Digging the Vein (8 page)

Joan’s cat, a mangy half-dead thing with falling-out black fur suddenly pounced on the back of the couch we were sitting on and mewled loudly. The sudden noise was enough to make us both jump and bang our teeth together painfully.

“
We can’t do this right now” I hissed, infuriated by the animals sudden appearance. “It's too risky”

“
Yeah” she breathed. I was disappointed but I didn't feel too bad. Something had changed tonight. I knew that it would happen now. It was inevitable. I had noticed a slight change in the way she looked at me over the last week, felt that she held eye contact a little longer than was usual. There was a sudden desire to confide in me, to engage in whispered conversations away from everyone else.

We took the CD with the coke piled on it with us and we crept back up to the bedroom. We sneaked in and stopped dead. The room was empty.

“
Where are they?” I whispered.

“
I don't know”

Joan went over and put the upturned CD down on the nightstand, and I followed her over to the bed.

“
Do you think they're in Jo's room?” I asked. She turned to me and shrugged, landing a light kiss on my lips.

“
Do you think they're fucking?”

“
Probably.”

She locked the door. She came over to me, smiled, and we kissed for a few breathless moments, tongues twisting over each other, probing and exploring. I felt my hard-on rubbing against her thigh.

“
Do you have condoms?” I asked.

“
Uh huh,” she nodded, and opened up her underwear drawer, pulling out a box. She undid my fly, freeing my cock, sinking to her knees.

Thud!

I look up, mortified. She turned her face away from the head of my cock as...

Thud! Thud! Thudthudthud!

“
Shit!” Joan jumped up as I stuffed myself back into my jeans. She handed me the coke and went over to the door. I kicked the box of condoms under a random pile of clutter as she unlocked it. It was Sal.

“
The fucking door sticks,” muttered Joan unconvincingly. “Want a line?”

“
Yeah,” Sal replied, “and let’s get some breakfast.”

We found Spencer on the floor of the downstairs bathroom. Sal woke him up by pouring a beer on his head. We drove to the farmers market on Fairfax and Third, getting there around eight to grab a booth at
Du-par’s
. Sal ran across the road to the liquor store to buy up a bottle of champagne. We ordered orange juice and when he returned made mimosas. I coughed loudly as Sal popped the cork under table. Breakfast passed quickly. It seemed I was the only one whose appetite was sapped by the coke, but then again I reasoned myself and Joan were the only one's who hadn't slept. I felt physically drained, if not mentally. I scrunched my eyes, trying to wake myself up. I suddenly felt faint, the plate of runny eggs and bloody steak taunting me.

“
Listen,” I said. “I gotta to stop by the house and email off some stuff to work.”

“
What you working on?” asked Spencer.

“
A shitty video for some shitty band called Sugar Ray. They’re fucking dreadful, and in the video they get blown up.”

“
Wishful thinking, huh?”

We laughed, as Sal refilled our glasses with champagne.

We stopped by my house for a few moments on the way from the farmers market—Christiane was at work and the house was clean and silent—and I sent off the treatment, cursing myself for not just mailing it when I had completed it. Writing had been coming easy recently and I had a few big artists actually turn concepts I had written into fully-fledged music videos. The first single from Whitney Houston’s new album boasted a video that sprung from one of my treatments. Still, there was something curiously unsatisfying about the whole process. It seemed I never got the opportunity to write for bands or artists that I respected. Although the money was great, I still found writing these things to be a constant source of bitterness for me. I tried to explain this to Christiane when she asked me what my problem was. I was hunched over the computer keyboard, listening to a Semisonic song that needed a treatment and cursing under my breath.

“
What’s your problem?” she sneered. “You wanna get a job at the Virgin Megastore instead?”

“
This music is terrible,” I hissed. “These assholes should be taken out and fucking shot.”

“
Oh yeah! You’ve got it tough, man. Somebody actually pays you to do this shit and you’ve got the balls to whine about it! Some of us have to work for our money, you know.”

“
It would just be nice,” I told her, “to write for people I respected.”

“
You don’t respect anyone!” she yelled, slamming a cup down. “And you know why? Because you’re bitter! Because they’re doing it for a living and you’re writing their fucking videos! You’re jealous!”

“
Oh, fuck you,” I told her. But she was right.

We drove back over to the Wayward, and when we stumbled out of Sal's big black 1968 Mustang, Kat was pulling up with Kris and some tall skinny blonde kid who I didn't recognize.

Kat bounded over to me “I've formed a new band, we're rehearsing in the garage right now,” she announced. “It’s a speed metal jazz band ... we're going to be called The Bitch Pussy Nigger Nazi's. Do you want to be in it?”

“
Sure,” I said bewildered, hugging her, and introducing myself to her new guitarist.

“
Jaz,” he said as he took my hand, a lank haired blonde kid with high cheekbones and pale blue eyes. He looked like some kind of hick, and so emaciated looking … his skin was almost transparent, exposing nothing but sinew and bone underneath.

Kat was full of energy, bouncing around in a tight black top, her huge tits threatening to bust out at any moment. I had briefly formed another band with her, a punk band called The Hitler Sluts who played one gig at The Garage on Santa Monica before breaking up onstage. She played bass (badly) and sang a little. Her ideas, though outweighed her talent. Talented musicians are ten a penny. Musicians with ideas though ... that's another story. I wondered absently if she was fucking Jaz.

Along with RP, Kat was probably my favorite person in the city. Sadly I felt trapped by my own inability to express this in any meaningful way. Only at 5 o’clock in the morning, full of coke and booze and crystal meth, could we begin to articulate this to each other, and the next day it seemed like more drug talk and bullshit.

“
Let's go to Jamba Juice!” she suggested and Kris grabbed me.

“
Yeah come on. Let’s get some juice.”

Half out of my mind on cocaine and booze and sleep deprivation, the sudden whirlwind of activity swarming around me on the driveway became too much. I looked at Kris’ idiotic empty grinning face and felt my muscles tighten. What the fuck was he so cheerful about all of the fucking time? Phony asshole cocksucker. He was nothing but a useless West Coast rich kid party boy, with his too-perfect teeth and Hollywood tan. I finally snapped in the face of his idiocy.

“
What are you? A fucking hippy? I fucking hate juice! Do I look like the sort of person who drinks juice? Fuck Jamba Juice! Fuck it and everyone who works and drinks there, fucking assholes! Get inside and let’s do a line, there's some Colt 45 in the fridge.”

“
Hey, its not even noon,” laughed Kat, unsure of how serious this outburst was and hanging onto Jaz.

“
And your point is?” I shot back at her

“
I love this guy!” laughed Kris a little too loudly, attempting to break the tension in the air. “He's crazy.”

“
Oh go do some heroin, you fucking retard!”

I was left there, panting heavily after my outburst as everyone dispersed. They seemed a little stunned by my ranting. Shit, I needed a beer.

“
That was kind of harsh,” Joan told me after they'd fucked off to Jamba Juice, “with Kris, I mean.”

“
Nah” I said, “He knows I was ... joking.”

“
Where you?” she asked.

“
No.”

Sal laughed, and cut out lines for himself, Joan, Spencer and I.

“
Here's to Saturday night,” he said, snorting his.

SATURDAY, JOAN AND WHY I HATE THE ENGLISH IN LOS ANGELES

We hung out doing blow for the rest of the day, and when Kat, Jaz and Kris returned with their goddamned fruit smoothies Spencer disappeared into the garage with them to drum for their new band. Joan, Sal and myself listened to the noise vibrating through the windows for a while before Joan announced she had to go to sleep before tonight. I went back to the Bike Repair Shop where Sal lived, and we carried on doing lines until seven in the evening, listening to The Stooges and David Bowie until I started to zone out. I started to wish that I'd slept.

The plan was to go to Spaceland to see a friend of Kat's DJ a set before trying to gatecrash a party at Spot Studios on Santa Monica and Vine. It was some kind of private party, and we had two tickets to sneak seven or eight people in with. I was watching TV when Sal shook me. The faces of the overfed, orange-tanned anchors on the news looked distorted and even more ridiculous than usual, hysterical and grotesque. I couldn’t make sense of what they said, a garbled moron-monologue of celebrity gossip and idiotic punning between the soulless airbrushed newscasters. I almost missed the grey-clipped tones of British news – at least that didn’t make you feel as if your brain was rotting away as you watched it. It was Sal’s hand on my shoulder and his voice saying, “Hey, its 9:30, we have to pick up Joan and Kris,” which shook me out of my mental fog. I was momentarily confused, until I realized that I had fallen into a drugged half-sleep. I got to my feet unsteadily, muttering, “Let’s fucking go. Let’s do a line.”

By the time Sal, Kris, Joan and I had made it to the club I thought I was dying; my eyes were heavy and I was feeling incredibly jumpy. The coke had fucked me up completely, and I realized that I had been doing lines now pretty much every fifteen minutes since nine o'clock last night. Now it was 10:30, and there was no way I could stop at this point. The more I heard about the party at The Spot, the less I wanted to go; the words “hardcore techno” were being banded around, and I knew that the club had a 500-person capacity at most. I had an image of a small, dark, sweaty hole with thundering dance beats blaring out of a maxed-out PA system, sweaty clubbers bouncing up against me, my coked-out exhaustion and paranoia reaching new heights of insanity. I began to fear the consequences of putting myself in that situation, seeing a trip to the emergency room or a police precinct as definitely in the realms of possibility.

The more Kris started to hear about the party, the less sure he was that we could all sneak in. It was just the four of us, as it turned out, (Kat had gotten herself a ticket through some jungle DJ she knew), but we still only had 2 tickets. Somehow the party was transforming into the place to be in Los Angeles tonight, Kris and Sal’s mobile phones started to ring incessantly after 8 o’clock with friends and casual acquaintances trying to get hold of tickets. Of course, the idea of hardcore techno was pleasing to Kris, and he definitely wanted to go. Joan looked as doubtful about the whole thing as I felt, and Sal seemed as indifferent as ever. I was thinking we should dump Kris and head back to the Wayward to do more blow. I fucking hoped so.

By 11:15, Joan and I were heading back to her house with the blow, and Sal and Kris were cruising over to The Spot. We arranged to meet up at the 3 Clubs at 1:30 to work our night out, and Joan and I decided to get a little more fucked up in the meantime. I was viewing everything through a haze of coke, Ecstasy and sleep deprivation. We arrived back to the empty house and headed straight to her bedroom. I cut out four lines, four thick, long lines. I figured it was all I could do to even feel the effects. I handed her the CD, and she did her line, struggling to get it all up in one go. I watched her face wrinkle in discomfort as I pressed play on the CD player.

“
Jesus Christ,” she murmured.

She handed me the CD case and I did a line with the only functioning nostril I had left. I snorted, chunks of coke going straight to my already numb throat; the length and width of the line enough to make me feel the kind of burn that I hadn't felt since my first line of the night.
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…