Junkie Love (16 page)

I love the way she sucks on my lower lip, and bucks and grinds into me when she comes, soaking 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 the 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.

If I look at Cissy, and then at myself, it is not a pretty sight. We have both become, in our own ways, something a little less than “human”: she, a bitter, disappointed and twisted bitch, somehow old before her time; me, an emotionally stunted and cold-hearted bastard, perverse and self-defeating. A horrid morass of hatred and self-loathing seems to poison everything
within and around us; while both of us are full of these aborted and unrealised possibilities that fester away and rot inside. And Vikki, too … I know that my continuing obsession with Cissy is destroying her also, and all that nonsense about shooting herself up was just her way of trying to compete on some hopeless and absurd level. I’m not even that interested in fucking her anymore, even though she has one of the most perfect and sexually-enticing little bodies that I’ve ever seen, and this is making her even more crazy. (Maybe it’s the smack, or more likely the methadone, finally getting to me after all these years.) I just haven’t been able to take her seriously ever since that episode in the bathroom, while Cissy’s words about “silly little girls trying to be cool” keep on ringing in my ears, like some kind of hex, or hoodoo. It’s not really Vikki’s fault, I know: she’s in way over her head, and can’t understand or deal with the situation at all. I just wish she was a little bit older, or had something in her — some mental or emotional power — that could blast and banish this evil witch from my life forever. But it’s something I’ve got to do for myself, I realise that — the only question being, of course: how? I’ve got two addictions to kick, Cissy and smack, and I’m so far down I can’t even see daylight anymore. So where do I get the inner strength and resolution to haul myself back up again, to switch from negative to positive, when all my circuits and wiring are burned out, seemingly beyond repair? (“An interesting and apposite question, Watson, and one that requires not a little thought and cogitation …”)

Dougie and his psycho brother Tony have been coming around lately — Dougie to visit Cissy, Tony to buy speed off me. Dougie and Tony actually hate each other’s guts; but they have the type of fraternal relationship whereby if either one of them is threatened by an outside party, both of them will unite to beat the living shit out of this third, unfortunate and uncautious person. Tony is an out-and-out thug, dangerous and potentially lethal, but Dougie has apparently mellowed; maybe
with age and experience; maybe with the knowledge that, carrying the
HIV
virus as he does, his days are probably numbered. In any case, though you can see that he still has it in him to be a hard and brutal bastard, he also has a soft and almost sensitive side. It’s obvious that he still feels protective about Cissy, and that she was mistaken and being totally paranoid when she thought he was looking for her to carry out some form of violent revenge.