Oh yeah. Oh, she calls me wantin’ money, you know? And I say to her, Sondra, if I had the money I’d send you the money. I love my kid, you know? Fucking flesh and blood, right? My leg, shit. They give me these bandages but they’re no fucking good.
So I gets home, I’m waitin’ for the Chinaman to deliver the goods and I’m catchin’ my breath, got Snowball next to me on the couch and for two seconds I’m happy. This is my life, for two seconds, maybe three, I enjoy happiness. That’s it. That’s the limit, three seconds, max. Then the phone rings. It’s the bitch. Like she’s got special radar. She’s like the Wicked Witch, with the crystal ball, she can see me, no matter where I am. She sees me happy and she says to herself “He’s in a good place, why don’t I give him a call and fuck up his day?” And she starts with the money. And what can I say? I wish I had the money. I play the scratch-offs every chance I can, trying to do the best of my ability to get some currency together for my kid, to send to my kid. But the odds, my friend, the odds are stacked against me, always have been, always will be. So I hangs up on her bitchin’ and moanin’ and I’m so pissed off, I yank the phone outta the wall. That does it. Fuck the food. I’m doin’ the methadone now. So I gets out the bottle and right then, there’s a knock on the door. Knockedy-knock-knock.
Who is it? Bet you can’t guess. Well, you wouldn’t be able to guess ’cause you don’t know my acquaintances, I won’t say “friends” because these are not friends. These are parasital leechlike aliens. Carol, another witch from another corner of my fucked-up life. She just copped some smokin’ smack, right? So she’s lookin’ for a place to fix and catch a nod, right? So she’s making me an offer, like gonna lay a Jackson on me so she can park herself in my place, shoot up, catch a nod and drool all over my couch, right? So I go along with it. First mistake. I’m sittin’ there, trying to stay calm, watchin’ her amateurish attempts to hit a good vein, gettin’ blood all over my furniture, finally I say, “Here let me do that!” and I find a spot in the back of her arm, hit her good. Man, she’s out so fast, she practically collapses onto the floor, but I’m bootin’ her ’cause you know if I take that spike out, and she wakes up, she’s gonna be pissed. Right? Plus I’m kind of into it. Pumping that spike. Which wakes up Mr. Jones. You know Mr. Jones? He’s a monkey. Lives right here. (pats his shoulder) And so I’m gone to the races. What else could I do? I can taste the junk in the back a my mouth. (inaudible) I mean I’m watching Carol nodding out with the cigarette burning her fingers, the needle hanging outta her vein and this whole scenario is pushin’ all my buttons, you dig? I’m thinkin’ a nod would feel real good right now, after all the stress I been through this morning. And this is after making such an effort to be good, you know? Just having her around defeats its own purpose. So I say, wake up Carol, you win, forget it with the twenty bucks, just lay a bag on me.
Just then the chink food shows up. And you know the way those guys are, givin’ you that Asiatic fish eye when you ask ’em if it’s all in there, and I’m just like cool, cool, here’s the money for the food, get on your merry way, you know? I had completely lost my appetite. Guy’s standin’ in the door countin’ his money, Snowball’s barkin’ at ’im, she hates Orientals, don’t ask me why. Carol’s wiping drops of blood off those black leather pants a hers she’s so proud of. I’m thinkin’ “People are fuckin’ weird.”
Anyway, I finally gets rid of the coolie, sticks the wings and the rice balls in the fridge so the roaches won’t devour ’em, although I should point out I once found a roach frozen into an ice cube, don’t ask me how it got there. And Carol says: “I don’t got no more. We gotta go cop.”
And you know how it is, my friend, when that monkey wakes up. He don’t just wake up, he’s speedin’, he’s shootin’ pure crank. Jumping up and down on my back like he’s on a pogo stick. So I say, “Fine, let’s go take a walk. I had this C-note stashed away, there’s people I owe it to, but they can wait, if you catch my drift.”
We go cop. And, of course, we get beat. You know how it is, whenever you’re desperate, you get ripped off. It’s like life man. It’s like fuckin’ life. So there you go, a C-note down the drain. Then I remember, I didn’t drink my methadone yet. So me and Carol hike back to my place, when we get there, Snowball is completely confused, we grab the ’done and go back to the corner where my usual guy is, and we sell the shit and I buy eight bags.
And we come back to my place and she says “You owe me two bags.” And I says “Why, bitch?” And she says “’Cause I took you to my secret cop spot.” And I said “I got b eat at your secret cop spot, you fuckin beat-artist.” And she starts yelling at me and shit, but man, fuck me if I’m going to lay two bags on her ass for gettin’ my ass ripped off. Which she probably had something to do with. Plus, she never paid me for hanging out in my pad.
Suddenly she gets real sweet on me and says okay, just gimme one. So I do. And then I bang the shit and it’s not as good as what she had before, but it’s gonna do the trick on account of my dealer knows I’m trying to get straight so he wants me to have a good taste. “Your ex wants you back,” that kind a thing, you know? So I shut my eyes for two seconds, next thing I know, the front door’s open, Snowball’s out on the landing barking her doggie brains out and Carol’s gone. So I’m pretty high but I’m also pissed, so I jump up like I’m the Lone Ranger and run to the door to get the dog back inside ’fore she gets kidnapped or some shit like that, but I’m running so fast (plus I’m more fucked up than I realized) that when I blast out my front door a my apartment, I keep going like the Wile E. Coyote, hit pure air and somersaults right down the stairs all the way down by where the mailboxes are.
And Snowball’s standing at the top of the stairs kind a staring at me with incomprehension, she’s not barkin’ anymore she’s just giving me this look like “How’d you do that?” Right? Or maybe “WHY did you do that?” Because I try to move but I can’t so I figure something must be broken. Hopefully not my back. Hopefully I’m not going to be paralyzed in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. The horror of that particular outcome enters my brain, but I’m actually too stoned to care.
And the whatchamacallit, “gentrified” assholes who live in my building are going to and fro and stepping OVER me and shit, like checking their mail and stepping OVER me. Even walking their fucking Labrador retrievers over me. The dogs are even sniffin’ me and shit. I’m lucky I didn’t get pissed on. (inaudible) No one’s helping me up. And I’m yelling. Somebody must a called EMS, ’cause about forty-five minutes later these two spades show up and toss me into the back of this stinking van somebody must a died in there. Lots a people probably died in there come to think of it.
So they like take me to Emergency. Kind a drop me off on account of I could walk on one leg. I guess they don’t actually bring you in on a stretcher unless you’ve got uncontrollable bleeding from an eye socket or some shit like that, then they give you the helping hand of mercy. Me, they just dumped.
So I’m in the ER and they’re cutting my pants off, good fucking pants from this Hasid over on Orchard Street, but man they just cut ’em off. And I’m still pretty high so I’m trying to tell ’em to gimme my wallet but no one’s listening to me they’re just like dressing me up in these blue hospital pants I got on now and they’re saying shit like, “Why did you break your leg? Why did you break your leg? Don’t you know you could’ve gotten a life-threatening infection?” Like I do it all the time. Like it’s my fuckin’ hobby to throw myself down stairs.
And this doctor comes in. Probably right out a med school has this gig as some kind of rite of passage/gauntlet thing, you know, work with the Untouchables down in Slimeballville for six months until he can get his Park Avenue shit together. Clean, you know the type, young, serious. Very black hair. Plays a mean game a handball. Smells like a good cigar. And he checks out my chart and says “Why did you break your leg?” Like this is the fourth person to ask me this stupid question. So I get a little animated you know. And then he says “Calm do
wn, I know how you feel.”
I says “Hey, slick. You don’t know how I feel. I’m a dual-addicted handicapped person living on welfare. I got hepatitis and sugar in my blood. So you don’t know how I fucking feel.” And he says “There’s no reason to get excited.” And I say “Yes there fucking is.” And he says “Please calm down, it’s not that bad.” And I lose it. I start yelling and I try to get off the gurney, and somebody pushes me back down and I push them away and I threw this roll of bandages and uh…anyway, long story short, they got these bouncers at St. Vincents now.
And they threw me out on the street, would not let me back in. And I’m standing there out in the snow, blue pants, this walking cast thing on my foot. I don’t have my wallet, I don’t have nothing, I’m just standin’ there and this little old lady, she sees me standin’there. Next thing I know she’s laying a fiver on me.
So that’s the situation. I’m five short. If you could see giving me a five in exchange for this interview, that would set me straight I could get my head clear and go feed Snowball.
(I will use some of this material in my book. I’m planning on a collage of “voices” gleaned from the streets. I will create a montage so that the characters will interface in a way that builds a tension up between them. I don’t want to be obvious. I want the fact that the “real” has been converted to “prose” to be the “frame.”)
After I paid the guy, we walked over to the place where he buys his drugs. We climbed a dilapidated staircase up to a urine-stinking tenement hallway on the Lower East Side. He shoved some folded-up bills into a hole in an apartment door and someone inside pushed little packets of heroin back out. He persuaded me to buy two more bags, one which I brought home to try. I’ve smoked opium, so it can’t be that different.
When I got home, I locked myself in the bathroom and took about half of what was in the little envelope, which wasn’t much, and snorted it. Nothing happened. I made myself some tea. While I was making the tea I realized I was getting into a very pleasant mood. I also figured that the heroin must have been very diluted, so I sniffed the rest. I finished brewing my tea, went into the living room, put some music on and gazed out the window. From where we live you can see a long distance. We face north so the planes taking off from La Guardia cross the line of vision. I sat and drank the tea until I felt sleepy and then I lay down on my bed.
I fell out, dreaming, but remembering it all. Glowing sunsets of orange and gold and purple filled me with a tremendous sense of wellbeing. I understood that everything is right in my life, that there isn’t anything to worry about. Then I fell into a deeper sleep and didn’t wake up until I heard Haim and Dagmara coming in the door. I got up to pee. But when I was in the bathroom, I was so high, I couldn’t focus enough to let loose. Just stood there with my dick out. After like five minutes I finally mustered enough concentration to pee.
Haim had brought home a typical kosher dinner: egg rolls, roast pork, shrimp lo mein, the usual. Watching him ram the food down his maw made me nauseous. I spaced out in front of the TV while Dag and Haim finished eating, then ended up falling asleep again.
I woke up to find Dagmara gently shaking me. She asked me if I was sick. I said no, I felt fine. Which was the truth. I went to bed and had a great night’s sleep. And today, I got up, had two espressos and started writing all this. I feel good and productive. Like I’ve been on a wonderful vacation. Heroin is really a kind of medicine. Maybe not something the average person should fool around with, but if you’re a creative person like me, maybe it works differently on the metabolism. No wonder the powers that be want to keep this stuff away from the people, especially if it unleashes the soul. I’m not saying this is something I’m going to do again soon, but I wouldn’t say no to it either. You only live once.
March 10, 2006
Long week of nothing. I take lengthy walks through the gray bare woodland, return home exhausted, lie down for a nap only to wake in the grip of almost total amnesia. Groggy, seconds float by before I can piece together who I am. I know that I’m in Connecticut, that I’ve just turned fifty-seven years of age, that I write. But nothing kindles within me, no sense of purpose, of why I should bother going on.
This must be happening because of my fucked-up heart. (And a Chinese doctor would say that my fucked-up heart is a result of my spiritual state.) But there’s no way around it. I am caught in the web of my physical self. Inescapable. My body is a prison. Skinsack of water, minerals and protein. I feel good. I feel bad. All contingent on what? Some chemicals washing over my brain? It all makes sense, until I discover I have cancer. Or a bad heart. I am only a man. Death is guaranteed.
I tell myself I can change, but I can’t change what I am. Go on a diet, jog, eat more green leafy vegetables. That’s nothing more than self-deception. Even the urge to do all that, where does the urge come from, let alone the ability? Where does the orignal thought come from? Isn’t it all hardwired from the beginning? I’m the kind of person who gnaws this particular bone. Of what? Dissatisfaction. I can’t change that. I was born that way. There are biological terms for this and there are philosophical terms for this, but the best word is “Fate.” One can’t change one’s attitude, or height. Or mental capacity. Or skin color. Or age. Fate.
“Live by the sword, die by the sword.” As long as you have a body, you’re stuck with it. There are only two solutions to physical existence. Art and money.
So alone. Me and my heart. And the flitting birds outside my window.
February 16, 1977
Ran into Zim at the bookstore on Spring Street. Told him about the heroin cop spot. He was curious so we took a walk over to the Lower East Side and ended up buying four bags of dope from a guy on the street. Then we went over to Zim’s apartment in Chinatown and did the shit. Spent the afternoon nodding off and talking and throwing up. Zim went into a long exposition about Kenneth Patchen and Hubert Selby Jr. and Charles Bukowski. There’s nothing finer in life than smoking cigarettes, sniffing smack and discussing literature.
Zim lent me his copy of Last Exit to Brooklyn. Shit’s amazing.
April 2, 2006
Book signing in Cambridge, Mass. I felt healthy enough to do this one. A “mini-tour.” Fans and old friends showed up. I didn’t recognize the high school chums until they introduced themselves.
After the reading, one earnest fellow in a hooded sweatshirt had a question about the original short story collection (“We studied them in college.”). A middle-aged woman wanted to know when I’m coming out with another collection. I told her that I published a new collection of short stories only five years ago. She replied without missing a beat, “I missed that one.” One person asked me about the “Jan” character (John) from the first collection and the first novel. No one seemed to have any interest in my more recent work, especially A Gentle Death even though I had only finished reading from the book minutes before. It was as if I were there as a representative of my former self.
Who are fans? Why do they bother coming?
February 27, 1977
Jack is in the hospital. He got hit by a motorcycle while crossing Broome Street. He’ll live but every bone in his body is cracked. He can’t eat solid food because his jaw is broken. I snuck him cigarettes. He’s got plenty of pain pills. I guess we’re not barhopping anytime soon.
Been spending more time at Big John’s. John knows everything. You can bring up any subject at all and the guy can give a lecture about it. Like I didn’t know that Haydn was Beethoven’s teacher or that the Mosuo women of China don’t live with the fathers of their children. I didn’t know that Sirhan Sirhan wasn’t the guy who killed Robert Kennedy. I didn’t know that zebras can’t be domesticated. And I didn’t know that the Masons are the largest secret society in the world. I had never even heard of them.
Last night he was talking about this Jewish guy named Levi who claimed to be the Messiah and started a whole new religion during the Middle Ages. This topic got John started on Genghis Khan, who had so m
any children that today something like a tenth of the world’s population carries his DNA. Which got him on the subject of the Mongols and how they would kill every living thing in their path as they rode across the steppes and how this guy Tamerlane killed so many people he made mountainous piles out of skulls and how the ancient Incas would cut the still beating hearts out of their sacrificial victims. Said that the Incas were communists! On the topic of communists John launched into a story about Clifford Odets and the Federal Theater Project and how they were shut down by the House Un-American Activities Committee when they produced a play about beavers building a dam (interpreted as left-wing propaganda). Which led to the hunting down and blacklisting of all sorts of people in the arts, including the guy who wrote the movie Midnight Cowboy and Serpico (which starred Al Pacino). Then John backtracked to the beavers and informed us that beavers often drown when they get stuck underwater. But he said they deserve it because beavers contaminate streams with their bacteria-filled shit and that bacteria poisons cattle when they drink the bacteria but that that’s not as bad as these tiny Amazonian barbed fish that are so tiny they can swim up your piss like a trout swims up waterfalls. Once these tiny fish are up inside your dick they get stuck there because of their spines and there’s no way to get them out.
When I asked John if he knew anyone who had had any of these fish stuck in his dick, he turned very solemn and said, “I’m not going to discuss South America.” And then, without missing a beat, said the flu and smallpox killed most of the Indians living in America long before Columbus arrived, which was news to me, and that the wheel didn’t exist in the New World, and how the horseshoe led to the Roman Empire, and I think I fell asleep during that part. When I woke John was describing how the ancient Romans would parade enormous eighty-foot-long penis statues down the avenue before cheering crowds.
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