Slash

purposely stayed away most of the time.

Suffice to say, I was miserable. I was in that state for a week or so while Megan and I just chilled in Kauai. The thing is, for as much effort as I’d put into getting drugs to feed my habit, every time I’d kicked, I never invested the necessary time to obtain the appropriate medicine to ease the process. It always seemed like a pain in the ass to get a bunch of prescriptions from my doctor; it always seemed like too much planning before the day that I decided to do it. Besides, I always have to do everything the hard way, so it had always been cold turkey for me.

After a week I got to the point where I could move around and I finally started feeling better. I could see that I was almost out of the woods; and I started to make plans with Megan to do the usual things tourists do in Hawaii. At the same time, I also got the wise idea to call my dealer and have him FedEx me some smack.

All in all this was a really dumb plan, because at that point I was halfway through the detox process; I would have made it if I’d been able to hold on for a few more days. But I refused to, plain and simple. In any case, my dealer could only send me a finite amount, so it was no more than a short-term solution. Looking back, I must say that it was a particularly stupid decision.

The dealer in question was the most high-end of the guys that sold me heroin; and he convinced me that my yearning could be fulfilled safely, via first-class mail, with very little chance of being caught.

I agreed to it, and the moment after I did, I remembered something: Mark, the guy from Faster Pussycat, the guy we’d duct-taped and sent to the lobby in the elevator, had recently been busted for having someone send him drugs through the mail. What the fuck was I thinking?

The next morning I was all jumpy, as junkies will be, anticipating the arrival of drugs. I still worried that I’d be busted picking them up. I weighed the pros and cons back and forth all morning until the phone rang.

“Hello, sir, this is the front desk; you have a package here.”

“Huh?” I said. “I have a package? I’m not expecting a package.”

“Yes, sir, you have a package from the mainland. I believe it was sent from Los Angeles, California.”

I decided to take extra precautions; I took the service elevator to the first floor. It let me out in a concealed corner where I could sneak into the lobby maintaining a sniper’s perspective. Nobody in the area seemed obviously suspicious, but I wasn’t sure whether some of the hangers-about were cops or not.

I was sure, however, that whatever it was that I was wearing was totally unpresentable. I slunk up to the desk, from the alley by the service elevator, and just went for it, keeping one eye peeled, so to speak.

“You know, I got a phone call saying that someone sent me a package,” I said, to the entirely innocent- looking-but-maybe-she-knows-about-this-thing girl at the front desk. “It’s totally funny because I’m not expecting anything at all.” I smiled… at least I think I did.

She fetched the package, which turned out to be an envelope full of CDs hiding the dope. When she put it down on the counter in front of me, I froze; I looked at it but didn’t touch it.

“Here’s your package, sir.”

“Is this it?” I asked. “That’s so crazy, I wasn’t expecting anything.” I looked all around the lobby, my eyes prying the corners, searching for cops or feds moving in for the kill. “That’s really odd, I’m totally surprised. I did not expect to get a package sent to me here at all.”

“Well, this package arrived here for you this morning, sir.” She looked at me oddly and held out a pen. “Will you sign here, please?”

I stared at the slip of paper sitting on the counter between us. I realized that if I was being set up, if there was any level of law enforcement watching this transaction, it would be the end of me, and that once I signed this paper, they’d have all that they’d need. I looked up at the girl, I looked down at the paper. I looked all around again, too obviously. I didn’t do anything for what became a very pregnant moment. Then I thought, Fuck it; I signed for it, I said thank you to her, and I ducked into the service elevator and hurried back to my room.

Megan was still out somewhere at the time, but when she got back I was high, I was happy, and the rest of our trip was wonderful. Call me what you will, but that vacation took a one-eighty degree turn for the better once I got my meds. Megan and I started doing stuff, we went shopping, I rented a Jeep, and we toured some of the sights.

From Hawaii, Megan and I flew out to Chicago to spend Thanksgiving with her mother, whom I was meeting for the first time. I finished the last of my smack in the hotel in Hawaii, and by the time we got to Chicago, I was starting to experience the typical junkie itchy twitchy withdrawal. I only knew a few people in Chicago, and I ran into one of them at the Smart Bar our first night there. This guy was one of the engineers who’d set up our rehearsal rig, and though he didn’t have a line on heroin, he always had tons of coke, so he hooked me up with a pile of it. When I got back to Megan’s mother’s house, I started shooting it in an effort to get myself straight.

Megan had no idea, but I could tell that her mom knew that something wasn’t quite right with me; I’m just not sure whether she knew exactly what it was. It was tough to keep my whole scene under wraps that holiday season because she and her mom lived in pretty close quarters. Their bedrooms were divided by a shared closet; so if the sliding doors on both sides were open, you could walk from one room into the other. At night, when I was watching TV and shooting coke after Megan fell asleep, I’d start tripping out, convinced that her mom was watching me from the other side of that weird divider. This went on for a few nights. I don’t know what I was thinking; I was shooting coke in her twin bed, between Megan’s body and the wall. It was ridiculous.

When Thanksgiving Day arrived, I took a shower and got ready to meet the family and friends; and I noticed as I walked down the stairs that somehow heroin had been cleaned from my system—it defies common logic, but my only explanation is that the coke had inexplicably taken the edge off on a very intrinsic level. I was out of my mind the whole time I was over there, regardless, and that Thanksgiving dinner was one of the most uncomfortable holiday meals I’ve ever had, but it did have its moments. We had plenty to drink and we had some good times, and then Megan and I flew back to L.A. and at that point I was clean(ish)—or so: no drugs, and very little booze. At least for a while.

Before I knew it Christmas was around the corner and Megan started planning a lavish party: she was way into the decorations, she bought a fondue maker, and she invited all of our friends to her winter wonderland. It was the most bizarre thing I had been involved with for a long time, and the fact that I was straight made that feeling pretty hard to ignore. The day before the party, she came home with about $400 worth of useless garbage that she’d bought at the market to decorate the house. That was my breaking point.

I watched her decorate our place, thinking all the while, I don’t even know who the fuck you are. We had the Christmas party, we had our friends over; and as soon as they’d gone, I set about telling Megan that she had to go as well. It wasn’t cool, and it was pretty explicit; I flipped on her for going to the market but that wasn’t the real issue: I was done with her, cut-and-dried, and I needed her to vacate the premises as soon as possible. It didn’t matter to me how she’d gotten there, it just had to stop. It had to end immediately. It went horribly: I looked her in the eye and said, “Go away.” And she went… her friend Karen, who hated me anyway, showed up and packed her up.

Looking back, once I was sober, I didn’t see Megan the same way at all. She was sweet, she was fine… but she was just there. Suddenly she was like a piece of furniture that I didn’t remember buying and I began to ask myself, each and every day, what we had in common. With nothing to cloud my vision, it felt like she was a stranger. I also didn’t have time for the time-consuming responsibilities and distractions of a relationship, so it wasn’t her so much as it was me. I was getting back to my old self; I was getting into work mode. All I kept thinking when I looked at her was, What are you doing here? You’ve got to go. I’ve got shit to do. We’ve got a fucking record to make. I believe I said as much to her. I treated her harshly, especially for me, because that’s not my style. But I just couldn’t take it anymore, and that’s the last that I ever saw of her. I’ve always had to do things my way; I’ve gotten high my way, I’ve gotten clean my way, I’ve been in and out of relationships my way. I’ve taken myself to the edges of life my way. And I’m still here. Whether or not I deserve to be is another story.

10. Humpty Dumpty