The Story of Junk (6 page)

“I don't think that's all she wants,” Belle muttered.

“Don't
worry
,” I said. I felt like I was talking to my mother. My mother resisted everything I ever did. We were never confidantes. She died young.

“Well, be careful.”

“I'm careful,” I said. “One thing I've always been is careful.” The minute I heard myself say it, I knew it was a lie.

BETTY

Kit liked my cooking. She and Betty started coming into Sticky's just as Big Guy sailed for a six-month hitch in the North Atlantic. They offered me a bag of dope.

“I kicked it,” I said, wiping the blood from a steak off my cutting board.

“Really?” Kit replied dully. “I wish I could. With Betty around, it's impossible.”

“Hey!” Betty cried. “That's not fair.”

“Pick up!” I yelled at a waitress. Kit stepped back. Betty fell down. We set her on a step. Pedro, a slight fellow with a long French braid who worked the station next to mine, asked if we shouldn't do something. I told him to turn up the radio.

Betty came to—the station we had on was playing a Toast song. When it ended, the DJ announced a gig the band had scheduled for the following night at Roseland. Kit asked if I would come as their guest. I would, but I had to work. Sticky's never closed, not for Thanksgiving, not for Christmas, not for anything. Not even when the previous cook was D.O.A. after a grease-fire explosion in the kitchen. Repairs were going on while Sticky was at the funeral, which he paid for. That's when he hired me. He was open for business that night.

Pedro wasn't just my kitchenmate; he was also Mr. Leather's companion. We were buddies. He volunteered to work in my place. “Go on,” he said. “See the show.” He didn't have to say it twice.

The old ballroom was jammed that night. Bodies in black leather draped along the chrome rails of the dance floor in haunting neon light, a bigger crowd in the middle, in the dark, dancing, jumping up and down. I found Betty by the stage, hovering near the dressing-room door. When the band went on, she kept yelling in my ear, “Doesn't Kit sound
great?
She's great tonight, isn't she?”

She was awesome. The sound washed over the hall in waves, electronic arpeggios sailing over sudden squawks and harmonic bleats. She could have been playing three guitars, not one.

“How does she get that sound?” I asked Betty.

“Effects boxes!” she yelled. “Special effects!” She was in motion.

The sound of hip-swaying, finger-popping funk alternated with percussive, foot-stomping rock. I worked my body into it, but I didn't want to dance with Betty and I didn't like dancing by myself. I stood still on the dance floor and let other bodies bump against me, propel me where they might.

I fell into a distant region of my mind, where I saw my mother in her hospital bed, watching a teen dance show on TV. During the last months of her illness, she tuned it in every Saturday afternoon. For her, this was peculiar—my mother had cultivated her ears for opera. Every now and then, when I was growing up, I'd find her standing by the radio listening to jazz, but she always hated pop.

“Is this how you dance?” she asked me one Saturday near the end.

My mother knew how much I liked dancing. As a child, I went to dance parties every week, begged for opportunities to throw my own. Dancing was my first addiction. When I was dancing, I never had to tell anyone I loved them and no one had to say those words to me. The body said it all. Every turn of the head, every shrug, every sway, every snap of the spine was a buzz, the vocabulary of desire in the flesh.

“I enjoy watching these kids,” my mother said. “Someday I'd like to watch you.”

“I'll dance for you,” I said. “When you're not so ill and can join me.”

She said, “I'm getting better every day.”

I shook the memory off and elbowed my way toward the stage. A string of beer bottles sat on Kit's amp and between songs she took quick, jerky swigs from one or two of them. She wore shiny tight purple jeans and long striped scarves. Strands of black ribbon hung from her wrists. She played with her back to the audience, all you saw was her arms moving and her legs. That's all you needed to see. She had a great ass—everyone said so. It was part of her celebrity.

As the band finished their encore, Kit set her guitar against her amp and turned up the volume. A high-pitched wail pierced the air. My hair stood on end. Sylph waved and said, “Goodnight, New York! We're Toast!” and the signal from Kit's amp grew louder. I couldn't stand it and I didn't want it to end, but a roadie came onstage and turned it off. The stage went dark and the DJ put on a record. My ears were ringing. I loved it.

After the show, Kit and Betty came home to my place and didn't want to leave. “The roommates,” they said. “Too obnoxious.” Kit had two roommates besides Betty, a man and a woman, not a couple, always drunk and stoned, she said, nothing but a shouting match, all confusion.

We sat on my bed watching a late movie on TV. I told them they could sleep in Big Guy's bed in the other room but they somehow never left mine. I didn't want to do the bag of dope they offered, but they were so sweet. One bag, I thought. A street bag. What harm could it do? I was used to stronger stuff.

Next morning I wanted to kill myself. My whole body ached, I could hardly bend my knees. I vomited for hours. “I'm sorry,” Kit said. “I guess that wasn't a very nice gift.” She still seemed to be high. Normal, I mean. Junkies don't get high. They get “straight.” I wasn't, but I was no junkie. I didn't have a name for what I was. I didn't want one.

Later, on her way home from rehearsal, Kit stopped by my place again. She had another bindle of dope for me, if I wanted it. The name “Toilet” was rubber-stamped on the glassine bag. “This'll take the edge off,” she said. I knew it would but I turned it down. She said she would save it. She stayed a few minutes more to talk about Betty, whom she didn't think she could live with any longer. They'd had another fight.

“You could ask her to leave,” I said.

“I know. But she makes herself so useful.”

“Maybe there are too many people living in your apartment,” I said.

“Yeah,” Kit nodded. “I know, but that's how I pay the rent. Usually, I sublet and move out. I've had that place for five years, but I've hardly lived there at all.”

“You're making money now,” I pointed out. “You don't need roommates.”

“Well, these drugs get expensive,” she said, her voice quiet. “I wish I could quit. Maybe if Betty moved out, I could.”

“Maybe,” I agreed.

“She'll never move.”

“I've never known her to stay anyplace long.”

Kit stared into space, scratching her ear with a few strands of hair. “Was Betty always this fucked up?”

“I hate to say it, but yes.”

“You know,” Kit told me, “she's really a nice kid, but she left home too soon. Her parents were always fighting. She ran away. I'd feel pretty bad if I kicked her out now.”

“Are you lovers?”

She nodded slowly. “I think big women are really attractive,” she said. “Betty was sort of a groupie, you know? Always hanging out at our rehearsal studio. My apartment was sublet and I was living with two people from my first band. All we had was a shower in the kitchen and I wanted a bath. Betty said I could use her place. It was right across the street. While I was in the tub she shot me up. You know the feeling. The warm water and that rush? It was the best thing I ever felt. Ever. Then she told me it wasn't her apartment we were in. She was just staying there. I told her she could come live at my place and we moved back in. What a mistake.” Kit looked truly miserable. “What a mistake.”

“I don't know what to tell you.”

“She'll never move. I know she won't.”

“Well,” I said, before I thought it through, “if you want to stay over here some night, it's all right with me.”

“You really wouldn't mind?”

“Not at all. I've been kind of lonesome lately, to tell you the truth.”

“All right if I stay tonight?”

“I work till three,” I said.

“I'll pick you up at the restaurant,” she said. “Will you make me dinner?”

“Anytime,” I laughed. There were worse things I could do than feed people.

She woke me at seven the next morning. Her pupils were unnaturally large, her hands shook. Her skin was clammy, the color of the sky before a snow. Immediately she was on the phone to Betty, ordering a couple of bags of D. At seven-forty-five the girl was back from the street, putting a needle in Kit's waiting arm. I felt sick, too, but for a different reason. The long red tracks on Kit's arm, the degree of her sickness, the girl's willing servitude—all of it turned me off.

Betty had to go to her job in the photo lab. When she came into the kitchen, she looked so hurt and angry, I felt ashamed. “Nothing happened,” I told her. “Really.”

Betty tossed her head toward the bedroom. “Then why is she here?”

“I think she just wanted a break.”

“You know,” Betty started in, her whine rising to a full-moon pitch, “I was really
glad
that you and Kit were getting to be friends. I was
really
glad. I always thought you were one of the
best
people around. Now I'm not so sure.”

“Chill out, Betty,” Kit called from the bedroom. She still had the needle in her arm.

“I'll see you later!” Betty yelled, and stormed out the door.

I pulled aside the curtain leading to the bedroom, a vintage 1950s palm print Big Guy had brought from Texas. “I feel bad,” I said.

“So do I,” Kit sighed. “But I'm not going back home with all of them there.”

“If you're going to stay here,” I told her, “I'm going to get you off this needle.”

“I hope you can,” Kit said. I remember she said that.

Before I knew it, Kit's clothes were hanging in my closet and her cats were fucking in my kitchen. So were we. That's where it happened—in the kitchen. In the tub.

I'd had a hard week on the job and was taking a long steamy soak. I must have been high. We were both feeling giddy. Kit was splashing me, then she was rubbing my neck. Before I knew it, she was in the water on top of me, and I was getting hot. It wasn't a very big tub.

Somehow, with all our splashing around, the plug in the drain came loose and let the water out, but we didn't get out of the tub. As Kit moved against me, she bumped a faucet and turned the water on. It poured out behind me. It was scalding. When I cried out, Kit thought it was from pleasure and kept on at me harder. By the time I got her off me, I'd been badly burned—my back, an elbow, a hand, completely scorched.

At the emergency room they gave me a burn cream and sent me home without anything for the pain. My skin grew hotter with every passing minute; it hurt like hell. There wasn't any way to get comfortable. Kit handed me a hairbrush.

“What's this for?” I said.

“Spank me,” she said. “I've been bad.”

“I can't do that!” I said, appalled. “It was an accident.”

“Go ahead, spank me,” she said again. “It turns me on.”

You never know what a person's really like until you've showered together, I thought. It's even more binding than sex. I took the brush in my good hand while Kit dropped her jeans. I felt ridiculous doing it, but I spanked her. After a moment, the pain in my burned arm seemed to subside. “You really like this?” I said.

“It must have meant something to me when I was little,” she said. “Right now, I don't care.”

I laughed. Looking at Kit's body was like seeing my own, same narrow hips, same champagne-glass breasts, same sex, except she was blond and I was dark. It was easy to get familiar.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“You hurt me,” I said.

“Same thing,” she retorted. We've hardly been separated since.

THE DAWN

In the weeks that followed, the hairbrush took up residence in the bedroom. Whenever Betty called to ask when Kit was coming home, Kit explained she had to stick around to “nurse” me. Betty's calls were troublesome, but we put them out of mind.

We had sex every day and went shopping. I brought Kit to clothing stores on Prince Street and she took me to guitar shops on Forty-eighth. It was exhilarating, having a woman friend who wasn't a rival, who didn't compete. A new world opened up, a world of music and art, a universe of private delight, whose orbit inevitably converged on Sticky's.

To make me presentable for work, Kit ripped up one of her scarves and tied a remnant around my wrist to hide the bandages. It was a junkie's fashion ploy. Many addicts wear wrist bands to hide their tracks, but mine were Kit's stagewear. At Sticky's, they did me proud.

She also brought me a daily bag of dope, dope Betty thought she had bought for Kit, with whom she was certain she would soon be reunited. I knew she was hurting while I had no pain, but standing in front of a 500-degree broiler for eight hours was no picnic, even without an injury. If it wasn't for that heroin in my blood, I wouldn't have been able to work. No work, no pay. No painkiller.

As the days went by, the burn on my arm became infected. I didn't go back to the doctor, though; doctors don't know shit. I went up to two bags a day. Six months later, Betty and her roommates were gone and my old needle habit was back. So was Big Guy. It was May 1981.

I moved in here. This is two three-room apartments put together, really, a shower in the kitchen, toilet in a narrow water closet that once opened onto the outside hall. The walls have been knocked out in one half of the place, to make one large room and three smaller ones, not counting the kitchen, windows in every room. The largest room, the living room, is where I sleep. The corner window overlooks Sixth Avenue and down a side street to a piece of the Hudson River. The Hoboken waterfront lies beyond, the World Trade Center towers to the south. The small bedroom next to the toilet we use as a walk-in closet. It has the same view. The little room I call the office, next to the kitchen on the other side of the hall, has a window on an air shaft, a desk and two chairs, a side table under a clothes rack, and bookshelves up two of the walls. The room behind the kitchen is Kit's. When I first came here, I slept in there too.