by St Jude Why has the goth set has always had a heroin subset? Why do YOU do heroin? Anne Rice. It's her fault, she did it to us. We've all read her, so we know that blood == sex == immortality in cool clothes. We're conditioned. What about heroin? It's an analgesic. Repeat after me: HEROIN IS AN ANALGESIC. If you get a bad burn, do heroin, fine -- although you get the equivalent of the flu when you come off it, and it does impede healing. One great drug, heroin. It's just got the blood glamour, that's all. It's so... so... parenteral. And since we all read INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE at an impressionable age, we've got the ringable bells. Hit us with the proper cues and we are panting gasping dripping, helpless to resist the lure of... |
BLOOD PORNThe music is a part of the blood rite: you know the songs. Jane says... there are SO many songs... If there's a TV in the room you turn it on, sound cut off, when you turn down the lights. Maybe the TV's between channels, because it's only a source of light and motion, like a campfire. You have your favorite tie... maybe you're wearing it right now. A cashmere scarf, a black silk kimono belt. The ritual builds a fondness for all its utensils, like a lover's sexorgans. You take out the matchbook. Snug behind the matches is the twist of wrap, scotchtaped in. You pluck it like a grape, put it on the table -- your eyes stay on it as you pluck a match and light the candle. (The match smell, the candle smell.) You and your friend sit down in its friendly light. You untwist the wrap and the vanilla scent fills space. Three beads of brown mexican. You don't bother smiling at your friend, because you know the moment is shared, and frankly you're more concerned with sharing the ritual and getting where it takes you. It's like joining in a party, it's like good talk, it's like sex, only the rite is unchanging, and the outcome is more sure. Break open the wrap of the insulin syringe, move the plunger once to free it. Spoon's on the table, handle twisted to keep it level. Distilled water's in a ruby-glass goblet: you dip the needle, draw the plunger, spurt the water into the tablespoon... you do that twice more, three times... You flip one of the beads into the water with the needle point, wash it around to see how it dissolves... usually the mexican just starts drifting out into the water like smoke. You hold it over the candle until it simmers on the edges and then suddenly boils up all over. The air smells like baking cookies. Put the spoon down on a piece of paper... the carbon on its back makes a mess. Pick up a Q-tip and pinch off a wisp, twist it into a tight ball, and drop it into the spoon at the edge. This is the cotton, the filter. You push the plunger all the way in, push the needletip into the cotton and draw the liquid through it, watching that you suck no particles. Really, mexican dissolves if you just think at it, but it leaves dope dirt like coffee grounds. You look through the syringe at the color... like sherry, I guess, if you like alcohol. You re-cap the needle and tie yourself off. If you're male, your veins stand like ropes; you can choose a discreet forearm vein. If you're female you may go for the wrist; the big vein under your thumb is easy to hit; it's hidden under watch or wristlets, and nobody thinks tracks if they're on the wrist anyway, unless they know. Slap it to bring the vein up. Swing the arm, clench the fist. Slap again: this somewhat anesthetizes, if you care. Usually vamp... uh users like to feel it when they make the hit. Needle slides in slow, bevel eye pointing up, here's lookin at you, and your breath goes very shallow... You angle in... feel the little pop when the needle breaks into the vein. Draw the plunger back gently, not to disturb the needle in its pocket, and look for the register: yes -- a little red flower blossoms at the base of the cylinder. You're in, you're there... and the real connection is made: through the blood. You're talking to your heart now, downstream in the blood; your heart talks to you. You hear it in your ears, hear the echo in your body... You loose the tie... ease the plunger in, watching the blood wisping through the shortening cylinder, breathe in shallow murmurs, and you push it all the way home... withdraw. Bright blood beads up on your skin. Grab a tissue and press it to the wound; slide back and take the feeling as it takes you...  It's pussy-by-the-fire. Your everything curls up purring. In a little while, as if something just occurred to you, you walk into the bathroom and you throw up. No problem. Just something you thought about doing. Then you can't do anything for a couple of hours. You nod, noting the music, noting the candle, noting the TV, but you're just scanning across the surfaces, distracted from seeing or hearing, distracted from your distraction by a thousand distractions, thoughts cutting in past each other like fractured glass panels. A significant-seeming thought pursued and pinned proves to be the thought equivalent of a doodle. Then you want to sleep but you can't sleep... so you keep on cutting in on yourself for another few hours... Then you droop lower and lower to a proximate sleep, a sleep that seems athletic, muscular: you leap from dream to fractured dream. You wake very tired, your everything slightly ACHES. When you stand up, maybe you throw up. But that's cool. In the mirror your face has a lead-gray aura, and your pupils are tiny, twitchy, like you're looking at something you hate. But it's okay. You look forward to next time. ...'Cause every time it's exactly the same... and it's always good. just like milk and cookies at recess was... always the same, always good... except the time it takes you to hit a vein protracts, and the time of the glow shrinks... |
BAH.It's Vampire Lite. It's only glamorous if you sexualize it. And speaking of sex, if you and your lover love the drug, your libidos will die in it, and this little rite will become your sex. Sex Lite. And you sure as hell won't do much talking. Friendship Lite. If you think your life is shallow and empty now, try the real thing: try heroin. Lite up your life. |
So when you run into a coven of goths at 2 am in yr local convenient shoppe,
and they got nothing on the counter but distilled water and Q-tips, you smirk
at them, sardonic-like-- |
