Junkie Love by Phil Shoenfelt Page A

I’d begun to use again. My relationship with Cissy was beginning to change, and it was no longer on the same basis that it had previously been. The bond which tied us together, now, was not so much love as a mutual need for the same drug: we became more jealous if one of us got high without the other than if either of us disappeared to spend the night with someone else.
    Sometimes, I wouldn’t be able to score, and both of us would be out tramping the streets, doing the round of small-time dealers who, like myself, sold individual wraps. We’d borrow and barter so that we wouldn’t have to break into our float, hustling for a half or quarter-gramme, just to keep ourselves straight for a few hours, or until one of the main dealers was back in business. After just a few months, I’d accumulated an impressive cache of stolen goods — watches, CD s, radios, jewellery, clothes — received in lieu of payment for drugs, and these often came in handy at such times. One girl, Suzy, who used to buy speed off me and would consume amazing quantities of the stuff, was an especially good thief. She would turn up with the most unlikely objects — anything from a high-quality continental duvet to a complete set of bone china dinner-plates — and she would also steal to order: if you wanted a particular record, or CD , or a new pair of jeans, you would let her know, and she’d be back on the doorstep within a few hours, bringing the desired goods to be exchanged for a gramme or two of speed.
    One of the characters I used to buy from, whenever I couldn’t lay my hands on a large amount, was Bela, an Italian junkie who used to deal out of the public lavatories in Regent’s Park. He had an English wife and a small child, and had recently secured himself a job with the local council, cleaning and maintaining the toilets at the Camden Town end of the park, next to London Zoo. He had a small office at the rear of the prefabricated building and would deal out of there, and on any particular day he would have anything up to two dozen junkies dotted around the grass and park benches, waiting to pay him a visit. It was an amusing sight to behold, all these pale, degenerate people sitting amongst the azalea and rhododendron bushes, pretending to be casually enjoying the watery spring sunshine while impatiently counting the minutes until it was their turn to meet the hallowed presence within. I don’t know if“Bela” was his real name — it could have been, or it might just have been a nickname derived from his thick, European accent; or from the fact that he so evidently enjoyed the act of shooting up in itself, booting and re-booting the blood time after time, as if fascinated by the sight, or the smell of it, and with an ash-laden cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth throughout the whole procedure. Whatever the case, Bela was the most committed and unrepentant junkie I have ever met. He never thought of trying to straighten himself out, shouldering the burden of addiction as if it were his true calling in life, his one real interest, and about which he knew more than anyone else. His deals were lousy, but he never cut the gear, regarding this as sacrilege, so that while the quantity was always a little under, the quality was good. He justified these small deals by emphasising that, for him, the drug itself was like blood — his “lifeblood” he called it, with a toothless and maniacal grin — and that he needed it more than anybody else did. Sooner or later, most junkies come to believe this, and use it to justify their own greed; but with Bela heroin really was like a religion, and he its saint, or avatar. To watch him shooting up, especially if you were sick and impatient to cop, was like torture. In and out the blood would flow, as Bela booted the smack around his veins, and you couldn’t interrupt or ask him to hurry — this would have been like urging haste on someone who was partaking of the holy sacrament. And