Oblivion: Shooting Dope in Santa Cruz, age 22
Junk, Youth and Lostness
*This is a short scene from my autobiographical novel, “Running Solo.”
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Oblivion
The heroin.
I’d followed a friend up north to live in Santa Cruz. Just after turning twenty-two. I thought it would be my new start.
But when I moved up there, my busted-up white Saturn with a blown head-gasket, and my few petty possessions, sleeping on a filthy mattress with no sheets in a corner of a room across from my buddy, in a one-bedroom apartment on Kaye Street in the Latino gangbanger-infested Beach Flats, by the ferris-wheel and carnival rides, with seven other punk rockers, I had started drinking more than I’d ever drunk. It was bad. I wasn’t working. Rent was dirt cheap with so many of us in one tiny space. Rats scurried. We stole food from restaurant dumpsters. Bread, vegetables, cheese. We stole what we needed.
One morning I met these decrepit, smelly kids wearing plaid collared shirts, baseball hats, tight torn jeans, Converse. I was sitting on the badly painted green porch. It was late morning on a Wednesday. None of us worked but somehow everyone was gone. Except me. A group of these mystical kids tromped by, in the street, arms around each other, laughing, yellowed teeth, kicking cans and rocks along Kaye Street. It was cold and windy that day, late November. Around Thanksgiving.
I was wearing my leather jacket, zipped up, collar popped. I watched them, hung-over from the night before, eyes narrowed in partial interest. One of the guys, wearing a brown-and-green plaid shirt, pulling on a cigarette, laughing like some hyena, happened to look over at me. He smiled, and it was like everything moved to slow motion. He kept his eyes on me, glued, and then removed his arm from his buddy’s shoulder.
Just like that, no big deal, the guy walked over to me, away from his buddies. I kept my eyes on him but then glanced at his friends. They slowed and waited.
The guy got close but stayed on the sidewalk, not stepping up to the porch. That would have been too forward. He had dark hair, almost handsome, but the yellow teeth, trucker hat, and plaid shirt, a few buttons open from the top, gave him a white trash appearance.
“Hey,” he said. He lifted his cigarette, stuck it between his lips, and inhaled, blowing out his nostrils like a pro. I could hear the sizzle of the tobacco.
I nodded. Said nothing. Hoped he’d go away. And yet. And yet there was something rather intriguing about this guy. What was it?
“I’m Jimmy,” he said. He looked back at his pack of goons. Faced me again. Smiled, those hard, cracked yellow teeth. “Want to come hang out with us?”
“Got an extra smoke?”
He walked up the green steps and held out his pack of Winstons. I snatched one. He pulled a red bic lighter and flipped the metal roll. Flame spurted and I lit the end. Inhaled. I noticed his ragged arm, bursting from the plaid shirt sleeve. There were track marks up and down that arm. Shame and excitement slithered into my consciousness.
I inhaled the cheap tobacco, held it, plumed. “I’m James.”
“Nice to meet you, James,” he said. “Come with us.”
I smoked. “And what is it that you cats do, exactly?”
He smiled even bigger, like some fool. “Me and my buddies, we stay in this motel, Crystal Lodge, and we shoot up dope.”
He’d just said it, clear as day. He didn’t care who knew.
So I followed these kids that morning. I don’t know why. I was bored. Lonely. Depressed. Alcoholic.
We walked about a quarter mile, along the muddy river, and entered this crusty, nasty motel. The room was very small. It reeked of booze and cigarettes and latex condoms. There were probably seven or eight of them. I watched them snort coke and shoot dope and then speed-balls. Jimmy asked if I wanted to try it. I said sure. Truth is I was afraid. But I wanted to numb out.
I shuffled over to Jimmy on the edge of the queen-sized bed. Everyone sort of walked around, aimlessly, or else nodded out on the floor, against the cabinets or the mirror or the TV. CNN played on the screen on mute. No one spoke. Jimmy tied the beige thick rubber band around my right bicep. He flicked a vein out. He picked up the syringe and tapped it, a drip of liquid squirting from the tip of the needle. He looked at me, satisfied, and nodded. I nodded back. He got serious. He located the vein and plunged the needle in, all the way down.
I sat there for a minute and then leapt off the bed, ran to the bathroom, and vomited. I returned, sat on the filthy, rank rug, leaned against the bed, and nodded out. I only lasted six weeks in Santa Cruz, and it was the closest I’d ever been to becoming a full-fledged junkie. I always did that, standing as close to the edge as I could, without actually jumping off. I liked to stand there, in danger, looking out from above over the great valley below, seeing what lay down beneath me.
One day, I thought, I’m going to jump clean off of that cliff, into the massive abyss, into the black void, into oblivion.