I HAD DRUGS ON THE BRAIN this morning. Specifically heroin (of course). For several hours my thoughts and actions centred on nothing else except using a teeny tiny residue I had left ~ and rushing out for more. This involved the biggest flap-about. I would gladly have changed places with Flapper the pigeon to have got down da area more quickly than I did. Because I got to what I thought was the right place, only for da man to inform me he had no wheels and could I come right down to him. Which, being already half way there I did. I took the bus fare out of the scoring money (too right!) Went on a massive excursion. Half an hour later I was there. I had to wait in a park with suspicious mothers throwing sticks at dogs. And workmen (for some reason) poking at holes in the tarmac. Then a random black man floats past. I had to double-take as I've only ever seen him in the front seat of a car before. People look different in plain air. Through the railings £14 exchanged hands for a third of a gram of B. He says they're half grams, but I think they're 0.4s or thirds. With this in hand I went skipping merrily away. A tubby black woman gave me a queer look from her front step.
On the corner of the bus-stop I found a side entrance to a huge local park which I power-walked through to the scrub at the back. Here I could have done my hit, but it didn't feel private enough. About three or four years ago I found myself in the company of two mentally ill junkies ~ one was an American girl. Americans in London are not that common (apart from rich international financier types). American addicts are even rarer. On that day we ended up in a huge bush needlepoking all together. I was determined to find this bush.
Crossing over a bridge at the back I found myself in a leafy walkland. I'm sure I was in the right area. Families with grandchildren rambling far too slowly. Well I couldn't exactly say would you hurry up and go away I have a bag of heroin I wish to bang up in these bushes? could I? Lacking the patience to go any further I delved into the first huge bush I saw. It was like a tardis-bush. It went on and on with miniature paths, trodden, so it appeared, by tiny Norwich terriers on dandelion-sniffing rambles.
Eventually I stumbled upon (and nearly down) a sharp drop with piles and piles of piss-stained newspapers, used drug works, cooking spoons (not the sort you eat Ben & Jerry's ice cream with, these are for drugs), and old pipes and packets and sachets of citric acid everywhere. In a corner was a seething fly-ridden splat of dripping diarrhoea. The whole place stank and looking up I saw some industrial window glaring emptily down on me. I shifted a yard to the left and the window was obscured by blackberry bushes.
Preparing the hit was stressful. Voices from the nearby pathway rang out disconcertingly near. I cooked up one hit. Looked yellow and weak. I shoved half as much powder again in the spoon. Now it looked dark brown. This dealer sells strange gear that looks the colour of beach sand, yet goes very dark when prepared. I'm not sure why. Once I'd done the hit I carefully sealed up the gear with a cellophane bag purloined from a nearby greengrocer's just for this purpose. Then I bared my bloodstained, gnarled trackmarked leg, slotted the works straight in and remarkably had the vein at once. In the hazy poppy-juice disappeared.
I held my leg up in the air to let it flush down. If I don't do this, my circulation is so bad there's a good chance the hit will sink to my foot and go nowhere fast, so I have to use gravity rather than my own heartbeats to pour the juice to my heart.
Then I felt OK. And I could face the day.
It was nearly two o'clock. I had been up for seven hours.
