Digging the Vein

by Tony O'Neill

  I sensed someone’s approach, heard a whistle and there was Macho, dressed down in a Lakers top and sweat pants, loitering by the mouth of the alleyway. I got up and walked towards him, and noticed the apparition in black from the payphone fall into step beside me. It seemed that we were both waiting for Macho.

  He turned back down the alleyway and we followed along like children begging their father for candy.

  “Whatchoo need, whatchoo need?”

  “Forty,” I replied.

  “Twenty,” I heard the girl cough out from behind me.

  He stopped and moved his tongue around in his mouth to separate out the different balloons as I handed him the bills. The girl was beside me now as she handed over the cash and I caught a faint, sickly-sweet smell of body odor and junk-sickness wafting from her. Macho turned and dispensed the medication into eager hands.

  “Haff a nie-ce daye,” he grinned in mangled English, before turning and walking away.

  “Spic cocksucker,” the girl muttered in a faraway voice.

  I turned and looked at her ravaged face. Her skull poked out through the skin like the modernist angles of a Picasso portrait. Her lips were swollen and cut. Her eyes were heavy lidded and dead certainly, but despite the ravages of violence and addiction there was no denying that I knew this girl.

  “Genesis?” I asked quietly.

  *

  We walked together for a while, through the side streets and back alleys to find the spot where she said we could get high. We didn’t talk much. She explained the busted lip happened when some “fucking asshole nigger” refused to pay for head. I walked in silence mostly, my eyes returning to her wasted body, unable to comprehend the ruin the girl had visited upon herself in the period following her overdose in my apartment.

  We eventually came upon an abandoned grey Volkswagen bug in an overgrown lot hidden from view by chain-link fences. She opened the door, sending the concentrated heat and stench from inside streaming out into the desert air and said, “Get in.”

  Inside we cooked our dope in silence. The smell filled the car, drowning out the smell of rotting food and stale sweat. Empty wrappers from bags of heroin and coke covered the seats, along with discarded fast food containers—Jack In The Box, El Pollo Loco, Burger King, Arby’s …

  I had to loosen my jeans and pull them down a little to get a hit in my inner thigh. I noticed Genesis rolling her top down, exposing one white tit to the daylight. I watched her silently as she appraised her breast in the same way that a butcher might examine a piece of meat for imperfections. Then finding her spot she squeezed the flesh hard with her left hand and slowly slid the needle in with the right.

  I returned to my own shot and fed the dope in slowly, careful not to blow out the vein. I withdrew the needle and looked over at Genesis. She had pulled out and was reinserting in a different spot. A trickle of dark blood ran down her bruised tit. She noticed me watching.

  “It’s the goddamn crank,” she explained. “Fucks up your veins real quick. Who knows what those bastards mix it with? I’ve been getting some joy here recently but ...”

  She froze as a small plume of blood shot into the barrel.

  “Gotcha,” she breathed.

  She finished up and with a cursory wipe of the injection site with the back of her grimy hand before popping her bloody breast back into her shirt. She lay back and closed her eyes in rapture.

  For now, we were elsewhere. There was silence in the car for a long time.

  “I’m sorry I left you,” I told her eventually. “You know, that night in the apartment. I panicked. I was all fucked up. I didn’t know what to do.”

  She just laughed. The dimensions of her face had changed so dramatically that her front teeth seemed bigger now, almost goofy. I could only see traces of the old, beautiful Genesis in the face looking back at me. Now there was nothing left but a shell, seemingly powered by drugs and fast food.

  “Thass cool honey,” she laughed, her voice taking on a slower and deeper tonality as the heroin took hold of her. “You did what you had to do. I’m sorry I trashed your place.”

  We returned to stoned silence for a moment, before Genesis retrieved a pipe from her purse and started preparing to smoke some c rank. She heated the bulb and rolled the pipe back and forth, the thick white chemical smoke filling the glass and sending puffs out of the hole in the top of the bulb. She put it to her lips and sucked it in, rolling the pipe to keep the meth liquidized and the smoke coming. She handed me the pipe and I accepted.

  “Can I ask you a question?” she said as I headed the speed.

  “Sure.”

  “Did you screw me? You know, when I was unconscious?”

  I took my hit and looked at her in a kind of stoned disbelief. The ringing in my ears from the crank subsided a little and I replied, “Jesus, no. Why would you think that?”

  “Ah, you know. You’re a guy, an’ all. But I kinda figured you didn’t. I didn’t hurt down there when I woke up, but I just wanted to be sure. You could tell me, you know? I wouldn’t be mad after all this time.”

  I shook my head, mute, and looked at her. Her face lit up suddenly and she smiled at me.

  “Hey listen,” she said. “I’m a little short today … I normally charge 20 for it, but you want head? How much bread have you got?”

  “Shit, Genesis I don’t know about that.”

  I looked out of the grimy windshield at the dirty sky above us. It was time to go. I started to grab my stuff, trying to ignore the look of crushing disappointment on her face. “I’ve only got five bucks on me, you know?”

  Genesis opened her mouth and reached in. She grabbed her front row of teeth on the top and with a little tug dislodged them. The bridge came out, explaining the difference I had noticed earlier. She leaned towards me, her ruined face suddenly aged another twenty years by the four-tooth-gap on the top row and she whistled, “five’s OK honey. Open up your jeans.”

  “Aw fuck, Genesis, I’m sorry. I gotta go.”

  I wrenched the door open an d stumbled out of the tiny car.

  “Aw shit man,” she spat. “That’s a real pain in the ass. Now I gotta go work again today! Can you lend me the five?”

  I really couldn’t afford it but I pulled five singles out of my pocket and handed them to her. She gripped them hard in her tiny fist and said, “Thanks.” The gratitude and relief in her voice made me want to cry.

  “Look,” I said, “I’ll see you around.”

  “For sure!”

  I started walking back towards where I could catch the bus heading west. I never saw her again.

  GHOST TOWN

  Six months later spun out on crack, heroin and crystal meth once more, stinking and weak, homeless and friendless, I tried to quit again. I was too scared to return to the apartment I’d been renting on Blackburn Avenue because of a stunt I’d pulled the night before. I let a dealer named Shakespeare crash there with a girl he was screwing in exchange for a couple of rocks of crack. When my crack was all smoked, I snuck into the living room where he was passed out and took the rest of his stash. I guessed correct it was in his shoe. I took that back to my room and smoked it compulsively, growing ever more paranoid that he would wake up and discover what I had done. He had ties to a Mexican gang called La Eme and I knew that this act of stupidity would surely not go unpunished. I stuffed my clothes into a backpack and abandoned the apartment at six in the morning, cracked out and insane with fear while they slept on.

  I hadn’t paid rent in two months and figured that eviction proceedings must already be underway. I needed a place to stay and a chance to get through the worst of my cold turkey.

  The guesthouse I ended up in was located at the back of a friend’s house, in an area of Venice known locally as Ghost Town. It was a slum with a thriving crack scene. The couple that let me take over their guest room for a few weeks were quite well-off, worthy and well intentioned, although I was rapidly getting sick of their concerns about my health. Broke and scar
ed, I called them up telling them that I was trying to come off of heroin again but couldn’t do it in Hollywood. They offered me the place to stay while I got through the worst of the physical symptoms and I accepted gratefully. It had only been a few months since I’d left rehab and I’d convinced myself that my habit wasn’t too bad. How bad could it get in three months? Shit, I’d probably surprise myself by not even getting sick.

  Seventy-two hours my last shot I was the sickest I had ever been. I realized that—yet again—I did not have the strength or endurance to make it through the next twenty-four hours cold turkey. I had to get heroin somehow. I waited until the sun went down and the night people took over the streets. Body wracked with dry heaves I threw on my stinking clothes and hit the street to score.

  For a junky, the place really was a ghost town. At first I got excited when I walked around—on virtually every street corner spectral figures loitered, whistling at cars as they cruised past, running up to the idling vehicles and making sales. In dark corners, pressed against walls like statues, ebony figures appraised the foot traffic in the area. Some kids used laser pointers in what seemed to be a code to warn of approaching cops. Shabbily dressed buyers tried to hawk boom boxes, jewelry and other worthless shit in exchange for drugs. I stepped over an old white guy who had obviously just been jacked for money, drugs or both. He was lying facedown on the sidewalk, the back of his head smashed open and raw. It was a street-dealing scene almost as busy as Macarthur Park so I figured scoring dope was going to be a breeze. However, after asking the first three guys who approached and finding nothing but crack or PCP, I started to get a sinking feeling. I only had forty dollars on me. In my sick state my overriding need was for heroin, not substitute drugs.

  I finally found an old looking crack head skulking around the darker recesses of a basketball court on Rose Avenue. He watched me approach with a smirk. There weren’t too many white kids walking around this area after dark. He knew I was looking for drugs straight away.

  “Hey.”

  He sauntered over, one shoulder up, the other down. The carefully presented stroll of hip.

  “’Sup, youngblood?”

  His voice was so deep it was almost subliminal. “You looking for someone?”

  “Yeah. I’m looking for chiva. You know where I can get some?”

  “Chiva?” The old guy shook his head. “Then you in the wrong place. All rocks around here, son. I got a friend can hook you good if you want some rocks …”

  “I’m a junky.” I said. “Man, I’m sick. All I’m looking for is dope.”

  “Well…” the old guy looked thoughtful for a moment, “I guess you gonna be a looking motherfucker then, ‘cos there ain’t no chiva ‘round here. People want that shit they go downtown, an’ be messin’ with those spics.”

  I thanked him and walked back to the guesthouse. It was eleven pm and I had no car. I was screwed. I went lay down on the foldout bed, popped five Valium and tried to sleep.

  The night seemed endless. My entire body would suddenly feel as though I had been doused in ice water. I shivered and pulled the blankets up over me. After lying like that for a few moments I’d suddenly realize that I was now burning up: sweat dripped from every part of me and I’d throw the blanket aside, gasping for breath. It went on like that, from hot to cold, cold to hot and then back again, on and on for the whole night. After a while I started to cry from a mixture of exhaustion, self-pity and pain. Even the fucking tears hurt.

  Eventually the sleeping pills took hold, and I managed to fall into a drugged half-sleep for a couple of hours. At 2:30 am I jerked awake with as gasp. I was wide-awake again, soaked with junk sweat, and doubled up with stomach cramps. I made it to the bathroom and shat violently, filling up the bowl with rancid smelling goo. It seemed to go on for hours. By the time I crawled back to the bed again my teeth were chattering. I felt that the night must surely be coming to an end by now, but the clock by the bed read 2:41.

  A great chasm of despair yawned open inside of me – every mistake, every rejection, every insult, every moment of embarrassment and humiliation were re-played over and over again by a brain seemingly tuned in to a broadcast from Hell itself. Time seemed to stand still. I took to closing my eyes and refusing to allow myself to move in an attempt to fool my brain into thinking I was asleep. It didn’t work. After an hour of this my stomach lurched, and the vomiting began. I puked continuously into the trashcan by my bed. The violent, painful retching continued even when my stomach was empty. I lay with my head hanging off the bed, groaning in despair, a long trail of burning yellow stomach acid connecting my bottom lip to the trashcan.

  I called Raphael as soon as the clock hit eight. Amazingly he answered first time around. He seemed surprised to hear from me, and even more surprised when I told him where I was staying. He told me that he’d figured I’d gotten busted or OD’d when he stopped hearing from me. I told him I wanted to buy a twenty-dollar bag of smack and he reluctantly agreed to drive it out to me. He always bitched when I wanted less than half a gram delivered, but I was insistent. Anyway, he surely didn’t want one of his regular customers to get clean did he? I gave him detailed directions and he told me he’d be here at 9:30. I agreed to meet him at a spot few blocks away and I settled down to wait.

  This was the beginning of my third day without dope. Stomach cramps were increasing in their ferocity and all of my demons where coming to the surface, lurking under the bed and in the closet … again I became totally aware of my situation, of the utter hopelessness of where I was and what I was about to do. I get 20 dollars worth of smack and then what? When it runs out, I am back to where I started … less money, starting my kick all over again. I was doomed. A month in detox and rehab and here I was four months later, strung out worse than ever, out of money, sleeping in the guesthouse of some people I barely know. None of my friends from before I got a habit wanted to know me. So much time had passed since my last success with a band that I had faded totally from the collective consciousness. Everyone who worked for The Catsuits at Warner Brothers had moved on, no one remembered. Back in Britain I’d hear snippets about what the others where doing—Laura was a TV presenter now, John had a new single reviewed in the NME, Martine and Ella had formed a band and were touring the country. And here I was, stuck in this shithole area of Venice, dope sick and suicidal, ready to extend my misery for one more hour of tranquility. I was adrift; stuck on the other side of the world, cut off from my old friends, my old life.

  I was miserable. I wanted this to stop; I really wanted it to stop. I didn’t just want a break from the drugs; I wanted to go back to a time before I stuck a needle in my arm, before I knew how fucking amazing that feeling is, before I blew it for myself by getting a taste of what heaven feels like. Mortals were not meant to know this; these kicks were strictly for the Gods. How could I go back to blissful ignorance now? Despite the dire situation I was now in and how unhappy it made me, I knew that the sad truth was that being straight, getting out of bed and starting the day without a shot of dope, the life I’d had mapped out for me before it all went wrong just wasn’t a possible reality for me anymore. How could I live with the horrors and the boredom of being alive without something to make me feel that it was worthwhile, without something to keep me insulated from the world around me? I’d changed. I’d altered my brain chemistry, my reward system, my entire outlook on life, and as far as I could see the change was irreversible. I had no more control over what happened next than I had over the wind or the rain. I was at my habit’s mercy.

  It was late morning when my phone finally went off. I had lain there, squirming and cursing, puking and spitting, staring at the impertinent mute thing, willing it to buzz into life, to no avail. I had actually started to sleep when the phone did go off, but I snatched it up before the first ring had ended. Raphael’s voice was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard at that moment and I gasped, “On my way,” before hanging up.

  I got up wearing only jeans and a T-s
hirt, no shoes, no socks. I had a sense of purpose now, like a long distance runner beginning his journey. I was focused totally on the transaction, on getting to Raphael as soon as possible, and then getting back so I could obliterate my feelings for another few hours. All those hours in rehab, sitting cross legged in a circle, concentrating on breathing and trying, unsuccessfully, to achieve the kind of spiritual peace though meditation that I am suddenly bestowed with while going to score. Maybe this is the closest I will ever get to that kind of bliss. My situation is suddenly cropped and reduced down to the bare essentials—I will leave, I will score, I will get high. Beyond that the world is an irrelevancy.

  In my hurry to leave I could not find my shoes. Instead of wasting time hunting around under the bed or rummaging through piles of unwashed clothes I simply walked out the door barefoot, nervously fingering the scrunched up twenty in my pocket. As soon as I had taken a couple of steps down the block, the heat rising from the pavement started to burn the soles of my feet. Well, fuck it. I considered the delay that returning to the guest house and finding my pair of shoes would entail and decided against it. I turned left on Rose and carried on walking the seven or eight blocks to where I was due to meet Raphael. The sidewalk changed from broken paving slabs to tarmac and the tarmac was beginning to melt already under the desert sun. I could feel its softness under my feet and became aware that it was beginning to stick to my skin. Each step became more and more painful. I could feel blisters forming as I started to walk on the sides of my feet to take some of the pressure off my burning soles. The sun beat down mercilessly, but I fixed my mind on the drugs I was going to buy, and like some old Indian yogi walking on hot coals, the thought of fixing pushed the sensation of my breaking and blistering flesh to the back of my mind.