For the next few weeks I stumbled around New York City in my sorry existence. I hadn't been able to find The Man for a while so I haven't been able to get high. Its not like it mattered, since I had no money to pay him with, and wasn't quite up to selling my body again.
The withdrawal I was going through was terrible. Since I had been using smack pretty heavily before I couldn't find The Man this withdrawal was much worse than the one I was going through back in rehab. Plus while I was in rehab I had a counselor I had to see everyday, group therapy meetings, books to read, people to talk to and TV to watch. We were even allowed to smoke cigarettes. That was a luxury I certainly hadn't had the pleasure of tasting in a while. But see in rehab we had other things to concentrate on. More things to think about then getting more drugs and the horrible pain you were going through. Out here by myself I had nothing to think about but how much I missed Roger, how much I wanted to get high again, and how bad I had wasted my life away. Not that I even cared about the latter at this point.
I had the sweats and shakes like never before. I can't fall asleep at night and wonder alone by myself. I throw up all the time. I try to hide so people don't see me, but sometimes I feel the urge to through up and just stop where I'm at and purge. But usually the only thing I could do was sit on a bench and cry. My muscles were hurting very badly, and I always felt as if I would just collapse if I tried to walk around.
As if all this weren't bad enough, the weather had taken a turn for the worse. It had to be below freezing. It snowed all the time and I was so cold. It was all I could do to stop from freezing to death. All I had to wear was some tight blue leather pants, heeled black boots, a black sweater, and an old leopard print jacket Benny had given me a few years ago.
Being out in the cold was never good for a person in my condition. Especially living in it. And what I mean by my condition is AIDS. I contracted it a few years ago from sharing a needle with a girl named Lila. She had worked at the Cat Scratch club with me for a while. She was actually the one who got me hooked on heroin in the first place. For a while we were pretty close. We would go out every night around three in the morning when we got off work to go get high. She is also the one who introduced me to The Man. At first I was scared to try it, but she was a few years older than me and made it sound so fun and cool. No day but today, that's what I live by. So I just said what the hell and did it. A few months after that she said she was walking home after work, but I never saw her again. I don't know where Lila is, or even if she is still alive.
But anyways, living outside in the winter with AIDS is like a death wish. Which just happened to be something I kind of wanted. If I even got the tiniest cold it could turn into a deathly disease. And I figured that was what was wrong with me as well. My throat was sore, I was feverish, and just plain exhausted. I know it could just be withdrawal. But this is something different all together, I can just feel it.
A/N: Please Review. I hope you like it. The next chapter is going to be the last. Lata.