by Tony O'Neill
I shrug. “It doesn’t matter. It’s just the idea that it exists that’s exciting. Who cares about reality? Reality is boring. Hold on, there’s more. ‘Jesse Flores, who coached me in Spanglish and taught me all kinds of filthy Mexican curse words.’ ”
“Good, I was going to remind you to thank Jesse. Mexican Spanish is totally different from the Spanish I know. They have a strong accent, a different way of speaking. You can’t have all of this proper Spanish in there, it wouldn’t be right. I can’t believe that in all the years you lived in LA you only learned one phrase in Spanish.”
“Vente blanco, vente negro,” I sigh, nostalgically.
“The following writers and artists supported me at the outset and really helped me out with advice and encouragement when I needed it: Dan Fante, Zsolt Alapi, Tommy Trantino, Jerry Stahl, Dennis Cooper, Sebastian Horsley . . .”
I drift off for a second. Something has caught my eye outside. Vomit Mouth across the road is pissing in the street now, waving his pecker around and shooting his urine up in the air like a gardener watering the lawn. I look away and back to the notebook.
“Is that it?”
“No, I just have this part . . . ‘I would also like to acknowledge the presence of many of my old friends and enemies, both living and dead, faces from the dope scene, shooting buddies, dealers, nutcases, thieves, prostitutes, and professional fuckups whose faces and memories haunt these pages.’ ”
Out of the corner of my eye, I think I see an old ghost from my dope days staggering across the road wearing a Mexican wrestling mask. I look up, startled, but there is nothing out there except the California moon, Vomit Mouth watering the palm trees, and the steady rumble of traffic down Hollywood Boulevard.
· · ·
“Well,” Vanessa says, “you are right about something. No one ever reads the acknowledgments. So I guess you can pretty much write what you want.”
“That’s true. Unless there’s some kind of weird acknowledgment-reading freak out there.”
I take a slug of my drink and check my watch. The diet pill makes my brain whirr like an overheated motor, and my fingers are icy cold. Seized by sudden inspiration, I jot down the phrase “JUST SAY NO TO THE WAR ON DRUGS.” I close the notebook. A few more drinks and maybe it will all make sense. The night is still young and full of possibilities.
Also by Tony O’Neill
FICTION
Down and Out on Murder Mile
Digging the Vein
Seizure Wet Dreams
NONFICTION
Neon Angel by Cherie Currie (with Tony O’Neill)
Hero of the Underground by Jason Peter (with Tony O’Neill)
POETRY
Songs from the Shooting Gallery
PRAISE FOR
Tony O’Neill’s
Down and Out on Murder Mile
“A tragic but hilarious redemption story. . . . This book is not for reading. It is for injecting.”
—Blackbook magazine
“O’Neill’s sharp humor about his recovery shows he is no formulaic ‘misery memoirist,’ but an author with a talent for describing life’s darkest moments and the beauty that can come out of them.”
—Financial Times
“The continuation of O’Neill’s autobiographical debut, Digging the Vein (2006) [is] even more caustic than its predecessor. . . . Whip-smart. . . . Call it a junkie fairy tale: boy meets girl, gets clean, and lives. The whole truth with no reservations: not a pretty story, but a rare telling.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“For a novel so focused on the abandonment of control, Down and Out on Murder Mile derives much of its power from the subtlety, even precision, of its structure.”
—Lit Mob
“Down and Out on Murder Mile doesn’t disappoint if you’re looking for a visceral, grisly experience. . . . Fans of Irvine Welsh and Warren Ellis are sure to enjoy this dark, disturbing journey.”
—Metro
“Fast-paced, compulsively readable portrait of a young would-be rocker junkie. . . . The novel’s consistent tone of urgency and desperation creates a gritty world of its own that compels.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Told with unwavering honesty, it is the perfect description of the lifestyle, and not surprising from a man who has lived it. Down and Out on Murder Mile is a force to be reckoned with.”
—Sacramento Bee
“Down and Out on Murder Mile is a deceptively literary work. . . . This is indeed a Bildungsroman but it is also a Künstlerroman—a portrait of the artist as a young junkie.”
—Times Literary Supplement (London)
“Tony O’Neill is one of my favorite new writers, and Down and Out on Murder Mile is his best book yet. In O’Neill’s wizardlike hands, all the drugs and sex, the fierce fights and shouts and blaring rock & roll, amount to a story both horrifying and beautiful.”
—Scott Heim, author of Mysterious Skin and We Disappear
“And I thought I was depraved. . . . Down and Out on Murder Mile is funny, moving, and completely authentic. It is a map of hell with directions showing readers exactly how to get there. Go there. By opening our hearts we open up our passage through the flames.”
—Sebastian Horsley,
author of Dandy in the Underworld
“Finishing Down and Out on Murder Mile hurts. O’Neill paints a vividly original picture of addiction and recovery that made my veins thirst and my heart worry.”
—Josh Kilmer-Purcell, author of Candy Everybody Wants and I Am Not Myself These Days
“Into the burned-out shooting gallery of narcotic noir, Down and Out On Murder Mile comes raging like a crack-fueled demon, breathing new life into the genre as it careens from low-end Hollywood to subterranean London, musical sort-of stardom to zombied-out methadone maintenance. Woven through it all is an epic love story at once wrenching, raunchy, and weirdly, wildly life-affirming. Tony O’Neill writes like a man with his tongue in a light socket and his toe in a puddle of spilled blood. I fucking loved this book!”
—Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight
About the Author
TONY O’NEILL’s books include Digging the Vein and Down and Out on Murder Mile, and coauthor of Neon Angel and the New York Times bestselling Hero of the Underground. His essays, poems, and short stories have appeared extensively online and in print. He is a survivor of heroin addiction, crack abuse, rehab, fatherhood, and stints in the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Kenickie, and Marc Almond’s band. He lives in New York with his wife and daughter.
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other names, characters, and places, and all dialogue and incidents portrayed in this book are the product of the author’s imagination.
SICK CITY. Copyright © 2010 by Tony O’Neill. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-06-178974-8
EPub Edition © 2010 ISBN: 9780062006585
10 11 12 13 14 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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