American Junkie

by Tom Hansen

  Soon another pretty nurse came in, pushing a new machine.

  “Where’s Gretchen?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. My name’s Jenny. I’m here to give you an ultrasound.” She leaned over and opened my robe. My ribs were there, I could see every one, the skin stretched tight over them like a lampshade. She squirted a cold blob of gel onto my chest, then slowly she rubbed a plastic device through it, pausing in certain places, all the while looking intently at some sort of display screen. The machine made a quiet whoosh whoosh sound, apparently the beating of my heart. It’s still in there, I guess, still working. Amazing. You’d think it would have blown up by now. After about a half hour she finished, packed up her machine and left. I dozed off.

  “Mr. Hansen!” It was the attending doctor, standing next to the bed, waving a piece of paper.

  “It looks like you haven’t had a heart attack after all,” he said, smiling.

  Jesus Christ. Make up your fuckin mind.

  “You’re heart is rotated in your chest. It threw off the EKG.”

  I gave him a confused look.

  “It’s good news,” he said, nodding his head.

  “Happens sometimes with tall skinny guys. The EKG only picked up half of your heart. You have a slight heart murmur but from what I can see it doesn’t appear very serious.”

  Well, that makes sense, I suppose. We are all born with things we inherit. Some have red hair, some long fingers or short legs. Mine was my heart. It was in the wrong place.

  [1976]

  From the back of the bus I pulled down on the plastic covered wire that ran above the windows. A bell made a muffled ding like it was underwater and the old bus rattled and squealed to a stop. I stood, tucked my skateboard under my arm like a notebook and walked up to the front. The bus driver, an older woman about fifty, said something as I got off. I ignored her. She was nice enough, but was always trying to lure me into pointless conversations.

  I was at the top of the hill, the edge of the plateau. From here there were countless routes I could take, all downhill for three or four miles until I reached the town center and the waterfront. I pushed off, having decided to take the back streets. I cut back and forth on the rough pavement, leaning hard into the turns, pushing the traction of my urethane wheels to the limit and beyond, into controlled slides. I saw birds and cars but couldn’t hear them. The summer breeze was warm on my face and I could smell the sea a little bit.

  As I approached Yost Park, a swimming and tennis complex, I turned into Shell Park II, a new housing development. The blacktop was incredibly smooth and steep and snaked down into a heavily wooded ravine for about a half-mile where it ended in a cul-de-sac. Houses that were just being finished lined the sides of the road, spaced very far apart. At the bottom the sun was almost completely blocked out by trees. Rather than walk back up the way I came I cut through the woods next to the park, across the ravine and over to Main Street, one of the main routes into downtown Edmonds. Emerald Hills sat directly across the street. A couple of miles across, it took up a large part of Edmonds, dotted with large expensive houses with views over the Sound, a gated community without a gate. Apparently there were no criminals in this town. I crossed the street and jumped on my board. Wide roads wound down past huge houses with white stone pillars in front, like something out of Gone With The Wind. I passed the house I’d broken into in order to ride in their indoor swimming pool when it was drained and they were on vacation, probably at another house with pillars in front.

  I had spent my entire life in this town, up on the plateau where people had less money. But I had never belonged here, never really lived here. Edmonds was a town of smoke and mirrors, nothing was what it appeared to be. It existed in a bubble, nothing from the outside world came in, not the Vietnam War, not crime, poverty, nothing. There were hardly any minorities. I knew one thing. Someday I would get the hell out of this place and see what the real world was like.

  After about twenty minutes I came to the town center where Edmonds flattened out, and emerged on 5th Avenue. The sun was still beating down, the heat rising up off of the pavement in waves. My skateboard clicked on the gaps in the sidewalk. Sour-faced retirees shot me dirty looks as I slalomed through them. A couple of old cranks in particular stopped and stood there staring, their eyes filled with hate, frozen in the center of the sidewalk like cows blocking a country road, flapping their ears. But they weren’t cows. Cows can’t hate.

  They were like all the people in this town. What was the point of amassing a pile of wealth, I thought, if all it meant was you became a bitter old crank? Apparently, a house with pillars, a yacht and three cars didn’t do shit for making a person happy. I bought a Coke and sat down on the sidewalk. Old Milltown sat across the street. The wooden facade looked like something out of the Old West. It was apparently supposed to be some kind of tourist attraction. It was filled with shops that sold useless trinkets. Silly homemade postcards, seagull figurines made out of wire, scraps of driftwood glued together and painted rocks from the beach. All the shops sold blue bumper stickers: It’s an Edmonds Kind of Day! These shops were constantly failing, only to be replaced by other useless trinket shops that soon failed, as if the owners could have cared less if they made money and only ran the shops so they could have something useless to throw time and money away on.

  I was feeling a bit disgusted. Is this all there is? Eventually I tossed my Coke can into the trash, then rode over to Main Street and Fifth, the central intersection of town. An elaborate bronze sculpture and fountain had been installed right in the center of it. It was never working, kids were dumping detergent into it, flooding the road with suds and causing the plumbing to break down or drunk drivers were crashing into it, knocking over the sculpture. Someone had even tried to commit suicide once by speeding down Main one night and ramming into it but the car had just flipped and landed in the kiddie clothes shop on the corner. The fountain and its sculpture had been destroyed countless times, but the town kept rebuilding it.

  I continued on, passing the old bakery where I used to get chocolate teddy bear cookies when I was a kid, the old Edmonds movie theater, the small post office, a few restaurants and a couple of banks. I coasted down the slight hill that descended the last couple of blocks to the beach, snaking my way through cars that were waiting for the ferry. I had a few minutes before the bus came, so I stopped for a minute at the train station, a small single story building with a tiny platform. It was empty. An old-fashioned luggage cart made out of planks and two bicycle wheels sat abandoned on the platform, leaning up against the building. Across the tracks, on the waterfront, the senior center was silhouetted in the setting sun. On one side of that sat the ferry dock, flashing from the reflections off the water. Beyond that was the marina, filled with expensive yachts and sailboats that seemingly never went anywhere.

  The old bus came barrelling noisily down the street. Sometimes I wondered why they even had them in this town, they were always empty. Everyone had cars. Most people had two or three. I dug my crumpled transfer out of the pocket of my jeans and noticed that it had expired. Dropping it to the ground I skipped over the train tracks and across the street. The bus screeched and hissed to a stop. I climbed aboard, dropped a dime into the meter. The bus was deserted. The driver looked at me. “Cashews?” she offered, smiling, holding up a bag of nuts. I shook my head no and trudged to the back, sat down, leaned my head against the window and closed my eyes.

  [1976]

  Curled up in the back corner of the van, I hugged my skateboard to my chest. The shocks of the old Dodge were worn out and it bounced on its springs. The up and down movement and the droning of the tires on the freeway comforted me as we headed for the contest in Olympia. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.

  The sound outside the van changed, and I looked up. We were getting off the freeway. Olympia was about an hour’s drive south of Seattle, the state capital of Washington. The contest was held in a shopping mall parking garage
. Sponsors’ banners—Coca-Cola, Sims, Logan Earth Ski-were draped all over the place. Skaters from other teams were milling around, doing tricks and limbering up. I sat off to the side and watched people getting in last minute practice. I never bothered, it seemed a waste of energy, I would always spend the time before a contest getting psyched up, like winding up a rubber band, then I would just let it all go. Sometimes everything worked out, and I won something, and other times it didn’t.

  After a while the contest began. Competing didn’t seem to be as important as it used to and I went through the motions. I didn’t win, not even a podium, but Evan won a trophy in slalom, a Coca-Cola can mounted on a white marble base, same as the eight I had at home that I had smashed one by one on the cement of the patio. After, we gathered off to the side. There were a few hours before we had to drive back. Three of us, Evan, Petey, and I, wanted to explore the town. We decided to head for the Capitol dome, the only landmark in sight. Rob came with us at the last second.

  The big dome of the Capitol sat atop a huge long rectangular building with big stone pillars all around it. It looked a lot like the one in Washington DC. A large courtyard was on one side of the building and a couple of other smaller building across from that. The entire grounds were made up of stone and marble and concrete, like something out of ancient Greece or Rome. It was a Sunday afternoon, the sun was shining down, and there was no one in sight.

  I skated around the building, staying in the shade under the stone portico. When I made it around to the front again, I saw Rob checking one of the doors. He was a thuggish sort of guy, big and bulky where the rest of us were thin and lean. I coasted over and asked what he was doing. He shrugged. The door was heavy and thick, all bronze and steel, and I could see in a gap between the door and the frame there was a heavy steel bolt keeping it locked.

  “Look at the size of that deadbolt,” I said, “you’ll never get in there.”

  He ignored me and began throwing his shoulder into the door. I figured it was impossible, that he was wasting his time and skated over to the others. Over the sound of Rob trying to break the door down, we contemplated what to do next. Suddenly there was a loud ping, and we all stopped talking and turned our heads. Rob was standing by the slightly open door, a large piece of the deadbolt on the ground near his feet.

  A large open foyer with a polished stone floor made up most of the first floor. A wooden balcony ringed the second floor, lining the inside of the base of the dome. For a minute we all stood there and looked around. This was the place where the politicians of Washington State came to make decisions. This was the place where the so-called people could supposedly be heard. We skated around the courtyard for a bit, the sound of our wheels echoing around the inside of the dome. We climbed a staircase up to the balcony. Petey tipped over a Coke machine. Evan hurled wooden chairs over the side of the balcony. Suddenly, I knew what I had to do. The others had stopped what they were doing and the place was quiet like a church. I walked to the edge of the balcony, and unzipped my pants. I watched the stream of piss fall and splash onto the marble floor and some broken chairs. Eventually we gathered back on the first floor, took a vote, and decided to leave.

  [JUNE 5, 1999]

  Gretchen. She was so nice, always smiling, always helpful. How does she do it? How does she come here, every day, see people burned, kids dying, all the pain and sadness and horror and carry on like she does? I couldn’t understand it. How could anyone see those sorts of things and then switch it off?

  I watched her move around the room. She was probably dating a doctor, I thought. That’s usually what happens on TV. I was a doctor, in a way. I knew more about relieving people’s suffering, about human anatomy and drugs than most real doctors. But that wasn’t what mattered, the knowledge, it was all about the mask, the title, the ‘status.’ Gretchen retrieved something from a drawer and removed the blood pressure cuff from its basket on the wall.

  “I have to take your blood pressure,” she said.

  The Velcro made a ripping sound. She leaned over to put the cuff on my left arm and I could see down her shirt a little, a glimpse of her black bra. I felt a tingling in my groin. My sex drive was waking up after years of being asleep. That meant that I was going to start thinking about that again, start desiring them, pursuing them, wanting. Waiting.

  Gretchen pumped the little ball and the blood pressure cuff tightened on my arm, then she released the valve and stared intently at the gauge, watching the needle go down as the air hissed out.

  “One ten over seventy-eight,” she said, “it never changes.”

  “Yeah, my blood pressure never goes anywhere,” I said.

  “It’s weird,” she said.

  “It’s because I don’t feel anything,” I blurted out in that way I’d always had, of spilling the core truth about something, precisely because it all happened before I could think about it. As Gretchen was walking out the door she turned back and gave me a strange look.

  She returned a few minutes later, and handed me something that looked like a small lollipop, the size of a Dum Dum. The wrapper read Oralet. I unwrapped it. It was red. I put it in my mouth. It was sweet.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “It’s a fentanyl sucker,” she said, “we’re going to start your dressing changes today.”

  Oh Gretchen. Synthetic heroin. In a sweet red sucker. Clever. I wonder who thought that up. Doctors probably. They think up the most ingenious ways to push drugs. You could have some fun with these on Halloween.

  Ten minutes after the sucker I still didn’t feel anything. I wasn’t surprised, it was why I never took any of the drugs that filled up my toolbox all those years. After heroin they were all just candy. Kid stuff. Just like after shooting coke, smoking or sniffing was like trying to put a band-aid on a slashed neck. It just doesn’t work. A few minutes later I asked for another sucker. I didn’t feel that either, so I asked for another. She said no. Apparently there was some sort of limit.

  Gretchen used the intercom to call for more nurses. After a few minutes they arrived, slid a backboard under me, lifted me onto a gurney. It was either extremely uncomfortable or mildly painful, I couldn’t decide. The Fentanyl must have been doing something. It should hurt like hell, there was almost nothing left of me, just skin and bones, my muscles atrophied, my body devouring itself for the last few years, disappearing into the black hole. My accelerated death. And then we were off, out of the room and down the hall with an entourage of tubes and fluids and IV stands, my own personal parade float.

  Wave to the crowd. Throw some candy. Fentanyl Oralets. For the kiddies.

  The hydrotherapy room was filled with stainless steel tubs and perforated steel tables that looked like autopsy tables. Everything was silver and steel and fluorescent light. The nurses lifted the backboard and slid it onto one of the tables.

  “Are you ready?” Gretchen asked.

  I don’t know why she was asking, I had no choice in the matter. She lowered me in. It wasn’t as bad as I’d thought it would be.

  I soaked for about fifteen minutes. Gretchen came back and turned the crank, raising me out of the water.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  I didn’t say anything, but I knew it was time, so I rolled onto my side. I could tell she was doing the best she could, slowly, gently peeling the tape from the side of my butt, then pulling the gauze out of the hole bit by bit. I hung on and tried to not make a sound.

  This must be what it feels like to be skinned alive. They should’ve given me fifty of those suckers. Fuckers.

  [EARLY JUNE 1977]

  It was a warm evening, that night, at Fisherman’s Terminal. I waited for my dad to carry some gear onto the boat, then bent down and took hold of the straps of his smelly sea-bag and heaved it up onto my shoulder. I got my feet under me, walked to the edge of the dock, stepped onto the rail of the boat and jumped down onto the deck. Floodlights high on the mast lit up the deck and the dock. It
was late, and the buildings on the shore were empty and dark. The smell of diesel fuel hung in the air. He was leaving again, but I was used to him being gone. Even when he was home he was somewhere else. I wasn’t worried either. He always came back. There had been four accidents and they only seemed to make him tougher.

  I could barely hear the water moving calmly under the creosote soaked dock, lapping against the pilings. I helped my dad get the rest of his gear on board. When we had finished he climbed up onto the dock and hugged me, and I felt the steel in his arms, strong as ever. He jumped back aboard the boat and waved as it pulled away from the dock. Mom and I watched it slip silently into the quiet night. It got smaller and smaller until it was just a point of light, and then it was gone.

  Mom and I turned and walked to the car, same as we’d done many other times. We drove across the Ballard Bridge in silence, the car tires humming on the steel grating. We stopped at Pizza Hut, not wanting to go home just yet. It was always strange, these moments right after he’d left. My mom was utterly devoted to my dad, but his boozing drove her crazy. She was both happy and sad to see him go. I was just sad.

  The week before, he’d asked us to go with him. Family of the crew did it occasionally, sailed with the boat up to Alaska and then flew back home. This time, one of the crew was bringing his girlfriend. It was a beautiful cruise up the inside passage along the Canadian coastline, then across the Gulf of Alaska to Dutch Harbor.

  “Why didn’t we go with?” I asked. I had wanted to.

  “I don’t know,” she said, pausing, “no...no...I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  I let it go. It was too late now anyway. We finished a pizza and talked about what we would do when he got back.

  [LATE JUNE 1977]

  I woke up. Someone was screaming. I got out of bed and made it halfway down the staircase, and what I saw made me stop in my tracks. My mom’s cousin was there with his wife. I sat down on the carpeted steps, gripped the wrought iron railing and looked down through the bars. They looked up at me and I knew. My mom was hysterical, screaming, shaking. I sat there until they said the words, ‘Ole is dead.’ I didn’t know what to do, so I went back to my room and curled up on the bed. I didn’t cry, and I remember thinking it was strange, it seemed like something I should be doing, and I even wanted to, but somehow I couldn’t, as if this particular event deserved something more.