November 4

April 1st 1998: The Winter / Springtime Episode

I woke in a cold sweat tonight, shaking from this dream, it’s the same one I’ve had for years now. Good God, has it been that long?? So much time has passed, so much has changed in my life, so much gained, so much lost, but still the visions come to me, clear as you would imagine fine crystal to be. Not that cheap Wal-Mart special, I’m talking high quality here, as if it were happening before my eyes. Here and now.
I awake to masked and distant figures hovering over me, everything is out of focus but as the images come together, as the figures fall into place, they’re looking at me inquisitively, as if some novelty item. I see them poking and prodding but I can’t feel a thing. I see movement in their lips and from the nature of their faces I know it’s about me but I can’t hear anything, sound hasn’t kicked in yet.
As my senses of sight, sound and touch slowly start to come back to me; I look beyond the figures, deep into the sterile white of the ceiling. I’m as confused as I have ever been in my life as to where I am and just what the hell am I doing here? I consider myself a man but I am not afraid to say when I’m scared and right now, right here I’m scared.
And as my sense of fear overrides my uncertainty and I regain the senses that I once took so for granted, I attempt movement, and that, right there, is when my fear really takes over. I CAN’T MOVE. My motor skills, they’re fine, but the whole world just came crashing down in an ungodly sobering reality. I’m tied up. All my limbs are attached to bedposts and I; I’m in the hospital. I attempt to flail my whole body, just trying to defy these restraints. Hoping, wishing, praying that this just isn’t true, that I can move, but nothing. The only thing that comes out is a violent thrashing of my head‚ I think I’m screaming but I can’t hear it‚ I think I’m crying.
The whole world is still blurry to me, sight and sound are arriving in fragments, I hear words like “death” and “critical,” I know there was something mentioned of “adrenaline.” Broken images are filtering through of doctors and orderlies, all very vague and distant. I’m losing consciousness again I can feel it; I’m starting not to care anymore not about the restraints, not about the creepy, contorted faces of doctors. I feel myself slipping, slowly slipping away and I’ve accepted the fact that I’ve brought this all upon myself. I’ve accepted that when you shoot heroin as a profession you will land yourself in this sort of predicament. Hell, this is not the first time I’ve been here, and I know now that this is not going to be my last. I brought all this upon myself and I don’t care anymore, I just really don’t care.
All the images are starting to unravel again, the sound is getting very choppy, the way it does in a movie theater when the sound goes out, it all distorts in a cacophony of loud and soft, then finally nothing. I’m losing consciousness again, or can this be something more, is this the acceptance that comes with the end? Is this the complete and utter feeling of contentment that comes with death?
I think I’m still screaming, I think I’m still crying, my head is still thrashing, but this has all become a matter of instinct, I’m not even thinking about it anymore. I’m fighting to keep myself from fading in and out of consciousness and in my disjointed vision I see an image that brings my reeling to a screeching halt. My sister is watching. Behind a cadre of nurses, my little sister is watching me, my little sister. My flailing, my screaming, they all stop as I lock eyes with her. She’s staring right at me; she’s been staring at me the whole time. Her eyes, my God, her eyes are tinged with such an incredible sadness. I’ve never seen her cry before, not really, nothing beyond a scraped knee. She’s crying. I want to howl out to her, “Don’t look at me, don’t fucking look at me” but nothing comes out. I try again, with everything that’s left in me, I want to let out a banshee’s wail, “Don’t fucking look at me.” Again, nothing‚ her eyes are deadlocked with mine, and as much as I wish I could just gouge out my own eyes so that I can’t see her, I can’t fucking look away.
I’m choking back the tears now, everything has become ultimately clear, I am blatantly conscious and God, I wish I wasn’t. Please kill me, strike me down, I’ve never asked for anything as much as I am asking for this my Lord, Please Kill Me! But, to no avail. My prayers go unanswered and I’m stuck here in this, for lack of a better word, shame. I do not want my sister to see me like this; I want my clothes back on. I strain to look at my arms and the almost freeway of needle marks, these craters of disgrace. I want to run to a corner, a cave and bandage them up, not coming out till they are fully healed just so she wouldn’t have to witness them. DON’T FUCKING LOOK AT ME!
They stuck a catheter in my urethra next. Now, don’t get me wrong, no matter how much I’ve racked my brain, there is not a thing I could possibly imagine more excruciatingly painful than a large, cold, sharp object being inserted into the tip of my penis. But I would take it any and every day in comparison to the pain in having to look into my sister’s eyes for one more second. I would take it any day compared to this disgrace I have harbored everyday since that early Sunday morning.
I cried out in agony as I felt millimeter by millimeter of that long, cold, metal needle knit its way up inside my most private of areas. I screamed and erupted in spasms of torment as violation slowly moved northwards from an area that, in my wildest of dreams, I would never imagine being penetrated. In my jerky outbursts, something went wrong. Despite their best efforts to hold me down, to stop my movement, something screwed up and a geyser of blood sprung up from my nether regions. The blood didn’t seem to stop, it flowed like a fountain and I felt it gathering at the small of my back then begin to travel northbound till pools collected at the nape of my neck.
I was finally granted my wish, my sister looked away, she couldn’t take it anymore, the blood, the cries, she just couldn’t take it. But the damage had been done. I believe it when they say that the doorway to people’s soul are in the eyes, bright with hope and happiness or dim with sadness. And the sadness I witnessed was enough to last me more lifetimes than it could possibly take to repent for all the damage I’ve done.
I don’t remember much else, or at least, I don’t care to remember much else. The visions of that cold March morning have stuck with me ever since. And that, to me is more than I care to ever remember. There was more, I know there was a lot more, but I’ve hidden the rest of that in a cell so far beyond my grasp and have thrown away the key.
But I tried, believe you me; I tried to atone for my sins of that morning and almost every morning thereafter. That night I cried myself to sleep, swearing myself off the dope for good. And like most dirt-ditch prayers, it lasted a little longer than a week. And the burden I carried from that morning lasted me the next fifteen years. Fifteen years, where so full of shame, I drew it up into a syringe a shot it back into myself. My only possible solution to cope with that and my incalculable number of what I view to be sins. Sins, which I have and will continue to sanctify until the day, when my wish is granted, I die.

Category: spring, story, winter | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 8

April 4th 1998: Smack – Kanike

I have done the most terrible thing, probably the most appalling, despicable thing that I ever have or ever will do… at least this week. I spent the entire evening alone with Janice. That, of course is a good thing and usually, even now, I enjoy the time I spend with her. But today there’s a slight hitch, you see for the past few weeks, there hasn’t been a single day where I didn’t score and today, against all odds, have found myself without any gear. So here I am, I can feel slight feelings of withdrawals coming over me and there’s no way I can score because Janice doesn’t know I do smack. To make matters even worse, she stayed out tonight especially for me, even though she’s dead tired. So what am I supposed to do? I said “Fuck it, because I’m with Janice I won’t score and I’ll just handle my dope sickness. Besides they’re not that bad anyway?”

Less than an hour later, after trying to bide the time, make it go by faster, my thoughts evade everything else and focus on one and only one thing. I finally succumb to my cravings for heroin… I MUST SCORE! But I still have a dilemma here, I can’t just ditch Janice and I certainly can’t let her know that I do heroin. So I have only one option left. I casually “persuade” her to try smack. (God, I have no morals) I also tell her “I haven’t done it in ages” and “I just want to try it again, see what it’s like” Bullshit! With a reaction that comes off as both eagerness and reluctance, she agrees. Now, I really don’t want her to do it, cause she’s never tried it before and I don’t want her to like it too much. So we both make an agreement, a damn near blood oath, “We’ll only do it once together, then we won’t ever touch it again” More bullshit!

Scoring, as usual, was easy but having Janice along with me was a real added bonus. Whenever we came across some cops, all I had to do was hold her hand and any tincture of paranoia that I had about disintegrated. Plus, I made her stash the bag in her bra for extra protection. So, hand in hand, we walked out of ‘Tei’, like some sort of cute junkie couple. I only let Janice sniff a very tiny line, and I myself did the same.

Later, I confined myself to my bathroom sanctuary to fix by a means and amount which I found more suitable and acceptable. The amount that I gave her was definitely enough – she was very fucked. Whilst smacked, wearing only shorts and a tiny T-shirt, Janice started to scratch herself all over, focusing a lot on her more, shall we say ‘sexual’ areas such as her breasts, legs and crotch. With her constant rubbing and scratching, I got a hard-on like a metal fucking pole, a rarity these days due to the habit that I’ve accumulated. Later on, Janice started to become sick and extremely fucking moody, telling me to “go away” she was violently sick and yelling at me about every fucking little thing. I didn’t mind though, I understood because of the condition she was in, so I let it slide.

She passed out after about an hour-long toilet-hugging session. I used for the rest of the night and just watched Janice sleep, I was thinking of what kind of dreams she was having, what was her sub-conscious thinking in its heroin-fueled rest? That and I wrestled with the guilt of having made Janice use for my own narcotic need, I was consumed by this guilt but dismissed it, still, as much as I pushed it away, the shame came back. Why did I do it? Was it really because of my ‘hunger’ for dope or was it something more? Could it be this pent up idea that I have in my head? This dream, if you will, that dope will bring us closer together. Dope can be something we can share. Either that or I feel so fucking trapped in this goddamn drug addiction. I feel so alone, so isolated from everything that could possibly make sense that I have to drag someone down with me, someone who I supposedly care about nonetheless, just so I can feel a part of something even if it is only this. But of course, this brings up another question, quite an important one. Do I really care about her? Do I? If I really did care about her, then why in the name of all that is holy and pure, would I even think about making her do heroin? Heroin, this drug, if you can really even call it that, that has made me so full of shame and self-hatred that I cannot even bear to look at myself in the mirror anymore.

I called up Chris and talked to him for the rest of the night about the terrible thing that I had done… despicable!

Category: kanike, smack, story | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 9

April 8th 1998: Fight Night

 

Okay, I know, even though we both promised that “no, I’ll never touch heroin again” I was in a bind. Here I was again, no dope and a girl at my side who just won’t give me any room to breathe. So I had to bring it up, I just had to, but she was easy to comply, so who was I to complain?

The events of the evening were pointless, to say the least, Chris, Janice, Jill and I just hanging around in some bar. Don’t get me wrong, I like hanging around in bars, it’s a great source of procrastination but there’s really not a whole lot happening on a Wednesday night.

I’m not the world’s biggest drinker; right now I’m too busy with old Morpheus to bother with liquor. I traded the bar for the corner store because I wasn’t too thrilled about paying two hundred percent mark-up on a goddamn Coca-Cola. I ran into some tourist girl out in front of the store who was looking to score some weed. I had actually unloaded some a couple days ago and wasn’t bothered to find a connection right now. But I knew that this girl had money and I wanted it to be mine. So, I threw everything I could at her, speed, ecstasy, acid and finally we both found common ground with heroin. I offered to go cop her a bag (of course at a hundred percent markup) but she was leaving in the morning and didn’t want a whole lot, so I cut her about ten bucks worth from what I had on me and charged her fifty.

The rest of the night is something I really don’t want to remember. Janice was fucking ripped the whole night off of the smack that I gave her; she was acting like she was having PMS a thousand times over. Whenever she talked to me, all that would come out was rancor and pique. I’m crazy about the girl, I really am and anything she says to me, especially spite spewing from her dragon’s tongue, I take personally. So, I started crying, yes crying, and say what you will about how much of a fucking pansy I am but I was crying. So, we’re sitting there at McDonald’s at five AM and she comes up to me with “why the fuck are you crying?” I’m sorry but how fucking cold hearted is that shit?

We apologized and she finally went home at around six. I don’t understand how this is supposed to work; a guy has to say sorry in a situation with a girl, even if it’s the girl’s Goddamn fault? Where on earth is the fucking logic in that?

After sending her off on her way, Chris and I walked the streets for a while; we ducked into the Kimberly Hotel to kill some time, waiting for the video game arcade across the street to open up.

In an attempt to steal some cigarettes from the almost abandoned Gift Kiosk, we came across the keys to the cash register. After a good twenty-five minutes of fumbling, we got our hands into nearly two thousand dollars, which we so heroically liberated from its cash register confines. With our motives changed, we gave up our plans of video game stupor and both headed our separate ways, each with a thousand bucks in hand.

As for the whole Janice, fighting thing, that is the last thing on my mind right now, with the money in my hand I could omit her presence from my mind completely for almost a week, lost in a glassy eyed reverie.

Category: fight, kanike, story | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 10

April 16th 1998: Macao, Withdrawals, the Kiss

We packed our bags and we were off. I went to Macao for a short vacation with my mother, sister, Janice and my sister’s friend, Sarah. It’s been enjoyable enough; we’ve been Shopping, Sightseeing and Swimming, the three S’s of what people are supposed to do on a vacation.

Well enjoyable for everyone else I guess, but not me. It had totally slipped my mind that we were even going, so on the morning that we left, I found that I only had a little smack to last me the entire weekend. Now this was a dire situation, this residual stash, it would maybe last me through the day but it sure as hell wasn’t going to cut it for three!

The first day there was no big deal, we left, checked into our hotel, settled and went to eat. About halfway through the day, I went to fix and surprise, surprise, I only had enough for one. What was I to do? I had planned to make this last for at least two days. It was already the early evening and I was starting to feel lethargic from not using all day, I held my breath and I fixed… I was going to feel this in the morning, oh God, I going to feel this in the morning.

And did I! We all started off the morning with a nice little swim and sunbathing session, I of course didn’t swim. And that’s when it started. Just a little lethargy, the little aches and pains would sort of creep up on you and you could shake them off, a little disorientation but nothing much more than really ‘uncomfortable.’

The trip continued. We all ventured around Macao seeing the sights going here, there etceteras, etceteras and then it hit, like an explosion, BOOM! Wrecking havoc throughout my entire body. The pain was creeping and crawling through every single muscle in my entire body. They say there are 205 bones in the human body and believe you me; I could feel every single one of them as pain started seeping into them. And there was not a single thing that I could do about it.

I was at least 50 miles away from anywhere where I could possibly cop, it might as well have been a million because there was no way that I was leaving this island before tomorrow. As our troop waddled along the streets, I ducked into every single pharmacy that crossed our path, seeing if maybe they had something… anything, for the pain, maybe some panadeine or maybe even some old school paregoric, anything with some form of opiate in it. But no such luck seems that you need a prescription for anything that contains any kind of opiate in this city, backward ass, motherfucking place.

The rest of the little entourage forged onwards to dinner, I instead opted to head back to the hotel, leaving my mom, Pilar, Janice and Sarah for a ‘girls night out.’

During the cab ride home, I passed out in the back seat, leaving the cab driver to yell and prod at me back to consciousness when we reached our destination. And as I stumbled back up to the hotel room, I crashed once again as I caught sight of the bed, not bothering to remove any of my clothing but instead focusing on drowning out all of the heroin induced pain that ravaged my body, with sleep.

When I woke I found myself feeling better, not a whole lot, but at least I could move without anguishing pain. Also, my mother has left Macao to head back home, leaving just ‘the kids’ alone. With the parental supervision, gone, the rest of the group began to cut loose. We headed out to a bar across the way from the hotel, a quaint little dive, trying to be more than it really was. As soon as we got there I tried to pump in as many drinks as possible, to try and relax, note the emphasis on the word ‘try.’ When the first of the drinks went down, I started to ease up a little; I started to forget about the pain that was burrowing its way into the deepest recesses of my body. I sat down with yet another drink, whiskey if I recall, and just listened to this blues band play.

The girls were playfully flirting with the bass player, this gargantuan of a black man, an oddity out here in China in general and especially over here in Macao. Graciously acknowledging the girls’ playfulness, the bass player kindly paid for all our drinks. I, of course not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, ordered up, adding more drinks to my increasingly high tally.

Finishing up our drinks, we all headed outside to the beach. There, Pilar and Sarah started setting off fire works, leaving Janice and I to sit in the sand, talking with each other. That’s when it happened…the two of us were just sitting there, talking, nothing special, and nothing out of the ordinary. I looked at her and she looked at me, she moved in, she kissed me. I was shocked, what was I to do? The only thing I could do, kiss her back, relishing in the thought of my dreams coming true as we made out together. After only a short while, a motorcycle passing by interrupted us. As our lips parted all I could do was let out a “What was that?” immediately, she turned away apologetically, letting out a number of “I’m sorry-s.” She got up and ran over to the other two girls, leaving me to sit there, contemplating what just took place. I was happy, actually I think ecstatic is a better word, because “maybe she did have feelings for me after all?” but at the same time I couldn’t help but feel angry about it. I mean here I was, I had practically spent the whole last year trying to get over her and think of her as just a friend, like the way she says she feels for me. But if her feelings were stronger than that, I had to do something about it. Now here I was, all locked up in this dark cell of confusion, with shards of anger and joy shedding light, periodically. Worst of all, I was really starting to feel sick now!

Back at our hotel room they all decided to call it a night at around 3 AM, I though, couldn’t sleep, this pain which now controlled my body, rendered me unable to sleep. Leaving me alone in the darkness with this God-awful pain and this shitty fucking Asian MTV as my only company.

The sweat was practically pouring off my body by the bucket-load, my sheets got so wet that I just threw them off the bed, bad move on my part, cause now the mattress was wet. Every muscle in my body was exploding in exquisite, excruciating pain. I was freezing, wrapped in a sweat drenched blanket in my best impression of a fetal pose, my whole body was shaking, I, going along with it as if trying to shake out the pain… it didn’t work. I smothered my face in the mattress, trying to distract myself from this agony, which has full control over my every muscle movement. I felt like I had been lying there all night, but each minute passed as if hours if not days. I knew that time hadn’t passed that quickly though, for the damn Asian MTV had only gone through about their fifth God-damned Backstreet Boys song.

“I can’t stay here any longer” I get up, trying to walk, or at least hobble, off this pain. I go to the bathroom, I repeatedly masturbate, my own ejaculation, one of the only things that took away from this suffering, if only for a few brief seconds… and at this point, every second counted.

Between each ‘session’ I crawled backed to the bed and tried to get some sort of rest, all in vain. Each time I closed my eyes, I honed in on every single burst of pain rampaging through my entire body. I tried, I desperately tried to sleep for I was painfully tired but the pain would not let up, not even for just a second, neither would these mother-fucking Backstreet Boys!

I continued to toss and turn in my bed; nothing was the slightest bit comfortable, until I gave up at about 6AM. At that time I knew that every single one of my efforts to try and get some sleep were completely futile. I threw on my sweaty three-day old clothes and wandered upstairs to the Sports Club. There, I made a useless attempt at breakfast, after poking at a piece of French toast, I pushed away my plate in complete disgust. I proceeded to the Men’s changing room, where I spent an hour in the hot tub, where the steaming hot water slowly relieved some of my torturing pain. As much as I was enjoying the hot tub, I left after I accidentally threw up in it.

The whole time, when I was trying to sleep, in the hot tub, bathroom, throwing up, I was still thinking about the kiss, still in this utter state of confusion. I didn’t have the slightest idea of what I was going to do. I was insanely confused and dope sick. There was only one thing left for me to take comfort in, we were already on a bus, making our way to the ferry back to Hong Kong. And back in Hong Kong, I could put an end to this horrifying misery.

So as the sounds of Operation Ivy’s “Sound System” slightly calmed my nerves, my face drew a sickly smile… only five hours to go.

 

Category: kiss, macao, story, withdrawals | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 11

April 17th 1998: Two Down

Yesterday, as soon as I returned from Macao, I immediately headed out to ‘‘Tei’’ at a neck-breaking speed to score. I picked up two grams of some really good dope, I got two cause after the ordeal of the last few days, there was no way in fucking hell that I was even going to come close to risking that again. The rest of the night was spent with some pretty mediocre friends, this and that, I didn’t really care what I did, I had heroin, and I was satisfied … finally.

I woke up in a haze from the amount of smack I had consumed last night, of course I wasn’t one to stop a good thing, I fixed before I even took my morning piss. Just to get me rolling for the day.

I have to keep up the relations with my family, so I went out with my sister today. We cruised around and did a little shopping. Pilar was the one to do all the shopping; I hardly had any money and any that I did have needed to be conserved for later donation to the Patrick Morais Heroin Addiction Foundation. But when I did see something that tickled my fancy I would try and convince Pilar that it was something that SHE really needed.

I was planning on meeting Janice in a few hours so as soon as I got home, I figured I’d fix, it had already been a few hours. I positioned myself, as usual, in my bathroom; I reached down to my shoe, in a rather large compartment that I had, quite creatively, constructed by cutting a large pocket into the tongue of my size 14s. No dope! Suffering from initial shock, I frantically searched around the pocket, nothing! I took off the shoe, looked in there, nothing! Trying the other, nothing! My search progressed; I searched every pocket, every orifice on me, twice. And still nothing! My searched moved beyond my bathroom safe-haven. In my room, I started under the bed, nothing! I pulled up the carpet, nothing! Checked my clothes, nothing! By the end of my hour long search, my bed, desk, tables, chairs, closet, everything, had been moved and turned over and moved again, all my clothes lay in a mound by the side of the carpet that I’d pulled off the floor and heaped in a pile. Now my room was barren, ransacked, it was empty, except for the mounds of furniture and clothes heaped into one corner; it was nothing more than four white walls and a wooden floor. And as for the dope…nothing!

Out of breath, I slumped into my heap of clothes, defeated, I accepted my loss, I’m a sore fucking loser but I put on a good show of convincing myself that I accepted it, it was gone, fuck! I picked up the wall clock that lay beside me on the floor, and now, I was late to meet Janice, fuck!

We went together to the airport to see off some friends, hers at least, they were more like associates if you’d ask me. It was an emotional scene; people were crying and saying their good byes as if they were going off to war instead of away to college. Me, I just didn’t give a shit, my mind was elsewhere, off in Mr. Dopeman’s, scoring a replacement for what I had lost tonight. They boarded their flights; everyone gave their long good-byes and I just watched the clock.

I went with Janice to eat some food; I picked at a piece of fried chicken and sipped my luke-warm Coca Cola watching the seconds on the clock. As if in some sort of life threatening situation, I sent her on her way home and immediately dropped my charming façade, I hopped the train to ‘Tei’. As I sat on the bench waiting for the two stops to come, I visualized the score, not the using, but instead on walking down that alley, passing the hookers and crossing the street, walking through the basketball court over to the methadone clinic. And as the train came to a halt, I bolted out of the train station, following all the procedures I had envisioned to a T. I picked up another bag at 11:30PM and treated myself to a cab ride home. I tapped the big, grocery store bag wrapped ball of heroin that rested in my top pocket and for now, I was complete.

 

Category: lost, score, story | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 12

April 19th 1998: Lost Enlightenment – Talk of Kiss

I don’t know whether it was out of obligation, boredom, or maybe something deeper but went to church this morning. Yes, I’ll admit it, I’m a Catholic – baptism, communion and confirmation and apart from the last two years or so, I went to church almost every Sunday since I could remember. And I hated every second of it.

Despite my animosity towards the physical act of going to church, I still somehow found a certain level of comfort there, you know? A kind of ‘everything will be alright’ feeling, I know I couldn’t appreciate that when I was younger, but now amidst the turmoil and confusion that is my life, I want to see if maybe its still there. Because I’ll tell you, right now whatever it is that I have that passes for a life these days seems to be coated with complete and utter chaos. All the dope, the petty crime, turmoil with every single person I come into contact with, and now, as I think it has always been, I realize how much I truly despise myself and the things I do. So this is it, this is why I decided to go to mass today; ‘cause at least it might be some place where I find a little serenity.

So, I sat there for an entire hour, I really wanted to give this a shot, I took in every word of the sermon as if it were oxygen, essential to living. I nodded at the gospel; I stood when I was supposed to stand, kneeled when I was supposed to kneel and sang when I was supposed to sing.

I gave it a real, honest to goodness shot, and after that hour of religious bombardment was up, after I put my donation in the basket and made the sign of the cross at communion, even after I prayed to God like a mother fucker to “Please, just let me have some peace” What did I find? NOTHING, not a goddamn thing, no spiritual enlightenment, no sense of comfort or even hope, nothing, just complete and utter emptiness like I have always felt.

It made me sad, very sad, the feeling that there was nothing, not a goddamned thing that would make me feel, just a little, more complete, not even church. I was disenchanted by the whole ordeal, was God not there for me? Had he given up on me like all the others? He couldn’t have, I mean even when everything around you has been turned to shit and you don’t know where you stand, at least God is supposed to be there… right?

Oh God! There really is nothing left for me. Before I went to church I thought I had some spiritual enlightenment to eventually look forward to but was more lost now than I was before. I bolted up out of my pew, pissed off and disappointed, I didn’t know whether I wanted to cry or to scream “FUCK YOU!” to the altar. So I forfeited the decision making process and headed to the men’s room, and fixed in church.

I sat alone for the rest of the day, just kind of reflective, I was still really confused about this whole Janice situation and despite how much dope I put in myself, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that God too had abandoned me. I just sat there for hours staring off at a blank wall as if what I had that passed for a thought process could somehow make everything be okay. Needless to say it didn’t work, nothing became okay, it just got worse and my drug soaked brain ran circles around itself on the issues at hand while I realized that I needed to decorate my walls, they were looking desperately desolate… much like everything else in my life.

As much as I could try to talk to God, it didn’t seem as if he would answer me any time soon. I talked Janice so that I could hopefully get at least one of these issues resolved.

She called me, which is odd because she hardly ever does these days. We proceeded with the typical ambiguous chit-chat. Then after a while, I couldn’t help but to talk about what happened this past week. I really don’t have the energy to get into the specifics of the conversation but it really wasn’t the cathartic experience that I was quite hoping for. She dodged the topic as much as she could then just made vague statements that hid what she really thought about the situation. I understand that it may not be the most comfortable subject to talk about so I just kind of dropped it after I saw that she really didn’t want to get into it.

I don’t know maybe I’m just old fashioned you know, I’m not really hip with the times I mean I still have the same music in my CD player since 1993 for Christ’s sake, but to me kissing stands for something, its not a completely plutonic thing unless its stated as so. You know, I’ve had my share of drunken female encounters but I was the only one in any form of drunken stupor that evening. Anyways, what I’m really trying to get at is that I just want to know if it meant anything. And if it didn’t, great, but please tell me why then, was it out of boredom? what?

We both just agreed to leave it at that and kind of bury it right then and there. It really wasn’t the closure I sought but I just didn’t have it in me to be pulling fucking teeth this evening. There was more chit-chat and eventually I just trailed off. Yet again I was lost and confused, twice in one day on two paramount matters. I told myself “I don’t care” and fixed to try and realize that thought before I passed out in my chair.

Category: church, kiss, story | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 13

April 20th 1998: And Again, Disgust

The sunlight breaks through tattered curtains, bleeding pristine shafts of light over me. Lying enveloped in the virgin dawn, I realize that at some point in my life I would have been in awe of the sheer beauty and grace of this sight but now I am just annoyed by it. I wish someone would please just turn it off. 

As daylight pesters me I slime out of bed and groan… it’s Monday and damn it I’ve finally got to go back to school. I opt out of the shower, changing clothes routine, I haven’t showered in weeks and if I didn’t know better I’d swear to the Gods that I only owned one pair of pants. Besides a ritual of that magnitude requires an occasion of the utmost significance, I mean its high school; I’m not getting married.

The whole way over to school, the past week slowly came back to me in fragments. Had all this shit happened in only one week? Fighting, stealing, and then the whole Macao incident, that one hit me hardest and I had to fight from feeling queasy over the whole ordeal. Just thinking about it made me physically tired.

To be honest, this whole last week was just too much for me, I mean nothing groundbreaking took place, nothing entirely new, just the same old redundant bullshit but I’m sitting here feeling confused and again, tired. I really don’t know if I can handle this going back to school shit. Granted, it’s only been a week or so since the spring break started but to tell you the truth, I haven’t really been there in what must be months already.  So why the hell am I even going, you ask? I don’t know, I really don’t have the foggiest of notions. Well, maybe it just makes it seem like everything else isn’t so bad if I actually put forth the effort to show up for school. Does that make any sense? I’ll reiterate; if I put forth the effort and look like I’m an upstanding, law-abiding member of society, there’s just a slight, slight chance that I could possibly con myself into believing the same. Better?

I walk into school and the sight of these people all but sickens me to my stomach, with their “look at me, look at me, I’m so cool, look at me! FUCK YOU!

I haven’t faced a day sober in more days than I could possibly count and there is no way in hell that I’m going to start now.  I make a beeline for the nearest bathroom, dodging numerous greetings and salutations. I slam the door louder than I’ve ever slammed a door before, hoping it will give off the ‘Do Not Disturb’ vibe that I hope to achieve. I mix up, it’s seven – thirty in the morning, I can’t think of a better time.

I sit in attendance letting every bit of the heroin absorb itself into my every cell so that I might block this day out of my range of vision. I make my way back down to the bathroom in the few minutes I have before class so that I can have a cigarette. And with that, I am officially and completely balls-to-the-wall, loaded. I look outside again but the people are still there. In desperation I go to my class so that I may spend an hour or so trying to catch a nod or two, its better that looking at these faces any longer.

After nodding at a computer, trying to look productive, I head back down to one of my many sanctuaries (bathrooms). On the way down, I rediscover that just the sight of these people is literally making me queasy, why do they have to sit right outside my bathroom?  I duck inside, making as little eye contact as possible; I slink to the floor and smoke another cigarette.  Some kid comes in and bums a few drags from me before the next class starts, I give it to him just so that I don’t have to talk to him anymore.  Class is starting but I light another cigarette just to avoid having to make conversation with any of these people.

I’m really way too loaded. I’m not going back to class, right now that seems just as daunting a task as facing these people any longer, with both my school-time options cancelled out, I decide to call it a day and leave at eleven.

 

Category: school, smack, story | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 14

April 21st 1998: Coming Clean

I’ve had this feeling lately, like I’m coming to the end of my rope. I mean I’m pretty sure that I can’t take anymore. Anymore of all this, this shit that comes with the life I live. This fucking stereotypical bullshit junkie lifestyle, I feel like I’m living in some fucking bad movie of the week every single day and its weighing heavily on me.

With that, I know now that it is a necessity for me to come off smack. There really is no way around it; I have to get myself straight. There is the problem of kicking, something that I really don’t think I can handle, not now. In the last three years, I’ve kicked numerous times but my mind hasn’t lived outside these fuzzy edges that come with heroin in what must be more than a year straight and it scares me to be any different.

But I know it; I know that I cannot continue living like this any longer. I could feel myself this morning, getting desperate and scared. Scared because I don’t want to continue living my life like this, dependent on a fucking narcotic substance, not being able to function for shit without feeling its caress, to feel trapped in this cycle that never, never ends, helpless… hopeless.

And in my panic, I think of the exquisite pain that comes with withdrawals, the sheer agony. I’m torn, I really can’t decide which of the two is better.

It is with this that I have devised a plan, a half assed one if anything, but a plan nonetheless. At least that’s a start. I going to stay on the smack, that’s a given, but I’m going to put myself on the maintenance program. Doing enough to not get sick, not doing enough to catch a nod, maintenance. I’m not exactly going to be clean, this I understand but I guess it’s sort of a step in the right direction.

I booted a decent shot home early in the morning and that’s it, that’s all the dope I’m going to have until late in the evening or hopefully, and I’m pushing it, tomorrow morning. It’s as simple as that and it’s a whole lot more difficult than that. Cause all I have is will power fueling me and a big bag of dope in my pocket to tide me over, it kind of makes for a tricky situation.

Granted, I haven’t worked out all the logistics of it yet. I don’t know what I am going to do with myself. Today, I was miserable walking around all day, knowing I had dope pumping in my veins yet I couldn’t catch a buzz. I wanted to, believe me, I wanted to. I spent half the day pacing, trying to con myself out of going back into the commode and finishing up the job good and proper. But I didn’t do it, I can’t do it, I know that now, I’ve known it for years. If I don’t come clean now, I fear that I may never be able to do it. And that thought scares me more than anything, carrying out the rest of my existence in a state of perpetual darkness, trapped behind this wall of… I don’t know what this wall is made of, nor do I really give a damn. At this point, I only know that I’m in a state of urgency and I’m trying to give it an honest shot.

 

Category: clean, maintenence, smack, story | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 15

April 22nd 1998: People Like Me

I’ve spent the entire day with this guy Niles; well to tell you the truth I’m not exactly sure if that was actually his name. I know that I spent the majority of the day with him but I just never got around to the physical act of asking him his name, but its pretty close to that and I really like the way that ‘Niles’ sounds, so from here on in he’ll be referred to as such, okay?
I was killing time at Pacific Place with James; he was eating a hamburger or some odd thing as I watched on inquisitively. I don’t remember the last time I’ve actually had something that resembled an appetite but there really was something about this burger that really appealed to me. I thought about it for a few minutes and after much debate I finally decided to get myself one, I had to, I’d been staring at the damn thing for well over ten minutes for crying out loud. I took one bite of the thing and suddenly remembered why it was again that I had forsaken food for heroin, I put down the damned thing in disgust and it was then that I bumped into Niles.
I was greeted with a “Are you going to finish that?” I turned around to see this tiny disheveled man-child in a blood soaked t-shirt, a sort of strung-out Oliver Twist. I told him to take it and he sat down and started munching away. Now, I knew this guy from the methadone clinic, as I know most of my acquaintances, and we’d split some dope a couple of times and said our farewells but beyond that there really wasn’t much else.
We sat and chatted for a while, supposedly Niles had spent the last two nights sleeping on the roof of Pacific Place. See he had just run away from the hospital after he had gouged out a Naltrexone implant from his stomach with a penknife, hence the blood. I’ve actually been talking to this doctor about one of those implants, chock full of the world’s premier opiate blocker for up to six weeks. There’s no way in hell though that I could actually afford the procedure. But it does sound enticing, detox in less than 12 hours without feeling a thing, guaranteed month and a half clean, how could anyone not want one?
By the time the conversation turned to smack, we were already on the train and I had abandoned James, hitting him up for twenty bucks along the way. Niles had the word on this dope that was half the price as usual. It was further away and quality was sometimes shaky but at such low-low prices, I just had to have some.
During the long train ride out, conversation was thin other than who we ran into while scoring lately, who’s a scumbag, who’s not, who’s been busted and who’s dead. Not your typical early Friday afternoon dialogue but you have to look at it this way. We are exactly the same as two housewives gossiping back and forth to each other over a clothesline. Sure, the subject matter may be the polar opposite of “what color did Brenda dye her hair?” but you have to see that the essence is exactly the same, no matter how lurid the topic. And regardless of how hip or hardcore we sometimes believe we might be, there’s no escaping that we really weren’t, and we knew it.
Niles procured the outfits, scored; well actually he took care of just about everything right down to prepping my shot for me. As much as I enjoy the ritualistic properties of scoring and fixing it was really quite a nice change of pace to have someone do all my work for me.
After scoring, we ducked into what was possibly one of the filthiest public bathrooms I had seen in a quite some time. Believe you me, I’ve been to some soiled bathrooms in my life, its part of the job, but this one just struck me. There was blood on the walls, there was no toilet paper, nothing that was classically associated with a ‘bathroom,’ and I loved every inch of it. Don’t ask me why but there’s just something about a scummy bathroom that gets me off, maybe its doing drugs in them, maybe it’s the dirt and grime, I don’t know but that’s just the way it is and I was simultaneously disgusted and thrilled with that thought.
Like I said before Niles prepped my shot for me, so as he handed me the rig, I was tying off with my belt. It took me a moment but I found a suitable route, got a register and hit home, I heard this loud cry coming from Niles. I turned, needle still in my arm to see blood jetting from Niles’ wrist.
You see, Niles had a quite a habit but he lacked the veins to keep up with himself. Working his way down from the crook of the arm/elbow area, he landed at his wrists. And as most people know there’s an artery down there, the veritable blood highway, so when a needle hits that, the blood is traveling at such an incredible speed that it has no option but to shoot right through that thing. The blood rose up through the needle, filled the chamber and ejaculated the plunger all within a matter of milliseconds and now blood was painting the walls.
I was frozen, I didn’t know what to do, and sure I’d heard of this sort of thing happening but to actually see it just held me in check. I would have almost been amused if it wasn’t such a repulsive sight, and with the dope kicking in, I just stood there gazing at this scene. All the while, Niles is cursing, “Fuck, my shot! Fuck, my shot!” as blood spewed forth in a revolting yet almost beautiful pattern. He got a hold of himself and plucked the rig from his wrist and quickly applied pressure with his free hand.
He scuttled to the floor, picked up the plunger and fixed himself a new shot, this time, steering clear of the wrist. Loaded, he slunk to the floor next to where I still stood stunned, he looked up to me and said what I’d been thinking but could not bring myself to say, “whoa!”
Before I knew it, it was already three o’ clock, school was just about ending and I’d already been gone for hours. I’d been all across Hong Kong and was nodding at the Holiday Inn for at least an hour. And all that was really required of me was to follow this guy along, hand over my money and stick a needle in my vein and boot a shot home. I really couldn’t ask for anything more, I mean here was everything that was required in my day wrapped up in convenience, dope, kinship and even the extravagance of someone to organize my using with. I should be set right? I mean, this is what I’m thinking, I could ask for nothing more. But in the midst of all this convenience and affinity I feel… tainted, dirty, I don’t know what.
Earlier this afternoon, lying there in that filth ridden public toilet, in between nodding and blood-painting escapades, it occurred to me, in stunning, true to life, 3D, high definition, surround sound. This is where I have taken my life. This is where I choose to be. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty sure that I knew this all along, I mean I’m not completely blind. It’s just that Niles, came across to me as this stereotypical scumbag, you know, dirty, grimy, doesn’t care about anyone or anything. And this is the guy that I’m hanging out with! Does that mean I’m a scumbag too? You see, that’s the trouble with people like me, when you assort with them, no matter how negative or disheartening it may be, you can’t help but realize how much like them you really are. And believe me, I am.

Category: bathroom, score, story, trouble | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 17

April 23rd or so 1998: Slivers

I think of something Higher

Governing my state, my thoughts

My thoughts, distraction and petty nurturing

With a WHIZZ and a BANG

They fly by

I catch them briefly

Just oh so briefly

Just shards, shattered images

Only sometimes do I catch them

In slivers of shining moonlight

Just slivers

 

Category: church, poem, story | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 18

April 23rd 1998: Absolute Failure

The initial results from my attempt to get clean are not good, no, not good at all. Well, all right, it actually isn’t going that bad, but it’s not as successful as I had initially predicted. I’m only supposed to be having one hit today, instead in decreasing the number of hits I have each day each day by one. This method will work, but it will just take a bit longer than I had anticipated. I don’t mind though, as long as I can eventually come clean…

Over there on the other page is the start of something,  a poem?  some sort of incessant rambling  of a fool? I don’t know,  I want to finish it but I can’t now, my head is way too clear. Yesterday my brain was a total blur; I could feel it, the fuzzy edges around my brain when I wrote that thing at the height of my hit.  When I get back to that mind numbing state, maybe then  I will continue to write.

Having only allowed myself  to fix twice today, they had to be timed out in Swiss precision as to get the maximum high gravity each. It’s 1045 now, I have 30 min. till I can have my first hit.

I’m writing this on the train from Yau Ma Tei  station, I had just been to  score.   My hit of the day was unsuccessful to say the least. I ended up finishing off all of the dope  just to catch a buzz.

I don’t really care for talking about this right now, in fact, I’m going to stop discussing this whole situation with smack.  From here on out  there will be no more talk of scoring, fixing or anything else remotely associated with heroin. I reckon it just makes me sound pretentious. Mark my words,  “no more talk of smack!”  At least not for a few days.

 

 

Category: clean, smack, story | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 19

April 24th 1998: Acceptance

I’m bummed out because I wasn’t able to finish that poem thingy that I started the other day. I have no idea why but I just wasn’t able to get into it. No matter what state of mind I was able to shoot into my vein.  So instead of lingering on it I scrapped the whole damn thing, I started another one and got a lot further with it, if I could find it that is.

That poem was supposed to be about two objects of my desire, love for a girl and the love for my drug, and the struggle to choose between the two. I haven’t felt that way and while and I found it difficult to get into that frame of mind. The next time my brain starts functioning that way again maybe I will finish it off.

I don’t like the fact that all  this poetry that I write (or at least attempt to write) these days is always concerning a will topics like love, or love  related subjects, it’s really quite God damn annoying. I guess it’s understandable because only thing that’s been on my mind for the last couple of years is Janice and how strongly I love(d?) her and how she could not reciprocate that love.   It has had a substantial impact on me and my thinking. I guess I have made that pretty apparent by now, huh?

Anyway, this whole situation is still getting to me, I mean I still think about it every day, I know I should be over her by now but I just can’t. No matter how  I try, or how many times I tell myself “just forget about it, forget about her” and I still love her, I do. I am however glad to admit that I am not still bitter about her not wanting to be with me. I have come to accept the fact that I love her and I probably always will love her. But she is something that I can never have. She doesn’t want me or anything like me. If anything ever does happen between us, I will go with it and having the happiest, most filled man alive, but I’m not to spend time wishing, hoping and praying.

So it is settled then… I love her.

 

Category: acceptance, love, poem, story | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 20

April 25th 1998: Nods

I have been on a heavy nod all night since I did a lot of dope with Janice. I have been constantly nodding in my chair while she is playing on the Internet. Though I can’t remember all of them the main nods from this evening, the ones that will remain locked in my mind  are as follows:

While I was literally sleeping facedown, this kid from school, Brendan and Janice were at my place. Janice had come there to work out in some gym that had magically appeared in my bedroom. She was now ready to leave, she said “goodbye” to Brendan and then hugged me, now, me I didn’t want her to go so as I was lying facedown I was asked her not to leave. Eventually convinced me that she had to go. As I was turning around and wish her goodbye, in reality I woke up, and said “goodbye” but no one was there

This deep nod moves onto one of those stalls along Haiphong Road, one those that sells cheap clothes, these two girls from school, Awon and Emily are looking at this cute pink cardigan, Emily, deciding whether or not to buy it. Along comes Janice and she sees Emily holding this pink fuzzy number. She flips out, she gets extremely excited, almost ecstatic over this cardigan, and she wants it bad. At this point, Emily, Awon and Janice start arguing over who saw it first, the argument escalating into a full on Skinemax style catfight… I can’t remember who won.

The last of my little adventures, at least the last one I can remember that has some sort of linear progression involves Jaymz, Mike Yoo and a Frenchman. The Frenchman comes up to Jaymz and asks him for a lighter. The Frenchman takes out his exotic pack of French cigarettes, which as dull as it sounds, the French word for cigarette is cigarette… how anticlimactic. Anyway, where was I? oh yeah, Frenchie takes out his pack of smokes, which just so happen to be a toy. It shoots rockets and moves along on these wheels. Treads I think they’re called, you know, like tanks have?

When James says he has no lighter, the Frenchman turns to Mikey and asks if he has a lighter. In turn Mikey takes out a huge lighter, too big to ever conceivably fit into his pants, no matter what skate board shop he bought them at. Mike’s ginormous lighter also substitutes as a toy, it has all these extensions and add-ons like arms that shoot rockets and legs that turn into some sort of roller skate as it folds over to look like some sort of mechanical cockroach.

Mikey lights the Frenchman’s smoke, or fume for the Francophiles among us. Frenchie slicks back his long, greasy hair and primps his tiny little mustache and walks away.

I know my description of these heroin induced “dreams” are quite incomprehensible but it’s hard for me, cut me some slack, I was high.

 

Category: dreams, nods, sleep, story | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 21

April 26th 1998: Hate

This is it… I’m trapped, the spiral of self–loathing. In short, I hate myself, well at least I think that’s the problem, just pure and simple hatred. I hate myself, and to make matters worse, I hate myself for hating myself. I’m different now, everything is different now, I look at myself and I get scared. Scared because that’s not me, No not really, just shell, a shell of a person who once resembled me.

I know, I know I said that I wouldn’t talk about the smack anymore but here, I really need to. My addiction to heroin is what has distorted me into this thing,  this vague husk of a person that I used to be, and I hate what I’m becoming.

What started out as some fun on a Saturday night, has grown into this full-blown addiction that has taken on a life of its own, almost independent from my own. And I hate myself for letting it go so far.   It was Avin, young, tiny, innocent Avin who was the one who made me realize what was happening to me. Little Avin, he was the one that told me, told me that I’m changing, he asked me “why can’t you just be Pat?” I hate myself for the fact that this little kid was the one who was the first to notice.

I know that my recent, constant disagreements with almost every living person in my vicinity have all stemmed from this constant attitude of indifference that seeps out of my heroin-addled brain. This is what I hate, heroin the way it’s changing me is constantly putting my friendships,  with Janice, with my family, with my crew, the most important people in my life, in jeopardy.

Because of all this, I need to change, and I only know one way to do so is to quit. The only problem is, will I be able to? Is my hunger for dope, so full-blown that there’s no turning back? I will now, I honestly don’t know but I guess is as good as yours and here’s only one way to find out. But I don’t know if I want to find out.

 

Category: hate, smack, story | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 23

April 27th 1998: “Fuck You Forever!” / Sucker Punch

Saturday night, 3am. Janice and I were taking a cab home, she was riding up front with me relegated to the back. She had been moody all night and hadn’t said anything for the entirety of the cab ride. I got really fed up and started questioning her on what was wrong. “are you okay?” “What’s wrong?” my questions were left unanswered. So I asked again, my questions going unanswered. I asked a third and final time, still to no avail. At that point I pretty much gave up on the whole thing and just started to ask her to at least acknowledge my presence as a living, breathing, goddamn human being. Her only reply was a sharp, rancorous “WHAT?!”  I had gotten the validation I had been asking for.

After some further questioning along the lines of “ what’s going on?” Janice replied with only spite such as “Shut the fuck up!! I don’t want to hear your fucking voice” and comments of the like which, honestly, I would prefer not to repeat. But I will say that, the pure brutality of them, a vicious sucker punch to the gut, was almost too much to bear and finally, she had her wish, my mouth was shut.

By the time the cab pulled up to her street, I had adhered what seemed like an eternity of her vile and ruthless commentary. As she got out of the cab, I, almost to the point of tears, followed. Partly because I was still worried for her but also because this cab driver was robbing me blind on the fare.

She stormed off into her building without so much as a word. I held the door open for her long enough for her to slam it in my face. Through the metal bars of her entryway I asked one final time what was going on. She spewed forth an onslaught of venom so vicious that it was clear she wanted nothing to do with me at this point. Those final words were it , the last flaming arrow through my heart , there was no more I could finally take. I walked away, defeated and in tears, and stopped and turned to let out one bout of fury “FUCK YOU FOREVER!” She stood there with a blank look in her eyes and we both walked away.

I sat on the side of the road for what seemed like hours, crying my eyes out. Crying like I can’t remember having cried before just in shock of the verbal beating I had taken. Delivered to me by the one person on this world that I actually cared about.

It couldn’t have been more that twenty minutes later that she came back downstairs. My heart perked up a little and my tears started to dry. Maybe she was coming to apologize, maybe she didn’t mean a word of it. Jance walked up to me and yelled that she could hear me all the way upstairs and could I please just “shut the fuck up?” Sarcastically I apologized for embarrassing her but there was nothing more to say, nothing ore I could do. She walked away.  And I just sat there, crying like an oversized baby just wishing for him mommy to make it all better.

I think I sat in that same spot for an hour, it could have only been minutes, before I mustered enough energy to start walking.

The walk home alternated between crying and brief intervals of anger, howling at the heavens to just make the pain stop. This heart, this broken heart of mine, it burned so hot, I don’t think it can ever be put out. I just don’t think I can take it anymore.

At home I sat. I fixed and just sat at my chair, having calmed down some, just sitting, shell shocked. My phone rang at around 6 am, it was Janice calling to apologize for what she said. I asked her if she really meant all the horrendous things she had said. And just as quickly as she had called, her mood flipped and she opened fire “No, I’m not sorry. Fuck You!” and hung up the phone. I just continued to sit. Finally passing out at 8am.

Later in the evening I ventured over to St. Teresa’s Church for the 6pm mass. You know as much as want to rebel against it, I still want to be a Good Catholic boy deep down inside. But if you want me to be completely honest I had ulterior motives for going that night, I just couldn’t let it go and really needed to talk to Janice about all this and I knew she would be there.

 

 

Okay, I gotta stop. Honestly this is getting really hard to write. I just don’t want to think about it anymore. The last day or so has really been way too much for me to handle and I don’t know why I have to try and torture myself by reliving it over and over.

So to sum it up, I went to church, she was pissed. I finally talked to her for a minute and we agreed not to talk for a while. I was upset so I slunk off to the bathroom at the Kentucky Fried Chicken and got high, just not high enough to numb the pain. And honestly, that’s what it is. It hurts. It hurts bad and I miss her already, I can’t stand the fact that we are now on non speaking terms but I can take some solace in the fact that she said she doesn’t hate me, that’s got to count for something, right?

 

Category: fight, hate, kanike, story | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 25

April 28th 1998: The Magic Number

So today is the day. The day where I take the first baby steps towards change. As I mentioned before, numerous times, I am starting to hate the person I am becoming and I need to change. Today I began that process, today I took my first steps towards quitting heroin for good. Today I started methadone.

After school I went over to meet Chris, he said he would come and keep me company over at the clinic. And you know sometimes I forget it but I’ve got some pretty good friends. I mean who wants to spend their evening waiting by the methadone clinic, seriously? Who does that? Oh I also ran into Pash but he was just there to cop.

At 6pm We arrived at the Yau Ma Tei Methadone Clinic and I began the registration process for treatment. It seems ironic to me that the methadone clinic, my main source of dope for the last 2 years is, from now on, going to become my place of recovery.

For the next 45 minutes I went about the procedure for methadone treatment. Signing consent forms, speaking to the social worker and taking the always-fun urine test. After going through my drug history with the social worker I was supposed to go and see the doctor but he wouldn’t be there for another hour so I had to wait.

Sitting on the awkward, splintery wooden benches in the main reception area I ran into Phil Mcghee. Phil was one of those old school junkies (well as old school as you can be at 19) who had been in the methadone program for years now. After catching up with the normal, boring chitchat we decided to split a bag. Since I still had to wait a while for the doctor, we decided to go pick up.

I told Chris he could take off since I was just waiting around anyway and walked downstairs with Phil. The bag was pretty shitty. But then again the neighborhood has been dry for weeks now so what can you expect?

Phil and I copped and walked a couple of blocks down; we squatted down and fixed behind a giant cement column that held up an overpass. I could hear the cars whizzing above, people going places, doing things. Maybe I could be one of those people some day.

I stumbled back to the clinic, taking my time as wandered the streets that I frequented so regularly. I stopped at a guy I knew to buy some bootleg Marlboro Reds that had just come in from the Philippines.

The doctor was in by now and he asked me all the medical questions associated with long term intravenous drug use. Questions about AIDS, hepatitis and any multitude of disease you can get by shooting heroin. It didn’t take as long as it should of, I feel that the doctor was really just half-assing it. He spent the prerequisite amount of time with me and sent me on my way.

That was it. They gave me my card and my first dosage of my “medicine.” I’ve got to say that methadone tastes like absolute shit. But I downed that little 80mg cup like the big boy I was. I walked downstairs and sat on the stoop just waiting for the stuff to kick in. I have to admit I was fixated with my little membership card. It made me feel special, like I was now part of some elite junkie club and this was my all access pass. I fondled the card for some time, the number of it bring up some unexplained emotions in me #49089, the key to success? The magic number? I hope my feeling is right, I hope this is the magic number. My winning numbers that allow me to get clean… I just hope I can quit.

 

 

Category: clean, methadone, story | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 27

April 29th 1998: Camouflage

Yesterday I received a letter in the mail. I don’t think I can remember the last time I received a personal letter in the mail. It was probably back when I had a crush on this girl who lived in Tokyo, this is pre-internet days so the only correspondence we had was by post. But that’s a story for a different time.

Back to the letter at hand, I first heard about it when my mom paged me saying that there was a letter for me. So, you see, there was quite a bit of build up to seeing this letter, I was honestly excited to read this thing. As I got home from the methadone clinic, there it was, this bright pink envelope adorned with an image of hello kitty and little red hearts around it. I could immediately tell this letter was from Janice, I was there with her when she shop lifted this sickeningly cute stationary from a stall over on Canton Road.

With Hello Kitty and her bright red stars and the overall innocence of the adorable stationary staring at me, I was expecting something positive from this letter, maybe an apology or something that along those lines, I mean it’s a fair assessment, no?

Little did I know that the innocence and sweet, loving nature of Hello Kitty was only camouflage for a letter that would, again, bring me so much pain.  The letter conveyed how she was sorry about the fight the other night but that she was firm in her resolution that we needed to take a ‘BIG BREAK.’ I know that we both agreed to take a break but it wasn’t until I read this letter that it actually clicked.

There it was, official, it was set in stone, there’s no taking it back now. It really upset me but honestly what do you expect? Almost everything in my life is upsetting these days. Especially in my state of pseudo-euphoria brought on by the methadone so I lay on my bed and half slept, half fell into the bed just thinking, could I really handle this break? Could I handle all of it? This big break, kicking dope, methadone, fucking high school, could I handle it?  It was all a big question mark at this point.

Honestly, I couldn’t stand to think about it for much longer, if this was how it was going to be than what else could I do about it, right? I knew I could cope but I still had a glimmer of hope. It’s weird, probably the only reason I still have feelings for her is because I no matter what happens, even through all the bullshit, I still imagine we will end up together. I know at this point I am probably dreaming but everyone needs hope, right?

I woke up from my artificial narco-state to the phone ringing at 11:30pm; it was Janice calling me from the payphone at the 7-11. She went down to call me, apparently her phone is still disconnected, because she didn’t want to take a break like she had said earlier. She was sitting at home and found that she really wanted to talk to me and yes, she missed me too.

It was the best talk we had had in a really long time though I found myself getting pissed off that the phone kept cutting out every five minutes because she was running out of change. But it was nice, it was really nice and even with the phone cutting out we were able to talk for a good hour or so.

Now, I ‘m glad everything is starting to get back to normal with us, still that letter really fucking pissed me off even though she did apologize for writing and but its just really confusing all her back peddling and not being able to make up her mind. Whatever, for right now I’m happy, that will have to be enough. A few days ago I felt like my life was in total ruin, I was strung out worse than I had ever been before and Janice and me were not talking anymore. Now I’m on methadone, I haven’t done any smack all day, Janice and I are better than ever. It seems like the pieces of my life are beginning to fall back into place. I just hope I can keep it up ‘cause I don’t know if I can live through all that again.

 

Category: letter, methadone, phone, sleep, story | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 28

April 30th 1998: Cutting It Close

So this is day three of my methadone treatment so far it has been moderately successful. I haven’t touched any junk in two days so far and I haven’t had any symptoms of withdrawal. As long as I have had my daily dose of mojo juice I may just be able to keep this up.

Since being in the methadone program I have found that this elixir, created by the Nazis as a cheap morphine substitute at the height of wartime, has left me with a feeling of complete and utter… I don’t know, emptiness? It’s like for the first time in a year I feel almost normal, almost. It’s not the normal that comes with being clean and sober, this is different. It’s different because I know its fake, it feels fake and it’s inexplicable. I feel normal like I’m clean but it just doesn’t feel natural. And it’s this fallacy that has left me empty inside.

This evening when I went to the clinic to get my magic potion I found myself having to dodge dealers left and right. Having been a regular on this scene for the last few years, I was pretty well acquainted with a lot of the guys on the street; most had taken to calling me “white boy” since I was the only non-Chinese guy to cop with such frequency. I must have shaken my head to about eight guys, the head shake being the universal signal of “No, I don’t want drugs, thank you have a nice day.” Though that shake can very easily change to a nod, the universal symbol for “Yes I do want buy your illegal substances.”

By the time I reached the clinic there were about a hundred angry patients all eager to get their serving for the day but the clinic doors were shut. At this point I had already begun to feel the signs of withdrawal creeping up on me, my nose was sniffling my legs were starting to hurt, I was in dire need of my juice.

After thirty minutes or so the gate to the clinic swung open, the hundred people in front of and behind me started shoving their way up the stairs. Once some order was gained I realized I would be there for well over an hour before I got my hit of refreshment. This was going to pose a problem; I was now past the point of eager as my withdrawal grew into a full-blown hunger.

My mother had already been paging me for well over an hour and I had to get home, I don’t think I could have pulled staying for another hour, what was I to do? “FUCK IT!” I was desperate, I did the only thing I could think to do, I walked down stairs and crossed the street and picked up a bag.

As I sat in the stall of the McDonald’s bathroom preparing my shot all I could think was that I didn’t want to score, this was the last thing I wanted to do. I justified to myself in a multitude of ways, saying I had no other option, I was at the end of my rope, and it’s not my fault.

Now my efforts over the last three days were all in vain, I would have to start this cleaning process all over again, I was cutting it close. I graduate high school in a couple of weeks and if I time this three week detox just right I will be able to be clean once I go on to work, or maybe college, I don’t know. What I do know is if I don’t clean up now before I move on to the next phase of my life, wherever I went, I would die there. Well, at least I’d feel like I was going to die.

Category: clean, methadone, smack, story, withdrawals | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 29

May 3rd 1998: Composition

It’s getting hard these days, the writing. I’ve found recently that I am unable to find the motivation for it. It seems that I have lost my ability for it. Last night I sat down at my desk for nearly an hour trying to put pen to paper but all that came out was incoherent babbling.

I just sat at first, whatever it was I was jotting down could hardly be considered language and after that hour all I had was basically a blank page. I guess what it is they say about me in school is true I am the great procrastinator.

Also I think this methadone is affecting my brain. I mentioned before how phony sobriety has left me empty. But more so than that I find that I just don’t care. I don’t care to write how I used to and even when I try all that comes out is drivel that clearly shows this cavernous void in the pit of my stomach.

It’s either that I don’t care or maybe it is as I had once feared and my consumption of drugs over these years has begun to rot my brain. I remember when I was 15 I was able to spurt out flowing prose as if at will. Now I feel like I couldn’t put together a coherent sentence to save my life.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just too self conscious, I never just write, I always try to make it funny, witty or have some grand scheme about life conveyed through my words. Maybe that’s just it then, my brain is fine I just need to work on my conscience.

 

Category: methadone, story, writing | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 30

May 5th 1998: Weakness

What is wrong with me? No, seriously what is wrong with me? I spent the whole of last week signing up at the methadone clinic, I showed up everyday at 6pm sharp and guzzled down my repulsive green punch with a smile. Now look at me, I’m back to shooting dope, I haven’t been to the clinic in well over a week and in that time I’ve copped a habit that is larger than I think I can handle. I mean, shit, I just scored last night and here I am today already hankering for another bag.
As I sit here on this train heading out to pick up, I wonder “am I so weak?” is it me that doesn’t have the will or is it this drug? This vile, sickening, beautiful drug, which I so disgustingly adore.
I want to believe, I want to believe so badly that its not me, it’s this drug that has made me like this, that has turned me into this person that I cannot even stand to look at in the mirror anymore. At the end of the day I know it’s me, my own little petty fears and weakness that keep bringing me back to smack.
At first it was the high. I remember that first time I took a hit up at Silvercord Park, a bunch of my friends were doing line of it and I looked upon them with disgust. And then this kid Adam, he picked on me every single day at school, he turned to me and asked, “you want some?” even though I was staunchly against it, I immediately let out a “yes.” That first euphoric rush and I knew right then and there that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. None of it mattered, none of the pain and suffering, none of the petty high school bullshit and social awkwardness, none of it mattered anymore. Before I knew it I was trapped, having to score every day to battle back the sickness.
My mind has been in this state of apathy for years now, not more than a day or two has my mind touched upon sobriety. And it’s all because of that state, that state of numbness to the world that comes with doing heroin every day. I don’t dare stop because I don’t know how I could possibly face the day with the clear head that comes with being clean.
Stopping is the easy part, I’ve got methadone and I can dodge the sickness of withdrawal. The only thing standing in my way is me. I have to want it, I know that, there are no illusions; I have to want to face the world with a clear head.
But do I want to? Do I want to have to face every single day of my life with a mind that is not numb and my sense not dulled? Do I want to handle the events of day-to-day life without any form of escape? Can I handle it?
Honestly and truly,

I don’t know… I just don’t know.

Category: smack, story, weakness | LEAVE A COMMENT