Ch 3.

Now that I’ve scored, tripped, and recovered, the really hard work begins. Interacting with the real world long enough to score again. It didn’t used to be this way. I used to have a job, I used to have insurance and benefits and a retirement plan. I used to have an estate. I used to think all that stuff mattered. I used to think TV was fun. I used to like food. Now it’s all just one big obstacle course, a series of rites and acts I have to perform to get high one more fucking time. All those skills I used to have, they’re all gone, they’re all worthless. The world has moved on and nobody wants a sysadmin anymore. They want something else, a wonderkid, a superman, they want someone who will do it all for them and lap up whatever money spills their way. I did that world once.

I’m done.

I start off at the day labor site. Nobody ever shows up looking for help, but sometimes there’s a guy with a line on some N. It’s always a good idea to be thinking one step ahead. Oddly today there’s someone there looking for a few guys to set up chairs at the convention center. He asks me if I speak spanish, and I say no. He asks me if I speak chinese and I say no. He stares at me like I’m something he flossed out of his molars for a minute, and looks around at the rest of the people there. He asks me if I do drugs and I say no. This is a litany, it’s a rosary prayer. No, I don’t do drugs. No, I don’t have any warrants. No, I don’t have any convictions. No, nobody is gonna come looking for me in the middle of the job. Yes, I will work for ten an hour, yes I will work for ten hours a day, no, I won’t report shit to the government. The guy appraises me one more time and thumbs me toward his truck. I walk to the tailgate and clamber over into the bed. A few minutes later, two other guys get up in the bed with me, one guy I know, Kevin or Peter or some jerkoff name like that. The other guy I’ve seen, but don’t know what kind of jerkoff name he might have. The truck lurches and we all fall off the bench, the whine of the electric motor giving way to a gentle cyclic thud. Hydraulic electric hybrid or something ridiculous like that. Only in America.

Kevinorpeter looks over and asks me if I know what the job is. I shrug. We turn to number three. The other jerkoff shrugs. This whole gig is starting to feel kind of weird. Normally if you don’t speak chinese, the cold call guys won’t take you because they have plenty of people who _can’t_ sell in China. If you can’t speak spanish, the manufacturing guys won’t take you, because you won’t be able to understand the management staff. If you can’t speak either you’re pretty much left to mucking out toilets or delivering take out, because just about everything else is cheaper to do with a couple bots. After all, why have five guys you pay nine thousand bucks a year landscape your property when you can pay fifty thousand for a Malaysian knock off of a Japanese landscaping bot which will last for ten years. The bot never gets hungry, never has a bad fight with a girlfriend and fucks up a hedge, it never breaks into the offices to steal all the TVs and laptops it can find.

We’re stuck with it now, I guess. We all kind of tune out of our shared confusion and feel the cold soak into our bones. Hopefully we’re gonna go hang posters on streetposts somewhere they haven’t standardized enough to automate, or something. I dig my hands into my armpits and shiver to pass the time.

Ch 2.

It’s ending now. Words work again. My brain is capable of doing something other than radiating concentrated joy. It’s bittersweet, but sometimes this is the best part of the trip. I’ve had my fun and now because I can actually articulate stuff, I can enjoy it too. Everything is just fanstastic! I feel like I’m waking up from the best nap in the world, but multiplied by a thousand. There’s no aches in my body, no pains, I can feel each beautiful ray of light as hit hits my skin. I can feel the photons racing to hit my retina from every object in the world. Life is pretty good.

And then it’s over. The aches are there, the place in my knee that pops when it’s cold out, the disk in my spine that’s not quite as elastic as it used to be, the cavity I have been pretending doesn’t exist. Then the smells hit. My armpits, the unknowable horrors that are inside the fridge, the urine, the overfull catbox in the corner, the cold turd which has curled up around my sack. When you can’t move for ten hours, things happen. You get used to it. I waddle like an overgrown toddler to the bathroom and start the shower warming up. I peel down my pants and assess the damage. I barely recognize the person that looks back at me from the mirror. I’ve lost sixty pounds. My hair is a stringy greasy tangle. My penis sags between angular, grotesque hip bones, my balls look huge against my skinny shit stained thighs. Hey there, handsome, what’s your name? It was… a line from a movie, I think. Or a book. I can’t remember anymore. Nano gives and Nano taketh away.

The good news is I haven’t gotten any bedsores yet, that’s when you know N has you down for the count. I check my back and my ass. In really high end N joints, they have beds that massage you, that roll you around so you don’t get any settling. I once saw some Japanese hotel that had a special hyperbaric chamber just for junkies. That would be the life. Instead, I’m scraping some preowned beans and rice off in the yellow orange spray of my shower. Smearing it with my toe to make sure it doesn’t clog the drain. I wonder if they catheterize you when you go in the massage bed. I bet they do. I think idly about what I could use as a catheter around here, but I don’t think it would be safe to stuff anything I have around here into my body. Maybe I should just get a tarp for the chair instead.

Ch1.

Addiction is a tricky thing.

If you’re an addict, you don’t really know. You know, on one level. But on another you’re so deep in your own shit you don’t even know it’s shit anymore. There’s a vague sensation that compels you to perform an act over and over again, but it’s internal, it’s organic. It’s completely you. When you’re a smoker, and you have a cigarette pack in your pocket, you don’t notice anything different, but as soon as it’s not there, you keep thinking of reasons to go to the store, or the gas station, or that bar on the corner, or as the day wears on ANYWHERE THAT SELLS CIGARETTES. And as soon as the pack hits your pocket, and you feel the corners dig into your thigh, or hear the crinkle of the cellophane when you walk, even if you haven’t smoked a cigarette yet, you start feeling more comfortable, less stressed out. The lights are less harsh and traffic doesn’t seem as bad. Everything is gonna be just fine, because your fix is right at hand.

Right now, the lights are harsh and the traffic seems terrible. There’s a haze over everything. Every time something happens it’s like my brain is bouncing off the sides of my skull. Dull ache everywhere, chills. Every interaction is rubbing me raw. Occasionally my brain kicks in and brings things into focus. Sharp, surreal memory moments. Now I’m at the intersection of Fifth and Ash, sliding on the bricks. Now I’m on the waterfront, staring at some graffiti. Now there’s broken glass digging into my palm as I rummage around this glovebox. Now I’m sucking a dick in a a back seat, trying to score. Now I’m shaking, on the bus headed home. Now I’m barely able to open my front door. But same as always, I feel the baggie in my pocket now, and everything is gonna be just fine.

The memory moments come faster now. Now I’m opening up the bag, now I’m crushing the caps, now I’m putting it into the gun. We’re almost ready baby, we’re almost there. Now the cat is looking at me from on top of the armchair, upside down. Contact, cold stainless steel against my forearm. Ceiling cat is watching you penetrate. Oh, god it’s so good, and the giggles are starting. I can feel them creeping over every nerve as they move from the tiny black dot on my skin. Just making it all OK, like I imagine being pet feels like for a dog. It’s completion. It’s so much more than sex or love or hope or God or anything else could ever be. They say you can’t really feel every one individually, but after you hypo, you know they’re all lying.

Nano is as close to religion as I’ve ever had, and if you think you can feel better singing and dancing with the choir… you’re full of shit. For the next ten hours, Nano will be every woman and every man and every food or drink or drug for me. It’ll run it’s course and tomorrow morning I’ll feel just like I did an hour ago, but in the mean time… language can’t do it justice. It’s every cliche, it’s completely beyond words.

Continued from Novacaine.

Remember when you held me tight
And you kissed me all through the night
Think of all that we’ve been through
Breaking up is hard to do - Neil Sedaka ‘Breaking Up is Hard to Do’

I remember getting back to the house, but I don’t really remember getting in bed. That’s probably because of the beer. I don’t remember taking off my clothes, and the reason for that becomes obvious as soon as I pull back the sheets. I unbutton my wrinkled clothes and start to kick them out from under the covers, savor the blank slate feeling of a good drunk night. But as sleep fades from my head, the creeping flavor of… I don’t know what. Burned cat shit? Road tar and asparagus? … starts crawling up my throat and coating my tongue. I stare at the ceiling. I should shower. I should brush my teeth. I should get a real job. I should have a drivers license. I should have married her when I had the chance. There’s the old magic. The doubts of the day begin to pile up and I heave off the bed like it’s going to do any good.

I immediately stub my toe on something blurry and heavy. More careful this time, I start again and pick my way toward the sink. ‘The maid died.’ That’s what I tell people. It used to be funny, I’m not sure why. Now they just stare. I wipe my face and stare at my bloodshot eyes in the mirror. Looking good. Looking good. I step on something sharp and I’m off balance again. Staggering around in the mess, I start to play back my evening. The barking dogs, the flashing lights… I pick up my toothbrush and get to work on those pearly whites. The kids in the park. Lola… I pick an errant glob out of the corner of one eye. I’m having a hard time remembering it all straight. Then it flashes. The envelope. Panic spreads up and down me. Toothpaste foam drips out of my mouth, and I bound around naked, searching. The toothbrush drops from my mouth and lands in a dirty bowl as I frantically pat my clothes down for the envelope.

All I really have in this world is that I know people. I connect them. And when people set up a tail to follow you around, and give you an envelope, they want you to connect them with somebody else. When they don’t come say ‘hello’, there are implications. When they drive around American cars and pull spooky shit while you’re eating, there are two specific implications. There’s an implied payment for success, and implied punishment for failure. I should have come straight home and checked it out. I shouldn’t have been drinking at noon. I shouldn’t have been blasted by dinner. I should have waited out the tail and not let them punk me like this. I shouldn’t have lost this envelope.

*knock knock*

There’s not an expletive strong enough for this situation.

*knock knock*

You don’t want your prospective employers to think you’ve goofed up before you even had a proper sit down. If you do, they’ll usually just deal out the punishment now and find some other loser to do the job. I grab the .25 from under my bed and stick it in the back of my underwear, walking toward the door.

I grab the door knob and yank hard. I’m just hoping at this point that the underpants and surprise will let me roll over anybody who might be out there. The cold wedge of steel in my buttcrack is the center of my universe, my hand floating above the grip. Looking casual there, champ. I catch the yellow stain on the front flap. Feeling fit and ready to go.

My brain is prepped for bad news, so it takes a while to cycle through all the worst case scenarios. Cop, FBI, drug dealer, wannabe, has been, vato, meth fiend, and my heart is fluttering so fast I can watch the door opening one degree at a time. This time it’s Special Agent Ortega. This time it’s an enforcer for the Angelos. This time it’s a man with a dirty needle full of drain cleaner, ready to stick me as punishment for some past crime. This time it’s… my aunt.

She smiles at me, looking down at my dirty underpants and gives a little chuckle. She has an envelope in her hand - The envelope.

“Robert, you left this up in my mailbox last night, with a note that said to give it to you when you woke up.”

Always thinking, I am.

“You look like hell young man. Can I come in?”

“No, it’s a mess in here… The maid died.”

She just stares.

Her smile is still there, but I realize it’s not at me, it’s about me. It’s over me and through me. It’s about all of this, the room, the underwear, the gun warming slowly in the small of my back. Mortified, I grab the envelope in her hand and maybe she can hear the “thanks” over the door slamming in her face. My embarassment colors over the panic and I sit down on the edge of the bed, staring down at my bad decisions.

I tear the envelope open and dump it out on the bed.

Continued from Nebulizer:

I made the bus with time to spare, not bad for a chubby little thing like me. The driver gives me a smile and I decide to sit up front so we can gossip a little. There’s almost nobody on the bus in the afternoons and I know she gets lonely.

_{Maybe I could ask her for help.}

We chat a little about the weather, the traffic, the smelly bum who gets on at fourth and rides until his transfer is up. She looks over and asks me if I’m working out. I tell her just in the kitchen, and we laugh about it a little.

_{She has that look in her eye that fucking look don’t just fucking look sad help me HELP ME}

I give her a little hug when it’s time to head into Albertsons, and head in to get some dinner and take care of some girl stuff at the pharmacy.

_{Cunt pharmacy bitch slut just fucking admit it’s wrong}

The meat all looks a little old, and it makes me a little sick to smell. I think we’ll have breakfast for dinner! Some bacon and some eggs, a potato to make hash browns. A twelve pack of Icehouse, some sandwich fixings for lunch tomorrow.

Finally it’s time to head for the Pharmacy _bitch to see about another _{just one more please a real one this time}. She sees me coming and she dials something on the phone. I walk up and try to just keep calm, no problems here. Nothing big. Just need another test, the last one was tampered with. We can’t go off half cocked here, can we? We have to have accurate data.

_{dickheadmanagercomeswalkinguplikei’mgoingtomakeascenefuckingsmallpeckershithead}

No, there’s no problem here at all, you just need to give me a new test, because this one was wrong, it was bad, it wasn’t real it was tampered with. He’s giving me some ma’am-don’t-make-a-scene line like I’m at fault here! Don’t tell me who needs to go see a doctor, you’re just a cashier who puts pills in a bottle, you silly little thing. No I wasn’t threatening, no, I’m calm, everything is fine, nothing is the matter. It’s fine, I don’t even need a refund, I’ll pay for the new one it won’t be a problem. I just need a new one and no I just want to explain it to her closer, just between us girls and no don’t pull me out of the window we’re just going to get to talk between the two of us. Let go of my bag, I will call the police if you don’t let me go I have something I need to do and I don’t care how many I’ve bought over the past week because who fucking cares you fucking WHORE WHORE WHORE WHORE WHORE YOU FUCKING WHORE I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU JUST SAY IT’S NOT FUCKING POSITIVE. IT’S MY MONEY AND I KNOW MY RIGHTS YOU FUCKING WHORE I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU KILL YOU

_{Please kill me}

And for a while, it all goes black.

_{Maybe I should just have gotten the pork roast}

When I come back around, here we sit, with the manager and the security guard on my arms, watching the eggs drip out of the cart and onto the floor, and nobody listens when I say they should mop it up. I don’t want to just wait for the police to get here, there’s no sense in it. There could be salmonella out there! A kid could get sick! _{a baby a baby} And the silly thing is the mop is just right there, if they’d just let me go I could go grab it and maybe they could get some Pinesol and it’d all be fine.

And then the crew cut policeman walks in and smiles at everybody and asks what the problem is. Everybody is mad, but he’s just so smooth and seems so bright and happy that it makes me laugh. I feel them loosen the grips on my arms and everything is gonna be just fine.

_{As long as they get the eggs mopped up}