By some quirk of nature or destiny’s neglect I am still alive. I’ve escaped the hells of war and, later, heroin addiction. However, like all battles, scars remain. The things we did back in the 1960s were charged with encounters of guilt, debauchery and shame. These were profoundly disturbing years yet, within this inferno some good exists. The thread of humanity still clings, intact. Sometimes something good can come out of something bad.
He left me barely enough room to breathe, the straight razor pressed tightly against my throat.
“Drop it on the ground,” he demanded.
Without the slightest hesitation or thought I opened my clenched fist letting the bag of heroin flip to the floor like a playing card.
“Try anything funny and I’ll slit your throat,” he threatened, tightening his grip from behind me, both of us sweating profusely from the hot 1965 July heat and heroin withdrawal.
Finally he released me. I remained stiff, frozen and afraid to move as he retrieved the bag of smack then carefully backed away; the razor held face high to warn me it wasn’t over yet. Motionless I watched out of the corner of my eye as he disappeared out of the project hallway. I took a few deep breaths regaining what little senses I had left, walked two flights upstairs to my dealers crib. After explaining what had happened he gave me a free nickel bag and assured me he would take care of the Razor Guy.
Ok, I thought, now I have to get out of this hallway safely as there could be other junkies outside in the courtyard waiting to rip me off, not to mention the Narc Squad I’ll have to elude as I walk the eight blocks to my pad.
I made it home safely, got my set of works I had hidden in a coat pocket hanging in my closet.
Now comes the moment all dope-fiends live and sometimes die for, passage to the world of the undead, that state of mind where nothing exists emotionally. The land of Nod.
I open the glassine envelope squeezing it tent-like, tapping the white powder into a metal bottle cap. I set up my glass eyedropper fitting it with a baby’s pacifier nipple on the eyedroppers large end held in place with a rubber band. On the tapered end of the eyedropper a needle is fastened with a small strip of a dollar bill wrapped around the small end preventing air leaks making it water tight. A small amount of water is sucked up inside the spike and squirted over the heroin. A lit match held under the cooker dissolves the heroin. Next, a B-B sized piece of balled-up cigarette filter is placed inside the now clear liquid. As the needle draws fluid through this filter it traps most residual garbage. It’s not unusual for dealers to cut and bag heroin on the surfaces of pool tables or toilet seats where cockroaches and mouse turds flourish.
Using my belt as a tourniquet around my bicep the veins in the pit of the arm swell making mainlining easier. Slowly I insert the needle into the largest vein, loosen the belt, squeezing the pacifier half way injecting half of the smack.
Releasing the pacifier, blood backs-up inside the glass dropper assuring a clean hit. One complete squeeze and all of the heroin is injected and the spike pulled out. A few squirts of water through the spike leaves it clean for the next time.
The rush of heroin is a silent surge of radiant numbness, a jolt of soothing electrons promising temporary relief from the agony of reality. Some experience the high directly in the core of the brain, others, in the pit of the gut. Yet all experience the feeling of not feeling. No sensory perception is allowed in or out, only a glowing wave of warmth. No sadness, no joy — nothing. What’s left is a shell of a body void of emotion, incapable of hate, empty of love. Everything is perfect, until the pain of withdrawal. Then it’s back to the angry streets — again. Searching again and again for the elusive, comforting embrace of Lady H.
*
The Vietnam warrior comes home with the thousand-yard stare. No one but this modern day gladiator knows what that stare is about. It can’t be explained. Sam says if you weren’t in Vietnam, the Republic of, you’ll never understand. People ask me what it feels like being high on smack. I concur with Sam. If you haven’t been there you’ll never know.
Just as there is a man’s man, Sam was the thief’s thief. Sam brought creativity to the junkie’s repertoire. Sam came up with what he called the liquor store walkout. We’d pretend to be customers in a liquor store prepared to buy a large order.
Sam picked up choice booze from the liquor store shelf placing it on the counter. From the opposite side of the store I’d do the same. Sam told the store owner we needed three cases of beer. The owner walks to a back room where the beer was stored giving me enough time to grab a few bottles of the most expensive hooch I can carry then walk out to the car and wait for Sam. Sam waits a few minutes then tells the owner he should go see what’s keeping me. Sam simply walks to the car and we are in white powder heaven.
Works every time.
Then there’s the Sammy television scam. Sam put the word out in the street he scored a bunch of color televisions. Eventually a parasite shows up wanting to know how much (50 bucks) for a television, and what he has to do to get one. Sam tells the guy to drive us to the P.T. Projects and we’ll get him one. The parasite agrees and we park near the last court of the projects. Sam asks the guy for the money. The guy wants three color televisions. Sam wads up the $150. and shoves it in his pants pocket then heads for the hallway of the project. Sam simply leaves and goes to my pad. My job is to tell the parasite, after maybe a half-hour, I should see what’s taking Sam so long. By this time the guy is angry, confused and unable to get his money. He let’s me go, reluctantly. I meet Sam at my place and we get high. Sam is a decorated Vietnam veteran. He pawned his Bronze Star and ran off with the Barnum and Bailey Circus. I haven’t heard from him since. Sam and I had fun together. Especially this day when we found out the parasite was a ‘Special Detective’ This was a glorious score. We ripped off ‘the man’.
*
I met Rich while incarcerated in North Avenue Correctional Center. Whenever Rich came out of the joint he’d hook up with Irene. Irene was Bridgeport’s lady of the evening, a ‘working woman’, as she liked to be called. Irene, I think, was scared shitless of Rich. He told her to hit the streets and bring back cash for Daddy. She never failed, always coming back with a wad of dough. I never understood Richy. He took me in like a brother, shared his dope and asked for nothing in return. Some months later I read in the local newspaper how he bashed in his landlord’s head with a hammer. He’s doing life for murder. I have to admit, Rich was one scary guy. I’m just grateful I never got on his wrong side.
*
Junior was a Richard Burton look-a-like. He dreamed of becoming an actor. Junior had many dreams. I wrote his letters to his wife while we did some short time in North Avenue. We did some dope together, became friends. He couldn’t read or write. His wife read his script lines which he committed to memory to prepare for New York Broadway auditions. Junior never forgot the years of rejection. He came back to Bridgeport a man deprived of his dream. A dead man. Deny a man his dream and life ceases to exist. Junior over dosed. I don’t think it was an accident.
*
Ron was your generic junkie. He never talked much. We met, did some thievery, shot some dope and that was it. I met him courtesy of North Avenue. He’d pick me up in his car and drive me to an expensive men’s clothing store. I’d scoop up as many suits as I could off a rack and run out, jump in the car, fence the suits off and cop some dope. We did this numerous times at various clothes stores. We also did a great deal of jail time together. We didn’t always get away.
*
I stole a woman’s pocketbook as she knelt praying at the foot of a tombstone in Saint Michael’s Cemetery. Using her car to shield me, I crouched low, sneaking up to the car, cat-like, opened the car door, grabbed her pocketbook from the front seat and quickly walked towards the cemetery exit. The woman somehow caught up with me pleading for her bag. I slowed down, turned and handed her the bag saying “I’m sorry.”
Forty years have passed since then. I still feel guilty and ashamed. Heroin makes one do horrendous, unspeakable things.
*
Joe died of cancer. I think cancer is the end product of guilt…it eats and gnaws. Joe told me he shot a guy. Joe said he shot this guy twice in the neck. He watched the guy clutch his throat as blood spurted everywhere. The guy failed to pay his drug debts. He finally paid with his life.
*
Leroy was a dealer, homosexual, and a lover of jazz. Sundays are bad days for junkies; most businesses are closed making it difficult to score money. I collected a few of my John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie and Stanley Turentine albums and headed for Leroy’s. Leroy knew I was sick and he’d take advantage by rubbing up against me, groping me. What could I have done? He had dope and I didn’t. He knew I was pissed off as he fondled me. If this is what it takes to get high then so be it. After five minutes of this he’d hand me the smack and collect his albums. After shooting up I thought about Leroy’s rubbing and groping… he had me literally by the balls. Wasn’t much I could do. I was sure I would need to see him again. He did have dynamite smack.
*
While carrying some swag from my fence’s house to the car-trunk of a Bridgeport mobster, a bunch of Polaroids fell to the ground from the car-trunk. I recognized the nude girl in the Polaroids. Nancy had such gorgeous, innocent eyes but in those Polaroids her eyes were dark and sad and full of shame. She obviously needed cash for dope. Hence the Polaroids. I remember, vividly, those eyes and the sadness they displayed. Her eyes haunt me to this day, forty something years later.
*
Smitty and I boosted a few cartons of cigarettes from the local A&P, fenced them off and copped four half-loads of dope, 60 bags, 30 each, a few blocks from the Apollo Theatre in the City. After coming back to Bridgeport, we split. The next day I went to Smitty’s place. I smelled meat cooking as I entered his apartment. There, in the parlor I found him sitting on the floor, spike hanging out of his arm and his face leaning on a steaming radiator. He had OD’d obviously, foam oozing from his mouth. His face looked like raw hamburger. The radiator cooked his face. I turned the radiator off and left. Someone will find him in a couple of days as he decomposes, I thought.
I cannot undo my life. What’s done is done, its epitaph written in stone. The many years I lived addicted to heroin took its toll. I am 60 years old, now, but I’m afraid I never matured psychologically. Heroin retarded my emotional growth. I stopped growing at age 19 so I guess I’m still a kid at heart. I am what I am. If I can say anything good about heroin it is this: During the draft lottery I was selected for active duty in Vietnam. However, during my physical I was rejected for having track marks. So — something good came out of something bad. In this one way, maybe heroin saved my life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Tracy’s fiction has appeared online at Mindcaviar and on numerous men’s room walls in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Dan and reality never got along well — they will never be friends.
