The Million-Rand Teaspoon

by Nikki Ridley

  Then the stealing started.

  I can tell you now what he took, but I couldn’t have done so then.

  We hardly noticed it at first. The odd thing would disappear, and I’d wonder where I’d put it. He was very sly about it. He wouldn’t take obvious things that would be noticed immediately. He stole with prudence, at least at first, and was highly convincing with denials, as well as alternative explanations, when you noticed that something had gone. We would only notice that something was missing when we needed it – like the binoculars, winter clothes and blankets, silver that had been put away for special occasions, tools out of the garage, and of course jewellery. Money left lying around. Windsurfing equipment that had been stored in the garage.

  Even after some months of this, coupled with a breakdown in his relationship with his girlfriend and a complete failure to get himself a job, and when we knew that he had to be the one responsible when things went missing, it was still hard not to believe his declarations of innocence because of the convincing wide-eyed manner in which they were delivered. He lied with such conviction. When he was confronted, or he knew he was under suspicion, he’d be as sweet as punch … as if he’d consciously stored his old personality in a corner of his mind and he could take it out and use it. He’d be the old Paul again, and we’d want to believe him, because we’d always trusted him before.

  He was as clever as a con man. He was a con man. He knew how to survive.

  But, as persuasive as he was when he needed to be, the overall change in his personality was undeniable. His demeanour, his being, had become imbued with a deviousness that could be sensed, and everything he did was manipulative. The world around him was a game, and the people around him were the pieces, to be manoeuvred and placed to his best advantage. There was never any bad temper on display. He was never abusive. He was a smooth boy. Smooth boys are never abusive. He enjoyed his game. He was in control of that, if not of his habit, and when there was no denying the drugs, he’d so graciously admit that he’d been smoking a bit and drinking, but that he wanted to stop. He was unerringly contrite, articulate in his explanations and good-natured about the whole thing. He knew exactly how to defuse anger and feed hope, because that kept him in the game. It kept him on top, and it kept him uncontrollable. He never gave us ammunition.

  We tried to help him. My husband and I, Savannah, and even Savannah’s mother, Wendy.

  It was a testimony to Paul’s innate character that most people would try to help him rather than reject him outright, as many would be wont to do with a drug addict, but it was also a testimony to the way he manipulated them.

  Wendy was an amazingly strong woman, and as Paul often stayed with them, she was determined to try to pull him right. He fed her efforts by genially going along with everything.

  She went about trying to rid Paul of his habit in a rather novel way. Thinking back on it brings a smile to my face to this day. She was convinced that she could make Paul sweat out his addiction. She would put him in the sauna for hours, as she believed it would get all the toxins out of his body, and then early in the mornings she would make him run behind her car around the streets of Waverley. The fact that her car was a Rolls-Royce conjures up even more of a comical image. She would crawl up and down the neighbourhood at fifteen kilometres an hour shouting, ‘Come on Paul, come on …’, then put him back in the sauna. I suppose it helped in a small, immediate way – he couldn’t use while he was in the sauna, and I’m sure it helped to keep him fit.

  Eventually, however, the reality of Paul’s thieving, and by virtue of that the reality of the extent of his problem, became undeniable, and I didn’t know what to do. The theft aside, the fact that Paul must have been taking the kinds of drugs to warrant it was enough to concern us on a twenty-four-hour basis. It was exceptionally worrying, but as much as we questioned him and as hard as we looked for evidence, we couldn’t pin him down. He denied everything, and we found nothing. I felt absolutely at a loss as to what to do.

  So when my best jewellery disappeared, I decided that enough was enough. I couldn’t cope with him. Savannah had gone over to London some months before, and I thought that would be the best place for him to go, because we were getting nowhere with him. I remember thinking that I would have to start locking everything away. We thought that he’d been clean when travelling, and we thought that Savannah, having been so close to him, would be better equipped to get him on track again.

  He loved her, and she wouldn’t tolerate him doing whatever he was doing in London. We thought that would be enough.

  The Ties that Bind

  Paul

  I WAS AWARDED A SECOND TRIP TO LONDON BECAUSE I STOLE my mother’s jewellery and money.

  I don’t remember particularly hanging for anything on my way over, or how I felt about it – or how I felt about seeing Savannah again. I’ve lost that. I don’t remember going over at all, but I do remember London.

  When I first tried to cast my mind back to that period, I remembered the smell of London, the feel of it and the colour of it. Smells have played a great part in my recollections. I often recall those first – and they seem to evoke images. I recall the odours of the squats I lived in, and I can actually close my eyes and smell those smells, as if I am in the squat, and the rest follows. I remember the Italian and the Scotsman I lived with in one of them. One of the pervasive odours that rebuilt my memory of that place was the smell of the open sores on the Scotsman’s body where he had abscesses from shooting up. Then I remember him, sitting against a wall, his sores green and weeping, and I remember that we had no furniture and that we had been friends since not long after my arrival in London and that we all did smack together and that I did not trust them at first.

  Memories like these are like the points in a join-the-dots picture, or a picture drawn in invisible ink that begins to appear haphazardly again on the paper, a bit here, a bit there, till a whole picture emerges.

  The picture is not perfect. I remember that we went to lots of concerts, at first, but I can’t tell you the names of the bands we saw. I remember that I was happy, at first, but that the weather got me down because it rained incessantly, and I missed the sun.

  I know I loved Savannah, but I don’t remember loving her much in London – and I do remember, very clearly, why that was so.

  When I arrived in London, I went straight to Earls Court, the hub of the visiting youth scene. It is in the middle of London, close to everything, and full of South African, Australian, Kiwi, American and European travellers, some visiting, some there to fulfil working visas, and most to work to earn money to travel further. Earls Court is replete with youth hostels. It was the best place to be to hook up with other travellers or to walk into a telephone booth and find, not adverts for brothels, but adverts for cheap places to stay and all types of work.

  I quickly found myself employment with one of the youth hostels. I worked as a driver, picking up and dropping off guests at the airport. It was an easy job and had the added advantage of free accommodation in the hostel.

  It had another advantage too.

  Being back in London, I, naturally, went straight back onto smack.

  My mother had sent me back to save me, but she had done so without all the information required to make an informed decision. She just didn’t know what she was doing, because she had sent me straight back to the cookie jar.

  The easiest way for me to incorporate heroin into my life in Earls Court was to sell it. I could earn extra bucks and take a cut of whatever I sold. It was very easy to find buyers. Working for and living in the hostel meant I had a captive market, and I didn’t need to introduce it or push it – I simply obtained whatever was desired. Heroin, coke, a bit of acid here and there, and lots of hash. I didn’t regard myself as a dealer. I was a ‘merchant’. A middleman. I was The Organiser.

  Life was good. It wasn’t serious, it wasn’t hard, and everything fitted together very nicely. The hostel was always busy. Nights were filled with parties.
Savannah arrived to meet me, and she got a job in the same hostel, working in the kitchen in exchange or room and board. Life was, to use a British expression, sweet mate!

  I met up with fellow users in Earls Court, and became friends with two in particular, James and Ricci, the Scot and the Italian.

  They were quite heavy into smack when I got to know them, and I didn’t trust them an inch. They were junkies. They’d steal the clothes off your back if you gave them half a chance.

  I did not consider myself a junkie. I was not in their league. I had messed up in Jo’burg, but I would get it together. There was still time. I still thought that I would stop all of it some time or other. I just wasn’t ready. There was always next week, or the week after that. So I’d stolen a few things. I was sorry, but I had a job now, and I was keeping it.

  I think I did reach a point when I realised (strongly enough that the realisation couldn’t be immediately squashed by denial) that I was in too deep, but I was too proud to do anything about it. Too proud to ask for help anyway, and too scared to take that step because it meant doing something I really didn’t want to do. I really didn’t want to never get high again, and I really didn’t want to stop being the person I was and become an adult.

  I’m sure these thoughts played themselves out in my head many times while I was in London, and no doubt many times before then when I was still in Jo’burg and on pinks, but I can’t place them with exact times or incidents. I had been a full-on junkie in Jo’burg. I had stolen stuff to pay for drugs and been unable to hold down employment. Definition of junkie.

  I must have been in absolute denial. My head must have been really untidy. I don’t know, but I do know that in an insidious way that actively being a fuck-up helps one deal with being a fuck-up; it was always easier to carry on. To stop would mean having to say sorry – and mean it – and having to feel ashamed, not to mention having to admit that I hadn’t been anywhere near in control. I’d do it at the right time. At least in London I could carry on without my folks knowing about it. It gave me breathing space.

  This was all background stuff. The psychological backdrop to the nasty little play of deception I was starring in. I never really grappled with the contradictions.

  I also remember that in London I didn’t think my friends could be trusted, because they were junkies.

  I hid my stash in the roof of the downstairs toilets at the Palace Court, where it was easily accessible, and where Savannah would not be able to find it.

  I had to hide my habit from her, in light of our history and especially as I was supposed to be in London to get clean, but it wasn’t hard. People don’t always see what they don’t want to see, unless you really shove it in their faces. She wasn’t naive about me, but there was always so much going on in the hostel that it was simple to steal away to the toilet for a hit, or I’d wait till she was at work. When it made me ‘sick’, I told her I just wasn’t feeling well. That was never a lie. Heroin can make you very nauseous, and when you come down off it, you are sick.

  I was exceedingly convincing (I was, if I say so myself, a highly accomplished bullshitter), and as London was damp and dismal, a constant state of ill-health was not very unbelievable for a sun-spoilt South African. And the short but brilliant summer that London has to offer wasn’t protracted enough for me to have to throw that excuse out of the window.

  Things began unravelling fairly quickly, though. I had only smoked smack during my previous time in London. I’m not sure why, because I’d used needles before for paregoric. Nevertheless, I had always had a fear of needles as a child, and although that fear had dissipated, I’d retained a dislike of using them, even while I chose to. So perhaps the opportunity to get high on an opiate without having to shoot it up had kept me ‘chasing the dragon’ the first time round. It was also a common form of using heroin, because it was supposed to be less addictive than spiking, and it was easier to do. The smack didn’t have to be cooked up. All you had to do was tip some out on a piece of foil, hold a lighter under it, and suck up the plume of smoke. It still made you high, and I honestly don’t know how true it is that it is less addictive. I met plenty of people who’d become addicted that way.

  This time round, however, I was shooting it up. Things had progressed while I’d been back in Johannesburg. I’d done pinks, so now it was just ‘same thing, different place, not-very-different drug’.

  The first time you do heroin, it just makes you sick. When you shoot it, you start off with about 5 ccs – a tiny amount, but, damn, it makes you ill. That’s where most people would stop, you’d think, but if the desire to find out what is so great about the stuff, or to be a rebel, or to gain entry into the glamorous world of the pop anarchist is great enough … well, retching and vomiting into a toilet bowl is not going to stop you. It didn’t bother me in the slightest.

  The second time you shoot it, it might only make you sick again. Not, ‘oh I feel a bit off colour, I must have eaten something bad’ sick. Really sick! It’s horrible. You wonder why people do this stuff. The universe is offering you so many outs, but you do it again, a third time …

  Last chance to go home – gone.

  The high from heroin is insane! The feeling as you release the tourniquet from your arm, and the blood rushes to your head … it takes seconds … it’s mind-blowing. Better than anything you can even imagine feeling. You rush, rush, RUSH, and it’s so fast, and you don’t lose consciousness at all. You are sitting there and you are rushing and rushing, but you can see everything around you. The elevator’s going from the ground floor to the top floor in seconds.

  You have done it now.

  To put it bluntly, you’re fucked.

  The highs of an ordinary life are never going to feel the same again. A stunning sunset will never again take your breath away in quite the same way. Elation at good news, laughter that comes from the pit of your stomach – all those things that used to pour fairy dust into your brain – they will never do so in quite the same way again.

  Everything has changed. You have felt euphoria more powerful than anything you could have imagined, and you will happily puke your guts out to feel it again.

  Oh, and that’s just the rush. The high lasts all day. You can lie there all day feeling like you’re in heaven while the world goes by.

  Addiction is at first psychological, then physical, but there is not a hugely quantifiable time lapse between the two, and the fact that it is first psychological does not lessen the drug’s grip, because that grip is so powerful.

  That rush is so exhilarating. You want it again so badly, and you will keep going after it until you are physically hooked, and you don’t know when it happened.

  You quickly begin using more heroin to rush, because as you become dependent, your body develops a tolerance of its effects. The tolerance is also experienced psychologically at first, then physically. First you need more than 5 cc to experience the rush, so you graduate onto 10 cc, then more, and after a few months you are on 20 cc a hit. It doesn’t stop there. The amount you have to use gets bigger and bigger exponentially.

  The first few times you get high, you can’t do much. Rush, sick, high. Sit down, lean on wall, lie down. Heaven is a place in your room, or in the toilet cubicle, or wherever. (Toilet cubicles possibly see more drug use than any other location in the Western world because it is the one place no one will disturb you, or question why you are in there.)

  So this is what it is all about. Is life about what you do? … No, man, it’s about what you feel.

  Time stops.

  Not for long, though. Soon, you can do things when you are high. You can shoot up in the morning, and after the rush and the nausea, you can go to work. You are smiling, and you feel like a god. Powerful. Sublime. You think and you make plans and you have ideas. Brilliant ideas. You are untouchable, because you feel so good, and that feeling is lasting and lasting. Almost all day. You work, you do your thing, whatever that thing may be, you talk to people, and you interact. You�
��re okay because you are functioning and you are ‘gonna do this and you are gonna do that … ‘

  Then you start to shake a bit, and you are not feeling so good. You suddenly forget everything. The brilliant ideas you had. The plans. They are gone. Your bubble’s popped. You are feeling quite bad now. You need another hit.

  So you cook it up again, in the nearest toilet, or wherever you can, and off you go again. You strap the tourniquet around your arm to push out the vein, stick in the needle, hit the vein, release the tourniquet, and … aaaah … BAM! The elevator shoots up again, or …

  You miss the vein.

  Now that hurts. It hurts like hell!

  If so much as one drop of heroin goes into your tissue, it’s like being stung by twenty bees at once in the same spot. That area immediately swells up, and your arm, or your hand or your leg – wherever you have shot up – is useless and numb. But you carry on, because you want more, and so you try again somewhere else.

  So you are careful. You make sure that you burn off the impurities and that you don’t miss the vein.

  I became quite partial to shooting up in my groin. It was the easiest place to get the needle in properly.

  I loved doing smack. It was so easy to get in London, and initially I managed to hide my habit quite well. I had a few ‘sick’ days off work, but otherwise I had it all under control. Savannah and I did things together. We were having so much fun. We smoked heaps of hash, and I was managing to pay for everything quite easily. When we went out, I would often do a ‘speedball’. A speedball is a mixture of heroin and coke, and you shoot it up the same way. It’s fantastic, man! You go out and you feel like a euphoric Hercules, so potent and full of energy and HIGH, man! HIGH!

  Everything I did was enhanced by incorporating drugs into it. I got high on speedballs to go out. I got high on straight heroin in the hostel. I went to work high. I smoked all the time. Apart from the attraction of the high, it was just all so exciting – everything about it – the ‘missioning’ to score, the whole process of hiding with your mates, cooking it up, strapping the tourniquet, dabbing for the vein. It all held this ‘underworld’-type appeal. It felt like a special secret, but not a shameful one. More like being a part of a cult – a subculture. I felt no fear. I had always been extreme, and doing this, living this life, was for me a way of taking things to the extreme. I didn’t see (or care to see) the consequences then, neither the immediate ones nor the long-term ones. I was young and life was a ‘jol’. Everything was a jol for the first few months … until I found that it had changed.