Needle Too
Craig Jordan Goodman
Copyright 2014 by Craig Goodman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to use part or all of the work for classroom purposes, or publishers interested in obtaining permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to [email protected].
Many thanks go to David Gazzo, David Minter, Eva Novak and Michelle Giancola…because good friends are hard to find.
The events depicted here are true. Certain identifying names, characteristics, dates and places have been changed to protect anonymity. A few individuals are composites, some timelines have been expanded or compressed, and some of the dialogue has been recreated or reconstructed to help support the narrative, and to clarify and illuminate critical aspects of the story. A small portion of Needle Too first briefly appeared at www.Needleuser.com.
Needle Too
“The most beautiful people are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
-Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character; and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.”
-Arthur Schopenhauer
“Addiction is way funnier than recovery.”
-Craig Jordan Goodman
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
The Afterward
One
July 23rd, 1996
Richmond, Virginia: 4:45 a.m.
“Ya’on that shit?”
“Huh?”
“That fuckin’ shit! You on it?”
“Yeah, man—sure,” I said because I wanted him to go away, but also because I’d been on so much shit he was probably right.
“You on the heron?” he tried again.
“The WHAT?!” I said as I looked up from the bench where I was sitting and squinted while trying to see past the residue clouding my thoughts and my ability to focus in on the fucker.
“The HERON, man The HE-RON,” said a middle-aged black man with a broom in his hand as he gradually materialized before me.
“The HE-RON, man?!?” I repeated back to him annoyed and tired and scared and exasperated and mocking his mispronunciation or whatever the fuck it was. “No, I’m not on the fucking HE-RON!”
“Well…you nasty like you on the heron.”
“I’m nasty regardless.”
“Yeah…you on the heron,” he decided with a strange sort of smugness.
“What the fuck, man—you a cop or something?!”
“Nah, man—I’m the custodian,” he mumbled.
“The WHAT?!”
“The fuckin’ custodian, muthafucka!!—I clean da GODdam terminal!”
“Try cleaning the men’s room.”
“Fuck DAT shit!” he said. “I don’t even wanna walk passed it. There’s all KINDS of fucked-up bullshit goin’ on up in DAT muthafucka. Actually, I ain’t even the real custodian. I just sweep up’n take out the trash for dis nigga every now and den and he throws me a few bones…and you know what else??? It could be worse.”
“I have no doubt it could.”
“Oh YEAH, muthafucka—oooh-wee!!!” he said in a rush as if he was waiting for just such an opening. “When I was yo’ age, I was mo fucked up den you is! I was paying dem muthafuckas $200 a DAY for dat black tar shit. Fucked my veins all up. I was on dat shit so bad I was bringin’ in blow from Mexico just to pay fo’ it with! Two kilos a trip, two trips a month, $5000 a trip for almost three YEARS, muthafucka!”
“You’re lucky you didn’t get locked up.”
“Who da fuck said I didn’t get locked up? I didn’t say dat shit! You think I be sweepin’ up after some broke-ass nigga if I didn’t get locked up? Dey locked my black ass up real good for 18 YEARS, muthafucka! Eighteen muthafuckin’ years, GodDAM!! And I’d STILL be on da shit if dey didn’t.”
“Well, then I guess it was a good thing you got locked up,” I said trying to be friendly, while secretly hoping he’d get the fuck away.
“Oh yeah, man, dey locked my ass up REAL good!” he said again. “Me AND my boys—white boys like you…muthafuckin poodle.”
“What?”
“MUTHAFUCKIN POODLE fucked my shit all up!”
“Man, what’re you talking about?!” I said while unexpectedly on the brink of tears.
Then, this black, middle-aged, surrogate janitor leaned his broom against the wall behind the bench where I was sitting and took a seat beside me.
“Man, I must’ve taken dat trip 70, maybe 80 times,” he said. “Every time I never had no fuckin’ problems. Even when dey started bringin’ out dem dogs and shit, man—nuthin. No, sir! Dem Mexican boys packed dat shit up so tight, so right—I didn’t even know where da shit was at. POlice pull dem big muthafuckin German Shepherds outta da gate and nuthin! Never! Not a fuckin’ thing! And den come dat one day—I had dis feeling. I don’t know what da fuck it was, man, but I had a BAD feeling dat day wasn’t gonna be like dem udda days…So we pass da gate and shit and come up on dis raggedy-ass checkpoint in some muthafuckin Hebbron, Texas or some shit, like it’s some GODdam holy place and shit, and dey be bringin’ dis ol’ black lab outta some broken down trailer. Now I ain’t never seen no dogs at no checkpoint, see? I seen’em at da gate a whole mess a times, but I ain’t NEVER seen’em at no checkpoint but it’s cool, man, it’s cool. So da POlice is walkin’ dis ol’ muthafucka around da truck, and me and my boys is kinda like laughin’ and shit cuz dis dog is soooo fuckin’ ol’, man, too fuckin’ ol’ to be out dere in dat heat lookin’ for dem drugs and shit for dese dipshit muthafuckas. So dey keep walkin’ dat ol’ dog ‘round da truck and walkin’ and walkin’ and he don’t know where da fuckin’ shit is at, I don’t know where da shit is at, nobody knows where da GODdam shit is at. So dey go a couple mo’ times ‘round dat truck before dey bring dat ol’ black lab dog back inside dat fucked-up trailer and I’m thinking
everything’s cool, right? Den dem POlice come out wit’ anudda dog…skinny, curly-haired muthafucka widda big, fuckin’ head and shit. A black dog—real nervous and shit—and crazy lookin’ like a poodle or somethin’—the biggest GODdam poodle I ever seen in my life but all skinny and FUCKED up! Had dese big, crazy muthafuckin eyes and I knew he wasn’t right. I knew he was a GODdam genetic operation.”
“You mean aberration,” I said after thinking about it for a moment.
“Huh?”
“You said ‘genetic operation.’”
“I know what I said, muthafucka! So out come dis big, gangly-lookin’ genetic operation with crazy eyes on a big, heavy chain’n shit, and I’m thinking why do dese fuckin’ POlice gotta big-ass heavy chain like that fo’? And Lord a’ mighty, when dey get dat fucked-up dog a couple feet away from dat truck his eyes get all big and shit, and he starts shakin’ and bouncin’ and shit like a GODdamned puppet on a muthafuckin chain. And dis big, hairy, crazy-ass muthafucka is gettin’ so GODDAMNED jazzed about dis muthafuckin shit dat he’s barkin’ n’ growlin’ n’ cryin’ n’ whinin’ n’ pissin’ all over hisself and I still don’t know where da shit is at—but dis fucked-up muthafucka knows where da shit is at cuz he’s about to shit all over hisself. And da cops is laughin’ and shit and dey be pullin’ on dat big muthafuckin chain and shit and dey be like, ‘Good boy—Cocoa, good boy’ and dat dog’s got all dis fucked-up shit tryin’ to come up out its mouth and nose and he’s tryin’ to bite the tires and shit and the cops is tryin’ to hold the muthafucka back and dey be like ‘Oh, don’t you worry, Cocoa, we know whatchoo like, Cocoa, we know whatchoo waitin’ fo’ and I be like, ‘Oh godDAMN!!! Dis is one muthafuckin coked-up genetic operation of a GODdamn poodle if I ever fuckin’ seen one!”
I think I might’ve laughed at that.
“It ain’t funny, muthafucka! Dat bullshit cost me 18 years of my muthafuckin’ life. Dem cops ain’t right, man…Dey was cheatin’ !!”
“Yeah…they do that occasionally.”
2
“Hey, I know you haven’t had a big guy around so if you need anything—anything at all—you just let me know…”
This was heavy. Over the last year my grandmother had slowly and steadily deteriorated, and she wasn’t exactly the picture of health to begin with. Although I wasn’t privy to the details of her condition at the time, at some point I remember hearing someone mention something about her liver, while even with my own eyes I could see her skin was turning a sickly shade of yellow and her body seemed to have become concave, almost as if it was receding in on itself…and disappearing. And Grandma had always been my hero. But she spoke slowly now in strange tones around measured pauses about peculiar things I’d never heard her mention before in a voice that seemed to be coming from very far away. But all along and not until just before she passed I was kept entirely in the dark about what was actually happening, and it would be years until I’d finally figure it out:
She was dying on me…she was saying goodbye.
Anyway, maybe a few weeks after I got the first inkling of what was really happening—just like that, Grandma was gone...
“…because it can be rough when there isn’t a big guy around. So uhhh, you know, if you ever need to talk about anything, anything at all, I’m always here for you and I’m not the only one, you know—your…”
I was suddenly being exposed to the death of a loved one and all that comes with it for the very first time in my life. Of course, my dad had been dead for years but that was different and I was now beginning to realize I’d never truly grieved for him; my mother had immediately nipped that one in the bud and up until this very moment I still hadn’t even addressed the fact. But I was older now and felt more and Grandma had always been my knight in shining armor…or at least tried to be and that’s all that mattered. And I know she was aware of how violent my mother was but really, what could she do about it? By that point she was already well into her sixties and nobody was prepared to take on my mommy dearest. Still, I know it really upset her but she must have felt helpless and she was right. The 1970’s were a different place and time and besides, she was scared of my mother. Who the fuck wasn’t scared of my mother? But again, Grandma knew what was going on in the Goodman household and I think that encouraged her to dote on me a bit more than the other grandchildren. For about as far back as I could remember Grandma was constantly buying me presents, cooking my favorite guinea dishes and by the time I’d turned eight years old, furnishing me with what some might consider inappropriate reading material. But generally speaking, Grandma always tried to expand my view of the world in ways that would soften some of its harsher realities, so perhaps she felt things like Rosemary’s Baby, Midnight Express and Flowers in the Attic might offer another perspective to help measure my own horror story against. Grandma was so unbelievably important to me and now she was gone, and I still didn’t have the skills or resources to properly absorb and appreciate the fact that, like my father, she wasn’t coming back.
“Maybe sometime you and I can catch a ballgame or something…”
For years Grandma did the best she could. Rather than prepare one grand meal on Sunday for her three children and seven grandchildren which had always been the case, right around the time I turned six she began preparing one on Saturday and one on Sunday to accommodate whatever shifting alliances were drawn-up between her feuding offspring—all of whom could usually never be in the same room without the threat of bloodshed. And now, in a mocking tribute to her memory, Grandma was gone forever as her feuding children and family members finally decided to reconvene for the funeral…and they should have been ashamed of themselves.
As a result, I was suddenly reacquainted with my favorite cousins and Aunt, though by this point they’d been missing from my life for so long that I couldn’t even recall exactly why I’d given them such status to begin with. In fact, the room was filled with family members who were mostly unknown to me, quite possibly due to some unknown injustice they committed against my mother (or vice-versa) at some point in the past.
“…because I know I haven’t been around much and I should have been. No kid should have to grow up without a dad. So I’d like to make up for that if you’d let me.”
“I’m sorry sir—now who are you?” I finally asked as he finally managed to wrestle me away from my reflections of Grandma.
“I’m your Uncle Sal!” he said triumphantly. “I’m your Grandmother’s sister’s husband!”
“Who?”
“Your Aunt Dolores’ husband.”
“Oh…My Aunt Dolores? Okay, then…It’s nice to meet you, Uncle Sal,” I decided to say without checking for references.
“Oh, no—we met once before.”
“When was that, Uncle Sal?”
“Well, it was a while ago,” said my newly-revealed uncle. “You were just a little baby at the time but believe me, I remember it like it was yesterday. Those crazy, Jew-curls.”
“When I was a baby?”
“Yeah…so whaddaya say? Maybe we could see a Yankee game together and eat some hotdogs or something. Just the guys! You know, I’ve got season tickets. REALLY great seats…I bet you’ll catch a foul ball! How does that sound?”
“It sounds great, Uncle Sal—except for the fact that I’m twenty-years-old!” I said without putting on my indoor funeral voice and though I was clearly upsetting other family members within earshot—I didn’t know who they were either. “And besides…I hate the fucking Yankees.”
As threatened, Perry made good on his intention to deliver us to Florida and, after the surrogate custodian finished illustrating the potential dangers of mixing Poodles with Labrador Retrievers and Cocaine, I made good on my own intentions and inconspicuously snuck onto a half-filled bus heading back to New York. Of course, had Perry noticed me attempting to slither out of the bus terminal he would’ve tried to put a stop to it. Fortunately enough, however, while he was busy in the bathroom with a teacher from Tampa trying to s
atiate a voracious libido that had suddenly awoken after hibernating for years, I was able to make my escape. I ended up getting as far as Newark, New Jersey when I was politely informed of my “error” by the bus operator, at which point I was able to take local transportation back to the city because like I said upon first hearing the news—Florida was out of the fucking question. Even while on the brink of a methadone overdose I remembered making that fact perfectly clear to Perry…twice.
Though my body was soon in Manhattan my brain would be marinating in Methadonia for another day or two, which wasn’t at all surprising given the fact that I’d consumed four pretty potent bottles of the chalky, orange variety in as many days. And now with really nowhere else to go, the extreme degree of intoxication made homelessness MUCH easier to come to grips with; so in a fitting tribute to what was apparently my new station in life, I walked about a mile to Central Park where I decided to lay down on a desolate patch of grass in one of the more wooded areas and remain there.
Although I’d always been convinced that hitting rock bottom was synonymous with checking into the Whitehouse Hotel, I cannot begin to explain how unbelievably indifferent I was about not being able to afford even that caliber of roof—or lack thereof—even for just a night. Certainly, though, my absurd complacency with absolute homelessness would be short-lived and commensurate with the subsiding effects of the drugs and at some point, as other old habits apparently die hard, the thought of once again freeloading at Jeff’s apartment. And though I was certain he would’ve put up with me, in reality and for excellent reasons I don’t believe I would have been entirely welcome. Besides, I was in no mood to discuss my present condition nor was I willing to address the tragic death of my friends or my bereavement which, even with a deceased father and grandmother, was something I had little to no experience with.
Within a day or so, literally with hat in hand and little else in terms of choice, I would eventually drag myself out of the park and use whatever money I still had for a train ticket to Stamford. Honestly, though, the thought of it made my heart race. I hadn’t seen or spoken to my mother since that glass table exploded under my ass two years prior, though I would soon learn that my Uncle John—her brother—had recently died of cancer while I was…unavailable. Of course, unlike the death of Eric and Virginia Holst, the news of his passing would have little impact on me, and I suppose that was partially due to where my head was at. But the more enduring reason was simply a byproduct of the dysfunctional and self-destructive way in which my family functioned.
Needle Too: Junkies in Paradise Page 1
