Junkie Love (19 page)

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The ambulance came about twenty minutes later and they carried Brian out of the door on a stretcher, his massive body covered with a blanket and an oxygen mask on his face. The fucker must be as strong as an ox to still be alive after overdosing then spending five or six hours in a bath full of icy water. Whether he’ll pull through and, if he does, whether he’ll have permanent brain damage or not is anyone’s guess. Carol was still crying and moaning, her hair tangled and her makeup all smudged, as she got into the ambulance with Brian. She continued holding onto his hand the whole time, as if he were some kind of anchor, the only thing in her life that could save her from floating off into the storm-ridden waves of chaos and mayhem that would otherwise overwhelm her completely.

A couple of cops also showed up to interview people and take notes, in case Brian died, I suppose. Of course, by the time they arrived everything had been stashed, and as far as we all knew he had brought his own drugs with him (which was true, as a matter of fact). There had been a party, he had locked himself in the bathroom to shoot up, and was later found
slumped on the toilet seat with the needle still in his arm. He’d been put into a bath of cold water to try and revive him. That was all any of us knew, end of story.

They weren’t really interested. As far as they were concerned, we were just another report to be filed: whacked-out, junkie, low-life scum. If we wanted to kill ourselves with smack, then it was nothing to them, one way or the other. Of course, it meant more paperwork and having to verbally communicate with species of human life they probably found depressing and disgusting — but this, after all, was what they were paid to do. They were the clerks, snoops and garbage disposal men of the huge, relentless machine that has us all by the balls, paid to go around and sweep up the wreckage: all the weak, damaged pieces of human debris that the machine shits out of its vast and pullulating arsehole; all of those who can’t, or won’t, comply; all those who refuse to, or can’t, find an acceptable way of accommodating themselves to its needs and requirements. One of the cops did become interested in the novel and original way in which our electricity supply was connected, and began to ask some awkward questions. But then their radios crackled into life and they were called off to some other emergency, blue lights flashing and sirens wailing, leaving a gaggle of neighbours outside on the pavement, talking amongst themselves and looking up at the house with mingled expressions of curiosity and disapproval.

Now it’s late evening, and I’m sitting here alone in my room, wondering what the fuck to do and where it all goes from here. Cissy locked herself away right after the cops left and hasn’t been seen since, and to be honest I don’t care what she does from now on. Me, I’m through with this junkie life. I can’t afford and can’t be bothered to wait around any longer, hoping that she will change, or that I will change, and that somehow we’ll get back together again. I’m bailing out of this stinking ship, and she’ll just have to take her chances, the same as me.

Just how I’m going to do this is a moot point, though — after all, I’ve tried before and nothing has kept me clean so far. I’ve gone cold turkey, I’ve reduced gradually, I’ve been on maintenance, I’ve been in a rehabilitation clinic. None of it has worked up to now. The problem is memory: as soon as the immediate pain of withdrawal has passed, you tend to forget about it and start hungering for the high again — you have the illusion that, somehow, you can experience the pleasure without the pain, if only you handle things correctly this time around. But in my experience you always end up back at the same point, whichever way you choose, and however long it takes: sick, miserable and alone, without money and with no drugs. I think that maybe, finally, my body has begun to realise this. I mean, every junkie in the world knows that shooting heroin is stupid and self-destructive; but smack is such a powerful and physically addictive drug that the rational part of your brain has no chance at all against the lure that it holds over your body — the situation is similar to that of a teacher endlessly lecturing a rebellious child, and quite simply it just doesn’t work. But I think that if there is such a thing as cellular memory, within the bones, skin and tissue of the body itself, then finally the message might have started to get through. I just feel so heartily sick, tired and bored of the whole fucking deal that I might even succeed, this time, in staying off smack for good.

I’ve decided to pull one last stunt on poor, old, long-suffering Doc. Mitchell. I’m going to tell him that I have to go away for six weeks to America, for family reasons, then persuade him to write me a script for the entire amount I’ll need over that period, which should be well over two thousand mls. I’ll even ask him for a covering note to give to the U.S. immigration people in case I get searched. This will make it sound doubly convincing, and I’m sure he’ll give me the stuff because he believes me and sees me as his star pupil — I can read what’s in his mind, and I tell him exactly the type of psycho-confessional
crap he wants to hear. After pulling this little scam, I’ll sell off most of the methadone because I’m flat broke right now and I need to buy myself a bit of time in which to get clean. I can’t afford a private clinic, so I’ll just have to hope that someone gives me a break and a place to stay while I sweat it out over the next month or two. I’m going to reduce quickly — five mls. every three days — so from my present level of fifty a day down to zero should take about a month. Then, after I’ve stopped, I’ll just sweat it out for however long it takes — fuck it, it can’t be any worse than what I’ve been through before, and this time I’m doing it for myself, because I want to quit, not because someone else is telling me to, or because I want something in return.

As for how I’ll cope with my re-entry into “normal” society — well, who can tell? Sometimes, I look at all these maniacs going to work each day, with their closed, miserable faces, and I really wonder if it’s me who is crazy, or them. I mean, do they just appear to be sleepwalking along a treadmill to their deaths, or do they actually know something that I don’t? Of course, if they do then the joke is on me — but I really don’t think they do. I think it’s just a case of everyone getting sucked into the machine, one way or another, and before they realise it, becoming trapped and locked into a regime that everyone claims to hate, but which they are actually addicted to: you want nice, fashionable clothes, so you can look good and be attractive to other people; you want access to news and information, because knowledge is power and you need it to succeed; you want to buy a house in a good neighbourhood, where you can feel secure and at ease with the world; you want a fast modern car with all the latest gadgets, so you can travel from A to B in comfort, in the shortest possible time; you want fax machines, answer machines, mobile phones, computers — things which are supposed to make life easier and less complicated, but which, of course, have exactly the opposite effect. And if you
don’t want these things, then certainly you’ll be regarded by the majority of people as some kind of cretin or social misfit. And if life as a latter-day tribal outcast doesn’t appeal, then you’ll have to find a job that will earn you enough money to buy these things, and this job will be more, or less, demeaning depending on your level of education and/or family connections. Alternatively, you can start your own small business and put yourself in hock to the banks, become one more cog in the bigger machine and be, in turn, either a provider of jobs or an exploiter of labour, depending on which way you choose to look at things. But whatever the case, you will be some kind of functionary, fulfilling a role in a society that you neither understand, nor particularly feel a part of. And then the kids come along, and of course they want things too: they also have their own system of status symbols programmed into them at an ever earlier age — expensive trainers, computer games,
CD
players, etc. etc. — and the image-makers and ad-men have been so successful here, that if you don’t buy your child all the things that the kid down the street has, then you stand a good chance of giving him or her irreparable psychological damage, an inferiority complex for life. And so the machine tightens its grip, you get sucked in deeper and deeper, and the only way you can stand it is to laugh it all off and pretend that you have “grown up” and accepted “the facts of life.” It’s not simply stupidity — it’s just that everybody is in the same boat, and therefore some kind of silent compact has been made so that people don’t feel so bad about themselves and about the way things in general are going.

I hate the fuckers who supposedly control this machine, who reap the benefits and look down from the heights with deep satisfaction, and it gives me great pleasure each time they fuck up and increasingly expose themselves to scrutiny. But in seeking to be neither sheep nor wolf I’ve actually ended up by becoming a cockroach — so where do I go from here? There
has to be some other way besides compliance or callous exploitation — (out-and-out rejection and rebellion having led me to where I am now) — some kind of working around and between things, of finding and making contact with people who have similar ideas, but have found some way to exist creatively at the margins without succumbing to negativity and despair. I guess it’s a hard, lonely road to travel, and you will have to live by your wits and instincts if you choose to take it — no company pension or health schemes; no pay-scales or annual increments — but I suppose being a junkie for ten years is good training for this.

I’ll second-guess the power-addicts and control-freaks, the greed-heads and anal-retentive manager types all the way down the fucking line; and even if it means I end up shadow-boxing my own reflection in an infinitely receding hall of mirrors, it’s got to be more interesting and rewarding than what I’m doing right now. But for the moment, I’m just going to concentrate on getting well. Once the drugs are out of my system, I’ll teach myself how to think and feel again; and then I’ll take a long, hard look, and see how the world appears from the other side of the street.

PHIL SHOENFELT
was born in Bradford, England, in December 1952. After colliding with the London punk scene in the mid-1970s, he moved to New York where he lived and played in several bands, such as Khmer Rouge, and was active on the downtown Manhattan arts scene. Returning to London in 1984, he continued making music until encroaching heroin addiction brought a temporary halt to all such activity. Finally kicking the habit after eleven years, he embarked upon a solo career and in 1995 moved to Prague, where he currently lives. In recent years he has produced several CDs of his music on various independent labels: solo; with his band Southern Cross; and with the Berlin-based Australian group The Fatal Shore.
Junkie Love
is Shoenfelt’s second book. His first, a collection of his poetry and song lyrics entitled
The Green Hotel
, was published in 1998.

The author would like to gratefully thank laura conway, curtis matthew, and howard sidenberg for their suggestions on the manuscript, and lubor mat’a, luboš snížek, and “zero” for their support and assistance.