WyzWmn's World©

the sound: Bad to the Bone – George Thorogood, Legs – ZZTop, Frankenstein – Edgar Winter, Stanglehold – Ted Nugent

Robert and I arrived at the almost formal “celebration of life” on his dresser, wearing jeans and t-shirts. Robert’s t-shirt read “I’d rather have a sister in a whore house than a brother on a Honda”…classy. Mine read “titties and beer, come’eer come’eer” around a negative picture of Frank Zappa.

Everyone else there was dressed in suits and funeral wear.

As if our mode of dress didn’t set us apart from everyone else…the very fact that we were both higher than kites might have set some people off. I had developed a nervous tick that involved flipping my hair around like it was some kind of scarf or flag and Robert wiggled his lower jaw back and forth, left to right like it was about to wag off of the lower half of his face. This combined with the obvious marks on our arms when we belligerently took our jackets off with the intent of showing everyone our “dress shirts” left little or no question as to the depths we’d fallen too.

There wasn’t much chance that anyone could miss we were in trouble.

Gray and Rosie tried to get us out the door before anyone made comment, but Robert began to argue and I began to whine as only a pair of junkies can. I was carrying on about the lack of fairness and Robert was getting pretty heated and loud. We were quite the floor show so it was no small wonder that Mrs. K finally noticed us.

Mrs. K descended upon us from across the room…waving the ever present lace hankercheif as she demanded….”wot? wot? Wot is this ye’ll be doin now?”

She drew herself up and sucked in a massive breath and began a tirade the likes of I’ve never seen or heard since.

“How.dare.you?” she demanded scathingly…

”How.dare.you.show.your.dirty.drug.addled.selves.here.in.the. presence. of.all.these.good.people? “

“People that are friends and dignitaries that hae’ come all this way ta show the respect to me poor dead Daithi’s memory? How dare you even breath the air he canna breath…such a waste…the likes of you two? How dare ye foul beggars…”

Robert had the good grace to look sheepish in the face of his mother’s wrath.

Me?

I started to laugh.

Slowly, gradually building to something resembling the hysterical crescendo that that we all remember of the wicked witch of the east in the Wizard of Oz.

Right over the edge.

I know, I know…it’s been a while 🙂

the sound: Jefferson Airplane – White Rabbit, Cowboy Junkies – Sweet Jane, Heroin – Velvet Underground

As Robert’s wounds healed, the two of us spiraled down a narrow path to our own personal and private hells…personal, private and together.

We ate together, when we ate. We fought with each other, when we fought. We slept together, when we slept. We plotted together when we plotted. And we fixed together when we got high. Neither often remembered to bathe and most often forgot to find clean clothes when we got up. We lived on caffeine, cigarettes and whatever we could get our hands on to get on the pitch.

As any junkie will tell you…getting “the pitch on” takes over your life. You never quite feel as good as you did in the beginning, so your life unravels around you and in no time at all…all you are concerned with is trying to get the right pitch on again.

You forget to eat, you forget to bathe, you forget to wash your clothes…all your time and energy is spent plotting the next hit, finding the money, finding the Greek, finding the works, finding.

In Robert’s case it was complicated by trying to keep what he was doing from his family.

Oft time family is not quite as stupid as you think and his was on to us in no time. Possibly it was the steady stream of people leaving the farm bearing goods that Robert had sold them or traded them in exchange for drugs. Possibly it was the ongoing presence of Gus and his evil looking cronies as Robert let them doctor their wares at the house for a “house cut”.

Robert, who’d made all his money running a motorcycle club that sold drugs and had kept them so successful by keeping such firm rules around not doing the product was pushin the pitch right through all the profit that he’d helped the club had make. He talked often of selling the farm and all of his motorcycles…he was his very own version of lets make a dope deal and often the men packed up their families and left simply because Robert had lost his sense of humor and the ability to love the brotherhood.

So possibly it was all the family of riders that slowly over time pulled up stakes and left the farm not wanting to watch what Robert was becoming that tipped his family off.

Rosie was particularly sad during that period…I don’t know if it was about her perception of waste, her belief that Robert had “done this” to me or if it was just her being tired of the lifestyle we were perpetrating….but she was noticeably sad while the rest of the family got mad.

Grey arrived on the doorstep one evening demanding that Robert and I attend a “celebration of life” that was happening in honour of Scurvy D’s birthday. Neither Robert nor myself were interested, both of us knowing that Mrs. K would be there…but in the end I guess we had no choice.