Needle Too (5 page)

I once read about a victim of post-traumatic stress disorder who suffered from nightmarish flashbacks during certain situations and moments of high anxiety. When I had
my
flashback I was in a London fog and wearing a raincoat—while staring at my mother’s bedroom window through the pouring rain. The next thing I remembered was sitting on the front steps of her building as the skies began to clear and the sun rose up over the Emerald City.

I suppose those hours spent in the rain reliving my childhood were driven by the combined effects of the methadone, sleep deprivation, my physical and mental condition and perhaps the sounds of the storm. But after years of self-analysis, I believe a secondary cause for the flashback—if that is indeed what it was—was at least partially due to my colossal failure as a musician, the very nature of my visit to Stamford and the fact that I no longer had a game plan, strategy or aspiration to help fuel and define my future. Ever since graduating from college and receiving that blank check that would prevent me from fucking up my life, seeking refuge under my mother’s roof was always just a desperate,
temporary measure and part of a contingency plan implemented only in the event of some completely unavoidable set of circumstances—
like if I spent all my money on drugs
. But regardless of how bleak things looked or actually were, there was always something tangible (or at least something in parenthesis) to hang on to, look forward to or believe in; Bob Donnelly, David Graham, Atlantic Records, Catherine, CBGB’s or whatever—there was almost always something to be hopeful of, something to be positive about and of course—something to help me look the other way. But right now—really for the first time in my adult life—there was none of that, and any hopes for a career in music and a life of opiated complacency seemed about a million miles away; now there was only a sense of failure and wasted potential drowning in a reservoir of bereavement that I
needed
to drain but refused to drink from.

It was Saturday morning and therefore too early to ring the apartment buzzer and awaken her, especially since she hadn’t heard a word from me in two years, so I decided to walk around Stamford for a few hours and dry off while I tried to assess things and decide how to proceed. Unfortunately, I was so tired and my head was still so full of methadone that I couldn’t quite think straight. Obviously, though, I had nowhere else to go, and I knew that once the haze lifted I’d have to find a job somewhere in the city of Stamford and as quickly as possible—assuming, of course, that my mother would be willing to provide me with temporary refuge.

By around 10 a.m. I wandered into the Stamford Town Center Mall, which was only a few blocks from my mother’s apartment, and noticed a restaurant on the fifth floor getting prepped for the day ahead. Though it hardly bears repeating, this was hardly my ideal employment option but it was, unquestionably, my only option. I was 28 years old, and even if I wanted to begin to forge something of a professional career, I had only six months of Archer Advertising and career-oriented work experience to put on a resume. Hence, I already knew the only thing I had to fall back
on in Stamford was my New York City restaurant experience which is
always
a big hit with the wider hospitality crowd.

Although I passed several other restaurants in other parts of the mall, the fifth-floor eatery was the only one I thought I stood a chance of getting hired at. So as I stood there peering through the windows of the establishment and sizing-up my chances while shielding my eyes from the pink neon lights that lit up the
Rock and Roll Café
—I’d finally become a parody of myself.

After a few moments spent coming to terms with some harsh realities, I departed the mall and wandered around Stamford until noon, when I decided it was finally late enough to chug back up the hill to Glenbrook Road and get it over with. When I arrived at the entrance to the condo I buzzed my mother’s apartment and within less than a minute she answered the intercom.

“Yes? Who’s there?”

“It’s Craig,” I said after taking a deep, jittery, breath.

“Who???”

“Your son!”

“Oh,” she said after taking a deep, jittery, breath.

A grueling and seemingly endless five seconds had elapsed before I actually heard a heavy sigh followed by a buzzer unlocking the door. I felt so incredibly uncomfortable I almost headed back to the train station, even though I had nowhere else to go and no money to get there with.

As I climbed the staircase leading to my mother’s apartment my legs were suddenly heavy and it became a psychosomatic struggle to get there. When I did, she was standing there in the doorway with an expression on her face that was the perfect mixture of
disappointment and disgust...
and she didn’t even know I was a junky
. She lingered there for a moment not saying a word, and then walked toward the kitchen as I slowly and uncomfortably stepped into her home with the awkward gait of a stranger.

After a quick perusal of the apartment I detected some changes to the living room décor. Immediately I noticed the broken glass end-table and shelves had been replaced by wooden counterparts as I thought for just a moment that Mother had made an attempt to junky-proof the apartment. But if that were the case I suppose I might’ve tacitly been welcome which I clearly wasn’t, and that fact was tacitly confirmed by the addition of a brand new, extremely beautiful, extremely expensive glass coffee table sitting squarely in the middle of the living room.

“What happened to the black coffee table?” I asked referring to the Formica predecessor I didn’t recall demolishing.

“Why are you here?” she suddenly blurted out with her arms crossed while ignoring my question and glaring at me from the entrance to the kitchen.

“I need a place to stay for a few weeks,” I said with more reluctance than I can possibly convey.

“Oh, God…Again??? You know, Craig, I really thought that by now I’d finally be done with this shit. Celine doesn’t even live with her fucking mother anymore!”

“Well then fucking lucky for Celine.”

“Well then
you
can just get out also!”

“I’m sorry, I was just kidding. I promise it won’t be a permanent thing.”

“Oh, believe me—I wasn’t worried about
that!”

“I just have some issues to sort out and I’ll be out of here before you know it,” I said as I ignored the insinuation and was about to absentmindedly sit on the couch.

“And stay the fuck off the furniture!” she screamed at me before my ass had a chance to grace that cushy black surface it had always been deprived of as a child. “You’re an expensive guest to have over, Craig, and I can’t afford to redecorate every time you visit. You can stay in Celine’s room if you want.”

“Thanks,” I said, even though she was clearly exaggerating my record of interior design.

“Yeah, whatever.”

So that was that. Mother permitted me to stay in her home, but the unsaid expiration date attached to that bit of hospitality was palpable.

By the very next day my head was finally approaching clear, and though I hadn’t had any dope in about a week I did swallow that final bottle of meth only a few days prior and was terrified I was finally about to experience the hideous methadone withdrawals I’d heard so many awful stories about. But fortunately, that never quite happened, at least to the degree I would’ve expected it to. So, as a result, aside from being very depressed and suffering some pretty severe insomnia and anxiety while staying at my mother’s apartment—which
itself
could have been the cause for the discomfort—for the first time in six years I was straight
and
clean. But to suggest I was suddenly imbued with a passion for healthy living and a future devoid of opiates would be
false,
as I was simply unable and unprepared to address the dependency issues. At that point my mind was being occupied by a destructive space and constantly consumed by evanescent, painful and immobilizing memories of personal failures, tragedies and ghosts from the past that I found impossible to address in the present. Due to several,
short, sudden and unsavory epiphanies it had become abundantly clear that I’d wasted the last six years of my life obsessing over a musical journey to nowhere while destroying my body in the process. But what was even worse and the most painful thing to accept was that the death of Eric and Virginia Holst, along with my failure to respond accordingly, was a dagger in the heart of my own stunted and pathetic sense of family. It was this surrogate relationship that I’d not only invested a good part of my life and emotional energy in, but in many ways had defined myself by and now, at least in certain corners of it, I knew I’d
never
be forgiven or welcomed again. So if anything I was feeling detached and isolated as well as physically, mentally and emotionally ravaged, and in many ways I suppose perfectly positioned to become a brand new fuck-up in another city under an entirely different set of circumstances. But regardless of what type of lifestyle I would ultimately embrace, I needed to make some money and was determined to find a job. My situation on Glenbrook Road was tenuous at best, and I wasn’t sure how much goodwill was left in my mother’s tank.

Before returning to the mall and the Rock and Roll Café, I sized-up my wardrobe which consisted only of things I’d left behind in Queens six years prior when I initially moved into Manhattan with Helmer. As a result I was limited to some tee-shirts and underwear, a few pairs of faded jeans, a ripped denim jacket and the snakeskin boots I’d been wearing for
years
. Certainly, it wasn’t what I would’ve typically chosen to wear while applying for a job—especially one in Connecticut—but that’s all I had.

Stamford’s Rock and Roll Café was the redheaded stepchild of the smaller Manhattan location which was in the West Village on Bleecker Street, and always seemed a bit too commercial, superficial and out of place even for
that
area—almost like a ghetto version of the Hard Rock Café geared more toward tourists and recent transplants than natives or musicians. The newer version was really just a big bar with a restaurant attached to it, but it was still sort of an odd thing to see in the Stamford mall, and
even odder to be managed by what was apparently a recruit from the West Village with earrings in both ears, spiked hair and a pair of very tight-fitting purple pants.

“
Oooohhh baby, looky here! We’ve got ourselves a genu
INE
rock star right here at the Rock and Roll Café of Stamford, Connecticut!
” he squealed with delight when he got a load of me, while his tight purple pants seemed to be getting a load of him. “What can I do for
you
, baby.”

“I need a job,” I said cutting right to the chase.

“Why? Is money too tight to mention?”

“Absolutely,” I told him while somehow missing the redheaded rocker reference.

“You don’t recognize me, sweetie,
do
you?”

“No,” I said as I hadn’t a clue who she was...I mean—who
he
was.

“Oh baby
pa-
lease
don’t tell me that or I do declare
—you’ll hurt my fragile little feelings
,” he said while suddenly doing his best southern belle.

“Hey, tone it down there, Dorothy—you’re not in Kansas anymore,” said someone with a very familiar-sounding voice that I hadn’t noticed standing behind the bar.

“Randy!” I shouted with real happiness the moment I saw him and then reached out to once again shake that big, gay, hand from California that I’d first encountered at Serendipity so many years before. “I can’t fucking believe it! How’s everything going?”

“Not bad, man, not bad.”

“What the hell are you doing in Stamford?”

“I don’t know—taking a breath?” he said as if he wasn’t entirely sure. “Things were getting a little crazy back there with the partying and shit and I had to get out of the city. So, a few months ago when I got the opportunity to come out here and open this place I figured what-the-fuck? What about you?”

“WHAT ABOUT
ME
?!?” squealed purple pants. “You still don’t remember
me
?”

“I’m sorry, brother,” I said. “Did you work at Serendipity as well?”

“No I did
not
work at fucking Serendipity!”

“Craig, this is Jack—come on, man, you remember him—
don’t you
?”

“Hanging out and getting high at the apartment while you were listening to Concrete Blonde and playing the synthesizer like a fucking psycho,” Jack said as he successfully refreshed my memory.

“Oh yeah, man, of course—how could I fucking forget?” I said. “I’m sorry. But you guys know I was really fucked-up then—which is why I also ended up in Stamford…
sort of
.”

“Oh, come now!” Jack said as he dismissed my flimsy excuse and preferred to remain offended. “I’ll have you know
this
face is
entirely
unforgettable!”

“It most certainly is…except when it’s covered by Randy’s nuts—so cut me some fucking slack, alright?”

“Hey, you know, we have to kinda keep that talk to a minimum around here,” Randy told me.

“What? No fucking F-bombs?”

“That would be fucking impossible,” Jack pointed out.

“No gay chatter or overly homosexual behavior in the restaurant,” explained Randy.

“Why not? Are you guys suddenly stuck in the closet?”

“Oh
pa-
lease
!” Jack squealed. “The only thing stuck in
my
closet is a big black dong with a sloppy suction cup.”

“Actually,” said Randy who bravely attempted to ignore the commentary, “the boss already knows we’re queer. Jack and I’ve been running the Bleecker Street bar for
years
.”

“But this isn’t Bleecker Street,” I said.

“Exactly, so we just have to try not to broadcast everything,” Randy said while briefly looking at Jack. “It really doesn’t even matter anymore because most of the staff and customers are pretty perceptive and it wasn’t too long before they basically realized we’re gay.”