Needle (35 page)

“This card’s been stolen!” she announced to Perry and any other customers within earshot.

Perry then immediately bolted out of the store, and the summer shopping spree had officially come to an end.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, I happened to have quit my job on the very same day when Leon—the cook at La Trattoria—and I had gotten into a nasty argument about sidework responsibilities. To teach me a lesson he began sabotaging my food orders and as a result, a very dissatisfied group of customers left me with shit for tips and I threatened to choke Leon to death. Apparently, the prospect of losing his cook was too much for the restaurant’s manager to bear and he sided with Leon, so in the heat of the moment I told them both to fuck-off and walked out. Of course, had I known about the confiscated line of credit I might not have. No, actually, I probably would have anyway.

Since we were both now unemployed again, it was incredibly fortunate to still have a variety of expensive merchandise ready for sale. For the moment, I didn’t think I could summon the courage to find another restaurant job—dopesick or not.

67

At the beginning of September, Perry was hired at a restaurant in Greenwich Village. That, along with the line of merchandise still stashed away in our hotel room allowed me to remain temporarily unemployed in order to focus on a busy week of recording.

Things were now running dangerously behind schedule. I suggested to Perry that in the interest of productivity, I should permanently forgo another restaurant job and concentrate exclusively on the music—while he work to support us from day to day. The upcoming sessions were of particular importance as Catherine had yet to hear a completed song, and the reassurance she needed was long overdo. Although I cared little about what people said, rumors regarding our extracurricular activities were now circulating and Catherine had actually threatened to pull the plug if we didn’t show her something to justify the time and money being spent. You couldn’t really blame her; after all, we’d been in and out of the studio for over eight months and still weren’t halfway finished. Although there was no particular time-frame to complete the project, I doubt whether Catherine or anyone else expected it to drag on for as long as it had.

Unfortunately, even in light of the costly delays, Perry wasn’t as open to my suggestion so I agreed to hit the pavement and find a job…eventually. Right now, at least for the week of recording, I really believed it was more important to make progress in the studio and after some cajoling Perry agreed.

I was scheduled to begin a string of ten-hour recording sessions and was very serious about getting the bulk of the vocals completed during the weeklong stint. So, when the day arrived, I woke up early and headed to Angelina’s to do some shopping before getting down to business. Ten hours was a long time to be singing, and I assumed I might need an extra bag of motivation to see me through the session. However, since it was well before my usual feeding, I decided to hold off on booting until I was safely in the studio.

When I arrived at Fast Trax Nick was already at work listening to “Sitting in the Sky,” and I realized I quite liked the idea of working alone with the sound engineer. I gestured a hello and proceeded to the bathroom where the song was being piped-in through a set of
speakers.

As I ripped into the bag of dope, I was horrified by what I heard. Although my performance was technically passable, there was a slurring sluggishness in my voice. It didn’t take a genius to realize that the heroin had somehow affected my vocal chords while recording, not to mention my ability to detect the audible abomination on the playback afterwards. This was the first time I’d ever listened to the performance in a sober state, and I was now both disgusted with myself and a little annoyed with everyone else for not having the balls to mention that it absolutely sucked. But could I really blame anyone for wanting to avoid an altercation with an egomaniac junky? No, I suppose I couldn’t, but what was Perry’s excuse? His stake in this four-year odyssey was as great as mine, and he had never before hesitated to share his thoughts with me on
any
matter.

Feeling desperation set in, I decided to put the dope aside. Of course, I was then forced to briefly leave Nick at the studio while I hailed a cab to Washington Square for a dime bag of weed. Fuck it—I wasn’t trying to be anyone’s hero. Although I would be able to postpone the dope-doing until afterwards, I surely needed something to help me through the extended session.

Within 45 minutes I made it back to the studio, got completely stoned, and then stepped into the booth.

“Let’s try ‘The Wish,’” I suggested to Nick. In order to keep my chemically-enhanced enthusiasm peaked, I wanted to start off with something new rather than become aggravated by a track that I should have performed correctly the first time. Unfortunately, although the weed left my voice in tact, it compromised the integrity of my brain. With each take the tape rolled, the music played, and my mind began to wander as I continually missed the fifth measure which is when I was supposed to start singing.

On the fourth take, like those that preceded it, I once again lost track of where I was in the song. With the tape still rolling I looked to Nick for help.

“Do I start to sing?” I whispered into the mike, as if by whispering my voice would somehow go unrecorded.

Nick just nodded and looked at me like a man who has simply given up.

Eventually, I did manage to begin singing during the correct measure—and Nick liked the whispered inquiry so much that he actually mixed it in. I finished the song and then recorded background
vocals and harmonies which took considerably longer. I then decided to re-record all the vocals to “Sitting in the Sky” which sucked up the remaining time.

When we finally wrapped everything up and Nick dubbed a copy of the effort for Perry, it was almost 11:30 and I was beginning to feel sick. I darted into the bathroom to tap a vein and then returned directly to the Midtown.

68

“That’s it, man. I tried to be down with it. I tried to go along with
everything
. But look here: I got this disgusting shit growin’ all over me! I’m tellin’ ya, I gotta get the fuck outta
this
shithole!!!”

“Hey, watch it!” shouted Perry’s anus from below, apparently offended by the pig valve’s choice of words. “You should see the crap that
I
have to deal with.”

“Sorry man,” the valve apologized. “But I can’t take it no more. I’m through with this!”

“Relax!” said another of Perry’s more indigenous organs.

“No, muthafucka—
YOU
relax!!! I didn’t ask for this shit! This is
your
deal, not mine.”

“Well, we’re all in this together now,” said the lungs in unison.

“Fuck
that
shit!!!” rebutted the pig valve. “I was taken against my will!”

“You know, you’ve got a really bad attitude on you there, porky,” the two chimed-in again.

“Fuck you and fuck you.”

“Nice language!” said one of the group’s less vital members. “Were you raised in a barn or something?”

A ripple of laughter could be heard reverberating throughout Perry’s chest cavity.

“You all wanna make fun of my shit—then go ahead, but lemme tell ya that this right here is the most grotesque muthafucka I
ever
did see. So fuck ya’ll…
ya dirty bunch of bitches!”

###

As the summer began to wear away, so did the pig valve’s willingness to acclimate itself to the new—but less than savory surroundings. Its displeasure became apparent one evening when Perry suddenly awoke with a fever and night sweats before heading to the emergency room at Lenox Hill Hospital.

After a few preliminary tests determined that his life wasn’t in any immediate danger, Perry was released from the hospital—though he would have to return within a week to see Dr. Wendel for a battery of more thorough examinations. Based on his symptoms, however, it was likely that vegetation was developing on or around the pig valve and the need for additional surgery was a distinct possibility. As ominous sounding as that was Perry would continue on, unfazed, with a four-bag-a-day habit delivered over the course of two feedings—once in the early afternoon and then once again in the evening.

On the morning after Perry’s trip to the emergency room we’d received a call from Adam.

“Hey, are you ever gonna come over and take a look at the artwork?” he asked me as it had been well over a month since I last agreed to stop by within a week.

“Yeah, man. No problem,” I said. “When do you want us to come over?”

“Is Perry there too?”

“Yeah,”

“Well then why don’t you both come over right now?”

Adam gave us his Madison Avenue address and after making the necessary stop at Angelina’s, we took the #6 back uptown to 77
^th
Street. Within a few minutes we arrived at his building, checked-in with the doorman, and entered the lobby which was lavishly adorned with mirrors and brass. Adam lived on the 14
^th
floor, and as we stepped into the elevator I noticed that it too was furnished with the same splendid motif.

“Wow. Adam must be rich,” Perry said.

“Adam doesn’t have shit!” I shot back with bizarre resentment. “He lives with his fucking parents. He’s still in high school, for God’s sake.”

It was just after 1 p.m. and I was completely fucked from the dope.
Furthermore, through a perverse extension of my own inebriation, I somehow lost sight of what was going on and began to associate Adam with the general debauchery. When we reached his apartment he was waiting at the doorway and my big brother instinct suddenly kicked in.

“Adam!” I shouted. “Why the fuck aren’t you in school?!”

“It’s Sunday,” he said.

We followed Adam down a long foyer and into a small office, carved out from beneath a grand staircase that led up to the second floor of the apartment.

“Wow! Adam
is
fucking rich,” I accidentally blurted out loud.

“I don’t have anything…but my dad does OK,” Adam said.

“See that, Perry—I told you so. Adam doesn’t have shit!”

After Adam made his way to a desk, he began rifling through a drawer of papers and extracted a series of sketches for us to review. They were all vaguely offensive in some way, but I picked out a few of my favorites to help him narrow the field.

“Oh yeah,” Adam said suddenly and then turned to retrieve a notebook that sat on a shelf behind his head. “These are the sketches of syringes I was working on. My dad had some lying around, so I actually had a few good examples to work from.”

“Your father’s a junky?” I asked.

“No. He’s a surgeon,” he said as I flipped through several pages with illustrations of hypodermic needles.

“This one’s great,” I said referring to the image of a shiny, metallic, cartoonish-looking syringe that appeared to protrude from the page as a gigantic drop of blood dangled from its needle. “But I think you should make the blood look like a teardrop.”

Just then my critique was interrupted when, from the opposite end of the foyer, we heard the front door unlock and open.

“Speak of the devil,” said Adam. “That’s my dad right now.”

As I continued reviewing the syringes, Adam’s father greeted us from the doorway of the office.

“Hey guys,” he said. “How’s everything?”

Although I didn’t recognize him at first, Perry did and he immediately turned white.

“Dr. Wendel!” Perry exclaimed. “Holy shit! What a surprise.”

“Yeah, what a coinkidink,” I pointed out as I was suddenly caught up to speed. And despite the fact that I’d apparently been encouraging the teenage son of Perry’s heart surgeon to draw pictures of bloody
needles, I continued to flip through the notebook, undaunted—on a quest for the perfect syringe.

“Yes, it
is
a surprise…and a coinkidink,” said the cardio-thoracic surgeon. “Nice to see you again, Perry… this time in my own home.”

“Very nice to be here, sir,” Perry said as he inconspicuously seized the Book of Syringes.

“Hey man, I was still looking at that!” I shouted.

“We’ll look at it later,” he said. “We have to go now.”

“So I’ll see you next week then.…
at the hospital
… right, Perry?” Dr. Wendel cautiously asked as he left the room.

“Right.”

Adam led us out of the office and when we reached the front door, Perry turned and grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Adam,” Perry said in a desperate whisper. “I want you to gather up any other drawings of syringes and throw them away. No, actually, just burn them. OK?”

“Sure.”

Before I could protest, Perry ushered me out of the apartment and down the hallway toward the elevators.

“Why the fuck did you tell him to do that?” I demanded.

“Because I don’t want his father fucking around with my heart after he learns you’ve been telling his son to draw pictures of bloody syringes…
asshole
.”

69

By September 19
^th
things were looking bleak. Perry’s battery of tests showed signs of new vegetation developing on his pig valve and as a result, though it would not require surgery, he would now have to spend several weeks in the hospital attached to the usual combination of intravenous drips.

Although we managed to momentarily pacify Catherine with two finished songs, I was still jobless and our total assets had dwindled down to just two CD players and three cameras. To make matters worse rent was due, and Perry would be relinquishing his own job in
lieu of the upcoming five-week stint at Lenox Hill that was to commence in only two days. I knew once again that even if I was to find a job immediately, it would be at least a week until I generated any cash and before that happened I’d likely be dopesick, homeless, or both. Certainly, at least while Perry was in the hospital, it seemed a reprieve from the financial pressure was definitely in order and as a result, we thought it best to check-out of the Midtown Hotel.

I decided to use my sister’s recent return home from college to justify a family visit to Stamford, where my mother had relocated a year earlier, and knew I could bolster the length of the stay by mentioning the fact that my “lease” was up and that I was now in between “apartments.” Before temporarily going our separate ways, however, Perry and I decided to liquidate the remaining electronic assets, which amounted to about $130 each. Given the circumstances, I knew exactly where a good portion of my bounty would be spent. I left the Midtown for the second-to-last time in my life and headed directly to Delancey Street. Before stranding myself in Connecticut, I knew I needed a good dose of methadone to be free from the threat of withdrawals, or at least those of the physical variety which was all that I was really concerned with.