Heroin Chronicles

by Jerry Stahl

  “Does your daddy let you smoke now?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I should ask your mama,” Googie said, and headed back into the house.

  “Hey, Googie, don’t go away mad. I got a money-making proposition that I know you’re going to like.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I want you to hang out at Leslie’s house. She likes to play Monopoly and shit. Get into one of them games. Keep your eyes open to where Norman Zerka might have the stash. I’m sure that’s the fool who ripped me off.”

  Whatever Googie felt before, the giddiness of making money, the pride at having Sidney cajoling him to do a favor—all of that vanished. In its place was a Fatburger, pink at the center with a runny egg on top, queasiness.

  “You want me to kick it with a sheboonie?”

  Sidney shrugged. “I ain’t asking you to be one.”

  “If you think they got it, why don’t you just strong arm them and get it back?”

  Sidney drew on his cigarette. “Norman Zerka, no problem. Leslie might be a sheboonie, but she can straight beat the shit out of you and she’s strapped and knows how to shoot. Once, Lil’ Dil tried to steal her purse, and she said, You made me jump out of my femaleness, back into my maleness, and now I’m gonna kick your ass! And she did, beat his ass south and north. She was a paratrooper when she was living as a man. She went through jump school with Jimi Hendrix.”

  “Jimi who?” Googie didn’t hear any of that; what he heard was what Sidney wanted him to do. It wasn’t something he wanted to do—chance getting beat down by a sheboonie for the world to know. Fuck that! “I ain’t cool with this. Get somebody else to do it,” Googie said, and turned around again.

  “I’ll give you forty dollars.”

  Googie pivoted like Kareem doing an up-and-under. “Fifty, up front.”

  “Aw, I see you learning how to negotiate,” Sidney said, and pulled two twenties and a ten off a roll and flicked them to Googie; floating weirdly, they reached his hand.

  “You help me get my shit back and I’ll give you twice that much.”

  “What? A hundred fifty?”

  Sidney squinted. “Don’t they teach you anything at school? You knuckleheads can’t multiply.”

  “Shit, I can multiply. Ask me eight times eight! It’s sixty-four! How about six times six? It’s thirty-six!”

  “What’s nine times eight?” Sidney asked.

  “Ninety-eight,” Googie responded, with the confidence of a pathologically bad guesser.

  Sidney shook his head. “Yep, your ass really knocked that out of the park.”

  Googie wanted to say Fuck you, but he felt the crisp bills in hand and instead watched Sidney walk away into the darkness of the alley.

  “Naw, man, I’m not cool with that,” I said.

  “I’ll give you five dollars.”

  “Your ass just said Sidney gave you fifty. I’m gonna be hanging with you at the sheboonie’s house and I’m getting one-tenth of what you got for doing the same thing!”

  I sipped my Strawberry Crush shaking my head, waiting for Googie to come back at me. I knew something was up since he’d knocked on my door with a drink and chili Fritos for me. I knew I should have asked why he was bringing me something, cause usually his ass would be trying to bum a quarter off of me. I sat on the porch while he stretched out on the lawn like the fellas did, looking as rakish as a fat boy can look.

  “I ain’t kicking it with a sheboonie. Nope. I ain’t rolling with you so you can find Sidney’s lost heroin. I’m going to college. I ain’t doing knucklehead shit like that.”

  Googie snorted. “Look, if you never do anything, how’s that living? You always talking about tomorrow—what if you get hit by a car and die? Then all the shit you could have been doing, you didn’t do, and what did that get you? You just missed out.”

  “You saying I need to kick it with a sheboonie before I die? That don’t make no kind of sense.”

  Googie’s face trembled and he looked genuinely hurt, like a huge baby about ready to cry. I knew he was going to come back pleading something ridiculous. “Aw … come on … I thought we were ace-boon-coon pardners. We go way back, don’t leave me hanging, I wouldn’t do that—shit, you remember when I saved your ass at that dance at Forshay?”

  He finished but I knew that it wouldn’t stop, that he would keep at me until I either slapped him or gave in.

  “If we going to go, let’s roll. I ain’t going over there at night. Don’t know what kind of shit goes down over there at night.”

  We walked the two blocks in silence. I hung back when he got to the door, hoping that no one would notice me. After he knocked, it seemed like nobody was home, which was cool. Then the door swung open so abruptly that Googie covered his head and ran. There was Leslie in an aquamarine bathrobe with matching curlers and fuzzy slippers, wearing lots of makeup on her strangely girlish face.

  “Hey, Leslie.”

  “What are you doing here?” she asked in a voice that sounded sort of womanly and sort of mannish, but weirder than usual because she was slurring her words.

  “You want to play Monopoly? I heard you’re good. Me and Garvy like to play.”

  It seemed like it took a second for the words to register in Leslie’s buzzing brain, but she nodded.

  “Yeah, I love me some Monopoly, but Norman is always too fucked up for board games,” Leslie said, and waved for Googie to follow. Her robe opened revealing smooth, brown, muscular legs that sent Googie into a panic. He looked about for me but I waved to him from the sidewalk.

  “Where’s your friend going?”

  “I think his mama called him. He’s chicken-shit like that,” Googie said, and before I could run he was already on me, and grabbed my arm in a sweaty, iron grip and dragged me through the open door into Leslie’s house. We smelled sweet, cloying incense and strange music playing, singing and shit, and trumpets.

  “You don’t like Billie Holiday?” Leslie asked.

  “Who’s he?” Googie replied.

  “Sit down,” Leslie said, ignoring the question, and handed Googie the game. “Do you want something to drink?”

  “You got a joint?” Googie asked.

  Leslie laughed. “We do not do drugs in my house.” She laughed again and coughed. “You set up the board and I’ll get us something to drink.”

  Soon as she left the room, Googie stood. “You set up the game, I’m gonna check shit out.”

  Googie casually searched the immaculate house—all the furniture covered in plastic with plastic runners protecting the carpets—as though the heroin would spring up and land in his hand.

  “You wasting your time. Let’s bail,” I said, but Googie just got on his knees to look under the couch.

  Leslie returned with 7UPs on a lacquered tray.

  “I hope you boys are good. I hate to waste my time with rookies.”

  Googie snorted, “I kick much butt at Monopoly.”

  They began to play and we both saw just how sprung Leslie was for the game. She rolled dice and skipped her silver dog about the board, laughing too hard, even drooling a little. Googie glanced at me a few times and I shook my head. I had no idea of how this was going to go; how this was going to work out in his favor. All I wanted was to get the fuck out of there, especially after Leslie started getting all flirty and taking turns tickling us. Homechick wasn’t going away and all she wanted to do was kick our asses at Monopoly, and she was. Well anyway, Googie was up fifty dollars on Sidney and that wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t up on Sidney, not a dime.

  “I’m going to use the bathroom for a bit,” she said after a while, looking kind of irritated.

  “Let’s bail,” I said to Googie, but he shook me off and started searching again. I tried the front door but it was deadlocked. Googie returned to the table trying to figure out a plan, but soon we both noticed Leslie hadn’t returned.

  Finally, we got tired of waiting and found her passed out on the floor of the bathroom, needle in arm, like Sid
ney when he had that shit. With her robe twisted around her waist, we saw her weird-looking leather panties with rhinestones.

  “Yeah, you know, freaks got to be freaky.” Googie shrugged and went about the house looking for the heroin, and wondering where Norman Zerka might be. I hung by the door, but Googie called to me. He found Norman in the master bedroom, passed out across the narrow bed, with his head hanging on one side and his feet the other, pale like the sun never shined on his white ass, even if he had a big fucking ’fro, and just about naked except he wore the same leather panties as Leslie, like that bald chick with the whip on the Ohio Players cover. Googie looked over the room but didn’t find anything except for empty baggies with white residue sticking to them. Sidney was shit out of luck.

  “These muthafucking weirdos ran through the heroin faster than Sidney thought they would. Dope fiends,” Googie said, as we shoved each other trying to climb through the bedroom window first. I won, but then Googie noticed the little white television near Norman Zerka’s head. He snagged it and finished climbing through the window.

  “Hey, man, that’s my mama’s television.”

  “Yeah, how it get in there?” he asked, and handed it to me.

  “Norman stole it from her after selling it.”

  “Yeah, well, now we stole it back.”

  We walked home, Googie talking about what he’d tell Sidney; maybe that the dope was still there and exactly where to find it for another twenty … fuck that, another fifty. A nigga needed to get paid these days; times were tough in 1972.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t get shit except the chili Fritos you brought me.”

  “What’s that in your hands? You got your mama’s little television back. It all worked out.”

  Or so it seemed. A few days later, a VW Bug driven by Norman Zerka stopped in front of Googie’s house as he was watering the lawn, and Leslie sprang out still in curlers, bathrobe, and slippers, and caught Googie with an overhand right and dropped him flat on his back with the hose shooting wild around him. He came over and told me this, with his eye swollen and purple, looking around like he might get clocked again.

  Me, I stayed inside and watched that little white television until I heard that Leslie and Norman had left town after robbing the Security Pacific Bank on Jefferson. On the corner, I heard Sidney, who had found himself another stash of red devils and was back to dealing—though the heroin was gone for good—say that they were living like Bonnie and Clyde, robbing banks up and down the coast.

  “Romantic motherfuckers,” he said, while lighting another joint.

  PaRT III

  GeTTInG a GRIP

  LYDIA LUNCH is always rebelling against the hypocrisy of America’s picture-perfect Hollywood image, which it exports through television, films, and commercial music. Her art has always revealed the down-and-dirty side of the all-too-real American underbelly. She is the author of Paradoxia and Will Work for Drugs, both published by Akashic Books.

  ghost town

  by lydia lunch

  Never answer the door at five forty-five a.m. on a Sunday morning. Either somebody’s too high, somebody has just died, or somebody has just arrived who wants to kill you.

  I drove 2,777 miles just to get away from him. From the Hudson River to the Pacific Ocean and it still wasn’t far enough away.

  A low-brow dirt bike racer from Topanga Canyon who was hell bent on a cross-country creepy crawl had pulled up, swept me off my feet, threw me into the front seat of his dilapidated pickup truck, and headed west, gunning it at full speed until we hit the “Slum by the Sea”: Venice, California. He said he was on a rescue mission to save me. That he had been sent east by a mutual friend who was concerned for my safety after hearing stories about hospital stays and late-night 911 calls. Great, the sociopath abducts the schizophrenic out from under the psychopath in a late-night snatch-and-grab.

  Something had to give because I was at the breaking point. The burned-out buildings, uncollected garbage, broken streetlights, endless break-ins, chronic shake-downs, and general havoc wreaked on the streets of New York City’s Lower East Side, circa 1979, were a cake walk next to the damage being done in my own apartment. The alcoholic pill-popping Irish construction worker who I’d been holed up with for the past few months was getting mean.

  Jealous, cruel, and beautiful. An irresistible combination of mania and machismo. By day he’d play iron man. Up at the crack of six sporting boxers and a wife beater, Lucky Strike behind his left ear, throwing sandwiches in a bag, filling a thermos with black coffee and Irish whiskey, singing a silly rockabilly song, a sly smile dancing under sleepy green eyes, happy to just be alive as he kissed me goodbye and disappeared out the door. Everything hunky dory until the sun went down, the knives came out, and he stumbled back from the bar half plastered after banging steel girders together for another eight-hour stretch. The first thirty minutes were always filled with bliss. We’d kiss, fall back onto the bed, and batter our bodies into each other until one of us started bleeding. Then batter away a little more after swallowing a couple of Seconals with a back of Johnnie Walker Black.

  And that, my friend, is where the trouble came in. Loverboy loved his booze more than he loved me, and in return the booze hated my fucking guts. Probably because I refused to play slave to it and only used it as a lubricant for pharmaceuticals. A treacherous combination which triggered the bitch that provoked the bastard and resulted in a fucking that felt more like fighting, and the fighting would flare up over some petty jealous bullshit usually concerning who I was or wasn’t fucking while the dick was dry humping rebar over at the construction site breaking his goddamn ass, and on and on until the garbage trucks rumbled on their early-morning run and he’d pass out for two or three hours, waking up refreshed and ready to greet the day as if nothing had happened, with a “Good mornin’, darlin’, care for a cup of joe?” as he smiled whistling through his wolfen teeth.

  If Brando did Badlands while stoned on barbiturates and booze … well … you get the picture. The one that played in rerun like a bad Turner Classic that our TV eyes got stuck on night after night for weeks on end.

  Yeah … yeah, and so it went, so wrapped up in torturing the shit out of each other that the world outside our ghetto hidey-hole was a squirrel-gray cotton-candy haze that we were too fucked up to realize didn’t muffle the screeching or screams forever leaching out the windows and reverberating into the street below, and if anyone was tuned in they probably could have heard us all the way to the West Coast. Our psychosis getting carried away like radio frequencies emitting toxic shock waves into the ionosphere. I needed to get the fuck out. And fast.

  I spiked his drink, packed a bag, left a note, and climbed into the front seat of the grease monkey’s pickup truck, which was parked on the corner of 12th Street and Avenue B where he had been waiting for me to show up for thirty-six hours so that he could “save me.”

  Four days later we landed in Ghost Town. A grungy biker and his nubile Las Vegas bride, a bitchy witch dressed in black casting voodoo glances at the neighboring hood rats. They probably feared the look on my face more than I feared what they hid in their waistbands. The gangbangers left me alone. But the ghosts wouldn’t. They were everywhere.

  Some people are afraid of ghosts and what lurks in the dark. Terrified of the possibility of the unseen violators sneaking around within its murky shadows. But true evil is arrogant by nature and doesn’t always bother to hide its intentions under the cloak of night. It gathers even more power by flaunting its vigor in the unadulterated glare of a perpetual high noon.

  Los Angeles. A beautifully hideous sprawl. Stretching like an ever-expanding virus of sick contagion under the relentless sun as hot Devil Winds blow down from the mountains scorching the landscape. The promise of an endless summer shattered by gunshots and sirens, helicopters and hospital beds.

  In 1980, Los Angeles County reported 51,448 violent crimes, 27,987 cases of aggravated assault, and 1,011 murders. The Sunset Strip Slayers preyed
on young women, ex-lovers, and each other’s twisted fantasies as they played out depraved rituals with the decapitated head of one of their victims. Welcome to Hollywood, asshole, where anything is possible.

  New York City may have been bankrupt, decrepit, and suffering from the final stages of rigor mortis, but the California Dream was a waking nightmare of dead-end streets ripe with bloated corpses where bad beat poets, dope-sick singers, cracked actors, and petty criminals were all praying to a burned-out star on the sidewalk. All betting on a chance encounter which would flip the script in the lousy late-night made-for-TV movie of their wasted lives. I guess I was no different.

  Everything was fucking peaches and whipped cream for the first six months of matrimonial bliss, until the lunatic who rescued me from the maniac took a bad spill on the Pacific Coast Highway and ended up in a coma with two charges of vehicular manslaughter on his rap sheet and a letter at the side of his bed which threatened eviction from our Venice crash pad. I went home and started to pack my bags.

  In the same way that a shark can smell blood, a junkie’s sixth sense alerts him to any possible random opportunity that may arise in which he can hustle, steal, score, or move in on and take advantage of an unsuspecting mark’s benevolent disposition, a friend’s temporary weakness, or an ex-girlfriend’s first night alone in a near-empty house. It was five forty-five a.m. on a Sunday morning when the doorbell blasted and shattered what was left of my nerves.

  Impeccable timing. The bastard always had it. Even down to the way he smoked a cigarette as I opened the door. Holding it down between thumb and index, deep drag, a small puckering sound as he pulled it away from his lips, staring straight into my eyes before he flung the butt into the wet grass. A sadistic smirk creeping in and cracking up the left side of his face. His husky whisper, hypnotic and irresistible … “Good mornin’, darlin’, spare a cup of joe for the road warrior?”