A brief interlude on the way to better things
Wow, this page for updating sure looks a lot different than I remember it. And I used a client for updating before that...I shall get one again, for it will make the journaling much easier. I'm thinking of re-setting up emeraldentropy.com and wallowing in self-masturbation for some time again. It's tempting, but not quite such a driving desire as to make me actually do it yet.
I've been thinking long and hard about writing that book everyone has been telling me to write for the past few years. The subject matter only grows more and more extensive as I age, and myself more capable of putting the book together in a fashion that I'd find acceptable. The working title is something Harv and I were kicking around the other day, "The Weevils of Heroin" with a subtitle of something along the lines of "Heroin: a loving portrayl" or "from a junkie (or a junkie perspective), with love"...the book would cover jail, life, homelessness, being raised perfectly, with everything I could ever want or need, with parents who raised me, I think, as right as right can be raised...and yet still I turned into what I am. I want to show people that I can be an addict and still be a person, and that there are evils, but mostly there are just weevils.
The mental ward, the handcuffs, the back alleys, living under the bridge, trips to newark on a flat tire, dealing, my apartment getting raided by the police on my 21st birthday, countless altercations in the city with various unsavory characters and interesting dealers, annoying cops and hoighty-toighty preppy junkies in college. Shooting, veins, setting up, the mechanics of my life, having a needle fetish. Everything. My stories...my favorite ones. 21 hours in a cell with someone about to be deported who spoke no english, and us conversing via charades (my finest moment being us discussing who was coming to get me, if I had anyone to call, and I got a stroke of genius and pointed at my left ring finger, while I wasn't married, it got the point across perfectly, and the look on that womans face...the woman who was sitting in a cell of stinking garbage for six days previous because she didnt understand "throw your garbage through the slot into this can" when the after-food officer came around to collect our trash...the look on her face of finally understanding what was going on, even in some small way, was precious.)
Stories about things my "friends" have done to me, and the things I've done to get back. What it's like when two shady junkies date each other. What it's like when three do. What it's like when three do, and one is currently dating and living with someone who has never done drugs, who drinks two cups of coffee and is wired all night maybe once a year and that's the drug intake. What happens in that apartment...known as "the" apartment for a while in my home town. Finding at least $30 every day for two years. Finding $60 and a car, or $8 and a car and gas, every day for months. Driving to Newark twice a day, three times a day. Stolen cars, stolen trucks, stolen plates, stolen lives. "Thirty dollars came and went, more is gone than money spent" being my self-written mantra, "Mr. Brownstone" by GnR my song..."I used to do a little but a little wouldn't do it so the little got more and more, I'm just trying to get a little better, a little better than before" and my webcam one day saying "we've been dancing with mr. brownstone" and the next day "he's been knocking..." and the day after "he won't leave me alone" and you can see the progression of my sickness, from high to hell in two easy steps. Kicking, quitting, stopping, breathing, drinking, crashing, hurting, dying. All this in excruciating detail straight from the horses mouth. Stories interesting enough that Harv wants to hear them over and over, like a childs favorite bedtime story. He tells me that I'm so shady, and I know I am. Leaving the house and coming back with strange amounts of money.
One day thousands, the next day standing outside WaWa bumming change. "Excuse me, do you have any extra change, I'm trying to get something to eat" and the people you meet...people who try to buy you hotel rooms and dinners, and the people who want something in exchange for that. What I've seen happen to people who go that route I won't go. People who are so mean you don't know how a god could exist who could have made them....people so nice and kind and giving that you wonder if they are angels on earth put there to give me faith again.
Reconciling with my parents. Snow on christmas, a tree, a house of my own, love. Life and lights, computers and kicking supposedly empty boxes in the middle of the night as alarms shriek into life, boxes that contain things that change LIVES. Things that change lives. Kill Hitler when he's young? Not roll and follow Brian into the Sunoco bathroom on a long-ago birthday, crushing on Brian and loving needles and peircings and tattoos and wanting him to put a needle in me, not even thinking about the drug itself. Rolling and loving how he told me it's like a big warm hug, loving how he cared enough to tell me I'd feel warm but not to take off my jacket cause I could get sick. Simple concern...splitting a bag and never feeling anything like that before...and then being sick for 24 hours, throwing up....finding out only after several more split bags that he just wanted half a bag so he said to split it while I paid and he shot me up...me realizing I needed maybe 1/16th of a bag.
The first time I shot myself. The first time I ever skin-popped. My love for the slow rush, my love for the quick rush. My love for the optimism, for the comfort. And how it's been like that since. The places I've shot up...in the corner of the place between my eye and my nose. In my neck. Under my tongue. In my chest (not on my boobs, I can't see the veins there) and shooting coke. Speedballing and other peoples apartments...wastes of two good highs, I'll do them near each other but why together? Watching other people do coke. Me buying fourteen forties of coke and sitting there with my friend Dallas just shooting coke for days. Going insane, seeing things, seeing bugs, feeling bugs, GOING bugs. Moving away from coke, staying with my true love, heroin. Guys coming and going. Girls coming and going *smiles*
Going to jail with all my belongings outside...sitting in a cell and seeing it rain and crying. Getting out and seeing my stuff ransacked, picked through, flea marketed, trashed. Theives apparently don't read, but the rain destroyed a lot of the books. One friend salvaged my computers and as much as he could...to find out I had true friends who knew what to save, what was most important, crying again. Having a so-called friend sell my baby, my love, the computer from the non-empty box sold for a dime of crack and finding out and digging my nails into my apple tattoo and crying and crying and crying...losing my child. And losing my child. Sitting on a toilet seat in the dark as I lose a life I didn't know I had created. Sitting in shock for hours, blood drying on my thighs...dying a little inside like my child had died. Like everything I create is doomed to die. Spiralling down, not knowing who to tell or how or if I even should. Not looking for sympathy, just looking for escape. Finding it, running shrieking down the halls towards the flashing exit sign, hiding inside my mind and my drug and waiting for time to heal me.
I'm not sure it has yet. I'm not sure it ever will. Some things you don't heal from...these are the weevils. Heroin is more often the savior than the cause, so it's not evil but weevil instead. It has evil in it, but it does not overal mean evil, you see? I have evil in me, I take evil into me, but I am not evil.
Burning evil into my hand. Cutting as a pre-teen and teen, stopping when I got a car, got real control. Stopping needing to, wanting to when finding heroin. A situation and a group of people all focused on the same thing, a trainspotting existence, Wal-mart returns, reciept scams, stealing, returning, gas cards, cigarettes, theft and shadiness. Cars with no heat and no passenger window in the dead of winter. Drug dealers shoveling out our car from a ditch on "the street" when we drove down during a snow emergency...everyone required to stay off the roads. The snow plows had blocked off the highway entrance with their plowing, and we backed up the car and raced down the onramp, busting through the pile of snow and out the other side onto the highway. Getting trapped behind five or six plows, going 5 mph, honking, them slowing to 3mph, an ambulance coming through and us zipping in behind it while the too-slow plows tried to block us. Getting there, getting well, getting dug out, driving home. Countless times getting lost, in all seasons. Getting stopped by cops before even getting anything. Getting stopped with no license. In someone elses car. Getting in the car to go to the city and noticing the tail-light is broken. Further inspection reveals that the rear-view mirror has just fallen off, the windshield wipers havent worked for weeks, the side view mirror is missing, the power steering went a few days ago and its almost impossible to drive (you have to go real fast in order to have momentum to turn...parking and unparking is near impossible), my glasses one remaining wing breaking as I get in the drivers seat and notice there is also no oil in it. I look at all these things and decide to go anyway, and as I pull onto the road I hear whump-whump-whump-whump......a flat.
And I go anyway, in the pouring rain, driving rain, downpour, with no windshield wipers...holding one in my hand out the window, putting it at the bottom of the window and letting the wind slap my hand upwards and wipe the rain off the window, which allows me to occasionally glimpse the road while getting soaking wet and freezing. The rain keeping the sparks and smoking down when I reach the rim and the huge tread of the tire slaps into the end of the car, detatching the entire back side of the body and causing what turns out to be a permanent problem with that rear wheel. Still managing to get out and get where I was going, got a ride in a cop car, said it wasnt me driving, we didnt know it was flat...they said I had walked eight miles in the pouring rain. When they got to me I was napping on a guardrail...no one called them any time I signalled for help, only when someone saw me napping. They only call cops for people up to no good, never for helping.
The good cops I've met. The bad cops. The boring cops. The cops who insist on telling you stupid stories that end with things like "and we found her, duct tape over her mouth and around her wrists and ankles, a dildo in her ass, pussy and mouth" and you cant point out that she apparently is duct taped AND dildo'ed because you want to go home and not to jail, so you have to look scared, like you just realized you are in a bad place and want to go home right now mr nice policeman, and that you dont want to scream that mcdonalds wouldnt let their workers shoot their customers, as long as you dont try to hand a roll of monopoly money to a dealer, they will PROTECT you from harm, not hurt you. The cops ask, "arent you scared to come down here" and we say instinctively yes, because we are, but its not from the dealers, its from the COPS. The COPS. Getting let go from Mr. Lecture and go back to the car where the next districts police wait to pull our shirts over our heads and shake out our bras while a line of giggling spectators line the sidewalks with snacks. Going home shellshocked and berated, empty and shaking, to do it all again tomorow.
And tomorow is always another story.
I've been thinking long and hard about writing that book everyone has been telling me to write for the past few years. The subject matter only grows more and more extensive as I age, and myself more capable of putting the book together in a fashion that I'd find acceptable. The working title is something Harv and I were kicking around the other day, "The Weevils of Heroin" with a subtitle of something along the lines of "Heroin: a loving portrayl" or "from a junkie (or a junkie perspective), with love"...the book would cover jail, life, homelessness, being raised perfectly, with everything I could ever want or need, with parents who raised me, I think, as right as right can be raised...and yet still I turned into what I am. I want to show people that I can be an addict and still be a person, and that there are evils, but mostly there are just weevils.
The mental ward, the handcuffs, the back alleys, living under the bridge, trips to newark on a flat tire, dealing, my apartment getting raided by the police on my 21st birthday, countless altercations in the city with various unsavory characters and interesting dealers, annoying cops and hoighty-toighty preppy junkies in college. Shooting, veins, setting up, the mechanics of my life, having a needle fetish. Everything. My stories...my favorite ones. 21 hours in a cell with someone about to be deported who spoke no english, and us conversing via charades (my finest moment being us discussing who was coming to get me, if I had anyone to call, and I got a stroke of genius and pointed at my left ring finger, while I wasn't married, it got the point across perfectly, and the look on that womans face...the woman who was sitting in a cell of stinking garbage for six days previous because she didnt understand "throw your garbage through the slot into this can" when the after-food officer came around to collect our trash...the look on her face of finally understanding what was going on, even in some small way, was precious.)
Stories about things my "friends" have done to me, and the things I've done to get back. What it's like when two shady junkies date each other. What it's like when three do. What it's like when three do, and one is currently dating and living with someone who has never done drugs, who drinks two cups of coffee and is wired all night maybe once a year and that's the drug intake. What happens in that apartment...known as "the" apartment for a while in my home town. Finding at least $30 every day for two years. Finding $60 and a car, or $8 and a car and gas, every day for months. Driving to Newark twice a day, three times a day. Stolen cars, stolen trucks, stolen plates, stolen lives. "Thirty dollars came and went, more is gone than money spent" being my self-written mantra, "Mr. Brownstone" by GnR my song..."I used to do a little but a little wouldn't do it so the little got more and more, I'm just trying to get a little better, a little better than before" and my webcam one day saying "we've been dancing with mr. brownstone" and the next day "he's been knocking..." and the day after "he won't leave me alone" and you can see the progression of my sickness, from high to hell in two easy steps. Kicking, quitting, stopping, breathing, drinking, crashing, hurting, dying. All this in excruciating detail straight from the horses mouth. Stories interesting enough that Harv wants to hear them over and over, like a childs favorite bedtime story. He tells me that I'm so shady, and I know I am. Leaving the house and coming back with strange amounts of money.
One day thousands, the next day standing outside WaWa bumming change. "Excuse me, do you have any extra change, I'm trying to get something to eat" and the people you meet...people who try to buy you hotel rooms and dinners, and the people who want something in exchange for that. What I've seen happen to people who go that route I won't go. People who are so mean you don't know how a god could exist who could have made them....people so nice and kind and giving that you wonder if they are angels on earth put there to give me faith again.
Reconciling with my parents. Snow on christmas, a tree, a house of my own, love. Life and lights, computers and kicking supposedly empty boxes in the middle of the night as alarms shriek into life, boxes that contain things that change LIVES. Things that change lives. Kill Hitler when he's young? Not roll and follow Brian into the Sunoco bathroom on a long-ago birthday, crushing on Brian and loving needles and peircings and tattoos and wanting him to put a needle in me, not even thinking about the drug itself. Rolling and loving how he told me it's like a big warm hug, loving how he cared enough to tell me I'd feel warm but not to take off my jacket cause I could get sick. Simple concern...splitting a bag and never feeling anything like that before...and then being sick for 24 hours, throwing up....finding out only after several more split bags that he just wanted half a bag so he said to split it while I paid and he shot me up...me realizing I needed maybe 1/16th of a bag.
The first time I shot myself. The first time I ever skin-popped. My love for the slow rush, my love for the quick rush. My love for the optimism, for the comfort. And how it's been like that since. The places I've shot up...in the corner of the place between my eye and my nose. In my neck. Under my tongue. In my chest (not on my boobs, I can't see the veins there) and shooting coke. Speedballing and other peoples apartments...wastes of two good highs, I'll do them near each other but why together? Watching other people do coke. Me buying fourteen forties of coke and sitting there with my friend Dallas just shooting coke for days. Going insane, seeing things, seeing bugs, feeling bugs, GOING bugs. Moving away from coke, staying with my true love, heroin. Guys coming and going. Girls coming and going *smiles*
Going to jail with all my belongings outside...sitting in a cell and seeing it rain and crying. Getting out and seeing my stuff ransacked, picked through, flea marketed, trashed. Theives apparently don't read, but the rain destroyed a lot of the books. One friend salvaged my computers and as much as he could...to find out I had true friends who knew what to save, what was most important, crying again. Having a so-called friend sell my baby, my love, the computer from the non-empty box sold for a dime of crack and finding out and digging my nails into my apple tattoo and crying and crying and crying...losing my child. And losing my child. Sitting on a toilet seat in the dark as I lose a life I didn't know I had created. Sitting in shock for hours, blood drying on my thighs...dying a little inside like my child had died. Like everything I create is doomed to die. Spiralling down, not knowing who to tell or how or if I even should. Not looking for sympathy, just looking for escape. Finding it, running shrieking down the halls towards the flashing exit sign, hiding inside my mind and my drug and waiting for time to heal me.
I'm not sure it has yet. I'm not sure it ever will. Some things you don't heal from...these are the weevils. Heroin is more often the savior than the cause, so it's not evil but weevil instead. It has evil in it, but it does not overal mean evil, you see? I have evil in me, I take evil into me, but I am not evil.
Burning evil into my hand. Cutting as a pre-teen and teen, stopping when I got a car, got real control. Stopping needing to, wanting to when finding heroin. A situation and a group of people all focused on the same thing, a trainspotting existence, Wal-mart returns, reciept scams, stealing, returning, gas cards, cigarettes, theft and shadiness. Cars with no heat and no passenger window in the dead of winter. Drug dealers shoveling out our car from a ditch on "the street" when we drove down during a snow emergency...everyone required to stay off the roads. The snow plows had blocked off the highway entrance with their plowing, and we backed up the car and raced down the onramp, busting through the pile of snow and out the other side onto the highway. Getting trapped behind five or six plows, going 5 mph, honking, them slowing to 3mph, an ambulance coming through and us zipping in behind it while the too-slow plows tried to block us. Getting there, getting well, getting dug out, driving home. Countless times getting lost, in all seasons. Getting stopped by cops before even getting anything. Getting stopped with no license. In someone elses car. Getting in the car to go to the city and noticing the tail-light is broken. Further inspection reveals that the rear-view mirror has just fallen off, the windshield wipers havent worked for weeks, the side view mirror is missing, the power steering went a few days ago and its almost impossible to drive (you have to go real fast in order to have momentum to turn...parking and unparking is near impossible), my glasses one remaining wing breaking as I get in the drivers seat and notice there is also no oil in it. I look at all these things and decide to go anyway, and as I pull onto the road I hear whump-whump-whump-whump......a flat.
And I go anyway, in the pouring rain, driving rain, downpour, with no windshield wipers...holding one in my hand out the window, putting it at the bottom of the window and letting the wind slap my hand upwards and wipe the rain off the window, which allows me to occasionally glimpse the road while getting soaking wet and freezing. The rain keeping the sparks and smoking down when I reach the rim and the huge tread of the tire slaps into the end of the car, detatching the entire back side of the body and causing what turns out to be a permanent problem with that rear wheel. Still managing to get out and get where I was going, got a ride in a cop car, said it wasnt me driving, we didnt know it was flat...they said I had walked eight miles in the pouring rain. When they got to me I was napping on a guardrail...no one called them any time I signalled for help, only when someone saw me napping. They only call cops for people up to no good, never for helping.
The good cops I've met. The bad cops. The boring cops. The cops who insist on telling you stupid stories that end with things like "and we found her, duct tape over her mouth and around her wrists and ankles, a dildo in her ass, pussy and mouth" and you cant point out that she apparently is duct taped AND dildo'ed because you want to go home and not to jail, so you have to look scared, like you just realized you are in a bad place and want to go home right now mr nice policeman, and that you dont want to scream that mcdonalds wouldnt let their workers shoot their customers, as long as you dont try to hand a roll of monopoly money to a dealer, they will PROTECT you from harm, not hurt you. The cops ask, "arent you scared to come down here" and we say instinctively yes, because we are, but its not from the dealers, its from the COPS. The COPS. Getting let go from Mr. Lecture and go back to the car where the next districts police wait to pull our shirts over our heads and shake out our bras while a line of giggling spectators line the sidewalks with snacks. Going home shellshocked and berated, empty and shaking, to do it all again tomorow.
And tomorow is always another story.