Brief Background
My father was an alcoholic. My brothers and I ate sweets for the emotional pain. I got fat. Everyone smoked cigarettes then. I smoked my first one at around 12. This was 1965. I hated what alcohol did to my father but I started drinking beer at 14 anyway.
We sniffed Weldwood glue out of plastic bags so it wouldn't dry as fast. All the kids did it and the local hardware store always ran out. One of my buddies, Wayne, fried his brain after sniffing only a month. Hard alcohol made me crazy.
I was a smart, talented kid who sang, made up stories, and could memorize anything. I couldn't wait to get laid and had low self-esteem. Here is a section from "Fiasco!", my autobiography.
This was my first time doing narcotics of any kind (at age 17) :
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[Fiasco - Pages 72-74]
So Stupid.
One day, feeling particularly low, I visited Ralph Jones in his cellar, My Joint. Of course, he was a likable idiot and OD'd and died in 1977. I think, “Good riddance,” because he was the one who first shot me up with heroin. All of my family and especially my ex-wife, Jennifer, hated and thoroughly resented the drug people I hung around with.
Make no mistake, I started of my own volition but it did not end up that way.
When I walked into his cellar, the first thing I noticed was this sexy chick. Her name was Linda and she was lying on one of the couches, half-dressed and very stoned. Joe Walsh was singing
Garden Gate with the James Gang:
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Well I’m sittin’ in the middle of a story would you
Like to read my line?
Sippin’ on a Morning Glory would you
Like to taste my wine?
“Hey, Mikie,” Ralph began. “Wanna shot of this stuff?” He was scratching his face quite a bit as he said the words, in a lower register, haltingly. There was nothing friendly about it. Druggies just need another sucker. They need someone to rip off or help pay the freight. When I think about it now, and I hardly think about it at all, Ralph was the devil incarnate.
This Linda, not my girlfriend Linda, was so out of it and stoned that she would have sex with anybody. Thankfully, I never sampled her wares but her sexiness added to the attraction.
Part of the lure of chemical addiction is the fantasy. But the fantasy never matches the reality. At first, it's sweet.
I was ready. “Just don’t give me too much, Ralph. I don’t want any problems, blah, blah. Joe Walsh didn’t stop singing and for some reason,
Garden Gate was playing over and over.
Don’t forget to tell the sun
I sleep through the day
See him when the morning comes
Everything’s OK!
“Roll up your sleeve. I’m just gonna give you a skin shot so it won’t be too much. Are you ready?”
“Uh, no,” I said but stuck out my arm anyway. He didn’t clean the area but plunged the needle into my arm and shot the stuff in.
Captain’s in the chart room, navigating on a star
Can’t know where we’re going ‘cause he don’t know where we are
“Now you gotta wait a bit. Maybe 5 minutes.”
Don’t you think I don’t know how to tell the time?
Can’t you see you can’t sell me something that is mine?
The five minutes passed. I felt nothing and told Ralph. He said, “I guess you need a mainline shot. Wanna try?”
“OK,” I said as I watched him dump some heroin into a spoon. I had no knowledge or overdoses or infections. Then, he tied off a vein and injected the heroin. This time, I got an immediate jolt. “Holy shit!”
The dog is outside barking, something he can’t see
The garden gate is closing
The rush ended in a few minutes and euphoria like I’d never known set in and the world was beautiful. Ralph was beautiful. The nodding chick on the couch was beautiful.
And, best of all, I was beautiful. I don’t remember what happened the rest of that day, but the
Garden Gate was certainly closed. That part of my life was over, and I was in for something that I couldn’t imagine in my wildest dreams.
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End of Background.
I will get to the rest of these categories at another time. Mikie