Don’t go under, you say to yourself.
Don’t go under.
Just hold it together, you keep saying. And don’t look at anyone, or the paranoia will kick in. There is chewing gum on the floor and it’s pink and it’s fucking disgusting.
There are germs all over the seats, making more of each other. Mating. Think of
something else. Now. Right now. Before the spidery sensation starts on your skin.
Little Roo.
What would Roo be doing now?
You go to call him,
but what useful thing would you say?
You don’t call.
When the bus finally arrives at your stop
you think that you can’t eat for a long while.
You think that breathing is a little too much effort. You want to pass out, in bed.
You want a drink. You’d like a drink to make the passing smooth.
You shuffle past the newsagent’s, catching a glimpse of your hunched body in the window. Your mouth is sore inside and out. Your lips are cracked and blistered. Your eyes are dark and that thing is happening again. Your face, dripping, all cold mist
wet nose
hot salt.
It is a bitter bright morning, still too much for your eyes. Dull orange car lights. Gray pavement. All of this blue, blue, blue
for as far as you can see and no sun in the sky.
gamma hydroxybutyrate
I wake up on someone’s sofa. Paulette is smiling down at me, playing with her blond, highlighted, posh Manchester hair.
How cute. She’s awake. Oh, how cute.
I wake up on someone’s sofa. Paulette is smiling down at me, playing with her blond, highlighted, posh Manchester hair.
SO much happened while you were asleep, she says. SOOOOOO much. But I don’t want to talk about it right now. Tell you when we leave. Tell you everything.
I wake up on someone’s sofa. Paulette is smiling down at me, playing with her shiny, blond, highlighted, posh Manchester hair.
Did I just wake up?
I ask, wide-eyed.
Paulette is laughing at my word choices.
“I think you mean . . . have I been knocked out for this long? Yes, you have, sleepyhead!”
I wake up on someone’s sofa. Paulette is smiling down at me, playing with her shiny, feathered, highlighted, posh Manchester hair.
I have been out clean for over eight hours and she’s high as a blimp. We have discovered GHB, the liquid party drug that smells like chemicals and tastes worse. It’s clear, like
water,
and makes you feel amazing . . . high and drunk at the same time. But a sip too much and you’re out for the count. For hours.
“Shit went down last night,” she says. “You passed out and missed it all!
How much G did they give you?”
“A capful,” I tell her. “The vodka bottle capful.”
“Shit, man,” she says, hands over her eyes.
“That’s how they fucked up. That was a big vodka bottle. A superlarge dose. You’re supposed to measure one of the regular-sized capfuls. Are you feeling okay?”
I climb to my feet, wobbling somewhat.
“Fine.”
“Kid”—she laughs—“you have angels.”
We get in the car and drive.
“So what happened when I was asleep? What did you lot get up to?”
“Ah,” she says. “Things got a bit too wild for me, actually.”
The color in her face has changed. Her eyes are dark, looking the other way.
I suddenly want to hug her but I do not dare.
“Be careful,” she says, “not to drink any of these water bottles in the back here. I don’t know what’s what.”
“Where’s my kit bag?” I croak.
Paulette passes me our drug survival kit, which includes Lucozade pills, plasters, Bonjela (for the mouth ulcers), orange juice for vitamin C,
and a melted Easter egg for sugar and energy. We share the chocolate on the way.
I love Paulette. She has ten years on me and a frightening temper, but she’s my best friend for now. It’s nice to have a woman in my life. I’d totally kiss her, but she’s straight as an arrow.
We both like powder and we both love pills and attention but
my favorite days with her are those when we’re with her little boy,
feeding ducks,
looking out at the water. Pillheads love stillness as much as anyone.
Two weeks later,
we are eating a curry with the little one,
watching a documentary on a man with psychosis,
and he is talking about how, one morning while high on GHB,
something told him to knock all of his teeth out with a hammer. So he did.
I shudder.
Paulette hugs her kid close into her and says, to me,
“Some people are just so self-destructive. God.”
“Terrible,” I say.
“Terrible,” she says.
19.8
Gemma from the agency: You know what this is, right?
Me: Yes, I do.
Paulette: [Having more trouble with this than me] Yes.
Gemma from the agency: [Looking at me] This isn’t a model agency. I just say this because you’re still very young and you must be informed; you see, I have to cover my back . . .
Me: Yeah, I know what this is. I’m fine with it.
Gemma from the agency: Because some girls think that it’s just dates and functions, and it’s really not. This is the sex industry.
Me: That’s fine.
[Gemma excuses herself, takes a call. Returns.]
Gemma from the agency: There’s a party happening in a penthouse at xxxxxxxxxx and the client loves the sound of you. It’ll be lovely. Top-notch people. You want to go? You look stunning as you are.
Me: Yes, I’ll go.
Gemma from the agency: Okay, great! [Turns to Paulette] I’ll find something for you later, hopefully.
Mr. Jumeriah at the Penthouse.
I arrive at the penthouse. A lady dressed in a trouser suit is sitting at a reception desk, like we’re at the office or something.
Go straight through and say hello to him, she smiles.
I pass through the annex to get to the master bedroom, approaching a table with powder like cocaine,
foil and glass bottles on it.
What’s all this? I whisper to myself.
“Oh,” says his PA, coming up behind me,
“it’s crack. But don’t worry, it’s totally optional,
hahaha.”
I am soon to learn that this is standard practice for Mr. Jumeriah, who is walking around in the other room in his boxers, making incoherent noises. He beckons me with a nod through the frame of a doorway. There, sitting on the bed, are two girls in swimsuits, sipping wine.
“Hey!” they say. “He just wants you to dance, really. . . . There are some bikinis in the basket. Pick one, any one.
Oh my God, that white would look good on you.
Oh my God, gorgeous skin, so jealous.
Oh my God, is that your real hair or extensions?”
Afterward, I am ushered to another room, where six girls in bikinis are sitting with cups of milky tea
biscuits
éclairs
crisps and cupcakes.
We talk about makeup, X Factor, the news and the fact that we’d never seen anyone on crack before
and isn’t it great that we didn’t even need to get naked this time, let alone touch him?
Mr. Jumeriah is a legend around these parts. Apparently he likes to dance in hotel rooms with young women, and that’s about it.
Afterward, the PA pays us each some money in an envelope, and everyone goes home. On the way home I call Roo and ask him what drugs he’s tried.
“Ah, it’s nothing,” he says. “I’m not really into it. Just a bit of weed. Sometimes something else, you know, but no big deal. No hard stuff. No H or crack or nothing.”
20.0
On the week of my birthday I go to Chorley to visit my mum for a couple of days. I have a dry, scratchy throat and am experiencing visual trails when I move too fast and a permanent sense of being off-balance, which is normal by now. All the floors are moving, always. I feel heavier than normal. And my breathing is off.
It is a cold day and the tips of my fingers are white. The circulation in my extremities is worse than usual. Mum and I go to the bank. Her eyes are unnaturally bright and she is talking about a holiday she wants to take. She is shivering a little and there is something chattery and fragile about her. I want to hold her hands
but I can’t feel my own. A daughter with no warmth in her body.
“Malta . . . or Tenerife,”
Mum is saying,
“both good places to relax.”
She seems different, somehow,
and
her voice seems to be coming to me from far away.
I say,
“Mum,
something is weird. I feel shak—
I feel shaky.”
The next thing I know, I’m on the floor and the bank people are giving me water.
“You passed out,”
someone says.
“You all right, love?
How ya feeling?”
Later on that night I am lying in bed
and the shadows are terrifying me. It feels as though the ceiling is coming down to meet the floor. Then a dark, hooded figure runs toward me and back through the doorway.
Someone is out to get me,
I just know it. There is pressure at the back of my head.
My teeth are getting in the way.
I can’t get the words out.
Sweating, I get to my feet and stagger to Mum’s room.
I try to scream,
but my voice is caught in its box and falls out ragged:
“Mum!
Mum!
Someone’s trying to get me. I’m unwell.”
Mum sits up at once in bed.
“NO,” she screams back.
“No, you are not. You are EXHAUSTED! And coming down from whatever it is you’ve been on.”
I trudge back to my own bed
but can’t sleep,
won’t sleep.
By the weekend I am back at some after-party with Paulette,
ignoring the sore throat,
battling the fever.
“Are you sure?” says Paulette. “You’ve just been really ill.”
“Fuck it,” I say. “Let’s get back on it.”
It’s too late anyway; we’re already well away. Paulette and I have been eating ecstasy tablets like sweets since Friday afternoon and we are introduced to a group of four men on Saturday afternoon.
They’re in their twenties, and lovely.
Irish Tony,
Dangerous Dave,
Adam and William from Manchester.
We disappear off into the early evening. They call Dave Dangerous because he has a platinum dye job, and a low drug threshold. Dangerous Dave gets out of control very quickly. He’s been known to take pisses in bars in full view of everyone and chuck full pint glasses at people’s heads. All the same, I find him quite lovable and the feeling is mutual.
“You’ve got really nice features,” says Dangerous.
“Thanks,” I say. “You got any pills?”
We go to a soulful house event in Blackpool;
we are more young and beautiful than we’ll ever be again.
Dangerous and I get high listening to soul music, steal William’s car and go on a joyride.
Three hours later and
I might be going under.
Tony is in bed with Paulette.
Adam is lost.
Dangerous
is looking for William under the teacups on the draining
board.
“Don’t worry about that,” says William.
“It’s ketamine.
Once they drop in the K hole you just have to leave them to it.”
I look up at him. He’s a tall, muscular type, but there’s something overwhelmingly kind about him.
“What do you want to do?” he asks. “We could drink some more or just go for a nice breakfast. You’ve totally fucked the wheels on my car, by the way.”
We choose breakfast and sleep wrapped up in each other for a whole day, until we have to get up on Monday for work. Him at the Wellness Centre, me at the office and then out again at night.
We meet again and again
and
as it happens,
we sink into each other.
21.0
“You keep talking about it,” says William, “but I don’t know what it is. You’re making me think scary things.”
We are doing the moves again, that dance of near-truth.
I’m exhausted. And I don’t know what else to say.
“Scary things like what?”
“You tell me,” he says, although I’m sure he doesn’t need me to.
And then I think,
There’s nothing for it. This is probably a waste of my time anyway.
So to end it all, I say,
“Escort. Party girl. Whatever you want to call it. All right? Good. Well, now you know. Good.”
He says,
“Right.”
I say,
“So move on if you wish, now you know everything. This has been fun
or whatever. It is what it is. Cool.”
He looks at me like I hit him in the face.
“Don’t be silly. I love you, you idiot.”
We continue drinking beer, shooting pool. My heart is overthrown, but I play it down.
on the monday
Paulette says I never should have told him. Never ever.
Just wait, says she.
He’ll only throw it in your face. Yeah, he’ll use it against you.
Just wait, says she. He’ll be out the door.
He isn’t. He stays.
I can hardly believe it. It feels like the bottom will drop out of our thing.
Any
Moment
Now. When he sleeps, his arm wrapped around me, I stare at his eyelashes in the dark and hope he never leaves. Sometimes I hold my breath to give the thing some weight. Some promise.
Paulette gets drunk one night, phones me up and calls me some names.
I never see her again.
RE
CREATION
If, God forbid, anything should happen to you
(I hold my breath every time you leave the house
for a good twenty seconds
so it does not
but if it does),
if it does and someone (anyone) asks me what first struck me about you, remember, I would say your face. The openness of your face, your kind eyes. Large enough to see the wholewideworld. And your thick hands, and your gentleness. Those are some solid things to remember about a person. You are a strapping Taurus and you know how to stay.
I don’t know what is in the pills I took tonight
but I am seeing things. The map, the entire
map of the world as I know it, is appearing
across your skin. All the Africas of the
universe stretched across
your taut skin. The
golden globe of the planet,
your pores, the hairs on your arms, a city each.
Should I call, I say,
Should I call and ask Mum, Why?
Should I tell Little Roo we love him? You say
no, not right now. Or you take my hand and
say,
See how you feel tomorrow. They’re going to know you’re on something. No phone calls for now.
21.2
Mum is in the house alone a lot.
She organizes things, paints her nails orange
or in purple glitter
and is mostly lonely. Roo likes to roam the streets at night.
David is seeing some woman in the next town. A woman with no teeth,
says Mum, matter-of-factly.
CA, said Mum, matter-of-factly.
CA (she likes to use hospital abbreviations).
Of course CA, I think to myself. Of course CA.
I could feel it coming.
This is how we came to know: She called me into the room.
She called, “Come and feel this for me, baby, and tell me.”
So I did. It was hard. Pebble-sized.
We didn’t take any chances. I made the call and she was in and they took a biopsy
and it’s
CA,
of fucking course.
David is asking me if I know what it means.
Of course I fucking know. I dreamed it. I dreamed it up.
Roo doesn’t really understand it,
is nodding but it isn’t going in;
or maybe it is. You wouldn’t know.
He has a strong back and arms now
and sinews and hair sprouting
all over his face. He’s got contact lenses in too these days.
His eyes are often pink.
Mum loses a breast. Gains another, round and full.
Silicone. Goes to Malta for a holiday.
Her limbs swell.
Lymphedema, they say.
The Terrible Page 8