Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man

by Bill Clegg

  Every night I hear shouting from the street—Billy, keep it up. You better enjoy it while you can. You’re lucky you’ve lasted this long, Billy. There are vans parked along Gansevoort Street with metal boxes on their roofs that I’m convinced are surveillance vehicles. There are bland American sedans everywhere, and each one, I’m sure of it, is driven by a DEA agent or an undercover cop. Still, each night after midnight, I put on my black Arc’teryx jacket and black Parks & Recreation cap and shuffle out through the lobby and up to 14th Street to a cash machine at the corner bodega. The place has two of them, side by side, and only once am I able to run my card and key in the codes and amounts fast enough to get them to dispense more than the $1,000 limit. Usually I have to wait and get no more than five batches of $200. Night after night I do this and then load up on lighters. I wonder how many others like me the people behind the counter have seen. Hundreds? None?

  I make my way back to the hotel, carrying whatever drugs and stems I have, because I’m terrified someone will raid the room while I’m gone. Twice I have dropped bags of crack in the lobby. My belt at this point has seven holes in it. It began with four. I’ve carved out one with a knife and two have come from leather shops that I’ve passed between hotels and cash machines. Still, my jeans are falling down around my hips.

  I’m not alone in the room. Malcolm has been with me for four or five, maybe six, days. He turned up with Happy one night and jumped on board for the ride. He went to Dartmouth, he says. He’s black, lives in Harlem, is probably no more than thirty, and is beautiful. Doesn’t seem gay and can do enormous amounts of drugs without appearing shaky or anxious.

  There is a night when I am convinced the room is about to swarm with cops and we race out of the hotel as if it’s on fire. We leave everything there—everything besides the drugs—and check into the W near Union Square. I pace the room like a madman, and Malcolm is patient and keeps fixing me glasses of vodka with ice and lime. He distracts me with stories about being on scholarship at Dartmouth and playing football. He dropped out a year ago but plans to return when he’s saved enough money or he can get a better break on tuition. He’s getting his real-estate license. When I ask, he says he knows Happy from the neighborhood, and when I remind him that Happy lives in Washington Heights, he says that he used to live there, too. Not much of his story seems to hold up but I don’t care. He’s gentle and sexy and being by myself right now would be unbearable. Being with him makes all the other nights that came before and the prospect of the ones to come seem unspeakably lonely. During some of those nights, I call numbers for escorts listed in the back pages of the Village Voice and New York magazine. None ever do drugs with me and most stay just exactly one hour. Their skin and their compassion—most at some point say I should slow down, that I might hurt myself—are never enough, never quite what I had in mind, and when they leave, I’m almost always relieved and disappointed.

  The room at the W is small compared with the one at the Gansevoort. It’s cramped and the ventilation is worrisome since the smoke we make seems to just linger and not cycle through the vents. I’m terrified a fire alarm will go off as it once did at 60 Thompson. I think about checking into a third hotel, but I’m getting worried about money—there is twenty or so thousand left and I’ve already gone through more than twice that much—so it’s the Gansevoort or here.

  We gather up what little we have and leave. Heading back into the Gansevoort is terrifying, and yet, as certain as I am that we are about to be busted, I stomp right back into the elevator, down the hall, and into the room. It’s precisely how it was when we left it hours ago. I head straight to the window to see if cop cars have pulled up in front of the building. Nothing. No one but the doorman and a few passersby. Then to the closet and the bathroom to see if anyone is lying in wait to ambush us. All is clear, but it takes a few big hits, half a bottle of vodka, and thrashing on the bed with Malcolm for the panic to fade.

  Later, as the sun comes up, Malcolm steps out onto the little balcony. I’m going to have to split soon, he says. His cell phone has died and he says that he has to go back to his life. I convince him to stay one more night. We have enough to carry us through to early evening when Happy goes back on call, and I promise to really load up. The day clicks by as it usually does, the routine of sex and drinking and hits and ordering food that we barely eat repeats itself from the day before.

  Malcolm’s talk of his life out in the world makes me think of mine, and I quietly pray for one of these hits to finish me off. I pack each one thicker than I had before and hold the smoke in my lungs a beat or two longer than it feels like I can. My neck throbs and my arm aches and I wonder when. Again, the lines from that novel. It would be now.

  Malcolm packs up his things in the morning while I doze. I hear the toilet flush in the bathroom and notice he has nearly emptied the ashtray on the bedside table where I keep the drugs. He has left a few rocks and taken many. I let it go. Not because I don’t care, but because I knew he would steal, and the night before, while he was in the shower, I hid two whole bags in my blazer jacket to last me through the day until midnight, when I can get more cash. Our good-byes are brief.

  The day grinds on. I try to listen to my messages—something I have avoided for days—but my cell phone produces a text message I’ve never seen before that seems prophetic: Memory Filled. New Text Rejected. The message keeps buzzing into the little screen, making it impossible to listen to voice mail. After a few minutes of trying, I give up. As evening comes on, a nerdy boy from room service brings a plate of nachos that I don’t eat. The truth is, I order food to have human contact. He is flirty and talks about NYU, where he is studying political science, the five guys he lives with in Williamsburg. As he speaks I am shamed by the youth of him: the pink skin, the clear eyes, the voice that doesn’t get snagged on sarcasm or exhaustion. He steps closer as he talks and I can almost smell the Ivory soap he must have used in that crowded loft in Williamsburg early that morning as he showered for work. He could not be closer now, and I could not feel further away. He is a boy at the beginning of everything, untarnished and lovely in a way he does not yet even know. And I am something else, not a boy, with hands covered in burn scabs and black soot from changing the screens on the crack pipes all night. I had, at first, thought about seducing him, but when he finishes talking, I can only scribble my signature on the bill and shrink away. When he leaves, the voices from outside begin to bark louder than usual. I finally am able to listen to a voice mail from Noah that tells me he loves me and is not angry but terrified I am dead. Just come home.

  I get high and drink, and when the voices outside get too loud and I’m convinced I see a man in the opposite building with a video camera trained on my room, I do a huge hit and decide to go home. To face the music and rush into Noah’s arms. I gather up my drugs and stems and clean the crumbs off the table surfaces and head out the door.

  A cab pulls up alongside me as I walk out onto Gansevoort Street. It slows, gently, and I hop in. Home? the man with a craggy Eastern European face and matching accent asks with a kind smile. I say yes. The music playing in the cab is Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” and it is calming and magical. The atmosphere twinkles, as if the cab is enchanted. The panic I felt in the room just minutes ago has disappeared. You’re one of them, aren’t you? I ask, as I have a few times to cabdrivers who seem to know where I am going but who only ever smile in response. I check the driver’s photo, which, like all the rest since the airport, is obscured by cardboard or paper. I look into the passenger seat up front and see, as I’ve now seen at least a dozen times, carefully laid out zip-lock bags filled with money—single dollars in one, larger bills in another, and coins in yet another. Like all the cabs with knowing drivers, it is immaculately clean. I ask him who he works for and he chuckles and says he can’t say. I press and he just laughs. But you do work for someone and you’re not a cabdriver, right? He laughs more and says, You’re the first one to see. I can’t believe he’s
crossed the line and acknowledged that he is not a New York City cabdriver. I knew it! I say, relieved that these strange encounters with taxicab drivers have not been drug-induced delusions hatched from my paranoia.

  The driver seems kind. When he turns around to speak, his eyes dance with light. He is grandfatherly and appears amused. I press on with more questions. Why don’t they just arrest me? He answers, because they want to watch me. That they have been observing me for a long time, before my recent craziness even, and that it’s only now that I’ve been able to notice. Is it good? I ask, and he says, Yes, it is good. Someone is taking care of you. You are going to be fine. I ask him who it is and he says he cannot say. But that I am lucky and, again, not to worry. I ask him if they are listening to me in the hotel and he says yes. I ask him to prove it and he says, Well, you know, you get very upset sometimes. Very nervous and very upset. I ask him if they hear and watch me have sex and he laughs and says they do but not to worry, they’ve seen it all before. We pull up to One Fifth, and as we do I feel calm and strangely blessed. No fare, right? I ask and he smiles and waves me away. Don’t be so upset, it will all be okay, he says as I climb out of the cab in front of the building.

  I am overcome with a wave of relief, and as I stand there, two people walk by—they are wearing the shoes, the coats, the earpieces, the complete JCPenney outfit—and they smile as if I have finally been let in on some great secret. I can now see that all of them, every last Windbreakered one of them, has been looking out for me the entire time. They’ve been protecting me! I say out loud. This is why I have not been arrested. I look around the street, across Fifth Avenue and up 8th Street and see several people looking my way as they walk at that unmistakable pace, that deliberate and performatively normal gait.

  In the lobby, Trevor is at the desk and does not seem alarmed to see me. This is still before Noah notifies the building management to call him if any of the doormen or porters see me and before he has the locks changed. I run past Trevor and he shouts hello. When I enter the apartment, it is empty. It hadn’t occurred to me that Noah wouldn’t be home. I pour a drink and do a hit in the bathroom and pace the living room for what seems like forever. It is strange to be home after being gone these weeks. Benny, my cat, eyes me warily and disappears into the bedroom. The apartment seems smaller than I remembered, more precious, as if each pillow and book and photograph is part of some meticulously arranged exhibit of The Life Before. I wait, and as I do, I play out the scene that will unfold after he returns. He will want me to hand over all the drugs I have on me and agree to go to rehab. I am desperate to see him. Want to hug him and be hugged by him and somehow blink away the last weeks and resume our lives. But the longer I’m there, the more impossible this seems. I don’t know how long I stay that night, but it is too long, or not long enough, and I leave.

  On the street outside, a cab pulls up and whisks me back to the hotel without instruction. I look at the driver as we pull up, and he shrugs as if to say, Nice try. He puts his hand over the meter and waves me away and, again, I leave another taxi without paying.

  The night passes swiftly and I’m awake for every moment, alone. Not long after midnight, Happy comes and I spend all the cash I can get, $1,000. He doesn’t say a word as he hands me the bags and the new stems. Doesn’t comment on the increasing orders or the fact that I am making them every day. That he has been coming every night for over three weeks.

  I have two liters of vodka delivered at a time with buckets of ice, and I always seem to be running out. I do hit after hit and drink heavily in between. I burn my hands badly from pulling, again and again, too hard on the stems. I shower three or four times. Lather up the shampoo as thick and luxuriously as I can, wash my face with the fancy face soap from the hotel, rinse off and feel clean for a little while.

  At some point I am convinced one of my contacts has folded up behind my eyeball. I pull on my lid with one hand while the other scratches and pokes into my eye, trying to feel the difference between the flimsy edge of the contact and the slippery surface of my cornea. After an hour or so of this, my eye is stinging from the assault and the entire area is red and swollen. The stinging has gotten worse, and I’m sure it’s because I neglected to wash my hands, which are covered in residue. I take a break to clean them off and instantly see the contact lens stuck to the hot-water knob. I face the mirror and it looks as if someone has poured acid into my eye. The agitation of the last few hours boils over and I yell, loudly and to no one, and storm through the room, throwing pillows, clothes, whatever happens in my way. I throw a water pitcher and it smashes on the dresser. The noise stops me. I instantly worry that I’ve made too much of a racket and that the management will come. I peek through the peephole and under the door off and on for the next few hours. There will be another shower, another hit, another drink, more shampoo, more soap, more water, more peeking under the door and through the peephole.

  Around six in the morning I notice that the sun, east of here, across town, is casting light into the sky above the Hudson. It streaks the palest pink behind the low-rise buildings of the meatpacking district. I hadn’t noticed when exactly the fury of the night began to ebb, but it has now vanished. As I step out onto the small balcony off the bedroom and inhale the still, chilly air, I feel relieved, depleted, as if some great thrashing has ended. The closing lines of Sophie’s Choice sound from some far memory: This was not judgment day, only morning. Morning: excellent and fair. I speak the words out loud. I laugh at how the word morning sounds now like the most beautiful, consoling word I’ve ever heard, when it has been what I have dreaded so many times. Morning! of all things, excellent and fair.

  Birds, hundreds of them, circle above the river. They dive and swoop against the barely lit sky. Are they seagulls? I wonder and immediately dismiss the possibility. But what else would they be? They multiply as the pink light expands and mingles more with the lightening blue. Hundreds become thousands, and the sky is a gorgeous riot of wings. It seems as if some panel of the world has been removed and a glimpse of heaven is being allowed. I wonder, for the first time, if I am still alive.

  I hold the rail and see two black sedans circle slowly in front of the hotel, one behind the other. The one in front is just below me, and I can see the driver’s hands on the steering wheel. Beyond them I notice there are people walking on the sidewalks. Mostly in pairs, several on their own. They are, of course, dressed in the same slacks and shoes and Windbreakers I have seen since Newark. Their footfalls and movements all seem timed to some very particular choreography of urban surveillance. Like the Penneys last night, they do not seem threatening. The birds above them wheel through the sky, and I step back to watch what seems like a meticulously staged theatrical performance. I remember Newark Airport and all the cabs that have miraculously appeared just when I’ve needed them. I remember the driver the night before and his words as I got out of his magical cab—it will all be okay. As I did standing in front of One Fifth, I think perhaps I’ve been running from something that has been, all the while, on my side. That maybe, if there is an organized system of observation, it might possibly be designed to protect instead of trap. I flush with the idea that something so elaborate and so stealthy could have at its heart concern, maybe love. For several minutes I lean against the railing and face the gentle morning wind.

  Eventually I notice the driver in the car below fiddling with a large white card. He is scribbling something with a black marker. His movements are unbearably slow and with a small white cloth he keeps erasing what he’s written only to begin writing again. I go back inside the room and smoke a large hit and pour another vodka. When I return to the balcony he is still scribbling. I can see only his arms and torso and hands. His head and face are obscured by the visor. Finally, he places the card on the dashboard in the front window. It says BARBER. Now that he is through with the card, his hands begin to move over a small, shiny black box. His fingers blur from the rapid movements and they maneuver there mysteriously for sever
al long minutes. I am sure he is packing a stem of crack. He then removes a lighter from his blazer pocket and begins sparking it. Again and again but not to light or burn anything, just to spark it. He holds the flame a moment and then begins sparking it again. I’m now leaning as far over the railing of the balcony as I can, certain he is signaling me in some cryptic language that I’m just on the verge of understanding. Suddenly everything depends on my understanding what he is communicating to me. I yell out, What are you trying to tell me? but he does not make any indication that he’s heard.

  After a while, he stops sparking the lighter and carefully removes the white card from the dash. Again, he starts wiping and scribbling. Again, slowly. After a time, he begins, even more slowly than before, to write out another word. Once he’s finished, he places the card again on the dash. TORCHER, it reads, and my mind reels with the connection between this word and the sparking lighter. What do you mean? I yell from the balcony. The driver puts the marker away and carefully folds his hands in his lap. I watch him for a long time and he does not move. One by one and pair by pair, the people strolling outside begin to disappear. Slowly, they round their street corners, or fade away behind buildings and trucks.

  The driver is as still as a statue, and it is now almost seven o’clock. I am awake and calm, free of worry or loneliness. My body feels light and relaxed and for once doesn’t shake or jitter. I have been up all night but feel well rested. There is still pink in the sky, and I have this great urge to go out into the morning and walk. Unlike following the usual routine of wiping down the counters and getting high and then dressed and undressed, I just throw on my jeans and sweater and shoes and head out.

  Both cars are gone from the front of the hotel by the time I leave the building. The streets are empty and I walk down Little West 12th Street toward Washington. I only make it a few blocks before I start getting anxious and the magic air that glowed between the buildings just minutes before vanishes and is replaced with the stench of meat and the low grind of delivery trucks.