Will Work for Drugs by Lydia Lunch Page A

than to meet his thrusts with equal dementia. Sticky and slick turns gummy and thicker still. Hideous swell. Horrible explosion. Mutual expulsion. He jackhammers the last few droplets of come and blood into my hollow. Squashed under him, I collapse. Feel myself drain, deflate. He ebbs out slowly. Gagging for air.
    But there is no air. It’s too thick to breathe. The swampy atmosphere is stained with spunk and plasma. Johnny burrows into the small of my back. Tickling, licking, lapping at my oozing wound. His lips and tongue bathing my bruise. “We’re both bleeding …” he baby talks.
    I had been running the straight-and-narrow for as long as I could remember. For no good reason other than loneliness hit harder while nursing a hangover. A brain-crushing headache and sour stomach became a tiring way to greet the day. Then came Johnny.
    Not that I could blame him for my multiple indiscretions. It just made sloppy easier, more seductive to slip back into. Felt almost criminal crawling around on all fours neck deep in the murky undertow. Dwell inside of someone else’s psychic surgery for a while. It felt good to just let myself dissolve. Binge and purge. Choke on excess and suffer the consequences. Not give a shit. Be selfish. Greedy. Disappear into need. Submerge in desire. Crash, get jacked up, and crash again. Johnny and I started getting lubed on coke every weekend. Glut on Friday and Saturday night. Reel and feel like shit until Tuesday or Wednesday. Fuck ourselves out. Spasm into conversations that would begin at midnight and dwindle down hours later, long after the dawn had been blanketed over by dirty sheets that blocked out the sun.
    The ritual always began the same. Hack out enough lines to force into cardiac arrest lesser mortals. Preparation for evaporation into a secret place. An undulating womb, which would expand and contract as the walls fell in upon themselves crushing out our breath. Our moods swung to whatever song was playing. Jump-cutting from blues to bebop to trance. Like our mind-set. A distorted juke box cranked full of musty tunes you could almost sing along to, but the melody kept escaping just as you got to the second verse.
    Five hours into another Friday-night binge. Slinking into the lull between rushes. A moment of spastic paralysis as the muscles still tremble but the outer shell of the body freezes, locked into an electric rigor mortis.
    Johnny was on the couch, one hand grabbing his bulge, the other playing spin-the-bottle with a broken fifth whose busted mouth reflected a smoky golden haze that meant we’d be screwing through another fractured day. I needed to wipe the dribble from my upper lip, comb my hair, grab a coat, search for my keys, and then try to remember how to drive, so I could rescue enough libations to see us through until the spell wore off and we were finally able to pass out in each other’s arms again, brittle but still greedy. Couldn’t send Johnny. He didn’t drive. Couldn’t send him even if he did. Didn’t trust him. Not in his state.
    Tiny’s Tight Spot was the only place that would sell after hours. Scuzzy flop on the far end of downtown where only the lifers and ex-cops went to booze. Been paying off the precinct captains in the fifth ward for decades with free drinks, grilled bologna sandwiches, and 150 bucks a week. Stayed in business with what they did under the table. Shots were still fifty cents a round. Had to protect the regulars. Some occupied the same bar stool for forty years running. Three-quarters of a mile going twenty-five should’ve put me there and back in about fifteen minutes.
    I placed my order with Tony, the owner. Two six-packs of Schlitz, Johnny’s favorite, and an overpriced fifth. Grabbed the bag and split.
    A slice of dirty brown was shredding a crack in the horizon. The electricity bouncing off the streetlights made everything look hollow. Ghostly. Life-sized images of what real once