Free Needle Too by Craig Goodman

tolerance, by the time I returned to my coworkers I was pretty high from just a short snort of subpar dope but no one seemed to notice—though that may have been due to the decoy drink I never drank but always held in order to help maintain the…
performance
. Of course, it would’ve been wiser to bypass Calloway’s and not risk nodding off and blowing my cover, but I absolutely had to kill time and stay out of my mother’s apartment if there was any chance of her being awake and alert—
especially while I was high
. But regardless, due to time constraints, I would have no choice but to relinquish my After Hours Club membership in exchange for several hours spent nodding in my sister’s bedroom—and though I faced a harsh rebuke from the strippers, like any other dope fiend
I had my priorities
. After all, steamy sex with exotic dancers was a sad substitute for true love and companionship and unfortunately, that was the only time I could get high without getting caught. And of course, it was absolutely imperative that I keep my secret safe from Randy and Jack as well, who—unlike my mother—were fully aware of why I was in Stamford to begin with. I knew for certain that if they even got an
inkling
of what I was up to I’d be fired immediately out of nothing other than concern—and then you know what that would mean: I wouldn’t be able to get high.
    Obviously, I was once again already overcome by the functioning-addict mentality, but this time I was unencumbered by any musical aspirations. And of course, I wasn’t even addressing the fact that Iwas living with my mother on borrowed time but certainly, I had a history of looking the other way until it was too late. So, in order to avoid my coworker’s suspicions and my mother’s waking hours, I’d usually hang-out halfway high with a drink prop at Calloway’s until 2 or 3 a.m. when Jack and Randy called it a night and transported me back home—where I’d finish the rest of my stash and remain in a pretty potent nod until my mother left for work and I fell asleep.
    I was able to maintain the façade through the end of the summer and into the fall, though I was clearly becoming an entirely different breed of junky. Gone was the junky of old, the who-gives-a-fuck-about-what-anyone-thinks junky. I was a brand new and
improved
junky—a redesigned and reengineered junky. I was a
sneaky
junky and a
lying
junky and a
manipulative
junky but nonetheless, a painstakingly careful, meticulous and detail-oriented junky that closely monitored his behavior and surroundings, always avoided dopesickness, never got arrested, controlled his costs and kept his secret hidden from
everyone
— without exception . In fact, every other week I now invented a reason to organize a Rock and Roll Staff Field Trip to the city which was just a ruse for a free ride and a chance to sneak away from the group and replenish my stash with dope that was much less expensive, much more potent, and when you factored in the cost effectiveness of the needle—a mere
fraction
of the price of Stamford’s product. Oh yeah, that’s right. I also started booting again. Clearly, though the vehicle was no longer an artistic or glamorous one, the career destination was suddenly the same as I became nothing other than an aspiring professional junky subconsciously devising a brand new road map to success.
    8
    Uh oh—I think I’m missing something. Where’s all that noise coming from? I think I know but I can’t remember. And I know I remembered a second ago but I forgot again. It’s so hard to remember anything unless I make a conscious effort to dwell on it. But then I forget to do that. And if I don’t focus continually on it it’ll probably be lost to the ages. It will most likely be lost to the ages. It always has been…down through the ages…there are many, many things that have been lost…irretrievably lost
.
    “Happy birthday to…”
    And there’s people singing but I can’t remember who