Needle Too (9 page)

“Happy birthday to you…”

If I keep ignoring it it’ll probably go away, but deep down inside I know it won’t and for some reason I don’t even care and I’ve already forgotten what I’m trying to ignore
.

“Happy birthday dear Toni—happy birthday to you.”

Oh yeah—that’s right! It’s Toni’s birthday. They’re singing Happy Birthday to Toni because it’s Toni’s birthday party and I’m supposed to be out there singing with them…because it’s a party…for Toni…but I’m
sooo
fucked up…and why the fuck are
they singing?

“CRAIG!”
Megan screamed at me as she was suddenly standing by the door wearing a shocked and somewhat horrified expression.

“WHAT?!”
I screamed back while my heart was pounding in my chest just as Recollection, Realization and Consequence finally came waltzing in
WAY PAST CURFEW.

“Whaddaya mean,
‘What?’
What the hell’s going on?! We’re all out there celebrating and you’re all fucked-up in here! Now get up and get the fuck out of there before I kick your ass you stupid douche!”

“Nice, Megan! Is this how you treat your fucking guests?!”

“NO—but my guests don’t usually decide to take a bath in the middle of Happy Fucking Birthday! What the fuck is wrong with you?! Are you high or something? God—I thought you OD’d!”

“I just drank too much,” I said as I rose to my feet with all of my dripping wet nakedness and shut the running water while battling to keep my eyes open.

“Oh, well that’s odd because I didn’t see you drink a fucking thing all night!”

“WELL THEN YOU WEREN’T LOOKING CLOSELY ENOUGH!!!”
I absolutely bellowed at her. But it was so much more than that. It was a straight-up but partially incoherent roar from a dark voice in a dark place—that same, infinitely selfish, desperate and tainted voice that knows no wrong, owes nothing to anyone, and when exposed or even threatened with exposure will become a disingenuous, scornful and belligerent voice to mislead and frighten away the light.
Technically
, though, I suppose I
did
OD but as far as I was concerned, getting fucked-up without losing consciousness and calling it an overdose was like taking your
cousin to the prom and calling it a date. So as far as I was concerned, I didn’t overdose—I simply
overdid
, and although it was foolish to get high in the bathroom during Toni’s birthday party I really had no choice in the matter because I simply refused to be dopesick. Earlier that evening, after my last table paid the check but before I had a chance to take a preemptive snort, Megan dragged me out of the restaurant and over to Calloway’s along with Toni as a smokescreen before we headed over to her apartment for a very well-planned and well-attended surprise party. And given the fact that my mother had a proclivity for snooping, I now carried my stash and works on my person along with an ever impending dopesickness that was actually getting the better of me by 3 a.m. when I finally decided to throw caution to the wind and boot a bag in the bathroom.

Of course, being in front of my coworkers while obviously under an opiated influence was a seriously bad idea as word could eventually get back to Randy and Jack though thankfully, they’d come down with mutual throat infections and as a result were absent from the party. But to be honest, after booting a single bag of heroin, a two-bag-a-day dope fiend wouldn’t typically expect to find himself in crazy-town talking shit while taking a bath in the midst of a stripper celebration. The fact of the matter is that this particular bag of dope was an anomaly of sorts and about twice as potent as the rest of my stash. How it happened to get into the mix I haven’t a clue, but junkies have been known to occasionally check-out after booting bags of unexpectedly potent product. Nonetheless, not long after Toni’s party, the majority of my coworkers—whether they were present for the spontaneous bit of bathing or not—began looking at and addressing me in a slightly different way, often with a head tilted slightly askew as if they were trying to figure me out, or trying to get to the bottom of something unseen or unsaid. Certainly, the After Hours Club figured it out, but every member down to the last stripper had a serious drug problem of their own to contend with and besides, I was able to brush it off as just a momentary slip-up and careful not to ever let it happen again…I mean
in front
of anyone, of course.

9

“I knew I’d find you’d living with your mother by now. Wanna know why?”

“Not particularly,” I said a little sloppily as he happened to have caught me in my special place.

“Because you’re a pathetic fucking junky with absolutely nothing left in your life other than a drug habit and a bunch of broken dreams—and only a completely desperate, brain-dead dipshit of a cowardly dope fiend would be homeless AND hopeless enough to sacrifice what’s left of his self-respect to move in with his fucking mother!”

“YEAH…especially
my
mother.”

“
YOU HAVE TO CUT THIS SHIT OUT!”
Alan screamed at me over the phone. “This fucked-up shit’s gonna
kill
you!”

“Don’t worry about it, man—I’ve got it under control,” I told him.

“You’re not in control of
anything
! You need to quit using and get yourself into rehab! What the fuck is wrong with you?! It’s been
years
now, Craig,
years
! It’s not cute anymore! Time to grow the fuck up!”

“Trust me, Alan. I can control it. I am a
functioning addict
.
”

“You’re a functioning
asshole
and besides, that’s absolutely crazy.”

“Yeah, but it feels
so
good.”

“Listen, I’m coming out there soon and when I do you better be in
rehab or it’s gonna be a bloody fucking day for you!”

“Okay, Alan…don’t worry about it, because every little thing is gonna be alright.”

“But why, man? Why this? Why the
heroin
of all things? I just don’t get it. How could you keep putting yourself through this? Just look at yourself—you’re a dangerous fucking disaster! Please help me understand, man,
please
…why?”

Why, why, why, why, why…Why would you? How could you? What’s with you? Are you fucking crazy? Why, why, why, why, why?!

Okay, well here it is…HERE’S the reason why—so get ready. After all, you’ve been so fucking curious! You’ve all been busting my balls about this for
sooo
long. So…are you ready? Well then
get
ready cuz now I’m finally gonna tell you something that no one else can seem to figure out:

I DO HEROIN BECAUSE…
it makes me feel good.
REALLY! I’m serious!!
That’s
the reason. You don’t believe me? That doesn’t make sense to you? Not to ANY of you??? Okay then—let’s try something else…but let’s not be so confrontational about it. Why don’t you first grab a glass of wine—you know the one, that young but sophisticated French Bordeaux with the raspberry undertones and rich bouquet that pairs delightfully with a porterhouse and a hearty helping of pretentiousness, or perhaps that full-bodied yet crisp and refreshing summer ale that tastes like you’re lying next to a babe on the beach—when you’re really just plowing into one at the intersection or maybe, just maybe you’re the heartier sort that prefers that hot shot of tequila that makes you wanna celebrate and slap the shit out of your kids,
because it was ALWAYS CINCO DE MAYO AT MY HOUSE
...Okay, now let’s try this once more, but this time without all the grandiloquence, misleading verbosity, deceptive euphemisms, false pretenses and of course—the drama. I do heroin because…

By November I was certain that one of those damn strippers betrayed me. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly, but there was something subtly different in the way Randy and Jack began behaving around me. They were more reserved now and occasionally appeared to be scrutinizing my behavior but regardless, whether at work or at Calloway’s, the time spent with them became nothing other than an opening act before the headliner took the stage at 3 a.m. on Glenbrook Road. Still, most of my coworkers continued to act suspiciously around me, and one afternoon near the middle of the month when Paula began preaching God to me I knew the End of Days was near.

“If you give yourself completely to Jesus and learn to live within His light, you’ll feel His euphoria every minute of every day,” she once said to me out of the clear blue while I was on my hands and knees collecting 8,000 Cheerios left behind by some completely inconsiderate two-year old—along with about a buck-fifty worth of euphoria left behind by his father.

“So let me get this straight,” I said to Paula while looking up at her from beneath the table. “You’re gonna be a bible-banging Connecticut cop?”

“State trooper, actually.”

“Then God help the tri-state area.”

“Yo, Craig—you got a phone call,” Megan suddenly informed me.

I momentarily stepped away from the wholegrain mess and picked up an extension near the front of the restaurant.

“Hello?”

“Hi, jerk-off!”

It was Perry.

“Hey, what’s up?” I said as I realized he didn’t sound even
a little
annoyed with me.

“Do you know your mother’s a fucking cunt?”

“No, Perry—I didn’t know that.”

“I just got this number from her and she was really rude about it. That bitch seriously needs to be put in her place.”

“Then come up here and help me kill her.”

“Are you fucking crazy? I’m spending the winter in Florida! Why don’t you kill her yourself and then come down here.”

“Because that’ll kill
me
. Speaking of which, I almost pulled a Jim Morrison in the bathtub a few weeks ago.”

“What?”

“I sort of overdosed and decided to take a bath.”

“You idiot!”

“But I did it with the shower on while the drain was up.”

“You pussy.”

“But it was at somebody
else’s
house during a birthday party with my co-workers.”

“Oh, well then I suppose that’s sort of impressive.”

“So where are you staying in Florida?” I asked my friend.

“At my grandmother’s.”

“Where’s that?”

“Lehigh Acres…near Fort Myers.”

“That sounds, rural, redneck and fucked-up,” said I—the incredibly cosmopolitan IV drug user.

“It’s all of those.”

“And I suppose you’re feeling better since the surgery?”

“Yeah, I think the weather really speeds up the recovery.”

“Hey!” I said as I suddenly remembered. “How’d it go with that chick you were banging in the men’s room?”

“Which chick?” he asked as if there should be so many of these.

“The teacher at the fucking bus terminal!”

“Oh, you mean the one on the rag?”

“I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me.”

“She bailed because I didn’t have a rubber. Can you fucking believe it? She’s got her bloody pussy kissing the lid of a scummy toilet seat in the men’s room of some fucked-up bus station—
but she draws the line at my dirty dick.”

“We all have our limits.”

“And do you know what the most fucked-up thing about it was?”

“She teaches hygiene?”

“No,” he said. “She’s married and she wasn’t wearing a ring!”

“Wait a second: You were about to stick your dick in the bloody hole of some strange woman sitting on a dirty toilet seat in the men’s room of the most disgusting bus terminal I’ve ever seen in my life—and the most fucked-up thing about it was the fact that she was married?”

“AND she wasn’t wearing a ring!”

“SO WHAT?”

“AND I think she gave me a yeast infection on my hand.”

That one was totally unexpected.

“I don’t think that’s possible, Perry.”

“Trust me, Grandma took a whiff and she’s positive.”

“Why? Is she a baker?”

“She said it actually smells more like beer.”

“She was probably drunk.”

“Nope. Grandma only smokes weed. She stopped drinking right after she took the backhoe to the American Legion. And besides, she was right. After she gave me some antifungal ointment it was gone the next day and hasn’t come back since.”

“Maybe you should rub some of that shit on your heart.”

“You mean the
oink
-ment?”

A birthday party of 15 toddlers bearing baggies of breakfast cereal
had suddenly stormed into the restaurant and there was little doubt my services would be required, so I hastily grabbed the broom and disengaged with Perry. But a few days later Perry would pick up the phone and call the restaurant once more—only this time I wouldn’t be there to answer…but somebody else was.

10

“Hey man, I’m really upset,” Randy said to me as I walked into the restaurant for the start of my shift. “Apparently, we have a bit of medical emergency to deal with.”

“Why, what happened? Did Jack cut himself shaving?”