Needle (45 page)

“Yeah, OK—whatever.”

About two hours later I was led to a courtroom and did as instructed, but without any real conviction or interest in the proceedings. I was consumed by only my emerging withdrawal symptoms and the fact that I’d missed final mixdown over nothing other than police suspicion. Regardless, the hearing was scheduled for July 15
^th
.

I was released at around 9 p.m. on Monday evening, and after visiting The Laundromat I returned to the West Side Inn. When I arrived, Perry was missing and I decided to give Nick a call to see how things had transpired at the studio in my absence.

“How’d it go last night?” I asked him the moment he answered.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean,
what do I m
ean?”

“Nobody showed up.”

“Perry didn’t stop by?”

“Nope,” he said. “I waited there until one, and then gave you guys a call but nobody answered the phone. I assumed you decided you were happy enough with the last two tracks as they were, so I dropped the tapes off at Ballistic this afternoon.”

Without another word, I slammed the phone down and started cursing. Of course, I wasn’t angry with Nick because the tapes had to be at Ballistic that day, finished or not. However, this did little to mitigate the fact that the final product was now compromised. Although seven of the tracks were clean, balanced, and virtually flawless, “Valentines” was far from crisp and “Living in the Land of the Lilies” sounded like it was recorded in a can—and it broke my heart. Now I would break Perry’s face. Unfortunately, when I awoke on Tuesday morning he was still nowhere to be found.

That junky motherfucker! He gets himself all fucked up, blows-off the session, and now he just happens to be missing in action. OK. FUCKING FINE!!!

I placed a call to Gary Reinstein at Ballistic Communications. Gary was charged with overseeing this stage of the project, and I needed a moment of his time because there were going to be some changes. I decided that if all aspects of the recording were ultimately my responsibility, and everyone else was willing to let things slide—then fuck it; they were all expendable and I wanted there to be some indication of that on the disc.

“What are the changes?” asked Gary.

Though initially intended to be a self-titled debut, I told Gary that the CD itself should be given a name.

“Do me a favor,” I told him. “On the cover, just beneath ‘Sections,’ I want you to print the words, ‘For Now.’”

I realized that “For Now” was as good a name as any, because it was the title of the first track—
and
because it now perfectly defined Perry’s involvement with the band.

Unfortunately, I didn’t stop there. Just for good measure and because I was feeling particularly spiteful, I had any mention of Matt’s name completely deleted.

“Hey man, by the way,” Gary said. “Nick just dropped off the masters yesterday and a lot of us really dig you guys. But I’ve been around the industry for a while now, and uh, well, you know—”

“Spit it out, brother,” I said.

“The acknowledgement you wrote for the insert is maybe…a little inflammatory.”

“What are you talking about?”

And then he read my very own words back to me:

“Additional thanks go to the Delancey Street Clinic for convincing me to bypass methadone and remain faithfully addicted to heroin, New York City’s Legal Aid Society for keeping us out of jail and in the studio—most of the time, Dr. Wendel for keeping Perry’s drug-ravaged heart beating long enough to see the completion of the disc and last, but not least, the former members of Sections for calling it quits so we could get a real band.”

“Craig, I really think you need to tone this down a little,” Gary recommended. “I mean, I like some of it. It’s very rock & roll and everything, but this kind of stuff is gonna scare away the big labels and eventually, that’s who you really wanna get a deal with. And besides, I know that Catherine isn’t going to be happy with it either.”

Apparently, contrary to popular opinion, record companies
don’t
like signing heroin addicts to recording contracts.

“Fine, at this point I don’t even care anymore,” I said. “Delete what you want but keep as much of it in tact as possible.”

“Will do,” he said. “As soon as we make the glass master, we’ll send the proofs over to you and Catherine for approval.”

I disengaged with Gary and later that evening Perry finally appeared. But before I had a chance to berate him for blowing off the session, he informed me of the new milestone.

“Sixty-three hours in the system,” he announced. “A new world record.”

84

During the first week of June, Catherine packed a few bags of clothes, a box of CD’s, and a list of college radio stations to visit before heading out to promote
For Now
. Perry then packed a few bundles of dope, a box of syringes, and a bottle of meth and decided to
join her. As a result, I was left alone at the hotel for about four weeks while they trekked westward through college towns en route to their ultimate destination—Pittsburgh. It was there where Catherine determined she could get the biggest bang for her buck, as the city and surrounding area hosted a number of universities and colleges.

While they were on the road trying to generate a buzz, I became engulfed in a cloud of self-medicated complacency. The CD was finally finished and now I could sit back, relax, stay profoundly fucked up and wait for my future to begin. In the meantime, however, safely scoring on the streets of Manhattan had become next to impossible. Angelina’s was long gone, Hell’s Kitchen was sanitized, The Laundromat had been raided, the area around Beth Israel was barren, the East Village was a police trap, and I couldn’t set foot in Harlem without the dealers
thinking
I was a cop and the cops
knowing
I was a junky. As a matter of fact, buying heroin in Manhattan had become so complex that before Perry headed out west, we actually resorted to scoring near the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. Of course, Giuliani was dubbed
Drug Crusader Extraordinaire
, as he dedicated a sizeable chunk of the city’s resources to eliminating the scourge. Unfortunately, the trains were now filthy because you never get something for nothing and quite frankly—I felt cheated by the fiscal refiguring.

In any event, once Perry left for Pittsburgh I realized that I lacked testicles large enough to fly solo in the Bronx. As a result, the only remaining spot that wasn’t necessarily an arrest waiting to happen was Houston Street, which was still risky and precisely where I was caught swallowing my stash a few months earlier. Even with the unpleasant memory, however, the day after Perry departed I found myself slithering around the area.

For about fifteen minutes I searched for a dope dealer. Then, as I made a right onto Clinton I noticed someone running in my direction. However, he wasn’t exactly running, and as he came closer I could tell he was actually skipping along the sidewalk. I soon realized it was Crackhead Jim and that he’d apparently lost his mind, as he continued to bounce down the block while waving to passing strangers—just like a little kid starved for adult attention.

“Hey crackhead!” I blurted out as he almost skipped right by.

“Dude! What’s up?” he said.

“I’m trying to score,” I told him. “I’ve been walking around here for fifteen minutes and I can’t find a fucking thing.”

“No shit, dude! It took me an hour but I finally copped a bundle,” he said which helped explain his insanely joyful demeanor.

Crackhead Jim was kind enough to sell me a couple of bags from his stash and I immediately got out of the area. After returning to the West Side Inn, I darted into a downstairs bathroom to get off, and while loading the syringe I detected the presence of someone in the adjacent stall.

“Is that downtown shit?” the stranger asked as I caught him peering over the wall. With some anxiety I stopped what I was doing and carefully responded.

“What the fuck are you looking at, dickface?!”

“Don’t worry, man. I’ve been standing here for ten minutes trying to take a piss,” he said, which was a subtle way for him to identify himself as a junky because dope usually makes peeing more trouble than it’s worth. “You know, you don’t have to go downtown to score. There’s a spot on 106
^th
and Columbus—and it’s not
nearly
as hot.”

“That’s good to know,” I said, not sure what to make of my new acquaintance. He did look familiar, however, and I could only assume that we had frequented some of the same dope spots. Regardless, it was odd to find another junky living at the West Side Inn because of its cost of lodging, which vastly exceeded that of a flophouse or what a typical addict could afford. But Richard Greenberg was hardly typical, and in between fixes he attended Columbia University’s prestigious medical school.

While Perry was away, the doctor and I rapidly developed a meaningful friendship as each night we nodded off together in my room. It may not seem like much, but it was about the best a couple of newly acquainted junkies could hope for. Eventually, I would learn that the doctor was failing miserably after only his first semester of medical school. Of course, he knew it was just a matter of time before his doting parents discovered his fall from grace and the jig was up, but in classic junky fashion he decided to look the other way and enjoy the plummet while daddy was still paying the bills. Actually, it was a terribly sad situation.

“I really would’ve loved to have studied contagious diseases,” he once told me in a moment of somber reflection as he mourned the death of his unborn medical career. “It’s always been one of my favorite subjects.”

“Why don’t you study the subject of drug addiction?” I jokingly suggested.

“That wouldn’t work out either, I’m afraid.”

“Then why not
become
the subject of a study about drug addiction?” I said with a grin while trying to lighten the mood.

The mood didn’t lighten, and within a few weeks the doctor disappeared from the hotel.

85

Perry and Catherine returned to New York during the first week of July. Apparently, even though it was summer, the CD was well received and supposedly getting some airplay.

But if a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it actually make a sound?

Though I was quick to criticize the promotional effort, I was also quick to embrace its positive results as justification to continue along in my opiate-infused version of reality. It seemed I could finally relax and patiently wait for the excitement to unfold. Unfortunately, my complacency with the situation ended the moment I was fired from Bella Luna for being a junky, or at least looking like one. Although I was never provided with a specific reason for the dismissal, I knew that my lifestyle was visibly taking its toll, and the effects were more noticeable on certain days than others.

After getting booted from the restaurant, I skulked back to the hotel and worried about the immediate future. Rent was due within a couple of days and I was almost completely broke. Of course, Perry would support my drug habit until I found another job, but I knew he wasn’t making enough money to pay the rent entirely by himself.

When I got back to the room Perry was there, nodding on one of the beds.

Shit, I don’t wanna tell him I got canned. He goes out on the road with Catherine to promote the disc, and then comes right back to work while I get fucked up and fired. What the fuck is wrong with me? Why can’t I hang on to a job when he does twice as much dope and still manages to hold it together? I’m such a fucking loser and now I’m down to 20 bucks and two bags of dope
.
WHAT THE FUCK AM I
GONNA DO?!?!

“Hey, Gina’s place is empty and we can stay there for free,” Perry suddenly blurted out.

IM GONNA TAP A VEIN, STRETCH OUT, AND RELAX!!! THAT’S WHAT I’M GONNA DO!!!

Apparently, Gina had finally found someone willing to impregnate her, and before he had a chance to come to his senses she immediately whisked him away to some desolate, southwestern town. The sudden relocation required Gina to pay for three remaining months on her lease, but she felt the pros vastly outweighed the cons. Now, there would be nothing other than an occasional cactus or a rolling patch of tumbleweed to distract the father of her future offspring from staying on course. So, before the next week’s rent was due, Perry and I vacated the West Side Inn and headed to Gina’s apartment in Sunnyside.

Although we were forced to sleep on the floor of a virtually barren apartment with no hot water, electricity, or phone service—I felt like I was living the life of a rock star. While each day Perry continued to work at The Boulevard, I remained unemployed and medicated in the dark apartment. There, I spent my days alone in a nodding reverie of self-satisfaction until Perry returned, at which point I booted again as we then sat around and discussed how fabulous we were.

On the morning of July 15
^th
I awoke and realized I was expected to make an appearance in court to address the trumped-up trespassing charge. But to be quite frank, even the
notion
of acknowledging the allegation infuriated me. From my standpoint, police tendencies to play fast and loose with the rules were bolstered by the blind eye of a legal system that encouraged them to do so. As a result, this enabled the cop to send me to jail, rather than issue a summons as he would have under virtually any other trespassing scenario. Most infuriating of all, however, was the fact that my incarceration compromised the quality of the CD as it went to print without ever being completely mixed down.

As far as I was concerned, I held the moral high-ground as the cops and courts were partners in crime, and I refused to dignify the former’s behavior by responding to the latter’s decree. Since the system had irretrievably wasted my time and effort, I had little difficulty returning the favor by imposing my own version of the Code of Hammurabi, with an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Consequently, I blew off the scheduled court date and as a result, a
warrant would soon be issued for my arrest.