Pure as the Driven Snow

The sweat of my own futility drizzles down my back, cold. I'm lost in a weakness with no strength to shake it. Compelled back to familiar places as they continue to haunt my dreams, I unceasingly gnaw at this material like a nervous tic.

1990. I am heading down Providence in Delaware County, to where it intersects with Edgemont and I-95. The nexus of my pleasure, the gates of hell. Here, the Widener University campus on the western edge of the interstate represents safety and severe need. (Somewhat ironically, the rehab joint I ended up visiting to dry out from my wetter, more socially/legally acceptable proclivities some 15 years later also makes its home here, just up the street.) On this side of the highway I blend in as a milquetoast suburbanite, albeit one quaking with an endorphin thirst the likes of which only Bolivian withdrawal can induce. To the East, over the narrow bridges providing passage across the freeway's River Styx, lies Dante's Inferno.

For years those bridges represented a barrier I'd not dare cross, relying instead on an emissary in the form of my "pharmacist broker"/Sherpa to conduct these oh-so necessary transactions (for a hefty fee, naturally). Need and circumstance, though, eventually demanded that I show my face in person. It was a risky proposition, one that provided no guarantee of reward even if I didn't get robbed or arrested for my troubles (I narrowly averted both concerns on more than one occasion). These few blocks of misery and medicine did not compare to the North Philly badlands, but they were at least as scary to me because I was making the climb on my own. (I never visited the badlands without my Tenzing Norgay along for the ride to handle the currency/goods exchange.)

My dip into the underworld became routine, so much that I could navigate it round trip blind (on many occasions I effectively proved this out). Sometimes I had to make back-to-back runs in rapid succession, if I happened to get cheated the first time round. After all, there was little chance for taste tests on-scene to validate my purchase and the merchants weren't exactly registered with the better business bureau.

The premise was simple: hop into the Samurai and point it south down route 252 from my Media apartment, continuing on Providence as it became route 320 south and then the rest of the way to the Days Inn parking lot at the aforementioned nexus of pleasure. Six miles, ten minutes. Sometimes it seemed like a journey of days going down.

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The Days Inn lot is where I'd wait for my Sherpa during the early years as he scaled the mountain top on my behalf and (sometimes) returned with the reward. Occasionally, he'd return with nothing and sometimes he wouldn't return at all. Later it became the spot where I'd park briefly to muster my inner guile for the push to the summit alone. Sort of a base camp, as it were. I remember this clearly, though I was rarely clearheaded, even on the first run of the evening (several hours of consumed liquid courage coursing through my blood stream was the norm). There were a couple of roads running over the interstate and into the snake pit, the most obvious being Edgemont/352. I preferred the road less traveled, Upland (plus I enjoyed its double entendre-laced moniker).

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The boys would come running by the time my jeep crossed over Rose just east of the interstate. I'd ignore them and swing left onto 10th Street where I was assured of two or three entrepreneurs knocking on my windows on either side of the vehicle. This was where the risk of robbery was at its height: they could just as easily be shoving a gun into my face as a fistful of powdered pleasure. I never did see a weapon but often got a lot of pounding on the hood and shouts of "gimme your money, motherfucker." I never gave in until I had the goods. And then my window'd go up and I was off again, less than ten-seconds ticking by to complete the transaction. It certainly wasn't uncommon for the merchandise to be worthless (100% talcum powder or some other cutting agent). When that happened, I'd immediately make another run down. Sometimes I'd drive back to base camp and check it out to avoid having to traverse the whole way round from the apartment again but was usually too paranoid to risk prolonged exposure in public carrying what was presumably - hopefully - a controlled substance.

There were a few times when the boys would suddenly stop and move as one away from my car. Cops in the belfry. My mind would race, quickly running through a rehearsal of the "lost looking for the I-95 on-ramp" routine I'd planned to blurt out should I get pulled over. But it never happened. A patrol car even drove right by me on one occasion. I can't believe they didn't hit the lights and put me through the ringer. A white boy in a blue Suzuki Samurai on the east side of the freeway: I would have pulled me over. Perhaps they didn't want to deal with the paperwork (they knew I hadn't yet scored since they had to have seen the dealers scatter prior to reaching my window). The scariest moments for me were when I had my prize and was driving the four or five blocks to the I-95 north on-ramp, my passage to freedom. Not that I wasn't still filled with terror all the way back to Media, or that I wasn't nervous about the quality of my purchase and the thought of having to do it all over again. But the sickening feeling was concentrated with the spotlight shining on felonious Freddy here in the soft-top mini-Jeep cruising the wrong side of I-95. All these things reverberated through my mind seemingly at once. But never did I pause to ponder that the whole fucking trip (not to mention the addiction driving it) was plain madness. Which itself was crazy, especially for someone as prone to excessive introspection as I was and am.

This journey I made on a dozen or so occasions between 1990 and 1992 had its foundation in adrenaline and delusion, addiction and anticipation. Thoughtlessness in its most crystalized form. Instinct as pure as the driven snow I was driving toward but never found. Purity is an elusive state for most things in life and in particular when what you're hunting is pharmaceutical-based happiness. I stumbled closest to purity by happenstance, but it was inert: talcum, aspirin, or other like manner of subterfuge. Not the kind I had in mind.

I often think of the large circle I made driving from Media to Chester, surrounding the smaller, inner circle summiting the mountain from Days Inn to Upland. Vicious circles. Dante needs to up the ante a few notches. In some sense I'm still spinning 'round and 'round trying to break free.

Torn & Sewn on Fabric Row

July 11th, 1993.  I'm walking double-time toward the pay phone on 4th and Bainbridge, around the block from my hovel on Monroe.  This particular summer night finds the heat and humidity particularly oppressive, soaking my T-shirt with sweat just a few steps out the front door.   Emerging from the arctic climate of the apartment's central air, the swelter hits my body like a freight train and I buckle.  But I'm off to the races again after a curt pep talk. Holed up in my little 3rd floor walk up the past week, there's clearly a powerful need to replenish.  In fact, I thought it was Thursday afternoon until I stepped outside into the darkness.

I live in the heart of Philly's Fabric Row, just a few blocks off the busy strip of bars and restaurants on South Street, which means the roads are usually lined with cars looking for parking on a Saturday night.  Night?  Clearly.  Unless I'm losing my vision. Saturday?  That's what the ATM receipt says.  Where did the week go?  Where it always goes for me these days. A short reflexive pause to survey the landscape and then I'm back into tunnel vision mode: my mission, the score.

The roll of twenties in my pocket is slick with perspiration as I race to the rendezvous point around the corner past the Famous 4th Street Deli.  I don't recognize my connection but nevertheless make her out at once, not far from the pay phone.   Her expression - her demeanor - makes it clear she's no South Street reveler gearing up for the clubs; she's a courier, my Sherpa's intermediary, and her body language says as much.  Tonight, she's my lifeline and I love her more than she'll know.  (Random trivia note: Denzel Washington uses this very phone in one of the scenes from the movie Philadelphia.)

I walk up quickly but nervously to my new love, with an eye peeled always for the cops.  My paranoia unbounded, everyone smells like Five-0 out here tonight.  And there's a good chance they are, heightened fears aside.  So the exchange is made fast: currency for goods.  Two thumbnail plastic baggies chock full of lumpy white bliss pressed into my palm and my bank roll likewise into hers, passing the baton without acknowledgement in this felonious relay race.  She blinks, tucks it away, then picks up the pay phone and dials.

Having scored the primary supplies for the evening, a rush of relief radiates through my fingers.  A wordless au du to my new lost love in a rush, I quick-step across Bainbridge's double wide expanse to the north, veering left a bit in order to sneak through Leithgow, the side street that splits 4th from 5th.   Swinging into Phila Deli around the corner on South, a prescription is filled for several six packs of beer constituting the oh-so necessary brakes that'll slow my heart down to earth once I run out of blow.  I've long ago learned that waiting until the need arises to buy alcohol often leads to wild heart palpitations crawling out of your skin when you first glance at a clock and it reads 4am, long past closing time.  My connection's still glued to the pay phone gabbing obliviously as I pass her by again, this time lugging two large grocery bags of booze back to my humble abode.

How will this particular ride into heavenly oblivion distinguish itself from the countless journeys that came before?   Simply put, it was to be my last for 14 months.   I'd stumble thereafter just once again, in September of 1994, but this trip would effectively put to bed my particular cycle of addiction to cocaine.  What follows is a sketch of the events and my state of mind that finally put the kibosh on this slow motion suicide carnival ride.

I shove the key into the outside door and hurry up the two flights of stairs to my place, the "penthouse" of the three units in this converted multi-family house.  Back into the deep freeze, chilly sweat soaks my skin.  It was actually the nicest apartment I ever rented, narrow but deep with high ceilings, central air, and my own mini-washer/dryer unit to boot.  I also had a private staircase in the apartment itself that led up to the roof where I could sunbathe with a view of city hall and much of the rest of the city.  All for $525.00 a month from 1992 - 96 with no rent increase, two blocks from the heart of the South Street action.   The one downside?   It was so narrow that getting furniture of any size up the stairs and in through the door proved challenging (I ended up having to sell my larger couch prior to moving in).   Still, it deserved better than me, at least better than the me who inhabited the joint the first couple years.  In those days it was merely my cocoon, used to wall off the world for the drift into madness.   Other than being stumbling distance to a plethora of bars and restaurants with take-out beer and the fact that it served as a kind of midway point between the cocaine meccas of Chester and Kensington, I might as well have lived on the North Pole for all I availed myself of its vibrant surroundings and culture.

I rush into my place and toss the beer into the fridge.   That's just medicine, needed later to come down safely from the mountain.   But who wants to entertain such notions now?  It is time now to climb!  The cocaine experience started out socially for me with a dysfunctional sub-culture from which I learned much things I'd rather have never known.   As Jim Carroll would caution, they were a "constant warning to take the other direction."   In the end, it degenerated into isolation, much as it would later with alcohol.  Grabbing a CD jewel case already scratched/sticky from the counter, I get to work.  The door to my bedroom closed?  Check.  Blinds closed?  Check.  My body flailed out on the mattress?  Check.  Okay, we're ready.  Next, the contents of the first baggie are dumped out on REM's Reckoning (or some equally random case), the chopping begins, the separating, the lining up.  Finally, the snorting.  Eventually, the bleeding.  Rinse and repeat for the next 20 hours, with an occasional beer break mixed in to keep the blood pressure below bursting.

My highs are euphemistically described elsewhere in this blog as wired wakefulness and concentrated bliss.  They were certainly all that, but also something more.   It sounds so awful as recounted here (and believe me, I've held back the uglier details something fierce on these pages; my candor has its limits), but in the moment it was wonderful beyond description, all happening away from the horrors, up in the serenity of my head.   No other drug has ever come closer to bringing as much happiness to me.  It always arrived with a truckload of misery, to be sure; however, not nearly as much as alcohol eventually rained down on my life.   On balance, the happiness was artificial and short lived, the misery real and persistent.  Still, if that was all there was to this equation, I never would have stopped.   Happiness is happiness, who is to say what is artificial or real?  And long or short-lived, it was better than the alternative.  No, the kicker in the mixer that kept me clean was simple biology, chemistry.  I would be dead pretty quickly continuing down this path.  Cocaine isn't compatible with biological life, not for long, not for me. And of course, there were the finances.  You plunge into coke, you don't end up working a whole lot at a time when you need that income the most to keep the white stuff coming (well, you can work a shitload for long stretches at first, but not too effectively).  All that to say, it's expensive.   So coke didn't work for me chemically or financially.  But I digress, so back to that day ...

By the time the sun goes down on Sunday, the coke is history.  I'd licked the last of it off the jewel case, the baggies long since torn asunder in hopes of finding some long lost morsel hidden in microscopic crevasses within.  Without luck, of course.   It was then time to turn to the come-down beer in the kitchen fridge with gusto, slugging three in rapid succession just to slow the heart down to what I surmised was a safe jack hammer pace.  Thank you, Her Doktor!  That was an hour or so ago.

Two beers further into my come down routine now, bent over on my sofa in the living room.  Thinking about things.  Left my full time job back in March.  I'd been with that company for seven years but the consulting position I accepted paid a lot more and I could make my own hours, could choose when to work and when to "relax" (all dangerous things for someone with my proclivities).  Of course, I haven't been with a client for several weeks now, what with the marathon blow binges and all.  They really eat into one's productivity.  So, no real savings, no discernible cash inflow to help stem the outflow.  The result is that my phone will surely soon be shut off for non-payment in the coming days.  Next the cable.  Then the electric.  My credit's fucked.  I am almost 31 years old and have not yet begun to live life, afraid in fact of trying.  These ruminations reach a crescendo over my psyche and I stew.  The reason for this reflective mood?  I'd switched on the tube to kill time coming down and the movie Clean And Sober happened to be on HBO.

I tend to enjoy irony and often watch movies such as Lost Weekend or Days of Wine and Roses while drinking, fully understanding - even embracing - my condition and yet at the same time never giving thought to rectifying things.   I always figured heretofore that rectification for me would be death and death would be here soon enough.  This time, though, Clean And Sober is really getting its hooks into me. It's not a particularly wonderful flick.   You never get to see the protagonist on his slide (he's already pretty much bottoming out when we first meet him).  You do, however, see the consequences of his addiction pretty starkly.  And Michael Keaton is great in his first dramatic role.  All told, right movie, right time, right tone.   I don't believe in fate, or that I'm somehow special, an omnipotent being arranging this fortuitous chain of events just for me.  It is a happy coincidence.  In fact, the movie has been showing pretty regularly of late on cable and I'd caught pieces of it earlier in the week, coked up and drinking down just as I am this evening.  But it didn't strike me then like it's hammering me now.  An hour into watching, I feel light headed and look down to see a rapidly spreading little pool of blood on the carpet.  My hand goes up instinctively to my nose, warm sticky wet. I dash into the bathroom with my head tilted back.  Then I drop to my knees in the john and cry.

Cut to Monday late afternoon and I'm attending my first Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting.  I have a sponsor before I leave.  Thus begins the first year of real sobriety for me as an adult (hell, the first month).  I re-join my old employer within a week and stay put there for another seven years.  I stabilize.  For a while, anyway.

I'd stick with AA for a few months but the spiritual aspect of the program eventually had me searching elsewhere, eventually reaching out to Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS). I've maintained my ties with SOS to this day, now with a successor organization, Lifering.   AA is great but there is never only one way to anything, including sobriety (if something works for you, keep at it).  My biggest misstep during this stab at sobriety was that I didn't get professional help for depression.  When I slipped in 1994, I quickly righted myself when it came to the coke (once and done, clean now for 15+ years).  Ironically, the only reason I drank again was to come down from that coke episode but the cork wouldn't fit back into the bottle.   No, the come-down booze that coke spurge necessitated was my full fledged plunge into the briny deep of chronic, progressive alcoholism over the next dozen years.  I think I've documented that swim and subsequent arrival back onshore sufficiently elsewhere on these pages.

This aspect of my experience has been exhausted here.  It's certainly exhausted me.  Perhaps it's time I attempt to dredge up some happy days for prosperity next.  It could happen.   But that'll take digging deep to find.  Until then, silence will reign on this blog.  With maybe just a bit of bad poetry to bridge the gulf.

Dopamine Unhinged

1990.

I clear my sinuses and swallow hard, leaning back with a smile as my throat goes numb. My brain is humming with good feelings and peace of mind; all is right with the world. I look around and admire this fine apartment, the bright and vibrant television on with a tape of Platoon in the VCR. This is a masterpiece; maybe the best movie ever, I think to myself. I am subjectivity, my own inner voice. I am intoxicated with concentrated happiness, itself a loan paid for with the torrent of sickness and misery to come. The interest on this loan is compounded by the minute with its dopamine drain, but payment isn't due quite yet. And nothing else matters "in the now."

You see a shaking man-child hunched over a rapidly diminishing mound of lumpy powder that lies on the CD jewel case before him. You observe him chopping up his happiness intently with a credit card, carefully partitioning off three thin lines and hoovering them up his nose with a blood-streaked rolled up dollar bill. You catch him occasionally mopping up the crimson dripping from his nostril with a matting of toilet tissue, the roll spilling out onto the living room carpet and the used wads littering his feet. You smell the stench of the place and feel the filth crawling. His hair waves wild and soaked with sweat. A damaged VHS tape plays on the TV, occasionally skipping over mid-scene, picture and sound coming and going unwatched, unheard. You are objectivity, the unseen fact collector; steely eyed sober, equally unaffected by life's ying and yang of morality and depravity.

I admire the costume I've assembled in the mirror: Charlie Manson, complete with fake beard, hippie wig and jailbird striped jumpsuit. I'm in the bathroom at my friend's Halloween party, a damp finger dabbed ever so slightly into the thumb-size baggie and then up the left nostril, white and anesthetized. I breathe in hard and deep through the left with the right pinched closed. But quietly! Flush the toilet; mask it! Ahh! An instant blast of life-of-the-party and contentment shoot through my toes and up into my eyeballs, closing the loop with a wonderful tickle around the inside of my skullcap. Be sure to check the Manson beard and make sure it's clear of tell-tale residue, I remind myself. Looking good, indeed! Now, back into the party! For once, I can nurse rather than chug my beer. And I can gab! I'm king of the small-talk, master of the back-slap, a gadfly personified. Conversation after conversation, I enthrall them with ease for hours. Oh, need to get some fresh air and blow my nose. Then it's time to reload my beer and my brain!

You see the wild eyes flashing from beneath his Manson get-up, all deep black pupil drowning out the white. The rat-a-tat-tat of his speech is aimed at no one, the telltale repetition of his thoughts in close proximity apparent to them all. He mingles staccato wired for sound and bouncing off the walls like a pinball. You bear witness to his sniffles growing more pronounced by the hour, an equation of addiction multiplied by bathroom breaks and tissue paper. You catch him dash to the back porch holding back his head, tissue pressed against the geyser exploding red above his lips. You hear him mutter, "Time to switch," as he stumbles for the bathroom. The left is shot for the evening, time to reload through the right.

And so it goes. Facts in clear-eyed 20/20 hindsight seem altogether different from their counterparts in the moment, wearing rose-colored glasses with dopamine unhinged.

1992 Heartbeats a Second

August, 1992. I lay on the couch with my heart pounding like a jackhammer.  The last of the coke gone and no alcohol in my hovel, panic had me in its grip. Boom, boom, boom.  Teeth chattering, freezing cold sweat, eyes all pupil. Boom, boom, boom.  Where were my car keys?  My eyes darted around the room, out of focus.  It was Sunday night, I needed to find a bar with alcohol somewhere, take-out beer to slow my heart down.  Boom, boom, boom.  I was living just north of Wilmington in Delaware but had just moved into this apartment from Media, Pennsylvania 30 miles to the North.  I wasn't familiar with what might be open on a Sunday in the immediate surroundings - my mind could only conjure up the Media establishments.  Boom, boom, boom.

I drove shaking, sweating, jittering raw nerves up I-95 and I-476 to Media.  Jack's bar, open every Sunday.  All pupil and sweating, jittery I pulled into the bar's parking lot and looked in the rear view mirror.  Jesus!  Like something out of Night of the Living Dead.  Thank God Jack's interior is good and dark.  Still, I needed to clean myself up a bit, comb the hair, get my squinting down pat to hide the wild eyes.  Slow the heart palpitations.  God, did I really drive here?  It's drizzling rain and I'm so wired out of my skin I can barely see let alone operate heavy machinery.  The force multipliers adrenaline and fear bring to the table are nothing short of amazing.

Inside, Jack's is dead on a mid-summer Sunday evening.  I manage to maneuver to the take-out case, grab several six-packs of brew and pay for it with minimal social interaction: head down, pass the barkeep sufficient cash, let him bag the beer and keep the change and motor on out into the night.  A half hour of terrifying action southbound behind the wheel of my shitty little black Mazda 323 with heart beating wildly caught in my throat and I'm back into Delaware, to my apartment.  I didn't kill myself or anyone else on the road this time only through undeserved dumb luck.  Boom. Boom. Boom.  But relief from the pounding and palpitations is at hand, thanks to Adolf Coors - at least that''s how it's always worked in the past.

But this time the booze did not keep up its end of the bargain.  This time, no matter how much I drink my pulse just keeps racing.  Did my heart skip a beat?  Two beats?  Boom. Boom. Boom.  I pace my apartment, gulp for air.  Fuck!  The alcohol has no effect.  I lay down on the couch, stare up at the ceiling fan, sweating/dizzy.  How long have I been up?  Two days, three?  Shit.  Boom. Boom. Boom.  My heartbeat echoes through my sinuses, up into the frontal lobe.   Looking around the apartment - torn drapes, faded carpet, TV unwatched on some random channel, blue walls into the white light of the kitchen.  My toes feel tingly, numb.  Boom, boom, boom.  My heart is - if anything - racing faster.

I make the decision: I need to go to an emergency room.  Shaky / dizzy, I jump back in the car and head down south to Wilmington Memorial.   At this point I'm gasping for breath.  Perhaps this addiction thing isn't all it's cracked up to be?  Are we having fun yet?  Then it's twenty minutes of chilly sweats and my ticker doing double-time at the pump station before I'm finally led in to see a doctor.

I describe my symptoms and beat around the bush to the ER resident for just a few minutes before letting on that - funny coincidence - I just might have ingested a very small amount of cocaine that evening.  Think it's related?   The doctor in fact is pretty sure there's a strong causal relationship between my heart nearly exploding and the Bolivian Marching Powder coursing through my veins.  You see, it's a stimulant.  Condescending smirk.  But isn't alcohol a depressant? I deadpan, ignoring his snide bedside manner.  Booze didn't work this time, doc!   Long story short, the rest of the conversation boiled down to a variation on Doc, it hurts when I do this!  Well then - don't do that!

The doctor gives me some valium and sends me home with written instructions to "stay away from cocaine."  Of course I will, Herr Doktor.   I follow those instructions to the letter just a bit more than two years later.  After all, I'm a bit slow.  But Deja Vu is a bitch in this context and even the slowest among us eventually grow wise to the weary.  Or we simply grow weary and die.

A Snow Blind Samurai (Tracking Hell through Aramingo on the Road to Oblivion)

1989. Summer.

My mind is screaming but my body is quiet, stomach churning.

And my brain is baking.

Parked and conspicuous on the side street of a neighborhood decimated by poverty, drugs and crime, menacing shadows seem to surround me as they pass by, turn/look, and finally, thankfully, move on.

I'm trying my best to blend into the driver's seat, scrunching down, wishing I could vanish. And fervently hoping it won't be too long even while logic and reason clue me into the futility of that. Then again, if logic and reason were my guides I wouldn't be here now. Somewhere west of Aramingo, a handful of blocks east of 3rd and Indiana. West Kensington. The Badlands. Waiting. Visions of the Velvet Underground's Waiting for the Man buzzing through my mind's eye.

My little Suzuki Samurai jeep is a bright blue beacon floating in the sea of the dirty gray that permeates the streets up here. Christ, I might as well have a big spot light shooting up from the vehicle into the sky, spelling out my intentions to the thieves and the cops alike.

Unlike the other bubble-gummers who dare to swing up into this area for their recreational party favors, I haven't arrived here as an outsider. I have my Sherpa, my guide. So no waiting in a line of cars at one of the outdoor drug bazaars catering to Joe and Jane Suburbanite for me. Those traffic jams are further east, closer to I-95. Instead, we pull into a dilapidated side street, kill the engine and lights, I give my Tenzing Norgay the money fresh from an ATM withdrawal, and he disappears into the hood while I sit there, alone.

It's plain to me that addiction does at least as fine a job eradicating judgement as it does dignity, money, a life, and the rest of what it takes. Even with all that, what it provides me, sitting here in 1989, is singular and compelling: glimpses of happiness or at least escape from my head for a few hours. In 2009, fifteen years clean of that particular indulgence, I've yet to find its equal. So, I sit there alone. Waiting.

Ten, fifteen minutes. Shadows and staring, aggression and hatred. Clearly, I'm not welcome.

Then suddenly Norgay emerges from the shadows, stupid smile and stoned shimmer virtually radiating from his being, already high on a large chunk of what should be mine. But that's the price I pay for his guidance up the mountain. I fire the ignition and we head out. Now comes perhaps the most terrifying part of this adventure through the looking glass: snaking my way through the burned out buildings and numerous patrol cars, an out-of-phase vehicle with an out-of-place driver and right-at-home junky sidekick nodding out beside him, a couple of bags of felonious powder in their pockets. Not a recipe for a happy ending. One slip and it's down the icy ravine, into the abyss.

Yet I always slip the noose and make it back down from the treacherous summit into base camp again, back to the comfort of suburbia. I drop off my guide, head back to my hovel, and drift off into sweet dreams of wide-eyed wired wakefulness. Fleeting happiness and escape. Only to repeat the cycle ad nausem, addicted as much perhaps to the russian roulette surrounding the hunt as I am to the consumption.

My tunnel vision eventually closes in on the fading point of light at the other end so completely that normalcy warps into the strange and this kind of shit into the norm. I even rope others into these kamikaze missions, keeping them blind to the destination and purpose until past the point of no return. A friend I hadn't seen in years arrives from out of town to catch up, hit the bars, have a few drinks and reminisce about the old days in the Navy together. I meet him at the airport with my Sherpa in tow, explaining we need to first take "a short road trip" before hitting the town. Great to see ya! It's been awhile! This'll just take "a few minutes." He's pretty shaken after the 20 minute Badlands park-and-sit scene. Afterward, I drop him off at the apartment and he's left to fend for himself while I drift off to wired island. When I get up the next afternoon, he is gone. And I haven't talked to him since.

Good times.

What tips the scale back to the land of the living for me? Enough mornings after. Enough afternoons after. Enough three days after. When the wired dreams morph into jittery, heart-palpatating waking nightmares. When the ATM is empty and the Sherpa goes missing in action. When the bills come due and the collection calls start at work. When the Samurai is repossessed. When my credit becomes truly fucked. When the blood from my nose turns my white pillowcase red, when it soaks through and covers my mattress in blotchy maroon patches. When my phone is turned off for non-payment. When booze no longer calms the shaking coming down. Coming down. Finally, the coming down. Finally, the coming down is simply that much more painful than the wired dreams are freeing. When all this comes to a head, I finally come to my senses. Four years after it comes to a head, anyway. After all, I'm slow to learn and a great procrastinator (I'll completely upend my world in the fight against any change to it, wise and at the same time oblivious to the irony of it all).

Then a year of living clean, 14 months, dissolves into a week back into the wood chipper when I spy my Sherpa "by chance" one weekend just prior to my 32nd birthday. But that week was my last, over 15 years gone by now. To be clear, that week busy getting my nose dirty included plunging my liver back into the briny deep as well. After all, it was the only way I knew to come down, slow the pulse to sleep. And keeping my nose clean thereafter didn't translate to pulling the liver back out of the river. In fact booze became a ready-made substitute for escaping the bonds of myself and I dove ever deeper across the span of the next nearly one dozen years. Time spent on the high seas before I nearly drowned making it to shore.

For those of us missing whatever it is we're missing, finding it even for a moment, and especially in concentrated bursts of what we imagine happiness feels like, is pretty fucking compelling. It carries with it a lot of weight, requiring that much more on the down side for us to run in the other direction, moving the scale back again toward the breathing end of life.

Many of us never get it righted and just keep going, going, going into oblivion.

The Cook

The blue white glow of the gas burner is central to the Cook's world. A world wholly crafted within the confines of his mother's house, narrower even than that: the back room, the kitchen.

The other denizens of this world - guests - huddle round the kitchen table covered in plastic baggies, lighters, spoons, pipes. A smokey stench permeates down into the foundation of the old row home. The fraying early 70s furnishings have long since given in to the activities of the kitchen, as has the ceiling and walls peeling paper, sweat and smoke. It can't be deodorized, fumigated, but there will be no such attempt: this ambiance is essential to the mood.

The Cook does his work at the burner alone. Bag to spoon over burner, powder bubbling to rock. His otherwise trembling hands steady in this endeavor, nimble fingers gingerly raising, then lowering the utensil over the heat. The others fixate on his mastery from the table, no one questions his craft, intervenes in his preparation. He is Emeril Lagasse, Wolfgang Puck. He is The Cook.

Beyond the burner's glow, the house remains bathed only in midnight's colors. Deep blue black shadows illuminate - quickly, a pulse - with flashes of the lighter, a flare of the pipe - rock softly crackling to smoke, inhaling: wwwoooowwww. Euphoria. Murmurs. One minute, two. Gone. Sad Shadows. Flash/flare, wow. Wonderment. Gone. Again. The Cook gently instructing his young charges: slow, slow down - never chase the flame. Disapproving glance, knowing mumble. The 'meal' is ruined with hasty consumption - savor, taste, let the flame chase you.

From the alley the kitchen window takes on the look of a lighthouse, the burner's steady glow punctuated by the table's periodic sweeping flashes. Wow, euphoria. Leading lost ships to its port for a price, fine dining on the edge of a rough sea. Cash or the raw ingredients gladly accepted. Absolutely no checks, cards or credit.

Sitting on the backyard trash can, a stray cat looks into the window transfixed, confused. Then jumps off and toward the Burger King parking lot down the way, more potential there for an understandable meal.

Spring Break

Always there was the rain. Even when the skies were clear.

Blue/black and streaky at right angles to the ground, carried on the wind blowing into your face. You huddle near the door step, paint peeling onto broken shards of glass at your feet. Peeling, broken. That's appropriate, you laugh swallowing. The itching is incessant. The nose. Scratching. Distractedly with your palm, reddish/clear. The balled up tissues in your jacket pocket come out again.

Fully clothed, you feel naked.

The city is quiet in this predawn early spring morning save for the weather and distant sirens. And the occasional laugh of a drunken reveler staggering home from the bars. But she's 'cross the street, he's 'round the corner, door slams/quiet, never this block. And it's never him.

Your skin is crawling, eyes red and sore, nose running reddish/clear. More tissues. Shaking. How much do I have? Your mind races, hands paw the crunched up 20s in your jacket pocket. That's it, no more. Day? Saturday. No more 'til Monday, when the ATM 'daily' limit resets. But that's for later, worry about that later.

You wait for the footsteps, the singular silhouette, eyes darting hopefully toward shadows. Is that him? Need and sickness, anticipation and exhaustion. Check the time, always checking the time, blurry rain streaked face, wiped. 2:30. How long? An hour? Two? Seems like ten. Was it two or three hundred I gave him? Three. Maybe, head's pounding. Is he coming back? Is that money gone, down the shitter? Should I go back to the car? Did he? No, here - always here.

There he is! Walking slow, low voice, mumbling. Jeans frayed, green shirt tail hanging, dumb smile. Dilated slits. High on my dime, hopefully he hasn't completely screwed me. Quick exchange, "it's all rock, give me a bit for the effort, hook me up, yada." You hear nothing of his rambling.

As though he was doing this for charity, for friendship. As though he hadn't already taken the lion's share of what three hundred gets you, gets him. Friendship, friend? In some ways perhaps my best friend, mostly my physician, probably my killer.

Wordless, call me later, rush to the car.

Driving paranoia, the sparse traffic all cops/they all know, waiting to hit the lights/siren, end it.

Then suddenly, you're home.


Relief, euphoria, dreams, everything is perfect, wonderful. Hours like minutes. Wonderful. Like seconds. Perfect.

Until it's gone. And the racing, shaking, itching begins.

Then you better have options, better have come down, something. Something to stop the pulse from racing, heart exploding, head from pounding. You always make sure of that first, always plan for that beforehand. Except when you forget, it's not so important then. Until now. Good, it's there, six beers, twelve beers - slug 'em down, slows it down.

Sleep washes over you. It's over.

For a few hours. Until the cycle begins again anew.