The old house struck the eye with a peculiar
air of antiquity. I decided to use that feeling when I decorated.
This time when we moved in I furnished the place from floor to ceiling
with the antiques I inherited upon my father’s death. I created a
library with my huge collection of books (currently on display in my brother’s
house). I turned one room into an office with a desk, my computer,
a phone and a filing cabinet. I filled the filing cabinet with every
piece of paper in my possession. I planted an appealing and well
manicured garden full of exotic flowers in the small front yard.
The house became a thing of beauty.
“I have never been so happy in my life,” Susan
informed me one day.
“I did all of this for you,” I replied.
The real reasons I went so far out of my way
to make her happy had a lot more to do with my own guilt than a genuine
desire to please her. I felt horrible for getting her strung out
on dilaudid. The day I found out she threw away a whole bottle of
valium I hit her. That might be a pretty good reason to hit another
man, but there could never be a good enough reason to justify violence
against your wife. My temper was a terrible thing. I attempted
to make up for that by pampering Susan to the extreme. I worked to
funnel that energy into beautifying the house. The results were splendid.
We talked all about my anger. Susan
did not know too many things about my past. I buried the very dark
facts far from her wandering eye. I finally explained to her that
when I became possessed with rage I could not control myself. The
worse my rage got the more violent my actions became.
“I am not afraid of your anger,” Susan explained
to me one day, “I am afraid of pain.”
I had really hurt her. When she made
me very angry, on numerous occasions, I slapped the shit out of her.
Every time I did that she tried to leave me, and I stopped her every time.
I wish she had left. I turned into a grim and dangerous animal when
confronted with proof of my own inadequacies. That was how she made
me angry. She would talk about all of the irrefutable proof she had of
all the rotten, low-down things I tried to hide from her. Unfortunately
the truth cannot be erased or changed. I had real problems.
Susan could destroy my calm instantaneously by waving my indiscretions
in my face. The times when I went on a tear were enough to make her
afraid of me.
She spent a lot of time talking to me about
the guilt I felt over that. “You are not a bad person,” she told
me over and over, “I love you more than anything. I love you so much
it hurts.”
I went months and months without losing my
temper. That had to be the only reason Susan put up with it.
Sometimes we went six months without arguing. Those are the recollections
I most enjoy. I don’t like to think about our fights, which were
almost always over drugs. I should also add that after Susan got
over the initial shock of being struck she began to fight back. I
lost all of our last fights (the ones that took place after I ruined my
shoulder and became very skinny). After that we stopped fighting
altogether. Also, I had become very dependent on her. Afraid
she would leave me I treated her with a lot of respect.
After I fixed up our house I went out looking
for a job. After numerous tests and waiting I landed a position with
the Postal Service. Scott was in jail on his way to a light prison
term, and I couldn’t sell drugs without him. When we were working
together Scott and I sold a huge amount of cocaine, marijuana, ecstasy
and methamphetamines. I sold thousands of tabs after Susan and I
got married. Not being able to do that made life more difficult,
but I made the decision to have a respectable life. I worked hard
at my job. I made a good bit of money. I got commendations
from the management of the Post Office for my job performance.
Susan took to pampering me for a while.
She kept the house clean. She cooked for me. She waited on
me hand and foot. She would make herself look very hot for when I
came home from work. No matter how tired I was, when she looked like
that and put her eyes on me in that way I had to got that extra mile to
satisfy both of us. She was a better wife than anyone thought she
would be, but I always knew how wonderful she was. Susan had a talent
for making life something you enjoyed to the fullest.
The job caused my back problem to hurt like
hell. I did not know a doctor to go to for medication. I did
know someone who had morphine. I ate it a number of times, but I
had never injected it. After all of my experiences with dilaudid
I was sure I could handle it. Confident I had nothing to fear I arranged
to purchase the morphine.
My friend Ben got it for me. He assured
me it was a waste to eat it so I got some syringes. At first I had
trouble drawing it up. The high amount of buffer in the pill requires
the use of a filter. Once I got it I knew exactly what to do.
I nailed it in about two seconds flat. My veins had rested for over
a year, and now this. This was nothing like dilaudid. The rush
pushed through my entire body. It was so strong it hurt all the way
down to the tips of my toes. If you know anything about junkies you
know what happened. I was gone on a mission I would never come back
from on my own: to score and hit every day, all the time.
I started going to work loaded. Before
my tolerance developed the morphine would make it extremely difficult to
hold my eyes open. It was obvious to everyone around me I was strung
out on some very heavy dope. Then one day I could not get any pills.
I thought it would be no big deal. I had only been doing a couple
of pills a day for six weeks. The difference between dilaudid and
morphine, I found out, is like the difference between beer and whisky,
especially in the area of withdrawal.
I came to understand what withdrawal was really
all about. It wasn’t some passing bad feeling. Even with a
minor addiction there are painful symptoms. Severe stomach pain,
vomiting, high blood pressure, and restlessness all plague even a mild
withdrawal.
When I experienced symptoms of withdrawal
I chose to stay at home from work. I hoped I could get in on some
pills that were supposed to be coming in. I had already lost a lot
of work so I wound up losing my job. The further into addiction I
descended the harder my life got.
I began the process of selling everything
I owned. My father always predicted I would lose everything he left
me. He spit the prophecy at me like an insult, like a curse.
The closer I brought myself to absolute ruin, and the more clearly I could
see how correct he was, the worse my depression and self hatred became.
Susan attempted to bring me out of it. She wanted me to seek help
for clinical depression. I was suicidal nearly all the time.
She hated that. She said, “Baby, I will love you no matter what you
have. All of that stuff means nothing to me.”
“I will love you forever and ever,” she said.
“You know I love you too,” I said, “I will
love you until I die and long after that.”
She cried softly for a moment before she said,
“You’re not going anywhere. I have always been the sick one.”
I laughed and said, “Sweetheart, you know
you’re going to outlive me by many long years.”
She got very quiet before she said, “I just
don’t know.”
We had basically the same conversation many
times over the course of years we were together. I always hushed
her up. I was so damned arrogant about how bad my own problems were
I never listened to what she was saying. Now I can see she was deeply
concerned about her own death.
Susan and I talked a lot about spirituality.
“What do you believe in?” I asked her.
“I believe that when we die we don’t exist
anymore. They put us in the ground and we don’t have to worry about
any of this shit anymore. We won’t hurt anymore. We won’t be
there at all.”
I was horrified. “You don’t believe
in God, or heaven or hell?”
She said, “I believe when they put me in the
ground I won’t feel pain anymore. I won’t be sad, I just won’t be
anymore.”
“So you don’t believe we will see each other
after we die?”
“Oh baby, you know I will love you forever.
I will love you until the end of time. I love you with all of my
body and all of my soul.”
“And I love you so much God could not keep
us apart,” I said.
At the time I meant exactly what I said.
I told myself that neither God nor the devil could keep our spirits from
reuniting after death. I whispered to my ego that I would find her
no matter the cost. I have always had a flair for the melodramatic.
***
Susan did not fully appreciate her new life
as a hardcore junkie. She hated the fact that I went back to selling
drugs. When I wasn’t dealing I held for people. I allowed all
of my dealer friends to establish headquarters in my home. I gave
a rotten grease ball named Nathan permission to move in. He had a
killer connection for grays. He supplied a huge number of college
students. He usually kept at least fifty pills at all times.
He had been in dire need of a base of operations and a place to stay.
I got a cut for the pills I could sell, which grew to be more and more.
I never worried about food or lights or water as long as I had grays to
hit. By then I needed at least a quarter gram of morphine to get
off righteously. One gray wouldn’t do anything but make me well.
When times grew tight Nathan would front me pills. Sometimes it took
me a few days, but I always paid him.
One day Nathan called Susan a fat, ugly bitch.
I was fighting with her. I was already mad at her so I didn’t focus
on busting his face wide open like I should have. Something else
tipped the scales against him for good. One day he hurt my dog while
Jane, my dad’s last girlfriend, was in the front room giving me food to
eat. Nathan hurt Gus so bad he couldn’t stop yelping. Now he
had insulted my wife and hurt my dog. I thought to myself,
“The motherfucker must pay.”
The next time Susan and I ran out of pills
Nathan refused to front. He had over a hundred pills. I told
Susan I was going to knock him out and take all of the pills. At
the precise moment when I was about to attack him he got a call to go pick
up some more. He decided to show me his trust by allowing me to hold
his pills for him.
After he was gone I went looking for his other
dope. He had an ounce of the best indica I have ever seen.
He had a bunch of authentic Quaaludes preserved from the seventies.
He had a small pile of valium. Twenty minutes after I started looking
I had found all of it. I called up a ride. We locked the house
up tight. I took all of the shit that once belonged to Nathan to
a hotel room. Grays are just like money, so a hotel room was no big
deal.
Nathan had been shooting up four grays at
a time when I did that. I found out later that the pills he had gone
to pick up had fallen through, plunging him into severe withdrawal.
He wound up being forced to crash in an abandoned apartment. He got
very sick. He screamed for help until someone called 911. He
was diagnosed with severe liver and kidney problems, and he had gangrene
in his arm. The doctors had to take veins out of his legs to replace
the ones in his arm in order to save his hand. I was willing to let
it go when he insulted Susan, but when he hurt my dog he went too far.
With a little help from morphine and myself justice came to him quickly.
***
Scott was a close friend of mine for many years,
as I believe I already mentioned. After my father died Scott was
the only quantity coke and pot connection I had. I could buy drugs
all over the place, but not in quantity. Whenever I needed help I
would turn to Scott. Let me explain how close Scott and I were.
I first met Scott on Chimes Street when he
was only fifteen years old. I sold him bags of weed. In a couple
of yeas he was slinging doses and small change cocaine like there was no
tomorrow. I had been in the game for a few years. It was easy
to recognize how much talent he had. He made money like a villain,
and he knew all of the young people I was afraid to deal with. Back
in 1988 I became Scott’s connection for quantity weed. He hooked
me up with volume doses and tabs. We became close. I won’t
talk about the drug ring, but Scott and I were friends beyond all of that.
One blessed night when I hadn’t gotten laid in a few months Scott came
over with this young freak he had been stringing along. We both did
her. Scott and I were tight like brothers. If anybody messed
over Scott they were messing me over too. Likewise Scott wouldn’t
let anybody fuck with me and get away with it. There was a war going on,
and we got ill with it. I am a soldier and a gangster. I have
never been a whore. I came from a crew that would bring it to you.
When I got robbed at gunpoint during a big deal in 1994 the thief wound
up with a bullet in his head. He lived, but he talks real funny now.
He doesn’t make any sense. Scott and I had big respect on the South
Side. We didn’t even have to pop him. The homeboys did it for
me, because they loved that paper we brought in. They wouldn’t let
some crackhead interfere with that. I could walk around in the bottom
any time and be safe from everyone but the police.
Things changed a lot when John Day died and
Scott set up a connection in Houston. We never went out on the street
anymore. We set up shop and let people come to us. We only let close,
old friends get in. After I lost my job with the Postal Service I
told Scott I was ready to rumble. We took a ride and came back with
two kilos of cocaine, a half-pound of crystal meth and twenty pounds of
weed. We were hustling around the clock, making mad bills.
I threw a monkey wrench into the whole program though. Scott lived
in our house with us. I kept syringes in the house. Scott saw
me shooting up a couple of grays and he wanted to try it. I did what
I do best. I fixed him up, tied off his arm and flushed his whole
life down the toilet. That was the beginning of the fall for Scott.
Before I could blink my eyes Scott was into quantity yellows and grays.
When people start jonesing for morphine it
is a lot worse than cocaine. A junkie will blow up your phone, or
your pager, or kick in your door if they think you are holding out.
Knowing that we set out to get everyone we knew hooked on grays.
In one sense our plan worked. We made lots of money. The problem
was that Scott, Susan and I were eating up all of our profits at the other
end. Not only did we sell around the clock, we used around the clock
as well. Within a couple of weeks we could see the whole deal would
come up a loss, to the tune of at least twenty percent, if we didn’t curb
our desires to stay loaded.
Maybe you don’t understand the type of nightmare
I am describing to you. Dirty spoons and syringes were constantly
scattered all over my house. Our arms were covered in bruises and
lines made from hundreds of needle punctures. We all had dark, sunken
eyes. None of us ate much of anything. Every time we had to
do a deal paranoia ran rampant. I would force Scott to help me clean
up. Then we would have to deal with loud people who wanted to get
high with us. This was totally contrary to the whole low-key thing
we were depending on to keep us from getting busted. None of us ever
wanted to go outside. It was too scary out there.
Scott, Susan and I went on a crystal binge.
We shot up for six straight days. We didn’t even take breaks to do
any business. On the sixth day Susan went crazy. She said she
saw a large animal in the corner giving birth. She said the mother
and her offspring disappeared into a hole in the wall, but that they were
going to come back to get her. She became frantic and wanted to run
out of the house. Scott and I had to grab her. I immobilized
her and blindfolded her for her own safety. I wanted her to be able
to come down and go to sleep without hallucinating anything else.
When she started yelling I gagged her too. If she had run outside
looking crazy or if she had continued to yell, she would have gotten all
of us busted.
I suggested to Scott that he and I also needed
to come down. We got some rohypnol delivered to the house.
Scott fell asleep, but for some reason it took me too long. I never
dropped off to sleep, and the rohypnol wore off. As I lay there next
to my bound sleeping wife something caught my attention. It made
my heart beat wildly and sent my stomach up into my throat.
I saw the shadows of people stopping in front
of my house. I had a lot of practice identifying the shadows that
trickled through from the real world onto the ceiling of my bedroom.
The odd thing was not that the shadows were there, it was that it was Saturday
morning. People rarely parked in front of my house on Saturday morning
unless they were coming to see me. An instant later the shadows took
off running. Not much later I saw a shadow move a quarter of the
way across the ceiling and then dart back the way it came. I kept
looking out my secret peephole, but I couldn’t see anything out there.
When I saw shadows run across the ceiling one more time I knew we were
being watched. I had been awake for six days, and I worried about
my judgment being impaired. I decided, however, not to take the risk
of ignoring my feelings. I woke Scott up and told him that he needed
to leave because we were being watched. I figured Scott would have
to be the major target of any law enforcement investigation centered on
my house. I reasoned that if I got him out of there we might all
have a chance to pull through.
Scott cursed me for all I was worth.
He called me crazy and said he was never going to party with me again.
He was spooked though. He asked me if he could leave his dope.
His ride pulled up a few minutes later. He left with only a small
bag full of clothes. Less than a hundred yards from my house unmarked
and marked police cars swarmed around the vehicle, forcing the driver to
pull over. They spent a couple of hours searching the car while Scott
and the driver sat handcuffed in separate police cars. Eventually
the police were forced to let them go. Scott called me up that night
to say he was sorry, that I was right. The police had been watching
the house. I told him I would take care of everything.
Late that night I darkened all the lights.
I took the dope and wormed my way out the back door on my stomach.
I inched my way through the high weeds until I lost sight of my house.
Then I got up and walked nonchalantly to a garbage can on the side of a
house a block away. That’s where I stashed the dope. Then I
walked up to the payphone. I called Scott and told him exactly where
to find his stuff. I told him to come in a car the cops wouldn’t
know, and to stay clear of my house. He already knew he needed to
get there as fast as possible. After I hung up I climbed to the fourth
floor of the Centroplex parking garage so I could view the scene without
being in the scene. Within a half-hour Scott had gotten the dope
and gotten under way without any problems. I walked boldly back to
my house, which was now clean as a whistle. I opened all the windows
and doors and turned the stereo on full blast. I always do that when
I’m being watched. I undid Susan before I went out onto the front
porch and drank a beer. Life was good. Susan called out a little
later. I told her not to worry, that everything would be okay.
I went to sleep at dawn looking like a victim of a Cambodian torture camp.
***
Susan became very angry with me. I needed
the money and dope from working with Scott, so I relocated to where Scott
was. That meant I spent all of my time away from Susan. It
takes a lot of time and energy to sell drugs. It took me all the
way out of my relationship. She wasn’t just angry about being left
alone all the time. She was furious about the fact no one was sharing
dope with her anymore. A woman scorned was exactly what I needed
in my life.
When Scott and I set up shop over at Blake’s
apartment I brought in all of the opiates. That was one reason Scott
let me bite into his supply so often. I made enough pills out of
keeping Scott and his people supplied to keep Susan and I well. That
was the only thing that kept her chilled out about what I was doing. What
I was doing was not good.
Scott and I shot cocaine all day and all night
for weeks. The only pauses we took came when we lapsed into unconsciousness
or we had to take care of business. Blake didn’t like what we were
doing either. She wanted to have Scott without any outside interference.
I was so far gone I didn’t care what anybody had to say. I am relatively
certain Scott didn’t care either. He kept putting the dope out, and
we kept on doing it together. Cocaine deposits poison into your bloodstream,
much the way a snake does. On four different instances Scott overdosed
and went into convulsions. Every time the convulsions grew worse.
I thought sure he would die soon.
Blake finally couldn’t take anymore.
Between the constant drug abuse in her living room and Scott’s crazy on-again
off-again girlfriend, Dina, Blake had had enough. She asked us to
leave for good. We didn’t have much of a choice but to go back to
my house.
The paranoia and the fear weighed heavily
on my mind. Scott overdosed one more time, in my bedroom. I
took all of the opiates and left while he was unconscious. Luckily
Susan was asleep, or else I might have had a hard time leaving alone.
That was the beginning of the end of my friendship with Scott.
I took the dope to campus, where I sold enough
pills to pay for a hotel room for a few days. Eventually I had to
face both Susan and Scott. I saved her a small number of grays, but
for Scott I saved nothing. We were so much alike it scared me.
I felt I had to sever the bond, so I ripped him off.
Scott was very disappointed that I had done
that. I told him I was tired of hustling. I told him I was
tired of watching him kill himself. He said he would have trusted
me with his sister. I didn’t have too much to say. He stole a lot
of valuable things from me. Scott left my house. Very soon
after that he went down on multiple distribution felonies. He vanished
from my life to populate the Louisiana Department of Corrections.
[Scott, if you are out there reading this
one day I want you to know I am sorry about all of the things that happened.
Still in all, I would hope that you are kind of sorry too.]
***
A haze that is difficult to penetrate shrouds the vast majority of the memories of my life. I have left out many details and people because I could not make the chronology of events detailed and believable. Other details, ones I considered too important to discard, have been sprinkled over the surface like glitter. I can not deny that this story does not function chronologically. It exists only as a free form of the ideas and feelings I had about the things that happened, and it’s going to get worse. I am really very sensitive about this. Please be so kind as not to talk about it in front of me. My anxiety attacks, you know.