Authors: Jerry Stahl
poppy love
by Ava Stander
I
am done with heroin, but heroin is not done with me. The scars on my body may be fading, but the scars on my liver bear the evidence of my addiction. Sharing needles has infected me with hepatitis C.
The treatment I undergo for the twelve months after quitting is referred to as “chemo lite.” I wake drenched in sweat with what feels like the flu times a thousand. Days and nights are spent with my head hanging over the toilet bowl, retching bile. I am a piece of hot coal lying on the cool tile floor. My skin is radioactive. My bones itch so badly it feels as though they are infested with fleas. My body's covered in wounds and scabs from scratching myself so viciously. I look like a leper. Dozens of times I think of getting loaded but I'm too stubborn to cash in the freedom I won back from the poppy.
Depression is a side effect and I catch it bad. I am unrecognizable to myself. I am reduced to a wretched, polluted amoeba unable to move from the couch. I enter suicide chat rooms online, only to be told to leave by other chatters because I am “too depressing.” I plunge deeper and deeper into an abyss of desolation. All the medication and therapy in the world can't put me back together again.
It is an awful Southern Californian sunny day. The sky above me is blue, my heart is black. I have been at work for half an hour when I hear my own voice inside my head.
Drive your car off Mulholland
.
I grab my purse and get into my car. Just as I escaped from the bonds of my addiction, so would I escape from this depression the past year of chemo bestowed upon me. I stop at a gas station to fill up my tank, to guarantee a fiery finish. Chain-smoking my way up the winding road of Laurel Canyon, I pass Houdini's property. I envision him immersed in a tank of water weighted down by chains, and the image won't leave my head. I drive along the serpentine twists and turns of Mulholland Drive for an hour looking for the perfect spot. I don't want to launch myself into oncoming traffic or land on anyone's house. After all, I have a conscience and don't want to hurt anyone else. I find a lookout post on a dangerous curve, with a stretch of dirt road a thousand feet long leading up to a guardrail. In it is an opening wide enough for my Honda to fit through.
I step out, into the majestic scenery of the Hollywood Hills. It is eerily quiet, as though the volume of the city had been muted. I look down and satisfy myself that the drop is sufficiently steep. I know the only way I am getting off this cliff is in a body bag.
I reverse my car to give me a good running start, but just as I reach the edge I press on the brake. I repeat this twice. My heart is punching against my rib cage. Catching my breath, fighting back tears, hands clenched around the steering wheel, I see a legal pad on the passenger seat. Should I write a goodbye note? Why bother, what I'm about to do really needs no explanation. It's a bold statement in and of itself. I'm finally going to get well. I close my eyes, put my foot on the gas, and floor it. The car takes flight, but instead of nosediving it hovers in midair for a split second, and that's when I know something has gone horribly wrong â¦
Addiction is like love. You don't know when it enters the room but you sure know when it exits. Hedonistic, idealistic, nihilistic, and above all dangerous. Have you ever been so parched that you feel like your esophagus is lined with cotton? You know that your only salvation is water, that cold, magical elixir pouring down your throat, trickling into every cell in your body. Nothing else will quench that burning need, nothing except water.
I'm not looking for God. I want to be God. I want to feel like God. Godly. My proclivity for heroin is unmatched. My affliction has been my driving force for a decade. I have traded in the glamour of Hollywood for the squalor of MacArthur Park. A neighborhood on the western edge of downtown Los Angeles, it centers around a large grassy park. Working-class Mexican and Central South American families populate the surrounding neighborhood. And then there are the undesirables. Gang members, petty criminals, ex-cons, prostitutes, pimps, the mentally sick, and the drug addicted.
I have disappeared into this milieu, only a few miles from my previous life. But the twenty-minute bus ride may as well be the distance from the earth to the moon. I left everything behind without batting an eyelash. Adapting to my surroundings. Indifferent to the consequences.
The Casa Sonora, a seedy motel a few blocks from the park that rents only to lost souls, will be the last permanent roof over my head until I get clean. My small room contains bulky, antiquated wooden furniture, carpet worn thin as cloth, and stark white walls. Cheaply framed Van Goghs that I rip out of a dime store calendar offset the funereal atmosphere.
A local gangbanger crack dealer, Spooky, sometimes stows away in my room to smoke so his homies don't find out he's getting high on his own supply. He rarely says a word. The only evidence of his presence in my room is the noise the lighter makes when he lights up. He likes that I never pester him for a hit. He is gorgeous. The ladies swoon.
On what will become my last night here, Spooky's ex-girlfriend ambushes me in the hallway. In a murderous rage, she grabs me by the throat and drags me to the banister to throw me over. I fall back into the wall and make myself as heavy as possible. When she realizes she can't lift me she unleashes punches to the back of my head, stomach, torso, and chest. I am so terrified I can't scream for help. She spits at me. I keep my head down to safeguard my face. She tries to push me down the seven flights of stairs. She tries to pry my hands open but I grip the railing with every ounce of strength I can muster and she's powerless. I don't want to die this way, murdered by someone else's hands. It is my life, mine to destroy and no one else's, and I want to live. I figure that everybody has to take a beating at some point and this is my turn. But I'll be damned if I'll let this mindless Medusa take my life. Her kicks are like a baseball bat on the side of my body. She's screaming vitriolic obscenities inches from my face. No one comes out to check on the commotion. I cling onto the railing with all the life force within me. My mouth tastes metallic. My sweat feels sticky. I look downâit's blood. Her screaming pierces my eardrums like daggers. Neither of us notice my gigantic ex-con neighbor, Cadillac, until he pulls her off me and throws her against the wall.
“You better watch yourself, bitch,” she snarls, and takes off. My eyes are squeezed shut. I don't dare move. I jump at the tap on my shoulder. Cadillac asks if I need help getting back to my room. I assure him I'm okay. He treads softly back to his room as if he knows the slightest movement may cause me more pain. After an eternity, I let go of the railing. I crawl back to my room on my hands and knees, and once inside I lie down against the door and curl up in the fetal position. I fall asleep counting my bloodstained tears as they soak into the carpet. I dream of floating on waves, suspended between a starless night and the deep blue sea.
The Van Goghs frown upon me in the morning as I throw some clothes and toiletries into my junkie luggageâa black trash bag. Miraculously, my face doesn't bear any traces of last night's homicidal attack, but the rest of me feels like I did ten rounds with Muhammad Ali. When I reach the foyer I picture myself splattered on the snow-white marble floor. My blood pouring out into the street. It sends shivers through me as though someone walked over my grave. Scoring is the first order of the day. The monster is awake and it's demanding to be fed.
I've been thrown out of every other motel in the area for nonpayment or drama. There's nowhere left to go. I'm living like a feral alley cat, in the basement of an abandoned building. I have dragged a chair and table out of the trash through the hole in the chain-link fence. The perfect setup for the day's only activities. Cooking up, shooting up, and nodding out. I can't risk being on the streets during the day. I have racked up a number of felonies and nonappearances in court, and the local cops know my face. I may as well be wearing a scarlet “A” for Addict. I'm an arrest waiting to happen. Next time I'm stopped I'm going to the pokey. And that's a hell I don't want to visit because there I would have to kick. There's no dope in jail. And that is what I fear the most.
I cop before sunrise, walking through the side streets and back alleys, passing the cardboard dwellers and sleeping bodies on the ground. After my early-morning dose of stress and anxiety, relief and gratitude pour over me once back in the safety of my living and dying room. Unwrapping the balloon takes a small forever. Who wraps these, Mexican midgets with tiny midget fingers? At long last I get the dope into the spoon. I squirt a bit of water over it and heat the mixture with my lighter to dissolve it. My needle is as dull as one of the nails used to crucify Jesus, so I sharpen it on a matchbox. The amber nectar has cooled, and I draw it into the syringe. I have to swing my arm around like a windmill to get my blood pumping. Otherwise I won't hit a vein and will end up looking like a bleeding pincushion.
I caress my arm in search of a vessel to carry me to oblivion. One pops up and my teeth clench as the needle goes in. I pull back the plunger and watch my blood blooming like flowers in the syringe.
The shades of my blood are ever-changing, depending on time of day, body temperature, and circumstances. I label the crimson and red hues each time they appear in the needle, like tubes of lipstick.
Scarlet Harlot, Better Red than Dead, Poppy Love, The Bride Wore Crimson, Devil's Magenta, Fuchsia Fox
. Mine are more romantic sounding than the names the makeup companies use. I push the plunger down, and before the needle's even out of my vein, my breathing slows and my heartbeat is barely there. I am God. I want to live forever. I don't want to die, I just want to stay high. My chin hits my chest. Let the drooling commence. A movie plays in my mind's eye, directed by David Lynch. In it I'm fronting a rhythm & blues band, wearing gold lamé pedal pushers with a matching gold jacket and nothing underneath. My tiny breasts make a cameo appearance every so often. The backing vocalists are horrified. I'm singing at 33 rpm, though I should be at 45 rpm. Swaying on my gold five-inch stilettos like a wounded bull in a bullfight, bleeding out as it struggles to stay standing. The audience below waits for me to keel over and die, or for the song to end, to put them and me out of our collective misery. I can't keep up but I carry on butchering the classic James Brown tune.
I feel good
,
I knew that I would, now
I feel good
,
I knew that I would, now
So good
,
So good
,
I got you
.
I feel someone's presence down here with me. I lift my two-hundred-pound head up off my chest. A silhouette stands in the doorway, backlit by the unrelenting sun.
“Girl, I would knock but you ain't got a door. Girl, you in there?” The Marilyn Monroe voice belongs to Angela, a six-foot-tall Nicaraguan ladyboy. She's stunning; black cat eyes, black shiny shoulder-length hair, cherry-red lips, and legs that put any supermodel's to shame. Angela just got out from doing three months in jail. She's still in the men's clothing the county gave her upon her release. I'm annoyed she found my hideout but I try not to show it. There aren't any steps and she has to jump down onto the dirt floor.
She glances at our surroundings and asks, “How you livin'?”
“Large.”
We howl with laughter and hug.
“Preciosa, give me something to wear and some whorepaint. I need to get out of this boy drag. I'm keeping a low profile until I go into this drug program in the desert. I got bumped up their waiting list cause of the SIDA. You should come with me.”
SIDA is Spanish for AIDS.
“Don't be a vibe slayer,” I say, raising an eyebrow and giving her my best stink eye.
“I heard about the beating you got. You should get out of the neighborhood. This place ain't no joke. Get yourself in a program. Don't you know there's nothing but hope for us until we're six feet under?”
“Hope is for suckers, Angela. And frankly, I would rather get the shit kicked out of me again than go to rehab.”
Angela keeps up a steady stream of mindless chatter. I stop listening. The only way to get rid of her is to give her what she wants. I want to go back to nodding in solitude. My trash bag's hidden behind some rotting cardboard boxes. In exchange for clothes, she gives me a balloon. We prepare a shot. I fix first, before letting her use my rig. She has no problem hitting a vein. They're thick as ropes; they're all that's left of her masculinity. I'm jealous of her veins. The Marilyn voice has slowed to a purr. I light a cigarette for her and put it between her lips. Eyes closed, she smiles with every part of her face as if this were the kindest gesture anyone has ever made toward her. The first shot of dope's always the best after a period of abstinence. The cigarette falls onto the trash bag lying between her feet, and I pick it up and finish it in a few drags.
I come to some time later. It's dark and quiet. I could be the last surviving person on earth. All of Angela's happy horseshit about getting clean keeps echoing around inside my skull. I have to obliterate the thoughts. I have to do more dope to forget what I had to do to get the dope. I lead a vampiric existenceâout of the sunlight during the day and into the moonlight at night. I only come out at neon. An existence as mediocre and mundane as the bourgeoisie and the nine-to-fivers I detest. My life's become so small you can barely see it under a microscope. Being a dope fiend is a twenty-four-hour-a-day job with no time off and no vacations. And the most dreadful thought of them all:
What am I doing?
That is the one thought I have to kill. I need to end this unwanted moment of clarity. I still have a tiny piece left of Angela's gift. I light a few candles and prepare another shot. Hitting a vein by the flickering light turns into a bloodbath. If the blood coagulates the heroin clogs up and won't go through the tiny opening of the spike. That's a waste I can't afford. A dozen holes later I'm in.