Black Hole (4 page)

Hopefully, I'm at that party. I'm at some of these parties—as many as I can find. Parties are where I found out about drugs and sex and the best music I've ever heard. Parties were the place where I wanted to be me for the first time, where I was glad I was me and not someone else.

The best punk shows I ever saw were at parties, in an Oakland backyard, a San Francisco warehouse, or a basement in Olympia.
No one taped them, or filmed them. They're gone, in the air, living in the memory of thirty or forty people who saw the show. I think back to some of those shows, remember the friends who were there who have since died. Every so often, that show will live in one less mind. When everyone who was there has died, that show will no longer exist.

Now those bands are gone. I don't hear good bands anymore. I'm flooded with DJs with records and laptops, and yes, there are still bands, but they just feel like they're playing dress up; they look like throwback bands and cover bands, a copy of a copy of a copy, losing integrity with each generation. Or they look too perfect, punk bands with every spike carefully planned and placed. The old bands are getting back together to play shows that are full of twenty-one-year-olds who missed it the first time and forty-two-year-olds who want it to be back for one night, driving the minivan in from the burbs, old dads in young skater clothes.

What's left for an old punk-rock washout like me who doesn't give a shit about punk bands anymore? Drugs. Which probably means I was always more of a drug addict than a punk. I would tell you then that I was going to change the world with my ideals and a pair of steel-toed boots, but really, I wanted to get really high and listen to something loud and fast. Acid, Robitussin, and cheap vodka: a perfect cocktail for punk. But the drugs now are better than ever.

There are drugs you don't know about unless you're someone like me. For every drug that gets known enough to have a name, there are a hundred others that don't make the cut. There's a whole scene of indie-rock drugs too cool for a name that are
fighting for their place in the market. But unlike the arts, this shit is a meritocracy. The best drugs will win, because it's not based on anything but how they satiate the horrible hunger of the drug addict.

There are drugs like Halloween stores that pop up and go away before you ever try them. Most of them aren't any good, but they're new, so people take them and get bored with them. The point is, there are too many for the DEA to give a shit about all of them, and until some suburban brats die taking them, no one will ever give a shit.

For every meth lab in San Bernardino County, there's an organic chemist in Berkeley making something new. What's the point of a new drug, some might ask. Well, if the drug just barely exists, there's no test for it. So for all the airline pilots and UPS drivers and parolees, they can take as many new drugs as they want because they can't test positive for something there's no test for.

In some tiny warehouse right now, groups of ravers take remote and a DJ plays audio and video at such high speeds you can't tell it's music and videos without being geeked out of your mind. They play
The Wizard of Oz
on the big screen with a dubstep remix of
The Dark Side of the Moon
compressed into seven minutes. They watch entire runs of
30 Rock
and
Law & Order
; they listen to the catalog of the Beatles and endless bootlegs of the Black Crowes. Richard Pryor routines lie on top of Miles Davis and John Coltrane records.

In another warehouse across town, everyone takes Multi, and DJs play multiple records at a time. To the sober, it sounds like a cacophony. On one hit, you can separate two sources of input. On two hits, you can hear four sources. On three hits, eight. And
so on. Kids with hacked iPods walk home listening to several podcasts and all the Led Zeppelin albums at the same time.

On a floor covered in rubber gym mats, everyone lies still and leaves his or her body on a full hit of Astral. You watch the whole scene floating just underneath the ceiling while hearing the sounds of whatever's playing distorted by the astral fields, which makes Slayer sound like Enya. You can listen to Napalm Death, and it's the most relaxing smooth jazz you've ever heard.

And there are endless amounts of amphetamines, psychedelics, and downers that you've never heard of and never will unless you know some degenerate drug addict like me. By the time the media hears about them, they're gone. By the time they report on the scourge that's killing your kids, there's a new drug killing your kids.

If you're really into drugs, you're taking them before they have a name, before anyone really knows what they do, how long they last, how addictive they are. That's when they're good. Once they get popular, they're copied by chem labs in China that will reverse engineer anything you give them, and the knockoff recipe is made. It's never that easy though. The knockoffs are never quite as good as the real thing.

If you remember how you got to the party, you're not taking enough. You should feel like your existence begins and ends within the time zone of the party. There's no tomorrow or yesterday; your friends are the people right in front of you; you have no job other than enjoying yourself.

The power goes out. Everyone screams. The girl I'm dancing with pulls in close, wraps her arms around me. It's pitch black, but I'm
seeing bright green Spirograph patterns like a screen saver in front of me. There's music from another part of the building, somewhere close, thumping in time with my heart.

A smartphone goes up in the air, lights up, and dubstep blasts out. The dancing starts again. More phones turn on, synced to the same phone and blinking a lightshow for us.

The girl I'm dancing with fingers my lips. I part them. She puts a tiny Tic Tac–sized pill on my tongue. I try to swallow, it but it dissolves into a bitter chalk powder. I hope it's good.

HOME

I'M ON MY
way home after most people have left for work, walking on autopilot from the club. Sobering cool wet air, that thick San Francisco mist. I have blisters on my feet, my joints are electrified, and my jawline is sore. My throat is swollen with a killer thirst going on.

There's a box with newspapers. I get close enough to figure out what day it is. Monday. I'm working later tonight. If I crash out at home, I may not wake up in time. I feel like I'll really be out for a day or two. The only option is to take enough speed to get through work and come home after that. Keep this shit rolling.

Home is where your drugs are.

I put the key in and turn the knob.

A dog barks at me. I don't recognize this dog. New dog? Chihuahua, much like the other one. Do we have a different dog or two dogs? Or did I forget the one we had? It's beige attitude and tiny teeth. It barks at me all the way to the kitchen.

I can barely see the refrigerator from the amount of Post-it notes on it. They're all to me. There's arrows from one to another, to bills that I owe on. I open the door. If any of this food is mine, I don't remember which is what is whose. Fuck it. I grab the milk and chug it. I'm so gakked out I can't tell if it has gone bad or not. Even if it has, I'm much worse than the milk. Immediately, it swirls in my stomach. I don't know if it will last in there.

The smell I don't recognize is me. I smell like smoke and old beer and my own personal BO. Shower is needed. What, since Friday? Yeah, I'm overdue.

In the bathroom, I start the water, lock the door, and empty out my pockets. Wallet. Keys. A bindle of some new dance-club amphetamine that just came out. A tin of mints, with nothing but four Vicodins. A vial of remote. A scrap of paper with a number and name smeared with sweat so it's unreadable.

My T-shirt is dirty, like I was rolling in the fucking alley or something. Hella gross. My shoes come off, and my feet throb. Under my socks, they're red and swollen and there's a matching set of blisters on each one. The pants are getting loose; my underwear comes off and a blast of ball funk hits me. I think I might have fucked someone this weekend.

I squeeze a drop of remote out and get in the shower. The first blast of hot water hits, and I slow it down to hours. The shock of the temperature and the pores opening. It's awesome. Relaxing. I hear a slow thump, like a concussive explosion. It's one of my roommates, knocking on the bathroom door. It can wait. The world can wait. My life can wait.

HORSEMEAT

BIG MIKE IS
sitting on the hood of the truck when I get off work. He's eating grilled chicken breasts out of a sack, without joy, a bored consumption of meat. Bodybuilders burn five or six thousand calories a day, an amount that would afford most people cronuts and pints of ice cream, but they apathetically eat protein sources. It's fuel, not really food anymore.

Jesus, Mike, what are you doing here?

I need the truck again.

I can't keep taking it out. It's not a Zipcar.

A thousand bucks is your end, bro.

That's all I need to hear. A thousand dollars would solve all of my immediate financial problems at home and leave me a little to have fun with.

Big Mike hands me one of those old-school coke bullets.

Happy Birthday,
he says.

It's not my birthday,
I tell him, trying to work the bullet right.

No, that's the name of this shit. Do it. You'll thank me later.

I give it a snort. There's a blinding flash that almost knocks me over, an amphetamine kick, and then all I can smell is birthday cake. And there's a high, a very specific high: it's that rushing joy you get as your mom brings out the birthday cake.

Make a wish
, he says.

I go back inside for the keys.

On the back wall of the slaughterhouse, there's a mural of a happy farm with cartoony pigs and cows all having a great time.
The cruel thing about it is, the barn door in the painting is the entrance to the killing floor. The animals, if they could think like we do, would think they're going to a better farm. Weird sense of humor, but if you work in a slaughterhouse, I guess you have to have one. Glad all I can smell is birthday cake. There's dead shit everywhere—must be horrible. I don't like being high in a place like this, but it's great to have the one sense knocked out.

The butcher who cut up our racehorse is a man who looks like a human version of a pug. He has deep wrinkles in his forehead and eyes that seem on the verge of popping out of their sockets. I think he's Russian, but I'm not sure. It's an accent similar to that, but he won't talk to me, only to Big Mike in hushed tones.

After the slaughterhouse, we end up at a warehouse in Oakland. It looks abandoned, dirty, broken windows along the side. A row of dilapidated RVs are parked outside.

We pull around to a loading dock with a roll-up door. Big Mike gets out and bangs on it with his fist. Squeaking and creaking, it rolls up.

Five feet of muscle stands behind the door. The guy looks like Mighty Mouse. I've never seen a guy this short with a chest this big. If he weren't wearing a cut-up shirt, I would think it was fake. Tiny legs, enormous chest, huge head. Behind him is a row of carts.

Mighty Mouse hops on the truck. He tosses the packages into the cart like they were the evening paper.

Mike walks past the roll-up door and motions for me to follow with an evil grin. I hear screams and horrible grunts that sound like a hippo vomiting. A smell follows. It's like spaghetti sauce heated in a microwave with a faint hint of chlorine.

I need another hit of Happy Birthday.

Mike hands it over. Snort, flash, and the smell of birthday cakes. Your friends may be unpredictable and flaky, but drugs will always be exactly what they are.

This is the real deal, bro, a real gym for real lifters.
Mike slaps me on the chest when he says it.

The powerlifters are first. Walking around the gym, they don't look that impressive. Frankly, they look like a bunch of fat guys, but they're built for nothing but strength. How much weight can a man lift once? That's what they aim to find out. That's their reason for living.

There are rows of squat racks, bars bending on the backs of men built like refrigerators. Their asses come much closer to the ground than I could get mine without a bar, the kind of squat only toddlers and the third-world poor seem to pull off, like they're trying to shit in a hole in the ground.

Next are the deadlifters, some with what must be close to a thousand pounds, men with pumpkin heads that turn bright red as they lift the weights, accented by the chalk dust in the air. They're screaming like they're victims of some kind of Catholic inquisition.

Bench pressers, each with two spotters, lift and scream while the spotters yell what are supposed to be encouraging phrases but sound more like threats to me. Did you know there's such a thing as a bench-press shirt? There is. Big Mike told me about them once but they don't sound like they would help.

Beyond the powerlifters are the strongmen. They've gone from the circus sideshows to the shittier timeslots of ESPN's other channels. These guys are like the powerlifters but for weird shit.
There are Atlas stones, which are giant concrete balls that you're supposed to lift up onto a pedestal. They clean and jerk giant logs with handles. Two guys toss a masonry block back and forth.