"All writers of confession, from Augustine on down, have always remained a little in love with their sins."--Anatole France.

The particulars of the mechanations of my years on heroin and how I survived, I neither know, nor seek to know. But it all started with Heather, who is long gone now. The following is my story with Heather.

Heather and I exchanged numbers, each hoping that someday the other would find drugs for us to partake in together. I was never expecting much, not even a phone call, until one day it happened. Heather said breathlessly, "I've got some stuff. Can you find the house?" I found it. I was expecting some pot. I was expecting a gateway drug to ease me into the harder stuff. But I arrived to find heroin, white powder set in a tiny bottle. I suggested snorting it but Heather said this was too dangerous. That you can't tell how much you've ingested because you don't feel it right away. Somehow, using a needle was supposed to be safer. The theory of this logic is ridiculous, but as a newbie I trusted her, my more learned peer. That first shot sent me running to the bathroom to vomit, something I continued doing for a couple of hours. I did not enjoy the high and it is beyond me why I even continued with it. It was dangerously selfish, amazingly obtuse. I was participating in that great ritual of outlaw cool, doing heroin just like a rock star. I was looking to Kurt Cobain and William S. Burroughs and Jim Carroll. I was ignoring Sid Vicious and Darby Crash and all the other casualties. You can convince yourself that it's all just a good time. Everything is under control. Always under control. It has to be for you to keep operating.

I lost my virginity to Heather just a few weeks later. I had started to build a habit, a measly little chippie that left me with a day and a half of minor withdrawal. Liquid bowels and feverish chills. It was not unbearable and I didn't learn anything from it. If anything, it fostered in me the belief that withdrawal was manageable. I lost my virginity in a horrible charade of being taken advantage of. I was literally unconscious when I lost it. I was more scared by that, the loss of control over the situation, than I was with what it represented in my life. I had engaged in intercourse, with a girl I found attractive, and become a man. Which comes first in this new age? What makes you a man? The first time you have sex, as the age of old, or the first time you do drugs? My experiences almost co-existed, the time frame was small in the grand scheme of thing. A matter of weeks before I passed through both hurdles of manhood. But after that shock, the being taken advantage of part, I decided it was time to pack it in and I stopped going to see Heather. I dropped out of the high school I'd transfered to and began working full time as a cook at a fast food restaurant. I still maintain this is one of the most humiliating jobs you can ever have. When things were slow, in the late afternoon for instance, they would find pointless busy work for me to do. I remember distinctly having to scrub the walls with a sponge on a few occasions. The humiliation of my job, coupled with the low pay and stress of fast food, I set out in earnest to reconnect with whatever it was that made me feel excited about my life. I turned to music, particularly Nirvana, who were in that time the guiding influence in my life.

I had taught myself to play guitar and was intent on buying a bass and getting into a band. My brother, who was a non-combatant in the drug war, would accompany me every weekend to an all ages club called Gee Coffee. I exagerrated everything to everyone. I made out that I was this big time junkie who had gotten off the hard stuff. I said I'd had sex with many people that I hadn't. In fact, I'd never had sex sober and wouldn't for many years to come. I was also constantly talking about my band and the great music to come, all of it quite hypothetical but only if you asked. In keeping with the attitude of what I was getting into musically, I began searching hard for drugs. I was avoiding the thought of returning to Heather, knowing that doing so would be an admission of my own defeat. That she had used me for her own purposes and I would be acknowledging that it was not a problem if I were to return. But I had to go back. The other drugs available to me were soft. I wanted the hard stuff. I've never developed an affection for alcohol, thankfully so since my liver is damaged from the heroin, and pot can only take you so far. At some point you have to face life again. My life was so depressing that I didn't want to face it.

It was all a part of who I was, as much as my circumstances. I can't explain it any better than to say that from a young age I was bred to believe, and had convinced myself, that I was meant for great things. That I would be famous and rich and respected and loved. But I had turned against the positive ways of achieving these goals, the polite way. I was not interested in inventing or developing radical number theory or owning a business. I wanted to fight the government and get retaliation on the preppie jock assholes that made up the masses, the me against them mentality, I wanted to breakthrough as my heroes had. I wanted to become that cult figure that somehow broke through the impossible odds to become a hero to others like me, as yet unborn.

Within this precarious ego trip, there was also a strong undercurrent of dissatisfaction. I was, conversely to my beliefs, struck down with my own hypocrisy and sense of self worth. I realized at the time that I was not a great person, that I was shitty in many many aspects. And that at the time I did not deserve a shot at greatness because I had done nothing to earn it. For so many reasons, I hated myself. I thought myself weak and weird. I thought my true self, the person that was not a stereotype that I fantasized to be, was wrong and improper. I resented myself for being different, not for the differences that separated me from the average person my age, but by the differences from a preconceived notion that existed in my head. If I was meant for great things, then surely I would be following in the path of the luminaries that filled my heart with hope. Every discrepency between myself and my idols marked a serious debit in my heart. I was blaming myself for not being a uniquely conformist person. It was in this way that I spent much of my teenage life trying to be something I was not, all while believing myself to be the only person around that was true to who they are. It was a strange dichotomy, one that only a teenager could fall into.

So given this moral minefield, coupled with the unfulfilling (even soul crushing) job and social life, it was a matter of time before I was drawn back to hard drugs to obliterate the reality of my existence. It all hinged on Heather having a steady supply of the H. And wouldn't you know it, her brother was now dealing full time after dropping out of college. Thus Heather was forced into this strange world of suburban heroin addiction. There was no blueprint for us to follow. All references to heroin use in art up to that point dealt with urban environments. There was no guide, we made up the rules as we went along. And so I learned of needle marks in the crook of your elbow. I learned of overdoses and roaches crawling on you while unconscious. Heather had her own steady supply of customers.

There was Nick, who was only 14 at the time but bigger than me. He had a habit of disappearing, that old junkie trick of fading from existence until the time was opportune. He would rematerialize at the moment of cooking up, the only time he was ever really present. The rest of the time he was a ghostly afterimage of a person. Nick was constantly half-sick from the time I met him. He had lost his parents in a car crash, though his mother was still alive and merely in a vegetative state, and he'd run from Florida to end up in Kansas City, where he lived with an uncle for some time until he was caught using and kicked out. He took refuge with the friends he'd made in KC, a loose-knit group of skateboarders, punk rockers, hippie girls, and strange gothlike artists that produced performance art pieces that were constantly being banned at schools. After one such performance, a teacher remarked to Nick that it was obviously "a deprived mind at work", the meatgrinder incident suggesting some kind of gross impropriety to the school administration.

Nick was always around but, as I said, seemed to never be there. He was the most confusing piece in the puzzle, a strange misfit that seemed to neither belong or be disavowed. He was a little bit of everything to everyone, but not a piece in there to explain his true self. All these years later, I realize that I never knew Nick, not in the way that you can think of a situation or a joke and say "Nick would have loved this!". I didn't know what he would have loved or what he would have hated. The only true desire he ever showed was a penchant for mind-blowing drug intake. Because Nick was never a present person, only a shimmering second shape, Heather never had sex with him and trusted him as completely as a dope dealer can, which is to say not a bit. She always refused him credit and he would always scrounge up a few dollars to get him through each day. His habit was longer than mine. He would talk of heading to Chicago where there was supposed to be some kind of cure arranged by an exasperated grandmother. But he never left.

Brian was another sort of customer, a supposed rat that there was only circumstantial evidence against. In the normal run of things, a dealer immediately cuts a rat off, the mere suggestion being enough to ruin your name for good. But Brian was a solid customer, always paying in cash beforehand and shooting up in the room, possibly as proof that he wasn't taking part in a sting. Heather was averse to putting up the whole "Shoot it now or you're a cop" routine because she felt it degraded everyone. It was bad for business to press others on how to use their drugs. The story behind Brian was that his brother was brought in on acid and they netted Brian also but he was not under the influence at the time. Where it gets murky is that the police arrested the seller that same night, supposedly on a tip. But the tip could have come just as easily from Brian's brother, who was out of his mind on LSD at the time and liable to say anything to relieve the tension. LSD is a whole other type of drug, unlike any other within the realm of availability. You actually feel every emotion that's in the air and if you were, say, under intense police pressure and forcefulness, you might just rat to get yourself off the hook, just to ease the tension on yourself. Brian swore up and down that he wasn't the rat but he escaped punishment somehow. He claims that he got Diversion, a special kind of probation that includes community service and/or rehabilitation courses, because he was a minor and it was his first offense. But sources close to Brian claimed that he actually got Diversion because he ratted to save himself. His brother was 21 and did three months.

Nick and Brian were the first steady customers that Heather had when I came back to her and were the first I met. Nick brought in a friend, Rachel, that was a good customer, or so it seemed on the surface. But Heather was naive about a lot of the drug business because she hadn't been hardened by years of steady dealing. In fact, Heather only started dealing to support her own habit. Heather was the inverse of me, proclaiming that drug use was good and dealing was the best alternative to having a real job. I was spouting the drugs are dangerous philosophy (unless you know how to use them, as I do, yup yup, and so forth) and holding onto a job because I was afraid of jail time. I didn't know it at the time, but I would have easily rolled over on Heather had I been cornered. In some sick way, it would have been exactly what I needed. Burn the bridge so I can't go on killing myself and making bad choices. But as it turned out, I was never forced to give Heather up.

The problem with Rachel, who seemed too pure to be suspected by the cops and always had money, was that she was a go between for several other people of questionable integrity. Nick had hooked up with some pretty horrible people and he didn't want to get burned if something went down. He brought in Rachel, who's boyfriend was one of the Westport Crusties, a group of users that were constantly on the streets panhandling for change to buy H with, a group of dubious means that lived on a subsistence level. They were mostly homeless, living in flophouses around the notorious 38th Street in Westport. This was the future home of the Daily Grind, an all ages punk club that would form a bit of a center to me later in life. Most of the Crusties had been busted and either kept their mouths shut and done time or rolled over on someone else. Rachel's boyfriend was one of the roll overs and he was buying through her because the other Crusties wouldn't serve him. She was buying from Heather through Nick's introduction.

Heather's first arrest was a result of Rachel's boyfriend being caught for possesion, turning in Heather through Rachel. Rachel was left out of the confession. Wary of dealing to people at the time, told to take it easy by her brother and flush with money after solid months of dealing, Heather's house was served with a search warrant. Normally they make a buy off you and then take you in right then. But Rachel was out of the loop so her boyfriend had no connection to go through. He claimed to the police he bought straight from Heather and testified against her in the trial. The lawyer worked over his confession tirelessly, insinuating all kinds of bad negotiation techniques. For instance, he made much of the fact that the cops presented the guy with the foil he'd been caught with some six hours into his junk sickness. They put it on the table and said, "And where did you get this? How about we leave the room for five minutes and let you think it all over. Young guy like you, couple of convictions already, we've got you for three to five easy. Or you can talk, like you did before, and it will all go away. Here, pick up the foil. Take a look at it. Feel it in your hands. You can smell it from there, can't you?" In the midst of junk sickness, this is about the same as holding up a huge sandwich in front of a guy dying of hunger.

Heather copped a plea, accepted the major charge of drug possesion and paraphanelia, and they dropped the charge of intent to sale because she was right on the cusp of intent to sale and the DA was worried the jury might be swayed by the lawyer's shifty interrogation of her accuser. It was also believed that Heather made a perfect victim, poor suburban girl led astray and all, and the jury might be reticent about sending her up for hard time. Her sentence was commuted on condition that she enter rehab. By this point I had gotten addicted again, much worse this time, and had to go through a harrowing withdrawal. It was a devestating sickness and no advance warning could have prepared me for it. I happened to be walking over to Heather's to shoot up the day she got arrested, arrived to find the cops there already, and just kept walking. I knew the gig was up and turned towards the withdrawal, taking all of the advice I'd heard on it to heart half-way. Only half-way because I had been through withdrawal before and was convinced it would be a repeat of that much more pleasant experience. I expected a heavy flu for a few days, not what I got. I ended up vomiting and shitting constantly, spending up to four hours at a time in the bathroom. I also had the shakes and sweat and shivering. I felt feverish and it was painful to move because it felt like there was crushed glass in my joints. I once talked to an addict from the 40s who claimed that arthritis is just like that aspect of junk sickness. I had scored some morphine pills and pot to ease myself off the H but it was all pretty much a waste. The drugs could do little, as far as I saw, to ease the misery.

In the midst of that withdrawal, I must have written my first fiction piece ever. I just know I awoke on my third day, after a couple hours of sleep, to find a little story in my handwriting in one of my poetry notebooks. Here is that story:

Once there was a boy with a hole for a heart. People could see into him because of the hole. He lived in a glass house with glass people and they told him to leave. He wandered into the woods. People sat him on a tree stump and called him king. He told them the forest was dying and they saw it for the first time. They left him there, no pleasure in the dying forest. He walked until he came to a lake. He looked in the lake and saw he was now an old man. He cried because he knew it was too late. He saw his family and called to them but they kept walking because they didn't recognize the old man. He tried to ride the wind but the ground hurt his feet. People he didn't know buried him upside down because they could see he was different. And everyone he met had a hole for a heart. And he didn't. People just saw it different.

By the fifth day, I could eat again without vomiting it back up. I had sweated off about ten pounds. My body still felt shattered, beaten up, crushed down, burned. But I knew I was on the upswing because I could eat again and I wasn't shitting out my intestines. In a couple of days, I felt like a whole new person and resolved to get my life fixed up to a point I could live with. And it happened quite by chance, as most things in my life have happened. A friend of a friend asked me to play bass in his band and I plunged headlong into the punk rock lifestyle. This just fueled my excesses and my anti-authoritarian stance. An escalation of the heroin ingestion was an inevitability. But this time it wasn't an escape, not in the sense that I hated my life anymore. I had friends again, friends beside my dealer and her cohorts, and I was in a band. I was on better terms with my parents (my mother wasn't kicking me out once a month), and I was happier with things. I felt freedom, had a better job, more money, it all was leading somewhere. Right back into the arms of junk.

Next.