Nothing on My Mind

by Erik Storlie

  I breathe a sigh of relief and head for the door. Tomorrow I’ll pull this paper together.

  “Hey, what’s happening, man?” I say.

  “Stuff,” says Joel, with a wry smile. “Let’s go in and sit down.”

  We sit down around my blond Formica coffee table on a couch and two chairs upholstered in plastic. Joel pulls out a small bottle of clear liquid. “Crystal,” he announces. “A gram of pure crystal meth dissolved in water. This is righteous, righteous stuff. You tried it before? You want?”

  “Sure,” I say. “Rosenfeld gave me some before at his place. We stayed up all night reading poems. I read a hundred pages of Auden. And Rosenfeld wrote at least fifty more pages of his magnum opus.”

  “Some of my best work,” Rosenfeld responds happily.

  I look quizzically at Rosenfeld. “But that stuff was pharmaceutical shit in sealed glass vials.”

  “So?” says Joel. “This shit is the same stuff. No one’s fucked with this. You worried? You some kind of control freak?”

  “So, how do we do it?” I ask.

  “We could shoot it,” Joel says, “but that’s a hassle. I’ve got cotton wads. Just dip ’em and stick ’em under your tongue. The big veins under there carry the shit right to the brain. You got some reefer?”

  “Sure, man,” I say. “It’s dynamite. Rosenfeld’s been scoring it from some dude from L.A.”

  “Yeah,” says Rosenfeld. “It is far out. It’s genuine one-toke weed.”

  Hours go by as we tuck cotton balls under our tongues, smoke joints, and talk endlessly—faster and faster—interminable, hyper talk.

  Intensely, Joel explains again and again, “The only meaning, man, is that there’s no meaning anywhere in this flicking universe.”

  At first I protest. This sounds like the endless nihilism of barroom conversations at the Mixer’s Bar on Seven Corners. This is the old despair, no longer necessary or useful.

  “Listen, man,” I argue, “the drugs are keys—keys that unlock the mind. Every different kind of grass, every hash, gives its own special trip. Cactus, coke, meth—each one opens some new groovy door in your head. This is just the beginning of something huge. Dig it, man, just dig it.”

  Then Rosenfeld chimes in. “Storlie’s right, man. You’re just bumming yourself out. A little grass, a little meth can trigger your artistic powers. You’re a thinker, a philosopher, man.”

  Joel laughs scornfully, bitterly.

  “No, man,” Rosenfeld persists. “I mean it, you really are. We all are. All you have to do to get with it is start writing your own stuff. We can’t let this dead capitalist country take us down with it!”

  But finally we can’t listen to each other. We each wait for our chance to talk again—poised, vultures at a carcass—desperate to relieve a pent-up agony with words.

  Toward dawn, Rosenfeld and I sit immobilized—Rosenfeld on the couch, me in a chair. Joel, fidgeting, paces the small room and begins to rummage through things on my desktop. He picks up a little framed picture of the family cat sent by my mother. “Oh, Storlie, this is sweet. Tell us about this. Storlie, there must be a cat in your life!”

  “Oh,” I say, stiffening. “No big deal. My mother sent it out here.”

  “Of course,” says Joel, in syrupy tones. “Your mother thought you’d get lonely in your student garret. So she sends family cat pictures—along with a nice check for the rent. What do you get a month to be a grad student, Storlie? Take a look at this, Rosenfeld. Storlie has a cat in his life. This cat must be very important to that cool cat.”

  Joel waves the picture at me, then hands it to Rosenfeld, whose bulk is slumped on the couch, legs crossed, one foot jouncing, fingers twiddling in his lap. Rosenfeld looks at it quietly and, without looking at either of us, sets it down on the coffee table.

  Silent, heart pounding, I feel an icy sweat break out over my body.

  “Well, so Storlie doesn’t want to talk anymore,” Joel says, sitting back down and picking up the picture. “Wow, what a groovy kitty. What a very groovy kitty. Is it a boy or a girl kitty? What’s its name? You’re afraid to live with a real pussy-cunt, so you’ve got to settle for kitty cats. C’mon, Storlie, cat got your tongue?

  “Hey Rosenfeld, man, you asleep too? Fat chance. No one’s asleep in this room. Open your eyes. We got to find out from Storlie about the cat in his life. Storlie, look at the picture.” Joel holds it up in front of my face. “Let’s groove on the kitty. Let’s groove on the pretty cat’s whiskers. Look at those long, silky, pretty whiskers. Wow! Oh, wow! Too much, man, too much! C’mon, Storlie, say ‘wow, far out’ some more! Be hip, man!”

  Rosenfeld stares at Joel and says, “It’s almost morning, man. Leave it alone. I’m beat.” He rolls back on the couch and turns his back to the room.

  “Well, Storlie, I guess it’s just you and me now. How about another cotton?”

  “Why not?” I say, now angry, resolved, thinking, “I can take anything this bastard can take.”

  Joel passes the little bottle. I dip in my cotton and place it—cold, bitter—under my tongue.

  “It’s been a long, long night, man,” says Joel. “Let’s do some more of that boss reefer.”

  “Sure, man,” I say, and roll a joint.

  Rosenfeld lies on the couch, still facing the wall, unmoving, withdrawn. We know his mind is racing too, but there’s no more talk. Joel and I smoke. Then, sitting on my chair, hurt, furious, I stare steadily at the floor, the late-night silence of the apartment broken occasionally by the buzzing of the old, noisy refrigerator.

  A squeaking sound intrudes. I glance up and freeze. It’s Joel. He’s staring at me, leaning back in his chair, tipping it slightly back, feet splayed out in front of him flat on the floor. He’s cranking his hips rhythmically up and down, up and down, thrusting forward an erection inside his pants.

  He smiles, licking his lips. A husky, contracted voice says, “Hey, man, let’s go! Or you too square? Don’t you know what hip folks really do?”

  With dead eyes, I stare back, holding his gaze until it breaks.

  He looks away, muttering, “Aw, fuck you, man. It’s getting light out. I’m gonna go get a paper.” Then he’s out the door.

  Exhausted, I lie down on the floor and shut my eyes. Every muscle in my body is a knot, my skull an agony of shifting pain. I hear Rosenfeld sit up, move around, and suddenly, silently, with a click of the door, he’s gone too.

  I climb wearily into bed, a dim light rising behind the curtains. Sleep, oh, God, sleep, if only I could sleep! My mind races in endless, exhausting circles—then into forbidden corners.

  “Storlie, you’re a failure. You can’t finish your papers, can’t get your ass out of bed before noon. You’re skipping all your classes. When you did show up at American Lit last week, everyone’s eyes followed you with disgust and pity—they know what’s going on. They know. And you can’t face it. You’re not superior to the Master’s Program in English at the University of California, Berkeley—that’s an act, a cover for your second-rate mind spawned in a second-rate town at a second-rate midwestern university. You can’t compete. You don’t cut it here.

  “You lie around this dump and smoke dope. It’s easier to get stoned than make love to a woman. When’ll Lisa figure that one out? You’re really just scared of chicks, aren’t you? Scared they’ll see through you, scared they’ll find someone else and leave.

  “And all the doping—just a macho cover—acting tough when you’re scared shitless. You’re hiding—hiding from the profs. You’re still a scared little shrimp like in grade school—big nose, chubby—hiding out in your room reading books when the neighborhood kids play too rough.”

  Now I’m pacing, pacing back and forth in the small apartment.

  Suddenly paranoid, I think, “The landlady’ll hear me pacing. She’ll know I’m stoned again. The old bitch’ll call the university. Christ, she’ll call the cops!

  “Hey, hey, cool it. That’s ridiculous. Sit down and relax.
Or lie down in bed. Try to sleep again.

  “Yeah, sure. Dream on! You’ll just lie there again and thrash and twist and sweat.

  “What if she does call the cops? Christ, they’ll find the grass—and the meth. I’ve got to get rid of it. But that’s dynamite grass, it’s the best shit you’ve ever had. You know what they’ll all say! ‘Well, Storlie finally blew his mind. He freaked out. He’s so paranoid he can’t turn on anymore.’”

  Hours of pacing, trying to sleep, pacing, sitting down, standing up again. The morning goes by. No way can I go out to class or the library.

  Then it’s afternoon. The meth is relentless.

  “Oh, God, if it would only end,” I groan to myself, and stretch out again on the bed.

  Now all I feel is my heart. It hammers, exploding in my chest.

  Suddenly I grow icy.

  “I know what’s going to happen,” I say to myself. “My heart’s going to rupture. I’ll die. The folks’ll have to come here to pick up the body. They’ll be humiliated, heartbroken. It’s all my fault.

  “I’ve got to get out of here.”

  In panic, I walk out onto my little stoop in the chill light of a late winter afternoon. It’s been twenty hours since we got stoned. A tall eucalyptus in a neighbor’s yard rustles in steady breezes coming in off the bay. I sit down on the stoop.

  The hammering in my chest drowns out everything.

  “My heart’s going to stop. I’ll die!

  “Get inside! Call a doctor, an ambulance! How about the university hospital?”

  I reach for the phone.

  “No, no, don’t call, you can’t go in there. They’ll call the narcs.

  “Who gives a fuck, you’re dying, you idiot. Do something!”

  Somehow I walk from East Oakland to the campus. Now for the hospital. Heart smashing in my chest, ears pounding, riding a wave of panic, I enter the front doors. Asking for a doctor, refusing to answer questions, I stand shakily in front of a frightened-looking girl at the reception desk.

  It’s a late Friday afternoon. For a few weeks I’ve avoided Rosenfeld and worked to catch up with classes and papers. I get back from the library with more materials for the Caxton paper and Rosenfeld appears at the door, eager for more of the one-toke dynamite. I really don’t want to turn on right now. What if I plunge back into that huge, crushing paranoia? But things are beginning to come together with school. I don’t want to let Rosenfeld think anything’s wrong—maybe nothing’s wrong! Anyway, it’s a Friday night.

  I roll up a slim joint. Neither of us mentions Joel. We toke up, put on Indonesian music, all gongs and bells that go on in endless crescendo and decrescendo. He stretches out on the couch. I lie down on the living room rug, ready to ride the magic carpet.

  Muscles all over my body tighten, hands clench into fists, the back of my neck turns rigid, contracts, forcing my head back into the rug. Bells and gongs rattle in my head and I observe, deep inside my brain, a tall metal tower, smooth, rounded at the top like a gigantic cypress knee. Suddenly, a tremor like a lightning bolt whipping through my body, I see a triphammer smash the tower into four quadrants, each splitting, peeling apart from the others—splintered fibers tearing from each other with a wrenching sound of agony.

  I sit bolt upright, groaning. “Oh, man.”

  Rosenfeld slowly opens his eyes, raising his large, bearded face and peering down from the couch. “Storlie, man, what the fuck’s happening? You okay?”

  “Oh, sure, man. Sure.”

  It’s May, three months later, a Berkeley spring evening. Joy, Elton, Right Hand, and I are sitting, slowly drinking doppios in the balcony at the Café Mediterranean on Telegraph Avenue. We stare at each others’ pupils with knowing amusement. Even in the dim light, they’re pinpoints, the effect of heroin we injected some hours earlier.

  Joy and Elton are fixtures on Telegraph and in North Beach. I met Joy one afternoon as she wafted up and down Telegraph wearing a brightly colored, flowing dress and trailing long, very pale blond hair. She hailed me cheerfully as I walked home one afternoon from the library, we struck up a conversation, and soon she, Elton, and I were companions. As teenagers, Joy, Elton, and Right Hand grew up in the East Bay, running with a crowd on the edge of juvenile delinquency.

  Right Hand is small, seems wizened, though he’s only twenty-five. He’s recently back from Vietnam, his left arm missing, the shirt sleeve neatly tucked away inside itself. He lives with his blue-collar family in Oakland, has no work, and takes the bus every day to Telegraph Avenue to hang out with hippies who are into smack. After I first met him, Joy confided that his arm was hopelessly shattered by machine gun fire, but that he would never talk about it. Envious, impressed, she told me he’d brought an ounce of pure heroin home with him from Vietnam and, for his first month back in Oakland, never left the house. He sat in his room injecting a vein in his leg.

  Joy drains the last of her double espresso and lazily eyes a young woman in Gypsy robes below us on the main floor making a noisy entrance into the Mediterranean. Behind her follow three large, fine-looking dogs, a small girl child, and a toddler of indeterminate sex. For the last hour, the woman has been sitting on the sidewalk outside the door in fading evening light, the children and dogs frolicking about her. Now the toddler is fussy. She takes a table at the front window, pulls up her blouse, and nurses it.

  We talk this evening in quiet undertones about needles, about techniques to protect veins and hide tracks. Joy was recently busted. As a condition of probation, she’s monitored every week in some drug program. Joy and Elton ask me to sign for diabetic needles at a nearby drugstore. They’ve become too well known to get them themselves. Reluctantly, I agree.

  “Hey,” Joy says, “how about that Sammy killing himself last week? Slit his wrists in a bathtub full of hot water. I’ve tried that myself, but I didn’t want it to work bad enough.” She smiles coolly and turns her wrists toward us, displaying thin white scars on even whiter skin. “I did that at twenty-one when my dear professor father freaked that I’d been kicked out of grad school in my first semester. Skipped all my classes. Fucked at least half the guys on the avenue. Humiliating to the family. Blew father’s cool! Very unlike him. He stomped and shouted all over the house.”

  Joy mimics a deep, booming voice. “‘Little selfish bitch. After all the opportunities we’ve provided for you!’ Mother just locked herself in the master bedroom. Great view of the bay from there. They always told the relatives back east about that view.”

  “But what about Sammy?” I ask. “He never seemed down to me. Rosenfeld says he was in the bookstore just the day before. They drank some beers next door.”

  “I dunno,” Joy says. “Doesn’t really figure, does it?”

  “Didn’t know the dude,” says Right Hand, continuing to stare toward the front picture windows.

  “Me neither,” murmurs Elton.

  “I guess his old man had to come out from New York and collect the body,” I say. “Jeez!”

  “Fuck the old man,” says Joy. “Let’s go back to your place and do up the rest of those papers. You can swing by the drugstore on the way there.”

  We leave the Mediterranean. An occasional star shines through fog moving in from the bay high overhead. We detour by a drugstore, where I go in alone and sign for diabetic needles. Then we walk down to my new place on Grove Street. Lisa invited me to move in with her in March. After a few months she left, taking her furniture with her. As we walk in, it echoes vacantly.

  The four of us sit down at a scarred wooden table in the dimly lit middle room. I pull from a built-in buffet drawer a little white tin Band-aid box containing paraphernalia and the two papers we’d scored that morning.

  Right Hand accepts help injecting himself. He’d rather not shoot the veins in his leg. He waits patiently, not asking. We’re solicitous of Right Hand. We feel bad about his arm. We always fix him. I massage the vein at the elbow of his right arm and reassure him, “Hey, man, it’s no trouble at all, really,
you know that.”

  Since Joy’s being monitored, Elton struggles to inject a vein in her leg—it rolls under the skin and he can’t hit it. Frantic, she screams curses at him. Finally he gets it, and she apologizes for freaking out.

  It’s my turn. In a spoon half-filled with water, I cook the brownish Mexican heroin over a match and drop in a tiny wad of cotton, through which the needle smoothly sucks up the fix. I tie off and ball my fist, then with a sharp, aching sting enter the vein just inside my left elbow. Fascinated, I watch blood burst up through the needle into the clear brownish fluid balancing in the eyedropper—a tiny red mushroom signaling contact with pulsing, living blood. I squeeze the bulb until a little burble of air tells me the fix is all in. Finally, I pull up a pulsing red column into the eyedropper to wash out any remnant of heroin, squeeze the bulb again, and watch the red column disappear back into the vein—stomach pulsing now with butterflies as the warm, liquid relief of a rush cascades through legs and arms and feet and hands and brain.

  As the night goes by, we keep fixing until the papers are clean, puking quietly and without discomfort in the bathroom. Then we sit in the darkened living room and watch TV. For an hour after the night’s programming is over, we still sit quietly and watch the blank dance on the screen.

  Then, after everyone walks out into the chilly late spring night, I go to my bedroom and pull another paper from my sock drawer. “No use sharing everything,” I think. “Got plenty here for a little nightcap for myself!”

  The next morning I get up late, too late to bother with classes. The thought of breakfast is sickening. There’s no milk in the refrigerator anyway. I look to see what traces are left in the papers. Nothing. Not even in the paper I got from my sock drawer. At least I can do up the cottons.

  I pick up the little white Band-aid stash box and find the eyedropper syringe submerged and stuck to the bottom in thick gouts of black, clotted blood.

  “My God! Where did it come from?” I ask myself. “How many times did I fix again after they left? Did I nod with a needle stuck in my arm? What am I doing! I could’ve killed myself!”