The Ancient Tribal Junkies Of The Southeastern United States.

Several thousand years ago, a syringe-worshiping peoples inhabited this particular region. They had a rather simple civilization...most likely they robbed neighboring tribespeople and traded stolen goods for the small amount of food they desired and other necessities.

It just so happens that my husband and I have purchased a piece of real estate located precisely over the sacred syringe burial ground of these people, and our house appears to be infested with these ancient syringe artifacts. In fact, a syringe appeared in our bedroom just this morning. It appeared to have fallen out of a pocket of his pants; however, it seems that the logical explanation for how he syringe got on our floor was that, due to the particular molecular structure of this tribe's sacred syringes, it was absorbed from the earth through the floorboards of our home and emerged, fully formed, on our bedroom carpet.

My husband has no idea where this syringe might have come from, so it seems that the only logical explanation is that it is very, very old. Ancient. It was so old, in fact, that he had to demonstrate the needle's lack of a sharp edge, the crustiness of the brownish substance caking the sides, the plunger's lack of pliability. Sure, he used to dabble a bit with heroin and syringes and all that, but it's been, like, almost a MONTH since he last used, and the needle couldn't possibly have anything to do with him using. It couldn't possibly be his. Could I, possibly, have planted it there to trap him? (Yes, he suggested this.) Perhaps it belongs to someone else. (No one except for me and him has been in this house in over a month.) Maybe it's from when he relapsed (Note: relapsED. It's in the past. Don't put it in the present, or you might get a tantrum.) Maybe it's one he set aside, you know, for sentimental reasons. Maybe he was going to make a scrapbook or something.

P.S.

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We're on an upswing, folks! Now let me try to fix that real quick!

Heroin heroin heroin heroin

Heroin needles junky fix

Heroin heroin heroin heroin

Heroin sucks. Heroin will ruin your life. Fuck heroin up the ass with a dirty needle.

I have the cure for heroin. It's very magical.

I can't wait to see if that worked!

Fucking Wedding.

I feel heartbroken.

We had these syringes for no good reason. It's hard to explain, but they are junky syringes that have nothing to do with being a junky. Those are the syringes that I used to find all over my house. I bought this rubber chicken because he's amazing. We stuck dirty needles in him. It's funny to me. Especially the one in the chicken's eyeball.

The wedding was beautiful. Beautiful. As soon as it was over, I had to call my man. I wanted to tell him about the poem. I wanted to tell him about the wedding. The officiant said, "Perfect love makes sacrifice a joy." I cried and cried, all through the wedding, for all kinds of reasons. I'm so happy for my beautiful, wonderful friend, for having such a beautiful wedding. I'm so sad for my own beautiful, wonderful wedding that I had with the Ex. I'm sad for my own marriage, my present marriage, for its flaws and beauty and hurt. I'm sad for the way that when Kathryn and her new husband spoke about trust in their vows, it made me feel like I'd been stabbed in the heart.

There are these parts of a marriage, according to her officiant. He mentioned love, passion, and trust. We have this abundance of love and passion. We don't have so much of trust.

It made me think that maybe all the overflow of love and passion make up for the missing piece of trust. But I don't know.

And then, I just wanted 5 goddamn minutes on the phone to tell him about the poem I read, the thing about sacrifice that the officiant said, and to tell him about how in all that sweetness, all I wanted was him, next to me. I wanted to share it with him. I couldn't get him on the phone. I needed 5 minutes, 5 goddamn minutes, and he couldn't give it to me.

I try to remember, as I've been instructed to remember, in 5 years, will I care about the 5 goddamn minutes? I probably will not care about the 5 goddamn minutes. But right now, the 5 minutes would have meant so much to me.

The best thing I have to give him is the way I can express things. When I'm feeling love, and when I'm feeling like saying that I'm in love, it's the bst thing that I can do. It's the best thing I have to give someone, that matching of words to feelings. When it's rejected, you might as well send me away.

I understand he was talking to his goddamned boss at his goddamned stupid ass new goddamned job, but I want 5 minutes. NOW. NOW NOW NOW. I want to talk about the dark place inside of me that is where my love grows from. I want to tell him how happy he can make me. I want him to give me the short, short few minutes that it would take to make me happy.

I am really a very easy woman to please. I wish I could have the dishes done, a few minutes to express my deep and abiding love, and some sex. I don't understand why these things are so hard for him to give to me. I don't understand why it has to be so hard.

Why are there knives everywhere?

So the last time my husband was acting up with the silverware, he got us in a whole world of trouble. I keep finding knives, everywhere. There is one on the back of the toilet, and one by the bed, and one on the mantle, and one under the stairs.

Because I'm crazy, I am now Googling "knives drugs" and "knives drug paraphernalia" and asking him, frantically jokingly, "How are you using the knives to get high? Do you have enemies I don' t know about?"

So if any of you know of any interesting ways my husband could be using our cutlery to get high, please let me know.

***

P.S.

There's no stains on the knives. I'm pretty sure he'd hide them if he were really using them for drugs, and we do have tin foil, and I've seen him construct a lovely pipe from tin foil once before to smoke pot.

Blah.

I think he is just very, very strange.

***

P.P.S.

Tonight, while out at dinner with him and one of my real-time BFFs, he said that he hid knives everywhere because of our peeping tom. Alone, he told me that he thought our house was haunted. I guess he's going to chop up the ghost with our steak knives.

How many times do I have to tell him, "Don't come between a Southern woman and her flatware!"

Heroin or no heroin, peeping tom or no peeping tom, brain-crazed zombie or no brain-crazed zombie, let's leave my lovely spoons and knives out of it! I can live with a madman, but not if it interferes with my cultural rite of collecting flatware!

Dishes. A spoon. A displaced diamond.

This is not a real photo of our kitchen, but it looks strikingly like our kitchen.



Nothing can send me into a rage quite like the pile of dishes that's in our kitchen. Nothing except a burned spoon, like the one I found in the yard today. There's nothing quite like the juxtaposition of burned spoon, dog piss on the carpet, dirty dishes, and him making me late for my Nar-Anon meeting by taking a long and luxurious shower to make me so fucking furious I could spit acid.



The burned spoon was underneath a pile of wood. I have mixed feelings about this spoon. There was the other spoon earlier this week. It seems like there's been a lot of spoons popping up lately. I hate burned spoons. Burned spoons make me want to bite people.



This latest spoon wouldn't have been upsetting if there hadn't been another spoon so recently. But there was a spoon. There appears to be a crop of spoons. Spoons are in season.



I don't want to write about spoons. I want to write about my nerd-shame about how upset I was about being late to my meeting. This is my blog, so I will choose to ignore the spoons. Fuck spoons.



So I get home from work, and he's in the shower. I'd left work in time to be able to pick him up, drive him to his new job so that he could help the owner with painting, and get to my meeting. I was nerdily excited to lead the meeting, and I'd even come up with my nerd-happy topic, and I was pleased with myself, pleased with the opportunity to boss the meeting around and play teacher, excited to see my husband and excited for him to hang out with his new boss, and eager to spend the evening together after our separate healthy activities. But he was in the shower, and he stayed in the shower. I kept saying, "Hey, we really need to go. I'm supposed to lead this meeting. I can't be late."



And he knew that I was going to lead the meeting. He said something about it this morning. He asked me if I'd thought of a topic. And he'd moved my diamond ring, the engagement ring from my first marriage. He had been looking at it, he said, and he put in on a wobbly table by the door, and the dogs had knocked it off the table and it had gotten pushed under the couch. For the few moments before he found it, I was sure he'd pawned it. Absolutely positive.



And the goddamned dishes weren't done, which he'd said on Sunday he'd do, and they were stacked SO HIGH.



And so we left to go drop him off. I cried. Somehow, the juxtaposition of dishes, fear of him pawning, finding the spoon, him making me late...it was all in about 20 minutes, and it wrecked my day. I'd been so positive earlier, so happy with him and happy with myself. It's like some scab got ripped off. I think it also involves lots of unresolved feelings about my ex husband. I am keeping that ring around for a reason, as if I might decide to go be married to the other guy again. It's another trapdoor fantasy of mine. I can be a lesbian! I can go back to the ex! Things will be normal then!



I felt this profound shame at my disappointment at not being on time to be able to lead the meeting. It was nerd shame. I was excited in a nerdy way. It was the shame I felt when I cried in second grade because someone broke my favorite pencil in a pencil fight (remember pencil fights?)...I was upset because someone broke the pencil I liked for writing, and I was embarassed by having a pencil that I liked for writing. Nerd shame hurts because it's so true to the core of who I am...I'm a big ol' geek on the inside.

I am feeling rambly and confused. Perhaps I should stop this, now.

Horrible Needles

Ewww. I forgot about this scene from Saw II. Fucking needles.

Watch Pete Doherty Shoot Up Cocaine

Ahhhhhh!

The Needle and the Damage Done

Here's a cover of the Neil Young song. The original song is a tribute to his bandmate Danny Whitten's descent into and eventual death from heroin addiction. The song's simple and haunting, like all Neil Young.

I caught you knockin'
at my cellar door
I love you, baby,
can I have some more
Ooh, ooh, the damage done.

I hit the city and
I lost my band
I watched the needle
take another man
Gone, gone, the damage done.

I sing the song
because I love the man
I know that some
of you don't understand
Milk-blood
to keep from running out.

I've seen the needle
and the damage done
A little part of it in everyone
But every junkie's
like a settin' sun.

A Spoon

Goddamn it.

When we went to the psychiatric emergency clinic, there was some horrible true crime show on in the background in the waiting room. I wasn't listening to it, but one line from the episode made my ears perk up:

Junkies lie all the time.

He called me a few minutes ago and asked me to bring him a few things. First, he wanted a pair of shorts, and also his sketch pad, a soda, and something to eat. He made a big deal, however, about how I wasn't supposed to look in the shorts and I wasn't supposed to look in the sketch pad because there is some wonderful secret surprise that would be spoiled if I looked.

I was immediately skeptical, and I said, "Is this something that I would be pissed off if I knew what it was?" And he responded, "No. It's really good, and you'll be excited tonight when you see."

I told him that I wasn't sure, and that if there was something that I wouldn't like, he shouldn't ask me to bring it for him. He assured me that it was all ok, and so I agreed.

I couldn't find the shorts, and I had to dig around in his drawer to find them. They were buried underneath some t-shirts, and when I found them, I saw the top of a spoon sticking out of the pocket. I pulled it out, and it was burned on the bottom.

For those of you not in the know about junky accoutrements, it's one of the essential components of any good junky collection.

Also in the shorts was the plastic wrapper from a syringe and a bloody paper towel.

He was first pissed off that I looked in the shorts and refused to believe that the top of the spoon was sticking out of the pocket. I am pissed that I'd begun to engage in this shit--there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to look in his shorts. It's not as if he has bought something that he would have hidden there. He has no money. There's no great surprise...no special thing.

And how dare he attack my honesty? I'm not the liar here.

He then swore that these things do not belong to him. He says they belong to his little shithead junky friend, the one who was always accompanying him during the week of insanity prior to my finding his needles, when he'd come to my work and take my ATM card, withdraw some outrageous amount of money to purchase something that was an outrageous lie. This kid's parents just sent him to rehab, and my husband says he helped him hook up one last time before leaving.

I don't believe him. It all makes too much sense to believe him. His fits of petulance and outrage and feeling like a victim, which of course I'd been excusing for him and blaming myself for, all fit too properly into his psychological profile when he's been using. I was out of town for the weekend.

And why should I believe him?

And even if his story is true, I can't imagine why he would do any of these things that seem so unconscionably stupid. There is no reason why he should be fucking with his Mexican heroin dealer any more. There is no reason to be around heroin, ever, and particularly right now. There is no reason to bring the shit home--if its his works or someone else's, why bring it into the house for me to see?

And WHY ask me to bring it to him?

He must know that transporting class A narcotic paraphernalia counts as a thing that I wouldn't want to do.

I want this shit out of my life. I don't want to fear his death, fear he's going to steal from me, feel a constant need to separate myself from him because I'm afraid of the consequences of being too close.

As soon as it seems like things are going to be ok, there is always this shit. Last night was nice. I built him a website for his artwork. He cleaned the kitchen. We enjoyed each other.

And then today, this...

And I had such great plans for myself for today. I was going to clean the house, get a haircut, go to a meeting. All I want to do now is take a pill and sleep.

I think I'm going to take a pill and sleep. I'll sleep until it's time for a meeting.

Funny? Yes? No?

Here is a step by step picture recipe for how to make pancakes using junky works. It's important that your own personal junky eat, so here's a way you can encourage him to eat a nutritious breakfast using his favorite accoutrements de junky.

I could criticize them for not finding a use for a tourniquet. Duh.

Goddamn.