by Storm Large
Loser.
Any addict worth their chips would call me a chipper, poseur, or a tourist. Looking back I call it junkie lite.
I don’t know if Billy ever said he loved me, or if he was even remotely kind. We had sex sometimes, but I would really just be waiting for him to care about me, or act like he did. Of course when we had plenty of dope, we had good times. He was ecstatic when I gave him some China White. He kissed me and called me his sweet girl.
One time, we were at the pay phone on the dying lady dealer’s corner. We were about to call her, head down into her basement studio, and get our handful of balloons, when a badly disguised undercover cop got in my face, hissing obscenities and trying to come across as a crazy homeless guy. Had I not been so startled, I would’ve laughed at him.
Billy fixed his bugged icy eyes on the man and stared him down, silently. I stood at the phone booth waiting for this idiot to scram so we could call the dealer. Billy stepped intently between me and the cop, still staring, creepy and hard. My heart did a tiny bump in my chest . . . was he protecting me? Finally the undercover stalked away muttering his pretend nonsensicals but we had to drop it and leave since we had clearly been made.
Later, Billy pushed a man who innocently walked into me and shouted, “Don’t touch my girlfriend, motherfucker!” The man staggered backwards with his palms towards us in the universal “Hey, hey, I’m cool, I’m cool” pose, stammering surprised apologies. Billy finally unlocked his eyes from the poor guy and we continued on our way to his place. When it’s feeding time, junkies get pretty cranky, and Billy could be downright scary mean at times, but he called me his girlfriend.
We had two main dealers. One was a dying woman in a filthy basement apartment on Market Street; the other was a married couple who would deliver. I really liked the married couple; the guy looked like Carlos Santana and the woman looked like a sunken-eyed seventies actress whom you’ve seen in everything, but whose name you can’t recall. They fancied themselves musicians, so they would always bring some home-recorded demo on a hissing cassette tape. The music was terrible, but if we sat through the agonizing twang and inane drivel of junkie lyrics, and made a sufficiently big deal over them, they would, sometimes, bump us a bonus, usually in pill form: “Honey, take this twenty minutes before you boot up and you’ll feel like you went through a wall.”
“Wow, actually that sounds terrible.”
“You won’t know what hit you. You’ll fucking love it.”
And I always did.
When I was high I felt like a rock star. Like I had already accomplished my dreams and everyone adored me. I felt famous, but, most important, I felt loved. That was the drug’s greatest trick.
One night Billy recorded me on his four track while we were wasted. It was a Billie Holiday song, “Lady Sings the Blues.” She was a real junkie and she was amazing. I sang a breathy lilt into the microphone, high as a kite, thinking I, too, must sound amazing. Later Billy took nude pictures of me wrapped in a black lace scarf. I felt beautiful and doomed.
Later when I heard the recording, sober, I could hardly believe what I was thinking. Flat, mush-mouthed, and out of tune, I sounded terrible, like a warped kid’s record. And the nude photos? Woof. They looked like pictures of a moon-colored narwhal, hauled out of a sea of sweaty cheese using grandma’s funeral veil.
Whoa.
I have no shame in admitting I am incredibly vain. My vanity has saved my ass, many times over, especially with regard to drugs and alcohol. Remember heroin chic? Those numb, bony girls, languishing across fashion spreads with their priceless milky flesh sucked in, drum tight, across long, chiseled bones? Doing heroin was going to make me look like them, right? I was going to look like an expensive, bisexual vampire cat from outer space! Yeah!
Yeah . . . no. I was ugly. My visage was more heroin shit than chic. I mean, you’d think vomiting and lying around all day would make you more attractive, but you’d be wrong.
My flesh was Elmer’s Glue-colored pizza dough peeking over sweatpants. My skin was puffy and spotted and my hair was a matted red mess. It’s safe to say that, had I been even remotely as hot as one of those smacked-out models, I’d have stayed on drugs and died in gorgeous, skinny squalor.
I figured it was definitely time to stop when I started seeing demons and thinking about killing myself. My spirit was looking down at me, literally and energetically. Pissed, mortified, wondering when I was going to get out of this half-life.
Then there were the demons. Pointy shadowy things, I could only see them out of the corners of my eyes. They would point at me, rocking and shaking in my periphery. I couldn’t hear them, at first, but I knew they were laughing at me.
Towards the end of my half-life, I smuggled some China White heroin back to San Francisco with me from a trip to NYC. I put the packets in a condom and tucked them inside me for the plane ride. Billy always got the first taste because he always made the score. But this was mine, so I did a bunch of it by myself, alone in my apartment. He’d get some later.
I sniffed up a healthy line out of the first bindle, and hit play on my stereo. When I was high I loved to get lost in music, become the star, the object of desire, and all my ugly would melt. This particular day, I was David Bowie, living as Ziggy Stardust: beautiful, bones, glamorous, misunderstood, and . . . and . . . lost . . .
I began darting, in and out, through a thick cloud of prickling panic when I found myself slumped in front of the stereo. I had been jet-black gone for half the album. I focused my eyes through my loose, gooey muscles; the CD counter was at track five.
“It ain’t easy, it ain’t easy, it ain’t easy to get to heaven when you’re going down. . . .” I did too much. I can’t . . . stay . . . hot coffee vomit spurted out and splashed onto a newspaper on the floor. My mouth was stinging.
I came to a few times. The music was loud. I would peek at the little track counter on my CD player.
If I make it to track 11, I’ll be okay.
“Time takes a cigarette . . .”
Open your eyes. Stay.
“. . . and puts it in your mouth . . .”
Awake. Get a smoke. Open your eyes, Storm.
“. . . it lingers . . .”
Open your eyes.
“. . . then you forget. You’re a rock ’n’ roll suicide.”
Track 11, “Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide,” a funny song to live to.
One of the smartest things I did at that time was speedballs. Doing speed mixed with heroin you could stay up and feel the high. The best part was not being able to sleep at all, having panic attacks and hallucinating. It was smart because it was such a hideous way to exist that I finally decided it was time to leave Billy and get clean.
Billy and I had started this little game whereby we would buy some dope together, get high, and then he’d start some ugly fight where I would usually end up leaving in tears, leaving him with the rest of the drugs to himself. Great game. He’d always win, though. He was a genius, after all.
There’s nothing quite like a rape to put things into perspective.
The rape was technically my fault, thus making it more heinous.
One night, Billy was in a rage. We hadn’t slept in days and he was obsessing over a complicated guitar track he was laying down. I was wasted, smoking and listening to the cacophony of his screaming guitar, trying to look supportive. In between takes he would cuss, kick something, rewind the tape, and then go again. Some of his ranting started to creep my way: “You stupid fucking waste of skin. Get the fuck out of my life.” He was trying to get me to leave. I pretended not to hear him.
I wanted to tell him he was brilliant. Amazing. What a totally unrealized genius he was, but I was fading. It wouldn’t have worked, anyway, my flattery, he would have seen right through it. Much better to go completely blank in general so that his verbal and musical assault would just fade into dream or nightmare background music. Billy might then get bored or tired, and leave
me alone.
I spaced out staring at his half-open bedroom door, waiting to disappear, when she walked in.
There were weeping red black chunks torn out of her huge, lumpy gut. Her flesh was a flat gray, like a dry shark, but wobbled with every step and hitch of her gurgling laugh. This corpse of a dead, bloated whore staggered towards me, her arm swung in a loose, accusing point at me. She had red, matted hair like mine and dull bulging eyes, filmed over like those of an old fish. Her livery smear of mouth opened off center . . . opened and closed but the sound that I heard from her was the sound of Billy’s repetitive guitar riff, screaming, accusing.
My lungs swelled with ice water, and my skin prickled to a bristling itch as I was hauled upwards by my own shouting, “What the fuck do you want? WHO ARE YOU?”
The whore demon was gone; All that was left was Billy screaming at me how I ruined his take, his life, you cunt. My heart popped woodily against my sternum. I panted and coughed and was suddenly aware of being very cold and damp. Billy’s screaming faded in my world even though it went on. I lay back down and tried to get comfortable.
Perched on a lamp over my head was a shadow demon. I looked right at it. It looked right at me. It was sooty and pointy and dust-bunny dry, and in the sweetest voice inside my head cooed, “You know, if you were dead, you would not feel this way.”
“Fuck you,” I said.
“No. Fuck. You,” It giggled.
I shot up and swung my tingling feet to the floor. Billy smoked at me, his huge, bug-lamp blue eyes hateful. He was holding his guitar still but the room was still loud, the guitar amp crackled and buzzed, threatening serious feedback that would rip the air to pieces.
“I . . . uh . . . I gotta . . .” I couldn’t say go. I didn’t want finality. As lame and mean as everything really was in that place, I wanted someone, anyone, to be there. Even if they hated me. And if I made some permanent-sounding declaration, and he listened, took it to heart, and never wanted to see me again, it would be my fault. My heart hung from itchy threads begging pathetically for Billy to say, “Don’t,” or “I’m sorry,” or anything. He just stared at me like I was a permanent disappointment. I pulled on some clothes, slowly, in case he might want to stop me from going off into the dark and cold. When he didn’t, I skulked out.
On the street, in that biting, spitting cold that is a specialty of San Francisco Februaries, I would find a place to crash. I had done it before. It was around one in the morning and folks would be closing up the bars on Haight Street soon, people would be headed home and one of them would let me tag along.
I ran into an acquaintance on the street. She was cute, older than me in years and miles, but she had an easy laugh and pot at her house and of course I could crash with her.
Thank god.
At her apartment, she couldn’t find the pot but she had some crappy wine I started to guzzle. Maybe she had painkillers? No. I was going to go from clammy to a trembling pile of fucked in a few hours, so I just drank. When the sun came up, I would get back to Billy’s, back into his stinking graces; maybe there’d be some chiva left.
The little apartment was very warm. She went into the kitchen to get some more wine and came back wearing a filmy slip.
“You know, I really like my body,” she said, jutting out one pale hip, handing me the bottle.
Uh oh. “You’re totally pretty, yeah,” I said. My teeth were starting to hurt. She pat her hands down her sides.
“Yeah, even if I gain weight, I still have this,” stroking her hands around her small waist and outwards from the ample curve of her ass, “see?”
Her words stretched out. She had a strange, dry lisp that was creeping into her mouth, as if she were talking through a stiff, permanent, wide-open grin. She was on something. Coke? “Here,” she purred, taking my hands to stroke down her sides, “I’ve always wanted to kiss you.”
Just a safe place to crash.
I let her kiss me and I tried to reciprocate.
“I want to taste you,” she said. Ugh. I must have been so filthy and smelly. When was the last time I even bathed? And was it before or after Billy and I fucked last? And when the fuck was the last time we fucked?
Even in this unwelcome sexual encounter I concerned myself with whether or not I was going to be yummy? I would have felt sexier had I been flung over a bar toilet in the middle of a plosive intestinal event, reacting to some shit Chinese food. How the fuck did I get here?
Whatever drug she was on made everything I did (precious little, if I’m remembering correctly) just fine with her. She scratched and bit and made a big scene about how she was gonna fuckin’ come, yeah!!!!
Ugh.
Naked and stinging, I crawled into her bed and faced the wall with my back to her. She slid under the blankets and fiddled around with me from behind while I stayed dead still.
I’m asleep. Get bored and leave me alone.
My skin crawled all over, but I wasn’t shaking yet and there was a purple hint of morning in the apartment. In no time she will be unconscious and I will get the fuck out of there . . .
Keys in the door?
I’m staring into the wall, my ears growing hot from aching towards the sound of someone coming into the apartment. Tossing keys onto a table. Jacket coming off, the flumping sound as it gets tossed onto the floor. She is in bed with me but isn’t moving. Footsteps into the bedroom then, “Hmmm.” It’s a man’s voice making a what-do-we-have-here? hum, a happy surprise. Then, a shirt being pulled off, the slip and leather squeaks of a belt being pulled open, big boots thumping off of big feet, then a zip of a fly and jeans. I could smell the salt and deodorant and cigarette funk of skin in close proximity as he crawled over us pulling the blanket down to reveal a she, whom I am guessing was his girlfriend, and a naked stretch of unsuspecting me, a new girl.
This must be his apartment because I am now paying rent to his cock. This is what I had to do. I was sitting somewhere in my skull, arms crossed, with a mix of pity and pissed-offness at my sad-sack existence. Twenty-two years old and I’m blowing another random dude, not for a semblance of affection, not for drugs, not even because he was cute. I never even saw his face. I drew my aching mouth around this stranger so I could stay somewhere warm.
The girl is suddenly awake and screaming: “What the? Don’t assume you can . . . you can,” she was screeching at him, slapping at his naked torso. He let go of my hair. I flopped back onto the bed and froze.
“Get out!” She slapped him out of the bed.
“Agh! You crazy bitch! A’right, a’right! Fuck! Ow!” He was trying to get his clothes off the floor as she smacked him on top of the head. She threw herself out of the bed to continue verbally assailing the guy into the living room. I braced myself for what might happen after the guy left. She was now awake and in a complete state of meltdown.
I’m asleep.
The door slammed open then shut, the shouting stopped, but her dramatic sobbing rasped in the next room.
I’m asleep.
She screamed something and glass smashed. A bottle? She padded her way back into the bedroom, moaning and crying.
I’m asleep. I’m asleep. I’m asleep.
She sobbed and keened in bed next to me, tried to hold me, but I was a dead heap. I am asleep. After awhile she finally wound down and blacked out. I was crawling and starting to shake a bit, hard to say if I was sick, or just in shock at the utter catastrophe my life had become.
When the sun came up, I got dressed quickly and quietly. Scraped a pile of quarters off her dresser and took the bus down Haight to my apartment.
I had my own room in a flat, catty-corner to Billy’s. I never had my keys with me because I was always at Billy’s place, but I lived with a nice couple. She was a gorgeous mom-to-be, who worked for an organic juice company, and he was a handyman who sold speed on the side. I knew they’d be home and awake by now, so they could buzz me in.
As I stood on my stoop, waiting f
or the buzzer to open the gate, I looked up the hill to Billy’s door. He was probably high and asleep. No idea where I was and not the slightest inkling of a shit did he give about it. Neither had I, obviously.
Later, alone in my drafty bedroom, the sick came over me, and I remember thinking, Whoa, this is bad. Not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be, though. Like that desperate, quaking skin wave before a bad case of food poisoning, just a little while longer here and it will all be behind me.
My stomach felt suspended in a sick, cold gel and the thunkathunk of my heartbeat sent waves of sick through it and down to my sweating bowels. Just a little while longer though. Home stretch. Atta girl, almost there.
Then it got worse.
Each itchy hair scraped out of every oily follicle, stiff and splintered across every aching stretch and fold of skin. My face was stuck in a dry heave “ugh” around my dried, fat tongue that sat in my mouth like a pantyhose toe stuffed with bark dust. I shook on the bathroom floor, clammy, spooning the toilet. Out of the corner of my tearing eye, I saw the demon staring from lip of the tub. Long, dark fingers folded around its knobby knees, beetle-black eyes flat, emotionless, superior.
Gotcha.
At some point, I no longer had to choose between cleaning up my own balsamic diarrhea, or foamy puke. Both my ends were endlessly leaking and spurting, but were now shooting blanks. I somehow smeared my damp body down the hallway into my bedroom. It all gets foggy from there, save for the pain and the humiliation.
Trying to get into my bed was a nightmare. Anything that touched me sent a crazy acid-splash sensation that shocked my nerves. Satin, worn raw silk, even a baby’s breath would have felt like electrified razor wire. My skin felt like it had been burnt crisp and I was smeared with rancid peanut butter and piss. I stank, and everything hurt.