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he water ran out of the faucet.
Wait….that’s not right. The water seemed to fall out of the faucet as if
being drawn out by barely more than gravity.
I was fascinated by this for a while.
I stared as the water slowed to a small, icicle like stream flowing
straight into the bowl of a spoon that was covered in cereal residue from the
previous morning. The sink was always
seemingly full of dishes. The dishwasher
sat quietly disconnected and non-functioning a couple of feet away, serving as
nothing more than counter space. Even
though I had every right to call the owner of the apartment for repair, I
simply didn’t care to do so. Why bother
him? I pay my rent and it covers my gas
and electric and water. Plus doing
dishes once a week gave me a sense of accomplishment.
I am literally dumbfounded by the icicle like water, just falling out
of the barely open tap. Gravity overwhelming
the oxygen and hydrogen molecules. And I
stare.
I
grab a pill to relieve the seeming never ending headache that befalls me. A searing ache that radiates behind my left
temple. The pill is yellow and oblong. Its
markings are clear but I am absolutely indifferent towards them. I stare at the
bottle trying to contemplate how many more there are; how much longer can this
go on? I reach into the oversized orange container and remove my muse. At least
that's what I would like to believe, but inside myself it's simply a drug that
wraps my head in a gauzy sheet, where nothing is distorted but is different
nonetheless.
The
tap water has a strange plastic aftertaste from recently changing the faucet to
a newer, more contemporary style. Actually, the old one was nearly calcified to
non-usage and needed to be changed. I grab a small, red plastic cup from the
cupboard above my left shoulder and fill it with just a few ounces of the
plasticish mix of hydrogen and oxygen. The pill in my left hand, cradled between
my lower knuckles and the pads of my palm. The cup held lightly in my right. I
lift the left to my mouth and immediately follow it with the right to avoid the
bitter aftertaste of the hydrocodone acetaminophen[1] and
swallow the water and the pill.
Why
should I feel bad? Why should my mind wonder about abuse? I take the little
life saver as prescribed by my neurologist, a professional who has been to
college longer than I would ever want to.
But
my God! How wonderful the addiction is. I could never know this without having
went without for a couple of days. Hiding the ravages of withdrawals from your
boss, and friends and family is not the easiest thing to do. Your eyes itch,
your legs are crawling with invisible ants. You can't stand still but you don't
want to move. You can't sleep eat or fuck. Life becomes a short series of
miseries that you have to endure as your body adjusts to something it has had
in it for over a year. Prescribed by our finest. I smile as I dump the
remaining water down the drain and head to the couch to have a cigarette. Camel[2]....grown
in North Carolina and filled with Black Death. But incredibly delicious. Of
course the cigarette is only a minor figure in this dance, but an important
one. Its smoke provides and extra layer of calmness to my frazzled system.
The
drug doesn't hit me until 30 to 45 minutes after ingestion, depending on the
contents of my stomach. But I know when it does. My head gets heavy in the best
way. My mind slows to a manageable pace. And most importantly, the nagging
sharpness in my left temple subsides. Or the neurotransmitters that are sending
the impulses to my brain to indicate pain are dulled and slowed making it seem
like the pain is dulling.
As
soon as I feel the effects I immediately run to take another, but that's a
fool's game. That's how you run out of your prescription before you can refill
it. Us smart addicts know a little self-control. We know the rush is worth riding out instead
of compounding it with more. The
couch brought a semblance of comfort. My
legs ached for no apparent reason. I
glanced at the table tucked between the couch and the loveseat. The stack of books I was reading currently
stared back at me. Great books, modern
marvels of literature. My own book
couldn’t stand up to these masters….Pynchon, Wallace, Gaddis, Barth etc. My book was a tragedy of my own making that
somehow people seemed to enjoy. Not best
seller enjoyed, but enough that it actually got a second printing.
I
peer at the faux vintage clock hanging high on the wall. Its Roman numerals
tell me it's ten till eleven: not very late for a younger man, but in my middle
age it's late enough. Work calls tomorrow, and sleep is needed. But I wish to
enjoy the feeling running through me. To utilize the drug’s effects to some
sort of benefit to myself.
Instead
I fall asleep ten minutes later....
I awake and stare in the half lit room to gather
myself. The large faux vintage clock
says its 1:34, or thereabouts. I’ve
never been able to gather specific time from the clock, but it certainly looks
interesting in a vague fashionable way.
The sleep in my eyes is wiped clean by my right hand and I then proceed
to shake the nagging numbness out of my left hand as I had positioned it
underneath me while I slept. The tingle
is fascinating and short lived.
After somehow managing to lay down when I had fallen asleep,
I swing my legs back beneath me into a sitting positon and reach for my pack of
Camels. It’s funny how addiction works;
my mouth is remarkably dry, my bladder is full yet the first thing I do upon
sitting up is reach for a cigarette. And
I light it with my free gas station lighter of sub-Bic quality.
It is then that I trundle to the bathroom to relieve myself. Upon completion I stare into the mirror. My eyes glisten with the remnants of the
drug, and are shot with blood from my minutes of sleep. My face is prematurely wrinkled, and I could
clearly use a shave. I can even spot a
few gray hairs peeking through the morass of my chin on the left hand side, which
compliments said wrinkles and my receding hairline quite well. No chance of me passing for a young man
anymore. I amuse myself for a moment by
allowing the Camel to dangle from my lips as if I was Humphrey Bogart, or some
other long lost movie star. I give my
best “cool” stare back at myself, before smiling begrudgingly.
In the early morning hours, the apartment lies silent. Though I must say living alone means there’s
not an abundance of extraneous noise anyhow, but the stillness that permeates
the morning is palpable with the lack of traffic on the street below, without
the chatter and rustle of the neighborhood children, without the many far off
sirens signaling crime or emergency in some other part of the city. In about 4 or 5 hours, people will begin to
wake and go to jobs they most likely hate, and children will go to school to be
taught mostly by dead eyed, underpaid teachers.
But now….now it’s quiet.
I stick my finished Camel into the lonely can of Coke sitting
on the end table, and head to the minutely small kitchen to gather a new
pill. I stop suddenly in my tracks. Why am I doing this? It’s been a mere two and a half hours since
the last one. It’s 2:07 in the
morning. I am already tired from my
preemptive nap earlier, and I certainly won’t be doing anything productive at
this time of night. It won’t help me
write more, nor does it encourage in depth reading of one of the five novels
currently sitting on the end table.
This is addiction, in its subtlest form. Mindlessly heading to the kitchen, reaching
into the cabinet, unscrewing the top of the bottle and swallowing the pill; all
because your body wants it. And you don’t
even realize it. It’s tragic, in a
way. To be so thoughtless about something
so powerful that you are putting into your body. And with that, I light a Camel and place
myself back on the couch to stare at nothing.
I shut the lamp off and lay down, watching the controlled fire at the
end of paper wrapped tobacco burn slowly as I inhale. I smoke half of the cigarette, put it out in
the lonely soda can and drift back off to sleep.
[1]
Commonly referred as Norco, Vicodin, etc.
Depends on the dosage of Hydrocodone in the pill, versus the dosage of
acetaminophen. This dosage was 10-325.
[2] I
have tried every type of cigarette at least once. I always come back to Camel brand Filtered
cigarettes. Though Lucky Strike non
filters were usually a favorite of mine, you could never find them fresh. And trust me on this, you never would want to
smoke a stale cigarette.
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