Dream

I WOKE UP at about quarter to one in the afternoon having just dreamt about "Nutnut" my "ex". I wish I had not taken to calling her Nutnut here. That was a name somebody else came up with. Because shorthand seemed to suit the needs of a blog it kind of stuck here. I dreamed of her and woke up missing her and feeling forlorn. Also I dreamed of a young kid breaking into an old lady's home. I could see him crawling in through the curtained window clear as I see this screen now. He got injured and was lying there. The lady called the police. He was about to attack and kill her. Somehow this and Nutnut got mixed up in a dreamlike way. Now I just feel tired, exhausted and more confused for having tried to unravel the unravellable.

Well it's a hot Sunday. The world is kind of swimming past. On days like this, all we need is a beach to run parallel with the high road and this place would be perfect. I've to go up the road later. Mother Hubbs is cooking. Also I have two friends who got clean after thirty years or more of using. They are a he and a she. I suppose I ought to have mentioned them before ... He went onto buprenorphine "Subutex" and came off that way. She just came out of a ten-week hospital detox. For him I have few worries, though he has just been diagnosed with cancer he gives the impression it's one of those livable-with ones. I'm not so sure. As for her: she lived between one person visiting her tiny flat and the next showing up. Drugs came in with the people. I don't see how she is going to live now. I'd always thought she was strong, but lately she seemed to have been getting weaker. I just hope both will be okay.

I have to go because I'm literally out of time. Maybe I should tell more about those two some other time. Sixty years between them on heroin. Sixty years! And both stopped. Amazing ...

Hair Cut!

PASCAL OWED ME £10 so I went to his parents' lovely carpeted, oriental be-rug'd driftwood, pot-pourri fine glassware bourgeois home where he inhabits an attic he says he converted himself into a wonderful room in just three months of fulltime labour. He didn't admittedly install the windows (who would? By themself??) or the radiators (trained plumber's job) or the bare pine floorboards (which had already been laid in anticipation of the space's use) but all else he did do; including the cupboardified walls, all the plastering, and every fitting. He did a wonderful job and I'm not surprised he doesn't want to move out. We sat there, got stoned watching Aljezeera TV on his new Sky system (so much better than cable!!)

Because we've had no hot water in my place for over a fortnight and because I've no washing machine chez moi, Pascal let me use his power shower plus washed all my clothes for me. I emerged feeling cleaner than I have done in weeks. Then he sat me down on a scarlet three-legged stool, and in seconds snipped my horribly overgrowing hair as short as I like it. I'm so grateful to Pascal for all he did. Don't know why I let my hair grow so much. With glasses on, I was getting to look like Weird Al. My hair can go horribly curly but it looks straight now. Once, some years ago, when I was at Nutnut's house, we did my hair with Sun-in. It looked a little like Madonna's in some of my vidblogclips. Artificially brightened. Nutnut knew of a place you can go where trainee "hair technicians" cut-colour-perm-relax-braid and otherwise treat in any way you like male and female hair of all descriptions. After my standard cut (which cost about £3!) they did a strand test for colouring it. Some minutes later a red-faced girl puffed back demanding "what have you put on your hair?" "Why?" I asked; "What do you mean?" "When we added a test drop of the chemicals to that sample of hair you gave us, it melted and smoke started coming out of it," she explained. "If we'd have put that straight on all your hair would have dissolved at the roots and turned to jelly and fallen off and you'd probably have a scalpfull of blisters. So whatever that product was you lightened it with before, it's badly damaged your hair. Don't use it ever again. Just let it grow out naturally." Which is what I did. And I have not touched "Sun In" (6% peroxide spray) ever since. Imagine if we had used some home product (as Nutnut was often wont to do ...) and my hair actually had melted and slid off my head. I'd have gone nuts ...

The Video Blog is coming along superbly. Presently it's nearly all musical "offerings" ... but I will get to posting other stuff up. Though presently it is following my own interests more (hornets-hamsters-Sinead O'Connor) some rare gems are up there already. Do drop by, please, inform me what you think of the new decor there...

... & I'm taking requests, please. Anything you wanna see -- just tell me ...

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Someone from critiquemyblog.blogspot has promised me a critical write-up. Let's see what they say ...

Living with Nutnut

YESTERDAY'S POST was actually half-finished. I failed to explain what being in "treatment" twice in one year meant. First time I applied to a Crisis Detox Centre that takes people on self-referral from all over London. The drugs treated turn out to be invariably heroin and crack as well as alcohol and benzos (sleeping pills/tranquillizers). I met no-one there who wasn't on one of the first two. The vast majority were on both. This was a 21-day blind detox. I left on ... (let me rewind my memory) it must have been day three. That summer I applied through the local drugs service to do a detox+6-month rehab on the South Coast. I got in at exactly the right time of year (June or July) and so would have left early in the next year. I'd say that is the best timing if you can do it. Then the new year would have been taking off hand-in-hand with my journey of discovery -- clean -- in the outside world. I ran out of there as well on something like day three. What I hadn't realized before I got there was just how many of this facility's occupants were on a "jail swerve"; ie undergoing treatment so they could tell the judge this is where they were staying, that they were 100% clean now and on this course of rehab and everything was going so well and why jeapordize this by throwing a newly reformed person back in prison among "peers" who had no real intention of staying clean. In my head, as I said yesterday, I had been hitting crisis point literally every day and telling myself every day "I cannot go on like this"; yet every day when heroin eventually came the crisis was solved only to build up to near-breaking point the next day. I was staying in a madwoman's home. She was very kind but crazy. Whenever I left, as I did a few times, she practically stalked me in the areas she knew I frequented. This side of my life was never properly addressed except once when the counsellor looked at me as if I was in deep trouble, & told me "you HAVE to sort this out". But I didn't. For months on end I didn't. When I eventually moved completely out Nutnut treated this as a crime. I said to her You don't want me around. You are so much happier without me. But she could not or would not see it this way ...

to be continued ...

PS (21:12 hrs) There's a fantastic drama about Van Gough on Channel 4. Get back 2u after that ...

Laundretta/Nutnut

THE PHONE RANG AT 9.04 this morning. Do I "want anything"? When do I not "want" "it"? Only problem: no money in house. (Or bank.) So I said I would call later. (When he won't be answering bc he is so lazy. So someone else will get the business.) Later being after I have conjured readies out of the air by dint of magic trick. ...That sounds like babelfish talking.

I posted nothing yesterday because I was seriously not in the mood. Could have got myself into a dangerous situation. Lost my temper with someone. O wot can I say nothing.

Sitting here dripping with sweat. BADLY. Have taken medication. It is not holding me. If you held my hand you'd feel like you were touching a tropical frog. Sweat is running down my back like a mini river. That is how Nutnut knew when I was "using" again (years back)... when I came in on a winter's morning sweating profusely, ran a bath (I was so clean in that house ... the bath being my only excuse to lock the bathroom door. And keep it locked for long enough to draw up water. Prepare a spoon. Get filter. Citric acid. Cigarette lighter. (If I forgot this I came out pretending I was desperate for a bathtime cig.) Do not be heard flickflickflicking on lighter. Her banging on door. Are you in that bath. Me sitting with one leg in water stirring it. Can't you hear that I am? Then when injection prepared got into hot water. (Brings veins up lovely.) Then try to restrain swearing etc when they didn't behave readily enough. Eventually sink back in water not caring if drowned (maybe that was half the attraction, well I have to be honest. You never lived with that woman.) And then carefully hide every little twist of torn syringe wrapper, cigarette filter, spilt citric, black from bottom of spoon, blood drips ... Just in case she declared a sudden interest in using loo whilst I was in there. How did I get on to this. O yes. When I went on Subutex/buprenorphine for about a month till relapsing in grand style. Took what I thought then was a "small hit" ie a third of £20/$40 worth - woke up with her slapping my head & screaming at me. The noise of my choked & shallow breathing had woken her at 7am. "That was a death rattle!" I said furiously. Why didn't you just let me die?" I genuinely hated her for "saving" me like that. (Though I'm sure I would have come round anyway.)

There is chaos in my present house too. Laundretta has been drunk and bawling since about 4am. Matran the Rat Man took her last £20 and spent it all on something (likely crack). She was still blowing her top at noon. That's what I call persistent. Nutnut was more persistent we used to have blazing public rows lasting literally nine a.m. to five p.m. (fortunately neither of us had proper jobs). Followed by minor eruptions for upto three days afterwards. Laundretta has destroyed the vacuum cleaner kicking remains of my needle lids/empty wraps etc all down the stairs. They try and be "respectible" junkies and not let it show as much as I do. She was a prostitute before she was an addict (which is very unusual) - used to make good money (still can make £300 in a night). Claims to have been in Dubai etc. Certainly explained how a hostess bar works in convincing detail. Now she is really just a drunken lush. Who sweats so heavily after a drink she looks like she has showered fully clothed.

Well I'm off now to read a book. Bye.