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You wanna know the kind of slump I'm in? Have you ever felt like a stubbed out cigarette butt in the crack of the sidewalk? I feel crooked. Bent sideways and backways and crushed in on myself.
I'm looking for a light.
For some unknown grubby fingers to pluck me out, dust me off, tell me "hey, this one's not so bad, I can straighten this one out and light'er up if I get desperate."
But nobody's as desperate as your goodtime boy, Danny Molloy here. I'm a fucking sore that won't scab over. I'm the hot tar that sticks into your tread in the high summer heat, collecting bits of gravel and refusing to let go. I don't know why. I just don't know why…
Nobody tells you that the first time you hit rock bottom it's a false one. There's actually a rockier bottom below that. And under that rock bottom is where I've just landed. I've got the taste of some stranger's load in my mouth and I'm $40 richer for it. That'll get me to Tuesday.
Today's Monday.
I see my man, I score breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and I load up. I stagger my feet down to the record store where Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly" floats me like a river. I thumb through the records. I don't have any money. The money's in my arm, now. The rest of it is twisted off in a little plastic bag in my shoe. I'm just here to look. I'm only ever anywhere to look.
I don't know what it is I'm looking for.
Two months ago I woke up somewhere I'd never been with what appeared to be a once-infected injection site in my neck and a week's worth of missing time. I had no memory of how I got there and the only people I could ask were not exactly what you'd consider reliable sources. That was rock bottom, the first. The sequel was about two weeks later when the marks on my throat had seemed to close without assistance. I'd been straight, junk sick and scared, but past the hump. I wasn't gonna die. Not from infection and not from withdrawal. But then I'd woken up in New York missing four days and four nights.
I think I'm actually cracking up.
October in Central Park is beautiful, just like you hear. Even when you don't know anyone, you've got other guys who don't know anyone looking out for you. I made the friends I needed to, I scored, I slept easier. The drugs haven't taken my looks from me yet, so I get by. But how did I get here? Who paid for it? By my calculations, that's a lot of cock I'd have had to suck to get me from one coast to the other. And in four days? I looked into it and it seemed I could've gotten here by way of train. That seemed the most likely. The cheapest way. I would've done it the cheap way, of course, always do.
There's hitching, but I had a bad run with that once and even loaded, this thumb remembers…
Strange tracks on my arms. Not in the pit, not anywhere I'd usually push off. Always in pairs. Close together. Too wide. Alarmingly wide. Like I was somehow shooting up with a plastic straw. Real Jekyll and Hyde shit. Some kind of latent somnambulism? Paranoid schizophrenia creeping in? I had an aunt who'd-
Well…
Actually, maybe I oughta snatch a magazine from the stand and flip to the back, see if anyone has lobotomies on offer.
The thought makes me giggle. It makes me laugh. I'm laughing out loud and strangers are walking past me, some of them glaring, some of them pretending not to see the shaggy-haired bum slumped over against brick. Consider this, though.
Consider an advertisement in the back of a dirty rag; Man seeking-
No. Again.
Boy seeking stranger. A missed connection. Maybe we met in September. Maybe we never did. Maybe you drove two spikes into my neck like some kind of creature and maybe I liked it because God knows nothing has hit the same since. Maybe you're a real life, no malarkey, dragon. Maybe your eyes were beautiful but I was so frightened I had to force myself to look at them. The thought of you makes my legs shake and my mind wrap around air until I get so frustrated and sick I could scream.
Sometimes I wake up screaming.
Did our phantom selves pass one another in the night? Are you the dragon I'm chasing? Does my subconscious kick me in the back of the knee when I'm asleep and drive me to go with men, to earn money for train tickets, to travel to strange places to find you?
If I feel your breath on my neck, will I stand still at last?
Why do I feel like I'm chasing something that wants to see me run? When I find you, will I get all the answers?
And that ticker tape question in my head, winding me round like a spool in a cassette; Will I get the fixes I need? Will I be somebody? Will I get the fixes I need to be somebody?
Rounding the other spool; I'm a bright young reporter with a point of view…
In the palm of one fist I'm malleable human clay. I'm anything anyone needs me to be, especially if they've got a dollar, and my story ends in predictable fashion.
In the other, I know just who I am. I'm Daniel fucking Molloy. I'm not anyone's boy, but I'm fascinating.
I'm laughing again because it's funny. It's clichéd. It's self-important. Life isn't a fucking Robert Frost poem. You go cutting through the thick, you're gonna get lost and die of exposure.
But maybe that beats dying from the lack of it.
Everywhere I wake up, my tape recorder is still with me. Search me how I've managed to sleep on benches in Central Park for weeks without anyone pinching it. I talk to people all the time. I record our interviews, I press the button, I watch the spools spin, I listen back. But every time I wake up the tape is gone and there's a fresh one in its place.
I'm losing my grip. Are you laughing? You should be. It's a joke, after all. The joke is a riddle. The punchline is a mystery. Maybe it's the comedian I'm looking for. Maybe when I find him, I'll tell him he's not that funny. Maybe I'll heckle him and he'll put two more holes in my neck and finish me.
Now that'd be a funny joke.