Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead (35 page)

I didn’t make it twelve hours.

Addicts are a lot like serial killers. Serial killers only get to be
serial
killers because they don’t get nabbed for their first murder. It’s the same way with addicts. You’ve got to be damn good at doing drugs-and hiding that you’re doing drugs-to become a full-blown addict.

Within hours of my release, I snuck away from the home I shared with Valerie and beelined to the rowhouse on Tree Street. I’d spent the entire thirty-day stint in rehab figuring out how to buy oxys again without Valerie catching me. Our joint bank account was off limits. So were my paychecks. I knew from then on I was going to have to find my cash elsewhere, somewhere no
one would notice it missing. So I went to Tree Street, waited for my mom to turn her head, stole ninety bucks from the drug till she kept next to her recliner, then bought three oxys off her with her own money. She was so strung out I probably could’ ve taken more. But I only took what I needed: $90 a day.

Valerie was suspicious, but without the bank statements for confirmation, she wasn’t completely sure if I was using again. And she wasn’t the type of person who’d accuse someone of something that serious without absolute proof. Like most people, she still believed-or maybe she wanted to believe-that people act crazy when they’re on drugs like Oxycontin. People do; addicts don’t. Addicts act normal when they’re using and out of their minds when they aren’t. So long as I never let myself go more than eight and a half, nine hours max between pills, I never jonesed myself into hysteria. And so long as I held steady at 80 milligrams, I never got so high that I nodded out. I cruised at 80 every eight hours, and no one was the wiser, except my mom.

When Nina, Matt, Valerie and I showed up at the Bertone Christmas gathering, my dad met us at the door in a Santa suit. Matt was too little to realize Santa was his grandfather. Valerie was too new to the family to know quite what she was supposed to do when Santa sang, “Ho, Ho, Ho” in her ear and shoved a half dead poinsettia at her.

“Santa, you didn’t have to give me anything,” she said.

“It’s not from me,” Santa replied, right on cue.

I walked over to Valerie, reached into the base of the plant, pulled out the diamond engagement ring Santa had hidden for me, and dropped to my knee.

“ Will you marry me?”

“Yes!” Valerie answered, bursting into tears.

Valerie cried a lot during our engagement. I wish to God I could say they were all tears of joy.

JUST A FEW weeks after I popped the question, I was once again scheduled to speak in San Diego, the scene of my notorious mini-bar raid. I was running late to leave for my flight, so I frantically stuffed clothes into a duffel bag. I was almost out the door when I remembered I didn’t pack any socks. My duffel bag was already bursting at the seams, so I reached for a briefcase the ADL had given me. They’d had it made special, with the Harmony Through Hockey emblem printed on it. It touched me they did that, but I rarely carried it. I’m not a briefcase guy. But rushing to catch my plane, I had to find something to stuff a week’s worth of socks in; it was the first bag I saw that wouldn’t need to be unpacked from my last trip. I grabbed the briefcase off the top shelf of my closet, blew most of the dust off it, opened it just wide enough to cram in the socks, and flew out the door.

I stood in line forever at the ticket counter at Philadelhia International. I checked my suitcase. I went outside for one last smoke. Then I did what all airline passengers do as their departure time looms: I emptied my pockets into a little plastic tub, laid my carry-on briefcase on the conveyor belt, and walked through the metal detector. The airport cops nabbed me on the other side.

I know this seems impossible, but it’s true: I forgot I had a gun stashed in that briefcase. I guess it was par for the course. After all, I was the same genius who left the videotape of an aggravated kidnapping in the freaking camcorder. The airport cops hauled me to the Philadelphia Police substation inside the terminal.

“I swear I just forgot it was in there,” I said to the officer.

“Don’t worry,” he replied. “It happens more often than you’d think. Obviously, we can’t let you board a plane with it, but it shouldn’t take too long to clear up. You live with somebody?”

“My fiancée. Why?”

“Call her,” the officer said. He slid a phone across the table to me. “Have her bring down the registration papers and you can be on your way. We’ll hold the gun until you get back.”

I didn’t pick up the phone.

“You have papers for this gun, don’t you?”

“No.”

He paused. “Well, so long as you’re not a convicted felon – ”

“I am.”

“You’re in a lot of trouble.”

The officer left me alone in the interrogation room for a while. I couldn’t fucking believe it. How in the hell was I going to explain this to Valerie? I was on the verge of tears when a huge black detective walked into the room. He shut the door behind him and laid the .380 on the table.

“What’s up with the gun, Meeink?”

I spilled my guts at hyperspeed. “I’m supposed to be giving a speech in San Diego. I was running late and needed another bag and I just forgot it was in there. And I know I ain’t supposed to have a gun, but I live in South Philly, you know what I mean? And some people don’t like me for what I do now. And …” I paused for the first time and gulped for air. Then I concluded, “I guess I ain’t going to be giving my speech.”

“Guess not,” the detective said. He stared at me for a really long time. “I know who you are.”

My heart fucking stopped. Did he know who I’d been or who I’d become?

“And I know what you do.” He stared into my eyes like he was trying to see my soul. “Keep doing what you do, Meeink.”

If it weren’t for that detective, things could have gone a lot worse for me that day. He made it as easy for me as possible. I was still in trouble, though: convicted felons aren’t allowed to be in possession of firearms, especially hot firearms without papers. The cops transferred me to a holding tank in West Philly where I used my one call to reach Earbow Petanzi.

Even though you can’t bail yourself out, the cops let you keep your cash in holding, in part so you can hire the services of the shyster street lawyers who hawk themselves down the row
every morning. One who reminded me of George Jefferson strutted toward my cell.

“ What’re you in for?” he asked me. I was hard to miss. I was a twenty-four year old white guy in business clothes surrounded by elderly black winos and teenaged black gangbangers.

“Gun at the airport. No numbers. And I’m an ex-con.”

“Ooh,” he said. “You need a lawyer.”

No shit. I could not risk going before a judge with nobody on my side.

“How much?” I asked.

“Two-hundred. No refunds.”

I forked over all the cash I had in my pocket.

“No refunds,” he reminded me.

A couple hours later, the guards escorted me and several of my cellies to a small room connected by closed-circuit television to a courtroom in another part of the city. I was shackled to a gangster, standing next to my Cracker Jack box attorney, when a video monitor popped on and revealed the lineup in the real courtroom. Earbow had been busy. He sat next to Valerie and Barry Morrison, one row back from the defense table, where Mike Boni was in a huddle with some guy I didn’t recognize.

My $200-non-refundable lawyer recognized him, though.

“Is the guy on the right on your case?” he asked.

“I guess, if he’s sitting with Mike. Why? Who is he?”

“That guy’s famous. He used to be a federal prosecutor.” Without saying another word, the small-time lawyer handed me my $200 non-refundable and walked away. The state’s prosecutor recommended the judge set my bail at half a million dollars on the grounds that I had an extensive criminal record, a history of skipping parole, one escape from an institution under my belt, and a prepaid plane ticket literally in my back pocket. Then my lawyer, the former federal prosecutor, spoke. I was released about two hours later on a $200 bond. A few weeks later, the charges were dropped.

The closest I’d been to clean since leaving rehab was the
sixteen or so hours I spent in that West Philly holding tank. I was a fucking wreck by the time Valerie took me home. She thought it was stress from my ordeal. It had been a hell of an ordeal, only this time, nobody had handed me any methadone to help me cope. I wasn’t home five minutes before I swallowed a double-dose of Oxycontin to make up for lost time.

My three-pill-a-day habit doubled overnight. I wasn’t convinced I could sneak $180 out of my mom’s till every day without getting busted, so I called my old buddy Keith and asked if he could throw me some hours at his antique shop. He helped me out, like always, for months, supplementing my speaker fees, not understanding why I was so hard up for cash. I was riding the train back from his store in Jersey one afternoon with cash in my pocket, when I made a life-altering decision: it is stupid to spend $180 a day on Oxycontin. I vowed at that very moment never to waste money like that again. So instead of getting off the train at my usual stop, I stayed on. I stayed on that fucking train. All the way to the Badlands. Telling myself the whole fucking way, “It’ll be okay so long as I only sniff it. If I only sniff it, I ain’t going to be a junkie. I ain’t ever going to shoot it up. I’m just gonna sniff a little, to save money.” In 2001, a bag of heroin only cost ten bucks in the Badlands. I slipped a dealer two fives and he handed me the key to heaven. Heroin was everything I’d ever heard it would be and more. I bought two more bags before I even climbed back on the train.

For nearly a month, I held out on two bags a day, one in the morning and one after work. Then I gave in and jumped to two bags twice a day. Then three. But I only ever sniffed, so I wasn’t a real junkie. Any worries I had about Valerie busting me dissolved by summer. With the wedding just a few months away, guest lists and flower arrangements consumed her attention. I spent a little more time in the Badlands each day, making buys and chatting with my new best friend, my dealer. One morning,

I only had a twenty and some change on me. I didn’t want to have to make a second trip back for my afternoon bags. I picked my
way around the busted appliances, toppled trash cans, and junkies that litter the sidewalks of the Badlands. I found my dealer.

“Hey, dude, will you front me, just this once?” I asked.

He clarified his policy: “No fronts. Not for nobody.”

I pouted like a four-year-old.

“You don’t need a front,” he said. “All you need is a rig.” A needle.

A lifetime of broken promises echoed through my mind. I’ll never smoke pot. I’ll never snort cocaine. I’ll never take oxys. I’ll never do heroin.

“I’ll never shoot heroin” was the only promise I had left.

“Twice the ride for half the price,” my dealer said. “Go buy a rig, then come back over and I’ll show you how to do it.”

Every kind of dealer imaginable works the Badlands, including needle dealers. I spent a buck’s worth of change on a clean rig. Then I handed a twenty to my dealer. He handed me two bags of heroin and told me to cool my heels while he finished up with another customer. But there’s always another customer in the Badlands. After about ten minutes, my dealer said, “Sorry, dude, I ain’t got time to help you right now.” He kicked me back two dollars and pointed to a homeless junkie begging nearby. “He’ll do it for you for two bucks.”

I winced at the thought of the filthy bum touching my clean rig.

“Don’t worry, he’s a pro. He could hit your veins from across the street.”

The beggar led me up into an abandoned train trestle near Kensington Avenue, through a maze of other junkies nodding out amid piles of trash and puddles of rainwater laced with urine. He found us a spot and kicked it clear of dirty needles.

“Sit down,” he said.

I propped myself against the filthy metal wall. He knelt beside me. From the bowels of his tattered coat, he produced a pop bottle lid, a tiny tripod holder, and a book of matches. He demonstrated how to transform the pieces into a stove. Then he
reached into his coat again and pulled out a small vial. He emptied one bag of heroin into the lid, pulled an exact measure of water up into my clean syringe from the vial, injected the water into the heroin, and lit a match. While my dose cooked down, he dug through his pockets again until he located a cigarette butt. He ripped off a little piece of the filter and floated it in my hit. He inserted the needle into the filter and pulled the cooked heroin up through it into the syringe. Then he gave me a little lecture about the importance of always checking the end of the needle for fibers so I wouldn’t get “cotton fever.”

While he talked, I snuck glances at the other lost souls of the Badlands. Not ten feet away from us, a man who looked like a corpse unzipped his pants and plunged a needle into his penis. The horror registered on my face. My homeless helper followed my eyes to the man, now slumped against the wall, a blissful look on his face, the needle hanging limply from his dick. “Only veins he’s got left,” the beggar said. He flicked his index finger hard against the pulsing vein in my right arm. “You got nothing to worry about. You got great veins.”

I was still staring at the corpse man, thinking, “At least I ain’t that bad,” when I felt the needle prick my skin. Three seconds later, I gladly would’ ve shoved a three-foot needle up my dick, through both balls, and all the way north until it came out my eye if that’s what it took to stay feeling the way I felt when that heroin rocketed through my body. Mainlined directly into a vein, heroin is fucking nirvana. It’s a feeling you can’t possibly imagine until you’re inside it. Unfortunately, it’s a feeling you can’t ever forget once you’ve been there.

Morning and night, every day for two weeks, I paid that same homeless dude two bucks a pop to shoot me up. I was terrified I’d overdose myself if I tried going solo. I didn’t want to end up like my cousin Nick, but one day I couldn’t find my helper, so I risked it. I tried to remember everything he’d taught me and to be safe, I only shot half a bag. The next day I shot a whole bag without assistance. When I didn’t die, I quit worrying about killing myself.