You Don't Really Have to Breathe

Lets go back a little. I started heroin one year ago the first day of summer. It seemed to be a summer thing to do, I was told that it was beautiful just like the air, and that didn’t make sense to me. Why anyone would say that I had no clue, and it nagged at my head for a good hour. So I rolled over to look at the voice.
“I wanna try it. I wanna be just like the air. Take me there.”
It took forty minutes to drive to Hartford, the capitol of the lovely state of Connecticut. It’s where you got dope if you wanted it. The whole drive there was tense. Every car turned into the police and you just knew they were going to pull you over knowing exactly where you were headed and why you had eighty dollars on you. My legs bounced and my hands clenched together, sweat just sheeting them. I tried not jerking my head around. He told me to stay calm and not draw attention to two white teenagers in the bad part of the city. So I glanced his way knowing I was pissing him off… but he just grinned. He was so relaxed it wasn’t fair. Nothing shook on him or trembled. Never did. Instead he just placed his hand on my knee and flexed his fingers out, tapping out a rhythm that soothed. I wanted to be like him so bad. I was so eager to sell my soul over to the devil I didn’t believe in.
We took a turn onto Center Street, a bad street. He parked in front of some shitty looking apartments, took out his phone, and called his old dealer back.
“I’m here. Red car.” Then he looked at me - “get in the back.” It made me clench the way he said it, as if I had to obey him… but I did anyways. This scrubby looking Puerto Rican came out of the apartments all huddled into himself. Chu is what people called him apparently and I got right along with him because of my little Puerto Rican background. Though you never made friends with dealers, well, Chu was just a middle man. He only brought us to what we wanted.
We took turns onto about ten different streets its seemed until we parked in front of another run down apartment complex. It was funny how this world was so different from my own and just a half hour away from me. You had to keep the doors locked and your windows up because you never knew who might be walking by. People got jumped here all the time. Drugs was simply a game and a way of life. Chu jumped out and was back to the car in five minutes, though it felt like a thousand. We dropped him back off and took off. You DON’T sit in Hartford with drugs on you. Fuckin pigs were everywhere and they’ll rip you right out of your car.
So I looked at him, “Can we do it now?”
“Are you fucking kidding me? You wanna go to jail? Cause they’ll take you there.” He rolled his gorgeous brown eyes emphasizing how stupid I am. But I didn’t know this game yet, why did he have to be so mean? The ride home was even longer and more intense. He had made me put the needle and bundle of heroin (a bundle is ten bags of dope) in my bra. I thought that was wrong, why should I be the one to take the fall if anything were to happen? So my eyes ravaged over the highway searching for cops. We finally got to his apartment. He walked so god damn slow! I was shaking I was so eager to do this. I wanted to prove to him I could do it to. I could be as cool as he was. I wanted him to love me because of it. It wasn’t cool, but at the time you couldn’t say anything to make me think any different.
And then he looked at me, “Wanna go first, babe? Yea of course you do. Go sit down I’ll get it ready.” But I didn’t want to. I wanted to watch the whole process…consuming every part of the experience into my brain. He poured just one bag into a bottle cap and then pulled water up into the needle and pushed it into the cap.
“One bag?” I asked.
“One can kill you,” was all he said. Before that I didn’t even think of that possibility and now my heart was racing. My family would be so ashamed I didn’t think they’d even want to claim my body. He pulled out the plunger from the syringe and mixed the heroin with water. It turned into a milky solution. He ripped a piece of cotton from a Q-tip rolled it into a tiny ball and stuck it on the end of the needle. He stuck it into the mixture and used his teeth to slowly pull it up into the needle. Warm amber swam through the barrel. It looked lovely. So lovely. Not saying anything he walked over and opened his dresser drawer and came back with a thin black belt. he handed it to me and told me to wrap it tight round my upper arm.
Squeezing all the blood into my lower arm, my veins were more visible. He seemed to marvel at them. “You’re damn lucky you got such beautiful veins,” and then he bent down and kissed my arm at the middle were the veins blazed bright.
“Don’t worry, it won’t hurt.” I couldn’t close my eyes I was fixated on this process. He touched my arm and I could feel pressure on a vein then he took the needle, lined it up and pushed it into my arm. I didn’t even notice the prick. I thought he would just slam it down into my arm but instead he pulled the plunger up and blood shot into the needle mixing with heroin. I thought something had gone wrong, but he smiled and pushed the amber down into my arm. The needle slipped right out of my arm and I liked the little drop of blood. It didn’t taste like blood, it tasted of chemicals. And while I noticed that, something hit me like a train. Like a thousand fucking angels singing my name. My head was so warm and so perfect and cloudy it rolled back and my eyes shut. Next I felt a slap on my face.
“Babe? You ok?! Wake the fuck up! Keep your eyes open for me.” And I really did try, but all I could manage was half opened glazed over eyes. He fixed himself and I saw almost the same response that I had had. I lied down on the bed, my body unhinged from all the pain its ever suffered. And it was so clear it was like the air around me. Nothing fucking mattered, just this feeling did. Everything was going to be better than ok. Everything didn’t exist anymore. Heroin was the only true thing that made any kind of sense.
He came over to me and lied down with me. I rolled over on top of him and stared into his eyes. His pupils were the size of pins, mine must have been gone all together. But I had no more confusion or constrictions. I had power and I didn’t question anything about myself. He kissed me softly first, then we crashed into each other. Making love.
That day, I was God.