Will Work for Drugs

by Lydia Lunch

  Not that I could blame him for my multiple indiscretions. It just made sloppy easier, more seductive to slip back into. Felt almost criminal crawling around on all fours neck deep in the murky undertow. Dwell inside of someone else’s psychic surgery for a while. It felt good to just let myself dissolve. Binge and purge. Choke on excess and suffer the consequences. Not give a shit. Be selfish. Greedy. Disappear into need. Submerge in desire. Crash, get jacked up, and crash again. Johnny and I started getting lubed on coke every weekend. Glut on Friday and Saturday night. Reel and feel like shit until Tuesday or Wednesday. Fuck ourselves out. Spasm into conversations that would begin at midnight and dwindle down hours later, long after the dawn had been blanketed over by dirty sheets that blocked out the sun.

  The ritual always began the same. Hack out enough lines to force into cardiac arrest lesser mortals. Preparation for evaporation into a secret place. An undulating womb, which would expand and contract as the walls fell in upon themselves crushing out our breath. Our moods swung to whatever song was playing. Jump-cutting from blues to bebop to trance. Like our mind-set. A distorted juke box cranked full of musty tunes you could almost sing along to, but the melody kept escaping just as you got to the second verse.

  Five hours into another Friday-night binge. Slinking into the lull between rushes. A moment of spastic paralysis as the muscles still tremble but the outer shell of the body freezes, locked into an electric rigor mortis.

  Johnny was on the couch, one hand grabbing his bulge, the other playing spin-the-bottle with a broken fifth whose busted mouth reflected a smoky golden haze that meant we’d be screwing through another fractured day. I needed to wipe the dribble from my upper lip, comb my hair, grab a coat, search for my keys, and then try to remember how to drive, so I could rescue enough libations to see us through until the spell wore off and we were finally able to pass out in each other’s arms again, brittle but still greedy. Couldn’t send Johnny. He didn’t drive. Couldn’t send him even if he did. Didn’t trust him. Not in his state.

  Tiny’s Tight Spot was the only place that would sell after hours. Scuzzy flop on the far end of downtown where only the lifers and ex-cops went to booze. Been paying off the precinct captains in the fifth ward for decades with free drinks, grilled bologna sandwiches, and 150 bucks a week. Stayed in business with what they did under the table. Shots were still fifty cents a round. Had to protect the regulars. Some occupied the same bar stool for forty years running. Three-quarters of a mile going twenty-five should’ve put me there and back in about fifteen minutes.

  I placed my order with Tony, the owner. Two six-packs of Schlitz, Johnny’s favorite, and an overpriced fifth. Grabbed the bag and split.

  A slice of dirty brown was shredding a crack in the horizon. The electricity bouncing off the streetlights made everything look hollow. Ghostly. Life-sized images of what real once was. I was no longer sure I knew. My high was folding, crumbling. I reached across the seat to pet the paper bag, praying the booty of firewater would by proxy rekindle a small flare-up in Johnny’s loins. I’d be back home in a matter of minutes, where I could throw my arms around his neck, slip my tongue in his mouth, and breathe. I was halfway through the intersection before I saw the squad car. Too late to stop, I simply played good citizen and pulled over. Routine bullshit. License, registration, insurance.

  “Where you headed?”

  “Home.”

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “Schlitz and Jack Daniel’s … Fancy a shot?”

  “Turn off the ignition.”

  “Is that really necessary?”

  “Do it. And get out of the car. Hands on the hood.”

  Believe it or not, I know when to quit. Did what was expected. Got out of the car. Typical traffic stop, but with a twist. Everyone was under suspicion now that the Bank Street Boys, a notorious gang of teenage hustlers, were turning up facedown in the Gratz River. Dead bodies were hitting double digits. Downtown hood rats scurried home after dark, turning bored traffic cops into Bad Lieutenants. Tried to make small talk just to distract the bull from looking too close into my pinwheel eyes, runny nose, nervous condition. Not that they’d suspect a woman. Women don’t kill for no reason. When a woman murders, it’s usually a crime of passion—lover, ex-boyfriend, husband. Not a pack of prostitutes. That’s man’s work, right? Killing off over and over again, the replicons of their first, their last, their ever-present rejection. Killing again and again, their lousy mother, the haughty cheerleader who snubbed them in tenth grade, the prom queen who at the last minute went to the dance with the football hero, the night nurse, the convenience store clerk, the women who represented to their tortured libidos all those who wouldn’t give it up before, but were selling it off in little chunks now, to anyone who could afford it … That’s what Bundy and Speck and Ramirez did. That’s not what women do. But that’s just the coke talking, so I keep it to myself and nod like a good girl, hoping all my papers check out and I won’t have to give this creep my mouth, just so I can hurry home to Johnny, who I’ll have to suck back up again after being gone now for a good forty-five minutes anyway.

  Officer O’Riley, or McKenna, or O’Rourke, or whatever the hell his smudgy badge reads, gets an APB on his car radio as I’m ruminating on my serial killer psychobabble, and without so much as a spit of dismissal, hops in the front seat of his cruiser and speeds off. Good thing. Because I was starting to scare myself. Wondering just how many ounces his Smith & Wesson clocked in at, and just how fast I’d need to be to get away with kicking him once in the nuts, poking him in the eye, grabbing his gun and firing off a round or two, hopping back in my shitty spitfire, and riding the gas all the way back home to that hunky fuck who by now was probably passed out.

  I could hear Johnny’s panicked ranting before the key was in the lock. Feel the vibration of boots cracking against the door. He’d take two steps forward, check the peephole, kick the door frame, take two steps back, and repeat. He flung the door open with such force he fell backwards and landed on his ass. Sprung up like a coiled rattler, ripe with venom.

  “HA! I knew it was you … Where the fuck have you been?”

  “Hey, slow down, tiger, I was out getting drinks, remember?”

  He towered over me, insisting I look him in the eye. His were red and bulging, dirty tears now dried, streaking his cheeks. A new three-inch laceration over left eyebrow, ruby-red and congealing. A bloody smudge under his left nostril. Caked with coke. Neck ringed with sweat. Wet hair framing his contorted face. Lips cracked and chapped. Beautiful and psychotic. Ripped to shit and gone.

  “Well, what the fuck took you so long? Did you blow the fucking bartender for a six-pack?”

  “What???”

  This shit came out of nowhere. Forty-seven minutes ago we were playing piggy in the throws of a lust which bordered on pornographic. Now he’s pissed that I bought HIM beer? I didn’t get it.

  “Johnny … that’s ridiculous … c’mon … cool out. Have a drink.” I reached up to pull his face closer. He slapped my hand away.

  “NO!!!” he bellowed.

  I headed toward the kitchen, pulling out a tall boy as peace offering, but he was just warming up.

  “Don’t fucking walk away … Answer me!” He spun me around, grabbed the collar of my coat, and pulled it down to my waist. Manic. “You fucking whore … I knew it. Look at you. Since when do you go out for beer in the middle of the goddamn night with just a slip on under your coat? You smell like you were fucking the whole bar, you cunt.”

  “Are you tripping? I went to the bar flying out of my gourd to get you some fucking beer. On the way back I got pulled over. If the fucking cops hadn’t gotten another call, I’d be sucking on a Breathalyzer downtown right now. What the fuck is up with you?”

  I pulled away pissed. Started toward the fridge, passing the coffee table we used as altar for the ceremonial ritual of our drugged communion. It was tipped on its side. Broken glass, ashes, cigarette butts scattershot on the couch and flo
or. Baggies torn apart at the seam. Blood-smeared straw orphaned on the saucer, which had been licked clean. The last of our stash, a hundred bucks worth, sucked up while I was gone. I was furious.

  He trailed after me. “We need more coke. Call your dealer. See if he’ll come by.”

  “Are you nuts? It’s 7 in the fucking morning, you’re tweaked, and we just ripped through 250 bucks worth. Do I look like fucking Noriega?”

  “I need more fucking coke … I mean it … I’m on to something here. Crystallized thought. Sharp as ice. I need to ride this out. Everything’s just starting to make complete sense. The body as Experimental Canvas, the body as Blood Bank, as Punching Bag, Carving Board, Sack of Pus and Come. Don’t cut me off now. Give me his number. If you don’t want to call him, I will.” He picked up the phone, raced over to me. Smiling. “Please, baby, please.” Grinning like a twelve-year-old suffering from chronic dementia.

  “I WILL NOT CALL HIM! You’re out of your fricking mind. They don’t deliver on credit, remember? Have a goddamn beer and cool it.”

  “I WILL NOT COOL IT! GIVE ME THE NUMBER! GIVE ME THE NUMBER! GIVE ME THE NUMBER!” Kicking holes in the wall with his size-thirteen steel tips.

  “NO! Calm the fuck down. You’re losing it!” I ran over to him, grabbed one arm behind his back, landed a nerve pinch between his neck and shoulder blade, which dropped him to his knees, and using my full body weight, shoved him head first into the pile of cigarette butts and broken beer bottles.

  “Oww! Cut that shit out!”

  Right. Okay for him to turn asshole, break up my shit, insult my generosity, and demand I cater to HIM, but fucking forbid the little bitch to give him a taste of his own poison. He starts to freak.

  “Fuck you, Johnny … You’re way out of line here. Shut up, settle down, or get the fuck out. Now.”

  “Fine, you bitch. I’m going out. Piss off.” He stumbles to his feet, flips me off sticking out his tongue, pretends to straighten his filthy clothes, yanks open the front door, and falls flat on his face screaming his ex-wife’s name.

  Johnny could stubbornly avoid sleep for forty-six, sixty-eight, seventy-two hours at a time. Propelled by alcohol, speed, coke, adrenaline, or just sheer panic, he’d string himself so far out he could barely light a cigarette. Raise a bottle. Trembling hands massaging a leg spasm. Chapped lips cracked by pointy canines. X-ray eyes detecting invisible monsters who’d steal him from me as he night-stalked energy trails, falling stars, fading headlights, meteors, night birds, stray cats. Flashlight cocked to hip, butcher knife in torn back pocket. Sneak-peeping around corners. Frozen in door frames. Glued to the window sill, peeking through a cigarette burn in the fabric. Paralyzed at the foot of the stairs. Paranoid agitation strangled the hours. Fueled his psychosis. Bored the shit out of me.

  Forcing me into silence, he attempted to decode the flow of traffic two blocks away, the scampering of rats in the next building, an ant hill under construction in the backyard. An insane reconnaissance mission. The enemy … a sonic surround. Every creaky floorboard, rattling pipe, electrical hum, a forged television static which seemed to leak from his ears out. Filling the room with a reverberating symphony of subdecibel tones only he could hear. A swelling claustrophobia. The cold sweat on his brow expanding like a freak weather pattern which coated the room in a dense fog of atmospheric perspiration.

  Sex became impossible. Johnny couldn’t focus. I’d be curled around him, one leg snaked high up on his hip, wiggling against him. He’d be teasing me with cool fingers, tickling my inner thighs, whispering about the texture of my flesh. How its plump satin was as sweet as honeyed butter. To be suffocating there, buried alive, inhaling my heat, was heaven, the only place he felt safe. Home. I’d cry for him to take me, give me more, feed it to me, finish me off, do something, anything, More. Please. Now.

  A car door would slam halfway up the block. He’d jump out of bed, mute the stereo, turn off all the lights, run to the window. Jimmy it open a crack to get a better look. He’d weave like a punch-drunk boxer attempting to spy a crack in the darkness through which he could narrow his vision in order to locate the intruder. He’d go through this routine six or seven times a night. Sentry at his post for countless hours. Waiting for the imaginary invader to materialize. Forever convinced that whoever was out to get him, for whatever reason, was sure to eventually appear, pull up right in front of my apartment, kick the door in, and take him away. No amount of practical reasoning would sway his dedication to this bizarre night watch. I assumed it was a hangover from digging the graveyard shift at the shitty hotel he used to work at. Try to convince him of that. He wouldn’t hear it. Eventually I’d grow bored, begin to fume, leave the room. Frustrated. Pissed off. Dejected.

  His paranoia battered my resolve. The end whimpered in like a small sick breeze one spring night. We were laying on the couch softly purring into each other’s mouth. So worked up and wet, the cushions were sticky. He was on top of me, his beautiful face inches away from mine, eyes half closed, lips parted just enough for the tip of his tongue to taste my breath. I blew in his mouth. He inhaled a whisper of moist heat. Blew it back at me. Light kiss. Bliss. Dreamscape. Dissolve. And the sound of small claws scampering up on the roof. Raccoons in heat. Such was the season. Johnny bolted off of me, wild-eyed, panicked. Pulling at his hair, his eyebrows and lips, muttering, “I knew those fuckers would come back! Bastards. Where’s the knife? Where’s the fucking buck knife? Hurry up get the knife!”

  “What bastards? Who’s come back?” Bewildered. Drained.

  “The assholes who’ve been taping me! I know they’re taping our conversations. I saw them in a black van last week. Cameras, tape recorders. Parked out front. They’re back! And now they’re on the roof … Shit!”

  “They are not on the goddamn roof. Get a fucking grip on yourself! It’s probably just a squirrel. A fucking raccoon.”

  We had been through this before. A week earlier.

  Four in the morning. I had forced him out of bed and led him by the hand to stand across the street from my apartment, arguing for two and a half hours about the construction of the roof. Unable to assure him that it was slanted to such a degree that no human being had the dexterity to dance, walk, run, or climb upon its slanted gables. He was not convinced.

  “Yeah … well, raccoons don’t sit in vans shoving a microphone out the side window, do they? DO THEY?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “SHHHH! Can’t you hear that?”

  “Yeah, I do … and if it was human, and it heard us making a fricking racket, don’t you think he’d split?”

  “I’m calling the cops!”

  “No you’re not! Are you nuts? There’s drugs all over this house. They’ll take one look at you and call for an ambulance.”

  “Where’s the phone? Where’s the goddamn phone?” Johnny flipped the pillows off the couch, turned the chairs over, knocked the TV off the shelf, checked his back pocket and my purse in search of the phone. Finding it finally, where it always was—on the kitchen counter—and stupidly dialing 911. I snatched the phone away to hang it up, calling him a fucking idiot. It rings in my hand. He grabs it back, conspiratorially whispering to the operator, who by law will respect penal code section 13730 and dispatch a squad car, “It’s you, isn’t it? The guy in the black van? I knew it was you … I knew it!”

  “Johnny behind the Deuce” was originally conceived as a film treatment which was generously financed by Gregg Hale, best known as producer of The Blair Witch Project.

  DEAR JOHNNY, JIMMY, JOEY, FRANKIE, MARTY, TONY, TOMMY …

  Beautiful liar. Blood-sucking junkie. Baby-faced killer. Serial rapist. Lecherous pedophile. Thief, con, crook, cunt. Derelict bastard cock-sucking cunt slut.

  Fuck you, death-defying mortifier. Night-stalking my graveyard. I opened the casket of my tomb, and with my last dying breath I spent myself of all perfume, my night-blooming jasmine, my gardenia, the magnolia of my youth, pulled up by the roots,
tender shoots … pissed upon. Again. By you.

  How fucking dare you …

  Bottomless vacuum, endless gully, empty black soul hole. The center of a parasitic universe. You have leeched me of all sensation. All emotion. Sucking on my life force in a cannibalistic feeding frenzy that has bled the color from my skin, the blood from my bones.

  I endlessly allowed you to be the virulent pig you always were, but you resented my generosity when you were drowning in gluttony. I offered up not only my body, which you ravished as disposable playpen, but my very essence, which you were unable to kill with your contagions, but have nonetheless polluted and forever stained with your filthy bloodshed.

  Overwhelmingly virulent, you suffocate in a nostalgic surround gagging on ancient wounds whose fumes have now become your poisoned succulent. You feared my elemental magic, mistaking it for bad voodoo which you turned against yourself. Lacerated by beauty, you accused mine of being a covert sabotage that has accelerated your downfall.

  I would rather be crushed into mortar, under rock and volcanic ash, pounded into quarry and reduced to sandstone, broken glass, tiny bones like the beaks of small birds, than to be once more swept away, seduced by your brilliant bullshit. You have cast me out, cut me off, and corrupted everything I offered up to you. I am left floating on a sea of toxic magnetic resonance. The by-product of your diseased runoff.

  Desperate and destitute, you have dumped my remains in the valley of unrest, unreason. That is where you have taken me. Stranded me. You swore to never leave me, but you left me long ago, night after bitter night while still standing in front of me drunk. Demented with rage, your fear turned to loathing. Accusing me of perpetrating the crimes you only wish you had committed. Dredging through the dregs of my ancient history like an inquisitorial archeologist sifting the sand drifts of all eternity for evidence of my corruption, which in turn you claim has corrupted you. But you came to me contaminated, and I admit it has perverted your ability to reason.