Needle Too (23 page)

Personally, although I liked Tony, my head and heart were with the fish, but since he was financing the operation I thought it wise to cast as wide a net as possible. So, after I put together a few mock-ups, secured display agreements with over a hundred vendors, purchased magazine racks and had a local printer about to roll out the introductory issue, I visited Tony at the restaurant to secure the necessary financing.

“No problem,” he said as he pulled out a brown, wrinkled, supermarket sack and dropped it on the bar like it was the first time a guinzo ever tried to impress me with a paper bag full of cash. Little did he know, however, my grandfather used the same brand under a floorboard in his kitchen.

“What in the world is this?” I asked to feign better breeding just in case somebody civil was watching.

“It’s uh, you know—the capital investment or whatever-the-fuck,” Tony said.

Yeah, it was either that or the brownest, leafiest, low-grade Florida schwag weed I’d ever seen in my life.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with
this
shit?!
”
I asked as soon as I was up to speed with the weed.

“Sell it…it’s at least a pound.”

“Sell it?”
I repeated back to him in disbelief.

“Yeah…is there a problem?”

Obviously there were several, most notably the fact that I wasn’t a fucking drug dealer.

“Yeah, there IS a problem,” I said as I slapped him in the face with a reality check. “First of all, I don’t sell fucking drugs and secondly—I don’t know anyone who would even
smoke
this shit let alone
buy
it! I know
I
sure-as-fuck wouldn’t.”

“Maybe the printer will.”

“Yeah—to print on, maybe.”

With that, in order to maintain whatever was left my professional

dignity not to mention my reputation within the local business community, I did what any serious and responsible entrepreneur would do. I tried to sell the shit to the glassblower:

“Forget it.”

“Come on, man—give me 700 bucks. It’s worth at least twice that!”

“No way, man—not interested,” Nelson told me as he stepped back and shooed me away along with any notion of purchasing the schwag.

“Alright then—how ‘bout I give you the whole thing for $800 worth of olives?” I propositioned him, thinking I could use the weed to barter for the olives and then use the money initially intended for the olives to launch the magazine instead. Fucking ingenious!

“I don’t think so—Craig…it looks a little…
unsightly
.”

“Oh, give me a fucking break, man! It’s not like you’re over here smoking Purple Haze!”

“Yeah, but why would I wanna pay for that shit when I got a backyard overflowing with it?”

He then brought me out back to take a look at his crop, and compared to the shit
I
was trying to peddle—it WAS Purple Haze.

I was finally able to unload the grass to another glassblower named Walter Weiss, a transplant from Germany who—though unmoved by the thought of fishbowls—was interested in eventually partnering with me to help him market his artwork. And unfortunately, for the Betta Martini, “eventually” would come a lot sooner than expected.

Initially, I truly believed the Betta Martini would be a vast improvement to the standard, ten ounce, aquatic environments these beautiful but sometimes aggressive fish are typically restricted to. However, as things turned out, due to the sloping, conical shape of the martini glass it ended up being nothing other than a very elegant suicide machine as a rash of betta fish were suddenly discovered flopping around office desks and coffee tables across the country. But fortunately enough, thanks to a primitive set of lungs, bettas can survive out of water for quite some time and as a result—all reported attempts were successfully thwarted.

37

“We'll be there in three minutes.”

“I don’t fucking have three minutes!” I said. “I’ve got about 30 seconds.”

With that, Perry whipped-out his stash and we immediately ducked down the basement steps of an old brownstone
.

My veins had deteriorated extensively over the past few months, and since we were operating right out in the open I decided to defer to Perry’s expertise and allow him to perform the procedure. He loaded the needle and due to my ravaged arms, several nerve-racking minutes passed before he was able to locate a battle-worthy vein. Eventually, a useable pathway was at last identified and penetrated as sidewalk pedestrians passed by in broad daylight without noticing. However, just after inserting the needle but before he could pull the trigger we were interrupted by the sound of a door opening directly behind me. I couldn’t believe my shitty luck. After ten courageous minutes working under extremely
risky conditions we’d finally found a vein, and now the entire effort was about to be compromised along with the condition of my underwear
.

With little in terms of choice we temporarily suspended operations. But, as luck would have it, after we scrambled back up the staircase to escape detection we stepped onto the sidewalk as a police car was seen patrolling its way down the street and in our direction. There was simply nowhere to turn
.

Now the challenge was to make haste and not attract any unwanted attention, so we continued on as I moved quickly and inconspicuously. That is, as quickly and inconspicuously as one can be expected to move with a syringe dangling out of one’s arm
.

“What syringe, ossifer?” I barely said out loud as I could see the cruiser cruising down the street while we continued walking as if we hadn’t a care in the world, and as if there
wasn’t
a needle hanging out of my arm and swinging like a pendulum
.

“At some point you should start writing some of this shit down,” Perry suddenly said. “Nobody would fucking believe it.”

Out of the kindness of his heart, but perhaps more inspired by a desire to have me write his product’s promotional pieces, I was able to get $500 from Walter for the dirt weed which would cover the cost of the magazine racks but was nowhere near enough to print the first issue. With that I decided to cut my losses with Tony and see what Walter had to offer, and—not surprisingly at this point—after photographing his work and creating brochures and websites to help promote it he fled the country with some serious legal issues not far behind.

I just couldn’t believe how many people had let me down in so short a time, and by the beginning of 2005 I began to recede
inward. I began to take stock. I began to examine who I was and how I got there. I also began to write
Needle
or rather,
Needle in the Paystack
which was the book’s original title, and though I’d been writing in one way or another for most of my life—
this
would be something completely different.
This
would be explosive and disturbing.
This
would be icky and irreverent and of course—
this
would never see the light of day.

Initially, I thought it much too risky to publicize my heroin addiction given the failed business efforts and the likelihood of a career spent working for someone else. However, I still felt it was imperative for me to write down, never forget and on some level—
do it justice
because self-inflicted or otherwise, it requires nothing less than a Herculean effort to come out at the other end. In fact, it wasn’t until this very moment that I finally began to feel a little normal and realize I was far enough away from it all to pick up a pen and put it in its proper perspective. Of course, getting to that point took seven years of almost complete abstinence which was about the length of my addiction, and though Perry sent me a couple of care packages along the way, I still considered myself, well, not so much recovered because I’m not sure you can ever
truly
recover from something so consuming, but at least…
reprogrammed
. Actually, I think “recovery” is a misleading term because you never really get it back the way it was. Indeed, your life—past, present and future—is modified, or even compromised by the experience: The death and destruction you’ve witnessed changes you; friends and acquaintances ignore you; rumors and raised eyebrows seem to follow you wherever you go and your credit score is reduced to…well, I suppose you can imagine. But regardless of the aftermath, suddenly and really for the first time I fully absorbed the fact that I could
never
have continued on the way I was going, or even as an occasional or
recreational
heroin user because of course—
there is no such thing
. It even sounds a little fucked-up to say out loud and that might actually count for something because I think certain adjectives are more at home in front of some words than others. I mean, you can call yourself an
occasional
drinker or a
recreational
pot smoker
until the cows come home, but show me an occasional
crystal meth user
or a recreational
crack smoker
and I’ll show you a liar with a little dick and a bunch of missing teeth.

Anyway, ever since Perry read
Wonderland Avenue
and floated the idea I knew I would eventually try to write
Needle
, but I was never sure of how or even if—as a writer—I’d be able to do it. Of course, with some demographics and data I could move masses to spend millions on products and services that would steal their dreams, vanquish their spirits and empty their pockets—but this was something entirely different, much more challenging and no one was gonna pay me to do it.

Although I had no idea how long
Needle
would be or how incredibly long it would take to complete, I still needed to pay the bills. Unfortunately, as I can only commence with that caliber of writing in the morning, it would require me to retire from my 9 to 5 gig with the software developer and once again chase the buck in the afternoon and evenings which meant something so awful and horrific it’s almost too terrible to type! But to be honest, when I reflected upon it, there was nothing about working in a restaurant that could be any more despicable than what I’d been doing at a desk.

“Now we gotta scrape the shit bubbles off the rim of the toilet in the men’s room,” said Marc, the head waiter, as the kitchen was about to close for the evening and I’d apparently forgotten a thing or two.

“Okay,” I told him without commenting on what seemed like exploitation in the workplace. Certainly, however, this was hardly an anomaly in Florida restaurants where waiters and waitresses often doubled as custodians and janitors after assuming their roles as servants…I mean
servers
, and all for the same $2.35 an hour which was minimum wage for tipped employees even though the toilets tipped like shit. Thankfully, however, my custodial services at the Morgan House in Fort Myers were limited to a couple nights
a week as I was fortunate enough to still have some lucrative freelance accounts with a few generous real estate and construction clients occasionally in need of assistance with direct mail or web content. And it was a good thing:

“Can I get you guys some dessert?” I asked as I placed menus before an elderly woman who’d just finished a late dinner while her husband was outside having a smoke. “The kitchen’s still open for a bit.”

“Thanks, honey—I’ll mention it to Fred when he comes back inside,” she said. “But it’s getting kinda late and if I know my husband at all—in a minute
you’re
gonna be heading to the bar.”

“No, in a minute
I’m
gonna be scrubbing the toilet—so take your time.”

So that job lasted about a day…but at least it was a
whole
day. Fortunately, Stonewood—a bland, nondescript, corporate chain of forgettable restaurants serving forgettable food—was looking for seasonal help and I was hired without incident.

38

When I arrived at Lenox Hill, Perry and his heart surgeon were discussing the pros and cons of replacing his damaged valve with that of a donor’s, or with a synthetic valve made of metal. The metal version was generally more durable and less likely to require surgical maintenance in the future; however, it did require a specific blood consistency, so much so that not only would Perry be forced to take blood thinners for the rest of his life, he would also be prohibited from ever again sticking himself with a needle
.

This was no idle warning. Even though the valve was synthetic, Perry would still be entirely susceptible to a reoccurrence of the infection due to the development of infection-friendly scar tissue and other factors resulting from the upcoming surgery. Consequently, if endocarditis was to reappear, and even a tiny piece of bacterial vegetation was to break off into his bloodstream the synthetic valve would likely suffer a catastrophic failure resulting in almost immediate death. As far as the donor valve was concerned, it was better equipped to endure such rigors without immediately shutting down; however, any transplanted valve made of tissue had an expiration date of approximately ten years, at which point it would again have to be replaced—regardless of whether it was attached to the heart of a junky or not. Of course, a valve made of tissue was—in and of itself—also susceptible to a reoccurrence of the infection. For a committed junky it was simply a no-win situation
.