Junkie Love Read online

  It was the amount of traffic coming to the house that worried me. I had always tried to limit the number of people passing through by keeping strict hours, refusing to deal at night unless it was a special favour to a friend who was sick. Now, there were people arriving and leaving twenty four hours a day, while there was always some kind of party going on in one of the rooms — drugs, sex, or both — full of strange, unknown characters, any one of whom could have been a stoolie or police informer. I was getting more and more paranoid, convinced that we were about to be busted. The cops would have a field day: they could lock us all up on any number of counts, from the use and sale of illegal substances, through being knowledgeable receivers of stolen goods, to less serious offences such as underage sex and freely tapping into the municipal gas and electricity supplies. It was a sledgehammer-through-the-door, sniffer-dogs-and-handcuffs situation waiting to happen, and I wasn’t happy about it at all.

  The trouble was, I was as much to blame as anyone. The pale, sleazy, vampirical creatures who visited me were hardly less noticeable, in their own way, than the variously deranged and intense-looking characters who visited other parts of the house, often staying for days at a time. As Cissy appeared determined to run some kind of non-stop, twenty-four-hours-a-day drugs supermarket, I decided to go along with the general flow of things, and completely gave up trying to preserve any kind of anonymity. I basically accepted that we were going to be busted in the not too distant future, and in my darker moods I would almost welcome the prospect as a way out of the blind alley that my life had become. But amazingly, it never happened; and even though it must have been obvious to anyone who was half awake that this was no ordinary squat, and that strange things were happening within, the anticipated police raid never arrived.

  The most interesting transformation, though, has been in Cissy herself. I always knew that she had a streak of selfishness and greed in her; but in the past this was always balanced by her warmth and energy, her infectious sense of enthusiasm that could sweep people along, making life with her unpredictable and interesting, if nothing else. Now, this lighter side has disappeared completely. Something cold and grasping has begun to emerge, something in her that is almost insect-like in the way she stays in her room all day, dealing from her bed and holding court to her customers like a skagged-out version of decrepit old Miss Havisham from Great Expectations. She hoards and protects her gear like some dark, underworld creature with its eggs, doling it out in obsessively weighed and measured amounts to her customers, who seem to be more like disciples, or drones around a queen bee, rather than normal run-of-the-mill junkie types. Many dealers get on power trips, it’s true, and take an active enjoyment in making people wait, or watching them crawl; but Cissy has elevated this tendency to an art form. Sometimes I walk past her half-open door and I catch her image reflected in the large, oval mirror on top of the dressing table, sat up in bed with her scales, packets of gear, spoons and syringes scattered about, surrounded by six or seven pale-faced young guys. Junkie castratos in the court of Queen Cissy, they hang on her every word and are only too willing to run errands for her, to flatter her in every way possible. A couple of months back, she had long, blond hair-extensions fitted that hang in braids almost to her arse, the type that are all the rage in the London clubs right now. With her pale skin and false hair, dressed in a white shift and propped up on pillows, she really does look like some twisted version of a Victorian child’s doll, translucent and ageless, but with an undertone of disease and malice behind the ivory smoothness of her flawless, junkie skin.

  I don’t know why, but some people, especially young girls, seem to thrive for a time on heroin. It wastes them, sure, but it also increases their beauty in some alien or waif-like way, and Cissy is undoubtedly of this type, her pretty looks now having reached some kind of apotheosis of weird, strung-out beauty. Of course, what is given is also taken back later, and with interest. Heroin seems to act almost like a preservative, holding back time and allowing the user to remain young and ageless, as if in suspended animation, and a junkie who is thirty five, or even forty years old, can easily be mistaken for someone in their early twenties. The problem actually comes when you stop taking the drug. In the same way that years of blocked emotions suddenly bubble to the surface in a mixed up mess of pain, remorse and confusion, so the aging process will attack your body with a vengeance, as your metabolism struggles to readjust and years of chemically-induced imbalance must be paid for. In the first year after kicking, many ex-users become fat and bloated, while on an almost daily basis you will notice new lines appearing on your face, a map wherein can be read all your previous sins and transgressions; and although this doesn’t always happen, the appearance of some ex-junkies does bring to mind the picture of Dorian Gray in the attic, or the face of some Hollywood vampire who has been unexpectedly delayed and caught by the rays of the rising sun.

  The trouble is, that as much as I loathe this new insect-like Cissy and her fucked-up, bitchy ways, I still want her. I’ve been seeing other girls lately, but the feeling I get with them just isn’t the same as what I had with Cissy, and as much as I fight it, the truth is that I’m still obsessed with her.

  First, there was the French girl who moved into the basement, a damp and stinking wreck of a room that she cleaned up with the help of some anonymous old man. In the beginning, I thought he was her father; later that he was a trick who she fucked for money. At any rate, I haven’t seen him for a long time now, not since he finished redecorating her room. One night a few months back she came upstairs to buy some speed off me and we ended up spending the night together. It was okay, as casual sex goes, but I soon found out that she was into leather and S&M, and what really turned her on was to be fucked in the arse while she masturbated her clitoris, or rubbed it against some piece of furniture, a wooden chair-arm or the rounded end of a bedpost. Of course, this was interesting, and I went along with it all quite happily, but the trouble was she couldn’t have an orgasm any other way — when I fucked her in the cunt, she wanted me to come as quickly as possible (pretty difficult when you’re loaded on gear), saying that my cock made her sore and that she had never been able to orgasm this way. Yet she was quite content to have me fuck her hard up the arse for as long as I wanted, while she masturbated and watched our reflection in the mirror. She especially enjoyed wearing a tight leather corset with a dog collar and chain around her neck, and as she began to climax she liked me to pull hard on this while I fucked her from behind, so that at the peak of her orgasm she felt that she was being strangled to death. She also liked to be hit hard on the bare arse with a wooden paddle or a leather belt, or gagged with a ball and chain device while I slapped her face and called her all the sexually derogatory names I could think of — something that made me want to laugh, but which really seemed to turn her on. I must admit that I enjoyed these scenes too, and participated enthusiastically — people are strange, and I long ago gave up on the idea that there is any such thing as “normal” sex. But to be truthful, she irritated the hell out of me when we weren’t in bed together, and without any love or deeper feeling on either side this lustful but limited affair soon burned itself out and became an empty ritual, repetitious and ultimately boring.

  There were a couple of other one night stands, but for the last two months now I’ve been seeing Vikki, a beautiful young English-Chinese girl from Bristol who has aspirations to be a photographer and film-maker. She’s a lovely fuck, and for some unknown reason appears to be crazy about me; and, compared to most of the girls I attract, she seems incredibly well-organised and together, cooking meals for me when I forget to eat, and making sure I don’t use someone else’s dirty old syringe that has been left lying around. She’s very conscious of the risk of HIV and even makes me wear a condom when we fuck — which is, I suppose, a sensible move on her part, me being in a particularly high-risk group, after all.

  I love the way she sucks on my lower lip, and bucks and grinds into me when she comes, soaki
ng the bed with her juices. Her long, black hair cascades down over her shoulders, the ends of it teasing each pink and upturned nipple, while her body and face glisten with a silver sheen of sweat as I lick and fuck her to orgasm. If I’m above her when she comes, I love to watch her thick, red lips pull back from her teeth, like some primitive and pornographic mask of sexual torture; if I’m between her legs, then afterwards my hair and face will be soaked, as if someone had thrown a bucket of steaming water over me, but fulsome and rich with her animal scent.

  I can tell that she cares about me, and I know that she’s good for me, but the trouble is I can’t stop thinking about Cissy — and I guess Vikki knows this, because they absolutely loathe each other (Vikki calls her “Spider-Woman”). Now, she seems to have got it into her head that I only ever loved Cissy because she was so fucked-up, that it was her “wildness” and “decadence” that interested me, and a few weeks ago she asked me if I would shoot her up with smack, just so she could “see what it feels like”. Of course I refused; but then she got hold of a set of works from somewhere and tried to inject herself with the speed I’d given her, thinking that she only wanted to sniff a line. She made a real mess of her arm, and when I tried to stop her she went kind of crazy, yelling at me to leave her alone, then running downstairs and locking herself in the bathroom. There, she continued to find a vein, while I hammered on the door and tried to reason with her, all to no avail. Eventually I gave up and kicked it in. I found her sitting on the toilet, tears streaming down her face and blood down her virgin arms, still wildly stabbing at herself in manic frustration at not being able to find a vein. She only stopped when I promised that if she came back upstairs with me, I would give her a little gear and inject it for her properly.

  Cissy came out of her room to see what all the noise was about, and when she saw the state that Vikki’s arms were in, she made some bitchy comment about “stupid little girls” trying to be cool. Vikki flew at her in a rage, with her long, red fingernails aimed directly at Cissy’s throat, and I had to pull her back, even though I felt like punching Cissy myself. But in a way, Cissy was right; and after I’d reluctantly given Vikki what she wanted, I could feel only pity and contempt for her pathetic, childish display (and anger at myself for being blackmailed into giving someone their first ever shot, something which I had always promised myself I would never do). Since then, I just can’t take her seriously, even though she tries so hard. Maybe she’s just too young, but the things she says sound stupid and false to me now — all this bullshit about “experience” and “exploring life” — and I see that behind the facade she’s just as fucked-up and neurotic as everybody else.

  As for Cissy, she seems to get more crazed, evil and twisted by the day. For awhile, she had a new boyfriend, the sound engineer of a well-known Australian rock band, and I would hear them fucking sometimes, or arguing, as I passed their room on my way to the bathroom, or down the hallway to the front door. Soon, the sounds of love grew less, their arguments got louder and more frequent, and it was obvious that they were having problems as Cissy’s tyranny of smack began to take over. From all the shouting I heard, it seemed that JC was being verbally scourged and lashed into some kind of emotional and mental submission. His ever increasing need for gear, plus the fact that Cissy was becoming more and more avid in protecting her stash, meant that they were on a direct collision course; and it wasn’t long before he began stealing from her, sneaking up the darkened stairway in the middle of the night to use my facilities in exchange for a share of the stolen goods. In spite of the fact that he was with the woman who, in some way, I was still obsessed with, we became good friends and would sit up together all night long swapping junkie tales and lore, while Cissy slept on downstairs, blissfully unaware that her latest stash place had been rumbled. Of course, in the morning, when she discovered that her golden-brown hoard had been mysteriously depleted overnight by anything up to half a gramme, there would be a furious row, with accusations and recriminations flying in all directions. But JC, being a crafty old fox, always kept a little emergency stash for these occasions when, out of anger or spite, Cissy would cut off his supply — just enough to keep himself straight until he could worm his way back into her good books once again. She began to hide her gear in small amounts in several different places around her room, but somehow JC would always find them; and, biding his time until she went out somewhere, he’d take a little from each, so that in fact this strategy worked against her: it was much harder to detect that these small amounts were missing than it was if a whole lot disappeared at once.

  In spite of this underhand and devious behaviour, JC was totally hung-up on Cissy. Both of us were somehow caught in this spider’s web — the dark, poisonous side of female sexuality that she was now emanating. And I’m not ashamed to say that we regaled each other mercilessly with tales of her insanity and all-round fucked-up behaviour, as some kind of protection against, or compensation for, the emotional pain that she was capable of inflicting. I began to see her more and more as some kind of insect creature around whom male drones swarmed to suck the nourishing elixir of smack that was secreted; while she, dealing always from her bed, became increasingly obsessive and exact about the quantities of gear she weighed out on her little set of brass scales, taking out then replacing minute amounts until she was fully satisfied that she hadn’t given away too much. It was like some primitive form of matriarchy, based on smack, and the worst times were when I couldn’t cop anywhere and had to go downstairs to join the queue of ghouls waiting to buy off Cissy. The deals she sold me at such times were always a little under, so I never felt bad about sharing the gear that JC had stolen from her, and we’d sit up until dawn, shooting speed and smack, babbling away until it was time for him to sneak back downstairs and crash out next to Cissy. Hours later, she’d wake to find that yet more of her treasure had unaccountably disappeared.

  JC was a one-off, a totally unique character. He was gifted with the driest, blackest sense of humour I have ever come across, and his stories about the criminals and junkie low-life of Melbourne had me in stitches, even though I was in one of the darkest, most miserable periods of my life so far. He was also the most original and talented sound engineer I’ve ever heard, capable of creating huge, black, cavernous holes of sound for the band he worked with, both in the studio and when they played live. As great as any band might be, live especially, they will only be as good as their soundman; and if he has cloth ears, or doesn’t understand the dynamics of their music, no matter how well they might be playing onstage they’ll sound like a muddy mess of turgid noise out front to the audience.

  Because the audience only hears what is coming through the PA speakers, and this is totally under the control of the sound engineer, stationed at his mixing desk somewhere in the back of the hall, or upstairs in the balcony. A good soundman can pick out the individual instruments to heighten or lower their prominence in the mix, adding colours to the sound and structuring it so that it meshes and holds together; and while it is true that no soundman in the world can make an awful band sound good, it is also true that a bad soundman can make a wonderful band sound like absolute shit. JC was one of the best, and unlike many sound engineers who find the basic levels for each instrument and leave them set like that for the entire performance, he was constantly on the move: adding a little echo here; reverb there; changing the EQ or the volume level of a particular instrument; and generally playing the mixing desk as if he were an additional, but invisible, member of the band — which, in truth, he was.

  Unfortunately, he had fallen on hard times, and when he met Cissy he had just been temporarily fired by the band for being the most fucked-up, junked-out and wasted member of a group that was notorious for being fucked-up, junked-out and wasted. It was true that he had become prone to falling asleep at the mixing desk, and was either so stoned, or else so sick, that he eventually became incapable of doing his job properly; so it was no real surprise (except, perhaps, for JC), when he and t
he band parted ways. Now he was marooned, penniless and thousands of miles from home, with an enormous habit to feed each day and totally at the mercy of Cissy — who had, by this time, turned into a complete virago. With his deep sense of irony and his gallows humour, I suspect it was a situation that JC secretly relished, in a dark, self-mocking kind of way. But it was also obvious that he had reached a dead end as far as his time in London was concerned, and one day he jumped ship with about half of Cissy’s stash in his pocket and a one-way ticket back to Melbourne, given to him by the band’s record label on condition that he never return. She could not believe that this had happened, so sure was she that JC was completely under her control: her fury and, to be fair, her grief at his unexpected departure (not to mention that of half of her supply), were awesome to behold.

  The situation in the house has worsened ever since. Sometimes, I feel it’s like a time bomb waiting to explode its rotting and putrescent contents all over the surrounding neighbourhood, so dark and claustrophobic do its rooms and stairways seem to me now. I miss JC and his crazy stories; the enmity between Cissy and myself has settled into a cold and stony silence; and I’ve never felt so totally alone and isolated in my whole fucking life, not even during the worst days at the end of my time in New York.

  Just lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about this anyway: about how I started taking drugs in the first place, and why I went down this particular road and, most of all, about where it has led me to now. I refuse to regret any of it. I’ve had a lot of fun and I’ve learned a lot of things, but to be honest, I think I’ve taken it about as far as I possibly can without actually killing myself. (I have, in any case, OD’d several times, turning blue on more than one occasion.) As far as I can see, there are three basic choices open to me right now: kill myself straight off, quick and clean; quit while I’m still ahead; or resign myself to this living fucking death that my life has now become, probably leading to actual physical death in the near or not too distant future.