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.

Say you are a manager at a McDonalds.

A customer walks in and walks up to the front counter and asks your employee for a McTaco value meal. You think for a moment. The employee says that there is no such thing as a McTaco value meal, looking at you for confirmation. You shrug. The customer becomes irate and asks for you. You walk over and immediately apologize to the customer, and tell them it will be no problem, that employee will head straight to the back and fix up your McTaco.

What have you done? If you take a common understanding of customer relations, you have just served the customer, because they are always right. You just saved the day, because that customer saw how quickly and decisively you put your employee in their place, and got that McTaco made.

In all reality, what you have done is fucked over your only customer. As a manager, your only customer is your employee. They buy their paycheck from you with their work. Much like a Value Meal, there is more to it than just the pay. There is the benefits (the drink) and the support of his decisions (the fries). That employee is now in the back trying to dream up what a McTaco could possibly be, and resenting you, they are no longer going to work as hard for you, because you’ve already demonstrated that you’re not gonna back them up. You, in turn, are a customer of your manager, you buy your paycheck from him with your work, and the extras on your value meal are again, the support of your decision and the resources to do your job (the money you can pay your employees).

Every manager offers a paycheck, every manager offers benefits to whatever degree. What separates OK managers from GREAT managers are the fries. Nothing is a worse feeling than having a manager so desperate to prove themselves that they shit on you in the process.

And that is how I spent my Wednesday - trying to fake up a McTaco, for an irate customer, while my manager defended his actions to me by trying to explain that by making this Taco just this one time, we could prove that we _never_ make Tacos.

I installed MobilePress on here so it should now load all speedy and have better navigation on various smartphones and other mobile devices. It is apparently very ugly. I don’t know what to tell you except I love you all and respect you.

I also installed Lighter Menus which you guys will never see, but it has made the Wordpress admin area so very much nicer.

And I finally updated to WP 2.6.3, because I am lazy and slow.

Someone asked if blog burnout has been a problem for me. I thought about it for a minute, and after some thought, realized I have “burned out” of at least three blogs in the past. Interesting, but their follow up is what threw me for a loop.

“What contributed to the burn out?”

Well… Self Censorship. Whenever too many people close to my personal life start reading my blog, I stop having as much fun with it. I don’t hang as many opinions out there, I start to avoid stories because I’m afraid it will cause tension. I stop writing what I feel. And usually those things that I’m afraid will rock the boat are the ones that gnaw at me.

A blog is a way to talk about the things you can’t talk about in person. It’s a way to rock the boat without losing your job. And once you start closing the valve on that outlet, it’s very easy to become burned out on it.