



I was watching the show "Girls" the other day (a show which I despise, my girl was watching a segment only because Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth was in it), maybe a five minute segment, and one of the characters was in a 12 step meeting (at least thats what I gathered, again, I only watched a few minutes of it) and she was arguing with the fella who was leading the meeting and she was saying how Heroin is "Fun".



Fun? Fun! I can think of a hundred different adjectives, but fun is most certainly NOT one of them. Dangerous. Yes. Romantic, maybe at first. Life-Fucking. Yeppers. (yes, life-fucking is an adjective in my book, errr blog, err geust post). Another word? How about- Malefic. More? Disabling. Corrupt. Crippling. Let's get more creative, huh?Friend-Euthanizer. Soul-Stealer. Emotion-Hider. Libido-Thief. Death-Dealer. It's also Injurious. Degenerative. Villainous. Oppressive. Ill-Fated. Disgusting. Horrendous. Gross. Fuckin gross. It's all so gross. Sinister. Unkind. Mind-Musher. Heroin is a Three-Card-Monty. It's a Sleight-Of-Hand. It's the Devil AND his Advocate. It's the Calm AND the Storm. Your worst enemy in the guise of your best friend. It 's a stalker, always there, always following me. It's the wretched Prince Of Lies AND the Angel of Death.



Which leads me to two parrallel stories. One, the calm, the other, the storm. One, a best friend, the other, an enemy.



The Advocate, The Calm, & The Best Friend-

I first went to San Francisco in maybe 1991, 92. I was with my three best friends. Patrick, who I hitchhiked into town with, Caine met me there a week later & Tracey was already living there. I was 17 at the time and if only I wouldv'e been a little older, a little wiser, seen the portents, maybe I wouldn't be writing this now, but alas, I am writing this.



It was maybe 3 days after I got there, though that number might be optimistic, might've not even been a day. I was in a squat on 3rd & Mission, and a kid younger than me, we'll call him Iggy, also a runaway, who was maybe 14, 15 tops, was slumped up against the wall in one of the rooms. It was dark out so the room was lit by candle, emitting a ghastly glow, and through the aura of the red-orange candle light I saw a dance, a symphony taking place. Iggy had just come back from scoring and the rites with which he practiced the ceremony of getting high was something I had never seen before, dangerous, yet with a romantic edge to it. As he cooked up the Dope, his rituals & his shadows played out a macabre waltz that had me hooked. He got it all geared up, put the needle in his arm, pushed the plunger all the way in and nodded out instantly. I watched him intently. I was enraptured. It was enchanting. The spell had been cast. His high looked so heavy, so grungy (not the Seattle 'Grungy', but grungy grungy), and so fucking beautiful. (It looked like) He was at peace and wore this wry kind of frown, which I saw as a smile, that looked so true to me. There was no lie, no falsehood in all this, it was an escape plain and simple, Iggy found an escape, a nexus to another place, a wormhole free of restrictions. And I wanted it. The Prince of Lies had struck!!



A few days later, the four of us, Patrick, Caine, Tracey and myself, were all at Traceys house somewhere between The Castro & The Mission. One of us, who was not me, had procured a bunch of Dope, enough for all of us. I was scared shitless, but not scared enough to be bothered by. Caine, I believe, cooked it all up, as we all went straight for the needle opposed to snorting it- Shoot It, Taste It~ Snort It, Waste It. The three of my friends all got high as I watched in dreaded anticipation. When it was my turn, Tracey offered to hit me as I had never done it before. She found my voracious vein within seconds and injected 10CC's of the Life-Fucking drug into a hungry bloodstream. I expected to be floored within seconds, as Iggy had, as Patrick n Caine n Tracey all had, but nothing. 30 seconds slowly ticked-tocked by. Nothing. A minute. Nothing. I started to feel a peace engulf me finally, a dark calm, knowing I was just in the eye of a very real storm that was about to pummel me. And it did. It did. Seconds later, I found myself crawling to the toilet to unleash a ferocious wave of vomit, emptying the contents of my malnourished stomach. Then comatose. Ahhhhhh....and I was head over heels. Smitten. I found something that I was able to make trades with. Drugs over responsibility. The high over those troublesome emotions. The fix over friends n relations n everything else. I found the portal to nowhere. Harry Houdini Heroin showed me The Art of The Escape. I gladly took this new found friend over life, over everything.



The Devil, the Storm & The Enemy-

10 years or so later (give or take), and I'm horribly strung out. I've nothing left. All possessions pawned. Parents don't talk to me. No more friends (when i see the last two holdouts I hide behind cars on the street, I have to duck them because I can't keep all my lies straight, I don't remember what I told who). No more relationships. My old life is only fond memories.



I find myself in a squat on 6th & Howard and it's late, maybe Midnight, the Junkies sleep, and I'm tiptoeing down the hall, trying not to be heard as I'm about to do a big no-no. I find an empty room, go into the corner thats unseen from the hall and i yank my pants down and relieve my bowels of all contents in a torrential heave, and it's alot, maybe three or four days worth of constipation. I have no toilet paper, so I grab an old newspaper and try my best to clean up the mess i've made between my cheeks. It's disgusting. The mess I made in the room I leave as is. It had to be done, and it's worse. I now smell worse than before, and that was bad. All part of the habits cycle.



I leave and tiptoe back to my room. I have it lit by candles which emit a bloody murder red hue and I sit down on a milk crate and go through the ritual of cooking my drugs, but it's no longer romantic, no longer a dance the way I first saw it with Iggy. I had scored the Dope from cash I earned through having sex. With men. And I'm straight. The habit dictates, because Dope is like Simon, and Simon says "Make me money no matter how, and feed me, feed me, no matter how."



I draw up a deathly black 90 CC's, only leaving enough room for blood, and try to hit a vein in my arm with no such luck. I next try for my hands, then my feet, my calves and then my groin. Fuck!! Nothing! I'm a pin cushion. I'm hexing myself with a voodoo doll thats me. I am out of choices so I decide to muscle it, but can't muscle it into my left bicep as it's abcessed, one which I'll be draining as soon as I get this no-fun elixer into my body. I shove the now dull and barbed needle into my right bicep , and it hurts, hurts like fuck, but no time for pain, I empty the contents into my muscle and lay down to wait the ten or fifteen minutes it takes before it hits me and I become a person again. Functionable might be a better word.



I have ten bucks left from having a dick in my mouth and I'm going to go cop a ten dollar rock, because I have to go back to Polk Street to make more money, because I have to cop more drugs, to repeat the cycle, and I don't wanna be sober doing it. It's all so exhausting.The cycle has gotten to be a full time job, with overtime, and fuck is it taxing. But Simon says 'feed me', and I do what Simon says because I'm hopelessly addicted. I have become Simon's puppet.



I leave the squat and it's late, about 1 A.M. and I hope I find a John willing to pay me some money at this hour as I have no wake-up shot and if I don't have one, Simon will be pissed and repercussions will ensue, notably vomit, diarrhea, tremors, migraines, spasms, and all those other horrible things that go along with withdrawaling off Heroin, the fun drug. I turn around as I leave the squat and above the door I could've swore I saw a flashing neon sign that said "Always Welcome Back My Friend", but it's only my worst enemy playing tricks on me again. Simon, The Prince of Lies, strikes once more, just to kinda fuck with me. Anyway, Off to Polk Street. Through the revolving door once more, going through the cycle again and again and again and again.......The habit dictates.