All or Nothing (9 page)

We stumbled out of the club hours later, still high, and walked to the end of Las Ramblas until we saw a marquee reading
LIVE SEX SHOWS
. We didn't know what this meant, but we had to check it out. A woman who had to be at least seventy-five years old checked our IDs, and after we paid she stamped our hands and pointed down a long, narrow flight of stairs. Finally we entered a big open room with a stage and a bunch of chairs. In the first row of chairs sat Japanese businessmen who were all holding cameras.

Fred and I sat down, having no idea what to expect. After a while a woman walked onto the stage and took off all her clothes, then got on all fours and started touching herself. We were only two feet from the stage and couldn't believe our eyes. The woman then came out into the crowd and started touching us, kissing my ear and playing with Fred's hair. Finally she stopped in front of one guy and started dragging him up onto the stage. At first he protested, but it was obvious that he was part of the act. He eventually went up onstage, and the woman started blowing him right there in front of us. The Japanese guys seemed totally into it, but Fred and I were pretty freaked out. After a few minutes the two of them started fucking, and when he finished, everybody started clapping on cue as if they were watching a performance of
West Side Story.

The whole time this was going on women started coming around and trying to seduce the men in the audience. One woman came up to me who had to weigh at least 250 pounds. She looked like a linebacker for the Jets. I was getting turned on from watching what was going on onstage, but I didn't really want to have sex with her. “I just want a blow job,” I told her. The woman grabbed me, threw me over her shoulder, and carried me off. She threw me into a chair and started pulling my dick out of my pants. Suddenly the old woman who had checked us in was standing in front of me, shining a flashlight in my face. “Give me the money,” she yelled. I handed it over, and she left the other woman to her job. Suffice it to say, it was worth every penny.

The rest of our time in Barcelona was spent tapas hopping along Las Ramblas, indulging in local beers and delicious seafood—mussels and anchovies that had, amazingly, come out of a can. I had grown up believing that any food from a can was automatically gross, but in Barcelona it was completely different; this was high-quality stuff, drowning in the best Spanish olive oil.

By the time we arrived in Madrid for our flight home, we had run through the last of our refills of the pills and were dope-sick again. Having no idea how we'd survive the eight-hour flight home without getting straight, I was determined to score. We went to the pharmacy in the airport, and I told them the same story I had concocted in France, including the fact that I couldn't fly without my pain pills and I was afraid I'd have a panic attack. The pharmacist again told me I needed a script, so I pleaded, “How can I talk to a doctor?” She got a doctor on the phone and handed it to me, and I somehow convinced the doctor over the phone to write me a script for five Vicodin—just enough to last the flight.

Fred couldn't believe I had managed to convince a doctor to write a prescription for me over the phone, and I couldn't really believe it either. But when I needed to score, I always found a way. Fred and I walked to the gate, and a few minutes later we heard them calling my name. The pharmacy had sent my prescription to the gate on a go-cart so that I wouldn't miss my flight. Fred and I immediately each took half of the pills, passed out, and woke up eight hours later in the States.

As soon as I got home everyone could tell that I was different. I went back to work at Smith's, but my motivation was gone. My addiction was at a new level. Cate knew I had cheated on her in Europe. She sensed the change in me, and we quickly broke up. It's possible that I was looking for an excuse, but I saw this as just another reason to continue going downhill.

Consommé

Consommé
: A clear soup made from bouillon or stock with a mixture of ground meats, carrots, celery, onions, tomatoes, and egg whites. Simmering the consommé for a long time while frequently stirring it brings impurities to the surface of the liquid, which are further drawn out by the presence of acid from the tomatoes.

B
ack from Europe, I was seventeen years old with a GED, no ambition for any more school, and a raging drug habit. My friends were heading to other cities and states to start college, and I felt stuck at home and restless. My friend Charnam was starting his freshman year at Florida State University in Tallahassee, and I convinced my parents that I should go up there with him. I told them I would room with Charnam, enroll at a community college, and get a job. They went right along with this plan, even helping me move in and buying me everything I needed for my new apartment.

Two days after arriving in Tallahassee I was out of drugs and dope-sick. I needed to score. Thinking I could replicate my amazing luck in Europe, I started scouring the phone book and calling up area hospitals. Finally, one of the operators pointed me in the direction of a methadone clinic. By the time I called it was already closed for the day. “Come down tomorrow, honey,” the clinic's receptionist told me.

First thing the next morning I drove about fifteen minutes to the clinic, which was located in a grim, partially deserted strip mall. It was starting to dawn on me how different Tallahassee was from South Florida. It was like the Deep South, and decal-laden pickup trucks filled the parking lot that morning. Outside, a group of people huddled together, nervously swaying from foot to foot while smoking an endless succession of cigarettes. Inside, the common area smelled of stale smoke. An old television was turned on to the news, and a dry-erase board listed everyone's name and how long they had been clean.

When it was my turn to meet with the doctor, he performed a cursory physical. This time I didn't have to put on much of an act. I hadn't been shooting drugs, but after checking my pulse and my pupils, the doctor could see that I was indeed going through withdrawal. I was approved immediately and made my way over to the nurses' station. “Bless you, child,” a nurse named Maryann greeted me. Short, chubby, and covered in freckles, she was wearing colorful nurse's scrubs. Behind Maryann was a large container shaped like a fish tank and filled with a pink liquid. New patients started with fifteen milligrams a day, going up or down five milligrams until they reached the right dose. “That will be eleven dollars, Mr. Schenker,” Maryann said. I handed her the money and got my dose.

Back in my car, Tool was playing on the radio and I felt great. For just eleven bucks a day I could get legally loaded. The only catch was that I had to be at the clinic by 9:00
A.M.
every morning, but I was ecstatic to have stumbled upon this place. Every day I went up five milligrams until I got to fifty or sixty milligrams. But I wasn't doing anything else. I had signed up for classes at the community college, but after attending maybe three classes I just stopped going. My parents were paying for everything, so I had no motivation to look for a job.

Instead, I just sat alone in my apartment eating candy bars and smoking cigarettes. The methadone clinic was the only place I went other than the supermarket. Being fucked up on methadone severely affected my most basic bodily functions. I stood over the toilet for fifteen minutes waiting for urine to come out. But I still cooked. One night I woke up in the middle of the night and started making doughnuts from scratch in my underwear. Another time I went to the supermarket, bought a duck, and proceeded to make a seven-course tasting menu for Charnam and some friends at 3:00
A.M.

It didn't take long for me to become hooked on methadone. I knew I was drifting, and it bothered me that I was becoming a hermit. In Parkland I had always felt like an outsider but had been able to connect with friends who were misfits like me. Tallahassee was different, and I quickly learned it was more populated with blue-collar workers than the privileged world I'd grown up in. I was so used to my parents satisfying my every need, I had no idea how to live in the real world. These people woke up every day not knowing what sort of pain they would face or where their next meal would come from, and instead of feeling grateful to my parents for sparing me this, I resented the fact that I'd never learned how to fend for myself.

Despite how determined I was to become more independent, even I could see that there was nothing for me in Tallahassee. I could tell it was a dead end, and after only a few months there I went back to Parkland. I moved back in with my parents and returned to my job at Smith's as if nothing had changed, except for my new addiction to methadone.

When I told them I was leaving, the clinic in Tallahassee made arrangements in advance for me to transfer to a new methadone clinic in Pompano. Compared to Tallahassee, this clinic was busier and brought in a different world. While three-quarters of the patients were the same types of junkies I'd seen at the other clinic, there was also a small percentage of functioning addicts. I lined up every morning alongside doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and soccer moms as we waited with the other junkies to get our shots.

Other than methadone, drugs had been hard to come by in Tallahassee, but that wasn't a problem in Broward County. Back home, I fell back in with my same group of friends, and within weeks my pill addiction resurfaced with a vengeance. At the new methadone clinic there were “therapists” whose job it was to monitor the patients and make sure they weren't using. Sometimes they pulled someone out of line and interrogated him or her with a bunch of questions. Other times they selected someone for random drug testing. In the back of my head I knew my luck was running out, but that didn't stop me from using. Most days I showed up to the clinic either loaded or dope-sick.

Sure enough, on Monday, January 20, I received my last dose of methadone. The next day the clinic booted me out for pissing dirty. For weeks they had been pumping me full of the strongest opiate imaginable, and because I dabbled on the side I was booted out. Suddenly I was without a daily source of opiates. Heroin gets all the notoriety when it comes to withdrawal, but kicking methadone is actually much worse. Heroin and methadone have similar withdrawal characteristics, but methadone takes it to a deeper level. At first I just started feeling jittery. Then came prolonged and very painful muscle spasms. My whole body felt like a rubber band being pulled taut one minute and contracting the next. The pain was unbearable. I felt it deep in my bones and slowly, inexorably rising through my body, penetrating every pore and fiber. Within hours I was writhing on the floor, screaming at the top of my lungs.

I couldn't deal with it. I needed relief. A friend told me about a place where all of the junkies went, a hole-in-the-wall pain clinic housed in a Coral Springs strip mall. I drove right over and pulled into a nearly vacant parking lot. The dingy strip mall contained five storefronts, two of which were vacant. Situated between a laundromat and a deli was a large door with peeling gray paint. Inside was a small vestibule, much like in any other doctor's office, but there was no receptionist waiting behind the glass. There were five ratty chairs crammed into a closet-sized waiting area and two extra folding chairs against the wall outside the doctor's office.

It was just past 9:00
A.M.
, and already the place was packed. One after another, people walked in—construction workers, domestics, crack whores, trailer trash—a cadre of cash-strapped misfits looking to get fixed. I pulled up a chair and waited. Only a minute later the door opened and a tall man with deep-set brown eyes and curly gray hair walked into the waiting room. “Next,” he announced without looking up.

It was strictly first come first served, and when my turn came I entered the doctor's office to find no examination table, no patient chart, no stethoscope, and no sink. There was just a small brown desk stacked high with papers and a safe tucked into one corner. I sat down and started making small talk with the doctor. “My parents have the same kind of dog,” I said, looking at a picture of the doctor and his Maltese sitting on his desk. I had named my parents' first Maltese Cutie Pie when I was five years old.

“What's a nice Jewish kid like you doing here?” the doctor asked me in response, ignoring my comment about the dog.

“Same as everyone else, I guess.”

“You don't belong here,” he told me. “You know that.”

I disagreed. I had little money and was dope-sick, so I belonged there as much as anyone else. In my heart, I knew that I was no better than the junkies who filled the waiting room.

“Five dollars,” he told me, and I handed him the money. “Roll up your sleeve.” He wiped my arm with an alcohol pad and gave me a shot of Buprenex, a narcotic analgesic, right in my bicep. I went back into the waiting room. Fifteen minutes later I didn't feel high, but the agony had receded. At least that was something.