Junkie Love (11 page)

Knowing him like this, I was dubious, to put it mildly, when Cissy came up with the idea of asking him to score for us while we were laid up in bed. I didn’t trust or particularly like Sammy, and while it was true that, in terms of his knowledge of the network of heroin dealers around King’s Cross and Camden, he was probably the most qualified of our acquaintances, I was also aware of the dangers of placing all our capital in the hands of such a shifty character. Cissy was convinced he was the man for the job, though, and used all her powers of persuasion to get me to agree.

“Really, babe, he’s okay, believe me, an’ he knows the scene better than anyone else — he’s been around for years, an’ he won’t buy shit or anything that’s cut too bad. An’ you know how he worships me — he wouldn’t dream of rippin’ us off.”

“I don’t know … I just don’t like the idea of giving all our money to somebody who basically makes a living from thievin’, even if he is a friend of yours. It’s too dangerous — if anything goes wrong, we’re gonna be up Shit Creek without a paddle … no money, no gear, and both of us laid up like cripples in bed.”

“What’s the alternative? Can you think of anyone else who knows so many dealers, and who the dealers would trust to sell to? I can’t, I’m sure. Come on, the guy’s in love with me, he’ll do anything I ask, I’ve got him like this around my little finger — an’ he wouldn’t dare rip us off, in case I don’t let him visit us anymore.”

Cissy appeared intent on making the situation into some kind of demonstration of her feminine power and hold over a helpless male admirer; but, at the same time, it was true that Sammy did know the heroin scene better than anyone else I
could think of. Within a few days we would be out of smack again, and I needed to score soon; as it was impossible for me to hunt through the streets and estates on broken feet, it was essential to find someone who would do the running around for me. I didn’t like the idea, but Sammy did seem to be the only person with the qualifications necessary for the job, so I decided to trust Cissy’s instincts and go along with her plan. But it was with severe misgivings that I watched him walk out of the door a few days later with over nine hundred pounds of my float in his pocket.

As the hours passed, the sinking feeling in my stomach became ever more pronounced, and though at first Cissy was dismissive, telling me to stop worrying and relax, as night drew in and Sammy had still not returned, she too began to worry and became silent and withdrawn. Finally, at around 11:30, the doorbell rang and someone downstairs let Sammy in. But I knew before he entered the room that the deal had gone wrong — his footsteps were slow and reluctant as he climbed the stairs, not at all the tread of someone who has just successfully scored a large amount of heroin and is now looking forward to sampling the goods.

“I got taken off, man, r-r-r-really, I’m s-s-sorry, but it was a rip-off — the guy disappeared with your money and n-n-never came back,” Sammy whispered and stammered from where he stood in the doorway.

“Who did? You mean to say you …? Why’d the fuck you give it to someone to go off with anyway?!” Cissy screamed before I had a chance to say anything. “I thought you were going to Frank’s to score, or if not then to Angie’s place. Why’d you give the money to somebody else, for Christ’s sake?!”

“F-F-Frank was away, and Angie only had a little bit, so I went up to D-D-D-Dodgy Dave’s — I’ve scored off him before, and he’s always been straight with me. But he didn’t have anything either, there’s a real drought at the moment, l-l-lots of
b-busts and people are laying low. But there was this one guy at Dave’s, claimed to know where to s-score, but he had to go alone — I mean I wasn’t happy either, but Dave told me he was okay, and I was gettin’ desperate. I’m f-f-f-fuckin’ sick as well, you know, and it was either that, or nothin’. Look, I’m s-sorry, but maybe he’ll show up tomorrow — I mean Dave’s pissed off as well, he’s a mate of his, and sooner or later he’ll track him down, he’s b-b-bound to …”

“What, you gave all our money to some total fucking stranger, and just let him walk off with it? Are you crazy?!” I just couldn’t believe that Sammy had been so stupid. In fact, I didn’t believe him at all. His story was just about plausible, but he was an old hand at this game and shouldn’t have been taken in so easily, even allowing for his desperation and growing dope-sickness. “I think you’re full of shit — you’ve stashed the money somewhere, and you’re just covering your own tracks by coming back here with this bullshit story. You’ll leave here, and the first thing you’ll do is go back home and get high while me an’ Cissy’ll be stuck here without money, or gear.”

“N-n-n-no way, I wouldn’t do that, you two are my friends, and I w-w-wouldn’t do something so shitty to people I c-c-care about! Look, you can check my story with D-Dodgy Dave if you don’t believe me, he’ll back me up in everything I s-s-say.” Sammy was almost in tears at this point — sweat was breaking out on his forehead, and he was shaking and trembling all over. He was obviously starting to withdraw, but I refused to believe that anyone with as much experience of the scene as he had could have been fooled so easily. If there is one cardinal rule to follow when copping, it’s never give your money to strangers, even if you are sick and desperate and they promise you the earth. Or, if you do, go with them and don’t let them out of your sight for a minute, even to go to the toilet — otherwise, they’ll be out of the window and around the corner before you know it, and you’ll be left high and dry, feeling like the idiot
you truly are for trusting them in the first place.

Cissy had fallen silent during my tirade; but suddenly she spoke up from the shadows in the corner of the room, where she was sitting with her knees drawn up to her chin, watching us intently.

“Aw, leave him alone, he’s tellin’ the truth, can’t you see? It’s too late, the money’s gone, an’ shoutin’ at Sammy ain’t gonna bring it back, is it? Yeah, he was stupid, but look, he’s sick as a dog. C’mon Sammy, I’ve got a bit of gear stashed for emergencies, enough to keep us all straight until the morning, anyway.”

I stared at her in amazement. Usually, she was acquisitive and possessive as far as smack was concerned, and I couldn’t believe she was offering our last little bit to someone I still suspected of rippng us off. I felt more like strangling the cunt than getting high with him, but it was true what Cissy said — one way or another the money was gone, and all the yelling and shouting in the world wasn’t going to bring it back. Anyway, I was starting to believe Sammy’s story — if he had stolen the money himself, he could easily have disappeared with no fear of my coming after him, laid up as I was, and there was nothing to be gained for him by returning to us and telling a pack of lies. I began to see him as the pathetic, lost soul he truly was, realising that Cissy and I were probably the best friends he had — or at least that was how he saw us. As I injected myself with the last of the gear, I cursed Sammy’s stupidity and my own bad luck; but most of all I cursed my idiocy for trusting Cissy’s judgement, for allowing myself to get back into the situation of no money, no smack and not just one enormous habit to feed each day, but two.

• • •

I always used to keep a few hundred milligrammes of methadone
hidden under the floorboards of our room, in case of busts or general heroin shortages, and I figured this would be enough to keep us straight, at least for a week or so. Once this ran out, though, I had no idea where I was going to get enough capital together to start dealing again. It had taken me over a year working at the factory to save just the small amount of money I had begun with, and I had no rich parents or fairy godmothers to fall back upon. So when Cissy suggested using the money that Julia had lent her months before, supposedly to start a club with, I wasn’t exactly reluctant to go along with the idea. I had forgotten all about this loan, and though it meant that Cissy would now be in control of the money supply, I didn’t foresee any particular problems with this: I had shared everything with her, treating her as an equal partner, and I expected that she would now do the same with me. For her part, Cissy was worried in case Julia suddenly asked her to return the money, or got wind that she had spent it all on drugs. But as they had not seen each other for a couple of months now, and as Julia was a rich bitch and not exactly hard up for cash, I managed to calm her fears, persuading her that she could always pay the money back in installments in the unlikely event that the loan was suddenly called in.

After about ten days, the constant throbbing in my heels had subsided a little, and I had taught myself how to get around quite effectively by swinging between the two crutches, landing on the toes of both feet together so that my heels never had to touch the ground. I could project myself forward quite rapidly like this, and soon I was hurtling around the streets and council estates as quickly as if the accident had never happened. Life returned to its normal pattern of scoring, dealing and getting high and, as my business grew, I was able to increase the amount I was buying each time from a half to three quarters of an ounce — not exactly big-time dealing, but enough to ensure that we could survive quite comfortably, both in terms
of the drugs we needed and for everyday necessities such as food and travel. We didn’t lead much of a social life anyway. Everything revolved around the squat, our friends were the people who bought from us and it was always they who visited, rarely vice-versa. My happiest times were when I was returning from scoring, a small plastic bag of junk stuffed inside my pants, and the anticipation of sampling this new batch uppermost in my mind as I climbed the shadowy stairways of our house. I rarely thought about the future, not in terms of plans and ambitions anyhow. As long as I had enough smack to last a week or ten days ahead, that was enough for me, while the thought of a nice little stash hidden away beneath the floorboards filled me with a warm, rosy glow — I felt safe, secure and at ease with life.

Such apathy towards the future is common enough amongst junkies — it is, after all, one of the most dead-end forms of existence you could hope to choose — and on the rare occasions that I did think about it, I realised that, for me, it was so out of reach, so beyond my ability to control or influence, that it really didn’t seem worth the effort. Easier, by far, just to take another shot and wallow in the slough of negativity and self-obliteration that is the natural element of the long-term user. In fact, I took such a perverse pleasure in not having a future that I elevated it to the position of a philosophy, some kind of code to live by, which fully satisfied all my deepest and most intense antisocial tendencies. For the act of shooting smack is like a one-fingered salute to society, a rejection of all the values we are taught to revere, respect and admire: patience; hard work; self-denial; the postponement of pleasure as a reward for labour; in other words, the whole Puritan ethic. And I felt more in tune with criminals and sociopaths than I ever did with the worker who finds his niche in the system and, by all his effort and striving, only helps to perpetuate the machine that is strangling us all. Never mind that I was destroying myself in the
process. This, too, afforded me a grim pleasure; and whenever I temporarily stopped using, and felt my natural energies returning, I would feel compelled to dissipate and obliterate them by a quick return to junkiedom, so thoroughly uncomfortable did this sensation make me feel. I distrusted all manifestations of so-called natural love and affection, and the relationships I chose were always based more on strategies of mental and emotional abuse than upon what is usually understood by the word “love”. Unless the person I was with was causing me intense pain, I simply wasn’t happy, and I actively sought out relationships that were hopeless, doomed, fucked-up and twisted.

My most treasured moments were those I spent alone, though, or in the company of a few like-minded friends, gouched-out and oblivious with the smack coursing through my veins. I didn’t care that Cissy and I were growing further apart, or that my original reason for starting to deal — namely, to get her away from junk — had disappeared along the way. I was too fucked-up myself, now, to give much thought to anything apart from dealing and scoring, and I was shooting either speed or smack from the moment I woke in the early afternoon until I eventually crashed out, usually around dawn.

• • •

“Push harder, for fuck’s sake, can’t you?!”

I was sick and perched on the edge of my chair, and as my guts went into spasm I fought to keep down the rising tide of vomit that threatened to engulf me at any moment. Ten days without a decent hit, and now this …

“Shut up, for Christ’s sake, you sound like a fuckin’ midwife. You’re puttin’ me off, an’ it’s just goin’ deeper inside.”

Dodgy Dave was crouched in the middle of the floor, his pants around his ankles and an old copy of
The Sun
spread
out beneath him. After one of the longest droughts in living memory, that had seen all the local dealers out desperately tramping the streets, Dave had finally managed to score a few grammes. The only problem was that he’d suffered an attack of the jitters and had hidden it so far up his own arse that he was now having severe problems finding it again.

“Look, it must be in there somewhere, it can’t have disappeared completely. Can’t you locate it with your fingers?”

“That’s alright for you to say, you callous cunt … I’ve ’ad the shits for a week and me arse is like a baboon’s. I could get me whole fist up there, and still not find it!”

Normally, I’d have had enough methadone to see me through times like this, but Cissy and I had had another of our increasingly frequent rows, and she’d disappeared with three hundred mls. of ’done and about half our float. Never mind that it was, in theory, her money — I couldn’t believe her treachery, and I was ready to kill her when she eventually showed up.