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| Author: |
Tony O'Neill |
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Tony on Loving The Dead: “I wrote a whole series of stories set in various drug rehabs in LA, and they are collected in Notre Dame Du Vide, published by the French publishing house, 13e Note Editions. This is one of them.”
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| Submission Date: |
| 14 Jan 2010 |
Category: |
Short story
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In Chap-book
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Loving The Dead
Word around the place was that Mercedes had died and come back, and now she believed she was immortal. I never heard it from her own lips, we spoke less than twenty words in the time I knew her, but I had the sense that not only did she believe this but that it was also true. She was beautiful in the way that only those possessed by immortality can be. I do mean, “Possessed by immortality”. One cannot possess immortality, nuh-huh, it happens the other way around. For thirty days, while my roommates snored, I silently conjured her face as I manipulated myself into orgasm. When I came I wept sometimes because I knew I could never have her. I was a mere mortal, bound by flesh and blood, and therefore superfluous to her needs.
*
“When you were younger… a child… there was… abuse?” His voice goes up expectantly at the end. I have been looking the office over again, the utilitarian grey carpet, the desk stuffed with post-it notes, pens, sharpies, folders, what seems to me to be a concerted effort to look “happy” and “productive.” When his voice goes up I realize that an answer is required of me. I look back to him, confused.
“I, um, I, uh, no.”
“No?” [Tap, tap, tap goes the pen against his chin]
“No.”
“Forgive my skepticism… It’s just that I have found that in cases of, uh, chronic drug use such as yours… there often tends to be… abuse at the heart of it. Sexual. Physical. Emotional. Even verbal. I mean, in very many cases, the patient is totally unaware of the connection…”
“Well, no. Not me. Nothing like that.”
“Hm.”
He makes some notes. I notice that he hasn’t turned his calendar over. Today is the first day of July. I have been here for three weeks already, and I feel no better. My birthday comes in another week. I am about to point out the calendar, when he says “So why do you do drugs?”
I start to laugh. Oh God, this stupid fucking question again. He smiles at me, pained, and says “You consider this a silly question.”
I’m still laughing. I wave my hand at him in apology. I get the laughter under control, and say, “Yeah. Kinda silly.”
“And why is that?”
“You used to do meth, right?”
He shrugs, and gets that puffed up look that the counselors get when you mention their own drug use. Most all of the staff here are ex dopers, drunks, fuck ups. Maybe he regrets telling me about his history with meth, in an attempt to get me on side at the beginning of our sessions. There’s a small part in every ex-junkie that still wants the approval of current dope fiends. They still want to be considered “one of us.” The thrill of being outside of regular society is a much harder habit to kick than dope.
“Yes,” he says, “That’s right.”
“Why did you do it?”
“There were many… complex reasons…”
“But – did you like the way it made you feel? The first time you did it, did you like it?”
“Yes, of course.”
“So you did it because it feels good. That’s why I do it too. Because it feels so fucking good.”
*
After the session I pass a woman sobbing in the corridor. Other guys walk right past her as if she were invisible. She is by the payphones, which are right up against the wall of the head office. People say the phones are tapped. You often see people crying here. Phone use is heavily restricted in this place, and usually when phone privileges are finally granted, the first news that patients get isn’t good.
They are going to press charges.
Tony OD’d.
The court wants your kids.
Can you sit down for a moment? It’s just that we got the results of your blood test…
I know this woman vaguely. I heard her share in a meeting. She is almost fifty, and looks much older. She has been an alcoholic for many years. She has two adult children, one is a born-again Christian, and one is a heroin addict. The Christian can’t have children; the heroin addict has three but can’t look after them. The Christian is threatening to call child services if her sister doesn’t get baptized and join a born-again commune that is supposed to specialize in helping addicts to get clean. That is the last I heard. Now there is more, because the woman is sobbing pitifully, wiping the snot from her face with a shaking hand. I fight my instinct to ask her if she is OK. I walk past her instead, as I am not permitted to talk with any of the female patients. That is called “consorting” and it is frowned upon. In the week that I have been here, I saw two people kicked out for “consorting”.
If I get kicked out, I will be back on the street. If I complete the ninety days, maybe Susan’s sister will trust us enough to allow us to crash on her couch for a while. Her sister is up in San Francisco. I hear that the dope is pretty good up there. Seven more days of this, and I will be sitting in the City Lights bookstore, high as a motherfucker, and reading a musty smelling old paperback. At peace again.
*
Cigarette break. The heat in the concrete yard is phenomenal. The first week I was here I couldn’t take my leather jacket off. I just couldn't seem to warm up. Now I find the heat stifling, unbearable. We are talking about Mercedes; Paddy, James and I. Paddy is a New York Irish crack head who went through detox with me. On the outside he is an air traffic controller at La Guardia Airport. James is here for Oxycontin. He is my age, mid twenties, stupid and rich. His father is someone high up in the Republican Party. James is a stupid son of a bitch. He is wearing two hundred dollar sunglasses, and a lot of gold. He is dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, just like the rest of us, but his T-shirt and jeans cost a lot of money. A lot of his father’s money.
“I’m gonna talk to her,” James says.
James acts with total impunity in this place. He has been here for a month, but this is his third visit. He has been booted out twice, but is always allowed to return, no questions asked. This is also something to do with his father’s money. James and Paddy are roommates.
“See if what’s true?” Paddy asks.
“The thing about her being immortal.”
“Fuck off! Immortal! You talk a lot of shit, sometimes.”
There are tables all over the yard, and the women all group together at one end, and the men at the other. It is like a fucking high school dance. I can see Mercedes, alone and thoughtful. The other women think she is crazy, or maybe they hate her because of the way she looks. She is staring at the backs of her hands.
“I don’t know about being immortal,” I say, “but she is beautiful.”
Paddy nods his head and stubs out his cigarette. James openly stares at her.
“She’s not bad,” he agrees, “You know, for a wetback.”
“Fuck off!” Paddy snaps. Paddy has a wife. She is Columbian. James just laughs, and says,
“Chill, bro, I’m kidding!” Like I said, James is a stupid son of a bitch.
*
The only time I spoke to her, I was late for meditation class. I was bounding up the stairs, when I found her alone, sitting on the steps in between floors. She had an unopened copy of the Big Book in her hands. She was wearing black jeans, and a tank top. Her hair was tied back away from her face. I just stopped, shocked to see her, and stared for a few seconds. The sun was streaming in through the skylight, and it made her skin glow. Her mouth was insolent, her nose regal, and her eyebrows thick and shapely. It was this glimpse of her face that would fuel my fantasies for the forthcoming weeks.
“Hi,” she said.
I just stared. Then, caught off balance, I stuttered, “Hi, Mercedes…” I looked at her arms, at the fresh needle marks that traced a history of pain and self-abuse starting at the backs of her hands up to her elbows.
“You know my name,” she said. She didn’t seems surprised. I heard a door swing open somewhere beneath us, and the clatter of approaching footsteps. Panicked I spluttered, “You have pretty hands,” before I ran past her, towards my class.
For the next hour I sat in silence with the others, but I could not concentrate. I was thinking about the backs of her hands, how torn up they had been by the needle. Why did I tell her that her hands were pretty? Why not her mouth, her eyes, her nose? I was sure that she now thought that I was either being cruel, or that I was a complete idiot.
”Breathe in…” the instructor, whispered, ”Now out…”
*
“Step one is the key, you do realize that…”
He has turned the calendar since out last session. I will soon be twenty-two years old. I have told no one of my upcoming birthday. Last week some poor bastard turned thirty in here, and they brought out a crappy cake, everyone sang happy birthday in the echoey, cold canteen. Then we ate hot dogs and drank fruit punch. I found it depressing, so I have kept my mouth shut about my own impending anniversary.
My counselor is a little put out that I haven’t thrown myself into the steps with as much vigor as some of the others in here. He tells me that my contrarian streak will kill me one day. My problems with the twelve steps begin with step one.
1: We admitted that we were powerless over drugs and alcohol, and that our lives had become unmanageable.
“But I don’t…” I sigh, “I don’t think that I’m powerless.”
“Have you tried to stop using heroin before?’
“Yes.”
“And what were the results?”
“It didn’t work.”
“Have you tried to control your use of heroin before?”
“Yes.”
“And what were the results?”
“It didn’t work.”
“So can you explain to me, why you think that you AREN’T powerless over heroin?”
I could explain this, but I don’t. I could tell him that by granting this mysterious, talismanic power to a man-made substance like heroin, I am cementing my inability to keep clean. I am admitting that I can never beat my addiction. I am making heroin God, and myself just it’s subject. Even if I quit heroin, by admitting I am powerless over it, I am saying that I will always self-consciously be ‘in recovery’. One day I would like to be something more than an ex-heroin addict.
But I don’t say this. Because that response leads to another response from my counselor, which leads to another from me, and it goes on and on and on, and no one ever wins. The debate is structured in such a way that the best I can hope for is a stalemate. My urge to resist is strong, though. I know that once I concede my powerlessness, they have driven in the first wedge. Then God comes next. And I’ll be damned if they start making me accept God in any way, shape or form.
*
Somebody else went home today, a woman who went through detox with me called Lori. Lori was an alcoholic. It was weird, because I saw it happen. We were at an outside meeting in a church basement, and Lori tripped and fell down a short flight of concrete steps. She twisted her back, but seemed OK. When she woke up the next morning I saw her limping around in the breakfast hall barely able to walk. The staff made a big fuss of her, and she was driven to the local emergency room.
The driver happened to be an old guy called Jimmy. Over the weeks, Jimmy and I had talked a lot. He was a dope fiend like me, and we shared the garbage detail the first week I was there. When we were throwing out rotten heads of lettuce and festering gravy, he would regale me with tales of hanging out with Lenny Bruce, or sitting in on drums with Art Pepper, during the glory days of LA’s dope scene. Jimmy had landed a prime job – van driving. When your movement is restricted, driving detail is one of the most liberating, sought after jobs there are.
Next day in the kitchen, Jimmy told me that Lori had been kicked out after the trip to the hospital. I was shocked. She had seemed real serious about getting straight. She had said in group that this was her last chance to have a relationship with her kids.
“She done fucked her back up good,” Jimmy told me.
“Yeah? So what?”
“So the doctors gave her a shot. When she got back the staff tested her urine, and boom! She tested positive.”
“Oh Christ! She got hold of liquor at the hospital? How?”
“No, man! The shot the doctor gave her was a painkiller! She tested positive for opiates.”
“So what? A doctor gave her that shot!”
“Bur she’s in here. She can’t have nothing like that when she’s in here.”
“Jimmy, that’s fucked up. That girl wasn’t even a junkie. She was a drunk. What’s the harm if she gets something for her pain?”
“The screws say that she should have called her counselor to see if it was OK, before accepting the shot.”
“Why? Her counselor ain’t a doctor! He’s an ex-crack head! What’s she gonna ask him for?”
“Thems the rules.”
I shook my head. “That’s fucked up. What about her kids?”
“What about ‘em? They don’t give a fuck bout that!” Jimmy laughed. “That bitch ain’t nothing but a number in here. Shit, they done filled her bed already.”
I thought about Lori all day long after that. In the evening meeting, we all greeted the new girl. Her name was Christine. She stood up and introduced herself. She looked young, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old.
“My name is Christine, and I am an addict,” she said.
“Welcome Christine!” everyone responded.
Lori was never mentioned again. When someone leaves by any other means than a proper graduation ceremony, the staff never talks them about again. It is as if they had never even been there. Lori was nothing more than a ghost now.
*
The truck driver got beaten up yesterday. Some guys in the dorm rushed him in the shower, and beat him with their belts and fists. Something about the truck driver upset a lot of the others. I felt it too: like there was an undercurrent of darkness about him that you couldn’t quite pinpoint. Sometimes he made jokes about fucking young kids, and he was the only one who laughed at them. He killed a few lighthearted moments like that. A bunch of guys sitting round, swapping stories, bar room tales, that kinda bullshit, and then he’d barge in. “OK, I got a good one. What’s better than fucking a ten year old?”
Everybody falls silent and glares at him. He seems utterly unaware of the poisonous effect his jokes have on the others here. He is sat with some serious people too. Gang bangers, hard men, and jailbirds. Nobody says anything. Then Paco, a muscle bound Hispanic whose entire torso is a tapestry of jailhouse tattoos says, “I dunno, Mork” (they call him Mork in here, because he looks a little like a young Robin Williams), “What IS better than fucking a ten year old?”
“Fucking a ten year old against a barbed wire fence!” Mork announces proudly. He starts to guffaw. Everybody just stares at him.
“Well you’d know, you motherfucking freak,” Paco hissed, and the conversation started up again unsteadily.
Anyway, today Mork sits alone with two black eyes, bruised ribs, and a bloodied lip. He isn’t talking about what happened. James is telling me that the word is that he creeped out too many people. “He got what’s coming to him,” James laughs, dragging on a Marlboro, “I mean, shit, a joke’s a joke… but kids? That ain’t cool.”
“They’re a pretty judgmental bunch for a gang of ex-cons and junkies,” I say. “Most people in here would steal the morphine suppository out of their dying mother’s ass.”
James laughs, and then leans in, conspiratorially. “Anyway, fuck that shit. So listen. I was in a meeting with Mercedes last night. Heard it straight from the horse’s mouth. Says her heart stopped for three minutes. Overdose. She says that she saw her mom and grandma, and that God himself was holding them in his hand. Then the doctors got her heart started again, and she woke up.”
As he talked, I looked around for her. She was alone, as usual, sitting under the shade of the only tree in the yard.
“She says that her mother told her that once you see heaven, you don’t have to fear death anymore. Fucking bitch is crazy. I’d bang the shit outta her, though. I made sure that I shared next. Told the story about the time I nodded out and crashed my Bentley into a bus stop.”
This was an infamous story around the place. He’d hit a young mother who was carrying a three year old in her arms. Nobody died, but the child needed stitches. It had taken nearly ten thousand dollars to make the family go away. The first time I heard James share that story, the meeting chair had asked, “And how did that make you feel?”
“Terrible. It was a beautiful car, and it was just totaled. It broke my heart…”
“Why’d you share that story again?” I asked.
James looked at me as if I was retarded.
“Immortal, crazy, or whatever – every chick digs a guy who drives a Bentley!”
Another day passes like a dream.
*
That night, after I came, I had a dream that I was driving Jimmy’s van on a winding dirt trail that ran through a forest. In the passenger seat was Mercedes. She was giving me directions, “Straight on… right… straight… past this tree… now stop.” We got out of the van. Underneath a gnarled oak tree, lying amongst the twisted, mossy roots, was a clear plastic bag, about the size of a shopping bag, filled with something solid, and off-white. As I got closer I realized that it was full of grotesquely oversized rocks of crack. The air around the bag was infused with the chemical stench of cocaine. Mercedes was naked, her skin glowing in the same way that it had on the stairs that afternoon. She was handing me a glass pipe. I tore into the bag, and loaded it. I handed it to her, watching hungrily as she smoked it. She put her lips to mine, and exhaled the smoke into my mouth. I sucked it in.
I jerked awake, bathed in sweat, heart pounding, still holding my breath. When I realized where I was, I groaned in disappointment. I tried to sleep again, to recapture the forest, the crack, Mercedes, but it was useless. It was all gone.
*
At the breakfast table that morning, Billy tells me the news.
“James is gone. He split just before lights out. Said he was gonna get a motel room and get fucked up.”
I laughed. “He’ll be back.”
“I dunno. Mercedes left, too.”
“What? When?”
“Same time. Word is, they left together. Ran off.”
I let my head hang. I stared at my toast with butter, my weak coffee. Oblivious to me, Paddy sighed, “That lucky bastard is probably banging her right now. Shit.”
I said nothing. It was time for the morning meeting. We already had two new faces: Shawn and Marianne. The cycle continued.
Days crawled by. Paddy graduated, and I gave him my phone number and sister’s address. He gave me his mother’s address in Queens. We promised to keep in touch. I never saw nor heard from him again. My counselor told me that I wouldn’t be allowed to go through the graduation ceremony, citing my resistance to the program as the reason. This was fine by me. It was August, and mentally I was already in San Francisco. Susan was already planning her escape from the hospital. I wondered how long it would be before our habits necessitated our stealing from her sister, or some other betrayal of trust, and we would be put out of her house. No matter. For now, at least there was a bed. A chance.
*
“I wish we could have worked more towards your recovery,” he sighed. “I fear for you. I fear for your life if you leave this place without engaging with the program. You had a shot at sobriety, but you seem intent on blowing it.”
“I’m thirty days clean,” I told him.
He tapped his forehead: “Not up here. Up here you’re as sick as ever. Up here,” [tap,tap,tap] “you’re already high.”
The day before I left, James was back. He looked terrible. He’d lost weight. Some of the cockiness was gone from him. He’d stood up that afternoon and was introduced as a newcomer. The turnover is so fast in a place like this, that to most people here, he was a newcomer.
“My name is James,” he said, “and I’m still an addict.”
“Welcome James!” everybody chimed.
I didn’t get to speak to him until the next day, during the morning cigarette break.
“So, you graduate today, huh?” he said, sitting down. I shook my head.
“No graduation. My counselor says that I didn’t complete the program.”
“Yeah, well fuck that guy. What the fuck does he know?”
I shrugged. “So what happened to you?”
“Ah… Mercedes and me. We shacked up together for a while. A motel, like twenty minutes from here, called The Sea Breeze. A real shit hole. It was a mess. Oxy’s. Crack. Mercedes had all of these sketchy Mexican heroin dealers camped out there. God, man, she was so fucking hot, but she was fucking crazy. A nut job. She’d like cook the crack down in lemon juice and shoot it, you know? And then she’d have seizures. Sometimes she’d make me drive her over here, and she’d sit in the car, staring at the gates and just sobbing. I’d tell her, If you wanna go back, I can pay for you! But no, she’d wanna go back to the motel. She insisted on shooting me with that heroin shit once, and I went under. She had to like pump my chest, breathe into my mouth, the whole bit. I came around and she was all, Did you see him? Did you see God? Crazy fucking bitch. I told her she was gonna die if she didn’t slow down.”
James stubbed out his cigarette, and I noticed his hand was shaking.
“Anyway, two night ago we’re getting high and the greedy bitch takes too much dope, and hits the floor before she even gets the needle out of her arm. I tried to bring her out of it, but nothing doing. She’s turning blue and shit. So I grabbed my shit, got the fuck out of there, called an ambulance, called my pop… and here I am. They say if I don’t complete this time they can’t keep me outta jail. Can you believe that shit? God or jail! What kinda choice is that?”
The bell was ringing. It was time for my last counseling session. James went to stand, but I managed to croak, “What about Mercedes?”
James shrugged, “Her? What about her? The short version is, it turns out that the bitch wasn’t immortal. Surprise, surprise, right? She was very fucking mortal. And did I mention the bitch was crazy?” He leaned in an winked, “But I’m telling you man, what a piece of ass she was. Incredible.” He slapped me on the back, and laughed. “See you around, bro! Clean and serene, right?”
I remained seated. I wondered where James would be the next time I saw him. I had the terrible, sneaking suspicion that he might one day end up as President of the United States of America. He had the connections, and he certainly had the personality.
I looked around the yard as it emptied. I had blown my last chance to accept my powerlessness over heroin. Tonight the graduation ceremony would go on without me. I would be written out of this story, off to join Mercedes, and all of the other ghosts that this place had produced.
One of Tony’s favourite videos: JOHN LENNON - Cold Turkey
Stand-out lyric: “I wish I was a baby / I wish I was dead”
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damion's comments
Liked the story a lot. Very interesting slice of life. James was a cold bastard
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22 Jan 2010
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