Anticipation: Mid-May, 1995
It is a Friday afternoon in mid-May.
All the long ride home from the south suburbs I have been thinking about this weekend and what it holds, all the promise, all the things work does not give me. I have been sitting for the past two hours on buses and trains, headphones blasting, waiting for my rewards.
In my pocket is my paycheck; I will cash it at the currency exchange when I get off the train. My stomach flutters as I climb the steps at the Division stop, cross Milwaukee, cross Ashland. The sun is shining and I am minutes away from home, minutes away from the place I'd never leave if it wasn't for the raw and naked need of money.
I walk back down Ashland, turn left at the corner. Our block is a picturesque mess of old houses, some dilapidated. The people on the streets are a mix, weighted towards the Hispanic; the nearest grocery store is the little carniceria on Ashland where we go to buy sacks of rice, of sugar for our Kool-Aid, where JP goes to buy his daily pack of Newports. JP and I are two separate anomalies on this block; even more strange taken together than apart.
But the signs are creeping in, I notice as I walk. Closer to Ashland, there is new construction happening; big three-story cinderblock buildings, with balconies and sliding doors. Some of them have "For Sale" and "Coming Soon" signs, quoting numbers I can't even imagine paying for an actual HOUSE, let alone a glorified apartment in a yuppie-building.
But they are nothing to me, a minor annoyance at best; they are not part of my reality, neither past nor future. Someone else's, perhaps, but not mine.
Halfway down the block, in the miniature yard fronting someone's house, stands an old-fashioned 1970's soda machine, rescued from a junkyard or some failed business. The coin slot says 25 cents, and miraculously it still works; more miraculously still, 25 cents is exactly what you pay. The sodas are some off-brand generic, but still cold and sweet and delicious, especially when a quarter is all you've got left.
Four houses away I can hear the bass thumping from our front room. JP has probably been home for two or three hours by now, which means that unless he's being really chivalrous, he's got at least an hour's head start getting high. Two houses away I can hear the melody line of "Lithium" or "Rape Me". Kurt's been dead only a year, and we still talk about it as a puzzle, something to be deciphered: why? was it Courtney's fault? was she fucking someone else? But the music still stands, the centerpiece of JP's dream, and before I even open the door, I already know JP is pacing the floor, living room to kitchen, kitchen to living room, drumsticks in hand, punishing the air.
To the right of the door is the living room, with the old blue couch from my parents' basement, flanked by two end-tables of our own construction. Each table top is a painted mirror, a curved yellow-gold design inside a square silver frame; each mirror-top rests on four cinderblocks stolen from the vacant lot down the street. The table farthest from the door is the surface from which I snorted my first line of heroin, five months before.
Of course, that was then, and we're more efficient now. Six weeks ago I sneaked the 40-year-old syringes from my dad's old army kit, and three weeks ago, we finally got the nerve up to use them; we've since learned about the needle exchange--Fridays on Wood Street, Monday evenings in Humboldt Park--and we've amassed an impressive collection of paraphernalia. We keep it in a black-painted wooden box, on which I've painted designs in gold, and we keep the box in the bureau in the kitchen. We each keep our own set of needles, separate from each other's.
When I walk in, the box is on the mirror table, opened, needles spilling out. My set still sits in tbe box, waiting. On the table next to the box there are three small foil packets and a glass of water. These are the things I see first--then JP, his eyes, his sweet smile. His voice is rough, his eyelids heavy; as I'd suspected, he's got a head start on me today. I go to him and bury myself in him for a moment, knowing that for the next three days we will be inseparable.
That used to be enough, and to some degree it still is. Neither of us admits what we both now know: we -are- addicted, we -do- have a habit. To ourselves, to each other, we pretend that it's still an exception, a weekend recreation, a reward for surviving another week. Neither of us admits that what used to be just a Friday thing became a Friday-Saturday-Sunday-Monday thing; neither of us admits that were it not for rent and food and bills, it would be more than even that.
And right now, neither of us admits a thing, because right now there's something more important--three little foil packets, waiting on the table. Right now there is a whole long night of sweet oblivion, of heroin and sex and music, of our own insular world and our eternal future.
All the long ride home from the south suburbs I have been thinking about this weekend and what it holds, all the promise, all the things work does not give me. I have been sitting for the past two hours on buses and trains, headphones blasting, waiting for my rewards.
In my pocket is my paycheck; I will cash it at the currency exchange when I get off the train. My stomach flutters as I climb the steps at the Division stop, cross Milwaukee, cross Ashland. The sun is shining and I am minutes away from home, minutes away from the place I'd never leave if it wasn't for the raw and naked need of money.
I walk back down Ashland, turn left at the corner. Our block is a picturesque mess of old houses, some dilapidated. The people on the streets are a mix, weighted towards the Hispanic; the nearest grocery store is the little carniceria on Ashland where we go to buy sacks of rice, of sugar for our Kool-Aid, where JP goes to buy his daily pack of Newports. JP and I are two separate anomalies on this block; even more strange taken together than apart.
But the signs are creeping in, I notice as I walk. Closer to Ashland, there is new construction happening; big three-story cinderblock buildings, with balconies and sliding doors. Some of them have "For Sale" and "Coming Soon" signs, quoting numbers I can't even imagine paying for an actual HOUSE, let alone a glorified apartment in a yuppie-building.
But they are nothing to me, a minor annoyance at best; they are not part of my reality, neither past nor future. Someone else's, perhaps, but not mine.
Halfway down the block, in the miniature yard fronting someone's house, stands an old-fashioned 1970's soda machine, rescued from a junkyard or some failed business. The coin slot says 25 cents, and miraculously it still works; more miraculously still, 25 cents is exactly what you pay. The sodas are some off-brand generic, but still cold and sweet and delicious, especially when a quarter is all you've got left.
Four houses away I can hear the bass thumping from our front room. JP has probably been home for two or three hours by now, which means that unless he's being really chivalrous, he's got at least an hour's head start getting high. Two houses away I can hear the melody line of "Lithium" or "Rape Me". Kurt's been dead only a year, and we still talk about it as a puzzle, something to be deciphered: why? was it Courtney's fault? was she fucking someone else? But the music still stands, the centerpiece of JP's dream, and before I even open the door, I already know JP is pacing the floor, living room to kitchen, kitchen to living room, drumsticks in hand, punishing the air.
To the right of the door is the living room, with the old blue couch from my parents' basement, flanked by two end-tables of our own construction. Each table top is a painted mirror, a curved yellow-gold design inside a square silver frame; each mirror-top rests on four cinderblocks stolen from the vacant lot down the street. The table farthest from the door is the surface from which I snorted my first line of heroin, five months before.
Of course, that was then, and we're more efficient now. Six weeks ago I sneaked the 40-year-old syringes from my dad's old army kit, and three weeks ago, we finally got the nerve up to use them; we've since learned about the needle exchange--Fridays on Wood Street, Monday evenings in Humboldt Park--and we've amassed an impressive collection of paraphernalia. We keep it in a black-painted wooden box, on which I've painted designs in gold, and we keep the box in the bureau in the kitchen. We each keep our own set of needles, separate from each other's.
When I walk in, the box is on the mirror table, opened, needles spilling out. My set still sits in tbe box, waiting. On the table next to the box there are three small foil packets and a glass of water. These are the things I see first--then JP, his eyes, his sweet smile. His voice is rough, his eyelids heavy; as I'd suspected, he's got a head start on me today. I go to him and bury myself in him for a moment, knowing that for the next three days we will be inseparable.
That used to be enough, and to some degree it still is. Neither of us admits what we both now know: we -are- addicted, we -do- have a habit. To ourselves, to each other, we pretend that it's still an exception, a weekend recreation, a reward for surviving another week. Neither of us admits that what used to be just a Friday thing became a Friday-Saturday-Sunday-Monday thing; neither of us admits that were it not for rent and food and bills, it would be more than even that.
And right now, neither of us admits a thing, because right now there's something more important--three little foil packets, waiting on the table. Right now there is a whole long night of sweet oblivion, of heroin and sex and music, of our own insular world and our eternal future.
posted by GJC at 11:04 PM
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