White Out (23 page)

Ah. The “office.” My pride and joy. A corner of the bedroom, really. But my computer was there. I’d gotten a new computer early in the fall. Don’t ask me how. Don’t be too nosy. Miracles occasionally happen, even in an addict’s life. A new computer had come to live with me. Call it proof. Proof of my unshakable intention to finish my dissertation. Proof of my faith in the future. And a willingness to take risks.

I picked up the camera I’d borrowed from Cat and took a picture of it. Then I got the two books I’d recently stolen from the Hopkins bookstore and posed them carefully next to the computer. I took another photo. I wished Cat were there to pose next to the computer and books. “Girlfriend with Computer and Books.” I became angry.

“Goddamn it!”

The desire to disappear was inside my anger like a bone is inside a fish. Supporting it.

I fell down a little bit. I picked myself back up off the desk. A burnt spoon was kind of stuck to the bottom part of me. I peeled it off. It was sticky. I took an antidepressant. I believed in them and so did my doctor. I counted some of my accomplishments on one hand, then I ran out of fingers. I needed the other hand for balance. OK, you’ve seen the office.

Now back through the bedroom. Here in this plastic bag are some vitamins Dom sold me. He told me they were Percocet. A new generic kind of Percocet. I’d stared sadly, unbelieving, when he held the bag out. He looked embarrassed.

“There they are, Mike. Real good Percocets. Forty dollars. These babies will really help you wean yourself off dope. That’s how Ron Howard did it.”

I looked at him sadly. I looked at the vitamins. They looked scared and naked in the plastic baggie. There’s something obscene about vitamins in a plastic baggie.

“I’ll give you five dollars, Dom. It’s all I got.”

“OK,” he said.

He gave me the bag. I never saw him again. I took one vitamin a day until they were gone. Now we’re back in the living room. I can’t stay long. It’s almost time to go to Chicago to kick dope forever. Just a few more minutes. I can’t kick in Baltimore. This is where the TV used to be. This is where the VCR used to be. This is where the cable box used to be. I’d done a little minor dealing early in the fall and had some extra money for a while. I’d bought some cool things. I looked at the space where the TV used to be.

“From money you came, and back to money you went,” I said sadly to the TV hole. “Money to money.”

This chair is where I sit when I get tired of pacing. And this square of carpet beneath the western window is where the autumn sunlight disappears. I took a photo of it. There was still light left. I looked up. Reflected in the bright window I saw the part of me that shows up in mirrors. A brilliant white outline, with a clear center.

Later that week I had to meet with my advisor. I’d sent him the chapter I’d been working on. I had high hopes for it. Every time I read it over it seemed to mean something else. I took this as a sign of its intellectual richness. Now I stood outside his office door with a clean shirt on and my freshly washed hair still damp. I knocked.

“Come in, Michael!”

I trooped in and sat down, looking at him expectantly. He had my chapter on the desk in front of him. I noticed he was avoiding my eyes.

“So what do you think?” I asked.

“It’s…interesting,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. “Do you think the ending is clear enough?”

“The ending?”

He looked down at the chapter. He frowned.

“Well, to be frank, Michael, it needs a lot of work.”

“It is a draft,” I said.

“Yes. In fact it might be best to just put this…draft…aside for a while.”

“Put the ending aside?”

From deep down in my relaxation, I was a little shocked. That ending was good.

“No,” he said. “Not the ending. The whole thing. Just put the whole thing aside. Just forget about this whole chapter.” He peered at me. “You need a new perspective. And some rest. Are you getting enough rest?”

“Oh,” I said. “I’ve had a cold.”

“Ah,” he said.

In December, I flew out to Chicago for my father’s birthday. The occasion inspired me to try to kick dope. Well, maybe
inspired
is the wrong word. But I’d gotten clean before in Chicago, and I thought I might as well try again.

It couldn’t hurt. My habit had gotten a little out of control. I’d been self-medicating to control my disappointment at my advisor’s lack of support. I was disappointed in Cat too. And now my fellowship checks, frequent supplemental checks from my father, and a whole lot of stealing were no longer enough to support my habit. My habit was on crutches. I needed a change. I went to Chicago with ten bags of dope and one bag of hope.

The second day I was there I sat in my father’s living room watching TV with him. The dope I’d brought with me was already gone, and I could feel withdrawal starting in the gooseflesh of my legs. I decided today was not the right day to kick.

“Hey, Dad,” I said. “I think I might, you know, go out for a little while.”

I stood up.

“It’s my birthday,” he said, looking up at me.

“I know it’s your birthday. I’ll be back soon.”

“Where are you going?”

This wasn’t like him, I thought. He was usually so easygoing.

“I want to get something to eat,” I said.

“There’s food here.”

“I feel like a hamburger,” I said.

“There’s hamburger meat here.”

“Dad, come on, I’m just going out for a bit. I’m twenty-six, you know.”

He looked at me.

“Michael,” he said. “I don’t ask you for much, do I?”

“No, Dad,” I said.

“I help you out with money when you need it?”

“Of course, Dad, I’m very grateful.”

“I don’t ask for much?”

“No, Dad, you really don’t.”

“Well,” he said. “I’m asking you for one thing now. This is my birthday. And I want you to stay here with me today on my birthday.”

“And not leave the house at all?” I asked.

“Just this one day,” he said.

I shifted from foot to foot.

“Dad, I—”

“Just this one day,” he said.

He was facing the TV again now, an angry look on his face.

“Dad, I—”

“Go on,” he said.

“I, um—”

“Go on!”

I left.

You might think that my father knew. That my advisor knew. That Cat knew. But they didn’t, not at that time. I know they didn’t, because when they did finally find out, they were all surprised. Of course, they told me, they’d known
something
was wrong. They didn’t know quite what it was, but they got a funny feeling around me. Something a little off, that they couldn’t put their finger on.

Naturally, I was careful. If I had to be around people who I didn’t want to know about my habit, I used great care. Showers. Clean shirts. And just enough dope to keep the withdrawal away. So it wasn’t obvious, unless you knew what to look for. And most people don’t. So my family, my professors, my old friends noticed only a slight souring of the space between them and me.

Of course, there was probably a healthy helping of denial on their side. People don’t want to think someone close to them is a heroin addict. They want to be fooled. So they collaborated with me, in a way, in hiding it from them. Not asking me certain questions. Suggesting excuses. “You look tired. You must be tired.” But part of them remained unfooled. Their senses, their bodies, their eyes startled and shied away from me. Like horses shy away from vampires. I noticed it.

After I got clean, I asked my friend Cash, who I’d had intermittent contact with all the way through my junkie days, if he knew.

“No, man,” he said, “I had no idea.”

“Well you must have thought
something
was up with me,” I said. “I mean, you had to have noticed something.”

He thought for a while.

“Sure I noticed something,” he said.

“Well, what?”

“I just thought you’d turned into a complete asshole,” he said. “It happens, you know.”

In Chicago the street name for police is “people.”

“Look out for the people.”

“Did you see the people?”

After my father’s birthday, I’d decided to stick around, wait for the right time to kick. But the right time never came, and instead of spending my days kicking in my father’s basement, I spent my nights there, writing “Don’t Do Dope” signs. Really tiny ones, so my stepmother wouldn’t find them. Really good ones. “Don’t Do Dope” matchbook scraps. “Don’t Do Dope” on a half-inch piece of McDonald’s napkin, with fancy designs on the Ds. I got so good I could write “Don’t Do Dope” twenty times on the back of a stamp.

I spent my nights writing. I spent my days copping dope in the projects on the Near West Side of Chicago. Ogden Courts. Roosevelt. The shells of Cabrini-Green. Moving fast. Ducking the people. At 10:00 a.m. about a week after Christmas, I was standing in a dope line, doing a little dance to keep warm.

“The people will be here soon,” the little gangster said as I got to the front. His eyes moved in the ski mask’s eyeholes, his leg jumped in the ten-degree morning, he handed me two baggies.

“The people was here twenty minutes ago,” said the lookout as I passed him.

“The people are getting close,” said a woman, standing in the breezeway with a tiny kid on her arm, sniffing the air.

“The people are here,” the glassy junkie next to me said.

He dropped his dope and went right. I dropped my dope and went left. The people started coming through the tenement’s modernist archways.

There is deep folk wisdom in calling the police the people. None of us were people. In our world the human shape dissolves. The apparatus of the state is required to prop up the human form.

“Here come the people!”

I moved along the wall, face melting in the heavy wind of no-dope.

“Hey, you there!”

I kept moving.

“Are you fucking deaf? I said stop.”

I stopped. Only the people expect you to take these face noises seriously. I turned my hole toward the people. The people swiveled their human faces toward me.

“OK. Where’s the dope?”

“I don’t have any.”

“We’ll see about that.”

A big person came over and started patting me down, going through my pockets, feeling under my belt and in the tops of my socks. My human flesh materialized under the hot people fingers. When it took its hand back I sagged formlessly against the tenement wall. The person grabbed me by my human shoulders and looked into me.