L Z Hansen

HEROIN MY LOVE

by LZ Hansen

When people ask “What would you like to be when you grow up”? No one ever says “I want to be a junkie.”

Well, that’s exactly what I wanted to be. I wanted to grow up to be the best junkie I could.

The type that walks with a loose hip swaying swagger. Wearing skin tight black jeans that have been worn so long they fit like a second skin. The type of girl who has long straight slept in hair. I wanted ghostly translucent skin and pouty lips, my eyes smudged with black eye liner.

I had day dreams of shooting dope in the top of an old industrial building far far away from people. Which is what I imagined being a junkie was all about, isolation.

As a child I watched the afternoon sun going down in the west behind the Thames. The river rippling mirror like scratches in it’s calm movement. I noticed the older kids drinking cheap cider and nodding out under ancient London bridge’s that shielded them of sight.

Although this was my secret, a closely guarded secret. I knew not to go around announcing at school, and family functions, where this question seemed to arise, what my plans for the future were.

I had caused concern amongst my family, for my whole life. My tantrums and moody behavior mixed with my inability to understand school, caused screaming fights between my parents and I. The mustached nuns who were supposed to teach, terrified me. The threatening way they tapped wooden rulers against the palm of their large rough hands.

At an early age, maybe eleven, I went through the usual array of cheap buzz drugs. I began with Inhalants, white out and Amyl Nitrate.

It was probably a Sunday and I was incredibly bored sitting alone in my bedroom. Like a good young Junkie in Training. I thought, What a good time to catch a buzz. Being eleven years old and having no access to anything better than inhalants. I opened my desk draw and pulled out a small bottle of Amyl Nitrate that I carried around a lot lately. It’s a substance known amongst the hard core male gay scene. After the first sniff of this toxic liquid, that’s supposed to be used moments before you orgasm, bringing the user to the most spectacular sexual experience ever. I decided I wasn’t getting high enough. So I kept on inhaling. Holding the bottle under my nose for about forty five minutes. I’d gone beyond the heart pounding, pulse throbbing, ear ringing, blurred vision, and for no reason ridiculous giggling, all syndromes of Amyl Nitrate sniffers. I wanted the two minute Amyl buzz to go on and no. My nostrils which were red and slightly burnt by this time. I soon felt my head began to crack, a crashing splitting brain ache that makes none believers pray. Nausea soon swirled in my gut, as I bent forward holding my head together, it was as if the drowned brain cells were leaking out. I knew there had to be something better than this, and that inhalants weren’t really for me.

In the back of my mind was the word heroin.

I had heard about the dark terror it had caused amongst men and women of all ages.  I’d heard…children, yes children, were sent running naked through the streets selling their pubescent bodies to monstrous old men for a taste of the heroin nectar. This only made its allure even greater. I wanted to crawl along the gutter, and live under the glow of its name. But how was I going to find heroin at my age? I was eleven.

At twelve years old I discovered weed, homegrown grass, at a cousins house while on summer vacation in Connecticut.

My nine year old brother, eleven year old cousin, and I picked off a small bunch of leaves from the marijuana plant growing in the flower bed by the pool. Deciding we  had enough for one joint. We patently let it dry for a day. Then I rolled it on a small piece of regular writing paper. Extremely excited at the prospect of getting stoned. I put a match to the hand rolled joint. Needless to say it lit up a flame big enough to singe my eyelashes, a few strands of hair, and the tip of my nose.

I continued to dream. I lay in bed at night the sweet thoughts of my future, rolling in my head.

Puberty bought around the sudden awakening of my sexuality, mixed with an internal pain and emotional discomfort, which had dragged on from early childhood. My days were consumed with the idea that I would indeed find heroin and live a romantic junkie lifestyle of the beautiful tortured soul.

Most young teenage girls wanted a handsome man to marry. Maybe dark hair, kind eyes, someone like their father, I suspect. They dreamt of living in a big house with two boys, two girls, a Brady Bunch existence. My friends spent time talking of boys, crushes, make out scenes, and love.

I had visions of love, sure I did, only mine were…somewhat different. I felt lust and love for a lifestyle that I had pieced together from TV, newspaper articles, and occasional overheard conversations between adults. I was holding out for heroin, knowing we’d meet soon, very soon.

I had learnt heroin was farmed from pretty Poppies. They became my favorite flower. In England we have Poppy day where everyone buys a (one pound $2) paper Poppy and wears it in their coat button hole, in remembrance for the World War 1 soldiers. Poppies were apparently fertilized on fields where young soldiers blood was spilled. I collected a couple dozen of these paper Poppies and displayed them on my windowsill, imagining my field of opium, like in the wizard of Oz, which took on an entirely different meaning to me.

Anybody who’s name was associated with heroin I became an instant fan of, the   actors, actresses, and musicians. I began reading autobiographies. My first was about Janis Joplin. Who I knew nothing about except she had died so romantically, with a needle in her vein and heroin by her side. I read her story, and re read the drug bits over and over. The same with Jim Morrison, Hendrix and Billie Holiday. I was thrilled when at a young age I discovered William Burroughs, Jim Carroll, and beat writer Herbert Huncke. These authors were the only books I read.

The Sex Pistols were making headlines in 1977. In 1979 Nancy Spungon was  murdered in New York City, her boyfriend and fellow addict Sid Vicious was implicated. Both were becoming poster children for what heroin will do to you. I saw them both as romantic fascinating figures.

A few years later, in London I found the mother load of hash. I discovered Rastas live to smoke cannabis. Thanks to an introduction from a twenty one year old stoner girl I was hanging around with, I had my first hash connection: a happy house of Rastas, who lived in Brixton, which was the London  Harlem, and quite dangerous for a young white girl of fourteen from the other side of the tracks.

Beckett was the head of this hash house hold. He was a thirty something year old Jamaican Rastafarian. His extremely beautiful white wife had long blond dreads wrapped in colorful African material on top of her head. She said very little, and smiled even less. She spent most of the time in the bare bones kitchen cooking over a large pot of something.

Their house looked as though it was constantly under construction, which it wasn’t. They had lived in it for fifteen years but looked as though they had just moved in. The floors were rough wood, no carpet or throw rugs. Walls were odd colors, orange or dark green and patched with plaster. Doors were missing from rooms, or were left leaning against a wall and glaring bare light bulbs hung from high ceilings.

There were always six or seven people in the kitchen listening to Beckett ramble on. He would go off on tangents, sitting in a worn filthy couch like a king. This couch leaned to one side where Beckett the holy man had made an ass imprint.

He had a large spliff in the corner of his mouth, high cheek bones and a permanent smile.

Children of various ages wandered in and out of where we sat. His eldest son, a beautiful boy of nine always fetched and served his father, bringing tea to him in a cup and saucer.

On one of these dark rainy London days I was visiting, with my stoner friend Daphne. After a smoke and usual gibberish nonsense talking. Beckett told me they had a tradition where swallowing a live goldfish bought about wisdom and some sort of connection to the divine. Beckett’s endless masterbatory hash induced ramblings often made me wonder if in fact he did have some knowledge that only myself and the few lucky ones surrounding him were privy to. It was hard to stay focused after smoking pure oily black Lebanese hash.

Beckett held up a clear plastic bag with a bunch of small goldfish swimming in water.

Would I like to partake?

This must be some sort of joke, of course it was…right? I looked around the room at these smiling faces who all looked back at me. Not wanting to seem rude, or even worse un cool. I was stuck, having no clue what to say.

“Err no, I don’t really think so, but thanks anyway…” I smiled back at Beckett.

In his strong Jamaican accent he tried to persuade. I could see he was enjoying my uncomfortable situation. I ummed and erred, trying to avoid his irritating smile. He was at the point some stoners get to where he believed he had powers of mind reading, he made me feel he knew what was going on in my soul.

The room was filled with a group of five Rastafarian’s, all equipped with similar thought reading powers, who I suppose had participated in this particularly strange act of swallowing a live goldfish. And they were all looking at me, with that stoned smile and a  ‘I know something you don’t know’ expression.

We went back and forth. Beckett trying to teach me about the wisdom and strength I will gain from this experience. And I shaking my head ever so politely trying to change the subject. I looked to Daphne for help in getting out of this mess. She said she’d swallowed a fish last week, and it was no big deal, and to just do it. She was way to stoned to really be of any help.

Beckett opened the bag with these happily unaware goldfish swimming around. He reached in and held a small fish between his unusually long fingers, he raised it to his mouth and dropped it in. I saw his Adams apple move up then down as he swallowed this goldfish whole. There would be no chewing or taste, no savoring the goldfish flavor. What if I didn’t? I would insult these holy men, probably be banished from ever returning to the house of hash. I’d be thought of as the un-cool white girl who couldn’t swallow one  tiny little good for nothing Goldfish.

All eyes were on me, it was my chance to prove I could hang with the big boys. Beckett offered me the bag.

“Oh all right.” I said in nervous haste.

It was a now or never moment. I wanted to get this over and done with. Beckett picked out a small fish. I tilted my head backwards and he dropped it in my mouth as though he was feeding me a kernel of popcorn. Strangely enough the fish slid down my throat with tremendous ease. I felt nothing, it was as easy as swallowing a pill, and that was easy. I received hugs and claps from the holy men. I had done good, and was patted on the back.

I finally asked for what I had come for. Which was ten pounds ($20)worth of hash. Beckett gave it to me, I gave him my ten pounds, and we all bid one another goodnight.

There was a current of danger, that was drawing me closer. I smoked hash and weed for years. But at this time I really wanted something a little edgier, harder, more chemical. I was on a quest for the perfect drug. I was going about this like some teenage drug connoisseur.

At fourteen I found myself looking for a part time job, my first job. I somehow convinced a middle aged couple, who were pub owners on The Kings Road that I was nineteen years old, and they gave me a job working on the weekends behind the Markham bar.

I was working in the pub one Saturday night, when I met an older women and speed dealer. She noticed I knew almost everyone in the pub, and asked me to send anyone wanting crystal meth, her way.

Lynne was stick thin, and reminded me of a Praying Mantis with bright red hair. She was strangely androgynous, and unsexy. Her jaw was always moving, in spasms, her eyes were particularly dark. At the end of the night she called me into the toilets. She had sold a lot of speed, due to my advertising.

Lynne held a straw out to me. Her shoulders curved forward and she loomed over me, engulfing the small bathroom space with her wiry frame. She looked better in shadow. Lynne opened a small foil envelope full of white powder that looked rather like sugar, and nodded to me. I had no clue how much speed I was to do. I took the straw from her spindly fingers and sniffed up almost enough to keep an elephant awake for a week. She pulled away her packet, exclaiming whoa!. Looking at me like I was some kind of deranged speed freak. I thanked her, a bit embarrassed at my lack of drug etiquette, and brushed off  any residue around my nostrils and went home.

My parents had people over for dinner that Saturday night. Eight good friends sat around this pleasant dinner party. I did something I would never usually have done, I sat with them at the table. I had no interest in their boring adult conversations about things that made little sense to me. But I sat down with buggy eyes and all sorts of brilliant ideas that I just had to share with these snooty wealthy English people. I proceeded to ramble on and on about anything and everything. I recall a few strange lingering looks from around that table. My parents hadn’t seen me so animated in years, and talking to them with such conviction. I was soaring, racing. I couldn’t talk fast enough, words were sticking to my pasty mouth. I felt more warm and confident than I ever imagined.

After a very brief lapse in my monologue I realized that I must be high.

Oh so this is what it feels like to be high on speed. I then excused myself and went to my room, hoping there wouldn’t be questions the next day.

I tried to sleep that night, but I tossed and turned as my heart beat like I had a tap dancer trapped inside my rib cage. I drifted off some time the next day.

My parents never commented on my enthusiastic rambling the previous night. Who would have suspected anything wrong? For Christ sake fourteen year olds don’t do crystal meth, but they also don’t work in bars.

I played around with these type of drugs, but they didn’t hold much interest for me really. I liked doing drugs and did them daily, either speed, hash or alcohol, but I was still waiting for the one,heroin.

I had learnt it wasn’t the type of drug you went around openly asking for. It drew fearful looks from people, they’d shake their heads vowing never. What was it about this mysterious king of all drugs? The feared and revered granddaddy of them all, death and destruction went before and after it’s name,  the big ‘H’ king heroin.

I continued to research all there was about heroin. But more than the powder substance I yearned for the lifestyle I imagined.

I watched Kojak, late at night with my father. Episodes of heroin traffickers and romantic 1970s styled skinny women with bellbottoms and distant eyes. Scenes of cool looking black pimps set against the New York City streets. Brownstones with stoops and people hanging on street corners. It was then I realized, I’m in the wrong city! New York is where I’m supposed to be.

Finally at fifteen years old I found my love, my first bag of tar heroin.

Claudine my new best friend and I, had talked and planned on getting hold of some heroin. We knew a junkie called Guy, he was around our age and lived in a bed-sit around the corner in Earls Court. The plan was that Guy would deliver a small five pound ($10) bag of smack to Claudine’s flat at five p.m. we would meet there and split the bag, and Guy would hit both of us.

I could hardly contain my excitement. I had waited my whole life for this moment. I was prepared. I felt like a virgin on her honeymoon.

It had been a pleasant day, cool and sunny, unusual for London as most days it was overcast and very gray.

I would ask my mother to please drive me round to Claudine flat which was a ten minute drive from our house in Chelsea, at fifteen minutes before five o’clock. I didn’t want to bother with the tube in case I was delayed, or who knows what might happen. I couldn’t mess up the plans.

To my amazement my mother agreed to drive me to Claudine’s flat, which was unusual in itself, but to me proved that the planets were all in alignment. She dropped me at the corner of Claudine’s street and told me to “Have a good time.” If only she knew where she was dropping me, and what I was about to do.

I turned to give my mother one last lingering look, and forced a smile. My mother was still beautiful, she had exotic features, high cheek bones and thin nose. Her olive skin was starting to line with age and stress. She smiled back with her blissfully unaware dark eyes. I sometimes even felt sorry for her.

I ran to Claudine’s front gate, she lived in a large Victorian apartment building. There was a front communal garden and a short path leading to the front door of the apartments from the street. I tried to open the latch on the gate, it seemed jammed. Damn, I tried again. I couldn’t open the latch, something I’d done a hundred times before. Heroin was on the other side of this gate and for some bizarre reason I couldn’t get it to open. Why today? I didn’t think about any negative signs from God, but of course looking back it could have been a sign, who knows? I called out to Claudine, yelling her name. Nothing. Fuck it, I hoisted myself up. I would have to climb over it. The gate was six foot high and made of black wrought iron. There was nothing to stand on but foot high spikes in-between each iron rod. I stood on one which I felt immediately stabbing through my boot into the sole of my foot, I didn’t care. I hoisted myself up onto the top it wobbled under my weight, if I didn’t get myself over now, I might fall. In a neat swiveling dismount I landed on the other side.

When I saw Claudines wide smiling face as she opened her front door, I knew it was there, heroin was in the vicinity.

“Tell me, its here right?” I asked, my stomach turning over as adrenaline surged.  I would experience the same thrill I felt then, for the next sixteen years, when heroin was close to me.

Claudine nodded, and put her finger to her lips. Which meant her mother was in her room. We walked on tip toes passed her room, and on down the dark hall. Claudines apartment had a musty old smell, it was huge and had five or six unused bedrooms, one that Claudine refused to ever enter she swore it was haunted, and something terrible had occurred in there years ago. There was no light at all, because it was in the basement. There were windows but two feet in front of them was a wall, so natural light was impossible. You could see peoples legs and shoes walking past, up on the pavement and small dogs shitting.

Guy was sitting in Claudines messy bedroom. Her room was full of clothes and makeup, and strewn about items from her childhood. There were some scribbles from friends on her walls and old posters of bands we had carefully peeled off  billboards from the street .

Guy had his sleeve rolled up, and a belt around his skinny arm one end clenched between his teeth. I watched as he tapped the spike into his vein on his forearm, he poked around for a moment, until blood shot back into the barrel, then he blasted the heroin back down the barrel into his vein. There had been sweat on his forehead, and his eyes had been large and watery, as he relaxed and slowly let the belt slide from his arm, the sweat seemed to vanish from his brow, his eyes looked half closed and not frightened. He smiled, and rubbed his nose.

“Hallo wot’s up? Guy grinned. “Sure you wanna do this eh?

Stupid question. “Hell yer, I’m sure.” I looked at Claudine. She was tall and beautiful, she dyed her hair in shocking red and wore her makeup like a pained doll, exaggerated arched eyebrows and long lashes with bowed ruby lips. She battled a slight weight problem but carried it well. Claudine was full of inner pain but hid it beneath a constant smile and a pleasant attitude. We were kindred spirits, soul sistas, we understood one another completely.

“Where’s mine” I said.

“Who’s going first…?  Guy asked.

“You can.” Claudine smiled.

“Are you sure?” I asked trying to be polite, but really glad she’d offered me the first spot.

Claudine joined Guy and myself on the floor. There was total silence only wide eyed innocent eager eyes.

I wanted to feel all of it experience every moment. As though  I was about to have sex with a man I couldn’t resist. Butterflies in my stomach, the anticipation. Guy began to mix my hit with expert handling. He measured half a syringe of water from a glass on the floor, after carefully scooping a small amount of perfectly brown heroin from the foil into the dirty spoon he mixed in the water and two drops of lemon to break up the heavy tar. With concentration and steady hands he held the spoon over a cigarette lighter, until the brown mixture almost boiled. Guy bit off a tiny piece of a cigarette filter, rolled it between his filthy thumb and forefinger, and dropped it into the caked spoon. With the needle he had just stuck himself, he drew up my hit. It was an old syringe the numbers from the side of the barrel had worn off, and the needle its self looked bent. Guy tied my arm with his belt, and smiled at me, holding the syringe to the light he flicked out an air bubble. I looked into his icy blue eyes his pupils so small he looked alien like. He licked the tip of the needle.

I felt nervous, and scared something I had waited for for so long. My lips felt loose, wet, trembling. He jammed the spike in my arm, shock at first…but… the pain felt good. Bam! I saw the blood register, thick red virgin blood, swirled up into the barrel in a slow dance, he plunged the muddy heroin downward, and immediately like a shocking mind numbing orgasm, the heroin hit my mind, then my crotch, my breasts. I could taste it in my veins feel it swirl in my wrists, my cheeks, my eyeballs, warm soft warmth.

I had had my first sexual orgasm when I was fifteen. I was kissing and making out with a sixteen year old boy named Chris. He was a smart handsome guy who went to a good English public school. We were under his covers in his bed, his parents had a huge house in Nottinghill Gate, and we often had free reign of the place. After a long slow make out session he reached into my underpants and started to rub my clit. I felt his hard penis, through his tight jeans, while we kissed, and touched each other softly, it was very sweet and innocent, with his fingers on my vagina, suddenly I was shook. A flood, wave of warmth, and bliss curdled my blood, my vagina throbbed as I came in a shocking surprise.

What the hell was that…? I opened my eyes to see if I hadn’t dreamt what I had just felt. For a moment I tried to figure out what had happened. When I realized I had had an orgasm I smiled and got back under the covers and continued letting Chris fondle me. I wanted to come again. Never enough, always wanting more.

When Guy pulled the spike out of my arm I sunk back against the side of the bed, limp. I felt Claudine pull the belt from my arm, and ask if I was all right. I opened my eyes to try and focus, but everything seemed slanted, off balance. I felt completely fucked. I was suddenly nauseous, sick to my stomach, just in time I lunged forward and leaned over a trash can and projectile vomited into it, mainly a spurt of fluids. Instantly I felt awake and better.

I lit a cigarette, and leaned back against the bed. I remember for the next five hours burning myself repeatedly by dropping my cigarette. I burnt my jeans, my T-shirt,  myself, the carpet around me a few  times. All while I felt too ill to really do anything more than sit and nod. This wasn’t what heroin was supposed to be. I couldn’t handle the nausea. I was numb, while my mind traveled into many corners of the universe. I felt I was floating above my dead body. Which would have all been fine but I was too sick & off balance to enjoy it, it was very close to a strange death.

Feeling sad and disappointed the next morning I dressed in my uniform of old worn tight jeans, and yesterdays t shirt. My unkempt long hair was full of hair spray and knots. I still had heroin pumping through my veins and felt the drug hangover from Guys strong smack. I thought about the night before. I wanted to say it was all I had expected, a mind blowing feeling of satisfaction, but it wasn’t. I was scared. My plans were disappearing before me. I didn’t even know who I was.

Frustrated and annoyed I went round to Guys bed-sit in Earls Court, we needed to talk. I was confused, my whole life long plan had been disturbed. What the hell was I going to be if I wasn’t going to be a junkie?

“So wots up, want a cup a tea?” Guy greeted me at his door.

Inside his room I began.

“I don’t know… I think maybe I didn’t do enough or something. I think I need more, cause I didn’t really feel… you know… what I thought…I would. Is that good stuff?”

“Oh you had enough.” he chuckled.

“Sometimes the first time isn’t like wot it’s gonna be like. Some like it the first time some like it better the second. Hey maybe it ain’t for you, and you should stick to hash.”

“Hash! fucking hell, I ain’t gonna be some lame fucking hippie, all stoned and peaced out n shit.” I was angry Guy would even suggest something so unthinkable. I didn’t fit in with the hippies. It was the total opposite of Punk rock and my beliefs.

“I wanna go again. You got a fiver you can sell me?”  I asked.

“I am looking out for ya. I dont want to be the one who turned you on and in two months see you out there selling ya cunt on Earls Court High Street. You know, like Fiona and Joanna.” He chuckled. Fiona and Joanna were to fat bloated greasy haired junkies who turned tricks and robbed people. They gave junkie whores a bad name.

“Oh come on” I laughed you know that’s not me, I’ll never be like them. I dont mind working the stroll but I wont look like them.

“Your in luck, I just scored  and I suppose I can spare a little, for you.” Guy looked me over, he was too shy to make a sexual move, but I knew what he was thinking.

Looking around at his junkie life, his small rented shabby room. One dusty window looking out over noisy Earls Court High Street, two old dusty curtains that have hung for fifty years, and seen their share of peoples lives. A small wooden bedside table full of old cigarette butts spilling from an ashtray, a glass of water with a syringe soaking, pieces of foil where Guy had smoked some smack earlier, and a soiled hot plate on top of a half sized refrigerator. I couldn’t tell the truth, that I aspired to be a junkie, people would think I’d gone mad.

Guy nodded his head in time to the music, and ran his hand through his greased black hair, lighting an unfiltered cigarette. He was playing a Johnny Thunders record on a small turn table. I sunk back into his bed that smelled musty and dirty, I inhaled it.

Guy mixed my hit, as I watched in silence. I owed it to myself, I was sure I would fall madly in love with heroin if I was just given another chance.

My dark red blood shot into the even duller spike, swirling like thick smoke into the barrel, and immediately something changed. I felt the crotch throbbing, the tingling, I felt the warmth, and began the enjoyable confident chatty rambling words that kept coming out of my mouth, in between nodding out.

I lit cigarette after cigarette, and never felt more comfortable in my own skin. I sat on Guys bed looking into his cracked mirror across on the opposite wall. I even looked good. My eyes looked light brown, and distant. I tossed my head of thick messy hair. Today, I like my hair. I thought, pushing it from side to side. I knelt on the bed viewing my profile. Today, I like my body… nice ass. I ran my hands over my breasts… good tits… I turned to look at Guy, wondering if he was watching me run my hands over my breasts and if he wanted to fool around. I was feeling sexy and turned on.

Guy was sitting on his one wooden chair. His body bent forward his eyes closed  and a cigarette with a long ash hanging on… in his grimy fingers…In his own world lying on a cloud of nods… dreaming of erections and pussy, love and romance, safe in his cocoon… he ignored me.

When I finally stumbled out of Guys musty small bed-sit. London wasn’t so chilly any loner. I could walk the cold gray streets with no jacket and didn’t feel the chill. I didn’t care about my parents, and the hideous nightmares I suffered from… forever. I didn’t care any longer that I lived in London where there was seemingly nothing to do for a kid my age. The emptiness that had be expanding in my gut didn’t matter any more. I had a grip on all of it. I had figured out how to deal with all the things that made my life so bad.  I had a new love, a love who would be by my side through thick and thin, a love who could satisfy all of me, never leave me, always mend the hurt, and I had it in my pocket.

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