Digging the Vein (22 page)

“
I sent my sister in to your room to look for my money and she stepped on this! It went into her foot! She’s at the hospital getting test for AIDS right now!”

“
I don’t … why did you go into my
room
, man?”

Suddenly I was back on the moral high ground. The lousy, thieving bastard!

“
I oughta call the
cops
on you, you fucking dick! You can’t go into my room like that!”

“
You? Call cops on ME
?”

The old guy looked about ready to explode. I started to laugh at the stupid expression on his face, and this was my mistake because I wasn’t ready for the punch he threw at me. It wasn’t hard, but it took me by surprise. It connected with the side of my face and I fell backwards, cracking my head against the wall.

“
You get your shit,” he barked, “and you get out! I will call the cops, asshole, not you!”

Suddenly all of my bravado had deserted me. I staggered to me feet. “Jesus Christ, I’m going, I’m going…”

I didn’t punch him back. I limped off to my room with him following me, muttering darkly each step of the way. I tasted blood - my lip was bleeding. As I made my way back to the room I tried to figure out my next move. I was homeless again, with only a word processor to my name, no heroin, and a bleeding lip.

Oh, you stupid bastard, why do you do this to yourself?

I opened the door and slammed it closed in the manager’s face. I sat down on the bed and took my jacket and shirt off. I concentrated on my breathing and the metallic taste of blood in my mouth. I tried to clear my thoughts. If you force yourself to make decisions in a panic situation the brain will turn on you and start sending out erroneous information like a malfunctioning computer. Many a person has been fucked over by listening to an overwrought mind. It took me ten minutes to shut out the chatter in my head and the managers yelling from outside the door. Finally he tramped off down the corridor again. My brain kept intruding, sending snippets from the past year crashing into the fore of my mind like uninvited guests at a party: Genesis, pretty, blonde, naked and OD’d in my bath after I shot her with some of my heroin, my screams reverberating around the bathroom as I smacked her in the face and sprayed cold water all over her yelling for her to wake up, wake up, you stupid bitch—the cops beating the shit out of me outside Cedar Sinai’s emergency room, getting an abscess cut out of my arm, doped up and unfeeling, yet quietly revolted by the smell of the rotten blood as they stuck the scalpel into the weeping, swollen flesh …

Eventually I forced these images out of my head and let my mind rest. There really was only one option left, but it wasn’t one that I felt I could do: clean up, before I ended up in jail or OD’ing in a shabby motel room.

I opened my eyes and looked around my little room. The Mark Twain had been good while it lasted: cheap and convenient. I had been creative here, writing dozens of poems. It was a shame I had to leave. I had to clean up, but I knew I couldn’t face methadone again. Without insurance or a regular income, any other kind of treatment was out of my grasp. I knew that trying to come off cold turkey was an exercise in fruitlessness from previous experience: over the past couple of months I had sequestered myself in motels in Vegas and San Francisco in an effort to get away from my connections but always ended up high again before the third night. Doing it in Los Angeles was a joke—when dealers didn’t hear from me for a few days they’d start calling me up, and when they heard I was trying to quit they’d start offering me freebies. I suppose all I could do now was wait for something to come along; in the meantime, pack up my shit and get my sorry ass to the pawnshop.

I ripped open my mail, starting with the envelope that looked the most like a check. I was sorely disappointed. It was a piece I had submitted for a music magazine in New York being returned to me with a rejection slip. I remembered the piece; I was high as hell when I wrote it, awake for three consecutive days on a speed run. Probably not my best work.

The second envelope was from England. I opened it and read the letter. Then I reread it in disbelief. It was from my mother, who had finally gotten around to selling my old car. They got 1,000 pounds for it, which translated into just under 2,000 dollars. The check fluttered out of the envelope and landed at my feet. Well, I suppose that was a sign if I was looking for one. Now I had to decide for real whether to I was going to try detoxing.

I packed up and headed for my car before calling Carlos again to pick up what may have been my last bag of dope. I would be able to think more clearly once I had had a shot, I reasoned, and if I was going to clean up, there was no point in denying myself a bit of pleasure before my trip into rehab. I headed to the check cashing place on Hollywood and
Cahuenga,
noting that it was past one already. It was another glorious day in Hollywood. Just up the road there was a street paved with stars for Christ’s sake. Could life be any more perfect?

THE SWEET SMELL OF OBLIVION

By eight thirty I found myself parked down by Pico and Sixth with Raphael, high out of my mind behind the wheel of my car, with Raphael sat on the bonnet, drunk as a motherfucker trying to navigate his new mobile phone and get hold of his coke connection. After cashing the check I had picked up some more smack from Carlos and later paid Raphael back what I owed him. I picked up two grams of coke from Raphael and started shooting it. I had gotten so lost in shooting coke that I hadn’t even found another motel room - instead I spent the afternoon driving around, shooting up in the car, public restrooms, wherever. Now I was trying to pick up more coke, but the only person around was Raphael. This was bad news for me because after five pm he tended to be drunk to the point of incomprehension.

Today was no different. He told me he was out of coke.

“
You’re a fucking
drug dealer
, Raphael! How the fuck can you be out of coke?”

“
Eess okay, man! Eeef you geeve me a ride I can peek up some more. You doing me a
favor
, homes. I make eet worth your while…”

As soon as I picked him up I regretted agreeing to drive him around. He stunk of malt liquor and cheap tequila and his English had deteriorated to the point of nonsensicality. The trip began with him making me drive down East Sunset to grab some McDonalds, then with him having me slow up next to a bunch of hookers so he could yell at them and lean out of the back window, trying to grab at them. They cursed him in Spanish and one managed to grab him and ripped his shirt a little. He made as if he was going to reach for his knife so I peeled out of there, the motion throwing him back against the seat.

Now my coke was wearing off and I was starting to feel edgy. The pleasure was all gone now, only anxiety and a pounding heart remained. My nerve endings felt as though they had been crudely peeled back to reveal the softness beneath. He told me to head down to Pico, where we drove around back streets slowly looking for the connection. I began to wonder if this was some elaborate revenge for my owing him money for so long. Surely “the connection”, the man who in weight to street dealers like Raphael didn’t lurk around on street corners near Union / Pico? Still my overwhelming need for coke kept me there. I wasn’t sure where we were anymore, but I knew damn well that the grim compulsion awakened in me when I started to shoot coke would keep me driving him around for as long as he wanted, even as the situation seemed more and more hopeless.

And that’s how I found myself parked in a gang-run neighborhood with Raphael sitting on the hood of my car, wild hair sticking up and shirt ripped open, watching him trying to blearily dial a number of his cell, experiencing a growing sense of hopelessness for the whole situation – tonight, my life, everything.

I sat there, debating whether to give up on this and find a place to stay for the night. “A few more minutes,” my head demanded of me. “He might get through to his connection any moment.” I thought about getting another shot of coke into me. I imagined the tidal blast of pure chemical pleasure I would experience as I pushed the shot home.

I shut up and I waited.

An patrol car rumbled past us but Raphael was completely oblivious to the danger from the cops, yelling at his phone like a madman, talking craziness and looking like an escaped lunatic with his shirt ripped open and one of his shoes hanging off. I groaned as I watched the car pass us by. They must have seen me! I had two balloons of heroin on me still and my spikes in the glove box. Plus I had been shooting coke all day, and my track marks were particularly bloody and vivid. It would take no more than a passing glance for the cops to realize I was a junkie and toss the car. I watched the pigs turn left at the bottom of the street and was gripped by the absolute certainty that they were going to circle the block and come back around for a closer look. I stuck my head out of the window.

“
Hey Raphael!” I hissed. “Forget it! There’s too much heat around here! Let’s go!”

He looked at me, barely able to focus and started to argue with me in Spanish. He slid off the hood and came around to the drivers’ side window, his shit-stinking breath wafting in like a garbage truck on a summer’s day.

“
Leesten man… he come! He say… right now, he say… he come in… two minutos, homie!”

It was the third time in the past hour that Raphael had given me the same speech. I calculated I had maybe a minute before the patrol car would swing back around. I stuck the car into drive and peeled out, leaving Raphael flailing around in the street. I took a left at the end of the block and - sure enough - I caught a glimpse of the prowl car turning back onto the street, flashing the red lights as it came.

“
Fucking alcoholic motherfucker!” I fumed, taking the next left and heading back toward the safety of Hollywood, “I hope you get popped, you drunk fucking prick!”

Drunks. They’ve just got no class to them. They’re worse than crack heads, stumbling around breathing their fumes on you. A fucking liability. I remember when I was staying up on Iris Circle and my only connection who would deliver was Pedro, the podgy young kid who drove a red Toyota Corolla. He was pretty good with credit but towards the end his drinking started to get out of control. Because of that I hardly saw him anymore. The worst time was when my car was broken down and I was completely out of dope and sick. Man, I was puking and shitting myself, doubled over with stomach cramps so bad it felt like my intestines were coiling and uncoiling like a pack of snakes. I took my last seven Oxycontin but that didn’t even
touch
these withdrawals. I had called Pedro at eight that morning and he assured me he’d be there in an hour. At nine I called him, he told me twenty minutes. At ten he told me two minutes. At eleven he told me he was at the bottom of my hill and would be there in a second. Every time we spoke I could hear music, and people talking, and raucous laughter but I kidded myself that it was just his car stereo and not some party he was hanging out at. He finally turned up eleven hours late, drunk as a motherfucker and hardly able to stand. I wanted to beat the shit out of him but I was too weak, and anyway he had the dope so I was polite and thanked him after he took my money and handed me the drugs. The next day when I got my car fixed, though, I went out and found myself another phone connection, swearing never to have another drunk as a dealer. Unfortunately, it seemed that almost every heroin dealer in Los Angeles was a borderline alcoholic. The trick was learning to rotate them in such a way that you mostly caught them on good days. I cursed Raphael again and swore that if I ever had children I’d rather they did heroin than drank alcohol.

On Sunset, near Western I found a dump of a motel called the Motor Home Lodge and I paid thirty-five dollars for the night. When I went to grab my bags from the back seat and noticed something small and black on the backseat. Well fuck me – they were two black balloons of dope. They must have fell out of Raphael’s pocket during his drunken flailing about. I picked them up and rolled them between my fingers. They big and fat, sixty-dollar balloons it looked like. Well, the night wasn’t a waste after all! I was starting to feel real edgy coming down from the coke and counting back it must have been at least five hours since I had fixed some heroin. I sprinted up to my room, let myself in, and threw my bag on the bed.

The room was dark, with a creaky old double bed and a fuzzy out of focus TV playing hardcore porn. It had the dirty, furtive feel of a place where junkies come to shoot up, johns fuck ten dollar crack whores, and washed up screenwriters come to drink themselves to death. I got my kit out and headed to the bathroom with Raphael’s dope. Even when I have a room to myself, I like to shoot up in the bathroom. I suppose its just habit, but to me a hit isn’t a hit to me unless you do it in a bathroom. Automatically I had the spoon out, water in the spoon, ripping open a balloon with my teeth…