The Hole Within

PROLOGUE

Nervously, I glanced around the disgusting room. I could not believe I was here. With these people. In this room. Waiting for Tyler. Ready now, he considered my eyes, maybe waiting for me to change my mind. I inhaled quickly as the needle bit my skin, a flash of blood, then the brown fluid inside the barrel began to disappear. No turning back now, I thought.

The rush came over me like a thousand whole body orgasms; a warm blanket on a freezing night. Heavily tattooed and twenty-three years my senior, Tyler looked at me as he loosened then removed the tourniquet. His eyes judging. Appraising. Finally, a knowing smile creased his weathered face. He may have said something, asked a question but it was lost on me. I was beyond caring. I was too busy riding the monstrous wave of ecstasy that filled my body and made my mind soar. Cresting, falling, crashing then cresting again. "Oh, my god," I thought. I mean, "Oh my god!" I had no words for the feeling, the marvelous, glorious feeling. I was drowning in it, my muscles relaxed, my head lolled back as the heroin and coke rushed through my veins. The anxiety and apprehension I felt was a distant memory, like it belonged to someone else. I vomited; a moment, an hour, a lifetime later. It was no matter. The vomit came like brushing off a piece of lint. Natural. No conscious feeling of sickness, no retching, no violent contractions. It was an insignificant act, I barely noticed it.

Tyler began to cook up again. He deftly used the works we brought with us. A new, sterile needle and syringe that I insisted on purchasing at the pharmacy earlier that day. Not that he cared. He would have readily used a cobbled together method of delivery, i.e. an eyedropper, an old, well used needle (read: dull), and a rubber band holding the crude contraption together. Tyler carefully pinched off a pea sized ball of sticky black tar heroin and placed it in an old dirty spoon. Expertly, he applied heat to the underside with a battered lighter. Partially melted, he poured in a measure of cocaine from the folded piece of wax paper which held its precious contents. In the mixture, light brown with curious dark brown specs floating on the surface, awaited a tiny piece of cotton torn from a used cigarette filter. The needle he used on me showed remnants of my aspirated blood in its clear barrel. Tyler tipped the needle point carefully into the spoon, landing on the bit of filter and drew up the murky liquid to the syringes capacity, much more than he gave to me. He placed the barrel between his teeth and skillfully tied off. The plump vein was easily found as he has been clean now for eleven years. Slipping the needle into the vein, he pulled back on the plunger, an immediate return of bright red blood, then he injected the entire contents into his bloodstream. He did not vomit. His eyes became half lidded and his head dropped, chin hitting breastbone as he nodded off into oblivion.

The initial rush subsiding, my body was awake. Alert. Filled with wellbeing and love for all I lay my eyes on. The filthy bathroom with its shit encrusted toilet, brown sink and blackened bathtub I sat against no longer bothered me. The dirt strewn floor on which I gingerly sat ten minutes ago was no longer a source of anxiety. I liked clean things, well ok, I am obsessive about cleanliness. I spent hours dusting, scrubbing, methodically scouring to ease my ever-present state of high anxiety. No high, or otherwise, anxiety now, despite the wretched conditions of my surroundings. Rising off the floor I floated to the bathroom door and headed out to the kitchen.

Roxanne was there and I felt a warm sense of being her kindred sister, despite first meeting her thirty minutes ago. Emaciated, she had long track-scared mocha limbs. Her unwashed, untamed kinky hair surrounded her face in corkscrews, swoops and whirls. I wanted to wrap my arms around her, talk until the wee hours of the morning, share secrets you only confided in your sister. But she was anxious, jittery, in need. She glanced up when I entered, then dismissed me with one look. Roxanne was in search of her husband, or rather, her chemical relief. She found him in the living room, sitting with other strung out junkies. Some were nodding off, some sitting up sleeping with their heads rolled back like the dead, some busily preparing to cook. Roxanne eyed her husband with trepidation. He was on the battered sagging green couch alternatively nodding off and jerking awake. Instantly she could tell he had shot their whole buy. She flung obscenities at him and ranted about her share. When she got no reaction, Roxanne abruptly wheeled into the kitchen, grabbed the nearest utensil -a fork- and in one fluid motion, turned and expertly threw the instrument at her husband's head.

I was amazed, in a detached observant way, as the fork hit its mark. Tines first, the fork impaled into his forehead. It wavered like an off-balance drunk and fell to his lap. No reaction. No pain. He did not even acknowledge the insult. The four holes the tines left seeped blood and it ran down his black skin.

I was entranced. This dirty-sickening-horrifying scene played out two steps removed from me. And I felt GREAT. I felt at peace, in love with my existence for the first time I could remember. THIS was what I had been searching for. THIS was what I needed. THIS was what I wanted MORE of. The hole inside was filled!