On The Lips

[Lightning Rod]

(from Lrod's book--Inktricks)

-----

ON THE LIPS


I caught Dallas on a chill wind and a sour note. The sky of galvanized steel
sprayed a hollow mist of grey. Ft. Worth calls to me. It's the perfect night
for a shot.

Red's house is down by the projects off Jones Street. It's a dope house. Red'll say, "Twenty dollas fo' the boy and twenty dollas fo' the girl an' a nickel fo' the nigga." That means twenty-five dollars to Red and he scores you a pill of heroin or a pill of cocaine. Two boys and a girl make a pretty good shot. Three boys and two girls is, like they say in Ft. Worth, "Bobbin' for apples."

Red's house is thirty-seven minutes from downtown Dallas. Bet I've clocked it five hundred times. Tonight it takes forty-three because there is a radar trap on the turnpike in Arlington.

It's about one Saturday morning when I knock on the door at Red's house. A small, scratchy voice says, "Come in." It's Mom, Candy's mother. In fact this isn't Red's house at aIl, it's Candy's mother's house. Red and Candy live in the back room. The front room is Mom's living-room-bedroom. Although a twenty-four hour-a-day procession of junkies files through here, Mom supposedly doesn't know what is going on. This myth helps maintain the decorum.

Inside Candy's room everyone is quiet and polite as they would be in the dimly lit waiting room of a suburban psychiatrist. Candy greets you like one of the ladies at a Baptist Sunday-school luncheon.

"How long has Red been gone?" I ask one of the regulars sitting in the room.
"Bout ten minutes, he should be right back," she says rubbing her palms down her blue-jeaned thighs. She has white-blond hair and almost transparent skin. Only her eyes have on make-up. They look like two windows in a cloud. Blondy is only marginally spooky and about twenty. I see her here a couple of times a
week.

"I just missed him. I got here about five minutes ago. They say the dope's
pretty good tonight, it's that light brown," she says with a hungry grin.

At the sound of the front door opening there is a subtle stir among those
waiting. Syringes and bottle-cap cookers appear. The guy with the crewcut and cowboy boots begins cleaning his rig in the jar of water on the bedside table. I think I heard him say he was from Burleson. Red appears through the bedroom door with a palmful of damp geletin capsules and distributes them to the anxious waiters. As a silent, determined tension falls over the room fixers perform their rituals. Red gathers the bills from Blondey and me and says he'll be right back, the man is just down on the corner.

By the time he leaves Burleson is pumping a fist and searching for a vein in his wide wrist above the thumb. He is releasing his breath in short gasps of concentration. When he gets a register he raises his wrist up to face level and biting his tongue at the corner of his mouth he squeezes it off like a shot from a 30.06. Then with a deep sigh he eases back into the chair like an old West Texas farmer in his front porch rocker after a hard day behind the plow.

Within five minutes all the injections have been accomplished, all the rigs
have been rinsed and the water squirted on the carpet, and chatter breaks out among the shooters as they light cigarettes and savor those enveloping first few moments of a heroin high. To the novice a shot of junk will produce drowsiness, even stupor, but to an addict it's like a vitamin or a stimulant, like waking up to a world aglow.

Candy has gathered the cottons from all the cookers and is tamping them
methodically in her own. The wash from them will give her a little shot.
Blondey is fidgeting on her heart-shaped ass. Watching the others get off has sharpened her anticipation. "Come on, Red," she moans to the bedroom door.

Candy draws up about thirty units the color of root beer into her syringe.
Since she has exhausted the veins in her arms and wrists as evidenced by the dark network of tracks on her chocolate skin, she asks Burleson to hit her in her jugular. This picture is Draculaesque. Count Burleson leaves the mark of only one fang on the fair neck of our burghermeister's daughter.

I remember the first time I ever saw anybody shooting up. It was a bunch of speed-freak college students and they were shooting ice-water just for the ritual thrill. I got physically sick and had to leave. At the sight of the
syringes all my childhood fear of doctors and shots boiled up. I think this
fear is almost primal in my generation.

Some time later a good and respected friend said to me one day, "Ya gotta try this." He dropped a little white crystaline powder into a silver teaspoon and squirted ten units of water on it from a syringe. When the powder instantly dissolved he dropped a little ball of cotton in it and drew it back up into the syringe using the cotton as a filter. Then he instructed me to hold my arm off just like in the Jim Morrison photograph to raise a vein. I did so and then looked directly into the camera just like Morrison did so I
wouldn't have to watch the actual operation. It was over in ten seconds. By the time my friend folded my arm up at the elbow my heart gave a little flutter. Then my face got warm and a tingling went up the back of my neck through my scalp. My hair began to grow. Suddenly, I had never felt better in my life. I wanted to jump up and kiss everybody for being so beautiful. It was altogether the most pleasant physical sensation I had ever felt. The only thing that compares with a speed rush in terms of pure cellular pleasure is perhaps a mixture of heroin and cocaine which cancel one another's less pleasant side effects. And that's what we were waiting on--for Red to come back with the boy and the girl.

The others were leaving when Red returned. Producing a cellophane cigarette wrapper from his shirt pocket Red said, "The ones with the blue dots are the girls."

Blondy grabs the package and hands it to me. "Here, mix us up one
together--two boys and a girl apiece."

"But I only got a boy and a girl here."

"That's all right, I got some extra." She bounces in the chair and wiggles her ass some more.

I attacked the task with the zeal of a suburban chef makinq a Roquefort
dressing. Gone are my childhood qualms about hypodermic needles. Now they are an instrument of pleasure, not an instrument of pain.

The preparation of a shot, especially a shot for two, is a little like the Zen
tea service - very ritualistic. The meditation includes elements of grace and
care as well as hygiene. Some like to do it slowly and chat while they work.
Others are deft and frantic. I like to accomplish it with style and precision,
rather medical and religious. The smell of heroin cooking is a caramel spice.

Soon I have twin hypos twenty units each of a golden brown, clear solution. I hand Blondy one and holding the other one in my teeth, take off my belt. I loop it through its own buckle and put my upper arm through the noose, then I wind it around the outside of my elbow and down into the same hand. This way I can apply and release pressure on the tourniquet with one hand leaving the other free to operate the rig. It only takes me a few seconds to shoot-up.

Suddenly it's as though the sun has just shone through on a not otherwise
unpleasant but cloudy day. I feel warm and everything seems quite acceptable. The hospital taste of cocaine flashes in my throat and my eyelids begin to tingle. A surge of well-being enters under my rib cage and swells upward in my breast, erupting through my spine into my head in a fireworks fountain. I feel like I just had a good massage, a good fuck, a sauna and a needle shower. Like kissing God on the lips.

[preston]

That opening sentence ... "a chill wind and a sour note"
Yeah, Dallas can be like that.

An interesting look at a part of the Metroplex I've never seen.
Been here 20+ years and I couldn't even tell you where Jones Street is.

[Lightning Rod]

Jones St. is in Ft. Worth

I get nostalgic for Dallas once in a while. It's good to be talking to someone from there.

welcome aboard, preston

[preston]

One of my favorite Ft. Worth haunts closed down a few years ago.

The Caravan of Dreams.

One of the few places in DFW that you could go and hear some great jazz.

[WIREMAN]

it sure is a joy to read yer stories on a beautiful beatific sunday Lrod.....

[Lightning Rod]

mark--thanks, buddy. Guess I'll be seeing you next weekend. Looking forward to it. Be sure to bring your bag of tricks.

preston--yeah, I hated to see the Caravan of Dreams go too. I had some good friends that were hooked up with that cabal. Bass money behind it.

[dadio]

L.Rod gets it on the nail. V. good.

[Doreen Peri]

Whoops! Looks like I missed moving this one to the Stories & Essays forum when I separated the "Creative Writing" forum into 2 different forums (Poetry & Stories) over a year ago. I'm moving it now.

[creativesoul]

your writing is great- this sone is a bit touchy for me-my buddy of nine years died from this particular dance- well done