This Is The Last Time I Get High

I snapped a picture of my surroundings and sent it to him, so somebody would know where I was.

“Pretty,” he said. “Where is that?”

“Downtown Newark.”

Downtown Newark, New Jersey is anything but pretty, but nighttime hides a multitude of sins.

“Are you going to score?”

“Yes” I  texted.

“Don’t be a dumbass” he responded.

“If you don’t hear from me in an hour-there’s a problem.”

 

An hour later, the most magnificent church bells rang in my soul as I bathed in the warm golden sunshine of a perfect life.

 

I was jolted out of my reverie by an obnoxious beeping.

It it was coming from my phone. I squinted, got a closer look.

7:45? AM?? Fuck. I’m usually up at 6:30. Get my kid up at 7.

My heart, thudding in my chest, slowed a bit when I recognized the reassuring sounds of his spoon clinking against his bowl of cereal.

I splashed cold water on my face. I was pale except the dark purple circles under my eyes. My hair was matted to my head from sweating profusely. I had a set of scratches on both arms.

I looked like a junkie.

If the shoe fits…

My kid was sitting at the table, eating his breakfast and looking at his tablet. I’ve taught him to be independent in the morning. But not so I can sleep off a dope nod.

“Baby, why didn’t you get me up?”

He shrugged. “Don’t sweat it. Can you make my lunch?”

He didn’t say anything about me wearing yesterday’s clothes. He couldn’t smell the dried vomit on my shirt. I opened the refrigerator door and the light hurt my eyes. Slowly, with shaky hands, I made his lunch.

Mother of the year

This is the last time I get high.

—-

NYC, April 1995

“Where have you been?” I looked up sleepily at Debby. It was 5 am and she had just let herself back into my apartment.

“I couldn’t sleep. I went to cop. You want me to fix you?”

“What day is it?” I looked at the calendar. “No. It’s Tuesday, right? I work today.”

I watched her prep her fix. I loved watching her beautiful, delicate hands do this. Her skilled fingers, the neat flick of her wrist – raised prepping a dope fix to an art form.

“Frenchie just got this in. This shit is supposed to be fire.”

She dumped the contents of her packet into a spoon, flicking at the small plastic packet until all the power tumbled out.

She added a small amount of water to the dope, making it the perfect consistency. She held a lighter to the bottom of the spoon, cooking the mixture to the optimum temperature. She always got it right – hot enough to burn off some of the cut in the dope – but never so hot that it damaged the heroin.

She twisted the cotton off the end of a Q- tip into a tic-tac sized ball. She dropped the tiny puff into the heroin and it swelled up like a sponge. She pushed the tip of the syringe into the center of the cotton, which filtered out impurities.

Slowly, she retracted the plunger until all of the heroin was sucked in.

Using her index and middle fingers she gently slapped a vein right above the crook of her elbow. She never had to pull back the plunger, like most junkies did, to draw blood up the syringe and make sure she was in a vein.

She never missed.

I watched her eyes take on that faraway look of exquisite pleasure, as her brain rode the waves of that first rush. Her facial muscles slackened, her body swayed. She looked at me and smiled.

“I’m…so…high…”

Those were her last words.

 

Her eyes rolled back in her head. She slumped to the floor. Her lips turned blue, then purple.

All in slow motion.

I did nothing. I was paralyzed with fear. I could not bring myself to touch her. I called 911 and babbled hysterically.

I could actually see a faint pulse throbbing irregularly in her throat. Her breathing was shallow. Her skin was the yellow color of cafeteria cheese.

She was dying.

She was dying, and I couldn’t bear to watch it.

I ran out of my apartment and stumbled out onto the street. I had on no coat or shoes, and even though it was mid-April, it was only a raw, cold 40 degrees. I ran through the streets barefoot, wild and desperate, going nowhere.

The police and EMT workers arrived 11 minutes after I called 911. The 5th precinct was only 8 short city blocks away. But an overdose, on the Lower East Side? That’s how you clean up the streets. Human pesticide, as far as the police were concerned.

By the time we all got inside my apartment, Debby was dead.

 

A memorial service was held for Debby at St. Marks Church in the Bowery, the second oldest church in New York and a legendary performance space. Debby knew everyone, and everyone knew Debby.

Her memorial service was standing room only. Several of NYC’s leading punk musicians unplugged and performed acoustic songs.

Debby had introduced me to rock stars and gangsters, and heroin and lesbianism. She was the first and only woman I ever fell deeply in love with.

I wrote a spoken word poem, dedicated to her memory, and performed it at her memorial service.

It was the last time I ever performed spoken word in front of a live audience.

 

After the service I copped several dime bags of smack down on Clinton Street.

My boyfriend’s face, when he saw them, darkened with rage. He snatched the packets off the table.

“What?!” I demanded. “WHAT?? This is the last time I get high!”

Apparently not. He flushed the drugs down the toilet. He snapped my works in half and threw the pieces out of the window.

I kicked heroin cold turkey. There was no money for fancy rehab.

The plan was simple. My boyfriend would not let me leave the house.

The withdrawal was not so simple.

I had excruciating pain in every muscle of my body. For three days, I threw up violently, and had horrible bouts of diarrhea. I was weak and dehydrated but couldn’t keep food down. I suffered with severe flu-like symptoms; sneezing and sniffling and dizziness and fever. Sweat poured off of me constantly; I was dangerously dehydrated. Sleep would have been a welcome relief, but there was no way I could fall asleep. I had frightening visual and auditory hallucinations.

By the second day, my boyfriend had to call both his brother and his cousin – who played in a band with him – for reinforcements. It took THREE GROWN MEN to keep me inside that apartment and away from my dealers.

I turned into a snarling, cursing beast. In between raging bouts of excruciating pain and illness, I fought them with the strength of 10 men.

My boyfriend’s brother was a recovered heroin addict. I sobbed uncontrollably to him and said,
”This is what it feels like to DIE.”

He answered, “NO. This is what it feels like to LIVE.”

 

By the third night I was drained and exhausted, and managed to fall asleep at dawn for a few hours.

I awoke Sunday morning. My muscles had stopped spasming in pain.

My boyfriend pulled back the shades that had been drawn for days.
“Let’s get some air in here,” he said.

He opened the large casement windows. Just then, in the distance, church bells began to chime.

It sounded like life.

It was Easter Sunday morning. And like Jesus, I had risen from the dead.

—

All these years later, and sadness throbs through my body.

There is a price to pay for feeling broken.

I’m aware of how I’m perceived, but I can’t feel it.

Heroin renders me immortal. I am what all humans seek through religion and spirituality.

On heroin, I am my vision of myself.

I’m socially adept, moving fluidly among others instead of hiding in my room.

I’m the writer who inspires, rather than constantly crawling through the wreckage of her squandered life.

I’m a woman capable of love; of intimacy and relationships. Not someone who lets no one get close.

I’m the mother my child deserves, not the one who’s exhausted and impatient and irritable.
Not the selfish bitch who risked her life to get a fucking fix.

 

This is the LAST time I get high.

This IS the last time I get high.

THIS. Is the last time I get high.

 

What is, or was, your drug of choice? What finally made you stop?
Did you ever write a post you just weren’t sure you should write, but you did anyway?
Are you tired of your problems? Are you tired of mine?

Talk to me. I’m listening.

This is the most simple, most perfect, most beautiful song about heroin addiction ever.

I Walked In At 7 am; Dirty, Drunk…

 

…my shoe was broken.

My 10 year old lectured me.

“It’s morning, Mama! Do you realize it’s MORNING??”

I was about to tell him not to lecture ME; I was the mom here.

I opened my mouth. And hurled into the kitchen sink.

 

This is all the doing of my college BFF.  She is a walking cyclone.

A full throttle unrepentant trouble maker.

She’s been my partner in crime over 25 years, ever since we were freshman in college.

We were the lone New York girls adrift in a sea of lame Midwestern chicks.

 

My BFF is a tough ass Latina chick from the South Bronx, a hard core rock and roller, and an empty nester.

This is a deadly combo.

She had her kids as soon as we graduated college, and after over 20 years of marriage, got divorced.

She was diagnosed last fall with Stage 3 breast cancer.

 

She lives every day as if it were her last.

 

In college, our mayhem was legendary.

I’m not just talking about our Intergalactic Voyage parties; in which we distributed pharmaceutical grade LSD to hundreds of students so they could get zonked out of their gourds.

I mean, literally legendary.

She is actually written into the pledge book of a popular fraternity at our alma mater.

She was so butt-toast hammered in the back of a limo en route to a fraternity formal, that she dropped a lit joint in her lap.

Her dress caught fire.

She looked down and deadpanned,

“Holy shit, I’m on fire.”

To this day, when a freshman is pledging that frat, and has to memorize facts in the pledge book,

one of the questions asked is, “Who said, ‘Holy shit, I’m on fire’?”

The answer? My BFF.

 

We both idolize Patti Smith, and when her birthday concert was announced for last December 30, we bought tickets. Immediately.

Patti was playing at Webster Hall, a club in Manhattan 2 blocks from my old apartment in the East Village.

Lot of memories from that place.

Dating all the way back to when it was The Ritz, a premier rock club in the 1980’s.

 

She and I and our freshman year boyfriends drove to Manhattan from upstate NY to see shows there.

Over the college years we had other boyfriends.

But we stayed friends with these two, because of our love for music.

And each other.

 

Freshman year, the 4 of us we saw the Beastie Boys at The Ritz over Christmas break.

Sophomore year, the 4 of us saw The Ramones at the Ritz for my birthday in September.

The Ramones. I could do a whole blog post on Joey Ramone. I will, someday.

Senior year, the 4 of us saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

I still remember the exact set list, because we stole it off the stage.

 

Since divorcing, she’d rekindled her romance with her college flame, R, who was also divorced and living in Brooklyn.

He was still best friends with M, my old college flame.

 

The last time I saw either of them, it was 20 years ago at a New Year’s Eve party at the Paramount Hotel in midtown Manhattan.

M was in law school in the city.

I was in a black rubber dress and heroin.

A lot had changed in the 4 years since we graduated.

 

When we found out that they were going to the same show, and wanted to meet up with us –

I shit a cold purple Twinkie.

It’s unnerving to see an old flame you haven’t seen in 20 years.

Of the four of us, M was the only one still married.  Apparently his marriage was on the rocks, and he was about to be separated.

 

Oh, shit. 

 

My BFF traveled to my house from Boston, and we spent the late afternoon making ourselves look like club sluts primping for our night out.

My kid FREAKED when he saw me dressed for the show.

 

I was in skin tight black clothing from head to toe, lots of cleavage showing, thigh high black stiletto boots, and more makeup than I normally wear in a week.

My poor kid. He blocked the door to try to prevent me from leaving.

“Mama – you can’t go OUT looking like that! Everyone’s going to LOOK at you!”

 

“Little Dude,” my BFF said, “that’s the whole point.”

 

We took the bus into the city. No driving tonight.

I planned to get a little buzzed that night, not inebriated.

I’m a total lightweight when it comes to alcohol.

I get stupid on half a glass of wine.

She, on the other hand, planned on getting rat-ass  kootered.

My girl can drink.

 

The club was packed with about 2,000 fans. All hail the Punk Poetess.

It was a bizarre mix of people; ranging in age from 20 to 60.

United only by the demographic of worshipping the Godmother of Punk.

R had texted her that they were at the bar of the club, near the back.

I spotted them as soon as we walked towards the bar.

 

That M.

He was still really cute.

He hadn’t changed a whole lot in 20 years.

It was like a time warp.

Almost instantly, everything was just like it used to be with the 4 of us.

The same exact energy was there.

 

Oh shit. 

 

M wanted to buy me a drink. I didn’t know what to have.

He suggested Vodka and Red Bull.

He told me it was “Refreshing. Like soda.”

 

He’s a FUCKING LIAR.

 

What happens is, you get drunk, but you’re so gorked on 5000 mg of caffeine, you don’t realize it.

So you keep drinking them.

Which is what I did.

 

The lights dimmed and the stage went black.

The band started to play the unmistakable and haunting opening strains to Lou Reeds, “Heroin.”

A few months earlier, Patti Smith had written a gorgeous eulogy to him when he died.

Her male counterpart, the Godfather of Punk.

 

Now, she was opening the night in an homage to him, and one of his greatest songs.

It took the audience a collective 5 seconds to recognize the song she was opening with – and then –

they went HOG WILD OFF THE WALLS FUCKING BONKERS BAT SHIT CRAZY.

2000 people screaming and clapping.

This is the kind of shit New Yorkers are famous for.

When it comes to honoring one of our own, it’s no holds barred.

 

I had so many emotions running through me that night.

This club. The location. My old neighborhood.

The opening song. Heroin. My demon.

My BFF

Her cancer.

These men. The boys we dated in college.

 

When we first spoke at the bar, M asked me about my husband.

“I’m not married anymore. I left him.”

He said,

“Of course you did. That’s what you DO.”

 

“Drunk” is an understatement to describe my condition.

Ossified. Comboozelated.

The kind of wasted where you lose your underwear (I didn’t.)

The show ended at 11:30.

The night went on forever.

 

I remember walking through the cold windy streets of downtown from one bar to another. And another.

I have no memory of where, exactly.

At some  point my shoe broke.

I think…I fell?

That would explain me getting so dirty.

Partly.

 

We ran the streets like we were 19.

My heart was free that night.

My mind traveled back in time, and I had no responsibilities.

No kid. No mortgage. No worries.

 

Things were said that shouldn’t have been.

Things happened that shouldn’t have.

 

We kept missing buses back to NJ.

The 2 am. The 3 am.

My BFF and I ended up on a 6am bus back to the suburbs.

We left the glittering city of hope and promise and rode the bus into the gray oppressive suburban morning.

I had no coat.

I had lost it at some point, and spent the night with M’s jacket around my shoulder.

 

The last thing I remember that night is him walking me on the bus – literally, onto the bus, taking his jacket back, and giving me a very soft kiss goodbye.

Just a peck on the lips.

And me looking up at him.

Then, I passed out.

 

 

M texted me the next day, and the day after that.

I never responded to him.

“Of course you did. That’s what you DO.”

I just heard through the grapevine he’s back with his wife.

Good.

 

 

We got off the bus and had no ride back to my house.

It was a mile walk.

I hobbled drunkenly, my shoe broken.

I fell again.

That would account for why I was dirty.

Partly.

 

I walked in my house at 7 am.

Dirty, drunk.

My shoe was broken.

My 10 year old lectured me.

 

My BFF started the worst 5 months of her life January 7th, one week after the concert.

The chemo nearly killed her.

She kept having seizures and almost fatal temperatures after every treatment.

After that, months of radiation burned her body to the point of blistering.

But she’s ALIVE.

 

We have tickets to go see an epic concert at The Stone Pony in July.

 

The Stone Pony is an iconic New Jersey venue. Bruce Springsteen started his career there, and is known for dropping in unexpectedly.

It’s in Asbury Park, right on the beach.

 

Our old college flames are thinking of getting tickets to the same show.

 

GOD HELP ME. 

 

 

Do you have that one friend who gets you into all kinds of trouble? Are you still friends with your college roommate?
Have you ever encountered an old flame, after a very long time?
Talk to me. I’m listening.

How Lou Reed Destroyed My Life

Patti Smith and Lou Reed, conspiring to Fuck. My. Life. Up.

 

Everyone who lived in downtown New York City has a Lou Reed story. If you love music, you have a Lou Reed story.

Some people did drugs with him.

Some people sold him drugs.

Some people were ripped off by him so he could buy drugs.

Some people had violent fist fights with him. He had an explosive temper, which could detonate at any time.

Many people were ridiculed and demeaned by him. He was a prickly, judgmental motherfucker.

Too many to count never met him but saw him perform.

And some have had their lives thrown irrevocably off course after seeing one of these performances.

I’m in that last category.

 

I was 15 when an older friend smuggled me into the Bottom Line to see Lou Reed perform.

The Bottom Line, like so many other iconic rock venues in New York City clubs, no longer exists.

Massive. Heart. Squeeze.

 

My first night at the Bottom Line I didn’t pay much attention to my surroundings, because as soon as we got there, David nodded towards a table near the postage sized stage and said, “There he is.”

Lou Reed had an aura of steel gray electricity. You don’t develop or manufacture that kind of presence; it just is.

He was dressed in a black leather jacket. Under it, a tight sleeveless black tee shirt revealed gorgeous muscular arms. Black jeans. Craggy handsome face. Close cropped curly black hair. Angrily set jaw.

He frightened me.

He turned me on immensely.

 

This night is memorable, not just for the music. It was the night I realized I did not want, nor would I have, a chance at a “normal” life. I remember the smell of liquor and perfume and pot and sweat; the crowd and its slavish devotion, the relentless screeches of feedback.

Lou Reed’s voice.

He crooned and drawled; half spoke, half sang. He was a poet who layered words on top of music. The effect was mesmerizing and dramatic but without affectation.

His songs were of transvestites, prostitutes, drug addicts, sadomasochists and utter madness. No romantic despair or adolescent misogyny for this rock-and-roller.

He was the Primal Prince of Fearlessness. An escapee from the dark, dangerous, sexually ambiguous New York underworld who had managed to live to tell the tales.

His music was pure/impure New York City.

“I’m Waiting for the Man.” A junkie on a drug buy in Harlem.

And the lyrics, so simple.

“I’m waiting for my man
Twenty-six dollars in my hand
Up to Lexington, 125
Feeling sick and dirty, more dead than alive
I’m waiting for my man”

It was a street map to score heroin. It was that specific.

At one point in the evening, someone in the audience called out for “Heroin,” Lou Reed’s love song to addiction. It’s the musical equivalent of a heroin high, just as your brain implodes.

Lou Reed became agitated; then angry. He had kicked heroin years ago and no longer performed this song live. Other members of the audience started calling for it. He got angrier; vicious. He would not satisfy the audience’s vicarious drug habit.

He ended the night in a brutal verbal fight with several of the audience members; shouting obscenities at them, finally storming off and turning a table over on his way off stage.

His behavior was unscripted, raw, sexual and human.

It was tragic.

It was fucking beautiful.

 

Patti Smith had already laid eggs in my brain years before. But just as I fell in worship/love with her, the GodMother of punk retired to raise her children near Detroit. I wasn’t able to see her live at that time. But her male counterpart- the GodFather of punk – was very much still a part of the downtown New York scene.

After that, I had zero interest in going to college; graduating, getting a good job, getting married, moving to the suburbs and having 2.3  kids.

I wanted nothing of that. I wanted Reed’s world. The seamy underworld he sang of and denounced and loved and judged and accepted and rejected and forgave.

I HAD to have that life.

I would stay in New York and be a writer. An actress. A musician. It didn’t matter that I didn’t play an instrument well. Lou Reed played guitar for shit.

In the end, I was a coward. At 16, I lacked Reed’s fearlessness. I did as I was told, and I was told you don’t turn down a full ride to an Ivy League school.

So I went.

And wasted my time. I was Ivy Leaguer in name only –  but a junkie rebel leather queen in my heart. As soon as those 4 years were over, I headed back to my home town and spent the next 15 years on the Wild Side.

I moved into the East Village, the artsy funky punk rock East Village, and was finally home.

I no longer live there, but my apartment on 2nd avenue will always be my home. Period.

I can’t even discuss this.

 

I squandered those 15 years when I could have been capitalizing off my fancy education. I’m paying for that now.

I pursued various artistic endeavors, but mostly I lived on the edge. I took ridiculous chances; did unspeakable things; hung out with sordid musicians, made terrible choices.

I had the time of my life.

I regret nothing.

 

Sometimes I wish I had died a junkie’s quick and painless overdose of a death, a poetic swan song in a blaze of glory. Instead of this slow drip of moribund that seeps into my blood, a day at a time.

I’m restless and bored and yearn for adventure. But where do you go when you’ve been there and done that?

I’m too old to keep up with the relentless pace of the life I once knew. Too young to be buried alive in the suburbs.

I’m in limbo. Not fit for either the life I once lived, or the one I live now.

 

 

Yes, I’m in disguise so I can I pass amongst the normals here, but that’s just a ninja stealth strategy.

I bake for the PTO. But my Halloween cupcakes sported tiny edible knives and leaked blood red icing and sold out immediately.

What? It came in a kit.

 

I’m raising a 10-year-old kid who dressed in all black on the 20th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death last month.

I live life my way, on my terms.

 

 

The night I found out Lou Reed died, Sunday, October 27, 2013, I was on the telephone with my best friend of 27 years.

We were stunned. And immediately – in our respective homes and without consulting the other –  started playing the same song.

“Street Hassle.”

An 11 minute tour de force in 3 movements, considered by many to be Lou Reed’s masterpiece.

 

Lou Reed didn’t really influence me to squander my life. He thrust me beyond the secure and ordinary allure of the mundane. He gave me an early glimpse of another world that existed beyond the safe and colorless margins in which  I had felt trapped.

I saw hope that I could live a life not scripted by, and for, the rest of the world.

It does not have to exist only in the demimonde of druggie nihilism, but simply by living with an uncompromising allegiance to the truth of who I am.

 

Like Lou Reed, I am a deeply flawed mass of contradictions. Lost, but found. Tragic, but magnificent.

I find humanity in the people that society condemns.

RIP, Lou. I’ll continue walking on the Wild Side.

Til the day I die.

 

Exactly.

 

This is an audio collage of three urban scenes connected by a memorable, elegant riff, first on cello and then on guitar. Bonus points if you recognize the voice after the second part.
In the third part, Lou Reed’s voice, an elegy for a lost lover, is one of the most painfully grief-stricken vocals in rock history.

Have you ever had a seemingly innocent event throw your life off course?
Has any musical artist ever had a strong impact on you? 
Talk to me.   I’m listening. 

New York Stories: Phone Girl In a Whorehouse: Part 2

 

The most inaccurate depiction of prostitution in the history of the world

 

The job of a phone girl in a brothel is basically a sort of sub-madam.

Clients, either established or new, would call. Once they arrived, I would let them in, pour them a drink, and seat them in main lounge, where they could chat for a few minutes before deciding who they would like to have a session with.

We called them “parties.”

I also had to keep the place stocked with alcohol, make sure all the laundry was picked up and delivered daily, collect weekly doctor’s notices from the girls, make sure the supply closet was stocked with tissues, baby oil, condoms, etc.

The clients, were normal, run-of-the-mill men. They weren’t unsanitary freaks incapable of attracting women. They were pleasant. Some were extremely handsome.

They were men who did not wish to ask their wives or girlfriends to fulfill some of their kinky fantasies.

It’s complicated to go home to the wife in Scarsdale and say, “honey, tonight I’d like you to pee on me. Afterwards, please dress me up in a giant diaper and spank me.”

I did find some of their predilections unnerving at first. We had a couple of dominatrixes on the premises, and I could never fathom the male masochistic inclination.

 

I occasionally got ensnared into a party.  Strictly as a voyeur, and reluctantly. If it was an “emergency” and everyone else was occupied.

“He wants you to watch while I stick my stiletto heel up his ass. PLEASE! He’ll pay you $50. There’s no one else available.”

The first few times, I was completely freaked out.

Then, it just seemed absurd.

 

Once, one of the dominatrix’s was running late. Her client had already arrived, and he was getting antsy. She insisted I “get him started.”

Even on the phone, she scared the snot out of me.

I looked in the closet where she kept her sadistic accoutrement. And shut it, quickly.

I ended up making him crawl around the room with a garbage pail on his head.

That was the best I could come up with.

 

I knew what I was doing was illegal. It appealed to my sense of non-conformity.

At least, it was an honest admission of being dishonest, as opposed to more covertly dishonest professions. Like being a car salesman.

Having grown up in a house with all brothers, I also enjoyed the sense of female solidarity. I gradually bonded with the girls, and became close with four of them.

Nikki was Queen Bee of 51st Street. She was in her mid 40’s. Strawberry blonde hair, blue eyes; a kind of luminous sensuality.

Men of all ages desired her. I never quite understood why guys in their 20’s wanted a woman in her 40’s.

Now that I’m her age, I…kind of understand.

She was married to Joe, who accepted her profession. Some husbands were like that.

They had a gorgeous apartment on the Upper East Side, where I spent a lot of time.

Their favorite hobby was doing massive amounts of cocaine all night while playing bizarre porno movies in the background.

Our all-time favorite was “I Spit On Your Grave.” One of the characters wore glasses, and when he was pounding away at women, closeups of his face showed there was no glass in the glasses.

This seemed hilarious at 5 am on an 8-ball of cocaine.

“No expense was spared in the making of this movie.”

 

Kathy was a big, voluptuous, 25-year old brunette.  She lived on Long Island, and was working her way through college.

Gail was very tall but model-thin; fair skinned, auburn hair with a pretty, girl-next-door look. She was my age, and lived near me in the East Village. She was also working her way through graphic design school. We frequently went out together after work.

And then there was Debby.

Debby.

Barbie doll body, unbelievably full, pouty lips, huge brown eyes and artfully tousled blonde locks.

 

Debby was a reigning queen of the East Village punk scene. She’d run away from home at 13, and had been on the scene since the late 70’s.

She knew EVERYBODY.

She was a musician. A painter. A writer. A vagabond. A free spirit. Brilliant, talented, tormented, fragile, tough…

 

At first, she was aloof and scornful. She’d mock how I was dressed when I was heading out with Gail.

Little by little, she let me into her world.

I realize now, she saw in me her younger self. Before she’d become so damaged and lost her innocence.

And was somehow trying to regain it through me, by osmosis.

Instead, the reverse happened.

 

Yes, I was impressed with the fact that she knew and hung out with all the punk icons I worshipped. What can I say? I was a kid.

She’d had a tumultuous on and off again romance with Johnny Thunders, and although he was now married, she completely lost it when he died.

I loved her particular habit of referring to rock musicians by their real names. It spoke of a true familiarity with them that I envied and craved.

She’d see Richard Hell – whose album Blank Generation I worshipped – at a downtown bar and command him, “Meyers – get me a drink!”

Much later, when she finally introduced me to them, I picked up the habit.

It wasn’t the only habit of hers I picked up.

 

Debby was a world-class junkie. I was so naive, I thought she was just frequently stoned on weed, like other girls at work.

I saved all my money and acquired a nice apartment on 2nd Avenue. East of where I lived was known as “Alphabet City” – it still is.

Debby was living in a “squat” – an abandoned building on Avenue B.

I didn’t connect that she was earning money at the brothel, but still couldn’t afford an apartment.

Alphabet City was a seedy place in the early 90’s.

 

Our friendship began with her sharing my taxi home from work. I always paid.

She’d critique my look. Make a few adjustments in the cab.

“Here – belt this.”

“You can’t draw a good cat eye with pencil- you need liquid liner.”

“Is that…glitter on your face? Where are you going, a fucking Bowie concert?”

Then, she began inviting me to go out with her after work.

 

The minute she entered the room – a bar, a club – she OWNED it.

I had a boyfriend at the time.

I was feeling things for Debby that I had never felt before, but I didn’t identify what they were.

I wanted to crawl up inside her and live IN her. I was besotted.

It wasn’t that she knew everyone.

It was the way she smelled. The way her lips looked when she was making an exasperated face at me.

Her walk. The sexy way she flowed through a room.

I could never imitate it. I tried for years.

 

Fridays were always busy on 51st street. People get paid on Fridays, which creates an illusion of abundance.

We all made a lot of money on Fridays.

Debby and I usually started our night at a popular bar, like the semi-subterranean Holiday Cocktail Lounge on St. Mark’s.

This time, she told me she had to make a stop first.

We drove to a sketchy part of the East Village.

In the early 90’s, Avenue D was run down and filthy. A barren urban wasteland of empty storefronts and abandoned buildings.

I said nothing as we got out of the cab. Debby had taken me to some squalid places before, and I learned to just keep my mouth shut.

 

The streets were littered with junkies and freaks.

Men, mostly Hispanic, wearing carpenters aprons, were walking around, announcing their brands.

“Pac-Man!” “Nynex!” “Fire!”

Two men were herding people in lines, and bringing them over to a burnt out laundromat.

It was my first visit to an “open air” heroin market.

 

We crunched across the lot in our heels, across broken bricks and trash and weeds. When she found the man calling out, “Terminator,” she made her purchase.

By now, I knew she was buying heroin. I tried to act as nonchalant as possible, but I was taken aback. And worried.

And extremely curious.

 

We made our way back through this perverse street bazaar to Avenue A, which was more civilized.

Debby wanted to go to the Park Inn Tavern for a drink. It was one of her favorite dive bars; pitch black walls and skinheads loitering outside.

It was a locals only place that would never attract the “Bridge and Tunnel” crowd – people from New Jersey, or the boroughs.

We walked in, and she nodded hello to the bartender.

She said, “You wanna wait here? Or come with me?”

“Where are we going?”

She laughed and ordered two shots, two beers. Took my hand and we went into the filthy bathroom.

Junkies shoot up wherever they can, as soon as they can.

 

I wanted to try it.

She insisted I go first.

“If I go first, I’m gonna be too high. I’ll fuck it up.”

 

Debby pulled all sorts of paraphernalia out of her bag.

She tore open a package and took out a syringe. She mixed the heroin with water, and put it in a spoon. Added heat from her lighter. She took a tic-tac sized ball of cotton from a Q-tip to filter it.  She dipped the needle into the cotton and sucked-up the heroin mixture.

She sterilized my arm with an alcohol wipe. Tied a black band around my upper arm.

She tapped hard on my upper bicep.

“Your veins are so tiny,” she crooned at me.

And then-  she found what she was looking for.

I felt an almost imperceptible prick.

There was a buzzing sound,.

For about 30 seconds, my brain felt like it was orgasming.

I got a metallic taste in my mouth that drove down my throat.

The sound of my own breath became echo-y, like I was under water.

 

And then I got violently ill. I RETCHED. For what seemed like an eternity.

When I finally finished, I looked up. Debby was leaning against the wall, stoned.

She looked at me and said,

“You look so beautiful with vomit on your face.”

 

She went to the bar and got paper towels and cleaned up my face. Handed me gum.

We sat at the bar for hours.

Or maybe not. I have no clue.

My entire life felt like it was in a bath, at the perfect temperature.

We ended up back at my apartment.

 

That night, I found out who puts what where in lesbian sex.

 

She took her time with me, and that, coupled with the heroin, made the experience euphoric.

She knew exactly how fast and slow to move, exactly where on my body to focus more of her attention;  knew what was going to curl my toes and just make my entire body tremble.

When we finished the first time, she just laid next to me and ran her fingers through my hair until my heart rate came back to normal.

The next day, she pushed her shopping cart over from the squat on Avenue B and moved in with me.

I didn’t know what I was getting into.

 

Next week: Part Three! The Conclusion. 

Part One Starts Here

 

Have you ever gotten involved with someone you shouldn’t have?
Or had a job you knew was a terrible idea?
Talk to me.  I’m listening.