would definitely describe it as an
out-of-body
experience.

Eventually, I found myself being flung like a rag doll over the shoulder of a gigantic black man who then proceeded to throw me into
the backseat of a cab. I remember feeling helpless and thinking he could have easily killed both of us and might have, had Perry not commissioned him to scoop me up off the floor.

Somehow, as we neared the train station at 125
^th
Street, I sobered-up just enough to be able to step out of the cab and have Perry lead me in the right direction. As we approached the staircase leading up to the platform, we were confronted by a rush of police activity. Fortunately, on this particular occasion, junkies weren’t the intended prey and crackheads scattered like roaches as the hunted and the hunters sprinted by.

Perry waited with me at the station for about an hour. At around 11:50 the train arrived and I was back at my mother’s apartment by 1 a.m. As I unlocked the door and gently turned the knob, it seemed as though I had again been transported back to 1980. I nervously felt my way around the dark apartment, careful not to bump into anything or even turn on a light and chance waking her.

With my right hand feeling for the wall, I tiptoed toward the couch and decided to call it a night right then and there. I was still very obviously fucked up and refused to compromise the safety of silence with a noisy trip to the bathroom. Apparently, even a bladder full of urine and a mouthful of grimy teeth failed to provide the incentive necessary to risk awakening the beast.

With tiny steps and in complete darkness, I very slowly made my way through the living room until at last, my left foot grazed the base of the couch. Mission complete. I heaved a huge sigh of relief and then turned to sit down. However, I must have misjudged the target or overshot my landing, because what I assumed would be the edge of the couch—was actually the edge of a glass end-table that noisily shattered under the weight of my bony ass. Then, for an immediate encore, as I landed on the chard-strewn floor my head hit the wall and the impact brought down a set of shelves. It was a remarkably loud and drawn-out demolition.

“WHAT WAS THAT!?!?!”
my mother screamed from her bedroom as the last, glass, trinket finally exploded onto the floor.

“It was the wind—go back to sleep.”

Unfortunately, she didn’t take my advice. After providing an on-the-spot assessment of the damage, my mother suggested that I find someone else to visit. Interestingly enough, my stay was terminated before I ever had a chance to see my sister.

The very next day, I packed up my belongings and headed for the
train station under the assumption that I could stay with Jeff until things got sorted out. It was probably for the best anyway, now that Perry was out of the hospital and would eventually be looking for a place to live.

I boarded the 7:38 a.m. express train to Manhattan, and took a seat next to a middle-aged woman with a briefcase on her lap and a newspaper in her hands. As the train left the station she turned to me.

“Look at the filth they print in that cesspool of a city,” the woman said in complete disgust as she showed me the front page of the New York Press.

She had an old issue of the paper and though I can’t remember exactly what the headline read, she was offended by the cover story. It began with a blow-by-blow account of the writer’s first experience with heroin, and then provided a glowing endorsement for the drug, as well as the impression that it can be casually used and safely experimented with.

“Isn’t that just the most irresponsible piece of journalism you’ve ever seen?” the woman asked me.

In the article, it was clear that the writer was enjoying the honeymoon stages of what would likely become his own addiction to heroin. He explained how the buzz was the most pleasurable he’d ever experienced as well as the most cost-effective, and that the side effects were negligible. In fact, he likened the nausea to “a toothless baby alligator trying to gnaw its way out” of his stomach. Three years earlier, I could have written virtually the same article.

“Yeah… It is.”

75

“Hey man, I really need a favor,” I said to Jeff from a payphone in Grand Central Station.

“Forget it.”

“I haven’t even said what it is yet!”

“OK, what is it?”

“I need to stay with you for a few weeks until I get an apartment.”

“Nope.”

“Come on—man!” I pleaded. “I really need to get back in the studio and finish this thing. I promise, just a few weeks—and you’ll never have to look at me again.”

“Fuck you and your shitty band.”

“Please?”

“No problem. Come over whenever you want,” he said. “But I probably won’t be here. Do you still have a key?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I’ll see you when I see you. And don’t smoke all of my fucking weed!”

Thank God for Jeff. If it wasn’t for him, I definitely would’ve ended up at the Whitehouse Hotel, which is precisely where Perry was banished to after he outsmarted Gina, got us high, dropped me off at the train station and then returned to her apartment. So, before October was over, I relocated to Jeff’s and then immediately set out to look for another miserable waiting job. I still had about 30 bucks and 60 milligrams of meth, so I felt confident that I could find one and make it through training.

As luck would have it—during my very first afternoon back in the city—I secured a position at Blockhead’s Burritos on Third Avenue, about a mile from Jeff’s building. I then returned to his apartment and unexpectedly found him there, banging out Beethoven on the piano.

“How’s it going, junky?” Jeff asked as he stopped playing and I crossed the threshold of his dwelling.

“I found a job,” I answered without much enthusiasm.

“That’s good. At least one of us should be slaving away in a shitty restaurant.”

“What do you mean?”

“I got fired from Serendipity three weeks ago,” he said joyfully with a gleam in his eye.

“No shit?”

“I kid you not, sir.”

“Then what the fuck are you so happy about?”

“Oh, nothing much…just
THIS!!!
” he said as he gleefully waved a slip of paper in the air—
like a lady trying to flag a cab with a hanky
.

“By the way—
that’s
why everybody thinks you’re gay,” I pointed out while realizing that the slip of paper was actually a check.

“What the fuck are you talking about?!?!”

I couldn’t elaborate on his girly gestures any further as I was
suddenly overcome by both envy and admiration. After years of contentedly waiting tables and performing in fringe productions, Jeff must have finally landed the role of a lifetime.

Lucky motherfucker!!! I can’t believe it. OK, fine, I love Jeff and this is exactly the break he deserves. But fuck! He wasn’t even looking for it and it just fell into his lap. No, that’s not quite true. He’s been at it for a while. Maybe that’s how it happens. Maybe you just have to be patient and work hard and then suddenly—after a lot of blood, sweat, and tears—someone walks up to you and hands you a check that changes your life. I wonder how much it’s for. I bet it’s for at least ten grand. Shit, I think I can see a one and a two. Maybe it’s 12,000. Fuck—I wonder if it’s for a $120,000!!! From the way he’s acting, it might be. God, I can’t stand the suspense any longer. I wish he would just tell me already!

“A hundred and twenty bucks!” he announced, as he continued to wave around an unemployment check like he was planning his retirement.

“Big fucking deal,” I said. “Perry pumps that much into his arm every other day.”

One of the many downfalls to working as a waiter or waitress is the limited compensation provided in the event of termination. Because incomes are gratuity-based and impossible to determine precisely, restaurants typically claim them as being roughly ten percent of an employee’s sales, which translates into about half of what is usually generated. Although the conservative estimate is beneficial at tax time, as far as unemployment compensation and social security benefits are concerned, it has
severe
drawbacks.