From Jester To King LXXIII

Every so often I liked to take heroin, partly to show off but also because it was the only thing that gave me this singular clarity. There were a couple of times by the Heath at a house party and we’d start on weed and drink, getting ourselves as fucked up as possible, getting to that place in yourself where you just don’t give a fuck, no fear, no interest whatsoever in what people are thinking or saying about you anymore, and it’s also when I got to that state that I’d get out the heroin and start encouraging people to take it. I felt like such an outlaw, such a dude. For once in my life. And I could sense a few of the guys coming, flocking to me, seeing what I was doing, and I took some -- I injected it into my left arm like a proper dude does, I honestly didn’t think anything of it -- and thank god I didn’t puke because that’s what I’m afraid of, but it made me feel so completely high and fucked in a way I cannot describe but also in a way that I was still able to control myself, still able to talk relative sense, still able to walk and to move etc. so this made me feel even better about the experience. And then I was about to give some to either Mark or Gershon, I can’t remember which, either way they were really scared and I had to calm them down, I remember that I was basically proselytising, telling them with this rabid conviction how it slows down or stops the senses, I was telling them that the senses are bullshit and not to make such a big deal of them, and that when you take it, you feel all the senses slowly and independently, you feel them for what they are, just sensations and you don’t ascribe any more meaning to them than that. That was how you reached your true essence I told them. But as soon as both of them take it, I see that face full of horror and alarm and then they rush off to the pavement away from me and I hear hurling, and I’m looking for the actual puke because I always like to match the sound with the material, I’m fascinated and repulsed at the same time, I want to make sure something is coming out, but I don’t want to get too close to disturb them either, anyway so both of them have succumbed, they can’t take their heroin, and I can.

I go back in the house, which trust me is more like a hotel with a marble lobby and underemployed staff and concierges, and I just wink up to them as if everything’s fine and they don’t pay me the blindest bit of notice really, I just swan in as if everything’s completely normal, and I remember thinking you can do things in this world behind people’s backs, things people don’t know about and then they’re none the wiser, and where they probably should have been calling the police they were just letting me back in going about their business, and it dawned on me, well the power you can have over people by hiding things, I’d never really had occasion to think about this, it was quite something, and it wasn’t the case at all that people could just somehow read your mind, you could really get away with murder.

Not that these things are related but this was about around the time the cat managed to get shower gel in his eyes – I don’t know how, I mean he must have stepped on the bottle and it must have squirted into them -- and my sister was there hoovering which didn’t help, and it was darting about the lounge in tremendous pain, squealing and squealing, and it was horrific because I just couldn’t catch him, but felt for him so much and the longer the gel stayed in, well it could have done some damage, and I don’t remember catching him, but of course I must have done, all I remember is him going berserk like a headless chicken letting out this deafening squeal.