by Nikki Ridley
I was so tired of it all. I was trapped, like a bug in a web, and I was so very very tired of fighting. I had no will, and it felt like a nightmare. There had been times, many times, when I thought I’d kick it forever. There had been so many last shots that never were. And yet here I was, on my way back. I felt desperate, and I hated myself. I was in a very dark place in the cab of that truck. I was in pain.
I thought about why I’d done it. I thought about why I’d done those trips to Jo’burg.
I remembered hearing a song by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers – ‘Under the Bridge’. I think they’d played it in the restaurant.
‘Under the bridge downtown is where I drew the blood’, or something like that. It had made me want to go and do it. The way a note or a lyric can strike a chord in someone’s soul.
It had made me want to get high. It had told me that that is where I belonged. Downtown. Drawing blood.
I loved music. I’d had a couple of guitars in my time, both stolen and bought, but they were the first to go when I wanted money, because they would become the last thing in the world that I thought I would need. I never learnt to play the guitar properly.
I felt such relief when I got back to Hillbrow. I was home, because home was the best place for me, and Hillbrow was the best place for me. I fitted in there. It gave me what I wanted. It welcomed me and told me it was all fine. Go there, it told me. The smell of the place, the sounds of the place. The dealers outside the corner café. They all took me in with open arms. Time stopped again, and the only thing that mattered was now. I didn’t have to fight any more. It was over.
But whatever had entered my soul on that truck stayed with me, and it took me home.
I don’t know how it all stopped. Only that it did.
I followed my parents to their new home in Ballito.
It wasn’t overnight. I spent quite some time in Durban and fell into a new crowd. There were lots of buttons. Pink and white. It’s all blurry now. I only know that there was a plethora of substances available in Durban in areas that outdid others in shadiness because of the thriving illegal prostitution trade that necessitated an underworld.
I guess that the variety and quantity of substances available bounced me off the one-track addiction I’d had before, and I slid uphill on to softer things, and an apparent improvement.
My parents put me on a bus to Plettenberg Bay. Lynn had moved there, and we’d always had a good relationship, so they sent me to stay with her.
I got a job at the Beacon Island Hotel, and I started running again. It was over. Somehow I was off the pinks.
It was over.
From this point on, I’ve little to tell.
I met Kate, the last girlfriend I had, and I ended up in Cape Town with her after the season. We lived together, and the people we lived with hated me. I don’t remember who they were, but I remember that they hated me. I worked at a Longhorn Steakhouse, and Kate and I were saving to buy a car, and we had plans to go overseas together.
I remember honestly intending to turn things around. It was time. I was happy, and I even went as far as enrolling myself to do a marketing course at Damelin about halfway through the year. Life was good. I had climbed up off that frenzied freeway of drug addiction, up the off-ramp, and so there to everyone who didn’t think I could.
There was no Wellconal to be had in Cape Town. It was one of those bizarrely city-specific drugs. Or was it? I don’t remember if I got it there. I was doing other stuff. Maybe that just took its place.
So I smoked some rocks and buttons, but I reckoned that it was a long way from where I’d been. It wasn’t the same. I didn’t like the rocks so much. Crack was an ‘upper’. I’d always preferred the ‘downers’.
I don’t remember much about Cape Town. I think the closer things were to the end, the less I remember. I honestly don’t know how much, or if, I studied. I can reasonably assume that I went to a few classes.
What I do remember involves quite a bit of Mandrax.
I remember smoking buttons in a house in Salt River, in a room with a bunch of other people.
I remember doing that a lot – that and drinking.
I remember a gun being pulled on me, in that same room, and then everybody falling about laughing because it was a big joke. I remember being highly unamused because the gun was loaded.
I remember the ‘whacking’ sound people’s heads made on the floors and walls when they keeled over from the buttons.
I remember a lot of gangsters and violence, flashy cars and guns, and people being shot and set alight in the area. These were the people I smoked with, and this was the conversation. This was their world. This was my world when I was there. This was a world a friend of mine didn’t think I belonged in, because even though he didn’t use himself, he’d patiently wait in the car for me outside the house while I did my thing and then take me home. He didn’t like to leave me there. I think I respected him for that, but I also think I liked that house in Salt River. I think I liked that world. I think I was fascinated with it.
The course went out the window, because I was working, and every cent I made went on rocks and buttons.
Kate was gorgeous. Vivacious. She had such a nice, supportive way about her. She was a really nice girl.
Hardly thought of her at all.
My parents took me away after a while. I wasn’t going to lectures, and they were pouring their money down the drain. They took me back to Durban.
I remember selling my passport in Point Road.
Then I was back in Cape Town. I hiked back to Kate. Another nightmare ride during which I questioned my life. I remember feeling utterly alone, and intensely ashamed and unhappy about the way my life was working out. I remember thinking that I really didn’t want to take drugs any more. Ever. I guess I must have been lower than down, and past hanging, in the lowest possible place a person could be, because I must have been feeling pretty damn bad to remember that.
I must have worked again, because Kate and I ended up in Jo’burg with a little Alfa Romeo. Maybe she bought it. Maybe it belonged to someone else. Whatever … I don’t remember exactly, but I remember going to my cousin’s wedding in Hartebeespoort.
Everyone in my family remembers me at that wedding, because I was clean. For the first time in my adult life. I remember the reception. It was a fantastic party.
That was in January 1995.
Kate and I moved in with her dad in Melville, and I got a job at Juicy Lucy at the airport. I was doing well. So well, in fact, that I was offered a job managing a branch in Durban. They flew me up there, but I didn’t stay long. I wanted to be with Kate, and I missed Jo’burg, so I left. The plan was to go overseas anyway, so it didn’t matter where I worked, as long as I worked.
There was another reason I missed Jo’burg. While working at Juicy Lucy, I’d hooked up with a couple of guys whom I’d known from before, from the Café Zurich days. I always had the Alfa. I had to use it to get to work, so I was mobile. I didn’t like to unwind after work by going to a bar or a club for a couple of drinks. That really wasn’t my scene. But I wasn’t really coping with the grind. I was restless.
I thought that it would be okay to do some pinks again, because I wasn’t going to be in Jo’burg all that long. I thought of myself as being a different person from the one who’d been really down and out in Hillbrow before. I had progressed. I had grown up. My confidence had come back, and once again I thought I could control it. I had stopped before. I could do it again. I was just unwinding.
Each shot was the last shot. The next shot would be the last shot, but the last shot never happened, the same way that tomorrow never comes.
Kate and I started arguing. I just wanted to do my thing, and she started giving me ultimatums. I knew that what I was doing was going to cause a rift, but I made excuses for it. It wasn’t that serious. It was just some fun for now, for goodness’ sake.
After I’d had a shot I would think, okay, this is it. That’s enough. I don’t n
eed it any more, but then after a few hours I would think, okay, just one more time. We were leaving soon. I wouldn’t have the opportunity again.
I’d missed being a part of something less ordinary. I’d missed the street. I’d missed the movie I had been living in. I’d missed the smell of Hillbrow. It smelt like a bottle store. I’d missed the sound of Hillbrow. It sounded like chaos. I just wanted to say goodbye.
After a month I was shooting six pinks at a time. At the height of my addiction I had been shooting eight at a time.
It’s funny how my memories of things, and feelings, that related directly to the drugs I used have survived far better than anything else.
As if they were more important.
Hope Doesn’t Float
Val
THE COLLEGE IN CAPE TOWN HAD CALLED TO TELL US THAT Paul wasn’t attending lectures, and we brought him home to Ballito, where we’d moved the previous year. We hadn’t seen much of Paul for almost a year. It had all been going on for so long that we had eventually both physically and mentally distanced ourselves, but not before Paul had shown enough of an improvement to allow us to do so.
Paul had come home after his disastrous stay in Kroonstad, the way he always did, and, like all the times before, he hadn’t come home alone. He’d brought it all with him. The lies, the manipulation, the fear that he’d steal from us, the anxiety and conflict that came from living with him. The disappointment. Not long after that, we’d moved to Ballito, near Durban. We had left him to his own devices in Jo’burg, because there was nothing we could do for him … nothing … and we’d wanted our lives back.
He’d followed us. He always followed us.
He’d come to Ballito, full of promises and tales, and then he told me he needed to borrow my car to go and visit a friend in Durban.
He was always just going to see a friend, and so I said no. I had a chance to stop him, and I was going to use it. I wasn’t afraid of him.
Paul was all right most of the time. This may seem completely at odds with everything, but, most of the time, he was level from having shot up. The trouble started when he didn’t have anything on him and the craving set in.
He never became truly awful. He never became violent or threatened any of us in any way. When the craving became too much, he’d walk off with something and just leave.
But when I tried to stop him from leaving the house, I saw another side of addiction that I knew of but hadn’t personally experienced with him. Ballito was different from Jo’burg. He had to get into Durban to get his fix, and to do that, he needed a car. It was too far for him to run.
He got the keys, but I managed to hide the gate control in time. Then he became violent. He went mad and started throwing the garden chairs around, ranting and raving, screaming at me that he’d throw the car keys in the dam if I didn’t give him the gate control. I’d never seen him like that before. He never touched me, but he raged on and on for so long that it gave his brother time to drive up from Durban. My husband was away at the time, and I’d called him at a loss as to how to handle Paul.
Mark had managed to get the keys off Paul, and then he told him to just go – which Paul did, on foot, again disappearing for months.
But he came back again, and wherever he’d been, whatever he’d been doing, he seemed better, and we sent him to Plett. He was a willing traveller, and by the middle of the following year, he called us to say he’d enrolled in a marketing course at Damelin. It was as if, after all the rehabs and prison sentences, he’d finally reached the end of the road himself.
It was a miracle, really, because most pinks addicts die.
By the time we sent him to Plett, he was looking healthy and fit again, and held down a job for the very first time in his life there.
So, after having to remove him from Cape Town, we were more encouraged about his chances than we should have been. Whatever he’d been up to there, it was a sight better than where he’d been before, and so we did what we had to do. We paid his fees, and we set him up in Durban as best we could.
We were still sceptical of Paul, but I, for one, was hopeful. You never lose hope completely. It has a way of floating to the surface of even the deepest well of disappointment. It’s always there, and it just needs something to cling onto to be restored.
We rented a flat for Paul near the college and fitted it with a few basic essentials like curtains, beds, a kettle, a hot plate … just to help him get on his feet.
I went to visit him after a couple of weeks. We had supplied the flat and I was curious to see what it looked like, and how he and his new flatmate were doing.
I was immediately suspicious when Paul met me at the bottom of the stairs and suggested we go for coffee in the little café below the flats. I wanted to go upstairs, and he tried everything to persuade me not to. He said he wanted to go out and buy posters for the flat, among other things.
But the more he tried to dissuade me, the more adamant I became that I wanted to go upstairs, and so he eventually had to let me in.
I stood and I looked, and I cried. I actually broke down there and then and wept.
Everything was gone. Everything. Even the bed and the curtains. Even the cutlery – except for one teaspoon. No doubt the last essential item to go.
It had all been sold for drugs. Paul and his flatmate had been sleeping on towels.
Nothing had changed. Then, to add insult to injury, the landlady approached me and asked me to please take him away from there. She said that there were pensioners living in the building and they were becoming disturbed by the goings-on in this flat. They had complained that all sorts of shady characters were coming and going all the time. No doubt the people who were helping to relieve Paul of our things. On top of all this, Paul had dropped out of Damelin almost immediately after his arrival in Durban, or, to be more accurate, he just wasn’t attending classes – unbeknownst to us, of course. It had all gone to pieces again in such a short time.
What could I do now? I was drained. Nothing had changed, and I was once again reminded that nothing ever would.
I did not want him to come back to stay with us in Ballito. He needed us, but his need was the wrong kind of need. He didn’t need us for comfort or healing, love or security – the things most parents would be only happy to give their child. He needed a prop to allow him to continue with his lifestyle.
I didn’t want to be that prop, living day in and day out with the fear that he would not only steal from us, but from our neighbours too. I could no longer cope with that – with never being able to relax in my own home, unable to deter him. Unable to watch him every minute and ultimately feeling responsible should anything go missing from a neighbour’s home or yard, or if he should borrow money from them and not pay it back. Living a life of constant suspicion.
I knew he had both the gall and the charm to borrow, and I knew he would steal.
I’d had enough. I had simply reached that stage in my life.
I was exasperated and I threw up my hands at the idea of bringing him home to Ballito.
It was such a lovely block of flats where we lived. Nobody felt the need to lock anything, and everyone thought that Paul was so nice … He would just take advantage of them. He was such a smooth operator.
In fact, during the short while that he had been there in 1993, two children’s bicycles had disappeared. Anybody could have taken them, but I suspected Paul immediately. I knew him (what a way for a mother to know her son), and nothing had ever been taken from the flats before Paul was around.
‘A bicycle?’ he said. ‘What could I get for a bicycle?’ Incensed, staggered, all innocence. But his protestations were ridiculous, because of course he could get something for a bicycle. He’d get something for just about anything, or he’d try.
(I think of the times we had gone to get a tyre changed, and … what do you know, no spare tyre.)
So when he asked to come home I said no, but I wasn’t just going to leave him either.
He cou
ldn’t come home again. Not this time.
I knew that Paul had nothing, but as far as I was concerned, nothing, at this stage, was a good thing. The less he had, the less he had to sell for drugs.
Paul’s brother donated a suitcase of clothes he no longer wore, and I took that. I planned to put him on a bus out of Durban, away from his contacts and so-called friends. Bloemfontein. It was about as nondescript a place as any in which I thought he might still have a chance of getting employment and pulling himself together. Surely it was harder to get drugs in Bloemfontein? I just wanted him to go. It didn’t really matter where.
‘Bloemfontein?’ he’d asked. ‘What am I going to do in Bloemfontein?’
‘Get a job,’ I told him. ‘Just try to get a job, and get away from the people you know. You’ve tried Jo’burg. You’ve tried Cape Town and Durban, so now try Bloemfontein. Stop taking drugs. Just stop. Just stop!’
I took him to a backpackers for the night, bought him a burger, gave him the clothes and the bus ticket, and drove home to Ballito. He’d obviously given the impression of really wanting to change his life, or I would not have left him at the backpackers, to his own devices. Or perhaps just buying the ticket out was as much as I could do by then. I had really had enough. It was time for him to help himself, or not. He had the ticket. He had a choice to use it, or to sell Mark’s clothes and sleep on the street. It was his decision.
I didn’t know what to feel any more. Constant struggle, worry and disappointment had created a vacant space within me – a place where feelings and emotions don’t die, but lie dormant for lack of direction and the need to just carry on.
He actually did take the bus to Bloemfontein, but upon his arrival he met a truck driver headed for Cape Town, and persuaded the man to give him a ride in exchange for sharing the driving.
I had asked Paul to phone me when he arrived in Bloem. My phone call came, but a day late and from Cape Town.
It was the end. I had tried, and failed, again. I felt helpless, but I had to admit that Paul was a survivor. He still had some ingenuity. It wouldn’t do him any good, but at least he wasn’t the passive empty shell that two days before had accepted the clothes and the burger and the order to leave.