Chapter
5
Death
Of A Lab-Rat
Thursday
afternoon, I was sitting at my desk, a black flame of resentment burning
inside, and it suddenly struck me I could visit Debbie and Sandra again. It was about three o’clock, and the
realisation hit like a sledgehammer in the brain, shattering any normal
preoccupations that may otherwise have been forming. In a flash, normality was bulldozed away like
so much rubble, and the ground was clear for a new edifice to be erected, part
cultish shrine to my new compulsion, part mausoleum, housing the shrivelled
remains of the first twenty-eight years of my life, and all those hopes and
dreams that I still thought I had a chance of fulfilling, if only I could just
make that leap of confidence, hack my way into a new mindset, stay there,
consolidate, and flourish.
I
now had a double-bolthole. As long as I
had money, I had access to that new combination-high of crack-cocaine and the
promise of sex – it was a heady mix.
What’s more, it was all so easy.
I was due to see Emma the next day, and crack seemed the perfect solution
to the problem of anticipation, the crushing pressure of nerves, and the constant
battle to keep my self-esteem afloat.
Crack offered itself up as a quick fix to the slow fracture of my life.
A
countdown began in my head. I’d leave
work at five, be at Westbourne Park by half-past, at Debbie’s by
quarter-to-six. Assuming one of them was
in, which was likely, we’d probably have scored by six. So I barely had three hours to wait before
that world-evading wave of euphoria would be swamping my brain with dopamine,
and rocketing me into that veiled world where only appetite and self
prevail. This was no passing thought
that could be questioned, tempered, revised, gone back on, even. The deal was sealed. As soon as the idea entered my head, there
was nothing that was going to stop me.
This
all suited the way my life was going generally, at least when I looked at the
negative bits, which I assiduously did.
The glass always seemed half-empty.
I knew, academically, intellectually, that it was always better to see
it as half-full. On a good day, I
might. But the glass never seemed to be
getting any fuller. And that’s the
problem with crack. It fills the glass
like a torrent of soda in a Schweppes advert.
Over the rim it gushes, down the sides, fizzing and brimming,
ever-rising, ever-giving, the nearest to a cum-shot a drinks ad may ever be
allowed to get. The only problem is the
next time you look there’s only about an inch of stale poison left in the
bottom, and suddenly it’s last orders, raining outside, and there’s a queue at
the cab-rank.
So
there I’d sit, day after day, nothing changing, mailing after mailing pouring
from the printer. Of course, I could
have applied for a new job. But apart
from not having the confidence to move on, I resented the fact that, having
done a day’s work, I’d then have to go home and spend time applying for another
job I didn’t want. Besides, I wanted to
be getting paid for my comedy, my music, or some other creative venture. But I had no real concept of doing the
groundwork, taking the knocks, climbing the rickety ladder to fulfilment. I wanted it now, or at least soon. The fact that the Beatles had to work like
dogs to get where they did meant nothing to me - couldn’t they see who I was?
I
had no relief from work at the flat, with its in-house band of minstrels and
barbarians, who, embedded in the past, had no future at all. Their Friday night violence in fibreglass
armour seemed an inadequate vent for the more high-pressure, nuclear rage that
I was incubating. The evenings would
drag, the weekends torture, and I just couldn’t get on with them, and the ones
I did get on with, I couldn’t get on with, because they got on with the ones I
couldn’t get on with. I have very high
standards – don’t want to be tarnished by association.
Of
course, I can see now that I was really down in the dumps, to use a clinical
term. I just couldn’t find the mental
wherewithal to get my act together, even semi-together, except now I see it
probably was semi-together all along. I
at least had a job, a place to live, good friends, I’d done comedy, and maybe
had the possibility of Emma becoming an even more significant other. But the spoiled child within wanted it
all. A half-life wasn’t good enough for
him. He had a particular and twisted
take on the phrase ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. His motto was ‘if it ain’t perfect, break
it’. I was on a low dose of
antidepressants, but whether or not they were really helping, I’d kind of
forgotten. I just took one each day and
carried on. I had noticed a slight
mood-lift in the first few weeks, but they certainly hadn’t acted as a
springboard to better times. Maybe I was
on too low a dose. Maybe I was on the
right dose, but too weak to capitalise.
So
there I sat at my desk, seeming to work, but actually marking each minute as
one less to endure. I could go into a
kind of dull trance, printing off lists, stuffing them in envelopes, answering
the phone, helping a schizophrenic in Ipswich, and before I knew it, it would
be time to bolt.
The
landscape of addiction is a rugged and inhospitable place, like the quarry the
TARDIS lands in when a barren moonscape is needed. The path to that first distant pinnacle is
treacherous and slow. Minutes truncate,
like when you’re going into a black hole, time slows…you spaghettify. Miserably, you surf the crest of each
resented minute, carrying you closer to the longed-for summit. If ever you were determined to do anything,
you’re determined now, even predetermined.
For a time, time doesn’t feel like time at all. But, when you do finally arrive, the leeside
of the mountaintop is steep, and hurls you down into murky, erratic
waters. But I just wanted the view from
that summit – didn’t give a shit about erratic waters, murky or no.
Five-to-five,
and there I was, chomping at the bit – then, computer off, coat on, and I was
gone. Even then, on what was only my
third rush at crack, I shot from the office like a greyhound from a trap, or
maybe into one. Within minutes, I was
knocking on Debbie’s door, just like on debut, ten days earlier. This time, Debbie was in, but Sandra wasn’t
about, and this suited us both. Sandra’s
strange ways in a Paddington guesthouse had been hard going. I was glad not to have to contend with her
bullying, blagging, and bucktoothed demands for kebab.
Debbie,
seemingly the gentler of the two, was glad to have her flat, and me, to
herself. I hadn’t been there long before
she told me how ‘gutted’ she’d been at my impromptu departure with Sandra the
week before. But this time she had me to
herself, and my bank-account, that ever-giving fountain of facilitation, braced
itself again for another nightlong ravishing.
In fact, I’d already stopped off at the cashpoint, no doubt withdrawn
forty quid or so, naively believing I’d spend just that. Then, after a few cursory niceties, I gave
her the money, she rang the guy, and off she went to the designated
meeting-point. I sat there on her
partially collapsed sofa watching some porn she’d put on, and waited. Most of drugs is waiting, or regretting.
Then,
twenty minutes later, footsteps on the walkway, the rattle of keys in the door,
and in bustles Debbie. ‘Mission
accomplished,’ she says, quickly throwing her coat down and spitting the wraps
into her palm. No sooner in hand than
unwrapped, no sooner unwrapped than on the foil, no sooner on the foil than
being keenly drawn into our desperate, hungry lungs. Then I think we got vaguely sexual. But the problem with crack (one of a few) is
that you have to keep going back to it, so, five minutes down the line, any
intentions are supplanted by the need for another pipe. And the whispering tyrant must be
heeded. This may all seem a little
repetitive, but this is what crack’s like.
It gets you like a lab-rat. As
soon as that looming white-coated figure appears, make a dash for the
waterspout, because you know that when temptation rattles your cage, your next
drink’s gonna send you crazy, and you like that, don’t you? Climbing over cagemates, living and dead,
doesn’t really matter, likewise the electrified floor that gives you the
occasional jolt as you dangle on that nozzle, desperately suckling on that
metal mother of a spout, hoping against hope that, this time, it’ll carry you
to where you need to be. Guzzle away,
knock it back my furry friend. I propose
a toast! To absent friends, who lie
about, mostly toasted.
My
initial outlay of forty quid ran out fast, so we unanimously agreed that
getting more would be a good idea. This
time, Debbie would take my card to the cashpoint, and meet the guy on her way
back, and ‘we may as well get eighty or a hundred out, to save going back and
forth’. Green as broccoli, I thought
this was a spiffing idea. Yes, that’ll
take us up to about eleven o’clock, time enough for me to catch the train
home. So there I sat, slumped yet tense,
trying to fast-track Debbie’s return by means of willpower alone. When this failed, I prayed, and
listened. Was that person coughing on
the pavement her? No, not gruff
enough. Were they her footsteps on the
walkway? Damn, they’ve gone by. Is that her key in the door? No, it’s just the breeze…every sound, a
taunt. Eventually, she returned,
hurriedly unwrapped the stuff, slung a bit on a pipe, and there we sat, two
lost souls in the half-light, smoking away, drinking from cans, porn flickering
in the corner. Every so often one of us
would embark on some sexual expedition, only to abort it five minutes later, as
the high gave way to desperation.
In
a while, we were in the bedroom, and Debbie began rummaging in the wardrobe,
removed a dress, and suggested I should wear it. Minutes later, there I was, perched like a
mannequin on the edge of the bed, in a nice floral number, wondering, amongst
other things, how I got there at all.
Then she decided it was time to take the makeover up a notch. Standing above me, unscrewing a lipstick, she
then traced the uncertain curl of my lips with impeccable precision. I probably had stubble showing, but no one
has it all. And we resumed our sporadic
and slightly off-the-map liaison.
Minutes later, there was a sudden and insistent pounding on the
front-door. Debbie went into the hall,
closing the door behind her. ‘Who is
it?’ she called. ‘It’s Freddie,’ came
the muffled reply. She unbuckled the
various locks and opened up. In he
clattered, they chatted in the hall, and she ushered him into the living-room,
much to my intense relief. A few moments
later, she came back into the bedroom and told me it was her brother, but
reassured me he was ‘safe’. She then
picked up the pipe and took it into the living-room. When you’re a crack-smoker, most of your
visitors will be crack-smokers too, and Freddie was no exception – birds of a
feather, I guess, or moths to a flame.
As long as there’s plenty left, offering a visitor a pipe is just like
putting the kettle on.
Can’t
say I was looking forward to meeting Freddie, for a few reasons, the key one
being I felt a little overdressed, sitting there like a half-iced Christmas
cake. But some people get fidgety on
crack, and soon Freddie was up and about, and I could hear his voice getting
closer. ‘Who’ve you got in the bedroom?’
he bellowed at sis. ‘Leave it, Freddie,’
yelled Debbie in the background, ‘come and smoke your top-up.’ But her enticement wasn’t good enough to keep
him in check, and the bedroom-door swung open.
There was a moment of quiet. All
I could see was a blurred head against the darkness of the unlit hall, and all
I could hear was a cross between a chuckle and a jeer. I felt caged, a specimen in a world of
specimens, but all I was wishing was that Debbie would come and sort things out,
preferably with crack. Freddie and I
exchanged no words, and he returned for his top-up. I felt ten years of awkwardness compressed
into a handful of seconds. It was time
to remove my glad-rags, and I went into the bathroom to wipe away the lipstick,
catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I did so, looking like a vampire
who’d forgotten to use a napkin after a night of overindulgence. Then, back in the bedroom, Debbie came in and
apologised for having let Freddie off the leash, who was now settled back down
in the other room, content to sit there mumbling and gazing at porn.
Debbie
and Freddie were originally from Manchester.
I don’t know how long they’d been in London, but somehow that’s where
they were. It’s hard enough knowing what
truth there is in people’s autobiographies at the best of times, let alone when
you’ve got something like crack fuelling and distorting the narrative. Sometimes she would tell me about her first
experience as a working-girl, aged twelve, in the back of some bloke’s car in a
Salford car-park. She would also furnish
me with stories of having seen Myra Hindley and Ian Brady on the hunt in the
area she grew up. Other little shards of
her upbringing would come to the surface from time to time. Things like incest, drunk and violent male
relations, not to mention punters, would all feature occasionally in the dark
pantomime of her early years. Whether
she came to London on the promise of streets paved with gold, I don’t know, but
in Westbourne Park the only gold was the odd squashed Benson’n’Hedges packet.
Debbie
spent the rest of the evening shuttling between me in the bedroom and Freddie
in the living-room. Every half an hour
or so she’d take a loaded pipe in for him, then return to me. I was surprised he didn’t keep coming in
demanding more. Half an hour, for most
people, is far too long an interval between pipes. But in future encounters with him I’d come to
the conclusion he was heavily sedated.
Whatever he was on, it seemed to go some way to overriding the desire to
keep returning to the pipe, for which I was suitably and selfishly grateful.
A
couple of hours passed, another trip to the cash-point for Debbie, and it was
blatantly apparent I wouldn’t be getting the train back to Essex that
night. But when you’re on a bender,
you’re welcome to stay just as long as you’re able to pay your way. Somehow, I still had money in the bank, so
there were several nocturnal journeys for Debbie to make as the night
progressed. I wasn’t such a cad as to
never offer to go with her, but she would always say it would be quicker if she
went alone. She knew better than I what
dodgy characters she might encounter, and how to deal with them. So I’d just sit there on the bed coming down
and counting down until she reappeared.
The fact I had work in the morning meant nothing, nor did the fact I was
due to meet Emma that evening. The
future, in all its forms, was like a separate world, and for as long as I could
fend it off with crack, all was well.
The
jackboots of another night marched on, Debbie and I in the bedroom, Freddie in
the living-room, deep in the canyon of a chemically induced coma. Then, as the two birds left in Westbourne
Park began to chirp, the obligatory milk-float skimmed past, and buses stopped
being night-buses, it became clear that dawn was icily announcing the onset of
another working day. Then, somehow, the
day upon us, with immense reluctance, I faltered my way to the tube-station,
and trundled unwillingly to another eight hours of mind-numbing drudgery. But it wasn’t long before, once again, I was
picking my way through rat-cadavers to get a grip on that life-giving nozzle
that the white-coated lady kept sticking through the mesh of my cage.
And, at last, I've written a new 'song', which you are welcome to watch/listen to on this safe youtube link: Thank You For Your Help In This Matter
See you soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment