Read Online The Story of Junk by Linda Yablonsky - Free Book Online

prop me on a wall? I was down with it. Squat with my hands in restraints? I’d play.
    It was the physical thing that hooked me. I wasn’t looking for God. I thought I’d seen enough. But the prospect of a life of pure sensation—that, I liked. Heroin was another way to see the world, from the other side of the glass, another way to free it. It’s a world you don’t have to enter; it enters you. It makes you feel sexy—good for something. But this life isn’t about feeling good; it’s about feeling better. However good or bad you feel, heroin makes you feel better. It’s a short leap from there to feeling nothing at all. For that you pay a price. Not five hundred dollars a gram—that’s just money. For heroin, you pay with your life.
    All drugs are poisons, my dad used to say. A necessary evil, he called them. He was talking about medicines. In his youth he had been a pharmacist’s apprentice and then, after the war, a drug salesman—like father, like daughter, ho ho.
    Dad pushed pharmaceuticals, eye, ear, nose, and throat. I grew up on a cough syrup made of two ingredients, codeine and alcohol—my first cocktail and still my favorite. Dad didn’t know that, of course. When there’s a poison in the body, he said, your best weapon is a stronger poison. The trick is to kill the intruder without killing yourself. I have yet to get the hang of it.

PART TWO
    HEROIN HONEYMOON

HEROIN HONEYMOON
    May 1981.
    â€œI’ve been watching you sleep,” I hear Kit say. It’s my first week in residence at her apartment. “I like watching you sleep,” she says. “You’ve been dreaming.”
    I don’t believe it. “I never dream,” I say.
    Kit’s kneeling on the floor beside me with a bent spoon and cotton, preparing a syringe. “You’re on your heroin honeymoon,” she tells me. “You sleep with that heroin honeymoon smile. You don’t wake up sick, like me.” She holds out a hand mirror lying by the bed. “Take a look and see.”
    I sit up and take the mirror from her hand. I don’t look.
    â€œYou went out and copped already?” I ask. I’ve been dead to the world. I can smell the coffee.
    â€œI had to,” she says. “Rehearsal’s in an hour.”
    â€œHow is it?” I nod toward the spoon. Sun fills the room. I feel pale.
    â€œPut out your arm.”
    I pump it. She ties me off with one of her scarves. “You have such good veins,” she says. “I used to have veins like yours.”
    â€œDon’t give me too much,” I say. “I’m not ready.”
    Her eyes graze my arm, her voice is gentle. “It’s only one bag, don’t worry.”
    I hear music coming from the living room, it’s jarring. “I don’t like loud music so early in the morning,” I say.
    â€œI do,” Kit retorts. “Anyway, it isn’t morning.” She holds a lighter under the spoon, dissolves the dope in the water. This is tricky. If the water boils, she’s lost it.
    â€œWhat is that you’re playing?” I ask. Don’t know why I’m so irritable. “Can’t we listen to your music, at least? This is dreadful.”
    â€œThis,” she says quietly, “is a tape of yesterday’s rehearsal.”
    I’m still nervous about the needle. I don’t know how to inject myself. I don’t want to know. I like the way Kit does it. I like her touch. My eyes lock onto her hands as she draws the liquid into the barrel of the syringe, taps out the air. Here it comes. I don’t want to watch but can’t help it.
    â€œThere’s that smile again,” she says after a moment. I look in the mirror. There it is, right on my face, a smile of saintly serenity. It’s odd to see—I never smile. I’ve been pissed off about something or other all my life. Now I look like a dark Ophelia floating in her