All my lovers are junkies

Kenny comes down like a kite wrestling the wind, leaping from gust to gust, pushing skyward against the inevitable fall to earth, but always with an eye to the ground, looking for that patch of grass, a soft landing instead of concrete. Even an astronaut succumbs to gravity sometimes.  He focuses on an empty glassine packet on the floor.  It is stamped with the word “LIFE,” which makes Kenny laugh because they used the same font from the magazine.   

“That LIFE was good dope.  When did we try that one?   That was some good fucking shit until they stepped on it.” 

The floor is littered with empty dope bags, each one stamped with a different name: Clinton Bomber, FBI, Purple Haze, Dirty Dick, and the unimaginative DEATH.   

“Jesus Christ, this place is a shithole.”   

He kicks at a pile of dirty laundry, only to uncover an old syringe and some bloody bits of toilet paper.  Rachel’s blood is everywhere.  The walls and ceiling are splattered with it.  Her needles get clogged because she reuses them too often.  It’s been hard to find new works lately.  So she’ll push on the plunger of a clogged syringe until the clot bursts, spraying blood all over the room.  Kenny used to think the random patterns on the wall looked cool, like a Jackson Pollock painting.  But now it makes him feel heavy.  He longs for white walls and open spaces.   

“I’m gonna clean this place up tomorrow.” 

“HA. HA. HA. You’re talking shit you crazy fucker you never clean anything.”

The words rumbled out of her in long deep slur, sounding more like a slowly-released fart than a sentence. Kenny looks up to Rachel, who sits on the couch in her panties, her wiry frame shaking with laughter.  A needle dangles from her arm and a jagged line of dried blood trails down to her wrist.  He often finds her like this, half-naked with her works still in her.  Sometimes he imagines her naked on horseback, her arms covered in needles that dangle from her porcelain skin. Junkie Lady Godiva.

Kenny takes off his t-shirt and wets it under the tap.  He pulls the needle from her arm and rinses some water through the works, so it won’t get clogged again.  Then he cleans the blood off her arm.  She looks up at him and smiles, still in the grips of the dope but starting to come around. 

“My sweet Kenny.  Always cleaning up my shit.” 

He picks her up and carries her to the bed.  He lays her down and curls up beside her, enjoying the warmth of her back against his skin.  His cock stirs.  That feels good too. He rarely gets hard anymore.    

“Remember the first night we fucked?” she asks. “When I came you said it was like listening to a flower blooming.” 

Rachel presses her body into his.   

“My Kenny, always the poet.  How many girls have you fucked with that line?” 

“Only you.” 

And it was true. 

They met at a party in the East Village and there was an electricity between them.  They huddled together in a corner, away from the others, lighting cigarettes from end-to-end and finishing each other’s sentences.  And when the beer ran out, she took him home with her. 

“Do you like to get high?” 

“I snort a little now and then.” 

“The high is soooo much better when you shoot it.” 

She kissed him and it felt like a swarm of bees in his stomach, his body a hive, a honey drip down his throat.  Rachel pulled his t-shirt over his head and gently kissed his neck and chest.  She got out her works, taking special care to explain each step to him so he wouldn’t feel afraid—how she cleaned the needles with bleach every time even though it makes the plungers dry out.

“If you share needles, it’s the only way to make sure you don’t get AIDS.”  

She opened a bag of dope and sprinkled it into a spoon, mixing it with a little water.  She cooked it with a lighter until the junk dissolved.  She tore a tiny piece of the filter off a cigarette, using it to get every last drop of dope out of the bottle cap and into the chamber.  Rachel tied his arm off with a necktie and Kenny wondered whose it was and if he knew it was being used to get high. He thought of the green and gold ties he was forced to wear in catholic school and imagined a school bus full of boys pulling them tightly around their forearms.

Rachel lightly slapped his skin until the veins came up big and blue. 

“I would kill to have your veins.” 

And she kissed his chest again and took one of his nipples between her teeth, teasing him. She cleaned his arm with some rubbing alcohol and held the needle up to the light, pressing gently on the plunger to make sure there were no air bubbles in the chamber. 

“Do you trust me?” 

“No. But it doesn’t matter.” 

Rachel laughed as she ran her finger along his vein until she found a spot that looked good. 

“Just relax,” she said as she gently pushed the needle through his skin and into his vein. A little pop of blood appeared in the chamber, like a wisp of crimson smoke.

“Look at me, I got it on the first try!” 

She slowly pressed down on the plunger and he could feel the junk move through him, submerging him like a Pentecostal baptism.  He was a fetus, engulfed in amniotic fluid.  

“That’s right baby.” 

Her voice hummed in his ears and his skin began to tingle the way it does after you come.  She loosened the tie and pulled the needle from his arm.  A small drop of blood leaked from the wound.  Rachel ran her tongue up his forearm, tasting his blood.  His body shuddered at the warmth of her lips.   

“Is that safe?” 

He knew it wasn’t. 

“No. But it doesn’t matter.”   

They both laughed at that. 

“I’m going to save mine for later,” she said.  “I want you to fuck me now.” 

Those words released him, unshackled him.  He was an unattended balloon, floating up to the ceiling. He watched her from above, pulling her shirt over her head and wiggling out of her shorts.  She grinned up at him and he was mesmerized by the tiny freckles that circled her nipples and trailed down her stomach.  He imagined himself a raven and her freckles breadcrumbs.   

Then he swooped down over the bed and between her legs and flowers burst from her cunt.  Petals fluttering all around him, as if he were inside a snow globe.  All he could hear was the trembling of her body but everything sounded compressed, the way the ocean sounds through a seashell. Kenny was sure he was drowning; his lungs full of water that tasted both salty and sweet. 

They stayed in her bed for three days, stopping only for an occasional cigarette or to buy more dope.   But that was months ago, before dope was all they wanted.  Before they quit their jobs.  Before they started stealing purses from restaurants.   Before they couldn’t even get high anymore.  Before they could only make themselves un-sick.  

And then the words are there.  Kenny doesn’t know where they come from or how long the thought has been in his head but the fucking words are there and so heavy on his tongue they just spill out of his mouth. 

“How come you never fuck me anymore?” he says and the words that felt so heavy now simply hang in the air between them.  

“What are you talking about you haven’t been able to keep in up for months?” 

“That’s cause your cunt is all dried up.” 

And they fight about that for a while, about his limp dick and her dry pussy, about which came first, the chicken or the egg until they both start to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.  And then they kiss and laugh, until they drift off to sleep again.