Thinking of writing a memoir of sorts surrounding a past relationship. A heavy relationship. You could think of this as the intro. Tell me what you think.
[EDIT: I added a "chapter one preview," because I didn't have 500 words. I wrote this "chapter one preview" very fast and without much thought. I'm disappointed I couldn't just submit the Intro. Thanks for reading.]
INTRO
Her mixed skin glistened under passing neon city lights, as though she were basking in a ray of an acid-laden moon. Her pupils were full; black and distant as a total eclipse. “Don’t you see?” She asked with a single tear in her throat. “They’ll never let us be together.” ...If I can just get us across that bridge, I thought, this cold sweat of an awakened nightmare would stay where it belonged… Deep within the random throws of that cold, desperate city’s bowels; somewhere between Turk and the infinite void.
A few eternal minutes later, I pulled the car into the back of an empty Walgreens parking lot. In a heroin addict like myself, panic and sorrow quickly give way to a methodic ritual when presented with the eager excitement of sudden and assured relief.
looking back, I don’t know which was better; witnessing the dark plume of blood fill the syringe, signifying my impending freedom from the hard, cold reality currently surrounding me, or the warm, heavy-eyed feeling of freedom which was now a guarantee. What I do know is that I don’t remember what that freedom felt like anymore. I only remember that conversation. Her sweat. Her panic; those eyes. Those eyes before her iris, once again, claimed her gaze. And that promising plume of blood... You see, that cold sweat of an awakened nightmare did not stay in that forsaken city. It has followed me everywhere I go. Everywhere we've been.
To this day, I have a certain distaste for San Fransisco.
CHAPTER I (Preview)
The first time I ever saw her, I was 21. Sitting beneath an outdoor umbrella, chainsmoking Marlboro Reds while talking in a much too intimate manner with strangers, simply in order to pass time. I was about one week into a thirty-day drug treatment program, aimed to wean me off my "drug of choice" and introduce me to a new way of thinking; commonly referred to as the 12-step program. Now... I've only been through this program once; I'm not exactly what you'd call an expert on the subject of higher powers and abstinence. For that, you may wish to speak with her; after all, as I recall, it was either the third or fourth time she'd gone through this treatment and subsequent "12 steps to recovery," in order to live a productive, drug-free life. By my math, she only had 8 more trips, at most, to complete the 12th, and final, step. ...I'm not here, however, to talk about my open disdain for this pseudo-treatment for the physiological disease of addiction. I'm here to talk about her. I'm here, to remember, HER.
She was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. Leaving the intake office and making her way down a narrow gravel pathway toward the main building, she wore tight, patched up jeans with a black leather jacket and Doc Martins laced to the top. This wasn't a style of fashion I was attracted to before; then again, she wasn't the stereotypical girl who would dress in such a manner. She was a fare-skinned African American girl, with full lips, a piercing stare, and a brow line similar to that of Marilyn Monroe. As she passed me, she gave a slight smirk and quickly looked back down at the ground. I'm sure I had been staring.
The center tried to encourage us to hang out with other people and spend less time together. In the first year of recovery, they say, one should remain single so as to not fall into the trap of codependency and therefore an increased likelihood of relapse. This, of course, is not based upon any medical literature. People need a shoulder to cry on; eyes to gaze into, and a certain kind of love to embrace them. An interesting study, for example - as I explained to one of the counselors at the rehab - showed that isolated rats, given the choice between cocaine water and pure water, will always choose the cocaine. When these rats had to make the more critical choice between cocaine and food - the lonely, drug-addicted rats overwhelmingly chose the cocaine. But, here's where the study becomes interesting. You see - these same, strung-out, bum-like rats that chose the Columbian weightloss secret over food when in isolation - they actually slowly weaned themselves off the drug when introduced back into a larger community of rats.
This, of course, was all bullshit. The study... Well, it's real... You can look it up. It's actually cited in many cases when explaining the huge discrepancies in the amount of heroin-dependent soldiers in Vietnam - A massive health scare stateside when we didn't exactly know how we were going to handle so many mouth-frothing fiends - versus the actual, small fraction of heroin addicts we got back. It turns out, when families don't treat their loved ones any different from when they left, soldiers just... Chose to be happy and have babies.
But we aren't rats. And we weren't coming from war. 25 days after seeing her for the first time, I left the rehab center promising to return five days later to pick her up. I came bearing gifts.
This is a memory I've had stuck in my head for about 7 years. It's about the mother of my son; the memory is from back when we used heroin together. This time period is very blurry, but for some reason by remembering this event, I can easily go back further in time or even recount what happened after. I don't know what makes it pivotal, but it is and in a literal sense.
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