Needle (40 page)

Although the check’s lack of zeroes was a disappointment to me—as far as Jeff was concerned he was on easy street for six months. In fact, he was so thrilled about being on the dole, that after his benefits ran out he intended to apply for an extension. His bounty may have only amounted to $120 per week, but his rent-controlled apartment was a $140 per month, and as a result his bills were covered and he was still left with plenty of money to burn on whatever he chose—which was usually rice, beans, and rolling papers.

“By the way—why’d they fire you?” I finally asked.

“I got into an altercation with Mitch.”

Mitch was one of Debbie’s favorites and though I never had a problem with him personally, there was always an underlying tension that existed between him and Jeff. One afternoon during a shift
change Mitch made a smartass remark that, as usual, threw Jeff’s heterosexuality into question. Apparently though, this time Jeff had taken exception to the comment and responded with some sort of a threatening, physical gesture. Then the shit really hit the fan.

“The next day Debbie got wind of it and called both of us into her office,” Jeff recounted. “Then she sat there for a half-hour kissing Mitch’s ass right in front of me, and telling me that I was envious of his professionalism. Can you fucking believe that? Like I could give two shits about Mitch’s professionalism.”

“So she fired you because she thought you were jealous of Mitch?”

“Not exactly,” he said. “So anyway, that night I went home stewing about it and when I came into work the next day I was
still
totally pissed off.”

“So you
are
jealous of Mitch’s professionalism!”

“Fuck no, I’m not jealous of that little prick,” he said. “Let me tell you something about Mitch: Whenever he doesn’t like the way a customer talks to him—he spits in the poor bastard’s food. How’s that for professional?”

“You should’ve mentioned that to Debbie,” I told him.

As a matter of fact that’s precisely what Jeff did, which, when verified by other staff members resulted in Mitch’s immediate termination.

“But it gets better,” he said.

“It must,” I agreed. “How the fuck did
you
get fired?”

“I’m getting to that,” he said. “The night they gave Mitch the boot, Renee called my house and left a really nasty message on my answering machine.”

Renee, one of Serendipity’s few female employees, was totally straight and extremely attractive with long blond hair and a pair of enormous breasts. However, from the tone of the message it became clear that she was now furious with Jeff, which was notable because in addition to the aforementioned attributes, Renee also happened to have been over six feet tall and one of Mitch’s most fiercely protective fag-hags:

“Jeff, you two-faced-fucking-faggot. When I find you I’m gonna kill you, you little piece of shit queer! I’m gonna wait for you in front of the restaurant and then I’m gonna drag you out back and beat the fucking shit out of you! Then, I’m gonna rip off your dick and shove it right the fuck up your ass because we all know that’s what you really
want anyway—you little, fucking, faggot-ass, queer!!!”

“Holy shit!” I said, half wanting to laugh out loud and half fearing for Jeff’s life.

“Uh huh,” he agreed. “And what do you think I did after hearing that?”

“Jerk off?”

“After that.”

“I can’t imagine.”

“I let Debbie listen to it.”

“No fucking shit!”

Debbie then decided to not only fire Renee, but to go for the trifecta by giving Jeff
his
walking papers as well.

“She said she was firing me because I ratted-out Mitch only to settle a personal vendetta, rather than because he wasn’t performing his job correctly.”

“How typical,” I said. “I can’t believe I missed so much.”

“That’s not all,” he said. “Aaron OD’d and died.”

It had been so long since I’d thought about Serendipity that it took a moment to remember who exactly Aaron was.

“Aaron…the cook,” Jeff said and successfully jogged my memory. “Two weeks ago there was a strain of dope going around that was killing addicts on Avenue D. One of the newspapers actually did a story about it that featured him.”

“You’re kidding,” I said in amazement. “I didn’t even know he was a junky.”

“No one did until the cops found his body on a park bench.”

“Oh my God,” I said and for a moment recalled the cook who always seemed to know a little too much about the secret life I tried to keep hidden from the world.

“Hey junky!!!” Jeff ripped me away from my reflections. “You wanna go get some now?”

“Get what?”

“What do you think?”

“You’re not seriously thinking about doing dope, are you Jeff?”

“Yeah, so?”

“You’re crazy,” I said with genuine concern. “You don’t need this shit in your life, trust me.”

“Listen, junky. I was doing dope in China while you were still suckin’ on your mama’s titty.”

“Uh, for your information: the only part of my mother that ever
ended up in my mouth was her fist—so fuck you.”

Within seconds, as if on cue, the door opened and in walked what I immediately knew was a middle-aged dope fiend in distress.

“Hey-hey! Speak-of-the-fucking-junky!” Jeff exclaimed. “How’re you doing, dude? Craig, this is Stephen—fresh out of Central Booking.
He’s
a fuck-up just like you!”

Not quite
.

Stephen Livingston was a hardcore, 24-hour-a-day junky and he didn’t care what anyone thought about it. He was dirty and disheveled with long, greasy, hair and a demeanor that not only screamed dope fiend, but crackhead as well. In fact, he could have easily been Crackhead Jim’s older,
smarter
brother.

“Hey man, how’s it going?” he asked me in a nervous way as he strangely scanned the apartment.

“OK. How’s it going with you?”

“Better—now that I’ve clearly been sprung,” he said as if he wasn’t entirely sure a moment ago.

“Stephen got busted trying to score on Houston yesterday,” Jeff said as he brought me up to speed.

“Twenty-nine hours in the fucking system,” Stephen added, which was a decent stint but nothing to write home about.

“Then I suppose you wanna score a few bags and make it a memory,” Jeff said as if he needed to egg-on the bundle-a-day junky who’d just spent 29 hours in jail. “Let’s go to The Laundromat.”

“The what?” I asked.

“The Laundromat,” he repeated. “Let’s go.”

As we jumped on the #6 and headed to the East Village, I was surprised that Jeff would know about a spot that I was unaware of. I was also very excited at the prospect of finding a safe, downtown option to replace the loss of Angelina’s with. We disembarked at Astor Place as Jeff and Stephen led the way to what was once a laundromat in a deserted old building on Sixth Street in Alphabet City.

Though I’d never previously seen or heard of the spot before, I must have been in the minority as I noticed a long line of addicts waiting to be served. Given the mayor’s obsession with eradicating the city’s drug problem, it was quite a spectacle to see such a robust business operating right out in the open, especially in Greenwich Village. And by the way, these guys were dealing dope
and
crack cocaine from the very same stoop.

76

“We need to finish recording,” Perry told me on a Saturday afternoon from a payphone at the Whitehouse Hotel.

Although I’d heard the tired, old, refrain on several occasions, he sounded more serious than before.

“Well if you could stay out of the hospital for a minute, then maybe we would.”

“Catherine’s issuing direct threats,” he said. “She wants the disc completely finished within a month.”

“It’ll never happen,” I told him. “Only seven tracks have vocals and
none
of the songs are completely finished.”

“Then put it in overdrive!”

“YOU PUT IT IN OVERDRIVE, FUCKFACE!!!” I shouted and then slammed the phone down.

“You’re getting nasty,” Jeff commented. “Are you feeling a little dopesick today, junky?”

As a matter of fact, I wasn’t at all dopesick as my methadone and heroin maintenance program was working beautifully. I’d been staying with Jeff for two weeks, and on Saturday mornings I’d head up to 125
^th
Street for a bottle of meth which would keep me medicated through Sunday. Then, on Monday or Tuesday at the latest, I would return to my 20 dollar-a-day heroin habit. Of course, the whole routine was really just a ruse designed to convince myself that I was in control of something.

“That reminds me,” Jeff said. “Stephen should be stopping by. He still owes me money from last week.”

During my stay with Jeff, almost everyday Stephen dropped by unannounced for one reason or another and it seldom had anything to do with drugs, as Jeff remained exclusively a Weekend Warrior. Today, however, was Saturday and though it was methadone day for me, I thought Jeff might have other plans as he seemed to be eagerly anticipating Stephen’s arrival.

I didn’t care for Stephen because he was a shiftless junky. He lived in an abandoned antique shop located on Madison Avenue and owned by his extremely wealthy parents, while he sold weed in Central Park to support a monstrous dope addiction and a diet consisting of Raman Noodles and Butterfingers. And yes, he looked
like complete shit.

Although in many ways he reminded me of Crackhead Jim, while Jim was a reckless, damaged, and unrestricted drug receptacle, Stephen was a thoughtful junky who carefully managed and maintained his lifestyle. Of course, he had the benefit of a free place to live, but beyond that he always paid his bills on time without ever burdening anyone or any government agency with requests for assistance. He never panhandled, never freeloaded, never slept in a shelter, never stole and never seemed in need. Mind you, he still wallowed near rock bottom, but he was fine there and perfectly content to live out the rest of his life in an opiated stupor. He had no goals, no aspirations, and no reason to live other than the needle he arranged his days around.

It may seem peculiar, but at the time I didn’t consider Stephen and myself to be at all similar in terms of lifestyle, and I really thought he was a terrible influence on Jeff. Although I may have been a junky as well, I was a junky on a mission that still managed to maintain a legitimate job as well as a facade of sobriety, both of which would remain in place until I achieved my goals. Of course, once the CD was completed and my success certain, I would tear away the cloak of normalcy and happily offend the sensibilities of everyone around me. In the meantime, however, I was able to look away from the fact that my daily life really didn’t deviate much from Stephen’s.

Before nightfall, Stephen made his appearance and it soon became clear that getting fucked up was, in fact, on the agenda.

“Hey—I think my shirt’s beginning to smell a little gamey,” Jeff said, tacitly suggesting a trip to The Laundromat.

“I have some for you at the lair,” Stephen replied. “But if Craig wants any we might have to do a load or two.”

“No thanks. I’m good,” I told him. “What’s ‘the lair?’”

“My pad,” Stephen said.

“Why do you call it that?”

“Because it looks like a dirty, disgusting, animal lives there,” Jeff blurted out.

Stephen’s
lair
was only a few blocks away, and by now the old antique shop was virtually an antique itself as it had been permanently closed in the mid-1960’s. We arrived at just after 8 p.m. in almost complete darkness, which was only accentuated by the seemingly uninhabited store.

Stephen unlocked the front door and felt for a light switch as he
walked in. A single bulb burned brightly in the center of the room, illuminating a volcano-like pile of trash consisting of empty bottles, Styrofoam cups, paper plates and fast food containers. The mountain of mess took up perhaps as much as a third of the room’s area, and was surrounded by newspapers, garbage bags, and a variety of other refuse. I was amazed that a single person could produce such an immense heap of shit.

“Wow! It actually looks cleaner in here,” Jeff commented, unbelievably.

“Excuse the mess, boys,” Stephen said, “But I’ve fully devoted my lair to the city’s recycling effort.”

Apparently, along with the rest of Manhattan
.

The condition of his “lair” was so deplorable that at first, it distracted me from the unusual choice of wall covering that adorned the store. Lining all four walls was white construction paper, almost completely covered in what appeared to be tiny splatters of watery red paint.

“How many do you want?” Stephen asked Jeff, as he pulled his stash out from under the dirty mattress he slept on.

“Just one.”

Jeff quickly inserted a dollar bill into the bag and inhaled, while our host emptied six bags into a spoon and began to cook. Somehow, Stephen managed to fill a single syringe with the massive dose of dope, but he had more difficulty locating a usable vein in an arm ravaged by scars, track marks, contusions and open sores.

After a few minutes and finally resorting to his
hand
, he found a vein and pulled the trigger. Then, with eyes wide open and mouth agape, Stephen removed the syringe and stared in awe at the needle as if it was telling him just how incredibly fucked in the head he was. He then stood up, pointed the syringe at one of the few white spaces remaining on the wall, and forced out what little liquid remained in the chamber. It amounted to no more than a raindrop’s worth of bloody residue, but like thousands of others it found its place in the grotesque, slice-of-life display.

After finally stepping outside to throw-up in the comparatively sterile conditions of 63
^rd
Street, I regained control of myself and returned to the shop. As disturbing as it was, the bloody walls of the antique store were not only a fair depiction of how terribly lost Stephen was, but how terribly long he’d managed to remain lost.

77

On November 24
^th
, Perry and I gave thanks and then booted.

But there were other things to be thankful for. Two weeks prior, Perry had found employment at The Boulevard—a pricey rib joint on the Upper West Side—just as I finally realized that Blockhead’s was a dead-end gig with little earning potential. The revelation prompted me to quit, and within a day of my departure I was hired at Texas Grill, also a rib joint but located on the Upper East Side and not nearly as lucrative as The Boulevard. Texas Grill had its perks, however, and preeminent among them was a staff consisting of fewer actors and actresses than one might expect in a Manhattan restaurant. Among my new co-workers was Marie O’Donnell, a recent college graduate from Ireland and Jill Simpkins, a violinist from Norfolk, Virginia. The three of us immediately became good friends as we all shared something in common: We were fucked up.