Acrobaddict (31 page)

Yes, that scared me. He was not a well man, and the words
dope sick
sank in, along with the smell of vomit all over everything. That was my first experience with the words dope sick. He seemed to be dying from a horrible disease right there beside me. How could the absence of drugs do that to a person? The driver jumped out of the car when we got to Forty-ninth and Eighth and started screaming at me through the window, apparently thinking I was the more stable and responsible one—forty dollars quieted him. Asten almost fell out of his door and into the street, but I propped him up, gave him $300 in cash, and told him to get as much heroin as he could.

I walked to the closest Starbucks, ordered a black tea, and sat down, waiting for Asten to return. The worst part was always the waiting. It usually took Asten fifteen minutes to score some dope—fifteen horrible minutes, each second tied down with anxiety, despair, and fear. I feared that he might never return with my stuff, and the
excitement I generated from scoring could only be taken down by using. I feared that he would get arrested and not come back, which happened once, and it left me waiting by the phone for two days. I feared that I would get arrested when he returned and wouldn’t be able to get high before going to jail.

After half an hour, I saw a crazy man resembling Asten crossing the street, but it couldn’t have been the same corpse that had shared a cab with me. Singing opera at the top of his lungs, he sauntered through traffic, with cars honking and swerving around him. Blood re-pulsed through the veins of his mummified body, and other than falling asleep mid-aria, and apparently overmedicated, he looked like a well, happy, healthy man. I wanted what he had: to be fluid, happy, calm, and healed. I grabbed the cigarette pack from him containing the power to resurrect the dead, and hurried into the Starbucks toilet. I cut the top off a straw with my key, stuck it in the powder, and sniffed my salvation. The powder stung, but I didn’t care—the heroin’s bitterness paired well with the aftertaste of my tea, creating a blend that would keep the green mermaid in business forever—heroin-blended tea, my perfect summer-signature drink, the foundation of my dreams.

Twenty-two was the best birthday ever. Everyone I invited came to my party, and most ended up doing heroin, which made me happy—nobody wants to sit in hell alone. The more demons I had around me, the more accepted and justified I felt in my drug use. I brought my friends over to my side of the mirror so I wouldn’t be forced to stare at the ugly reflection of reality all night.

Vicky, my newest friend, was an aspiring painter with a warm smile that made me want to hug her and never let go. Vic was pretty, smart, and skinny, with strawberry-red hair, and we shared the same love of alternative music.

I was excited, but hesitant about exposing my heroin use to my new friend. Asten always told me, “Don’t turn anybody on to this; there is a God above us and he won’t be happy with you if you share this secret.” But didn’t he turn me on to heroin every time he got me more? In my own boundary-less euphoria, I invited her in for a visit
to the dark world. Vic took right to it, her face and skin effusing love. That night I was wrong in facilitating the permanent staining of her nose and brain, and it is a moment I will regret for the rest of my life. The heroin always runs out and the party always ends.

I used more and more, outside the watchful eyes of Darren and Nick. Unable to come off heroin without more heroin, I always set an extra bag aside for the day after our “social using.” While they seemed content smoking pot the next day, I needed to taper off to make a more gradual descent—Heroin Light, for a smoother landing.

While walking home from work one day, I saw a torn, mud-covered poster stuck at the bottom of a storefront window with the word “Gymnast” on it. I stopped dead in my tracks. It was an audition for Disneyland in Florida; they were looking for dancers and gymnasts. I had never seen a connection between gymnastics and a job before. Competitive gymnastics seemed separate from the acrobatic performance world, and I felt it would be like selling out. Simply staring at the audition poster made me nervous. I was just a gymnast with no dance or performing experience, and probably too old for the job. What if I auditioned and didn’t make it? What if everyone there was a better gymnast than me? I didn’t need any more humiliation in my life, and I tried to ignore the invitation. But that poster loomed as a huge reminder of my failure, and seemed to follow me everywhere I went. I wanted to tear them all down. After a week of dodging those posters, I decided to go for it.

The audition was in three days, so I still had time for self-dissuasion. That night Nick came over and we went downtown, met Asten, and then faded into our romantic, black-hearted love triangle: Nick, me, and heroin. We used all of Friday and even Saturday morning, the day of the audition.

I went to the Manhattan Gym, and, despite being well medicated, was still a shaking mess, terrified of reentering the temple I had
desecrated. I had pledged never to return, but my legs carried me toward some desperate hope for change.

Huge windows lined the gym overlooking the Hudson River, and seeing the equipment through the glass made me want to turn back. Instead, I walked through the double doors and headed toward the “Audition Here” sign, though I interpreted it as a warning sign that said, “Joe, you’re an ultimate failure. Go home.” I stood in the back of the room and watched a few guys stretching before signing my name to the audition list; I had to study the situation before committing to the audition. Looking over the silent, warm bodies on the floor, in a state of meditation with their muscles, I envied and loathed them. The woman behind the desk asked for my resume and headshot. High on heroin, with a thick cloak of cigarette smoke around me and my Boston accent, I responded with “What the fuck is a headshot?” She was not amused.

I proceeded to the warm-up room, but when I recognized two guys from my gymnastics past, my feared humiliation began. Did they know what had happened to me? Did they know of my drug-fueled madness and destruction at Staunton? And now, years later, with two large holes pierced through my ears, on heroin, there I was, trying to audition for wholesome-as-American-pie Disneyland. I felt busted even though no one had seen me, let alone recognized me. Even worse, one guy from my past was helping to run the audition. Would he be judging me on all levels? The headshot woman said, “Okay, Mr. Put-Ig-Nano, you can get in line with those guys.” I looked at her coldly, not because I didn’t like her or for mispronouncing my name, but because I was having a mental breakdown.

I laughed, shook my head, grabbed my coat, and stormed out the door, hailing a taxi to go back to Nick, who was on my couch, nodding out from the heroin that was holding his bones together. I did a huge line and curled up next to him, pushing the shame and self-hatred away, placing that memory where all my other bad memories went.

Nick felt my body next to his and asked in a cool, raspy voice, “How did it go?” I told him I hurt my Achilles tendon while warming up,
knowing that from his years of football he’d understand no one could tumble with an injured Achilles. A tear fell from my eye. Nick couldn’t understand why I was so emotional over a hurt tendon. And I couldn’t tell him how gymnastics equipment was the stone foundation of my church, how the high bar and the pommel horse had shaped and molded me, and how I loved them. The way a painter falls in love with his paint and a dancer loves movement, I loved gymnastics but had repeatedly condemned my church before my God. I had set one foot back in my holy place, only to feel rejected by its spirit. My heroin, however, would never reject me or cause me such humiliation. Heroin would hold me in its warm embrace, and in return I entrusted it to fill me with the light of God and protect me. Nick and I shared that love, and our love was perfect. I would never know a relationship as deep or as powerful. My dreams weren’t crushed, because I didn’t have nor did I want any.

Since I wasn’t going to Disneyland, I decided to go back to school. That summer Nick and I went downtown and applied to the community college for the fall semester. I was happy and couldn’t wait to start, figuring that school would help me stop using heroin. I didn’t feel like I had a problem since I was only sniffing it, and I knew I would never use needles. I loved body piercing, but sticking a needle in one’s arm to get high seemed like a sad, dead-end road.

Vic and I hung out more often and our friendship quickly grew stronger, as most friendships do with drugs. She would stay the night and we would use heroin together. I got to know her on a deeper level, and she disclosed her horrible eating disorders. That information sealed the deal for our friendship. We were the same—both with our personal demons that wanted to use us, kill us, and never allow us to know peace. She would never question my disease and I would never question hers, both of us accepting each other’s destruction. She was never addicted to heroin like me; she only did it to make herself throw up. She had been repeatedly hospitalized, intubated, and force-fed. We were fallen angels expelled from heaven; only God knew why we had to keep living like that.

As I started using more, I started feeling sick coming off my highs. Asten told me to buy a bottle of methadone and sip it for a few days, and it would get me through between sniffs. I got a few backup bottles from him, and didn’t mention it to Darren or Nick. The deep-red, strong elixir did the trick. With a methadone chaser, I would never have to face the sickness again.

School was annoying. It interfered with my drug use, and I could never wake up for my early-morning classes. I needed to get help. An ad in the back of the
Village Voice
said “HELP: HEROIN,” so I called the number and got the Substance Treatment and Research Service of Columbia University. I went to the STARS clinic and was told the detox used Klonopin, and after that I would be put on naltrexone, an opiate antagonist, to block the effects of heroin. But I had to be abstinent for fourteen days before starting the naltrexone pills. If I took them while opiates were still in my body, I’d go into immediate withdrawal and get an illness worse than being dope sick. That scared me. I didn’t like the idea of detoxing off heroin with Klonopin—one pill would send me off on a horrible bender with unknowable repercussions. I found another place in Greenwich Village that offered group therapy and one-on-one counseling. I decided to give it a shot.

Asten was also going through a rough time. He got kicked out of his Upper West Side apartment and moved back to Forty-ninth Street. I hated calling him there, because some woman would answer the phone and call me “Chico” in her raspy voice. I didn’t even care if she knew Asten was my heroin dealer.

At the end of that fall I got terrible news: Asten, my faithful drug dealer, was leaving New York to enter recovery in Arizona. I was happy for him, but unhappy for me. I took that as a sign and believed without Asten around to supply the drugs, I too would be able to stop using. How else would I get heroin?

The door between heaven and Earth was closing. The whole gang bid farewell to our heroin use and closed the opening of the well. I continued with school and was happy to do something besides
waiting tables. The air around us changed; it was getting colder. I wasn’t seeing Nick as much, but continued to hang out with Vic and Darren. We were all secretly pissed that Asten was gone and thought he would come back someday—but he didn’t.

29

FIBULA

F
IBULA IS DERIVED FROM THE
L
ATIN WORD
figo
,
MEANING “TO FASTEN,” AND DENOTES A BUCKLE, BROOCH, OR CLASP
. T
HE RELATIONSHIP OF THE FIBULA TO THE TIBIA IS THAT OF THE NEEDLE TO THE BROOCH—A SKELETAL FASTENER.