Junky Girl

            I can’t write at my apartment ‘cause it’s too fucking hot and the bed’s there so I always just go to sleep.

Plus the dogs are a distraction.

Besides Ramona I’ve been taking care of my friend’s dog while he’s at school during the day. Her name’s Cash and she’s like some American Eskimo mix—small and white and fluffy and the sweetest thing ever. She’s the total opposite of Ramona, though they were both found on the streets.

Anyway, I can’t write at home so I usually drag my ass over to some coffee shop—partly, I guess, for the not very satisfying illusion of interacting with other people.

I mean, sometimes they’ll talk to me.

That’s the most I can hope for.

I’m way too shy and insecure to approach anyone on my own—without drugs, of course.

So I sit half praying for some sort of interaction, but it usually doesn’t happen and I end up leaving, hating myself even more than I did before.

But it’s probably for the best.

My, uh, “picker” as my old friend Zan put it, is totally broken—in need of repair.

Today I saw this striking girl, right—blue, blue eyes and black hair and intricate tattoos and this look of like pain and intense longing in her face.

I tried to catch her eye, but she just walked past into the coffee shop, disappearing for a good long while.

When she came back out she sat in the corner and lit a cigarette. She stared off at nothing. She stared and stared. Her cigarette burned down between her fingers. She fell asleep.

I scanned her arms for tracks. They were finally visible on her wrists and the backs of her hands.

So I watched her, like the fucking masochist that I am.

I watched her nod and jerk awake and spread her legs out.

She looked so…gone…disconnected…numb.

No anxiety, no pain, hardly even an awareness of where she was. Ignorance. Unconsciousness. Bliss.

My mind turned ‘round like a radio scanning for some sort of signal up in one of the canyons.

It would be so easy just to walk over there, offer her a cigarette, tell her I’ve got a place she can crash, that I can drive downtown to go score for the both of us.

We could lock ourselves up together—tangled in spaced out, time traveling, kaleidoscope, Heroin sex.

I mean, how do I not reach out for that numbness? For that just not giving a fuck?

How do I stay away from the one thing that I know will make everything better?

Knowing that all the fear and craziness will be bled out in the point of a needle breaking the skin.

It’d be so goddamn simple.

I watched her staring and her eyes going blink, blink—blink, blink.

She wasn’t there at all.

There was no life in her.

Just blankness followed by pain followed by blankness.

‘Cause the sickness will come.

Cold—vomiting—diarrhea—aching—cramping—spasms—screaming out but never getting any relief.

That’s all she has left.

Looking beautiful and stoned in the corner—for a moment—till the sickness comes back.

She’s a fucking prisoner.

And me, well, I may be crazy in the head, but I’m not trapped anymore.

I’ve been set free.

And that’s something I wouldn’t trade for a balloon of dope or a teener of meth or anything else that robs me of my life and makes me a slave.

Because I can see it so clearly, man—if I don’t get through the hard shit—if I keep running away—nothing’s ever going to change.

I mean, I’m either gonna have to deal with this now, or when I’m fucking older and it’s even that much more hopeless.

Or I could die, of course.

That’s always a possibility.

But, really, there’s no escaping it.

Not if I wanna live there isn’t.

So I looked down for a second at my computer and when I glanced back up the girl had gone.

It must’ve been a good hit.

Lasted nearly thirty minutes.

Motherfuck.

I breathed out long, long and slow.

I felt something like, I don’t know, sadness, I guess, and something else.

There was a sense of relief in me.

‘Cause I have a chance at life, right?

A fucking chance to live.

And I choose that today—for today.

And maybe even for tomorrow, too.

The world’s open.

I just gotta hang on.