Does Heroin Illuminate the Dark Albert L. Ingram, Ph.D. Albert L. Ingram, Ph.D. 3 387 2001-11-11T01:36:00Z 2001-11-11T01:40:00Z 2 1026 5853 Great Lakes Instructional Design and Evaluation 48 11 7187 9.2720

I swear to god I'm not a drug addict. No, really. I research all this. I probably care too much to be a drug addict, which is sad because I really don't care much.

This will be a series of three shorts. So, yes, there will be more.

The title of this chapter comes from a Colorfinger song called "The Gay Bar Song". No joke.

Does Heroin Illuminate the Dark?

I always had this phobia about being left alone. It wasn't that I was afraid of being alone. It was more like, if I was left alone, I'd miss stuff. Things'd happen without me and I miss them. I'd be left in the dark.

I hated being in the dark. I hated feeling stupid. I always wanted to be in the midst of things, in the midst of people, watching and observing and not missing a single detail. I loathe ignorance. People always seem to be able to twist things to make me come out looking like the idiot. It's easier to avoid that when I see everything, know everything.

The silent observer.

So how did I miss it? And for so long? It didn't make any sense to me. Pietro was always thin. A real, slim Jim, haha… If he turned sideways, I think he would've disappeared.

Fuck.

And he was always moody and pissy. Half the time you didn't even know what he was saying because he was talking so damn fast. Hell, he could've been shouting it at us the whole time and we just never realized…

But in the evenings he'd get really calm. Cool. He'd talk a lot more slowly, and his thoughts weren't quite so jumbled. It was… different. Usually when he was trying to keep his hyper-metabolism under control, you could still see it. He'd twitch, he'd shift and twist in his seat, he'd stutter and trip over his words. Such a challenge, you know, to hold yourself back so the rest of the world can keep up.

And it would be like that during the day, almost more so. His muscles would jerk horribly some days, as if he was a marionette whose strings were being plucked at random. His speech would also be harder to decipher, even when he made an effort to talk slowly, because the words would come out wrong, or not come out at all. So we wouldn't understand and he'd become frustrated; it almost always ended in shouting matches.

But in the evenings it was just… serene peace. He'd smile and speak slowly with a lot of emotion in his voice. He'd smile at me and we'd talk. And for once it would be pleasant because we were on the same mental page. He wasn't too far ahead, I wasn't too far behind, and we were right together, thinking together like brothers or lovers or friends.

I liked those times, as stupid and selfish as it sounds now. Because I can remember how the light played off his smooth, pale skin. I can remember how we'd sit, private and hidden, in my room. Sometimes we would talk, lovely lilting speech that I could have fallen in love with. Other times we would kiss and kiss and kiss. And once he let me touch him, make him moan, feel what sex between two boys was like. He'd reassured me, urged me, goaded me, coached me, comforted me.

It was so wonderful. I don't think I ever knew reciprocated love, and I just wanted to savor it. Maybe this situation was a little skewed- hell, we only got along during the evenings- but it was something for me to hold on to and treasure like a little schoolgirl with a furious crush. I loved him, he loved me and there we were with our little family in our little house. It was all about pretending, pretending that our lives were what they were supposed to be. Like playing house in preschool, only this was the real, live version.

And for a long time I was able to convince myself that this was the way it was supposed to be. Maybe that was the way his body had always worked, irritable during the day and happy at night, and I just hadn't noticed before. Or maybe it was a normal thing that had developed, a teenage thing, a puberty thing. Anything. Oh, god, anything.

When I really start thinking about it, I can usually persuade myself that anyone could have made that mistake. Could have written it off as something normal…

Then I think about the way his eyes looked, sunken and hollow, toward the end. I think about the way his skin seemed too tight, or the way his collarbone and ribs protruded, so sharp and noticeable. I think about the midday vomiting, the goose bumps and the chills, and the occasional shaking fits I would hold him through, muttering frantically in his ear, "What's wrong with you? Do you know what's wrong?"

He always said he didn't know. I guess, in some twisted way, he really didn't. He knew he was an addict, of course- he wasn't stupid. But maybe he didn't know why, didn't know why his life had taken this turn.

It was the marks on his arms that made me stop and look at what was going on. Stupid me, I thought he was cutting himself. I could have understood that. Because that sort of thing seems to mean something, or it means something treatable. Depression, unhappiness, whatever the fuck. I was still naïve enough to think that I would be able to help him through whatever bumps in the road he was experiencing. This was familiar territory.

Did you know that heroin is a derivative of morphine? The very same thing they use for a painkiller in every major hospital in the world. Only a step away. A legal drug only a step away from being a lethal drug, how's that for irony? Haha. And morphine is made from opium, another drug that was great in its time. And opium comes from the poppy, Papaver somniferum L.

I swear to god, if I could have ripped every one of those damn plants from the ground by their fucking roots, I would have.

            It was the syringes that told me this wasn't some idiot thing he had, some personal vendetta against his flesh, some childish way of handling anger. Or, more accurately, it told me that it was exactly that… but more serious than an angsty night spent in the bathroom with a shaving razor.

He said it was like fire pouring into his veins. Fire, spreading, moving up his arm and eclipsing into some sort of soothing warmth that he couldn't get from me, that selfish little fucker. Like fire in the evening when he was high, but like ice in the morning when I had to hold him and reassure him that the world wasn't ending.

It was all a joke. What was love? He was fucking with some chemicals in his body and that was making him love me. It wasn't real. It was false love, drugged love, fucked up, crack-addict love. It wasn't even pretending anymore, it wasn't playing house. This was pretending life, counterfeiting emotions.

I don't think I ever knew rage until the moment I realized that.

The syringes were on his bed. Sterile, thank god. At least he wasn't going out and sharing his needles, running the risk of contracting AIDs or hepatitis or god knows what else.

Small, stupid comforts.

At the time the question was very puzzling: what is a healthy fifteen year old boy doing with medical syringes? Very puzzling indeed. So I sat there on his bed, packet of needles in hand, and waited for him. I waited and I thought. I thought about loving him, embracing him, and fighting with him. I thought about emptiness and hope. I thought back to when I'd knelt between his thighs and sucked his cock; I thought about the rough, little scars I'd run my hands over without a second thought. Bruises and blood, complacent nights and uncomfortable days, fucking and sucking and just waiting for the confrontation.

And what a confrontation it was.