Stepping Aside_

Stepping out of the story line here for a minute, to tell you about my friend who passed away last night.

Although i do not yet know the cause, i feel like i already do.  She always walked a very thin line, which is how we became friends in the first place.  I can't remember the first time we talked to eachother, but i do remember gazing at her from across the room for weeks on end - baffled by the boldness she so gracefully embodied.
What can i tell you about her that you won't absorb like everything else you read today?  What can i say, that you won't brush off the way everyone does when a "friend of a friend" dies?  You didn't know her, but if you did - you would know the following to be truer than most.

Her laugh was infectious.  Like a fucking virus.  The sound of her cackling will never be lost on my ears.  Her deep, smokey voice...she did go through a carton a week.  We would together.  Drinking shitty 7/11 coffee and chain smoking in her "brand new" car from '87.  She was tall, had these puffy lips i could never stop staring at, and was strikingly beautiful.  BEAUTIFUL.  No non sense about it.  No one looked like her...she was in a world of her own, and i was lucky enough to be a part of it for a short period of time.  She had a wickedly cynical sense of humor...i can't count how many desperate, depraved, nice people - we relentlessly mocked quietly from the back of the room.  She was an incredible artist.  Painting immaculate flowing pictures of women's faces on glass panes.  She ONLY painted on glass.  We used to sit on my bed reading eachothers notebooks.  Our deepest, most personal writings, poems, letters we never sent....we would just read them out loud to eachother with some black and white movie playing in the background. All day.  After the coffee wore off, we'd get under the covers and just hold eachother for the simple reason of feeling loved.  Nothing sexual about it.  We'd just hold eachother until we fell asleep. [which was hard for both of us to do]

I remember one day, a day like that....Where right before we fell asleep, her head was on my chest...her hair tickling my neck.  I pulled her real close, held her as tight as i could, and kissed her on the forehead and told her "everything is going to be alright".  Because in my worst, most depressed and fucking torrid times, all i ever wanted was for someone to do the same.  She new that.  She'd read that in my notebook.  And she sat up, squeezed me, and kissed me on the forehead, and told me "everything is going to be alright".

That's what i will miss the most about you.
I love you, my RockNrollBeckster.  Sweet dreams ;)

GIRL

Like all cheese-ball, fuckhead stories...there is always ONE.  One girl who left a mark, a fingerprint on the person i would come to be in the years following a departure of sorts.  That girl, was J.

To keep this from running to an absolutely absurd length, i'll shorten certain parts to keep it bearable.

I had been busted the final time.  Facing 5-7 years in prison at the age of 17 wasn't looking like a fucking vacation to say the least.  So needless to say, my day to day spirits weren't exactly of the "jolly" nature.  I had stopped calling my PO, and my NA sponsor [i was also mandated to attend Narcotics Anonymous meetings on a daily basis.] hadn't heard from me in weeks.  So after a tortuously quiet week in school planning how i was gonna jump the train downtown and spend the weekend escaping in to the wonderfully dark and familiar hole i had dug with a needle and spoon, it was FINALLY time to break the schedule that had been set for me.

I walked out of the school door nearest the parking lot [the first and only time i had ever done this] to find my sponsor sitting on the school stairs waiting for me.  "What a fuckin prick" i said to myself staring at him in a mass of High Schoolers swimming towards their parents cars.  He politely informed me [more like forcefully dragged me to his car] we were going to an NA convention across the state line for the weekend.
Great...fucking great i thought [out loud] not only do i get to NOT GET FUCKING HIGH, but i get to spend an ENTIRE WEEKEND SURROUNDED BY SMELLY ASSHOLES LIKE YOU IN SOME DINGY HOTEL CONFERENCE ROOM WITH WALLPAPER FROM THE 80'S, SHITTY COFFEE AND VENDING MACHINE FOOD!
I made it a point to remind him of that the entire drive there...looking back on it, it was kind of ridiculous.  A grown ass human being bitching, moaning, and crying for a 3 hour drive in a shitty Saturn sedan.

After an awkward nights sleep at a relatives house, we arrived and my sponsor left me a little slack on my chain.  He was popping in and out of hotel rooms, drinking pots of rancidly black coffee...If you've never been to an NA convention - it's basically an incestuous gang bang of brainwashed adults acting like greedy, sex depraved infants...fueled by truckstop caffeine.

I sat next to the indoor pool chainsmoking and staring at the mobs of instinct-suppressed-humans throbbing around the lobby.  Then i noticed HER.
Stupidly enough, she was playing ping pong with the only other guy i recognized in this whole human zoo.  Matt.  Matt was into metal and covered in tattoos.  I sheepishly walked over and sat down on a bench next to the table, acknowledging him as i did so.
He came over after a few games with this GIRL in tow, asking if i wanted to go out to her car and listen to some metal CD's and smoke more cigarettes for a while.
I quickly gazed at the GIRL standing in front of me and was immediately awestruck.  Pink and orange hair, there must have been 20 piercings in each of her ears, various neon articles of clothing, and knee-high black platform boots.
I struggled, and eventually a quiet "yeah" slipped through my lips as i stared into her gorgeous blue eyes, blushing like a pre-teen meeting a hot babysitter.
We went outside for an hour, them in the front seat, me sitting alone in back....listening to ear piercing black metal at blood curdling volume levels, staring into the rear view mirror at this punk-goddess.  Matt eventually got bored and asked if we wanted to go inside.  She told him we'd be inside in a little while.  So we sat outside her car on the 10 foot wide strip of grass between the parking lot and the highway this hotel called a "lawn" for 6 hours talking about everything we'd been through and done, bands we liked, our friends...giggling and trying to avoid eye contact the entire time, but being too enamoured with eachother to not look up "one more time".  Literally until the sun went down.
About this time her sponsor came out and was ready to leave [she had driven them both, along with Matt], J asked her if she could give me a ride back.  She and my sponsor obliged, and we went careening down the freeway at 95 until reaching the far west suburbs of the city. [J always drove this fast...and in doing so managed to flip her, AND her father's car within a week of eachother]

I leaned over her seat from the back seat and kissed her on her cheek on the drive home.  We stared at eachother in the rearview mirror the whole way back.  I've never felt that way since.

We started a love-smitten "hang out" session that quickly turned into seeing eachother every day i could make the 45 minute drive to her house after school, rehab, and a meeting.  A week after we had met, i held her hand as she threw the last 4 syringes of Demerol into the sewer at the end of her driveway.  We colored on her walls and made out for hours.  We literally couldn't stop holding eachother.

One night on the way to an NA meeting together, she pulled in to a school parking lot and told me to get in the back seat.  We fucked on her leather seats for 2 and a half hours until both of us were so exhausted we couldn't go anymore.  The windows fogged up while our sweaty skin stuck together as we lay breathing heavily onto eachothers chests, resting for a while before heading home to tell our parents about a "great meeting".

The next 3 years of my life were spent in that general fashion.  Every waking moment i possessed i spent with J.  We did everything...we were like children discovering things for the first time again.  We went on long meaningless drives just listening to our favorite records, we walked around the city chasing eachother through the parks, we'd dress up in winter clothes in the middle of August and blow bubbles in the middle of the street.  She would paint, and i'd play guitar until dawn when we'd fall asleep holding eachother in her bed watching tank girl or some shit.  We'd wake up at 4 in the afternoon, have INCREDIBLE sex until 10:30 at night, get more tattoos, and drive to my best friends house and watch horror movies all night and talk about particle physics until the coffee shop opened in the morning.  All the while, inching through my last year of school, graduating from rehab, going to NA meetings 5 times a week, and slaving off my drug charges in community service. 
I think it's safe to say i was walking the thinnest tightrope i'd ever been on, and loving the pressure and stress of it.  Life is much more fucking exciting when your freedom is constantly being threatened.  The, "this might be the last time i feel the hot sun on my back" approach definitely gives your daily mood a little lift.

Life was fucking horribly perfect.  Then came college.

I never had any inclination to go at all, but J's parents were rich and hell bent on her not only GOING to college, but succeeding. [and they made it very clear they "didn't want her to be with me...AT ALL"....i quote]  And when i say rich, i mean RICH.  Like 3 Audi's, 2 lawyers, 1 Son preparing for the bar-exam, and an ex-drug addict punk/artist/rebel Daughter RICH.  Picture perfect suburb, right?

And that's kind of where it ended.  She fought her parents for show...to make it look like she cared about me, and wanted to stay.  But behind closed doors, she accepted their money.  She was too scared to fight for the life we had dreamed of in California.  Didn't want to put in the effort, and bailed on me.
She took her parents money, bought a bunch of china white [a mutual friend of ours informed me a few weeks after our split she was "back on the shit"] and ran off to art school in Los Angeles....our plan in the first place.

Not a lot of closure to that story huh?  That's how i feel too.  It still keeps me up every few weeks, thinking about her, where she is, what she's like.

That is my GIRL story.  The one that fucked me up real good.  For weeks i slept all day, i was scratching my self until i'd bleed, and my arms and legs were covered with finger-wide lesions that stung like hell when i'd get in the shower, stick to my clothes - and the scabs would have to be peeled away every morning after i woke up.

I will never understand why things wound up that way, or how a person could be so lazy to just "give up on a dream"...It's actually a pretty large flaw i have.  I've yelled and screamed at friends of mine for settling for less than they dreamed of as a child.  I just don't get it.

I just don't get it.

Methamphetamine

I've never done it.  This is the only drug i've heard of that I can consciously say i have never ingested.  That statement carries some sort of arrogant pride in my ears.  It's terribly embarassing nature makes 98 percent of people i know, stand up human beings - wish they had never met me....While for some sick twisted reason, i carry the weight of that statement proudly.  There's a glare in my eye as i mention it to you, and i can see your face reacting to it over, and over again.  As if i was saying "top that, fucker".
The reason Methamphetamine became a part of my heroin soaked puzzle isn't because it's the only thing i've never touched.  And to say i've never set a finger on it would be a lie.

About a year and a half into my heroin addiction, me and my running buddy came to a quick realization.  I say quick only because it seemed to occur to both of us simultaneously one fall afternoon.  If we had jobs, we wouldn't need to steal all this shit to buy more dope.  A genius thought, i know....
This thought was then followed promptly, and abruptly by several realizations.
1) We can't get any job that would drug test us
2) We can't get any job that would cut into the time we spend getting high
3) We can't get any job that wouldn't pay us at LEAST 400$ a week. (Our current running MINIMUM for how much tar we'd smoke in 7 days)

This narrowed down the job market considerably, and obviously - wasn't the best way to find work.  But we found one job we knew wholeheartedly we could succeed at, and would flex to our "busy" schedule.
We'd decided practically overnight we were going to cook, and sell Meth to pay for our heroin habit.
A seemingly very logical leap for a couple of junkies in need of dope money, yet unable to land a respectable job.  So this is where our "logic" lead us...

Believe it or not, we did know our chemistry.  In fact, my running buddy [who will obviously remain unnamed] is currently finishing up his degrees in Nuclear, Chemical, and Civil Engineering while maintaining an astounding 4.0 GPA. 
So we printed off every legitimate copy of directions for manufacturing Methamphetamine we could find, cross referenced all of them, and then multiplied the amount of ingredients by 10, so our batch size would be large enough to cover our dope habit, and leave enough room for purchasing supplies.
Turns out we weren't done stealing shit quite yet...Why would we spend the little bit of money we had on supplies when we could just steal them, and then make nothing but profit?  So off we went, scavenging for everything on our shopping list like a soccer mom making a pasta dinner.
We were horribly paranoid of someone catching on, so we convinced our friend Charlie to let us borrow his mom's van when we made our trips to the store.  That way, if there was any security footage of us stealing all these ingredients to cook meth and they ran the plates on the van, nothing would come back to us...["sucks for Charlie's mom" was our credo at this point]
So, hooded sweatshirts and backpacks we went, in and out of every grocery store and ace hardware within 20 miles of Charlie's house.

*and yes, it's that easy.  EVERYTHING you could ever need to manufacture Methamphetamine in mass quantities can be stolen or purchased from your neighborhood grocery + hardware store.


After a few long, freezing cold nights in the garage off the alley of my running buddy's house, with a space heater, lots of stolen chemistry equipment from the lab at school, and a few packs of Camel Lights - we had a rythym, and a schedule. 
After leaving school [early most of the time] one of us would jump the train downtown to drop off a batch of meth at a dealer's apartment, and take the money we made to OUR dealer's apartment and buy more dope.  The other one of us would get the rig going, completing the first half of the cooking process by the time the other returned.  Then we'd get high while the glass was slowly being chemically seperated from the toxins that DIDN'T make up the disgusting product. [I say disgusting because once you see what goes in to making something like meth, you wouldn't find it as attractive as tweakers do, trust me]
This cycle went on for about 4 months. 

We didn't go to the movies, hang out with friends...hell, we didn't even watch tv.  We just worked to get high. that was it.  The only form of entertainment that had any point in existing to us was the shitty radio we kept on in the garage all day and all night.
It'd be 3 AM on a Wednesday night, and instead of doing our homework and going to sleep like most kids our age, we'd be listening to the "Love Advice" segment of some awful/across the state line/late night radio program, laughing our asses off chain smoking Camel Lights cooking up hundreds of dollars worth of Meth.

Eventually we got too paranoid that the stores we were stealing from had caught on, and that there was a SWAT team of Safeway employees waiting outside the garage door with semi-automatic weapons ready to shoot us apart piece by piece, bullet by bullet, until all that was left were a few eye lids and a whole lot of stolen school property.  The mental storm of stealing things out of people's cars in the middle of the night was easier to weather than walking out of a flourescent warehouse with a backpack full of cold medicine they ID you to purchase.  So we went back to what we knew best. 

Being a junkie is easier than being a chemist.

my room

The first time i was arrested for posession and consumption, i was court ordered to go to a state "sponsored" rehab center, and move back in to my parents house.  I remember coming home from jail for the first time, and [not having seen the inside of my bedroom or my house in months] feeling so awkward standing in the middle of my room.  I must have stood there for 20 minutes, just glaring around wondering where all my shit had gone.  I felt the same as the times i'd taken too many valium and drank a bottle of cough syrup before school, and got sick in Gym class. 
I'd be so slow changing clothes and getting my shit together in the locker room that the Seniors would already be piling in to the locker room for the next class by the time i was done.  Then i'd be the one, 5 foot tall dorky little freshman, high out of his goddamn mind trying to swim upstream through the one way parade of bigger, scarier kids flowing into the locker room for gym class.  I'd catch an elbow to the gut or a slap on the back of my head...but i was to incapacitated to give a fuck.  i'd just put my head down and keep pushing through the testosterone infused football players who thought it was fun to try and rip my tshirt off in one fluid motion as they passed me by.
I had the exact same feeling standing in my room for the first time in months, staring at where my Who records were stacked, or where the model airplane my Dad and me built when i was 5 used to sit...the only things left were naked slabs of furniture...nothing on the shelves.  No speakers, no notebooks, no comics or action figures.  Not a drawer in my dresser...everything had been torn from my room and replaced with the bones of what had been my LAST resort for a place to sleep at night.
So naturally, after about a day or 2 shit began to hit the fan just like it used to when i lived at home.  Constant screaming and slamming doors.  Knocking holes in the walls with my guitar, I would punch the door to my closet so frequently the paint chipped off and it started to crack in half.  So after a week of me living at home for the first time since i was a little boy, my bedroom looked like a hotel room after Keith Moon stayed the night.  I had spray painted all of the walls, and carved shit into every piece of wood i could fit the word FUCK on to.

After a few weeks of sobering up and constantly fighting with my parents, my manic depression started working the night shift.  I'd just lay in bed all night, staring at the gouges i'd put in my walls, and the paint on the ceiling.  Listening to Godspeed You Black Emperor or some other horribly depressing shit.  Then a few months had passed and my manic depression was working the double shift; day + night...I'd slump through school ignoring all my friends, not eating for days at a time.  I'd just stare at the pages of my notebook and write more heroin infused dribble about fetuses, sunflowers, train rides and towns i'd never been to.
Then one night i was laying in bed with my giant ass headphones from 1984 when i realized the current fabric making up my life was not worth living for.  simple as that.  no talkin me out of it, no "it's gonna get better mannnn", fuck that shit.  This sucks, i don't have to be here.  Fast, logical, done.
So i got up, wedged the chair from my desk under the doorknob [later i realized this was really pointless...] and grabbed the pair of scissors from the radio station mug on my drawer-less dresser.

I sat cross legged on my bed with my headphones on, no shirt, and the only light on was the blue light bulb i had spray painted and put back in the lamp standing on my bookshelf.  I grabbed the scissors by one blade, put the other's tip at the base of my palm and pulled it sharply up my wrist to my forearm.  I didn't open my eyes and switched hands, but as i placed the tip of the scissors under the palm of my other hand i felt a hot sensation on my legs.  I opened my eyes and looked down to find the blood pouring from my wrist down onto my legs and soaking the bed.  I immediately dropped the scissors and curled over my arm putting my head down on the matress, listening to the violin section of some god awful 20 minute instrumental/post grunge anthem.
I remember waking up the next morning being cold and wet.  I woke up so light headed i had to crawl to the chair in my room from my bed only 4 feet away.  I sat up in the chair and realized i'd left the window open all night, and now the cool, damp, grey spring morning was floating into my bedroom.  I unjammed the chair from my door and snuck into the bathroom downstairs.  In awe of my red stained skin i did my best to clean up and not splatter any onto the white tiles surrounding our shower.  I cut the bottom off one of my tube socks and wore it over my left forearm to hide the 8 inch gash traveling lenghwise up my pale arm.
This was the 1st of countless times i decided i didn't want to be here the next day.  One of the only times i woke up in my own bed after a suicide attempt, staring at the shadows cast by the blinds on my floor, or hanging out the window on the side of my house on a rainy morning trying to wash some cold water onto my face.

one more for the road

As with everyone who's done or doing dope, there's always a last time.  One last time to take a ride, one last time to see the beauty, one last time for eternal bliss...
My last time came as a surprise to even me.
After developing a steady habit for 4 and a half years, i had nothing else to live for.  Not in a negative sense, more in a sense of time.  Time; mine was all spent up.  I was consumed - every waking minute of my life labored on the highs and lows of my heroin addiction.  Did i have enough?  Can i get more?  How do i get the money?  Where am i? 
and most of all, the fuck you.
I started doing heroin for many reasons, but the bulk of them boiling down to me hating life.  Life as a whole - hated every fucking bit of it.  I hated me, i hated you, i hated school, i hated getting made fun of and beat up on, i hated my family, i hated people looking at me, i hated feelings...
and all i did was feel... i felt awkward, i felt stupid, i felt out of place, i felt lonely...i felt absolutely fucking miserable about myself, my surroundings, and my situation - and the only thing that would take that away seemed to be heroin.  nothing mattered.
NOTHING
not the assholes at school, not how uncool i was, not the music i listened to, not my job, and certainly not my friends...no responsibility, no pressure, just sky.
nothing but blue sky, hot sun on my skin, a pack of camels, and a few bags of dope...nothing mattered.

Of course, there came a point where things weren't dissappearing anymore.  no matter how much tar i smoked, or china white i packed up my nose, things started working their way under my skin...and i was miserable again.  except now, i was miserable and incapacitated for 6 hours at a time.  Dosed off under some park bench in the shade, or on the train to the end of the line.  The obvious choice was suicide.
Turns out i was no good at that either.  Slit wrists, bottle full of pills, somehow i'd always wake up in the hospital.
I came closer to dying  from doing to much dope, and almost got my chance to kick God in the balls a couple of times i didn't even mean too.

So there came a last time.  and i didn't even think it was going to be the last time, but as luck would have it, it was a tuesday. [tuesdays were my favorite day. i'd always manage to make a good score, eat a good meal, and find somewhere to sleep on tuesdays]

It was a hot sticky summer, and i remember this particular summer the city flooded with china white...which burnt like hell to shoot or smoke, so i was mostly snorting up thick rails of this synthetic shit every few hours.
We'd lay around all day in my friend T's basement cause it was 95 degrees outside, so we'd just wait for the sun to go down.  Naturally, every 2 and a half or 3 hours, i'd slink upstairs to the bathroom and cut another rail on the dirtiest sink known to mankind - until around 8 o'clock at night.

Around 8 the scorching summer sun fell behind the houses, and the asphalt started cooling off in the july evening.  We piled in to T's car and drove to the rich side of town to meet my then girlfriend of 3 weeks and her friends.  She snuck out of her house and met us around the corner, T parked, and we jumped the fence onto the private golf course.

If you've never snuck onto a private golf course at night in the summer, you're missing out.  The place is like a perfectly manicured dreamland of lakes, sand, thousands of lightning bugs, free water, and soft grass to lay on, have sex, and look at the stars. 
So after our juvenile amusement with chasing lightning bugs, climbing trees, giggling and having sex wore off, we all wound up laying in and around one of the biggest sand traps near hole 5, staring empty at the sky.
I was laying near T, and my best friend was behind me with the girls still wandering around smoking weed.

It was really over in the blink of an eye, and to this day i do not know why i did it.  But in a very heavy handed 4 or 5 seconds, i reached into my shoe [for years i stashed my shit under the soles of my shoes], opened the smokey tinted bag, and flicked it like a cigarette butt into the wind and watched it flip and tumble into the sand trap.  gone.
i put my head down on my knees, T looked over at me with a puzzled "what the fuck?" look on his face, and my best friend behind me [noticing the weight of what i had just done] put his hand on my head, messing my hair around and said the exact words "i'm proud of you for that".

Realizing what i had just done, i layed back, closed my eyes, and with tears running down my face, felt my girlfriend lay her head in my lap, and pulled my hands to her chest.

Needless to say, i fought through wednesday on cigarettes and whiskey - again, baking in T's basement all afternoon, and Thursday morning, woke up sicker than i've ever been...and it only got worse for the rest of a fucking week.

Some people have given me various spiritual and religous reasons for why i tossed my last bag, frankly - i think it's a bunch of fucking bullshit.  i ran out.  i was dry, i was beat, i was exhausted, i weighed 85 fucking pounds...i was done.
God didn't throw that bag, i did.

home

From the age of 8 or 9, i took every opportunity i could to not be at my biological parent's house, and alienate my family.  I just didn't fit with them, and it was a plain and logical choice for me to "be a part of a family i DID fit in".
So from the age of 8 until i was about 13 or 14 i lived with the family up the street, with my best friend Brody.
Brody's family was perfect [to an 8 year old's train of thought] and i felt at HOME with them, and around them.  They let me be who i was at heart, they were interested in the things I liked to do.  Skateboarding, snowboarding, punk rock, junk food, video games, burning stuff, waterparks, fireworks...we ran the gammut with fun shit until the sun went down, purely enveloped in childish exploitation.  And from the very beginning, my parents HATED it, which only made me love it more.
After living with, and being a part of this family for long enough, i WAS part of the family.  Weddings, birthdays, funerals, hospital trips, helping my little brother and sister with homework, vacations...i was in, deep.  Me and Brody split his room and spent every day together...and i felt loved for who i was.

In all reality, it was the most dysfunctional, fucked up family i've ever known, or been a part of.  Dad was always yelling, drunk, smacking us around, or a combination of all three.  Mom was a flight attendant, so was frequently out of town, so it was up to me and Brody to cook, clean, make sure everyone got their homework done, went to bed on time, and avoided Dad at all costs.
We would go to such extreme measures to avoid him, it's actually still hard to believe to this day.  We would rush home from school, grab a box of poptarts, a couple of beers, bust out of the house and ride our bikes all the way across town to a park [that Dad wouldn't look for us at] so that 1) we were gone when Dad got home, and 2) had enough to eat and drink to last us until he got drunk enough and passed out at 1 or 2 am so we could sneak back IN to the house and fall asleep upstairs.
On the weekends we'd stay up all night and leave the house at sunrise before he got up and made us go everywhere with him all weekend.  We actually got in to the habit of breaking IN to his house at all hours of the night that we could do it while Dad was still awake.
But man, did he catch us doing EVERYTHING...almost on a weekly basis would he catch us drinking his liquor, smoking weed or snorting pills upstairs, breaking windows of the neighbor's houses...he'd catch us fucking girls, throwing partys, stealing cars/booze/money...it was never really a thought in my head that when he kicked the shit outta us, we didn't deserve it.  That's just "what happens"...
The family dynamic changed over the next few years, and it became obvious to Dad, that everyone hated him...and this was voiced by Mom as well.  So the drinking got worse, the fights would escalate further, Dad was doing cocaine now too, and me and Brody would lock the door at the bottom of the stairs and sit with little Brother and little Sister on the landing of the stairway until Dad wore himself out screaming and hitting the walls and shit.  We'd all just sit there crying all fucking night, being loudly berated through the thin wooden door that seperated the two halves of our family. [minus Mom...this would only happen when she was at work, 35,000 feet above Denver or Reno.]
So as we all grew up, things got worse, but coping was easier because it was a natural occurence...a survival skill of sorts. 

When i hit the age of 13 or 14 i was so invested in heroin and other drugs [anything you'd put in front of me] that i wasn't home at Brody's much anymore.  I had a few close friends who quickly became a revolving cast of "sleepovers".  Crashing on couches, sneaking in to Brody's with him late at night, and even occasionally slipping in to my parents house to catch some sleep.

For the next 5 years i wore out my welcome just about everywhere i stayed except for Brody's house.  From friend's basements and dealer's cars, to girlfriend's bedrooms.  Mom loved me so much, and could see exactly what i was going through, she never stopped trying to help me, talk to me, or comfort me.
It is really the only house i've ever felt at home in.  Felt like i belonged...didn't have that unsettling feeling of sleeping on someone else's bed, under their sheets, staring at their ceiling. 
As fucked up as it was, i'm still trying to get back there.

Years later, Dad contacted me asking me to lie about him physically abusing my little brother and sister, and his drug habits.  He was taking Mom to court in the divorce for custody of the kids, and i refused to respond.  I told Mom i'd testify to anything she needed me to, in order for her to keep the kids...She's the only one of us who has seen Dad since he moved out, and only in the safety of a courtroom.

Mom still has the house, and little brother and sister still live there.  Brody got thrown out a few years back, and subsequently attempted to steal his own car.  Whenever i stop by for a visit I end up staying up with them all night until the early morning, in the same living room we used to crawl past at 3 am avoiding Dad's cocaine fueled vodka bender at all costs.  But it's still my home.

Tainted

In the beginning of my addiction[s], there were certain places and people i had to deceive of my using.  Mostly out of fear.  i would hide my distraught and taboo doings from them. and i'd NEVER chance it.
One blown pipe and the whole city would flood, a kind of paranoia...

And i became an expert at hiding things very quickly.  Turning shirts inside-out to hide blood stains.  turning the ankle of my sock into a wristband to hide post-suicidal razor cuts, i kept all my drugs in the soles of my shoes.  Nose bleeds, Overdoses, constant vomiting ; i was just a frequently sick kid as far as the nurses were concerned.

But there were places i'd never even BRING heroin, cigarettes, a bottle full of pills...nothing.  I wouldn't even worry about jones-ing or getting dopesick.  One of these places was a vacation house i'd visited very frequently since birth.  Almost every weekend, long stretches of time during the summer.  It was in the middle of no where essentially.  about a 25 minute drive from anything resembling civilization, a few hundred yards from a lake, and completely BURIED in the forest.  Since i'd done the most of my growing here, spending days on end alone walking through the woods, catching frogs and turtles, burning shit...somehow it became this sacred place - and i could never bring myself to "change" my relationship with this place that had posessed innocent little me.  So i never EVER got high or drunk there.
Never even brought anything just in case.  Really, i was breaking the golden-rule of being a heroin addict...Never EVER EVER go anywhere without your shit.  ALWAYS be ready.  But it never even phased me...it was without question that i could never taint this beautiful piece of my childhood.

I eventually drove myself into a crippling drug addiction, and more and more frequently crossed these imaginary lines in the sand; until there was nothing left but a ravaged beach.

There was another place i treated like that house in the woods, that did not fair as fortunate in the tides of my blind need for substance.  A beautiful island.......i mean, so beautiful you would never want a single thing for the rest of your LIFE, except to draw another breath.  Truly perfection - and i treated it that way for many years.
Eventually, i went seeking to impose my own thoughts of perfection - upon nature's version... as soon as the first few lines of china white went up my nose, this incredible sense of guilt overpowered my numb, serene, paradise.
And i could no longer enjoy it.  All i could think of was "i hope i don't feel like this when i come down", and sure enough, the trip faded, and the guilt stuck around...like some new years day hangover that you don't forget for a fucking week.  Where all you can smell is spilled beer and cheap perfume...you change your clothes, open the windows...but it still lingers.

Every time i go to the island, the guilt lingers in the back of my brain, waiting to leap forward the next time i piss on perfection.  Of all the places i held "sacred", or safe from my drug addictions, that house in the woods is the only one I never tainted...it's really the only thing i'm proud that wasn't affected by my lack of morals, and blatant disregard for anything but ingesting more heroin.
After all those years, it's still perfect to me.

one mike's house

Mike's house was somewhat of a phenomenon to the untrained eye, but in reality it was a very calculated and careful continuous experiment.

By experiment i mean that - nothing ever happened the same way twice, and EVERYTHING that happened at mike's house was completely backwards to how it would happen everywhere else.
I came and went at all hours of the day and night.  There would never be anyone home besides Mike, and somehow, he'd never have the keys to his own fucking door, so we'd end up climbing through a window in the garage to get into the house.
If i couldn't sleep on a Monday night, i'd head to Mike's house, and find him laying in the living room at 530 in the morning watching cartoons drinking a case of MGD.  So i'd knock on the window, he'd open the door and we'd get shitfaced for an hour and a half before getting in the car to go to school.

Afternoons were where the experiment would be in full effect...  His parents would work, but not far from home - so we were always on edge because we'd have no idea when they'd walk in the door.  So one minute i'd be doing lines of china white off his kitchen counter, and slinking around looking for another bottle of cough syrup...and the next we'd be jumping off the balcony in the front of his house because his Mom came in the back. [without cleaning up a thing....there'd be crack pipes made out of foil, empty bottles and resin everywhere, and we'd just jump ship.  Our reasoning would be the cycle that kept everything spinning - at all times - at Mike's house.  Like we were spinning plates...one would start to slow down and we'd run over and spin it some more, and then another one would start to wobble, and we'd run over to it and spin IT some more...just constantly moving on impulse out of sheer convenience.]

These days never stopped either.  We'd steal his brothers car at 3 am and drive to the harbor just to walk around, get higher, and waste away for a few hours. watch the sun rise, fight traffic to get back, drop the car off without anyone noticing, fill our backpacks with beer, and go sit on a patch of grass in an alley and chainsmoke until late afternoon.  Then break in to Mike's house [again, through the garage] run around breaking shit with the music as loud as it could go for a few hours.  i'd smoke more crack, snort more china white, have a few drinks, and then we'd leave again before anyone showed up. 
ride our bikes to the park and lay around for a while, or go mooch a free meal at a restaraunt we knew someone at.

In the end, Mike turned out to be a lot different than the person i'd known for years.
He cleaned up, just enough to not get caught as often, and we grew apart. 
But he will always be one of the best friends i ever had.  As insane as shit got with the 2 of us, he saved my life multiple times - and not from Overdosing, or falling off a fucking balcony....he saved ME from ending my life.  He'd get serious at the strangest of times....[as if time was normal at all to us]
and tell me how much he'd miss me if i left.  and the kid would do ANYTHING to cheer me up.  concert tickets, 5 star dinners, he'd "borrow" someone's car if i wanted to leave somewhere, just to get me the hell outta there.
truly one of the best, and i wish it never had to end.

Sonic Nurse

There really is no one specific time this happened.  But i made it a point to make sure it was the same every time.
School would always be the worst.  From waking up cold and in need of more heroin, to walking to the bustop in the late January frozen muck that seems to get blacker with every passing winter...it never started well. 
By 3rd period i'd have to find a vacant bathroom to smoke more tar in, or find my drug buddy and see if he had any crack before 4th period.  But the thing that bothered me most in school, were the people.
I hated everybody.  and everybody hated me.  I was far from being friends with the cool kids, and was a towering 5'6" - 85 lbs.   not exactly a lot to work with, so i learned how to dissappear.
My headphones were in every second they could be, and i'd do my very best to pack whatever drugs i could up my nose, down my throat, and into my lungs - to vanish completely off even my OWN radar.
The end of the day was always bittersweet for me.  I'd be ELATED to finally fucking leave the building, and all of those horrible people behind...but i'd always JUST be coming down off my high...leaving me pissed off, irritated, massively depressed, and surrounded by throbs and throbs of people who made it their daily goal to make my life a living hell.
When i finally did turn the corner onto the first sidestreet past the gates...sweet salvation.
My pack of camel lights, and my music as loud as it could go.  Turning that corner was almost as good as getting high again...i could chain smoke, and listen to Sonic Youth's "Sonic Nurse" album all the way to wherever i wanted to go.  Freedom.

Those walks home were some of my happiest moments throughout High School.  I would turn down a ride just to walk in the rain, by myself, listening to that record and smoking cigarettes.  For those 50 or so minutes...i had someone to relate to - something i could FEEL besides miserable.  something that mattered.

first impressions

there was a beginning to all of this.  like most stories on the subject, it starts when i was a bit younger.
It was the last few days of summer, and school had already fired it's warning shot across the bow...
At this age, we clung to the daylight like our last breaths before drowning in the dismal abyss.  Every firefly, bead of sweat, and scraped knee were cherished like we were being shipped out to war at the ripe old age of 12.
The last of my innocent days...metaphorically speaking...i was no ideal child.  i'd already had an arson charge the previous summer for turning the outhouse at the park into an escape-pod-sized-defecation-bomb during a baseball game, setting the nearby tree up in flames, and splinters of wood from the surrounding enclosure violently hurled into the playground like the biggest pipebomb you've ever seen.  i didn't stick around long enough to see who got hurt.

On Friday we had an hour and a half of school.  So that we could find the classroom we were assigned to, and get our curriculum, paperwork, blah blah blah...needless to say, those 90 minutes left the impending-doom cloud looming over head for the last 2 free days of summer.
I knew not a SINGLE person in my class this year.  So during the "oh my god" orgy of bffs cluster-fucking it's way around the classroom [from new hair-do, to summer tan, to "OMGGGG....lip piercing!!!! i didn't know you were so cool!"]
**which brings up a side note - how any human being who went through YEARS of schooling to be a teacher in his/her field of choosing, doesn't start popping a .357 round into the mouths of teenage students so vigorously yelping about the assanine shit that makes up the "rich" fabric of their lives............i do not know.

i sat and thought to myself, rarely glancing about the room.

After the orgy was over, and we were free to enjoy our last - now tainted - days of summer, we were all set loose in the halls.  like a pack of fucking dogs.  some limping, some yapping, but mostly just fucking...the little dogs waiting for a tossout from the cool ones.  fucking disgusting.
Luckily in the wings i spotted a friend.  Andy
Andy was cool.  Not to everyone else, but cool as shit to me.  He was new last year, and we became quick friends over our love for hockey, and doing all around stupid shit. Paintball, skateboarding, trying to jump bmx bikes over his moms cars...you name it, we'd try it AT LEAST once.
I shuffled through the mob to Andy, and he introduced me to 2 friends of his Charlie and John.  Funniest 2 kids on the planet i swear to God.  Nice too.  I'd never met these people before in my life, but i could tell they'd never make fun of me for the music i liked, the clothes i wore, or how i talked.  John and Charlie said they were going to their friend John's house tomorrow night to get high and drunk, have a bonfire, and most importantly, the carnival was in town this weekend, and John lived right across the street from it.

I told 'em i'd think about it, and went home for the day, played street hockey with the neighbors, and contemplated whether or not to make an appearance at John's house tomorrow.


The next evening i called Andy to see if he was going over to the carnival [my chicken shit way of asking him to go to John's with me] and he said he'd meet me over there later.  So i hopped on my bike and headed over to John's house...There were kids EVERYWHERE...it was like every kid in town had converged on this one block of over-priced food, and rigged-games.  Luckily i showed up and Charlie and John were already there...sitting on a park bench they stole and put under John's carport, eating handfuls of trix cereal from the box.  We sat there for a while just watching dusk slowly creep over John's street, but with darkness came no cold...just hot, sticky, and humid night. A few more people showed up and John ran inside to grab his grab bag-o-drugs.  I'd never seen anything before, and this duffel bag he brought out looked like the EMT survival kit.  Every color and shape of pill i could imagine, weed, pipes, little bags with smiley faces all over em full of powders i'd never seen.  My eyes would've lit up like fucking christmas had i known what half the shit was.
So John packs a bowl [also new to me...blown glass] and starts passing it around...everyone knew it was my first time, but no one made fun of me for being the new guy.  and i liked that.

So i guess this is where i'm supposed to convey the magnitude of "my first hit", and say something like "this fortuitous moment changed the landscape of my life....forever..."  but really, that's all bullshit.  We were all curled up in this grassy ditch on the side of John's house, and I must've hit that bowl a fucking dozen times and felt NOTHING...it tasted different than the cigarettes we'd steal from the gas station. [at this point in time, they weren't behind the counter yet]  John packed me another bowl, all for myself...and i smoked right through that one too.
Everyone stared at me in disbelief and i looked at them like they were fucking crazy..."what the hell" i thought...THIS is what i've been missing.
So, since no one else wanted to waste weed on the new kid who apparently was immune to it, we started walking over to the carnival....well, to say WE started walking is a bit of an overstatement.
Everyone stood up and began walking down the sidewalk, i just stood up and stood.  I couldn't fucking believe it.  Whatever it was that i felt, i wanted more...MUCH more.  Hot blood slowly making it's way from my shoulders to my feet.  The sun was almost down, but everything was warm...fucking bliss, that's what it was.
So for the first time, i was high out of my goddamn mind - and wandering around this carnival with 4 or 5 other guys, just staring at the lights, going in and out of the funhouse, laughing my ass off, touching shit just because it felt good.  It was like everything was brand new again...and i never once thought about what had been on my mind since the beginning of summer...the END of summer.  Perfect, i thought.

We quickly realized that the carnival was not as fun as John's vacant - house just hundreds of feet away, and made our way back.  Sitting in the screened in porch off the back of John's house, the bowl was passed again, and a box of 40's was placed in the middle of the table.  Someone tossed me one, so i cracked it open and started sipping on it like everyone else.  I'd had the ends of dad's beers many times, but i never liked it as much as this stuff...or was i just high?  Lord knows i didn't care, and i downed 2 of em before John returned with the duffel bag.
THIS, was that fortuitous moment...the weed was goofy, the malt liquor was just a magnifier for the weed [although trying to play basketball was more fun than ever] but this shit was what I wanted more of.  John opened up dozens of the orange childproof medication bottles on the table and combined what was left of the unused-prescriptions.  ALL vicodin and oxy.
Since i was the new kid, [and they were all quite impressed i was ingesting as much as i did] he smashed up 2 pills into this neat little pile, handed it to me on a tray, and then put 3 more pills in my other hand.
"put those 2 up your nose, and those 3 down your throat" he said smiling.  I looked at him, looked at everyone else around me, all smiling like we were best friends.  And so far this had been the best night of my life, so i put the straw down in the pile, exhaled as hard as i could, and breathed in until all the powder was gone.  Being brand new to snorting drugs up my nose, i got that taste in the back of my throat [the one i'd grow to love...i can still taste it every now and then] and it took a few minutes for my sinuses to re-equalize, but my God i didn't care.  I Looked down at my hand and tossed the remaining 3 pills into the back of my mouth and washed em down with a sip off of Charlie's beer.
I don't remember a word of conversation, but i do remember feeling hot as hell, and moving from the screened-in-porch to somewhere in the middle of the yard, laying down and staring at the slightly orange sky for a minute, while the late summer crickets cheered the moon into the sky.

When i woke up, i had this burning, warm sensation on my forhead, and immediately opened my eyes to a blazing fire.  I rolled back in the grass and sat up on my knees.  I took a quick, very stoned glance around me and abruptly noticed that i was in the middle of something very different, and completely foreign to me.
For starters, it was dark out...and when i fell asleep the sun was still up.  There was a raging bonfire erected in the middle of the backyard, with dozens of people running around it, and talking to eachother.  And no sign of John, Charlie, or Andy for that matter.  At first thought, i was terrified...then those fears slowly subsided, and i just sat in some raggedy ass lawn-chair for hours, staring at the fire, mentally notating how i felt, and what i thought, and how things looked...

Eventually i just got my bike from the side of John's house where i had started this night hours previous, and walked it to the Walgreen's near his house.  Got myself a bottle of juice or something...and quickly realized i couldn't make it home.  One phone call, and an extremely awkward car ride with my dad later, i passed out on the living room floor. 

When i woke up the next morning, it was as if nothing happened...no one treated me different at home, still had to wash the car and help dad clean out some shit in the garage...really the only residual from the night before was some dried blood on my nose [which i assumed was from the drugs, but turned out to be from "laying down" so gently on the floor the night before]  and my clothes reaked of bonfire and beer.

I left the house later in the day to go hang out with Andy [who'd been smoking weed and taking pills for years now] and told him what i did the night before.  He went fucking nuts.  in a good way.  He was ecstatic that we could start doing shit together now.
I spent the next month smoking weed, getting drunk, and snorting any kind of pill you'd give me in Andy's basement - with new people every day.  His mom would bring home valium, coedine, dxm, whatever she could for "the kids"....2 months later i got bored of feeling the same way over and over again.  i wanted something more exciting...something that would make my skin fucking crawl, and wouldn't be the same high i'd been chasing for months now.  Bob Marley live in Santa Barbara, and the same Doors VHS got old really fast...i'll never understand how stoners are content with that shit.

That's when i met my drug buddy.  My drug buddy and me had a mutual friend he knew from grade school, and shared the same affinity for getting fucked up fast, on stuff we'd never done before, having fun, and running all over the city sharing these experiences with eachother.  More importantly, escaping the lives we led. 
His opressive family [and i mean OPRESSIVE...military dad, religous mom...childhood killing-combo], and my constant need to be free of mine, only made us better friends.  I'll always be glad we found eachother.  And shortly after both of us declaring our mutual boredom with smoking weed, we found a world of things that made us higher than we'd ever dreamed about.

That was my first time getting high or drunk....and the short 3 months that followed.
I met my first running mate, found my place in a new school, and before halloween that year was snorting china white heroin.  Life was fucking great.

There were other times...

There were always times i wasn't dying, overdosed, passed out, stealing, throwing up, lying, cheating, depressed, obsessed, fiending, scratching or flat out suicidal.  And the way i remember those "fondest" years of my life spent in and out of hospitals, stranger's houses, and the glovebox of every car i could pry open [which incidently, isn't hard with a knife and a brick] - will always puzzle me...
If i think really fucking hard, i mean - for a few days, really contemplate going back, and try to remember how everything felt...i start to grasp hold of the hole i was in.
Then and ONLY then do i remember the constant sickness, the bleeding nose, muscles just fucking twisting in knots until i got a fix, throwing up anything i'd try and eat, and consequently, not eating for days.  the headaches, the ulcers, coughing up blood, the countless psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, social workers, case workers, counselors and "coaches", sleep? fucking forget about it...the 40 minutes i'd dose off on the train to the city was about the only time my eyes would close.  the always scabbed and reopening cuts on my wrists.  No money, no food, no cigarettes, a different place to sleep every week......fucking tiring, that's what 5 years of shit will do to you...tire you out.  unfortunately - when your time's up, rest is the last thing the liscensed doctors surrounding you will let you have.

Otherwise - all i can remember is when there were other times...times that weren't like that.  and only these times stay at the front of my brain, ready to be rattled off in conversation like medals, ribbons, and trophy's.  sick and twisted - that's what that is...and i'd love to assume we're all a little sick and twisted, but from my experiences - i think it's safe to say the vast majority aren't.
i think the bulk of people who you converse with on any given day, have never stabbed anybody, shot anybody, watched somebody bleed out, seen the pavement on independence blvd. on a tuesday night at 3 am...ate with crackheads and whores, spent time in just about any type of hospital, with just about any type of mental practicioner you can think of...people don't function like this...junkies do.
and we do with love and valor.  like a goddamn walk in the park - nothing unusual to the numbed eye.  not a person, but a body, a vessel...just floating on by waiting for that day to come.  and TRUST me, you can see it coming.  but all the while, you'll swear it'll never happen to you.



that's usually when you start rattling off the war-stories, the laughers, and the "no-fucking-way"(s).  right after the quick but mesmerizingly horriffic realization of death.
The shit i burned, the trips i took, those perfect days spent with nothing but a pack of camels and a couple bags of dope...
everything else resides far in the distance. the blood, the cold, the ever-ending life...it takes a permanent back seat.
that's the sick and twisted part - that there were other times. times i will too soon forget.

dinner party

So I guess i'll start this off with a story of simple blindness...

it was a tuesday afternoon in summer.  after waking up around 1 and going skating for a few hours by myself, and burning the shit out of my hands on the metal ramps that had been sitting in the blazing sun all day, i went back home and layed in front of the fan in my bedroom for a few minutes before making my way into my desk...
My dad built me this desk for my room YEARS ago, and through all the fights, and staying up all night getting geeked out of my skull, it had slowly turned into looking more like one of the lunchtables from high school.  band names, every fucking curse word in the book, wierd lyrics from sonic youth and bad religion songs carved deeply into the wood my dad took weeks sanding, staining, and coating relentlessly with laquer over, and over again...
the desk was great because the top hinged up so you could have little compartments to keep paper, pens, stamps....or in my case, photographs, drugs, pipes, tinfoil, lighters, and stupid little fucking keepsakes from my years of doing drugs...we all had 'em...little fucking pins, ticket stubs, stickers.  pointless garbage dispensed from the quarter machines outside grocery stores at 3 am while on some 4 day binge with a running buddy that we just "never wanted to forget".
so i dug through my desk while simultaneously holding all the shit that was stacked on TOP of it to the tilted surface, and found my little black tinted bags filled with what always seemed to be the ever-dwindling supply.  ripped the cap off my usual pen-tube, got out my shell gas card that had 63 cents on it for the entire 4 years i had it, and cut 3 skinny little rails right there on my gouged-out desk, being careful not to slide any of the brownish/white powder into the etched lyrics to "youth against fascism" by sonic youth...

6 minutes and an eternity later, john pulls his blue monte carlo into the driveway of the house i am hardly EVER at anymore and honkys the horn...somehow he always knew when things were going well with the family...cause i'd have the same phone number for more than a week.
i drag myself, shuffling, down the stairs and slump myself into the passenger seat of his car in silent elation...staring bugeyed into the blue sky mumbling along to the stone temple pilots as he whipped through town driving past any girl with shorts above the knees TWICE on the way to the only liquor store that would sell to his dumb ass.
45 minutes [that felt like an hour and a half] in blistering humidity and parking lot traffic later, we arrived at his dad's vacant house [he was always on some trip with his newest girlfriend...since being divorced, he made it a point to stay away from his children] with a warm case of Icehouse, and whatever was left of a small bottle of Jim Beam he picked out to "impress" his "friends" at some high school party later that evening with his hard-liquor/cowboy drinking skills...
I immediately turned on some music and b-lined for the greenhouse off the back entrance to the house...
this time was different, johnny boy followed me...and being as blown out of the sky as i was already, i couldn't exactly make a quick getaway...and besides - it WAS his house. [not too mention, john had quite the affinity for knives and guns - getting smart around him in an empty house was almost always a bad idea]

i set about opening my smokey colored bags on a wooden stool in the middle of the room, and carefully unfolding the tin foil being sure not to dump any of the precious resource carelessly onto the floor.

john sat ever so patiently on a stool to my left at the table...watching my every move like a child seeing an ant hill for the first time. almost grinning and the simplicity of the deadly relationship between drug and user that was unfolding before him in, of all places - his dad's greenhouse.
between the second and third pass with my pen tube, he asked an obvious question, and i gave him some form of the vaguest answer i could drum up.  consumed with my actions..or rather, reactions.

the next 3 or 4 hours are a blur, really.  i don't remember doing anything but watching john cut something with some samurai-jack knife repeatedly...and he seemed entertained, so i wasn't really worried.
i do remember driving all the way across town to his mom's boyfriends house, and the whole time him nagging at me and questioning the qualifications of my appearence and demeanor to actually sit down with his family and hold a conversation, let alone eat a meal.
All i remember of dinner was briefly looking around to see everyone wearing nice clothes.  and quickly realizing i had my sweatshirt on inside out to hide the blood stains covering the sleeves.  this threw me a bit off tilt, and i started gazing emptily about the room observing all the differences between their happy home, and the places i usually had tuesday night dinner.  [ i was a regular mooch at several friends houses, and the 7/11 by the highway - the guy would let me use the microwave for my ramen and shit ]

I slowly convinced John to leave after dinner, and as soon as we got in his car, i started pulling my bag out again to bump a little while we were driving downtown....as soon as he saw it the questions started again..."FUCK MAN, you really need more?!  i don't want you doing that shit in here - lemme pull away from the house first, christ."
the chastising was quickly followed by praise for "behaving" during dinner...he couldn't believe how normal i seemed with the amount of drugs i had injested before his very eyes.  which for some reason, i wore as some scum-bag fucking joy-band on my arm....a teenage pride - being better at dying than your friends.
and at that instant...it hit him for the first time, the same way it hit me years ago-

"do you do that much all the time?"
johnny boy finally came to his senses and realized the "normal" me he'd known for years now was on so much heroin on such a constant basis, that i couldn't function otherwise.

this was the 2nd to last time i saw john.