longtailedhermit's Journal: An addict takes a holiday

Streaming SomaFM Drone Zone: Stevie Be Ret - Maya & Aliens

It was a cool, cloudy morning, the twenty-fifth of December, and I could feel the heavy, ocean-laden wind tugging at my coat and dampening my holiday spirit (what little bit I had). I had only crawled out of bed moments before. It was a quarter to eight when I walked out the door on my way to a eight o-clock coffee "date" and really wasn't all that embarrassed by my cat-hair covered Brooks Brothers' sport coat and greasy blue jeans. This outfit was complete with black wool watch cap, decomposing leather combat boots, and matted hair. I suppose my lack of self-consciousness had quite a bit to do with the fact that I was on my way to see my old hook-up, not the kind of appointment one gets prettied up for. A holiday doesn't bottom out much lower than that.

A month ago, I was a sober man, or at least I possessed that label of sobriety that gives one a sense of purpose and self-worth. Ludicrous or not, that label is missed when you become an addict. Why? Well, why does anyone want what they don't have? By now anyone reading this might assume I'm a waste of a life. I try to do no harm; other than that, I'm not sure if I care what other people think. Anyone challenging social expectations (Puritanical/socially conservative Western ideas) should expect to be met with hostility. Besides that, I'm not the one reading someone else's blog....

Thursday 3 weeks ago was pleasant but chilly. I rode my bike down the hill (Twin Peaks) toward Golden Gate Park, near the Panhandle. Then, I changed course steering to the East and rode a dozen or so blocks through the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, then went a few blocks up the hill again, turned West, and headed to Mason, just off Haight, to a cafe where I go to study sometimes. I hopped the curb and rode up onto the sidewalk to the street corner shaded by live oaks and some other green trees that look the same year round and don't really lose their leaves during the winter in the temperate climate of San Francisco, California.

As I'm wrapping my cable bike lock around the one pathetic tree that is scraggly and has lost most of its leaves, I think it's odd to hear someone calling my name, "Robin?" I turned and had no idea who this woman was who obviously knew me. I was surprised when she said she was Dara Shimer, my hook-up from years ago, 5 maybe. She was sitting alone with a paper and a cup of coffee at a table outside of the Cafe. (My x-girlfriend, the Lovely but Tragically Insane Angry Ingrid who I have blogged about before, was friends with her and had introduced me to her years ago when she first showed me the thrills of the needle).

Dara was sitting at a small wooden table in front of one of the large store-front windows, her back to a large potted jade bush. She is the kind of person, what I imagine to be the1 American stereotype of a worrying and concerned Jewish mother, who will greet you with a cheerful smile and a plate of cookies in one hand, but (breaking the stereotype) in the hand hidden behind her back is a tray of syringes and dope.

Recognition occurred slowly like buried memories being dredged up from the murky cesspool that my mind has become since I last knew her. Her hair once black has turned white, her once plump matronly body is like a wire hanger supporting baggy clothes, and her face is shriveled like an old apple. She was my regular hookup for dilaudid, oxy, and heroin. Whatever she had, I needed. Tbe last time I saw her, years ago, she was lying on her living room couch, not moving, pale, sweating, simultaneously vomiting and squitting (uncontrollable squirting of diarrhea). She was sick from heroin withdrawal. She had been cut off / her source had gone missing. I don't remember what she said if she said anything. Maybe I just didn't bother to ask. She had asked me to buy her a pack of Marlboro Reds (tobacco) cigarettes. She was dry - no more dope and didn't even have money for a pack of stinky cigarettes...

My gf, who is lying in the bed behind me, is trying to sleep. She says that I'm making too much noise and need to get to bed. I have been trying to finish this single journal entry for a 2 days now. She has been in a bad mood lately. More on that later. To be continued.