Summer Solstice Sunday

91.4 Degrees

It was even hotter when I woke up this morning; after having drifted back to sleep at 6:37 AM, until about 11 AM, when the above reading was noted on my AM/FM CD playing clock radio type thing.

I want to get a dedicated thermometer for the place because I think the one on the CD player is biased by the fact that the unit heats up when in use. If I listen to the AM radio for a couple of hours, I can feel heat coming from it.
Maybe it isn't quite 91.4, once you step away from the radio a yard or so...

When I woke up and saw that the time was 6:37, I was happy to look out the window and see the sun rising over the school across the street.
That would be impossible, if it were 6:37 in the evening, I thought.
It took me a second to rule out the possibility that, due to the Covid-19 virus, the sun might be rising in the evening, now.

But, it meant that I had slept for about 15 hours, after having stayed up for something like 48 hours.

More importantly, it meant that Harold the cat was only 4 hours late on his feeding schedule, rather than 16.

Sit Down And Give Me Your Arm

Friday night, Bobby shot me up with a syringe of heroin.
He had miraculously* come across some that was so pure that he marveled at it, and then held the 3 gram bag of it under his illuminated magnifying glass, so I could marvel, too.

It looked like someone might have taken some of the cat litter that I threw away, out of the dumpster and put it in the corner of a sandwich bag and then tied it off. A grey-ish brown color, it was, and looked like clay.

I am starting to question these "miracles."

*Somebody probably overdosed off their first sample of it; maybe having never had anything so pure in their lives. And then, the next person to come along might have been there to buy some off him, and wound up just taking the bag from his cold, dead fingers. You know, a miracle...

But, Bobby came knocking on my door Friday afternoon, saying: "Come on, I got something for you," then added: "You are going to be the first to benefit!"

I did kind of wonder what the "something" might be, I was pretty sure that it wasn't going to be a pipe full of crack, because Bobby wasn't acting like he was in "crack mode," but rather, more in line with the Bobby that had given me the electric guitar that I play every day, the plant light that I am now growing weed under...and the list goes on.
He truly seemed to have been compensating me for the dismal amounts of income that I have been making from busking the past couple years, with the gifts of things that he has bestowed upon me.
I can just look around my apartment and see things that Bobby has given me -the 60" TV that is staring at me that I hardly ever turn on, is an example.
But, Bobby was very excited, and after I went to his place and he showed me the almost pure heroin that he had come across -again, probably from someone who didn't know the strength of it and had overdosed (fuck that person, to the victors go the spoils)- and then he had me sit down in a chair, as if he was ready to give me a haircut, or something.

He went and did something with a spoon and a syringe and then came over to me and assured me that he knew what he was doing and would never give me a dose that anyone in history had ever overdosed upon.

Having figured out what the great surprise was that had him knocking at my door, and knowing that he was high as hell on the stuff and was truly trying to give me the greatest gift that a heroin addict could ever give to someone else, I allowed him to shoot me up.
I knew that I was pretty much immune to the stuff and would never become addicted to it, because it just wasn't in my constitution, I let him go ahead and shoot me up with a needle that was ridiculously thin -a mosquito could inflict more of a wound on somebody- trusting his 30 something years of experience as a heroin addict, that he wouldn't kill me with it.

I really just wanted to find out what the whole deal was, and why Miles Davis supposedly played some of the greatest jazz, immortalized through several waxings, while high on the stuff.
A musician is always a sucker to explore such avenues.

So, Bobby stuck the needle in one of my veins, showing much more skill than most of the plasma collecting technicians at the lab where I once went, and gave me what he considered a good dose, but not enough to ever kill anyone.

I was shaking me head right away, as I felt something familiar to me from the one time I was hospitalized with a broken leg sustained in a motorcycle crash, and more recently, from the times he has given me some of his methadone "wafers" that he had extra.

I am just not a downer person.

My aversion to such things as heroin is in step with how I can fast for 28 days on nothing but water, and love it, compared to how some of my contemporaries broke down by the end of the first evening and "just had to" eat something.
Because they were feeling weak, or whatever it was that resulted in me losing respect for them and seeing them as being weak, feckless and ineffectual human beings that I had no interest in associating with.

What a bunch of losers, I thought.

But then, I came to the realization that different people have different "demons" and it might just be that people are attracted to others who are pretty much immune to their own demons, maybe in the hope that those others might be able to teach them to think like themselves, and help them slay their demons.

Bobby has persistently lectured me on the dangers of tobacco, and about how he used to smoke x amount of cigarettes each day, and how, one day, after having suffered through an episode of waking up and hardly being able to breath, he quit the things.

He has similarly lectured me on the subject of those whom he knew who had killed themselves with alcohol.

"You need to just quit smoking those things and say goodbye to booze," he told me "as a friend, who cares about you."

And so, it has been interesting how, out of the times he has turned me on to methadone, and now heroin, and how I came back the next day and told him that I wasn't interested in any more, and how surprised he seemed to be about that, he could immediately jump upon me after I lit up a cigarette, shaking his head and saying something like: "Man, you're still a slave to that shit, why can't you just decide 'this is it' and just quit the things?!"

So, I went back to my apartment where I was able to work for about 12 hours, in a pretty mellow state of mind, in between running to the toilet to puke about 8 times.

"That's good," said Bobby about the puking.
I knew what he meant.

But, like the methadone, I felt like I was much above it, like it was at a level of physical numbness that I was not that impressed by.

That is kind of why I let him go ahead and shoot me up with a syringe of the stuff -he had already been the guinea pig for it, so I wasn't worried about it killing me- and I trusted his experience and believed him when he said that he knew people that had done ten times as much as he was giving me, and lived; mostly because I have always wanted to have as many varied experiences in life that I could -bring them on.
It was why I just had to go into the military, just to see if Basic Training would "break" me; humble me, so I just couldn't take it.
And, why I just had to manage to go to prison, just to see that facet of humanity.

And, I guess I had to shoot up heroin.
You hear about how people become pathetically addicted to it, and wind up a slave to it. Bring it on, I say.


Miles Davis was supposedly shooting up "every night" while producing timeless, classic jazz. Bring it on.

But, I found it just to be a cleansing experience.

I would gulp down a quart of spring water, in preparation for the next bout of puking, and wound up feeling very much purged afterwards.

The next day, I couldn't even conceive of the notion of drinking alcohol, and it had put me in a prime state for beginning a cleansing juice fast.

Bobby knocked on my door the next morning, very curious about what I had thought about it. I told him that I had hiccuped for hours and even had wondered if I would be able to get to sleep, or if the hiccuping would keep me awake.

I refused another shot of it. It's just not my thing. Just like cigarettes and alcohol are not Bobby's thing. I guess I would envy him; if I didn't see him selling his bike to get another 2 grams of the stuff that looks like litter out of Harold's box.

Now, it is Tuesday already, and this is my Sunday post...