Read Online Will Work for Drugs by Lydia Lunch - Free Book Online

red light, the wrong way up one-way streets for thirty-two blocks, no fucking cops when ya need ’em … no fucking cops and we’re blasting on the friggin’ horn … They could have heard us in Hoboken if anyone had been listening, but the whole fucking city was hammering away, hammering away, and we were just a tiny close-up of life about ready to abort itself.
    And the closer they get the gun to my face, the wilder the asshole next to me is getting. Cursing the mothers and godmothers of our would-be killers, yelling at them to “Blow our fucking brains out! … Go ahead and do it, you chicken-shit all-dick-no-balls black boys … What the hell ya waiting for, City Hall? It’s two miles in the other direction!” And as the Sicilians are fond of saying, BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR, because no sooner said than done, and they start firing tiny bullets, little pellets which rip into the bloodstain-red interior as the Indian who has now also joined in the fun begins yee-hawing and yippity-dip-do-ing like it’s a Wild West comedy fest, stuttering so hard he can barely control the wheel and “666! I am the Beast!” And I’m freaking out trying to convince myself that I’m too stubborn to die … too young to die, too goddamn pretty to die … And with a sharp right turn we pull up right behind an empty police van and park Kojak-style as if nothing happened while the sharpshooters sail off into the sunset screaming out our license plate.
    * * *
    [Author’s Note: At least once a week for three years running, an equally outlandish adventure cemented my friendship with the Beast until it finally collapsed under the strain of a mutually accelerating frenzy.]
    The last time I saw the Beast, he was in St. Vincent’s Hospital where they were threatening to amputate his right arm to eliminate the cellulitis, a cancer and rancor, crank-related. He got off easy when they decided to just gut it, leaving a gorgeous scar four inches wide and three centimeters deep running from wrist to armpit, doing gentle swirling twists all the way down the inside of his useless limb. I knew half a dozen guys who would have killed for that type of memento, a souvenir that says FUCK YOU … I’m a survivor, if you wanna get rid of me you’re gunna have to chop me up in little pieces . And I pictured him a head on a skateboard buzzing down to the men’s shelter where he started living after they let him out of St. Vincent’s because there were only so many beds and they wouldn’t take him back at Bellevue because he no longer qualified as a serious mental health threat or in need of intensive care or could be considered disabled, except for the fact that his motor functions didn’t and the chemotherapy left him pallid and weak and he was constantly hallucinating with the fever of delirium caused by the painkillers or by the methadone treatments or the Thorazine or the Xanax and Ritalin, the Percodan and Placidil, the antipsychotics and antidepressants … the whatever the hell it was it took to placate him into a permanent sedation, a stupor, a torpor.
    And even though they couldn’t just lock him up and throw away the keyhole, it wasn’t two months later that he was back in detox for the fortieth time, trying to fight the Devil in the bottle and losing badly. Saying, “I need the juice … I need the juice …” to recharge his battery. It had been overloaded. His circuits went haywire. He short-circuited. It was pure chaos. He was being devoured. His blood flow was quicksand. He was looking for someone, for anyone to break the free fall. He was free-falling into a timeless wonderland where sight and sound were replaced with smell and taste and touch—“AND NOBODY WANTS TO TOUCH ME ANYMORE”—and the only touch is that of a wet hand on the back of his neck like the kiss of death reaching up from under his deathbed.
    And the