Needle (13 page)

As a matter of procedure, they took a statement and quietly made a list of the stolen items. Then they left without a word.

For a variety of reasons, Perry suspected Crackhead Jim of the burglary, and the more we thought about it—the more it seemed likely. Besides band members and girlfriends, he was probably the only person we’d ever had over, and he was
definitely
the only crackhead. He was also aware of our belongings and the fact that the ground-floor apartment could be accessed through the patio. Although the revelation didn’t occur to us until a day or so after the incident, we became certain that Jim had to have been the culprit and once again saw how you can never trust a fucking junky. But on a more positive note, he did teach us how to make crack—so I suppose it wasn’t a total loss.

23

On Valentines Day, Venus and I decided to renew our relationship while later that evening, Perry and I decided not to renew the lease and to be out of the apartment by month’s end. The decision was spurred on by a variety of factors, including the recent burglary as well as my resurrected relationship.

Though I ended things with Venus immediately after the Halloween debacle, near the end of December she launched a determined campaign to rekindle my interest—culminating on New Year’s Eve when she actually
asked
me to fuck her in the ass. I’m not sure whether the request came from a sincere desire, or was just a clever tactic designed to reel me in. Whatever it was, it worked like a charm because for me—this wasn’t just a pleasant diversion and an opportunity to have anal sex. More precisely, it was the final frontier and a chance
to boldly go where no man had gone before
. However, unbeknownst to me, by this point Venus’ ass might as well have been the
starship, Enterprise
—and my voyage just another footnote in its long history of galactic exploration.

Venus wanted to think that the Valentines Day we’d spent
together served as a catalyst to help realize, affirm, and demonstrate the permanence of our relationship; however, it was clearly the drunken sex that ended the evening. I’d no sooner climbed off—she asked me to move in. Although I thought she might still be a deceptive slut, over the last few months she’d been unusually supportive of my musical aspirations and I could tell that she
really
wanted me to live with her—so I gave in.

As far as
Perry’s
immediate options were concerned, he was faced with the prospect of either living with his mommy—or a sexually reassigned prostitute named Clarissa whom he’d met on Tenth Avenue. Regardless of his dilemma, within a week after Valentines Day we’d be packed and ready to vacate the premises, with the beds and furniture already relocated or in storage.

During our final week in the barren apartment, Perry and I decided to rough it out and continue writing and polishing songs, rather than risk interrupting the steady progress made since the Christmas respite. We realized that soon enough, we’d both be subjected to new living arrangements that weren’t conducive to the late-night jam sessions which produced the bulk of our music. As a result, on the very last evening in our apartment, we invited Matt over to rehearse the newest material and simply make the best out of the bare and less than comfortable surroundings.

Matt was becoming, without question, the most out of control of the three of us. He lived the biggest lies and did the most drugs, and Perry and I were beginning to grow impatient with his unreliability and inconsistent performance. Certainly, we were both well on our way to full-blown heroin addiction ourselves, but we refused to allow the drugs to negatively affect the music and at least on the surface it didn’t. Matt, however, had been screwing up for a long time—arriving late to rehearsals or not showing up at all. Of course, when he did make an appearance he was almost always fucked up and not very helpful.

Don’t get me wrong. Matt was still an incredibly gifted guitarist, and in terms of raw playing ability he was in a class by himself. But it was impossible to harness that greatness with any degree of consistency because although Matt was brilliant, his brilliance had strict limitations. The first time hearing a song, he’d immediately join in and amaze everyone with perfectly executed riffs that soared. Unfortunately, we soon realized that for each song—Matt had only one magnificent load to blow. After that he’d be shooting blanks and
unable to repeat the performance in quite the same way again.

Initially, we thought we might solve the problem by recording the spontaneous bit of genius in order for him to have something tangible to duplicate. But even after listening to the playback he would seem at a loss. He couldn’t really remember the notes or summon the same energy he had previously. Later, while recording the CD, we would use no less than five guitarists to duplicate Matt’s recorded brilliance, as none were able to achieve his level of mastery with a wholly original effort.

As usual, Matt was late for that final, 74
^th
Street jam session. He was supposed to be at my apartment by 8 p.m., but it wasn’t until 11:30 when I heard him ringing the doorbell. And though it took only about twelve seconds to answer the door, that was apparently long enough for him to get stuck in a nod as I was confronted by Matt with his eyes closed, head tilted upward, and mouth hanging open.

For several minutes I waited, holding the door as he stood there lost in the depths of his nod. In fact, had it not been so late already I would’ve left him standing there just to see how long he might linger. Unfortunately, after about five minutes my curiosity gave way to an overflowing resentment which I’d now been trying to suppress for hours.

“Who is it—
FUCKHEAD??!!!”
I screamed in his face.

That scared the shit out of him. His eye-slits suddenly burst open and he stumbled backwards grabbing his chest as if he was having a heart attack. Once recovered, he cautiously walked around my fury and into the apartment where he took a seat on the floor of the empty living room. Without a word, Matt then returned to the land of nod while Perry and I remained thoroughly sober and extremely resentful over the way he wasted our time and compromised our effort. Once again he was late, wasted beyond words, and fucking everything up. Perry had to work the following day and by this point I was hardly in the proper mindset, so we gave up on the notion of getting anything accomplished.

As Perry retired to the bedroom, I followed to put away the guitars. When I returned to the living room I found Matt still sitting Indian-style on the floor, and nodding off with a lit cigarette in his hand. He was completely wasted and worthless. I silently glared at him for some time and though he remained sitting cross-legged, at some point I noticed his upper body begin to gradually bend forward until the tip of his nose was actually touching the carpet. It was as if he
was seeking a meditative path toward some sort of spiritual awakening. In reality, of course, he was just completely mangled and could no longer sit upright.

Not until the cigarette’s burning cherry had crept between Matt’s fingers did he come back to life—but only long enough to drop the smoldering butt onto the carpeted floor. I attempted to rouse him while stressing the importance of not incinerating us all. He would sit up, agree for a moment, but then light another cigarette as he slowly reassumed the position and again threatened to burn down the building. It was a very long and drawn out process that reminded me of watching a flower die—in slow motion…
over and over again
.

This continued on for about an hour or so until I’d finally had enough. As his nose and cigarette met the floor one last time, I disposed of the burning butt and left him to his meditations. I realized his contorted position was hardly conducive to a restful night’s sleep, but at this point it was either him or me. I wasn’t his fucking babysitter and it became clear that if I were to rouse him and try to reason—he would only once again humor me, light up another smoke, and then continue with the seemingly endless cycle. So, I chose to leave him there as I eventually passed out not far from where he sat folded-in-half and nodding.

At around 9:30 a.m. I awoke to a madman pounding on the front door. It was The Good Detective. Apparently, Matt’s school had called Mr. Anson’s home in an effort to determine whether or not his son would be teaching class that day, as he was presently unaccounted for. This set daddy’s wheels in motion.

Ernie Anson was a mountain of a man and at six feet tall, weighing in at 300 pounds, he was not to be taken lightly. When he arrived, Perry did try to greet The Good Detective at the door. However, he’d no sooner turned the knob when Mr. Anson blasted over the threshold like a crazed rhino with a force that literally knocked Perry back into the bedroom.

“Matt!!!” roared The Good Detective. “You are so fucking dead!”

Becoming more in tune to what was going on, I looked over at Matt. He was still folded-in-half but now completely alert, and with a look in his eyes that reminded me of a fawn stuck in a mud hole. In order to get a better view of the charging terror, Matt was able to lift his head and rest his chin on the floor in a space previously reserved for his nose. At the moment, unfortunately, this minor repositioning was about the best he could manage as the rest of his body seemed to
have petrified overnight. I, however, immediately sprung to my feet unsure if I would be included in the beating that The Good Detective had apparently mapped out for his son.

Thanks to the length of the foyer, Matt had a second or two to get it together before being confronted by the wrath of his father. With a superhuman effort accompanied by a subhuman groan, he managed to straighten his legs and somehow stand. Unfortunately, after rising to his feet he was still unable to unfold himself and was forced to hang on to his ankles and hope for the best.

“MATT!!! I’m gonna kick your fucking ass!” roared Ernie Anson as he raced through the foyer. Little did The Good Detective know what a marvelous position his son was in to help him complete just such a task.

“My back, my back, my back, my back, my back!” Matt cried as he desperately tried to become one of the vertical. It was about the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.

As his father entered the living room he discovered Matt, pathetically looking up from his ankles and attempting to find a position from which he could better defend himself.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you, Matt?!?” The Good Detective bellowed. “Don’t you know you’re gonna lose your fucking job if you keep missing work?!?!”

“My back, my back, my back, my back, my back!”

Not wanting to be rude, I chimed in.

“What’s up, Mr. Anson?”

“Fuck you, asshole.”

The Good Detective then totally refocused on Matt.

“You know, Matt—I’m not putting up with this shit anymore! You better get your act together or you’re out! What the fuck are you doing with your life anyway?!?”

“I’m trying to run a band!” Matt shouted while looking up from beneath the summit of his ass.

“Yeah, into the ground,” Perry astutely pointed out.

Thankfully, and without resorting to physical violence, The Good Detective turned around and stormed out of the apartment for the first and last time. Perry went back to sleep, I made some coffee, and Matt was transported to Lenox Hill Hospital where he was treated for muscle and ligament damage to his back and both legs.

24

We vacated the 74
^th
Street apartment on February 28
^th
, 1992. During the weeks leading up to our departure I never sensed any hesitation or foreboding from Perry. That’s because he’d saved it all for the day of the actual move.

I’ve seen Perry endure some awful things in the past, things that would have most men crying like a baby. However, I’d never actually seen him shed a tear until he was ultimately forced to decide between living with a transgendered hooker—or his mother in Brooklyn. Perry had apparently underestimated the difficulty he would have finding an affordable place to live without a ready-made roommate, and was now faced with a no-win situation. As the lesser of two evils he chose to live with his mother, but he was furious about it and directed all of his venom at Venus, whom he held chiefly to blame. Though he was fine with the idea of relocating he thought it unwise for us to separate and disrupt the recent songwriting spurt, especially since the decision was mostly inspired by my resumption of a relationship with someone he considered a deceptive bitch.

“Nice job, Venus,” he snapped at her while she was helping me gather my things. “You know, the band’s gonna suffer because of this.”

“What are you talking about, Perry?” she asked with some disgust.

“I have to live with my mother because you have to live with Craig. I hope you’re fucking satisfied.”

“I most certainly am. He’s a good pussy licker.”

“All
premature ejaculators are good pussy lickers,” Perry replied as he stormed out of the apartment and headed directly to Brooklyn.

Unfortunately, it soon became clear that
my
new living arrangement was not without its own drawbacks and within three days of moving in, Venus had me reluctantly discussing the topic of marriage. Forgive me, but I found it difficult to consider a lifelong commitment to someone I’d recently caught dry-fucking a football player. By moving in, however, such conversations were apparently fair game.

Venus was a mixed bag. She liked the convention of marriage, and did have the potential to become a reliable and trustworthy mate. Of course, she also had the potential to become a terrific slut.

As our first weeks passed as roommates, I could see her begin to try to mold my life in accordance with the future goals she determined we should strive to achieve together. She intended to go to medical school and began suggesting that, given “the relative worthlessness of an English degree,” I had few options other than applying to a graduate program as well.

I went along with her delusions to an absurd extent, even applying and getting accepted to Hunter College’s graduate program; however, I wouldn’t be marrying her or anyone else. All of my focus and commitment was directed toward Sections exclusively. She knew this and though she felt the band was talented, she indirectly dismissed my efforts and aspirations by stressing the importance of a graduate degree. This annoyed me to no end and I realized that when it came down to it, Venus really didn’t believe in me. Furthermore, with the exception of alcohol, she lived a drug-free life and was less than thrilled with my fondness for heroin—even though she unknowingly had a bag of dope to thank for a desensitized penis and her very first orgasm.