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.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, May 9, 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
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.
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.
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