(But you don't believe me)

Oh mother mercy, then take me up higher.

I guess I'll come up with you and rest awhile.

But I never wanted it to end this way, a forgotten dream in a broken day.

I fell asleep.....

Jonathan A. Marcott Jon's funeral was a heart-wrenching affair made only more upsetting by the official cause of death, which, provided by the city-was so vague, essentially meaningless and ultimately forgettable that it lived up to its potential, but these days I feel it isn't worth the anguish of researching and rehashing for anyone that was affected by it. Certainly, however, at the time we knew something was amiss when the medical examiner-or whoever's responsible for determining the cause of death in a city of ding-dongs-came banging on the door and asking for more information. And of course, I told him there was no more information to give because I ATE ALL THE DRUGS. And though by now I'd already discussed this critical detail on several occasions with just about anyone who would listen, I decided not to mention it to Jon's father when we first met for the first time to bury his son-who took a piece of me away with him.

Jon's pa.s.sing seemed to necessitate relocating from my apartment, which Emily was now understandably adamant about especially since we had plans to live together. And given the tragic situation it wasn't long before Empathizing Emily decided to invite Billy along as she thought it better for us to live together, until I broke my fist on his forehead and she thought it better for us to live apart. With that it wasn't long before she and I secured a comfortable, two-bedroom apartment on the other side of town and of course, the second bedroom was for Savannah when she was visiting which continued on as usual.

That summer and fall were difficult to get through for everyone, especially Emily and Momma Marcott, and the winter holidays would quickly escalate the anguish as only a few days separated Jon's birthday from Christmas. And on that first Christmas Day without her son, a despondent Momma Marcott called to ask if it would be alright if Emily, who was supposed to be spending the day with her, could instead join Savannah and me at my mother's condo in Bonita Springs because she was too distraught to celebrate and besides, my mother would be going through the motions.

"Hey, Emily's coming over for dinner tonight, okay?" I asked my mother simply as a matter of course because I couldn't imagine her taking issue, especially given the still recent tragedy and the time of year. After all, Christmas Dinner-in fact the entire holiday for my entire life-was never anything beyond a performance and even with that it was never a showstopper, so I a.s.sumed an additional mouth to feed wouldn't be too much to contend with but- "Oh, Craig! How could you spring this s.h.i.t on me at the last second?"

"Spring what?!"

"I'm not prepared for another dinner guest!" Mother had the audacity to say especially when her holiday recipe wasn't all that complicated.

"Just call and order another one!"

"ANOTHER ONE OF WHAT?!"

"ANOTHER ONE OF WHATEVER THE f.u.c.k YOU ORDERED!" I shouted as I returned volley in the stupid screaming match that I was already tired of playing.

"It's Christmas and they're closed!"

"Well then she can have mine!"

"You know-you're nothing but a selfish, f.u.c.king, heroin addict!"

Holy c.r.a.p! Coming out of the clear blue that was not only the first time my mother ever referenced my drug addiction, but the first time I realized she was even aware of it and I was suddenly at a loss for words. But then that went away: "That means a lot coming from a drunk, baby-beating, worthless f.u.c.k of a b.i.t.c.h whose dying husband preferred to have his d.i.c.k stuck between the scaly thighs of some psoriasis-ridden s.k.a.n.k -than be anywhere near the self-absorbed guinea pig he was married to."

So that put the kibosh on Christmas dinner in Bonita Springs, along with any semblance of a relationship I'd ever have with my mother again-and it had nothing to do with her calling me a junky. After all, I was a junky or at the very least a "recovering" junky but as far as I was concerned, her brutal callousness and insensitivity was now a liability and though I'd managed to somehow survive in spite of it all, n.o.body else needed to endure it. So after 35 years I finally hung-up on my mother, disconnected our relationship for good and would be lying if I said I ever looked back.

I'm almost certain that for the vast majority of the civilized and uncivilized world the notion of permanently severing maternal ties is inconceivable, if not impossible. After all, typically there'd be entangling alliances with family members, extended and otherwise, that would make it difficult to completely avoid the matriarch-but there would be none of those to consider in my situation. Indeed, I would eventually learn it was Celine, my sister, who'd recently shared the nitty-gritty of my life with my mother which she learned in a phone call from another junky musician trying to recover twenty bucks he'd lent me during a dopesick moment of recording-which only goes to show you there's no honor among fiends. Nonetheless, due to Celine's willingness to disclose the dirty details of my past, I'd make certain there'd be no immediate family members getting in the way of my estrangement from Mother, either.

I know from the outside looking in it's a shocking and perhaps even deplorable thing to so instinctively and decidedly dismiss not only my wildly abusive mother, but also the sister I grew up with-not to mention the brothers and sisters I grew up without. However, although I didn't stop to a.n.a.lyze my behavior back then I have since, and believe my decisions may have been a byproduct of the terminal family dysfunction that historically extended outward and onward for as far back as I can remember. In fact, as a child I was not only puzzled by the strange bond that seemed to exist between siblings, but suspicious of long-winded stories celebrating family togetherness and of course, later-as a resident a.s.sistant in college-completely unavailable for emotionally-charged freshman sob stories dedicated to missing mommy and her pumpkin pie. And certainly, I'm not the only one suffering from the family affliction; over the course of a ten-year estrangement from Celine and my mother, neither one of them has ever made an effort to reach out to Savannah-as the same old sickness is apparently a generational thing.

So, on Christmas Day, after Momma Goodman whipped out her yuletide jeer, Momma Marcott whipped up something marvelous and brought it over to my apartment for Savannah, Emily and me to enjoy before returning home to spend the rest of the holiday missing her son.

36.

"Where's Grandma Goodman?" Savannah finally remembered to ask on New Year's Day while I was driving her back to Jupiter.

"Flying around on her broom."

"Huh?"

"Oh, Savannah-I don't knowat home I guess," I told her as she dropped the subject and thankfully, has only picked it up a few times since.

We made it to Lion Country Safari which Amy recently decided would be the new midway meeting point, which also happened to be about 30 miles closer to her apartment. And just to start the new year off on the right foot, my 16-year-old, perpetually ailing Trooper finally decided to break down for good only ten miles into the return trip home before I sold whatever was left of it to a redneck for a ride back to the Cape.

The following day I purchased an old Toyota Camry for $4000 which was most of what I had saved. It wasn't long before I realized that as my bank balance was rapidly dwindling Savannah was becoming increasingly expensive, and that any fruitful future for my daughter would depend heavily upon her father becoming profitable. Unfortunately, Martin completely dropped the ball with the resume templates. Besides missing every deadline he was ever faced with his work was shoddy, incomplete and to be honest-I think he was more interested in working on cars than developing websites. Consequently, by the summer of 2004 I decided to drop Martin for a couple of entrepreneurs with whom I had more in common: A pot-smoking gla.s.sblower and a restaurant professional with a professional drinking problem.

Nelson-the gla.s.sblower-was sixty-years-old, retired, and less a partner than an exclusive vendor and indispensable component in the creation of the Betta Martini, a visually stunning, aquatic pet environment I hoped to market to betta fish or "Siamese fighting fish" enthusiasts around the world. Essentially, it was a 60 ounce, decorative, martini gla.s.s that I would purchase at a department store and then equip with a hand-blown gla.s.s olive and stirrer crafted by Nelson.

Tony, the other individual involved in my alternate quest for success was originally from New York but relocated to the Cape to manage an Italian restaurant owned by his family and one that Emily and I would occasionally frequent. He had grayish hair and was in his mid-forties, kept the company of another trashy alcoholic named Patty, and in an effort to make himself appear as something of a success to his overly critical father he recruited me to launch a local business magazine that he thought might generate some income.

Personally, although I liked Tony, my head and heart were with the fish, but since he was financing the operation I thought it wise to cast as wide a net as possible. So, after I put together a few mock-ups, secured display agreements with over a hundred vendors, purchased magazine racks and had a local printer about to roll out the introductory issue, I visited Tony at the restaurant to secure the necessary financing.

"No problem," he said as he pulled out a brown, wrinkled, supermarket sack and dropped it on the bar like it was the first time a guinzo ever tried to impress me with a paper bag full of cash. Little did he know, however, my grandfather used the same brand under a floorboard in his kitchen.

"What in the world is this?" I asked to feign better breeding just in case somebody civil was watching.

"It's uh, you know-the capital investment or whatever-the-f.u.c.k," Tony said.

Yeah, it was either that or the brownest, leafiest, low-grade Florida schwag weed I'd ever seen in my life.

"What the f.u.c.k am I supposed to do with this s.h.i.t?!" I asked as soon as I was up to speed with the weed.

"Sell it.i.t's at least a pound."

"Sell it?" I repeated back to him in disbelief.

"Yeahis there a problem?"

Obviously there were several, most notably the fact that I wasn't a f.u.c.king drug dealer.

"Yeah, there IS a problem," I said as I slapped him in the face with a reality check. "First of all, I don't sell f.u.c.king drugs and secondly-I don't know anyone who would even smoke this s.h.i.t let alone buy it! I know I sure-as-f.u.c.k wouldn't."

"Maybe the printer will."

"Yeah-to print on, maybe."

With that, in order to maintain whatever was left my professional dignity not to mention my reputation within the local business community, I did what any serious and responsible entrepreneur would do. I tried to sell the s.h.i.t to the gla.s.sblower: "Forget it."

"Come on, man-give me 700 bucks. It's worth at least twice that!"

"No way, man-not interested," Nelson told me as he stepped back and shooed me away along with any notion of purchasing the schwag.

"Alright then-how 'bout I give you the whole thing for $800 worth of olives?" I propositioned him, thinking I could use the weed to barter for the olives and then use the money initially intended for the olives to launch the magazine instead. f.u.c.king ingenious!

"I don't think so-Craigit looks a littleunsightly."

"Oh, give me a f.u.c.king break, man! It's not like you're over here smoking Purple Haze!"

"Yeah, but why would I wanna pay for that s.h.i.t when I got a backyard overflowing with it?"

He then brought me out back to take a look at his crop, and compared to the s.h.i.t I was trying to peddle-it WAS Purple Haze.

I was finally able to unload the gra.s.s to another gla.s.sblower named Walter Weiss, a transplant from Germany who-though unmoved by the thought of fishbowls-was interested in eventually partnering with me to help him market his artwork. And unfortunately, for the Betta Martini, "eventually" would come a lot sooner than expected.

Initially, I truly believed the Betta Martini would be a vast improvement to the standard, ten ounce, aquatic environments these beautiful but sometimes aggressive fish are typically restricted to. However, as things turned out, due to the sloping, conical shape of the martini gla.s.s it ended up being nothing other than a very elegant suicide machine as a rash of betta fish were suddenly discovered flopping around office desks and coffee tables across the country. But fortunately enough, thanks to a primitive set of lungs, bettas can survive out of water for quite some time and as a result-all reported attempts were successfully thwarted.

37.

"We'll be there in three minutes."

"I don't f.u.c.king have three minutes!" I said. "I've got about 30 seconds."

With that, Perry whipped-out his stash and we immediately ducked down the bas.e.m.e.nt steps of an old brownstone.

My veins had deteriorated extensively over the past few months, and since we were operating right out in the open I decided to defer to Perry's expertise and allow him to perform the procedure. He loaded the needle and due to my ravaged arms, several nerve-racking minutes pa.s.sed before he was able to locate a battle-worthy vein. Eventually, a useable pathway was at last identified and penetrated as sidewalk pedestrians pa.s.sed by in broad daylight without noticing. However, just after inserting the needle but before he could pull the trigger we were interrupted by the sound of a door opening directly behind me. I couldn't believe my s.h.i.tty luck. After ten courageous minutes working under extremely risky conditions we'd finally found a vein, and now the entire effort was about to be compromised along with the condition of my underwear.

With little in terms of choice we temporarily suspended operations. But, as luck would have it, after we scrambled back up the staircase to escape detection we stepped onto the sidewalk as a police car was seen patrolling its way down the street and in our direction. There was simply nowhere to turn.

Now the challenge was to make haste and not attract any unwanted attention, so we continued on as I moved quickly and inconspicuously. That is, as quickly and inconspicuously as one can be expected to move with a syringe dangling out of one's arm.

"What syringe, ossifer?" I barely said out loud as I could see the cruiser cruising down the street while we continued walking as if we hadn't a care in the world, and as if there wasn't a needle hanging out of my arm and swinging like a pendulum.

"At some point you should start writing some of this s.h.i.t down," Perry suddenly said. "n.o.body would f.u.c.king believe it."

Out of the kindness of his heart, but perhaps more inspired by a desire to have me write his product's promotional pieces, I was able to get $500 from Walter for the dirt weed which would cover the cost of the magazine racks but was nowhere near enough to print the first issue. With that I decided to cut my losses with Tony and see what Walter had to offer, and-not surprisingly at this point-after photographing his work and creating brochures and websites to help promote it he fled the country with some serious legal issues not far behind.

I just couldn't believe how many people had let me down in so short a time, and by the beginning of 2005 I began to recede inward. I began to take stock. I began to examine who I was and how I got there. I also began to write Needle or rather, Needle in the Paystack which was the book's original t.i.tle, and though I'd been writing in one way or another for most of my life-this would be something completely different. This would be explosive and disturbing. This would be icky and irreverent and of course-this would never see the light of day.

Initially, I thought it much too risky to publicize my heroin addiction given the failed business efforts and the likelihood of a career spent working for someone else. However, I still felt it was imperative for me to write down, never forget and on some level-do it justice because self-inflicted or otherwise, it requires nothing less than a Herculean effort to come out at the other end. In fact, it wasn't until this very moment that I finally began to feel a little normal and realize I was far enough away from it all to pick up a pen and put it in its proper perspective. Of course, getting to that point took seven years of almost complete abstinence which was about the length of my addiction, and though Perry sent me a couple of care packages along the way, I still considered myself, well, not so much recovered because I'm not sure you can ever truly recover from something so consuming, but at leastreprogrammed. Actually, I think "recovery" is a misleading term because you never really get it back the way it was. Indeed, your life-past, present and future-is modified, or even compromised by the experience: The death and destruction you've witnessed changes you; friends and acquaintances ignore you; rumors and raised eyebrows seem to follow you wherever you go and your credit score is reduced towell, I suppose you can imagine. But regardless of the aftermath, suddenly and really for the first time I fully absorbed the fact that I could never have continued on the way I was going, or even as an occasional or recreational heroin user because of course-there is no such thing. It even sounds a little f.u.c.ked-up to say out loud and that might actually count for something because I think certain adjectives are more at home in front of some words than others. I mean, you can call yourself an occasional drinker or a recreational pot smoker until the cows come home, but show me an occasional crystal meth user or a recreational crack smoker and I'll show you a liar with a little d.i.c.k and a bunch of missing teeth.

Anyway, ever since Perry read Wonderland Avenue and floated the idea I knew I would eventually try to write Needle, but I was never sure of how or even if-as a writer-I'd be able to do it. Of course, with some demographics and data I could move ma.s.ses to spend millions on products and services that would steal their dreams, vanquish their spirits and empty their pockets-but this was something entirely different, much more challenging and no one was gonna pay me to do it.

Although I had no idea how long Needle would be or how incredibly long it would take to complete, I still needed to pay the bills. Unfortunately, as I can only commence with that caliber of writing in the morning, it would require me to retire from my 9 to 5 gig with the software developer and once again chase the buck in the afternoon and evenings which meant something so awful and horrific it's almost too terrible to type! But to be honest, when I reflected upon it, there was nothing about working in a restaurant that could be any more despicable than what I'd been doing at a desk.

"Now we gotta sc.r.a.pe the s.h.i.t bubbles off the rim of the toilet in the men's room," said Marc, the head waiter, as the kitchen was about to close for the evening and I'd apparently forgotten a thing or two.

"Okay," I told him without commenting on what seemed like exploitation in the workplace. Certainly, however, this was hardly an anomaly in Florida restaurants where waiters and waitresses often doubled as custodians and janitors after a.s.suming their roles as servantsI mean servers, and all for the same $2.35 an hour which was minimum wage for tipped employees even though the toilets tipped like s.h.i.t. Thankfully, however, my custodial services at the Morgan House in Fort Myers were limited to a couple nights a week as I was fortunate enough to still have some lucrative freelance accounts with a few generous real estate and construction clients occasionally in need of a.s.sistance with direct mail or web content. And it was a good thing: "Can I get you guys some dessert?" I asked as I placed menus before an elderly woman who'd just finished a late dinner while her husband was outside having a smoke. "The kitchen's still open for a bit."

"Thanks, honey-I'll mention it to Fred when he comes back inside," she said. "But it's getting kinda late and if I know my husband at all-in a minute you're gonna be heading to the bar."

"No, in a minute I'm gonna be scrubbing the toilet-so take your time."

So that job lasted about a daybut at least it was a whole day. Fortunately, Stonewood-a bland, nondescript, corporate chain of forgettable restaurants serving forgettable food-was looking for seasonal help and I was hired without incident.

38.

When I arrived at Lenox Hill, Perry and his heart surgeon were discussing the pros and cons of replacing his damaged valve with that of a donor's, or with a synthetic valve made of metal. The metal version was generally more durable and less likely to require surgical maintenance in the future; however, it did require a specific blood consistency, so much so that not only would Perry be forced to take blood thinners for the rest of his life, he would also be prohibited from ever again sticking himself with a needle.

This was no idle warning. Even though the valve was synthetic, Perry would still be entirely susceptible to a reoccurrence of the infection due to the development of infection-friendly scar tissue and other factors resulting from the upcoming surgery. Consequently, if endocarditis was to reappear, and even a tiny piece of bacterial vegetation was to break off into his bloodstream the synthetic valve would likely suffer a catastrophic failure resulting in almost immediate death. As far as the donor valve was concerned, it was better equipped to endure such rigors without immediately shutting down; however, any transplanted valve made of tissue had an expiration date of approximately ten years, at which point it would again have to be replaced-regardless of whether it was attached to the heart of a junky or not. Of course, a valve made of tissue was-in and of itself-also susceptible to a reoccurrence of the infection. For a committed junky it was simply a no-win situation.