Or maybe—maybe—I just need to get sober.
My head keeps going around like this.
Gack asks me what’s wrong and I tell him I think I gotta be alone a minute—take a walk or whatever. He says that’s all cool and to call him. I leave like that. Sea Cliff is miles away, but I walk over there. I walk down Stanyan, down Park Presidio—then on down Clement. I listen to music—Miles Davis’s Live-Evil. My heart is beating, beating, beating.
I think about Jasper and Daisy. I think about my dad and stepmom. I think about Spencer and my friends in the program. I think about my mom and her husband and their two dogs. I think about my job at that rehab. I’d started taking some classes at Santa Monica College. I’d had a life. Suddenly I can’t even remember why I started using again in the first place. I wanna throw up, I think. I’m sweating from everywhere. I’m sweating from everywhere, but I’m real cold, too.
The avenues are deserted as always, but I feel like people are watching me from their windows as I pass. I know that’s not the most sane thought in the world. I call Lauren from a pay phone and she answers right away.
“Lauren,” I say, my voice cracking some. “I need help. I think I’m ready to get help.”
“Oh, baby,” she says. “Where are you?”
“Right near your house?”
“Then come over.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, no one’s home.”
So I walk over to Lauren’s house and already the sun is going. When she opens the door, I hold her and then I cry and cry. I sob so hard. All those damn corgis are all over—whining and trying to lick me and I just cry, cry, cry. I don’t know when I’ve ever cried like this before. It’s been a long time. I smell the soap in Lauren’s hair as she wraps herself around me. I can’t stop.
“It’ll be all right, baby.” She just repeats that over and over.
Eventually we make it down to her room and I’m still crying but we make love and all. A crack in the floor breaks open and we tumble in—swallowed by the eroticism of sex and our closeness to death. Our bones stick together and the joints pop, pop. I’m blind, or disoriented, or not really sure what. The blankness of white nothing pulls me out of myself for a moment and I feel very far away—disconnected. Somehow I fall asleep like that. I don’t dream.
I wake up with my jaw tight as hell from clenching it so hard.
Lauren’s shaking me. “Come on,” she says. “We gotta go—my parents are home.”
“I can’t stay here?”
“Candy called.” Lauren’s all dressed and everything. “She’s got some really good heroin in. She’s gonna cut us a deal, er, uh, something.”
“Baby, I ain’t got any money left really.”
“I have a little,” she says, all but pulling me out of bed. “We’ll get clean right after this—I promise.”
“Okay,” I say. “Yeah, I know this cool old hotel off Grant. We can hole up there till we’re done with the heroin.”
“Then we’ll come back here and my parents’ll help us.”
“I love you,” I say.
“Yeah, I love you, too.”
And so fast, fast, fast we’re outta there. It makes sense to me. We’ll just go on one more run—blow it all out till the end. I know it’s gonna be all right now. We shoot most of the crystal in her car down the block from her house. She hasn’t used much in a couple days, so she gets real high. I drive.
The San Remo Hotel is, like, fifty bucks a night—but nice. Dark wood paneling, strange potted ferns and things, thick carpeting. The place feels like a ship—warped, uneven, sinking.
We hook up a bunch of tar heroin from Candy and pack some stuff up to take to our small room. There are two twin beds. I look out the window at the clear sky—streaked white and blue. The sun is still warm, though falling—shattering the leaves, littering the ground with bright yellow and shadows. I watch the branches sway, sway—weeds growing up through cracks in the parched concrete—vines twisting up the brick walls across the street—green turning red and brown. It is all so, uh, lovely—but then I pull the shades down and turn to Lauren.
“This is it,” I say. “You ready?”
“Yeah, baby—let’s do it.”
I cook up the heroin so it is thick, syrupy black and add whatever’s left of the meth. Lauren actually hits real easy, but I gotta dig for fucking ever. I swear all the veins in my arm are straight collapsed. I finally find one in the back of my hand.
The bed is soaking and stinking—but as night turns to day, turns to night, turns to day, we don’t leave. The cleaning staff knocks but we tell them to go away. Maybe they’re talking about us, maybe they’re not.
I smoke cigarettes out the window and throw up several times. The only food we eat is candy from a vending machine down the hall. We drink water from the tap. Four days go by. Lauren’s phone rings and rings, but we never answer until all the heroin is gone and most all the money, too.
“Dad,” she slurs into the mouthpiece. “Dad, I’m ready. I’m ready to get help.”
He tells her to come home.
“What about Nic?”
He wants me to wait till the morning for the meeting with her therapist, but Lauren insists he let me stay the night.
He relents.
We get our stuff and leave quickly. I have to throw up a bunch more on the way to Lauren’s car. The world’s just going around and around and I’m blacking out. Clouds filled with gray, gray rain make ready to drop their heavy load on the streets below. It’s so cold that my teeth chatter and my stomach is tight, tight, tight.
Lauren has to drive. We’re both crying some now, as we get closer. I put my hand on her thigh.
Pulling up to the house, her dad comes running out to the car. He’s short and sort of round—with a tiny head and a dyed brown comb-over. He cries some as he hugs Lauren to him. He shakes my hand awkwardly and I try not to throw up all over him.
“Dad, please,” says Lauren. “We need to go sleep.”
“Okay, sweetie, Jules will be here soon with some medicine for you.”
Lauren has to support most of my weight as we walk. I’m actually sicker than she is. Those dogs bark at me all over the place and the smell of them makes me cringe. I’m blacking out. I lie in Lauren’s white bed and try to just focus on my breath going in and out—the way my lungs expand and contract like they do. I’m hyperventilating some and I try to calm myself, but it doesn’t really work. Lauren holds me, but the feel of her skin on me is suddenly repulsive.
“Please—please—I just need to lie here.” That’s all I can say. I maybe pass out for a moment, waking up only to take some pill Jules is shoving in my face.
“Thank you,” I say, but I throw up whatever it is he gives me. I roll out of the bed onto the floor and vomit into a blue plastic trash can.
I sleep like that on the carpet.
DAY 26
Waking up, the sickness has passed some. My clothes are soaked through with sweat. I pull on one of Lauren’s sweatshirts and stagger up the stairs into the living room. It’s raining outside and I can feel the damp underneath my skin. Lauren, Jules, Lauren’s dad, and some woman are sitting around the living-room table. Lauren is so pale and sunken in. They offer me coffee and I take it. I add lots of sugar. I also eat a piece of toast, but I feel them all staring at me with each bite I take. It seems like the noise of me chewing is, like, the loudest thing ever.
“We were just discussing treatment options for the both of you,” says Jules, in this voice that sounds like it should be from a guided meditation tape—soothing and serene. “Please, sit down.”
“Thanks.”
I’m introduced to Kathy, Lauren’s stepmom. She is definitely less than thrilled to meet me. She has a creased, overtanned face with blond highlights and a lot of makeup. Her lips are thin, lined, and painted bright red. She mostly says nothing.
Jules explains that he wants to get Lauren and me into our own place—a furnished monthly hotel off
Van Ness. He knows the owner and he will certainly keep an eye on us. As well, we will be randomly drug-tested throughout the week. We will have to go to seven twelve-step meetings a week and meet with Jules twice a week—separately. Both Lauren and I will have to get jobs and Lauren is no longer allowed to work for her mother. Her parents will pay for food and rent.
I just nod my head. It sounds perfect, you know? I’ll be taken care of. I won’t have to worry about money and whatever.
“What if we test dirty?” asks Lauren.
Jules looks at Lauren’s father.
“Then all deals are off,” Jules says. “You’ll either have to go back into a residential treatment program, or you’re on your own.”
“I don’t know,” says Lauren. She starts talking about why what they’re saying isn’t fair and now I’m trying to talk her into taking it. Her dad and Jules seem grateful that I’m so enthusiastic. We are all trying to convince her now.
And so it’s decided. They’re gonna take care of us while we get back on our feet. We all shake hands and then Lauren’s dad asks if he can talk to me privately. He puts a hand on my shoulder and leads me into this study area. There are books all over the shelves and a white stuffed tiger-head rug on the floor.
“Nic,” he says, “I appreciate everything you’re trying to do. I know you care about Lauren very much and that means a lot to me. But I have to ask you one favor—I need you to stay away for a few nights. Just till we get your place set up. I want to have Lauren here, alone. We have to talk over some things and I’d just feel safer that way.”
“Yeah, I understand.”
“You do? Excellent. Thank you.”
He shakes my hand again firmly and I try to meet his eyes. They are distant blue, like Lauren’s.
When we tell her I’m leaving, she kinda throws a tantrum. I’m just trying to keep on her dad’s good side, you know? I mean, what a fucking opportunity, right? I wanna do whatever he says at this point. Plus, the sickness is coming back and I figure I should at least say good-bye to Gack and maybe Candy, too—maybe get high one more time—just one more time. I’ve still got a little money anyway.
So I call Gack and we agree to meet back at Church and Market. The rain’s stopped, so I’m able to walk to the bus stop without much trouble and ride down there. I sit toward the back, looking at some graffiti drawn on the seat in front of mine. As we sway and stutter down Geary, I think about the possibility of me staying clean in this city. It feels impossible again. Not that I don’t want to—but it’s just so easy to get on a bus, call Gack—justify it to myself. I guess it’s that way in every city—I just know this one so intimately. The thought scares me some.
Gack shows up with a bag of a few clean needles and he goes off with twenty dollars of mine while I wait for Candy. I’m leaning my back against this video store and watching all the street kids trying out whatever hustle they got on those who pass. Some of ’em are just straight-up begging—ain’t got no hustle at all. I’ve got that cold sweating again from the heroin withdrawal and I ache, ache, ache all over.
Candy pulls up some minutes later and I get in the passenger door. Her skin’s broken out and her mascara is starting to run down, but she’s still fucking striking as hell.
“You only getting half a gram today?”
“Yeah,” I say. “This is it. I’m getting clean.”
She sighs, lighting a Parliament Menthol cigarette.
“You goin’ away then?”
“No, I’m stayin’ around.”
“All right, then, don’t throw away my number.”
“No, we’re done.”
“We’ll see.” She hands over the wax paper ball and tells me she’s gotta get going.
“You ever think about stopping?” I ask.
She puts on a pair of big sunglasses before turning toward me. “Honey, we’ve all tried. I’ll see you around. You’re a good kid.”
I leave.
Gack’s reaction is basically the same as Candy’s. We hike up to Dolores Park and shoot the speed (and heroin for me) in someone’s doorway. Everything is all cleared out in my head suddenly. I feel a surge of power and find myself thinking, thinking, thinking back to what Candy said.
“Yeah,” says Gack, walking down to the still wet playground. “I went to some twelve-step meetings and shit. I didn’t really get it. They say the average life expectancy of tweakers like us is around three years. I’ve been going for at least twice that and I’m doin’ all right. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“But I just feel like I’m not even getting that high anymore—and I’m outta money, you know?”
“There’s always money. We’ll figure it out.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Trust me,” he says. “You only get to live this life once. I’d rather be blissed out for a short time than fucking bored and miserable till I’m like ninety or something.”
“Yeah, I’ve thought about that too.”
We’re quiet awhile after that—or at least, I am. Gack is kinda rambling like he does, but I’m not paying attention. I try to remember—was I happy before all this? The fucking tweak won’t let me think. It tries to tell me I wasn’t. Maybe that’s the truth.
“This is life,” says Gack, shaking me. “This is living. Every day is an adventure.”
“I don’t know,” I say after a moment. “Every day is the same thing. Gack, I love you for everything you’ve done for me—but I don’t think I can go on like this. Maybe you could get help too.”
“No thanks,” he says, smiling. “But, yeah, I love you too. And we’ll see each other soon. It’ll do you good to clean up for a while—especially get off that fucking junk. That’s some nasty-ass shit.”
“Word.”
“Word.”
We walk together down Valencia, talking shit—just keeping it light, you know?
We walk all the way to the TL and it’s dark and starting to rain again some. I say good-bye to Gack, then call Lauren. She begs me to sneak into the house and spend the night. I figure since it’s raining, that’s the best option I got. Her dad’ll either understand, or he won’t. I don’t care. I shoot the rest of the dope and it’s all I can do to get on the bus again. My hands shake so bad that I can’t get the dollar into the little machine. I have to hand it to the bus driver and get him to do it. He looks bored, or annoyed, or both.
Lauren doesn’t even bother trying to hide the fact that I’m there. She lets me in through the front door, dragging my loaded ass down the stairs. When she sees how fucking high I am she tries to get me to give her whatever’s left of the drugs—but I don’t have any. She pretends to be less pissed off than she is. My world fades out into an opiated fantasy.
DAY 27
I have been throwing up all night.
Sleeping and then jerking awake, dry-heaving into that plastic trash can. I lie on the floor, on the bare carpet. Lauren keeps trying to get me to come up in bed with her, but moving makes my stomach turn, so I lie still. Plus there is the smell of her and the smell of that house, those dogs, cigarettes, Gatorade, and leftover Chinese food. The stench is overpowering. I retch over and over. Everything is heightened, but sickeningly so. At one point Jules is there, standing over me and giving me a tablet of methadone. I throw that up too.
Lauren is whining, crying for me to hold her, and I just want her to shut up.
“You don’t care about me,” she says. “You don’t love me.”
My skin itches and the top of my head itches and I scratch until I’m bloody. “Lauren, man, I’m sick.”
I am so tired—this painful, aching tired. I just want to sleep and be left alone—or maybe just to die there. I can’t take it. I drift in and out of hallucinations. At one point I think I’m walking around with Gack, or that he is there at the house. I can’t tell what is real and what isn’t. My spine digs into the floor, but I can’t move, I just can’t.
I have to get out of there—I have to. Please, I mean, please, I?
??m ready to do anything.
After sleeping some more, I wake up and it is night. Lauren has gone somewhere. I pull myself up on the tattered couch, pushing aside all the clothes and things that are scattered everywhere. The room is all dark and I’m sweating. My breathing is strained. For some reason my shirt is off, my ribs sticking through the skin—tracks up and down both arms. From where I’d missed the vein while shooting up, my arms are swollen and aching. I’m broken out all over and thin, so goddamn thin.
I close my eyes, tears streaming down suddenly. I don’t know what to do. I think back on all the stories I’ve heard at twelve-step meetings. I think back to what my sponsor said. Broken down, defeated, they’d all asked for help from a power that they called God. And so that’s what I do—I pray. I pray from somewhere deep inside me. I pray out loud to a God that I don’t even believe in. The words just start coming out.
Spencer used to talk to me about God. He talked a lot about God, but I always dismissed it. I was a militant atheist. I thought the belief in God was totally backward, delusional, and ignorant. Spencer would talk to me about prayer and meditation, but I basically avoided ever experimenting with it. I just couldn’t believe, there was no way. But Spencer sure did talk about it a lot.
Tonight I pray. Maybe it isn’t the first time, but it is the first time I pray with sincerity. I am desperate. And so I cry and ask God for help.
“God,” I say. “Look, I don’t believe in you or anything, but if you’re there, I need your help. I can’t do this anymore. I’ll do anything. PLEASE.”
Nothing happens. No flash of light, no burning bush, nothing.
What I do is, I call home.
My dad answers on the third ring. “Hello?”
That voice—my dad’s sweet voice.
I cry so hard. “Dad…I…”
“Jesus, Nic. What are you doing calling here?”