Needle (42 page)

Had she been anyone else in the world, I would have concocted a lie to get rid of her. But Marie was special and she happened to have looked worse than ever. As she walked from the kitchen attempting to mask a limp, it was obvious that even at the age of 23 a diet of tortilla chips and Guinness had finally taken its toll. I was awed by the fact that for the first time ever, a concern for someone else’s well being had actually supplanted my own selfish determination to get high. We sat down for a while and talked about what was going on.

“I saw a doctor today,” she confided. “He suggested that I go back
home and I think it would be wise to heed the advice.”

“That sucks, Marie. Coming here fucked you all up and now they’re telling you to go back.”

“It has nothing to do with being here,” she said. “I used to think it did…but it doesn’t.”

“You know, I’m the last person on earth who should be judging anybody. But you’re beginning to look really sick, and I’m beginning to get, you know, kind of worried.”

That was about the best I could offer beyond listening, which I continued to do for two hours as she attempted to explain her illness. Eventually, Marie likened her condition to my own drug addiction and though I couldn’t see the similarities then, I do now. Apparently, by starving and depriving herself of food, she managed to achieve something similar to the false sense of well-being, security, and control that I found at the end of a needle.

Marie had been in the states for only a year to launch a career in charitable fundraising and given her condition, it wasn’t surprising that she met with limited success. But the grave risk to her health was overshadowed by a fear of going back home empty-handed, as some of her compatriots apparently looked down upon those returning from America without the success they set out for.

“Going back to Ireland will be horrific. They’ll torture me. I think when I get back I’ll just hide in my room until everyone forgets that I ever left,” she said with a sad giggle.

“Give me a break,” I said. “What’s the worst that can happen? When you go home just tell them you went to New York to get your career started, but got sick and had to come back. What the fuck are they gonna say?”

“They’ll say it serves me right for trying.”

After two hours of mutual commiserating, I began to feel a churning in my belly and that could mean only one thing: anorexia or not, Marie had to go.

“Are you sure you don’t wanna go out for a few drinks?” she asked as she could sense our chat was coming to a close.

“No, really. I’ve got a session tomorrow and I should be getting some sleep,” I said as I walked her to the door and sent her on her way.

With that I was free to open my Christmas presents while Marie booked a flight to Ireland.

79

As 1995 commenced, Perry got himself situated at the West Side Inn located on 108
^th
Street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues. In the meantime, I became even further immersed in my own debauchery. Throughout the month of January and on into February, each night immediately following my shift at Texas Grill, I’d be at The Laundromat for two bags of dope and as many rocks as the evening’s earnings would allow. Then, I would look forward to getting high for hours and putting my body through the ringer. Night after night I found myself sitting in Jill’s living room with her ukulele in my hands and a sizzling crack pipe between my lips, as I played along to a recording of whatever was last completed in the studio. Then, just as the pipe crackled for the final time I would plunge a loaded syringe into my arm, well before the horrid cocaine crash ensued.

Although I had passing dalliances with crack cocaine before, mainly at the grimy Hell’s Kitchen apartment, I had never before hit the pipe with such ferocity as my intensified drug use had now spun me into a whole new dimension of fucked up. For really the first time, I was no longer rationalizing my addiction as a coping mechanism designed to help me survive the Herculean trials of a starving artist. Now, rather than using drugs as a buffering agent and to help me convince myself that everything was fine, I was using purely for the sake of getting loaded. Although I probably didn’t recognize it as such, issues pertaining to Sections and the CD had clearly become secondary. I was also beginning to look worse than ever, as not only my arms but my face showed signs of the abuse. Like most junkies, I had dark circles under my eyes and was skinnier than I should have been. However, the incessant crack smoking was beginning to wreak havoc with my complexion as well. I looked like an AIDS patient suffering from multiple afflictions, but I didn’t care. Armed with a tube of flesh-toned Oxy-10 I was prepared for anything.

On Valentines Day, which commemorated a month-and-a-half since we’d resumed our relationship, I found myself whispering sweet nothings into one end of a crack pipe while my rekindled passion burned brightly at the other. Then things abruptly hit a snag. As I sat on Jill’s living room floor Indian-style, thrilling imaginary audiences
with spine tingling leads on the ukulele, I suddenly went into convulsions; however, at the time I was completely unaware of what was happening. Actually, it seemed as though someone had grabbed me by the nape of the neck as my head was violently thrust downward, my body folded in half, and my nose was repeatedly smashed against the floor between my knees. While the punishment continued and my nose absorbed at least six or seven solid shots, never did I once even consider the role that intensive drug use may have played in relation to the attack, as I was consumed with the question of how the fuck Gina managed to get into the apartment.

Of course, Gina was nowhere to be found but Perry, who was making an unscheduled visit, had inconspicuously entered the apartment through an open door just as the seizures began. Apparently, besides the cocaine crash, heroin also eliminated those pesky feelings of paranoia that often have crackheads bolting doors, boarding windows, and securing perimeters.

“That was the most fucked up thing I’ve ever seen,” Perry said as the convulsions subsided and I sat there rubbing my forehead and wiping a bloody nose. “It was like ‘The Exorcist.’”

I took a deep breath, leaned back on my elbows, and completely unfolded my body and legs.

“Holy shit,” I sighed as I exhaled the first, post-convulsive breath.

I then rose from the floor and with Perry in tow, made my way to a bathroom mirror to inspect the damage as blood steadily flowed from a nose that was now slightly bent.

“Do you think I look tough?” I asked.

“No,” Perry said. “I think you look like a crackhead with a busted-up nose.”

80

On the morning of March 1
^st
I finally joined Perry at the West Side Inn as Jill’s lease had expired. Rather than renew it, she decided to remain at her parent’s home in Virginia and like Marie, confront her problems in more familiar surroundings.

My new residence was located just south of Harlem. Regardless of its location, this particular hotel was actually respectable and though the bathrooms were communal, they were in much better condition than those of the Midtown and the Whitehouse. Here, residents were mainly graduate students from Columbia University, and I quickly realized that academics were much better neighbors than hookers and pimps. I also temporarily ended my romance with cocaine and to the untrained eye, it may have seemed as though we were beginning to get our lives together. Unfortunately, although my complexion had cleared up, this was hardly the case as I continued to look the other way and slide deeper into an opiated abyss.

“You know, after today, we only have three scheduled sessions,” Perry informed me as I entered my new dwelling for the very first time.

Although nine tracks were almost finished, we had initially slated ourselves to record twelve, and I knew that another fifteen hours of recording would be nowhere near enough time to complete the project as it was originally intended.

“We’re gonna need at least another 50 or 60 hours to completely finish everything,” I plainly stated.

“It’ll never happen,” Perry told me. “Catherine isn’t even returning my calls anymore…and that isn’t a good thing.”

“Fuck Catherine,” was my usual response, which made no sense whatsoever as I foolishly permitted my ego to pretend to call the shots. Launching our careers with the CD would obviously entail a greater effort than merely recording it. Unfortunately, for well over a year now we’d missed virtually every deadline we were faced with and as a result, the promotional trip that Catherine had planned for the college radio circuit in April was now impossible.

That day the recording session would begin at noon and conclude sometime around 4 p.m., and even though I wouldn’t be getting high until after it ended, I decided to get the daily dope purchase out of the way beforehand. Unfortunately, however, the Laundromat didn’t open for business until well after nightfall. Given the circumstances, I could either take advantage of the daylight by heading uptown to score, or scour the downtown area around Houston Street, which, with the dismantling of Angelina’s, was now frequented by several dope dealers bravely peddling on foot. Since police activity had recently increased in Harlem, I foolishly chose the downtown option.

I took the subway to the Second Avenue station, and then headed
east on Houston until I reached Clinton Street and made a right turn. I continued on in that direction until I noticed two junkies getting busted by narcs on the corner of Delancey. I immediately turned around feeling very fortunate that I hadn’t arrived two minutes earlier, and wisely resigned myself to somehow scoring later in the day when things cooled down. Then, as I got back within 50 feet of Houston Street, I recognized a Colombian dope dealer exiting a building.

“Right here, papi,” he said to me as I casually walked past.

“Be cool, people are getting busted down there,” I turned and said nervously as he followed from a few paces behind.

“Don’t worry, papi,” he said as we neared the corner. “How many do you want?”

At first, I thought it unwise to proceed with the transaction in such close proximity to a drug bust and almost kept walking. After all, the last thing I needed was to get arrested and miss the recording session. However, since the dealer had even more to lose, I ignored my instincts and assumed he must have known it was safe.

“Three,” I told him.

He turned around, walked over to a payphone, and then stashed the dope in the coin return. After waiting a moment I then made my way to the phone, retrieved the dope from the slot, and replaced it with $30. With three bags of dope cupped tightly in my hand, I casually continued toward Houston.

As I stepped off the curb, I noticed a black sedan heading in my direction that seemed to be strangely telegraphing my pace. It intermittently fluctuated in speed, either accelerating too quickly to allow me to cross Houston safely, or drastically reducing its pace so it wouldn’t pass me by.

As the car pulled within three feet of me it made an abrupt stop, and as the doors were flung open I knew I was going to jail. Things then proceeded in the usual way, with a direct order followed by a personal attack.

“Put your hands on the car, scumbag!!!” screamed a skinny, black, female police officer who looked not unlike a crackhead herself.

Unfortunately, my right hand was full of heroin, so in order to better comply with the police directive I did what any other junky would do:
I swallowed the dope
.

Although her partner seemed unaffected—as though he’d seen this tactic used before—the skinny, crackhead, lady-cop became incensed. She then shoved me into the front of the car, grabbed me by
my hair and began banging my head against the hood.

“Spit it up,” she said as she continued to bang away. “Spit it up you junky fuck!!!”

Though I had no idea the gag reflex worked this way, I still managed to keep down the dope.

Of course, swallowing the heroin would do nothing to persuade the police to abandon the arrest and allow me to attend the recording session, but I still took some pleasure in the fact that once again a lack of evidence compromised their level of enjoyment. After a few minutes of interrogation, denials, and some name calling, I was thrown into a van right behind a cop in the passenger seat.

“You know,” he said to me, “we saw you swallow the dope, and when it opens up in your stomach you’re gonna be a dead fucking junky.”

Wonderful. As if things weren’t going badly enough already, now there was a chance I might end up dying in prison. I decided to deny the allegation, at least until the autopsy.

“I have absolutely no idea of what you’re talking about…officer.”

Although I continued to deny the charges, by openly divulging the manner by which I disposed of the evidence, the cop had put me in what would later turn out to be a very uncomfortable position.

By the time I made my way through the initial processing stages, Central Booking, and then on to the tombs to await the judge—I’d been incarcerated for over 30 hours which was already a lengthy visit. Apparently, business was again booming, and due to the length of my incarceration I was beginning to feel the onset of withdrawals. Some of my cellmates, however, sported much larger habits and were suffering severely, as their pain would undoubtedly worsen until they saw the judge and were released or placed on the jailhouse methadone program.

One of the truly afflicted was Jake. Approaching seven feet tall he was a monster of a man—not only in terms of height, but in waste line as well which was unusual for a junky. He was big, black, and sweating profusely, and when word got out that I had three bags of dope lingering in my digestive system he started looking at me like I was a pork chop dredged in dope. Even so, in his extremely weakened state, Jake instilled feelings of sympathy rather than terror.

“Please bro. Go over there and take a shit for me,” he pleaded with tears in his eyes while pointing at a metal toilet that was sitting in the center of the cell.

“You’re kidding me, right?” I asked.

“No, man…I’m
begging
you.”