Chapter 17
Just A Little Prick
I returned to Spike and Suzie’s the
next time the good taxpayers of Britain put money in my account. I’d been experiencing experience-envy since
witnessing Faith inject crack’n’heroin a few months earlier. I couldn’t see the exact detail of how she
did it, nor could I see enough to do it myself, but I could perhaps get someone
else to.
Vaguely knowledgeable by now, I
stopped off at a chemist to get new needles, and made my way to Spike and
Suzie’s. I figured they’d be more
willing than Faith, having only just met me, and turning up with clean works,
coupled with some knowing needle-talk, would surely be enough to get one of
them to do the honours, especially seeing that I’d be bankrolling proceedings.
Back past the BBC, pharmacist’s bag
swinging at my side, I disappeared down a White City side-street, finding Spike
and Suzie’s place with ease. I rang, and
moments later an upstairs window opened and Suzie called down, ‘Oh hi, Dan,
I’ll come down.’ I didn’t mind being
called Dan, as long as I got what I wanted.
Upstairs, Spike was in his normal
chair, clutching a can and stubbly, and Poppet, the in-house puppy, began leaping
all over me, almost like it wanted to escape.
I made out I’d got the fresh needles for myself, and was just dropping
by on my way back from the chemist, but if they needed any, they were more than
welcome. I asked if we could get
something, and soon Suzie was ringing around.
I gave her the money and off she went to meet the guy, somewhere near
KFC on Uxbridge Road.
She returned, and we all had an
inaugural pipe. Then, party started, I
gave them some more blather. ‘I was
planning to go home and have a hit, but my flatmate wasn’t answering the phone,
so what on Earth was I going to do now?’
Then Suzie said those special words.
‘I can help with that, love.’
The doorbell went, and Spike was left
to organise three syringes’ worth of finest White City crack and heroin. I had a pipe as he went about his work with
needle, spoon and lighter. He asked me
how much heroin I usually had. I told
him about a fiver’s worth, not really knowing what I was saying. Minutes later, he was placing each finished
article on the coffee-table before him, one for him, one for Suzie, and one for
me. Then Suzie returned with her
guests. It was a couple they knew, she a
lumbering ogre of a woman, called Mo, and he a curly-haired scamp of a man, who
looked like he could do with a meal, or a lifestyle overhaul, called Sam. They were users too, and delighted to find a
supply of fresh needles to cook up what they’d arrived with.
Then it was time. Spike explained which syringe was whose, and
Suzie took up the bayonet of destiny earmarked for me. She asked me whereabouts I usually did it. I admitted to being early in my injecting
career, so I still had sufficiently prominent veins left in my arm. I rolled up my sleeve, using a donated belt
as a tourniquet on my upper arm, both to bring veins closer to the surface, and
to hold the chemicals in place until the moment of release when the tourniquet
was pulled away, and the ingredients could coarse through my whole being,
rendering me the monkish equivalent of Faith’s ‘nun kissing God’. I was on the brink of revelation. Poppet was locked in the hall, because he was
jumping around, getting in the way.
The tiny press of the needle was
painless, as I sat there on the sofa, peers around me. It was like keyhole surgery with a kick. I could feel something entering my
bloodstream, asking directions to my brain.
‘There you go,’ said Suzie, ‘you can pull the tourniquet away now.’ I let the belt fall and sat there, waiting to
see what it was I was going to feel.
Initially, I felt a bit blank, numbed, queasy. Then Mo, troll-like on the floor before me, said,
‘Are you ok, Dan?’
The next thing I remember is waking up,
shirt torn open, with two paramedics above me.
‘Can you hear me Dan?’ one of them asked. I soon realised I’d overdosed, and began
apologising repeatedly, as I was helped to my feet, and down the stairs where
an ambulance and police car were waiting.
My plan had gone awry. I think I
was relieved to be alive, even though my name was now apparently Dan.
I was helped into the ambulance, and a
blanket put around me. I felt quite
shaky, and the woman looking after me was so attractive that my sense of being
damaged goods felt heightened to a point of pivotal self-loathing. I said, ‘I don’t usually do this kind of
thing, I’m sorry to waste your time, thank you so much for being there.’ I looked at her like one scowling from hell
at a soul in heaven. I requested a glass
of water, or maybe that was the closest I could get to asking her if she’d like
to go for a coffee some time. She wasn’t
allowed to give me water. Health and
safety, I guess – I mean, imagine what harm a glass of water could do compared
with crack, heroin, brick-dust, ant-poison and bleach coursing round your
bloodstream. Blanketed, I was driven to
the hospital.
I arrived in the ward, where a nurse
wanted to put my possessions in a locker.
I gave her my white cane. I
didn’t have much else. Then, after a
preliminary interview, in which I said sorry several more times, I sat on a
bed, curtains drawn around me, crying.
Then, when a doctor came in, I apologised some more, and continued
crying, and answered his questions as best I could. He was very calm and sympathetic, and gently
recommended I tried to exercise some harm reduction. When he went away, I sat there some more, still
weeping, not sure what to do. Then, a
rustle of the curtain, and Sam appeared. He’d seen fit to come and see if I was ok, and
offered to walk me home, which I found extraordinarily kind. It wasn’t such a long walk, so we asked for
my cane. The woman who’d dealt with me before
had gone, and the new nurse didn’t speak great English. I tried to explain that my white stick had
been put in a locker, and she eventually returned with two walking-sticks,
which I kindly declined.
Sam walked home with me, I got in,
called a friend, distraught, and went to bed.
The next day, I went back to Spike and Suzie’s to apologise. Apparently I’d slumped over, and even though
they stretched me out on the floor and tried to slap me back to consciousness,
they ended up ringing the ambulance. I
was grateful they had, cos I’ve heard of people overdosing, dying, and their
bodies being left out with the rubbish.
The police and paramedics had asked a few questions, but no accusations
were lodged, and I guess it was just put down as a regulation overdose, maybe
making a brief appearance a while later in a Town Hall spreadsheet. So, apologies made, and accepted, and after I
promised not to inject again, we all three scored, and this time Poppet could
stay in the living-room.
I don’t know when it came back to me,
but at some point I recalled something of what I experienced during my
overdose. Maybe I wasn’t so far gone, or
perhaps I was nearer to leaving than I knew, but when I was out on Spike and
Suzie’s floor I had the vaguest, quietest of dreams. I was looking in on a darkened room, from the
side, as if in an empty warehouse. There
were people standing there, in profile, silent, as far as I could tell, as if
waiting. Reader, one of them was
Morrissey. I know not why.
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So there you are. I hope you feel like tuning into to episode 18, in a few days. Meanwhile, just in case you need more entertaining, here is a song of mine, just in case you're not depressed enough already. It's a safe youtube link, just click here for entertainment: Mental Illness Is The New Rock'n'Roll
Thanks for now.
