Authors: Phil Shoenfelt
Sometimes, I wouldn’t be able to score, and both of us would be out tramping the streets, doing the round of small-time dealers who, like myself, sold individual wraps. We’d borrow and barter so that we wouldn’t have to break into our float, hustling for a half or quarter-gramme, just to keep ourselves straight for a few hours, or until one of the main dealers was back in business. After just a few months, I’d accumulated an impressive cache of stolen goods — watches,
CD
s, radios, jewellery, clothes — received in lieu of payment for drugs, and these often came in handy at such times. One girl, Suzy, who used to buy speed off me and would consume amazing quantities of the stuff, was an especially good thief. She would turn up with the most unlikely objects — anything from a high-quality continental duvet to a complete set of bone china dinner-plates — and she would also steal to order: if you wanted a particular record, or
CD
, or a new pair of jeans, you would let her know, and she’d be back on the doorstep within a few hours, bringing the desired goods to be exchanged for a gramme or two of speed.
One of the characters I used to buy from, whenever I couldn’t lay my hands on a large amount, was Bela, an Italian junkie who used to deal out of the public lavatories in Regent’s Park. He had an English wife and a small child, and had recently secured himself a job with the local council, cleaning and maintaining the toilets at the Camden Town end of the park, next to London Zoo. He had a small office at the rear of the prefabricated building and would deal out of there, and on any particular day he would have anything up to two dozen junkies dotted around the grass and park benches, waiting to pay him a visit. It was an amusing sight to behold, all these pale, degenerate people sitting amongst the azalea and rhododendron bushes, pretending to be casually enjoying the watery spring sunshine while impatiently counting the minutes until it was their turn to meet the hallowed presence within. I don’t know if
“Bela” was his real name — it could have been, or it might just have been a nickname derived from his thick, European accent; or from the fact that he so evidently enjoyed the act of shooting up in itself, booting and re-booting the blood time after time, as if fascinated by the sight, or the smell of it, and with an ash-laden cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth throughout the whole procedure. Whatever the case, Bela was the most committed and unrepentant junkie I have ever met. He never thought of trying to straighten himself out, shouldering the burden of addiction as if it were his true calling in life, his one real interest, and about which he knew more than anyone else. His deals were lousy, but he never cut the gear, regarding this as sacrilege, so that while the quantity was always a little under, the quality was good. He justified these small deals by emphasising that, for him, the drug itself was like blood — his “lifeblood” he called it, with a toothless and maniacal grin — and that he needed it more than anybody else did. Sooner or later, most junkies come to believe this, and use it to justify their own greed; but with Bela heroin really was like a religion, and he its saint, or avatar. To watch him shooting up, especially if you were sick and impatient to cop, was like torture. In and out the blood would flow, as Bela booted the smack around his veins, and you couldn’t interrupt or ask him to hurry — this would have been like urging haste on someone who was partaking of the holy sacrament. And so you would sit there, sweating and twitching, pretending you really weren’t too concerned whether you scored or not — when in truth, every nerve and fibre of your body was screaming out for the precious elixir that was now being flaunted right before your eyes.
On several occasions I went with him to his house, and once he showed me his set of antique glass syringes, the type Sherlock Holmes would have used to inject himself with cocaine (“Purely for medicinal purposes, Watson”), and of which he was inordinately proud. He had a whole ritual for shooting up, and
nothing could be allowed to interfere with this. In a room crowded with nappies, toys and drying laundry, and with the baby crying loudly for attention, he would carefully lay out the tools of his trade and prepare himself like a priest awaiting the presence of the Holy Spirit. Only afterwards, when he was satisfied that every last particle of the drug had been thoroughly absorbed into his bloodstream, could you talk to him again. The baby would be pacified, the room tidied, the dishes cleaned and life allowed to resume its normal flow — after which, finally, you would be allowed to score.
Eventually, of course, the Regent’s Park shooting gallery was rumbled. A posse of police surrounded the lavatory building, just after Bela had bought half an ounce of new heroin and was busy in his office dividing it into smaller deals. Luckily, he had plenty of toilets to flush the stuff down, and with only a small amount of personal on him he got off with a six months suspended sentence. However, all his capital had gone, and the last time I saw him he was looking dirty and dishevelled, his clothes stank and he had been forced to sell his treasured set of glass syringes. He didn’t seem too bothered, though, accepting this set-back philosophically as part of the price to be exacted in the service of his master, Lord Heroin. As he shuffled off to search for the next half or quarter-gramme, with the same toothless and insane grin, I noticed he had a big, spreading stain in the seat of his grimy, fawn-coloured trousers.
My main dealer, though, the person I bought quantity from, was Joe the Geordie. An archetypal Northern hard man, his place was like a fortress: he’d had a steel-reinforced double door fitted to his flat, and there were enough locks, keys and bolts to satisfy the warden of a maximum-security prison. Joe had been busted on several occasions in the past, and having done time inside was determined to avoid repeating the experience. Before he would allow me to buy from him, I had to meet him several times in various different pubs, so that he could
check me out and satisfy himself that I wasn’t part of some setup, and on the first occasion he even shook me down to make sure that I wasn’t carrying a wire for the police. After these pleasant and diverting formalities, I was finally accepted as being on the level and told the address to come to when I wanted to score. A telephone call had to be made first, though, and an elaborate but simplistic code followed, that would have fooled no-one listening in who was in possession of a more or less functioning brain — something along the lines of: “Hello, is Mr. Brown in please? Oh, he’s not — could you tell me what time he’ll be back, then?”; or, “Yes, I’d like to meet Mr. White, but I’d prefer it if Mr. Brown came along too”; or again, “A quarter past three would be okay, but half-past would suit me much better.”
Joe had also had a video security camera installed above his front door, with a monitor in the bedroom, that gave him a perfect view of the hallway and whoever might be approaching, or lurking there. But even with all these precautions, the doorbell still had to be rung a certain number of times, and in a certain way, according to a code given over the phone before a visit (“two short, two long”), and which was changed each day. Without the correct code the door would not be opened, even if your face was known.
Once you had gained access to this castle-keep, you’d be confronted by a room full of other small-time dealers waiting to score. Joe would be in the bedroom dealing with one client at a time, painstakingly and precisely weighing out the heroin on a set of silver surgical scales while you’d take your place in the living-room queue, to be served mugs of coffee or tea by Joe’s common-law wife, Jody. Both were from the North-East, both had been junkies for many years, and both had been inside on more than one occasion — I think they might even have been at school together. At any rate, they had a nice working relationship, and had managed to stay together through all the
trials and tribulations that junkie life involves. Joe was my main connection for about six months and was always reliable, both in terms of quality and quantity. He never bought rubbish and passed it on to his clients, and if good stuff wasn’t available he was straight up about it; then you would either have to take a chance and go elsewhere or wait until Joe had managed to score and was back in business again.
Finally, though, in spite of all his elaborate precautions, he was busted leaving the premises of a bigger dealer who the police had been watching for several weeks. He was carrying a couple of ounces shoved up his arse in a plastic bag; but a quick body-search back at headquarters soon revealed that, and he was sent down for four years, first to Brixton Prison, then later to some low-security joint in the Home Counties. Jody, true to form, stuck by him and would visit him regularly, passing small amounts of gear wrapped in silver foil, and hidden under her tongue, from her mouth to his when they kissed. This way, he was able to gradually taper off to minimise the pain and sickness of withdrawal.
After Joe, I had trouble finding a regular connection and was forced more and more to make do with second-rate stuff. Paradoxically, my own business was growing and an increasing number of people were visiting me, both for heroin and speed; but far from making me happy, this only heightened my paranoia. On some days, it seemed as if all the crazy, braindamaged inhabitants of King’s Cross and Camden Town were converging on us, and I was sure that by now we must be under police surveillance. But it was impossible to stop: I needed to maintain a rapid turnover of drugs and clients if our own ever-increasing habits were to be maintained, and I was forced to accept the risk that all these conspicuous characters brought with them, particularly as the house was a squat and not my own place. It seemed to act like a magnet for crazies of every shade, persuasion and description; but also for a never-ending
stream of beautiful young girls, some of whom used, but many who didn’t, often from good homes and wealthy families, who apparently came along to soak up the sleazy ambience — or something like that. The house, by now, had been painted in a variety of psychedelic, pornographic and gothic styles, depending on the drug and love-interests of the shifting population at any one time; the different coloured lights and art-work in each room, and on each floor, together with the clashing styles of music and noise that constantly blared from every doorway, gave you the feeling that you had wandered into the nightmare of some particularly disturbed mental patient. But it was home, and in spite of these occasional bouts of paranoia I felt more relaxed, and in a better frame of mind, than I ever had when living in Muswell hill and working at the T-shirt factory.
Sometime in the early summer, Cissy, Andy and I had a big bust-up. We had been lying together peaceably on the balcony at the rear of the house, looking down over the verdant and weed-choked back garden, enjoying the warm sunshine and drinking can after can of ice-cold beer. Andy had gone back inside to fetch another one, and was about to climb back out through the first-floor window, when Cissy made some remark, half jokingly, but with a sarcastic undertone. I don’t remember exactly what she said, as I was drunk myself at the time, but whatever it was, Andy took immediate and extreme umbrage, hurling the opened beer can through the upper part of the window and showering Cissy and me with a mixture of broken glass and foaming beer. Though angry, I was befuddled and slow off the mark — but Cissy was through the window like a shot, chasing Andy into his room. By the time I arrived they were trading blows and screaming insults at each other.
“Arsehole! You could have blinded us with all that flying glass, you stupid twat!”
“Yeah, I’m an arsehole and you’re a right fucking little bitch. Just keep your poisonous remarks to yourself in future!”
“Ah, piss off! You can’t even take a joke anymore. You should learn how to laugh at yourself — everybody else does!”
All at once, Cissy upped the ante and began throwing Andy’s possessions through the half-opened front window into the street: first cassettes, then records, then clothes, then the record-player — anything, in fact, that she could lay her hands on. At first, Andy stood back and allowed her to carry on unchecked, venting her rage; but then suddenly he rushed at her, pushing her so hard that she herself went hurtling towards the window, her head and shoulders crashing through the glass of the unopened upper section. Both Andy and I were shocked into momentary silence — I don’t think he intended to actually push Cissy through the window — but then I went after him in a rage, getting him in a headlock and running his head repeatedly into one of the walls. All of us were drunk, and I was berserk with anger; but luckily, Jigg, one of the other temporary residents of the house, alerted by the shouts, screams, breaking glass and scattered possessions crashing onto the pavement outside his ground-floor window, rushed into the room and pulled me off Andy before I did him any serious damage. Miraculously, Cissy was unscathed and her face was not the cut and bleeding mask that I had expected. We all stood back panting, surveying the chaos around us in silence, then Cissy marched out of the room with her nose in the air and went upstairs. I followed, leaving Jigg with Andy to retrieve what was left of his possessions and to tidy up the mess. Cissy and Andy didn’t speak to each other for a few days, but then they made up and it was as if the fight had never happened. Andy even gave her a mosaic, made from the broken pieces of glass and stuck onto a purple background, as a gift to commemorate the episode.
• • •
Towards midsummer, a group of about eight of us went up to the West Country for the Glastonbury Festival. I bought an old Bedford minibus off a friend for fifty pounds, and even though it was on its last legs I reckoned it would at least get us all there — we could worry about the return journey later. Of course, we took plenty of drugs with us: Rachel, a beautiful, red-haired, Pre-Raphaelite girl of about eighteen, who used to visit us a lot, had a few grammes of hash-oil secreted inside a condom and hidden in her vagina; Andy had about fifty hits of acid stashed under one of the seats; while I had speed and enough methadone to keep Cissy and me straight for the four or five days we would be at the festival. The van had a top speed of about 35 m.p.h., and was basically a heap of junk on wheels; so to avoid being stopped by the motorway police for going too slowly (we had no tax, or insurance either), and perhaps being searched for drugs, I took to the backroads and lanes, cruising between the hedgerows of the dreamy summer fields at a comfortable 30 m.p.h.