Starting--Late December, 1994
I have seen him do it before.
I have seen him cut the powder into lines, seen him roll up a dollar bill, seen him breathe the lines back into his nostrils, eyes watering. He does not understand why, exactly, I am afraid. Nothing bad has ever happened; he has done this before, he tells me, and I have even seen him do it. This was part of the plan, he says. He is only telling me what I already know.
I have never done it myself. I have never done anything myself. It is only in the past six months that I have even smoked weed for the first time; I never drank as a teenager, never smoked a cigarette after my first. I have always been in control. Control is the only thing I have, the only thing I know.
The past eight months have taken that from me, and all I have left is JP and my anger. JP is a known quantity; he and I have fused together somehow, finishing each other's sentences and sleeping tangled together like puppies in a basket. My anger, on the other hand, is something new and searing. There were nights in the summer when I had feared it was going to slip its reins completely and lead me somewhere I didn't want to go; it had taken all my will to marshal it and force it somewhere safe, into poems and rambling journal entries laced with Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails lyrics.
It is hard to explain that I am afraid of what I will do, given the excuse of heroin. I am afraid that it will take that control from me, though I do not know what I will do if it does. I am afraid, in short, that I will lose my mind. Months later, blood dripping down the crook of my elbow, I will look back on this moment and laugh; just now, though, there is only that fear, mixed with the wanting: to see, I have told him. I want to see, I'd written.
I grab a piece of paper and I write.
"What are you writing?" he asks me.
I read to him. "If anything happens to me because of this, please know that I did it of my own free will." JP laughs a little.
I sign my name and write the date. Then I pick up a ten-dollar bill from the coffee table, roll it into a cylinder as I've seen JP do before. I bend to the glass of the table, where the lines are laid out neatly, hold the tube to my nostril, and draw the powder in.
I have seen him cut the powder into lines, seen him roll up a dollar bill, seen him breathe the lines back into his nostrils, eyes watering. He does not understand why, exactly, I am afraid. Nothing bad has ever happened; he has done this before, he tells me, and I have even seen him do it. This was part of the plan, he says. He is only telling me what I already know.
I have never done it myself. I have never done anything myself. It is only in the past six months that I have even smoked weed for the first time; I never drank as a teenager, never smoked a cigarette after my first. I have always been in control. Control is the only thing I have, the only thing I know.
The past eight months have taken that from me, and all I have left is JP and my anger. JP is a known quantity; he and I have fused together somehow, finishing each other's sentences and sleeping tangled together like puppies in a basket. My anger, on the other hand, is something new and searing. There were nights in the summer when I had feared it was going to slip its reins completely and lead me somewhere I didn't want to go; it had taken all my will to marshal it and force it somewhere safe, into poems and rambling journal entries laced with Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails lyrics.
It is hard to explain that I am afraid of what I will do, given the excuse of heroin. I am afraid that it will take that control from me, though I do not know what I will do if it does. I am afraid, in short, that I will lose my mind. Months later, blood dripping down the crook of my elbow, I will look back on this moment and laugh; just now, though, there is only that fear, mixed with the wanting: to see, I have told him. I want to see, I'd written.
I grab a piece of paper and I write.
"What are you writing?" he asks me.
I read to him. "If anything happens to me because of this, please know that I did it of my own free will." JP laughs a little.
I sign my name and write the date. Then I pick up a ten-dollar bill from the coffee table, roll it into a cylinder as I've seen JP do before. I bend to the glass of the table, where the lines are laid out neatly, hold the tube to my nostril, and draw the powder in.
posted by GJC at 9:13 PM
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