The Dream (A Junk Story)
When all is lost, he finds there is more to loose, life is only what
you want it to be, none the less the motives can complicate the rest of
society.
About the
author: Jeff Birdwell is an
undergraduate at
By Jeff Birdwell,
For Literary Nonfiction, ETSU, Fall 2004
* * *
The Basic Con, By. Lew Welch
“Those who can’t find anything to live for,
always invent something to die for,
Then they want the rest of us to
die for it, too.”
From “Ring of Bone: Collected Poems 1950-1971”
* * *
It was a dark summer night; the wind was howling through the trees as we left the bar, we were supposed to go to Deans’ to smoke. From the beginning of the night, Jack and I had noticed the weariness and shadiness of Dean. He once had been a great friend, but years of school and his car wreck had kept almost all of us apart. Jack had been working on an organic farm and becoming even more of a damn hippie than he already was. I had just been recovering from an alcoholic stage in my life and that evening was the first drink I had had in over two months. What happened later will be inside my mind for years to come.
Once we arrived at Deans’ we smoked a cigarette and talked a bit looking at a moon, which had almost disappeared. We were catching up on what we had missed out of each others lives in the past year. To get things strait Dean had been hit head on by a drunk driver seven months prior and been recuperating. The man who had hit him came onto the off ramp of the interstate without having his headlights on. The wreck shattered Dean’s foot and broke his hip. Leaving Dean in extreme pain and suffering. This apparently is what put him over the edge.
Dean opens his door and lets Jack and
me in. We proceeded to go upstairs, pack a bowl and began smoking. The room is
one of those rooms you imagine a tenement in
That is when I first saw the junk train. When I talk about Junk, I am talking about Heroin, barbiturates and the many forms of needle dope, which all relate back to opiates. If you have never been around a junky, it is not a pleasant sight. Junk is implicit, even through its name. Just like the many days, I was drinking just to fall asleep so I could wake up in the morning and face another day. He was shooting, things that could put him away forever. I saw Dean, he took an oxycontin pill, washed the coating off, he began crushing the pill up into this powder. Which he then putt into a spoon, with a lighter began cooking it until it was a liquid, which is one of the dirtiest liquids I have ever seen and then he gets the syringe, which he fills with this junk. He took his belt and tightened up his arm, to bring out the veins. There is nothing like the pain you feel when you see the needle in the vain. Jack and I looked at each other in disgust; a man invites you into his house, gets fucked up in front of you. Especially when he knows that, you do not agree with what he is doing and he knows that it is his death but he has bigger issues, issues that he believes are bigger.
What is bigger than getting to the streets the next morning to get more junk? I believe William Burroughs describes it best in his essay – “Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness” which was in the Evergreen Review in 1960. He says, “I have seen the exact manner in which the junk virus operates through fifteen years of addiction. The pyramid of junk, one level eating the level below (it is no accident that junk higher-ups are always fat and the addict in the streets is always thin) right up to the top or tops since there are many junk pyramids feeding on peoples of the world built on basic principles of monopoly:
1. Never give anything away for nothing.
2. Never give more than you have to give (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait).
3. Always take everything back if you possibly can
The pusher always gets it all back. The addict needs more and more junk to maintain a human form … buy off the Monkey.”
Jack and I had heard the rumors for a few months, but no one believes it until they see it. I couldn’t it is almost like being disillusioned. Jack and I decided to leave, for if he had died, or the cops had shown up. There was more than a misdemeanor weed fine, and probation for us, “this is serious shit” Jack exclaimed. We had tried to talk to him but it never worked. Dean later stole money and other various items from some of us, to pay for his drugs. He even stole something off his neighbor and later tried selling it to the man whom he stole it from.
A year later, and is anything better, well, Dean is doing six months in jail; Jack is a clean Christian hippie, helping old people with gardens and flowers. I am one of those whom decided to finish what I came for. Did Dean ever learn his lesson? This is debatable. I hear that he has quit Heroin but then again I will believe it when I see it. He apparently has lost his mind in all of this because his stupidity keeps landing himself in jail. Being on probation for possession, he gets random drug test. First time he failed a drug test, one month in the “Washington County Adult Day Care” as he likes to call it. The second time his little but was busted; he landed himself three months in jail. This last time he was busted, they gave him six months. Overall, I would say that even though he cannot use it in jail. I am almost positive he will when he gets out. And the only thing I can do is stay a friend and pray he gets better.