Twice

When I gave up meth all I had was a soiled pair of underpants and some ripped cords and nothing much more. I had to report to my carer every day and she would give me some of that stuff which soothes the angry want and some cream for my skin which drove me up the wall with itching. My carer always told me to be thankful I didn't do heroin because the withdrawal is much more painful but that's like telling the victim of a head on collision to be thankful they didn't drive a Mini. My carer hasn't seen things when they're really broken, nor the immobility, nor the absolute depravity of the rooms I have seen. Nurses are all excessively real, their hands are dry and warm and their heads are grounded and their faces lined with things they've seen, but all they see are people at the end of their snapped tether, completely broken, eyes swivelling, faces torn and bleeding, and the nurses soothe them, tie them back up to reality, then send them out to be broken again.

Every night I am tweaking with my carer in a back room. She's always the instigator, she holds the pipe out to me with this sultry-sexy look on her face and tells me to go ahead and what can I do but do it. There's this wailing music, a wailing woman singing sounds of the shifting sands, the million years. So I'm tweaking at night in a flickery-lit back room and when I wake up screaming and sweating, the feeling fades, as well as the feeling of wanting, wanting a woman, wanting something beautiful, whatever that is, it just fades away and I am left with the world with its myriad surfaces, countless cigarettes and clean cotton on skin.