After the bust, Heather was forced to get a job as part of her parole. She opted for a community service gig, citing wealth of family as evidence that she didn't have to work. She ended up spending three days a week as a volunteer nurse's assistant at a hospice right outside of town. This satisfied the judge and her parole proceeded smoothly. She dealt to the inner circle only during this time. That consisted of me (stumbling back into heroin with love for the first time rather than out of self-disgust), Nick, Brian, Charlie, Tobey, Rebecca, Avis, and a guy that I rarely saw (due to his schedule) named Clay.

Tobey was older than us and had found Heather through friends of friends. It started off as a kick, something fun to do with the friends on weekends. It evolved into habit when he was doing it Tuesday and Thursday nights to kill the boredom. It didn't take long for it to become a daily practice. As one of Heather's best customers (he had a job as an electrical apprentice and lived with his parents, thus had extra money), he was welcomed warmly. He was known to be a stand up guy and had the cash to buy freely. He was a perfect customer.

How did we know if someone was right? With no real reputation in drugs to speak of (because only so many suburban kids get caught with drugs), we had to rely on outside integrity issues. Did the customer speak ill of their ex disproportionately? Did the customer tell lies? Did the customer ever fold under pressure at school? These were the kinds of things Heather would find out.

Clay, who I only met two or three times, was simply ousted one day when Heather told me, "That guy's told lies about his age to have sex with younger girls. He's gone." And that was it. One simple instance like that and the guy was cut off.

The problem with dealing, as Heather was prone to go on in stuttered speech while on the nod, is that you end up hated and in jail no matter what happens. Your customers will fold under police questioning (and wouldn't you if you were 16 and looking at months in juvie?) or you would otherwise get busted. It was a matter of time. With Heather's legal fees and her own use, she was barely breaking even for the first year. Then she always had the customers pressuring her for credit. They figure if they pay for a $20 shot one day, they should be able to get the same for the next day when they don't have money. That first year, Heather never turned away a sick customer. She would even cut into her personal stock to make someone right. In a year, she no longer gave credit (which shut out a lot of her clients) and wouldn't budge on that. She decided it was too risky to peddle the dope from her home now that the police were wise. She said police cars would park in her neighborhood with a line of sight to her back door (she had a basement room with a door that led to the backyard). She said they would take shifts, noting all the people that entered and exited, and then honk their horns at each other as the new shift drove up.

She settled on a diner off 135th Street and began dealing from there. I often met her there around noon and became part of her coterie for a couple hours each day. She would have the H in foil, divided up by 1/8 and 1/4 and 1/2 grams, a different pocket for each. She would take out the foil with a deft slip of the hand as she pulled out a pack of cigarettes. The foil would be on the bottom of the cigarette pack and she'd lay this on the table. The customer would slide it across the table to take a cigarette for themselves and just palmed the foil as they did so. It was a good system but the restaurant was wise to what was going on. The fact that Heather would spend five or six hours a day there, over coffee and danishes, and a long line of runny-nosed, stringy-haired waifs would wander in with a hunted look about them, that was a pretty big tip off. The conversation in the diner was disjointed and changed little.

"Maurice said weight can't move in the suburbs."
"So tell him. Let him come and see. No, actually don't."
"Yeah, a piece of the pie."
"But you gotta tell Eddie to stay off. He's got too much heat."
"Too much heat is what he's all about. Guy like that, can't even tell. Been living like that so long he's forgotten that there's another way."
"I just don't wanna again. You know? Because it was bad."
"But you're back. You're earning."
"Just tell Eddie to stay off. To stay away. He'll get us all taken in."
And it would continue in this manner, all some sort of almost code where the important words were left out. It was like Mafia talk, where you wouldn't say "You know Eddie?" You would say "You know that guy from the place down the road, runs out of the back of his car?" I spent half my time trying to break the code because I had a life separate from junk.

I was employed at a movie theater at the time, my first but really just the stepping stone on a path paved with movie theaters, and had a band. I had two other groups of friends that I spent time with besides Heather and her crew. So I would stumble in every day to buy my quarter-gram of H, that would make about three lines and that could get me through the day until I was off work. Then it was back to Heather's after work to shoot up with her. We would lay in bed watching the Basketball Diaries or True Romance or Taxi Driver or a bootleg Marilyn Manson concert that she had. We were on the nod most of the day, my experience was just intensified at night because that's when I shot it. I usually would hang out with my other friends after work (after midnight) and drive into Heather's at 2 or 3 in the morning and stay until 5. Because I had dropped out of school and was almost an adult and had a job, my parents were content to not give me a curfew but insisted I call if I was going to stay out all night. I managed to skulk home just around dawn every day.

But in a couple months I wasn't getting by on just half a gram a day and needed to up my dosage. This was running me over $60 a day and I was only making $30 at the theater. I had vague ideas about giving it up, as all junkies do throughout their addiction, but knew in my heart I was running full speed until it was not available to me anymore. I had to start getting more money.

I had read a biography of William S. Burroughs and it actually had his address at the end of the book, his house in Lawrence, Ks, just 30 minutes away from my suburb. I drove over one day to meet the man that had done more to inspire the outlaw cool of drug use than anyone since Aleister Crowley. I found him sitting in a lawnchair in front of the brick house with a .357 Magnum and a bottle of Jack Daniels. Reticent about approaching the man who shot his own common law wife, I hesitated by my car. He finally called to me and asked if I was coming up. I grabbed my books from the car and approached him cautiously. We sat and talked for maybe half an hour, I told him that I was a heroin addict and an artist. I probed him for information about Kurt Cobain, my idol who he had met and collaborated with. He was kind, though initially cautious, and spoke in an epic manner. He would relate things through terms of good and bad, explaining there are demons inside us that try to turn us to evil all the time. He discounted drug use, much to my surprise, saying that once you've crossed the threshold all is different and that's enough. He said there was no reason to go on using drugs for long because you could only go so far without destroying yourself. He also later contradicted himself by suggesting that proper use of heroin would make you live a long life. I can't remember all of it clearly but those statements stand out to me. And when I needed money for drugs, I sold all of my autographed Burroughs books except for Queer (and that one only because the bookshops wouldn't buy it, saying it wouldn't sell). There is a perverse humor in selling autographed copies of Junky and Naked Lunch for money to buy heroin.

The run at the diner hit some major skids when the manager called the police and said he believed drug deals were being conducted in his establishment and police officers started showing up regularly and watching the table closely. Heather got so she was afraid to carry at all. She already had someone else pissing for her drug tests (how she kept it warm and concealed so she could pee in the cup every other week or so is a story that's a bit beyond my telling as I have only the faintest idea about the intricacies of the plot), but this was a more serious risk. If she made a single mistake, crossing against a light or some other innocuous crime, they'd catch her. She moved the business back to her house out of necessity.

But there were more serious threats. Nick was getting worse. His addiction had burned out everything else around him and, barring the two days Heather was in jail, he had not been clean at all for almost a year. His habit was getting excessive and Heather was running out of credit to give him. He showed up one day and stuck a gun in her face. "Take this," he said. "It's hot but never been fired at anyone, only at a cop."

Heather told me she knew that Nick was her biggest risk. He was sick and broke all the time and was forced to score for other people. That meant he'd be picking up anyone's money. It could just be someone that didn't know anyone that could sell them H, but that was usually a pipe dream. Heather had a large network, all whispers on the wind as people said, "I know a girl. I can get it." The people that had to score through Nick probably had a bad reputation, were known as pigeons and couldn't get drugs legit. You were not supposed to score for a pigeon; ethically because they should be cut off for ratting, for your own safety because they've ratted before and will probably give you up if caught again. But Nick was too deep to care who's money he picked up. A person that sick is as likely to turn into a pigeon themself as to buy for rats. But with her own addiction and the cutting back, Heather was making just enough to stay ahead. Barely. She couldn't be choosy about where her money came from. She had to get back to selling to a wider pool.

In addition to all the pressure and stress of dealing to people like Nick, there were customers like Tobey. He usually had money to pay and when he didn't, he would strong arm you. He would say, "Just front me one, right? I'm good for it." He always had a paycheck coming and if he couldn't get it that day, he'd turn against you. He once held up a quarter when Heather tried to turn him away kindly and said, "One call. You understand?" Heather gave him a shot on credit that day and he returned the next day saying, "I saw Nick down at the police station. He's crying and sweating down there, was raving. You really oughta cut him off." And when asked what he was doing down there, he'd say, "I had to drive my brother there for an application. He wants to be a cop, can you believe that? I'll keep quiet, of course." The implied threat was that he could turn to his brother, the police cadet, and say, "I've gotten in trouble. I need help. If you help me out, I'll tell you my supplier so that you can cut it off for me." It also was a shitty situation because the other part was that he could rat on Heather like that and then blame it all on Nick, who's supposedly been seen sick down at the police station.

The people Nick had been scoring for began getting in touch with Heather. I doubt he ever told them how to find her because that would have killed his gig. He was getting it from her, taking a healthy bit for himself, and then moving it on to his buyers. That was how Nick survived. But he was living on credit and Heather was getting ready to cut him off. His customers probably followed him, no small feat when you consider how paranoid he was. The first to show up was also named Nick and he lived in Leawood. Yes, Heather had finally branched out of Olathe and was serving the customers of Overland Park, Prairie Village, Leawood, Lenexa, and Roeland Park. Nick had a large network of people through his constant couch hopping. Heather may have been the supplier, but Nick was the one that got all the kids hooked. I can just imagine Nick, his nose running and his eyes watering as he jumps up and says, out of the blue, "Hey! I know what we could do! You guys ever done heroin? See, I know this guy..."

And the first of the hooked to show up was Nick2. Nick2 was anxious about everything and his nose was running. "I only come here because I think Nick's ripping me off," he tells Heather. "I heard they have his prints on file from some robbery he did a long time ago. The guy stole from his own grandmother, that's the kind of guy you're hooked up with. He's been around to a lot of people talking about scoring for them. He says it right out in the open, you see. At AEP (Alternative Education Program, where the reject kids go to school) he's going down the line telling people he can score for them. Just a matter of time, you see..." And once again that implied threat that Nick is going to get caught and crack. Everyone's making Nick out to be a pigeon so obviously that they could all be covering their own tracks. Of course Nick2 had to end his warning with, "Can I have an extra shot? What I've told you must be worth that, at least."

On my 17th birthday I got higher than I've ever been before. I was literally fucked as hell with how much I did. I've described elsewhere the events of that day so I won't retell the story but it was a fucked up day in so many ways. It was around this point that I began missing band practices and showing up to play stoned. There were angry looks and a lot of warnings about how Sid Vicious was only cool until he did heroin. That reasoning really intrigued me as I saw my friends reverting to stereotypes. I believe they were so commited to being punk rock that they refused to see the world from outside of a punk rock worldview, or in other words, all things in the world related to punk rock. Their only experience was Sid Vicious and Darby Crash and GG Allin. They knew little, and cared to know little, about Kurt Cobain and William S. Burroughs and Jim Carroll because they were not in the punk rock pantheon. I shrugged off their warnings as the naysaying of people not in the know. They had never done heroin so they didn't understand it. It was tenuous reasoning but I convinced myself I was right, as only an addict can. That's the paramount feature of addiction: A belief that you know better than everyone else. You will not get hooked because you KNOW your limits. People that warn you that you will get hooked have never done it or, alternately, have less willpower than you do. You are not an addict because addicts die or go to jail or ruin their life. This has not happened to you so you are not an addict.

With the introduction of Nick2 and the others that Nick had been scoring for, Heather made the defeatist decision of selling to new customers. No more intermediaries and more merchandise moved, more profit for Heather, and more risk. I urged her to quit with me. I had an epiphany during an acid trip and decided I didn't need drugs anymore. I thought I had found something out, though I can't for the life of me even begin to articulate what I think I realized because it is so visceral and abstract. I went off drugs that day and faced withdrawal with a supply of acid, a daunting prospect that I somehow survived. When I vomited, it felt like some kind of machine pumping oil out at a high flow rate. There's no other way to describe it. I also had a stash of sleeping pills and was taking eight at a time to put myself into temporary comas between the acid sessions. My parents had left my brother and I home alone for a week while they went somewhere on vacation. I was completely clean by the time they got back.

I suggested to Heather that she stop using. I insisted. I made threats of leaving her forever. She had told me too much of what was going on and now I, clear-headed finally, realized that I could lose her for good if she didn't get out now. Aside from everyone whispering in her ear, Heather was still an addict. She may have been a dealer, a damn fine one in my opinion due to the fact that she was shooting a gram per day and dealing with twenty to thirty sales every day, but she was still an addict. The H owned her. Entwined with this was Heather's sexual attraction to me. Like I said, she had taken my virginity but I was not awake for the event. She loved me deeply, seeing something in me that I do not understand. Looking back, I consider myself then to be a watered down version of my idols, offering little of the talent that made them my idols. Oddly, I was as attracted to their lifestyles as I was to their art. But their lifestyle was often the death of their art, not the birth of it. It was when they lost control of their private life that their art died. I wonder sometimes what caliber artist I could have been if at that age I had been as driven and focused on my craft as I am now. There's no telling how much value I lost to my drug addiction, if only in bartered time where I was firing on one cylinder because of my addiction.

I couldn't reach Heather. I came close to being myself, being assertive and commanding and clear-headed and logical and persuasive. But in the end I lost us both. Heather got arrested in a sting operation after someone gave her up under questioning. One of these new customers, probably one she'd never met before, turned out to be a narcotics agent. In many ways, we were outgrowing our safety net. Heather had been dealing only to high school kids, very young adults, college students that had relations with her brother. But now she was dealing to ex-cons pushing 50. She was dealing to biker gangs that rolled through, meeting them at a gas station off the freeway. She had lost the safety net of youth. She could no longer differentiate the potential stings from the normal sales because her customers were no longer kids like us and there's no such thing as the Mod Squad, only rats. On top of her first conviction, she got a distributing and possession charge that put her away. She got 18 months. The judge gave it out like he was giving out candy. My heart froze in the back of the court room.

I was stranded from the refuge of my life. Even when not using, I turned up at Heather's for love. For affection. She would hold me and feel so proud to have me near. I thought she was amazing. I wanted to write an epic album and dedicate it to her. I tried writing her a song but it was no good. I couldn't put how I felt for her into words. She was going away for a long time. She might even be transfered over to gen pop at a federal prison when she hit 18. Her life was over and I couldn't save her in time.

In between my journeys to Heather's to shoot up on a nightly basis, I would stop at Hari's house. Hari had been my best friend since 5th grade and after his dad passed away he became a major drug fiend. He didn't use hard drugs much, mostly because he couldn't get any. I never introduced him to Heather because...well, I never introduced any of my friends to Heather. I liked having that secret life outside of everyone's knowledge. Hari was my main source for acid and we often smoked pot together. Hari's mom was very cool with the drug use so we did it in his room with no fear of her. I was also smoking pot with Nick G. and Mike T. But then I had my Xmas-week epiphany, the unexplainable instance I mentioned earlier. Hari had been there with me at the time, along with one of my other friend group members, Nick G. Nick G. stayed downstairs watching the Return of the Jedi while on acid and Hari and I were upstairs watching Stephen King's It on acid. Then the epiphany and no more drugs for me.

I drifted from Hari a bit because I didn't want to do drugs with him anymore and drugs were all he was interested in anymore. I had picked him up from rehab and helped him get fucked up again as soon as possible. He ended up with a bad acid trip and alcohol poisoning, restrained in the hospital where I had to face his crying mother and talk to the police. I stayed off drugs until the Friday before Easter. On that day, Hari ripped me off for $110. Nick G. and Mike T. helped me find some pot and I just went home and got wasted. It was just what I needed. Once again, I was back in the embrace of drugs.

Next.