Life is full of pain, but the pain I feel is the pain of fleeting joy…
Excess rules everything I do…

Time: Sometime during the Fall of the year 2000?
Location: Outskirts of Chicago, Eden’s Expressway

Full fledged dope fiend I be couldnt even tell you how long this run has been but its been at least a few years with out a day of a needle piercing my skin. Sitting in traffic, another day of feeling nothing. I woke late in the afternoon scrambled to get dressed thru on a hat and sunglasses and hopped into my Volkswagon Jetta. My car has taken the toll of being a junky, I am probably a good 10K miles over getting an oil change, let alone your basic upkeep, its always tomorrow, its simply I don’t care. Unfortunetly this would be the last day I would drive my Jetta, fairly new 97 or 98 I forget, I probably had about 60-70K miles on the car. It was my favorite dope scoring machine.

On this unfortunate day, I was stuck in your typical Chicago rush-hour traffic. Instead of sitting and playing brake dancing with the car infront of me I decide to ride the shoulder and pass all these smucks stuck sitting in traffic. All my needles are stashed and I dont have anything else on me but cash so I could give a fuck about getting pulled over and ticketed, the 20-30 minutes I save riding the shoulder of the expressway is definitely worth the sickness that I am feeling.

Humming away on the side of the road, having to break for the random trucker that swings into the shoulder to stop me from my goal, heroin in my veins. Seconds are critical, as I swallow back the dry heaves. 10 minutes from the dope spots, I notice that my car has been driving WAY in the red and it should have overheated by now. My opiate depleted receptors tell my logical brain fuck stopping your almost there, you’ll make it. I agree and continue flying down the shoulder at a cold 50 mph as the traffic to my left sits in stop and go. Somewhere in my daydream of me fixing up my shot and hitting a vein my first try I hear a loud snap and I start to loose power. Motherfucking shit!!! Luckily I was right by an exit ramp and coasted up the exit, coasted thru the redlight and pull right into a gas station on 17th Ave. if I recall correctly.

I try to get the car started again but knowing in the back of my head that I just killed my car, I blew the fucking engine. Fuck it, I dont care. I am sick as a motherfucker and I have to get some dope in me immediately. As fate would have it that sun-spotted day the first person I walk up too is my savior.

He looked about my age but probably was 5-6 years younger, he was rummaging around on his floor of his car for change to fill up his gas. Immediately with all the red flags going off I know the skinny kid is a dope fiend. I approach him from the front as I didnt want to scare him as this isnt exactly a ‘nice’ neighborhood. ‘Hey’, I call out and give him my schpeel about how my car just brokedown, and I am stuck up here. Slowly testing the waters. Which way are you headed? ‘East’, How far East are you going? ‘Into the City’. Ahh I see, you wont be stopping at Independence Ave. by chance would you. We eye each other carefully, both of us skinny, runny noses, and looking like we havent shaven or showered in a week, time skips a beat as he replies ‘Yeah thats where I am headed, know any good dope spots?’ The fuck I do, look I’ll buy you a couple bags and throw you a 10 for gas if you save me the trouble of having to cop on foot as I am much to sick for that.

He is down hook line and sinker, we get in the car and he starts to tell me his story a story I have heard a thousand times… Well, I just got out of rehab about a week ago I have been on a run ever since. I stole my ma’s car and broke my little sisters piggy bank to scrape up enough cash to score a bag. With the bat of an eye he starts puking into a plastic garbage bag he has rigged up right next to the drivers door. His eyes tearing as he wipes his mouth clean he gets back to the details of the story. What rehab he went to? Where he has been cop’n his dope? He continues to puke right up to the dope spot. Thankful he took my advice and went to one of my reliable spots at the time rather than some of the shitty spots he reeled off as to where he was cop’n from. The spot we went to were selling $5 nickles and I picked up 2 packs: 100 bucks for 22-23 bags. I give him four nickles in addition to the 2 nickles he bought. He shot one and was blown away, high as hell. I thought nice, at least he will be happy he scored some good dope. The nickles were a good 100mg’s and potent off-white vinegary smell when you opened up the bags sealed in double-sided tape the heroin clumped together and just by looking at it you knew you were in for a good high.

I ask him if he would be so kind as to drop me off at the train station and he would have none of that, he insisted that he drive me all the way home even though it was well out of his way as he was from the southside. I was curious as to why he wasnt coppin from the southside instead of the westside but kept my comments to myself.

I had the car towed to some lot where I donated it to something similar to Toy’s for Tot’s I forget??? I ended up geting a nice tax write off that I didnt even need but it sure saved me from the headache of getting a new engine and all that jazz. I was carless for a short period of time when my parents blindly gave me a nice Cadillac, which I lost in my last arrest for being passed out in a gas station with a cooker and needles on my lap, windows rolled up and doors locked. Woke up to cops rapping on my window with their billy clubs quite the nice awakening. Ending a well needed heroin run and since than I have been sober with the help of buprenorphine albeit a few slip ups in the begining but alls well that ends well, I guess. I miss my crocodile and hope she is doing well :\

All good things in all good time, someone once said…

Reach for the sun, catch hold of the moon
They’re both too heavy but what can you do?
Reach for the stars, smack into the sky
You don’t want to live but you’re chicken to die
Chicken to die

Run, run, run for the roses
Sooner it opens, the quicker it closes
Man, oh, man, oh friend of mine
All good things in all good time
All good things in all good time

Reach for the rose, get caught on the briar
You’re warming to love, next thing there’s a fire
The trouble with love is its other face
You just want the cup, you don’t want the race
No, you don’t want the race

-Seedless [cutting this landscape short because I am tired of typing]