Liberation--November 1994

We have been apart too long, JP and I.

After our long summer of sneaking trysts, rage and poetry, it has been two months since we had seen each other; it was either that or homelessness for me. My mother had laid down her "one condition" for me to live at home during my separation from Dave: I was not to see JP, period. I have violated that rule exactly once--I drove to Palatine to pay a bill, then stopped at JP's mom's apartment on the way home; we stood in the door just holding each other in perfect silence for thirty minutes, and then I left. But I have told her in no uncertain terms that her one condition is ridiculous and unfair, and that I will go against it the first chance I got.

Finally, I tell her that I am going out the next night, to a concert, and that I am going with JP, and will accept whatever consequences were involved. All she says was "Fine, I can't stop you," and so I pick up JP, hours before the concert, and we kill time in Barnes and Noble, eat dinner at Gulliver's.

Later we walk up Sheffield, to the Metro, hand in hand. It is one of the first times we'd been able to go out without fear of being seen; in fact, we want to be seen, do anything we can to draw attention. But it is Sheffield, near the Metro; no one finds us odd, or even noteworthy. That is fine too.

Mazzy Star...how many nights that summer had I stood in the kitchen at Dave's mother's house, washing dishes and listening to "Fade Into You"? How many nights had I been lulled to sleep, finally, by _So Tonight That I May See_? And of course, Jesus and Mary Chain, the punk gods--and the combination made even more alluring by the alleged romantic link between the two lead singers...oh, it fits perfectly into our little rock-myth universe.

And of course, the stories say that both bands do heroin.

Junk is never far from our minds, even from the first. JP had done it, of course; I am still an innocent, but all that summer I had read every junk story, listened to every junk song, studied the priests of dope culture, pored over Burroughs. We pick over the texts the way scholars pick apart the Dead Sea Scrolls; we quote _Naked Lunch_ and _Junky_ the way evangelists quote the Bible. We have planned our path, and we are only waiting for the chance to take it.

Consensus is that we are crazy. Even my best friend, my closest confidante--even Celia, the girl who'd acted as my alibi all summer, the eternal answer to Dave's eternal "Where were you?"--even Celia thinks we were insane. From JP she expects it, of course, but not from me.

And maybe I am a little crazy--but it is a good kind of crazy. There had been one night that summer when I'd taken Dave's car and picked JP up at the Maplewood apartment, and we'd put _Siamese Dream_ on the car stereo and blazed up Lake Shore Drive, me and my lover in my husband's little blue Hyundai.

We came to a stop light and pulled up next to this big boat of a car--a Lincoln, a Caddy, whatever--with two very scandalized-looking elderly white folks looking at us from the front seat. JP looked at me for just a moment with a wicked little gleam, and then he grabbed my hair and YANKED me towards him and gave me a tongue-kiss deep enough that he could have licked my spleen. And of course Granny and Gramps in the next car went all saucer-eyed on us, and finally he broke the kiss and the light went instantly green and I SLAMMED the gas, my head thrown back, laughing like mad.

That was JP. That was me. That was us, back in the summer of 94, and now it is November and we are going to be together, and damn the torpedoes.

We stand by the speakers at the Mazzy Star concert, his arms around me, and I can feel life opening up around me, swallowing me whole, warm like water.

Feminism, Part One--September 30, 1995

They leave me at home.

Not that I minded; I don't particularly like the notion of Lou driving my car, maniac that he is, but a fix is a fix and a fact is a fact, and the fact is, we need a fix, all three of us. And honestly, I'm tired of the ride. We've been out to the spot at least three times this day, in varying permutations: me and Lou, me and JP, me and JP and Lou and Sophia...I really just want to stay home and nap.

Reid goes with them this time, leaving the dog, Thunder, with me. Thunder is his guide dog, a big slobbery Lab who isn't above snatching an unattended burger from the table and scarfing it, bag and all. Since we have no money for anything but the nightly fix, burger-theft is out of the question; the dog lays on the floor with his head on his paws and waits.

JP has gotten paid today, and we're flush with cash; in fact, they're going to stop at the Maplewood house for a sack of weed, a treasured indulgence. We're certainly living large again...an empty fridge, a house full of packing boxes for the move in two days, and a sack of weed. The sink is full of dishes and cold greasy water--no hot water since the gas was been turned off--and we have no dish soap, no truck rented for the move, no idea of where we're going or where we're going to put our stuff. The only "stuff" we care about is the box with the needles, my notebooks, and all the music. JP's guitar, his amp, the TV, my computer, the CD player, the four-track...all are in the pawnshop waiting to be redeemed. At least without the rent to pay, we'll have enough money to get them all back. Then we'll clean up, get the band together, save some money, rent a new place, and get to work on immortality.

Yeah, right.

I sleep for a while, maybe an hour. When I wake up they still aren't back. I wonder what's happened, but then again delay is the only constant at the spot. "Go around the block" means a five-minute wait. "Five minutes" means fifteen. "Ten minutes" and you have at least half-an-hour to cool your heels before the pack-man shows up. "Half an hour" means you might as well go home.

None of us ever go home. We always wait.

The door opens. Lou first, leading Reid; then JP. I know immediately that something isn't right; JP's wearing the look that says "See, what had happened was...."

"Hi puss," he says.

I'm not going to be charmed. "What happened?"

JP and Lou exchange glances, and JP puts his arms up over his head, his most adorable-little-boy-telling-a-huge-fib gesture. "See, what had happened was..." he begins.

Lou cuts in. "I didn't crash the car. The car is fine," he says. "Sorta."

Visions of seizure and reposession dance in my head. "'Sorta'? What does 'sorta fine' mean, JP?"

"No really, it's fine, I promise." He pauses. "It's just...not here right now."

"Well then WHERE is it, if it's not here???"

"It's over on Maplewood," he says. "We....sorta got a flat tire."

All the air goes out of my lungs in a rush. "A fuckin' FLAT? You get me THAT scared over a fuckin' FLAT???"

"Welll, we didn't know how you were gonna take it!" he laughs.

"You idiot, I thought you got the car seized or something." I'm prepared to be magnanimous, now that I know what the problem is. "So where's the...you-know?"

They glance at each other again; clearly, THIS is the part they'd rather not tell me. "We didn't get to the spot," Lou says. "We stopped at Maplewood to get the sack, and when we came out the tire was flat. It's over in front of the house over there. We'll have to go get it in the morning, and I'll take the tire off and go get it patched over at that place on Western."

I'm more pissed about the lack of dope than about the flat. "How long has it been since our last shot?" I ask JP.

"Four, five hours, maybe. You're NOT going to get sick," he tells me sternly. "It'll be fine--we'll just get the tire fixed first thing tomorrow, and then we'll go over to the spot like always. No big deal...It'll be fine," he tells me again.

And though he's always been right before, this time, somehow, I'm not so sure.

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.

Dopesick--Spring 1995

I am lying on the bed in the back bedroom of the apartment at 1460. In the morning I have to go to work, and it's after midnight, and though we've been snorting it for a few days, I'm not dopesick, of course not--I just have a cold, that's all. And cramps. In my hands. And if my mind is racing...well, that's just how my mind always is. And even though it's a huuuuge coincidence, JP has a cold too! It's amazing how couples can share these things.

We lay in the gray room, with the little TV on the north wall, not-watching _All In The Family_ reruns on channel 50. I haven't written a thing in weeks--a strange situation, since we'd sold the car in February based on just that plan: sell the car, buy JP a guitar, amp, and 4-track, buy me a computer, and use the remaining money for....

Well, that was the problem, wasn't it. I mean, it's not like we used it ALL for that...right? We bought some CD's, didn't we?

And then as I lay there on the bed, in the bluish light from the tv...the music starts--the Earworm of the Damned.

It's time for AN-I-MAYYYYY-NEEEEEE-AXXXXX
And we're ZAAAYYYYYYYYYNEEEE toooo the MAX
So just sit back and reLAX, You'll LAUGH til you coLLAPSE
We're AN-UH-MAYYYYY-NEE-AX!

I try to think of something else. Anything else. I try to count, to say the alphabet backwards--nothing will get the damn song out of my head. It's moving at unnatural speeds, like a warped record, a calliope from hell. Meanwhile my hands are cramping, right in the middle of the palm, like I need to crush something. I clench and unclench them but nothing helps. And the song keeps going.

JP looks at me; he's sitting across the room in the battered orange chair--he can't lay down because the pain is in his back... "I'm sorry," he says. "God, look what I did to you. I'm so sorry."

The night goes on, and neither of us sleeps.

Background

The first time I quit heroin and meant it, I switched to vodka and orange juice. The vodka was filched from my mother's liquor cabinet, late at night after she had passed out and would no longer remember how full the bottle was when she'd fixed her last drink of the night.

After two or three drinks, I felt sufficiently competent to face the facts of my existence, to wit: I was 25, divorced, bankrupt, and several weeks into the aftermath (or so I thought) of an addiction that had robbed me of a lot of things that didn't matter anyway, as well as the only one that DID matter: my fiance, JP. Even the vodka couldn't take the edge off THAT memory--his eyes widening as he took the needle from his arm that night, then his gasping struggle for breath as his throat closed, the heavy sound as he fell to the floor...the voice of the policeman coming into the holding room where I was cuffed to a hospital bench, telling me "He did pass." His official time of death was 11:10 PM, they told me later.

After five or six drinks, when I looked at the back of my hands, I would see two parallel lines of livid scar tissue, reddened now by alcohol: putting my hands together I could read the time, the first minute of my "new, improved" life--11:11. By that point in the night, of course, nothing would matter except the things I couldn't obliterate. Eventually I would pass out, into troubled sleep, smack-haunted dreams.