scarecrow short fiction

I married my second wife the day the dissolution of marriage from the first disaster became final: we did it in the home of a Dominican notary public near Korea town, having shot the last of our heroin and furiously smoked the last of the crack in the car parked outside. I was 21 years old.

Before the wedding we stopped at the storefront needle exchange on Cuengua between Hollywood and Sunset. I wore a suit that had a few bloodstains on it and Susan wore a crumpled white dress. We dressed like that because the whole thing seemed slightly perverse to start off with, so why not go all out? Inside we received a few sideways glances, but nothing more. Needle exchanges are like porno bookstores or public toilets. Nobody wants to talk or even make eye contact unless it is absolutely necessary. The exchange had a front room were you could watch TV or get access to the internet, as well as picking up lube and condoms (mostly for the meth freaks, I assumed). In the back was a desk with a flip top container for people to dump used needles into, and a storeroom full of syringes of all shapes and sizes. We used the standard Turemo 28giage ½ cc insulin needle because we were young and our veins were not too screwed up yet. We had not begun to inject into our groins, neck, and the back of our knees. We were babies, but growing up fast.

Todd was a dreadlocked ex-junkie who worked the exchange on Wednesdays. He was a good guy, one of the few people I knew in recovery (he has been in narcotics anonymous for almost 10 years) who still gave a shit and tried to help those still strung out in a practical way. He doled out the needles and advice every week for 4 hours on a strictly volunteer basis. He eyed us up and down as we dumped the old needles and requested a new 100-count box.

“What’s with the outfits?” he half smiled, “You two getting married or something?”

“Yup. We’re on our way there now.”

“Yeah” sighed Todd, sliding the box across to us, “Well, you know, congratulations.”

My wife-to-be to be was a heroin addicted 32-year-old accountant named Susan. We married to keep me in the country, as we were having such a good time getting high together. Meeting Susan was the moment that my drug use ceased to be a healthy product of my youth and recklessness, and started to become the only thing that mattered in my life. That old, drunken Irish fatalism that had been with me throughout my life suddenly resurfaced, and it was no longer enough to be high and having a good time. I needed to be higher. I needed to feel my heart pounding so hard it seemed as if it might burst loose from my ribcage. I needed to feel the palpitations and see my vision blurring, doubling. I needed to know that death was here, in the room and that I was too fast, too young, and too smart for Him.

Before the marriage, we would drive around in her 80’s Mercedes with the roof rolled down blasting punk rock from her tape player and pulling over to get high. We always had enough drugs. Heroin. Crack. Methamphetamine. We woke up and did drugs. We did drugs until we passed out. And the money was always there, the money I made writing videos and the money she had saved from accounting jobs. The money would never run out, it seemed. And for her dollars, Susan had bought someone as completely into the idea of complete destruction as she. It wasn’t love, but there was the unspoken agreement that we well may die together.

The wedding was as brief and perfunctory as one could imagine. The house was a dimly lit, ramshackle little place. We signed the papers, high and twitchy, and since we didn’t have any friends the old woman called her daughter or her granddaughter downstairs to act as witness. She was around 16 years old, and pissed to be dragged downstairs from her TV shows. She looked at us, silently chewing gum, and we shot back big stoned smiles at her. The whole thing was over in minutes. This now marked the second time that I had married someone while I was out of my mind on drugs. The first time was a rush job in Vegas to a vengeful blonde while ripped on booze and crystal meth. And now here, 2 years later, junked out of my brain and spun from smoking crack. I started singing Handel's wedding march as we staggered out of the place and back into Susan’s car.

We were renting a place in the poor part of Hollywood. We moved in and never unpacked, so everything sat in cardboard boxes, the furniture that Susan had kept from her last divorce was stacked up in a corner giving the place the look of something completely uninhabited by the living. The shades were drawn all day long, the only furniture we ever used was the couch, the coffee table upon which we divided the drugs, the television and the filthy bed that we lay in moaning and cursing whenever the smack ran out.

Later, back at the apartment, we had our first married argument. We had miscalculated what was left in the bank, and the ATM refused to dispense cash. We had to wait for Susan’s pay to arrive in 2 days. A phony check we deposited hadn’t cleared yet. There weren’t enough drugs to get through the night and the only dealer who would take our calls was an evil little rat bastard called Raphael.

He agreed at first, but when he showed up to the place he was drunk and feeling mean.

“I no have no chiva” he kept telling us, “I don’ know why you call me. Who are you?”

Susan turned to me and whispered, “He’s out of his fucking mind.”

“Ok Ok” he yelled, “How much you wan?”

“$80?” Susan asked, rather optimistically.

“OK. Where the money?”

“We don’t have it until tomorrow! You said you’d give us credit!”

“I don’ say nothing! I ain’t Wells Fargo bitch! I no give no fucking loans!”

Then he pulled out his cell phone and started yelling at someone in Spanish.

“We’re fucked.” Susan said, desperation creeping into her voice, “He ain’t gonna play. We’re gone be sick again.”

I cursed and started hunting around the place for electronics or jewelry that he might take in exchange for a bag of dope. But everything was already given away or in the pawn shop: the DVD player, the DVD’s, the Playstation, the CD player, my musical equipment, all gone. All we had was a busted TV and the cell phone, but without the phone we would be completely cut off. I returned from the bedroom, empty handed to find Susan in tears, screaming:

“But it’s my WEDDING DAY, asshole! You’re crazy!”

“Hey hey!” I yelled, “Calm down!” then grabbing her by the arm, “Shit, cool it Susan! We’re trying to get drugs out of him, not piss him off more!”

“He wants me to blow him,” she snarled, “For the drugs. He wants me to suck his dick!”

“Oh.”

I couldn’t see the problem. Susan had sucked a lot of dick for drugs, for better grades, for promotions at work, or because some crazy pulled a knife and told her he’d gut her like a motherfucking pig if she didn’t. I didn’t assume that was going to stop because we had gotten married.

“OK, I go. No time for this!” Raphael started yelling.

“Its my wedding day!” Susan said again, drawing out the syllables until they bled.

“Well” I sighed, “It’s up to you. Whatever you want.”

“He fucking stinks!” she whispered, “And what if he doesn’t give us the drugs afterwards?”

“She wants the drugs first!” I yelled at him.

“No. They’re in the car. I bring them after she keeps her part of the deal.”

“That’s it, Raphael. Fuck off!” she yelled, and he stormed out, dramatically slamming the door.

I couldn’t help but believing in that optimistic dope fiending part of my brain that if she had only sucked his dick for a few minutes, we would have had drugs. We didn’t fight about that though. When we started to get sick that night, we fought because we had spent our last 50 dollars on the wedding license instead of on heroin.

“I didn’t know it was our last 50 bucks!” Susan pleaded.

“Well that’s great” I hissed, “Some fucking accountant you are!”

At midnight we managed to get a hold of Carlos, one of our back up guys. He agreed to front us 2 bags until the next day. We drove down to Bonnie Brae and 6th with a trashcan in the front for us to vomit into without having to pull over. The whole deal was extremely sketchy as on Wednesdays the cops had started to do sweeps of the area and bust people as they were leaving. Anyone who wasn’t from the 90% Hispanic neighborhood was likely to get pulled over and questioned. Especially a white guy and a half Chinese woman driving a Mercedes and vomiting into a trash can in the front seat. Somehow we avoided a bust. We sailed right past a prowl car as they pulled some other poor bastards car apart on 6th avenue.

On the way home we stopped into a MacDonald’s so we could go shoot up in the toilets. It was two in the morning and the only people in there were other junkies, street people and the unfortunate teenagers working there. They played the Disney theme song “It’s a small world after all” at full volume, and even piped it into the fucking toilet stall were I was fixing my dope.

And that was what happened the day I got married for the second time.

Tony O'Neill © 2006.