White Out (6 page)

I lay down on my makeshift bed. I pressed my naked burning foot to the cold plaster wall. I got up, swallowed all the pills on the table and lay back down.

Sounds of laughing voices rose from the street below my window. The breeze moved in the thin curtains. The curtains wrinkled with sadness. The sunlight went away on the sounds of the voices, on the bare wood floor of my apartment, on the sad, wrinkled curtains.

Sometime after dark I moved into a new level of withdrawal.

Now I realized that the eight-hour burn was just an inkling. A premonition. I didn’t want to know anything about this.

I shoved myself up against unconsciousness, trying desperately to get in. Sleep. Dreamless, motionless, senseless. It was like the cold plaster wall. I could feel the good absence of feeling on it. I pressed my burning limbs against it. But it was closed. A wall, not a door. I pressed up against it, awake at fourteen hours.

Fifteen hours.

Ever since I was little, I’ve told myself stories to fall asleep. A little cushion of fantasy between waking and sleeping. I lie down and start imagining some pleasant scene. Like I’m on a sailboat in the Caribbean with my friends. Or no, I’m a pirate. Walking on the deck with my sword. I start walking slowly, with big pirate steps. The black metal cannon barrels gleam in the moonlight. Then I notice a fine green parrot has landed on the deck. Its beak has opened. Then I don’t know what else. Then I wake up.

That first night of kicking, I imagined I was living in a castle. A blizzard was raging outside. I’d been trudging though the blizzard, carrying my sword and shield, fleeing the enemy. I knocked on the massive oak door of the castle. I heard the slow sound of the bar being raised and the door swinging open. The friendly warmth rushed out, strong friendly hands pulled me, fainting, inside.

“You must be exhausted,” said a tall, handsome man in chain mail. “Well, everything is going to be fine. We have everything you need in this castle. The walls are strong; the enemy will never get in. And we have enough supplies to last for years in here.” I nodded and tried to smile.

They showed me to a room high in the walls. A big fire roared in the fireplace. A clean, white bed piled deep with cushions lay in the corner. I stood for several minutes gazing at it. I repeated the contents of this room in the castle over and over to myself. I was shivering terribly.

“They also have hundreds of soldiers to protect me,” I told myself.

The red light of my electric clock bled through the thin walls of the castle. 3:22. I reached down to get the bottle of Gatorade on the floor. My abdomen was segmented like an insect’s and the Gatorade was hot like insecticide.

“They have hundreds of soldiers to protect me in this castle. The blizzard rages outside. It is warm and safe and deep inside the castle. I’ll fall asleep now.” But the shivering cold came through the thick castle walls. They had to move me deeper inside the castle, where I’d be warm.

They had to move me again. Deep in the castle’s heart, to a windowless room, with an ancient glowing furnace and a fire burning in the fireplace. They’d never heard of drugs. I heard hundreds of soldiers rushing in the corridors.

“They’re going to their battle stations,” I told myself. I stared at the red digits on the clock. I turned over and over in the bed. My vibrating legs made red electricity. 4:51.

“They’re going to their battle stations.” I invented the name of the enemy. The history of the country. The names of the people in the castle army. “Henry Abelove, Lieutenant.” I counted their weapons. Lieutenant Abelove led me on a tour of their supplies and armaments.

“Here we have the lumber room, where all the lumber for the fires is stored. As you can see, we have enough to last two full years of siege. We will always have enough fuel for warm fires here in this strong, safe castle.”

He showed me the vast hall where they stored the weapons. He told me about the theater the duke had ordered constructed high in the upper keep. He told me the names of the books in the libraries. 5:30. The castle had everything that was needed, all right. I spent hours telling myself about all the good things in the castle. Listing them, counting them.

But something was missing. Despite the plentiful stores of food, everyone in the castle looked starved and crazy. Despite the vast fires, the huge furnaces, the halls piled high with entire felled forests, I could not stop shivering.

“There is no sleep in this castle,” Lieutenant Abelove said sadly.

“But,” I said, “I thought that one first enters the castle, and then passes through into sleep.” He shook his head.

“This entire structure is built along the wall of sleep, but at no point does it penetrate it.” I tried to follow his words.

“Can’t we use some of these weapons, some of this fuel to break through?” He shook his head sadly. I tried to stop thinking about the castle.

“Now I’m on a pirate ship,” I told myself.

I tossed and turned on my bed in a windowless room deep in the heart of the castle. The sleepless armies rushed through the halls on their way to battle stations. They had never heard of dope. They had never seen white-topped vials of dope. Except in the distance, through the castle’s tiny windows.

The white blizzard raged outside, but the strong white sleep couldn’t get in. Sleeplessness was an invincible fortress. It had enough fuel, enough food, enough weapons to withstand two years of siege.

“Sleep can go everywhere but here,” I said, sleepless.

The red numbers of the clock read 7:40. I stood up in pain and slowly drew back the curtains. Red sun erased the red numbers. I struggled into my clothes. The fabric felt like sandpaper. My shirt was soaked with cold sweat by the time I reached my car.

I drove straight out of the castle. I reached the Edmondson Avenue dope spot ten minutes later and gave the runner my last sweat-soaked twenty. The white sun rose at 8:05.

CHAPTER 3

W
riting is an aid to memory. It helps me to remember what I never experienced. Through this writing, I remember sitting in my car on Edmondson Avenue. The sweat-soaked twenty clenched in the bones of my hand. The ghetto street scene clenched in the bones of my face. Watching for the runner. Shaking.

That moment never existed. I wasn’t there.

Well, I was there, kind of. It’s hard to explain. If you’ve ever looked out at the sea on a clear day you know there is a line where the sea and sky meet. That line doesn’t really exist. It’s an optical illusion. I was there in the car on Edmondson Avenue the way that imaginary line is there between the sea and the sky.

I hung there suspended between the first time I did dope and the next time. Between the original eternal white bliss of my first time, and the next eternal white hit. I was the imaginary line that kept those two halves from meeting. Those two heavens. The pressure of all that white bliss above and below, and I was between and thin and imaginary.

Hurry, runner. One white top, please. I’ll do it right here in the car. The way the horizon looks in a thick white fog. I wanted to be there in that car on Edmondson Avenue the way the horizon isn’t there in a white blizzard.

But once that dope hit me I only felt thicker. A thicker barrier between that first-time dope and the next dope that would bring it all back again.

After fixing I watched myself getting fatter there in the car. I wasn’t a line anymore. I was growing thicker and realer by the second as the dope ticked through my heart. Growing arms, legs, eyes, swollen fingers, dirty jeans. I could see my hand in front of my face. There was no white blizzard. I could see the potato chip bags on the floor of my car. The withdrawal was gone, but that was it.

So I was there in my car on Edmondson Avenue after all. I only wanted not to be. I looked at my big hands. I noticed the potato chip bags on the floor of the car. 8:06 in the morning. Eight hours until the eight-hour burn. Twelve hours to the castle. I feel lucky to be writing this now. Writing is a way of not being somewhere. And there’s nowhere I’d rather not be than there.

Writing is an aid to memory. Writing is an AIDS for memory. OK. I drove from Edmondson Avenue right to the Center for Addiction Medicine. It still hadn’t opened by the time I parked and walked up. There was a line of addicts waiting by the entrance.

“Hey, man.” I turned around. A guy around my age in baggy shorts, wearing a gold chain.

“Oh. Hey.” I vaguely recognized him.

“Kicking sucks, huh,” he said.

A cigarette dangled loosely from his thin lips. His pupils were the size of ant heads. He was obviously high.

“Hey.” Another junkie shuffled up to us. He nodded politely to me. “Kicking surely does suck.”

He was high too. He was actually grinning. The first guy started to open his mouth. Then he closed it. Then he smiled. I began to smile a little, despite myself.

The clinic doors opened at eight-thirty and the already-tired-looking nurses started to shepherd in the line of eighteen or twenty sad, grinning, kicking, high, desperate, happy junkies.

“Have you used any drugs since you were last here?” The nurse studiously avoided my eyes, looking down at her clipboard.

“No,” I said. She looked up and fastened her eyes on the wall above my head.

“You know,” she said. “We also offer a medication called ReVia. This drug completely prevents you from getting high for twenty-four hours. As long as you take it every day, you can’t relapse. Some people find it helpful. Once you’ve been off narcotics for forty-eight hours, we can start giving it to you. Taking it any earlier, however, will dramatically increase your withdrawal symptoms.”

“Well,” I said. “It’s only been about twenty-four hours for me. But the withdrawal symptoms really aren’t so bad. I guess that medicine you’re giving me really works!”

She nodded tiredly. She gave me the little green lozenge of buprenorphine. I cleverly pretended to put in my mouth, and pocketed it.
This stuff really works
, I thought.
I better hold on to it until I really need it.

The guy with the gold chain was outside waiting for me.

“Hey, can I get a lift, man?”

“Sure,” I said.

Now I was really quitting. I knew what to expect. I was prepared. I could use some like-minded company. Some reinforcement. He settled heavily in the passenger seat and we sped off.

“Where you going?” I asked.

“Westside,” he said. We drove for a few seconds.

“Man, I can’t wait to get off this shit,” I said.

“Tell me about it,” he said. He fiddled with the car cigarette lighter.

“It’s ruining my life,” I said.

“I’ve lost my girl, my job, and my car,” he said.

“It’s the devil,” I said.

I looked quickly over at him, then looked at the road.

I rubbed my right knee a little bit. He was rubbing the side of his left leg. For a split second, our fingers gently touched. I drew my hand quickly back. Then I slowly put it back.

“I am so glad I finally decided to quit,” he said.

“Is it hot in this car or something?” I said.

He rolled down his window. Then he rolled it back up. We drove for a few seconds in silence. I looked quickly over at him and caught him looking at me. He quickly turned away. I felt myself blushing.