Personality
By Patrick Smith
How did I get started?
How does anyone get started?
I'd messed around before: pot, acid, even heroin once or twice, but nothing too heavy. I'd seen too many dead end losers for that, folk who could barely wipe themselves after a shit.
But it was Alice. It was always Alice.
She was skanky – she smoked too much, had bad teeth, didn't take care of herself and smelled a little funny, but God she was beautiful. Big blue eyes, pale white skin, hair black as darkness and she could fuck like a hurricane.
Maybe I should start at the beginning.
It was the fall of '98. I was an Art major in NYCU. The term project for Oils II was to do an impressionist piece, in the style of the masters, and it wasn't coming together. I just couldn't see the way they did.
I mentioned it to Alice one night at a party after she screwed some frat boy, long before we started sleeping together. She came out of the back room and said, “I can help you with that.”
Oh, brother, could she.
Three hours later I was in some guy's apartment in Soho, with my sleeve rolled up and a belt tying off my arm as he readied the needle. Alice held my hand and I could feel my heart pounding like a piston.
“Just relax and let it happen,” she said. I did.
The guy approached with a syringe filled with some green, pink and orange goo.
“What am I shooting?” I asked as he found a vein.
“Van Gogh,” she answered.
I felt like shit that night, like I was dead and my limbs were moved by wires. Still, I painted. I chewed on my brushes, and there was no joy, only color, but I painted. I finished two self portraits before finding a knife and scratching my head up badly. Then I passed out.
I spent the next two days in bed sweating and shaking. When I finally left my apartment, I went back to class and turned the paintings in.
I got an A for the term.
I was hooked.
I don't remember who I did next. I had to do a poly-sci paper, so Alice introduced me to John. John hooked me up with some Edward R Murrows. Or maybe it was a dose of Amy Tan for creative writing.
What I do know is it wasn't too long till I tried it for fun. Me and Alice scored some Moby before we went clubbing. I remember being all socially conscious but when the music started I didn't give a fuck.
The first time I dosed without her was when she was in Chicago and John called to say he was holding Jim Morrison, 25 bucks a hit. Man, I might have drunk myself to death that night if it wasn't for a pair of Swedish exchange students. The were just out of high school, and I managed to talk them into a threesome back at my apartment. Thank God I threw them out before I crashed. Hung over and strung out, the next day I couldn't even get out of bed to puke.
I functioned for a while. Coming down was always tough, but it got easier. I'd try to get high on Fridays, so I was usually okay for Monday class. I lost my job as a cook when I came into work buzzing on Dali and shit on a plate and sent it out.
Pretty soon I could barely handle my classes with out someone, and I kept pushing it further and further. Alice helped
The next semester I had to give a speech. I wanted some one like Martin Luther King or Reagan, but she said, “No, Hitler.”
“But my teacher's Jewish.”
“No problem, we'll chases it with a little Mother Teresa. It'll work.”
And it did, it did.
I actually got a standing ovation, and I basked in it like a little holy dictator, filled with shame.
Things weren't going good with Alice either. We couldn't stand each other. We'd get in these huge fights, throw shit, and she'd walk out.
Then two days later she'd show up on my door step with a needle and some vials. She'd shoot de Sade and I'd shoot Sacher-Masoch and she'd beat me senseless and then fuck me bloody.
I forgot the paperwork and lost my financial aid. I spent the last of money on Gandhi and fasted.
It gets to be a blur after that – I lost my apartment. I didn't have any friends let by that point, so I ended up on the streets. I lost touch with Alice – she jumped in the East River and froze, and I didn't hear about it for two weeks. When I did hear, my only thought was, “Where'd she score Houdini?”
I nearly died a couple of times. The worst was when I did Malcolm X and went walking in Harlem, a skinny little white boy. I spent two days in Emergency in NYU Downtown before I could slip out and get back on the streets.
The last one was completely different. I'd hustled together ten bucks and went to see John. He was getting $15 for shit like Carottop, but I begged and begged and finally he gave in.
“This is new,” he said, slapping my arm to bring out a vein. “You can be my guinea pig.”
I looked at the vial, pearl with with little drops of red.
“Who is it?” I asked, as he jabbed the needle into me.
“Messiah,” he answered. “You want to save the world?”
You want to know what Hell is? Worse than all the shit I'd been through up till that point, Hell is when you see God every where: in the shadows of your dealer's face, in the beer and vomit stains on the carpet. When you hear God's voice in the hum of traffic on the street outside.
Hell is when you feel God's eyes upon you.
And you know He doesn't much like you right now.
I got out on the street some how . . . I must have run three or four blocks, though I don't remember it. Finally I collapsed. Some one called an ambulance. I was in bad shape – they tell me was clinically dead for three minutes.
By the time I came down I was in a locked ward on 24 hour suicide watch.
It wasn't easy, but I made it. I spent two weeks in the hospital, then six months in a half-way house, sharing a room with a crazy guy who didn't believe in dinosaurs.
I kept taking it one day at a time. I'd discovered religion, and that helped. The day they let me out I got on a bus to Chicago to be closer to my parents. I've stayed clean for four years.
I still hold on to the memory of Alice. I know no one else remembers her like I do. I can save that memory. Sometimes, when I'm in a weird mood, I tell myself if I pray hard enough I can save her.
The rest of the world I'll leave to the real thing.
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