The only lie I’ve ever told about drugs is that I never used needles.
I mean, technically, I never touched them. But after the right amount of mind-altering substances, a little horse tranquilliser (lovingly “donated” by my next door neighbour, the horse chiropractor), and some soft company, a man is open to suggestion.
Well, I was seventeen and as a strapping young lad, pussy is the interrogation technique, never mind the rest.
She was twenty, and much more experienced in many different subject matters than I. She held her purse close. Drunken Chinese whispers hinted that she had spent time as a lady of the night, but who gives a fuck about that? I for one, did not, as I struggled to hide my hard on when she spoke to me. She knew.
“Take this.” She placed the pill in her mouth and kissed me, leaving it on the back of my teeth as she extracted her tongue. I swallowed, like a good boy. Slowly, a smacked up, MDMA hit came on, weaving in and out of the ketamine of yesterhours. Cut way too much, as is the case with all drugs in Sydney. She giggled, I remember that.
Towards the end of the night, I was still awake pondering why I couldn’t ponder anything except my inability to ponder. Or move. She moved just fine, back and forward, dancing. No, more like floating, to music that I certainly couldn’t hear. Maybe she could. Her tiny purse had been wrapped around her wrist. I sat on the floor, legs out, propped up in a corner watching her.
She curled up in between my legs, her head resting on my my right thigh, leaving her hands free. They got busy fairly quickly. I don’t know if there was anyone else in the room, but it wouldn’t have been much of a show. Definitely funny, but not hot. Nothing happened of course, although I did wonder if the devil possessed it and took it away.
Sat up with her lips hunting my ear. “Do you wanna try something new?” My reputation had already preceded me, she knew I would take whatever she gave me earlier. What could be new?
I should have known what new meant. New is always the next step, the next rung down on the ladder. Her “purse” was in fact her ritual kit. Spoons, foils, a syringe in pieces and a jet lighter. It hurt to move my eyes, but I lifted them from my navel to the space between my legs she had taken shelter in to cook. She doled out a light weight dose into her warped silverware. I’d watched the ritual before, fascinated. It was sacred and must not be disturbed. The brown bubbled and melted.
I couldn’t speak. My mind had no control over atrophied limbs. I didn’t care. This is what I longed for. Decision making privileges, removed. I was at her mercy. She showed me none as she straddled me, tapping the needle with a slight grin. My belt came undone, and was promptly pulled from the loops. Clamping my wrist in between her ribs and elbow, she held my arm out straight and tied the belt around me, syringe between her teeth.
Flex, slap, pump, rub. Bring the blue up to the surface.
“Nice veins.”
Get on with it.
The spike was the only thing I’d felt for a while. Could’ve been minutes, could’ve been hours, but I can still feel that pain when I look down at the crook of my arm. She drew back the plunger and my blood swirled in to the needle, wicked satisfaction danced on her face.
As soon as she applied pressure, my lips came unstuck. “N-“o. I finished the word in my head as she pushed it down, moaning as though the plunger sliding down the tube had become the hard, phallic inspiration for an orgasm.
I had heard all the stories about heroin before. A thousand screaming, moaning, fist making orgasms coming out of every pour in your skin. The ultimate experience. But I felt none of that. I turned to a thick sludge between her thighs. Slowly slipping back and being absorbed by the wall and anything I touched as I spread outwards. I felt nothing, and yet I felt as though this is where I belonged. That I had finally found a reason for my life. An answer to the question. Then I vomited all over myself. Deep and violent, but painless. She was kind enough to turn my head to the side so my chin could aim my mouth down and rest on my shoulder at the same time.
The last thing I saw before I commenced my time as a vegetable was her siphoning another spoonful, in the syringe she had used on me. It was her syringe. At the time, I didn’t think “fuck” because I blacked out while she was filling up. When I woke up the next night, I definitely thought “fuck.” A lot. Repeatedly. Over and over again. She was gone. No phone number, nothing. I didn’t even know her name.
The train ride home that night was the loneliest two hours of my life. I sat in the carriage by myself, huddled in the corner, rubbing the infected needle mark on my arm. I’d used someone else’s needle. A hooker’s needle. I didn’t know the last time she had shot up. I didn’t know who else she’d used it on. I panicked. I called my mother, to collect me from the train station. I stood in the rain for half an hour, looking down at the little red dot.
As I got in the car, Mum let fly with the obscenities. “Where the fuck have you been?!” and on and on it went. She didn’t stop, so I just said it.
“I shared a needle with someone.”
The car locked up and slid out sideways in the wet as she jammed the breaks on. “You fucking WHAT?!” I repeated the statement. She cried, she wept so hard that she couldn’t drive. I didn’t, I just stared into the eye growing on my skin.
The next day was no school, but more needles. I hadn’t slept since I first woke up from the junk, and so any nightmares I might have had were now reality. I had to look away when they pushed their needles in almost the same hole. The judgement, the horror, and the disgust were stabbing into me.
“He’s so young…” was one comment. “Not as young as some…” was the next.
Vial after vial of blood was extracted. I heard an expression a few years later in safety training for a job “one needle equals a hundred more”, and by that time I knew it was a fact. I eventually lost count of how many tests they did on me. HIV/AIDS. Hepatitis. All the usual suspects. I eventually got the all clear. No repercussions this time.
After it all cooled down, I kind of fantasised about it, I understood and romanticised it. I was scared by how right it felt. It fit me like a glove. I felt at home in the space that exists between life and death - it is a space called drugs. But, like anyone who pushes the envelope, things tend to go bad fairly quickly. This was the beginning of the end of my days as a “drug user” with my group of friends. Some would run away, people would die and others would seek their early graves through various methods.
And I didn’t even get to fuck a pro for free.
(Source: mister-selfdestruct)
