Digging the Vein (32 page)

I got up and walked to the window. I looked at the London skies, overcast and moody, the same skies that my as yet unborn child would soon look upon. I remembered my father’s hands, how solid they seemed when I was a child, how sturdy. Hands that had laid concrete, driven buses, fixed cars. I looked at my hands again, white and thin and mangled. What good had these hands ever done?

With a sigh I walked over to the word processor, opened a blank document and began to write.

*

The first good night happened some time after, when Vanessa and I were at a party in Brixton where I met Jonathan, a friend of Vanessa’s who had also left Los Angeles and junk behind. We talked and drank for at least four hours, talking about our relative experiences, the drug scene in Los Angeles and the difficulties he had coming off, too. He was no more interested in abstaining from all drugs than I was, yet here he was—fiercely intelligent, beautifully dressed, and most definitely no longer a junky, champagne glass in his hand, fixing me in a green eyed stare and telling me, “It does get better, you have to remember that it does get better.” And I started to believe him. I realized that for the first time the alcohol was acting on my body in the desired way and I was happy instead of tired, loud and laughing instead of withdrawn and feeling ill. Almost as if on cue with meeting this other ex-junky, my metabolism had somehow shifted, allowing me a glimpse of what wonders my body could experience if allowed to recover fully.

That night we all stumbled from the club drunk and happy into a warm Brixton night, a full champagne flute still in my hand, our drunken raucous laughter echoing up Coldharbor Lane, and I wrapped my arms around Vanessa and kissed her on the lips, tenderly, shocking her with a kind of intimacy that I had been unable to muster ever since coming off of opiates.

“
I love you,” I told her. “It’s all going to be alright.”

And on we went, until later we lay wrapped up together sleeping gently. It’s all going to be alright.

AFTER

NO more junky talk, no more dope talk, no more quantifying my existence… How much smack? How much $$$? No more standing around in parking lots, in doctor’s waiting rooms, on street corners waiting for the connection … London, Los Angeles, San Francisco, here he is with his junky walk. Here comes Paco, here comes Henry, here comes Pedro, here comes Raphael, here comes TJ, here comes Richie … down all the years, all the hours, all the streets and all of the places I have stood in solitary agony waiting for someone to drop a few hours peace into my hands.

Happy birthday to me. Twenty-three today. Standing in Kings Cross trying to score before I have to meet my friends for a birthday drink that I don’t want. Before I have to be nice to people who don’t know that I can’t feel what they feel. Extra methadone warms my bones … take me back to dear old Blighty.

Finally scored for a rock from some Rastafarian scam artist, tell him that if it’s good I want more. Immediately tries to get me to buy more now. Refuse. Takes me to his car for a smoke. Asks me to give him back the rock he just sold me, and tosses it out of the window.

“
That one,” he says, “is bullshit.”

There is no acknowledgement of the easy admission he has made. Pulls a real rock out of his mouth and we drive around the corner and pick up his girlfriend who is streetwalking outside of a transient rooming house behind an amusement arcade. It is four o’clock in the afternoon. She jumps in, produces a crack pipe fashioned out of a miniature Martell cognac bottle from a fake Louis Vuitton purse.

We park up and we smoke the rock in the car. A police car rounds behind us checking out street traffic, waves of black dark paranoia fill the car as the guy pulls out and we drive around the block partially tailed by the police. Somehow they lose interest. I am high, anxious and I haven’t eaten all day. We agree on the deal, he sells me the other rock and I get out. I go into the McDonalds and lock myself in the bathroom to check my purchase. I have been burnt, sold nothing but layer upon layer of cellophane. I walk out. Through the glass front of the McDonalds I see Michael, a guy who used to attend the same Narcotics Anonymous meeting as me in Camden. I haven’t seen him since I stopped attending. He is waiting by a newsstand, the furtive look of a man waiting for the connection. All around are people, all waiting, all pained and shifting from foot to foot in a conga line of misery … happy birthday to me.

No more junk talk, no more lies. No more mornings in the hospital getting bad blood drained out of me. No more doctors trying to analyze what makes me a drug addict. No more futile attempts at trying to control my heroin use. No more defending myself when I know I am practically indefensible. No more police, using me as practice. No more ODs, no more losses. No more trying to take an intellectual position on my heroin addiction when it takes more than it gives. No more dope-sick mornings, no more slow suicide, no more pain without end.

No more AA. No more NA. No more mind control. No more being a victim, no more looking for reasons in childhood, in God in anything but what exists in HERE. No more admitting I am powerless.

Down the dusty Los Angeles sidewalks, down the urine stained London back alleys … there goes the connection fading into the crowd like a 1960’s Polaroid.

“
Business…?”

“
Whachoo need…?”

“
Chiva…?”

London, October 21
^st
2003

Bonus Tracks: B-sides, Rarities and Outtakes: Digging the Tunes

Track-by-track playlist of all songs referenced in
Digging the Vein
. You can listen to the complete playlist by following
THIS LINK.

“
Almost Blue” by Chet Baker

Putting something appropriate on the CD player. Chet Baker, maybe, singing Almost Blue. That's always good. Slipping he belt from my jeans and wrapping the cold leather around my upper arm. Flexing for a vein, needle grasped between my teeth. I almost don't need the shot, it's true. I am already altered, transported, fixed.

“
Life on Mars” by David Bowie

I’d fled London because I sensed an encroaching darkness there, one that threatened to swallow me whole. I’d somehow thought the endless California sun might banish it, or at least keep it at bay. But now I knew the darkness had traveled with me and there wasn’t enough booze in the world to drown it in. Back at the house I cracked open a can of Steel Reserve and listened to David Bowie singing Life on Mars.

“
Trans Europe Express” by Kraftwerk

We got back to Daschel’s spacious apartment off of Sunset and Benton, and listened to music while sucking down beers. Kraftwerk’s “Trans Europe Express” turned the mood kind of odd, but the mad look was disappearing from Tate’s eyes so I knew that violence wouldn’t be on the menu tonight.

“
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” by Mantovani and His Orchestras

A Korean barmaid looked over at him with a sour expression as he laughed and looked away. A musak version of “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” played on the jukebox, and we greeted each other with “heys!” and hugs as we took our seats.

“
Brass Monkey” by The Beastie Boys

We had taken over the jukebox and the bass line of The Beastie Boys’ Brass Monkey caused the floor to vibrate
.

“
Season of the Witch” by Donovan

Tate was wearing a long black wig and I was laughing hysterically, both of us in Joan’s bedroom while Donovan’s Season of the Witch blasted from the stereo.

“
She’s Lost Control” by Joy Division

In the background a rhythmic pop-pop-pop told me someone had left a record on the platter. I walked over and took it off the turntable. I put another on, picking out a dog-eared copy of Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division. By the time the rhythmic, metallic thump of She’s Lost Control had started up, we were kissing.

“
Praise You” by Fatboy Slim

The taste of chemicals in my mouth and Praise You by Fatboy Slim blaring from the hi-fi and the fire in my nostrils creeping up into my skull…

“
Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” – Karaoke version

In the bathroom I was doing key hits with Joan and Spencer while outside a drunk Asian guy who looked at least seventy years old crooned “roosy in the sky with diya-monds,” into the karaoke machine.

“
I Wanna Be Your Dog” by The Stooges

I Wanna Be Your Dog blasted out of the jukebox and I drank beers, saying “hi” to everyone who passed by, including a completely blitzed Francisco Engel who alternated screaming incoherently at his pretty blonde girlfriend and shaking my hand with a desperate urgency, staring at me hard and grinning, “We’re the same you and I. We’re the fucking same, dig?”

“
Brown Sugar” by The Rolling Stones

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 tried to replicate that famous Jagger chicken walk, badly.

“
Superstar” (unreleased demo) by Southpaw

The show dragged and I played badly in my vomit stinking shoes. Songs like Superstar and Fade Away that had once seemed to vital and spontaneous now dragged, every bit of life and had joy bled away until nothing remained but a junked out shell of what once was.

“
Odessey and Oracle” by The Zombies

“
You know Odessey and Oracle? Like, The Zombies’ album?”

“
Yeah.”

“
He said the production on it was “faggy.” That was the word he used – faggy.” Atom shook his head as if still galled by the keyboard player’s ignorance. “I mean, it’s a fucking great album.”

I had to agree there.

“
So we left him in Kyoto airport,” Simon drawled, half nodded-out. “Cunt’s probably still there, wondering where we are.”