Digging the Vein (15 page)

Over breakfast at IHOP Sam explained my duties for the day. I was to interview the band before and after the show. They would film the gig and while it was happening I was free to do whatever I wanted. When the show was over we would hit the road, hopefully making it to LA by tomorrow afternoon.

Once again, I could barely believe I had allowed myself to get involved with something so utterly stupid. Why was I in Laughlin with these people? When did my life stop making sense? I was pondering this when Sam got up to go to the bathroom and Paulie leaned over to me and whispered something I didn’t catch.

“
Huh?”

“
I
said
…you got any smoke?”

The prick was actually trying to score fucking weed from me. I looked at him and raised my palms.

“
Shit. Well if you come across any … let me know. Just keep in on the down low. Sam, he don’t approve of drugs when we’re working, you know?”

“
Oh, sure,” I told him. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

Some hours later I was sitting on one of the casino’s toilets, pushing a shot of heroin mixed with some crystal meth I had brought with me for emergencies into the large vein that curled around my left forearm. The blood coagulated in the barrel, causing the needle to block before I could get it all in. I pulled the needle out and watched a thick trickle of blood run down my arm, drip-dripping off my wrist and onto the floor. I remained impassive as I started to sense the speed roaring around my blood, sending my heartbeat into the stratosphere. As was my ritual I pointed the needle at the gleaming white tiles and pushed the plunger hard with my thumb. Sometimes, if the syringe was totally blocked, the plunger would depress fully and spraying the blood and heroin back inside the barrel. If it wasn’t too badly blocked, as happened this time, pressure on the plunger made a thin spray of brown blood erupt from the needle and create a pretty pattern on any surface it hit. Beautiful. I felt like a dog marking its territory. I was in the habit of sneaking into some of the nicer hotels in West Hollywood to use the bathrooms and leave my mark on their pristine walls. It gave me a curious feeling of satisfaction, an almost-sexual kind of thrill… I would absently fantasize about leaving blood splatters in the toilets of Buckingham Palace, The White House or across the face of the Mona Lisa. On a whim I dipped my finger into the small stream of blood flowing down my arm and drew a crude frame around the spray pattern, which had started to run into itself and drip down the wall. Almost perfect, but it was still missing
something
… I smeared some more of the blood onto my fingertip and scrawled an illegible signature on the bottom. Perfect. I was the junky Jackson Pollock.

I washed up and slipped my equipment into the pocket of my leather jacket. Then I left the relative quiet of the toilet.

Stepping out onto the casino floor was like stepping into some kind of awful redneck hell. The noise of the machines was deafening, but even more deafening were the screams and yells and laughs and har-har-hars of the bikers, crazies, gawkers and lost tourists who swarmed around the slot machines and gaming tables, or tried to fight their way to the front of the crowds gathered around the bar. The band were due to hit the stage in thirty minutes and I was supposed to be there as they walked from the dressing room to the stage – which was set up in the middle of the casino floor - to do one of those stupid Q&A sessions on the way to the stage. I fought my way to the far wall, showed my laminate to the security guard and was ushered into the backstage area. In a long, quiet corridor I found Sam, Jules and Paulie standing around with the camera and boom mike at the ready.

“
The band are getting ready now,” Sam informed me. “Did you find everything OK?”

“
Yeah,” I told him, feeling a little jittery from the speed.. “So listen … what exactly do you want me to ask these guys? I mean … we haven’t really discussed any of this.”

“
Just wing it,” Sam told me with a big stupid grin. “You’ll be fine.”

Jules muttered cryptically to himself, peering at me through the viewfinder, while Paulie stood picking his nose and looking as dumb and useless as ever. The crystal meth and heroin sent my brain whirring in all kinds of different directions. What should I ask them? I figured I’d have thirty seconds at the most to get a question and answer on tape once the band started walking. I decided that I should concentrate on one person. The obvious person was Mick Jagger … but what to ask? I needed something great, something funny. Something that would capture the inherent pathos of this sad lifestyle. A zinger … something perfect, a perfect question. But what?

Suddenly, the doors to the dressing room swung open and Mick came strutting out with the band following behind him. They were already making a brisk move for the door at the far end of the corridor. Everything erupted around me and Jules leapt into life tailing the band. A microphone was thrust into my hand and I saw Sam mouthing, “Go, go, go!” and waving his hand frantically in my direction. I broke into a trot after the band and started yelling “Mick! Mick!”

Mick half-turned but kept walking, and in a moment of panic I blurted out:

“
So do you do this shit because you couldn’t make it as a real musician?”

Everything stopped for a moment, and the band almost walked straight into their singer as he broke his stride. I panicked and stuttered, “What I mean is … is there any
dignity
in it?”

Mick gave a contemptuous look and instead of answering he slowly raised his middle finger and placed it in front of my face.

“
Asshole,” he said.

Then he repeated the gesture into the camera and at Sam who stood there looking like someone had slapped him in his dopey face. Then boom! The band was gone. Jules and Paulie stood around, unsure of what to do until Sam barked, “Follow them, you pricks! We’ve still got to film the fucking show!” They scuttled out onto the casino. Sam and I were left in the corridor.

“
That was pretty good, right? I mean you can use that, right?”

For the first time since the whole thing started Sam lost that annoying enthusiastic look. He looked tired. Now the fucker knew how I felt.

He shook his head then walked out to watch the rest of the show.

I made it out there for a few songs. I was more interested in the crowd than the band, which churned out lackluster versions of the usual Stones’ tracks. The audience didn’t mind though; they were drunk and up for a good time no matter what.

I went to the bar to get a drink. There was nothing else to do. Biker girls stood next to their man-mountain boyfriends and a few of them flashed their tits in order to get the barkeep’s attention. Tit flashing seemed to be de-rigueur around these parts. When a bartender finally noticed me I ordered a vodka tonic at a hideously inflated price.

I noticed a burly, bearded figure in full Angels' regalia standing next to me. He watched my every move with an amused look on his face. I looked up and he grinned, exposing a mouthful of tobacco stained teeth. I smiled back and nodded.

“
Hi there,” I said.

“
Yuh look a little lost,” he slurred.

“
Really?” I looked around, wondered what on earth he meant. His smiled broadened.

“
Yeah, you do.” He leaned in as if about to impart a great, cosmic secret. Put his lips to my ear and growled, “So here’s some direction for ya … San Francisco’s thataway you scrawny-assed limey
faggot.
”

I nodded blankly at him. What else could I do? He laughed a deep crackly smoker’s laugh and I picked up my drink and made my way to the side of the stage. The band were flailing their way through “Brown Sugar” while a couple of drunk peroxide blondes were dancing up front, mouthing the words back at the band. Mick blew them a kiss and attempted to replicate the famous Jagger chicken walk, badly. On the stroke of midnight, an Angel rode through the casino floor on a gleaming Harley with, yes, a topless girl riding on the back. It got the biggest cheer of the night, and when the band resumed playing “Sympathy for the Devil,” the sense of anticlimax was palpable.

That evening we rode back to LA in silence. The band refused to do the scheduled post-show interview and decided to stay on in Laughlin for a few days, then make their way back to LA. With no good reason to be in Nevada anymore we started the drive back to that night.

I started to feel better and better as each mile closer to home rolled by. I nodded out on a nice strong hit of junk for most of the journey back and surfaced as we were pulling off of the freeway near the Hollywood Bowl, just minutes from Iris Circle. When the van pulled up outside of my place Sam yelled, “We’re here!” and I was already grabbing my bag.

“
OK guys,” I said, hopping out. “We’ll have to do it again sometime.”

Jules and Paulie waved at me as I headed to my front door. I called back to Sam, “Thanks for everything!”

I heard him mutter something before the van pulled away with a roar.

I slid my key into the lock and smiled. I swore to myself that I would never set foot in Laughlin, Nevada for as long as I lived. Oh Christ, it felt good to be home.

PART TWO - ALVARADO AND 6
^TH
BLUES

Alvarado and 6
^th
: smell of meat cooking on grills at corner taco stands, 2 for 99 cents and the feel of the sun against your back, walking on to the beat of mariachi music blaring from Popsicle stands. Guys waving an inverted ‘L’ shaped hand signal to oncoming traffic yelling “papers!” LAPD patrol cars rousting the street drunks, one pours a bottle of Thunderbird into the gutter as old bum yells, “please god, no!” tears streak his sun-beaten, filthy face…

Alvarado and 6
^th
is purgatory: I have done my time on its corners and in its shady doorways hoping to score, dunking pound cake into my coffee in its donut stands, waiting for my beeper to go off, sitting in McDonalds and Wendys and Burger King waiting for the bathroom to vacate so I could fix under flickering fluorescent lights…

Alvarado and 6
^th
was overrun with people. I walked past the bar where a Mexican in a cowboy hat empties his bladder, too drunk to stand straight, propped up against the wall he is pissing on. An older man stood in the doorway next to a sign reading “Cerveza - Futbol” eyeing me with suspicion as I went past. The people around here weren’t dummies. They knew the score, and \ could tell what I was straight away -a
viscioso
, one of the junkies who haunted this intersection, waiting anxiously by payphones, cursing God as the sun dragged across the sky, mercifully scoring before scuttling away from the daylight.

I paged Carlos from the payphone at the intersection. Then I settled down at the bench at the bus stop to wait. It had been months since I injected that first time with Genesis and life had moved fast. My friends’ attitudes changed towards me considerably. I was totally open with them about what I was doing. As a result I saw them less and less. “Dropping the H-bomb,” Chris called it. “They can tell you that they’re cool with it,” he said sagely. “Act like they’re all hip and open minded. But unless they do it too…”

I didn’t see too much of Joan once my heroin use became public knowledge. She had her own problems and was dealing with some relationship bullshit with B. Their intake of crystal meth had increased steadily. She stopped going out altogether. I suppose B felt uncomfortable out at parties and clubs because no matter where he was he’d rather be in his room smoking crystal with Joan, talking endless hours of nonsense though sunsets and sunrises, fucking and talking, talking and fucking, pausing only for more hits on the pipe. She spent most of her time in bed sleeping when he was up in San Francisco, and stayed shacked up in her room with him when he was in town. They got high and fucked so often that RP worried aloud that B was going to “wear her pussy out.” He laughed and took a slug of his beer. “Shit, it ain’t right. Nice young girl like that. Her cunt’s gonna look like a twenty-mile stretch of unpaved road after that fucking tweaker gets done with it…”

I held in a gasp of pain. The comment stung. Thinking about what Joan and B got up to in the bedroom still hurt me inside. Later - during on one of my rare outings that didn’t involved scoring dope- I saw her at 3 Clubs and a strange thing happened.

As it turned out it would be one of the last nights I saw everybody. Since returning from Laughlin there had been nothing much to do. Consequently I was shooting more and more dope every day. Money was getting tight and my habit was getting bigger -the thought of hanging out in a bar with my friends was not exactly appealing. When RP insisted I turn up I did so out of a sense of loyalty. I didn’t want them to get too pissed off at my flaky behavior. I knew that once this final link to my non-heroin world was severed that there would be nowhere for me to go… except further down.