*

You live in New York, and you’re so cool. You have an apartment in the East Village, and you call yourself an artist. But after a while, you forget what it was you were so excited about. There is nothing here for you. You feel like a sucker every day paying fourteen bucks for a pack of smokes. You take stock of your resources, and you don’t have anything. You call yourself an artist, but you work fifty million hours a week just to sleep in a room where only a bed fits. You go to bars where you can’t sit down or hear anyone talk. You’re a hipster in New York City. There are a million of you, and it doesn’t matter that you believe you’re talented, because no one cares and you’re only getting older. The thing you didn’t realize when you were fourteen and thought Kurt Cobain was God was that not every weirdo with an ironic tee from Urban Outfitters makes it. There are a lot of people in their sixties, toothless, broken, and poor, who have stories of almost making it. At what point do people hear “loser” when you say “artist”?

I didn’t care how amazingly successful you got as long as you weren’t younger than me.

The first thing Elizabeth did after opening the door was shush me. Not a good sign. She pointed through her railroad apartment to the bedroom, where I could make out two sleeping bodies. “Noah and Candy,” she told me. I didn’t know who Candy was.

I was disappointed she had let Noah in and into her bed, where he was probably crashing from whatever drug he had injected or smoked. That didn’t bode well for Elizabeth’s sobriety. Said me, the girl who was fiending for a bag of heroin, but hey, you still had those feelings. A year into Elizabeth’s relationship with Noah, he lost his job and started smoking crack. I didn’t know which had come first, losing his job or smoking crack, but my money was on the crack. He pretended to go to work every morning but instead went to his studio where he smoked crack and fucked around. He claimed he was taking care of the bills. But it all came out when Elizabeth started getting bills with the bright red “Final Notice” warnings. Elizabeth’s mother paid all the back debt. Noah had helped Elizabeth clean up when they first met, so he laid a guilt trip on her when she tried kicking him out. And then he got her hooked on dope again, so she couldn’t really get away. But she didn’t blame him. She said, “I’m an adult. No one can make you do anything.”

“Shit,” was the first thing Noah said when he came into the kitchen.

Noah owned a lot of scarves.

Five years of hardcore drug use had taken a heavy toll on him. The whole time they were together, he seemed frozen at twenty-five, but now he looked like he was pushing forty. It was weird how age didn’t work in steady steps but was like a car accident: it hit you one day and left you fucked-up forever.

Noah took a jar of organic peanut butter out of the cabinet. He scooped some on his finger. The jar fell out of his hand and broke into pieces. He picked up a shard of the jar and wiped the peanut butter onto a piece of bread.

Noah’s teeth were black and broke off in his sleep. Junkies don’t brush. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know why.

Noah had contracted Hep. C. from all the injectables. When I asked Elizabeth what she thought would happen to him, she said these words like they were no big deal, “He’s going to die.”

Candy couldn’t find her pills. She dumped her purse on the bed. Losing drugs makes you crazy. You alternate between “It has to be here” and “I am going to be sick really soon, and there’s nothing I can do to help it.”

Candy cornered Elizabeth and tried to pull the “Maybe you accidentally somehow....” Elizabeth rolled her eyes. Candy was screaming at Noah to get off his ass and help her. Noah’s eyes kept closing. I figured it out. Noah had stolen Candy’s Xanax.

Elizabeth came out from the bedroom and said, “Can you guys leave? You were supposed to come over for dinner and that was twenty-two hours ago.” And then she went back to the bedroom. I snotted on my sleeve. My head ached. Everything was raw, and dread filled me. The back of my head and neck were sweaty. Sometimes I was so desperate for drugs that it was hard to act casual, which was the way we all tried to be. Like we were just using this one last time, and we didn’t even care much about doing it. You have to pretend. That’s why dealers are better. You don’t have to pretend anything. Both of you just want your shit and to get the fuck away from each other as quickly as possible.

“I can get more tomorrow,” Noah said.

“Get it now,” Candy said.

“He isn’t around now. We’ll go to my place and then in the morning…”

“Your place is gross,” she said.

“I can get you crack.”

“Do I look like a crackhead?” she shouted.

“I’m just telling you what I can get,” he mumbled. .

You watch them. It’s depressing. You want to run and never touch it again. Thank your lucky stars you never got caught, not even that one time you copped on Delancey Street in broad fucking daylight with cars whizzing by.

This little jail is made out of powder.

There is this powder people snort or shoot into their bodies that makes them feel good, but they end up turning into zombies, lying around, wasting their lives, getting older, and doing nothing. It makes you feel so good. It is a bad sci-fi movie, and you’ve seen it how many times?

“You can shut the door,” Elizabeth said as I walked into the bedroom.

“Here.” She handed me a methadone pill. Thank you, Elizabeth, for being so fucking considerate. You didn’t make me have to act nice.

“How much should I take?”

“What’s your habit like?” she asked. The way she was wearing her reading glasses, I felt like we were at CVS, and she was the pharmacist.

“About a bag and a half a day for the last ten days,” I told her.

“If you want enough not to be dope sick, half is fine. If you want to get a high, then take the whole pill.”

“Do you want money?”

“Nah, it’s cool. They’re only three bucks a pill,” she said. Was it even a crime if you didn’t pay for it? Was the crime taking the drug or having it on you? Did New York City consider my body a container?

Elizabeth chased the dragon, lighting it off aluminum foil. She must waste a lot that way because the smoke goes everywhere. I wondered why people didn’t use a bong or something to catch the smoke.

Elizabeth cleaned in red heels. Give that girl a bag of dope and watch everything sparkle. As she folded her size-zero jeans, she told me Candy’s story.

Candy lived Upstate. She and Noah had been friends when they worked at an art gallery together like ten years ago. She had gotten married, moved back home, and had two kids. Some dude had wanted to spend the rest of his life with that annoying bitch. She friended Noah on Facebook.

Facebook: the way to ruin nice memories by having to meet up with people you should just be allowed to wonder what had happened to.

Candy was pretty hot in a vulgar, all-American, skanky way. Blond hair, vacant eyes. She had that vibe, like you could do whatever you wanted to her. Just bend her over. Like she was used to it. Like she’d been fucked so many times she wouldn’t care if you had a turn. I kind of wished I could give off that vibe. Sometimes I tried, but it was always awkward. Something about me wasn’t easy. Whatever it was made it harder for men to forget I was a real person. Every time I fucked someone, it became complicated.

At some point, Candy got addicted to pain pills. Her husband was leaving her. He was going to take the kids. She had to get clean. She asked Noah if he would look after her kids while she kicked if she came to the city and picked him up. And for whatever fucking reason, probably because he was high out of his mind, he agreed. Then Candy came down and put the large, simple pieces together. Noah brought her to an apartment that looked like a junkie lived there. There was a girl nodding out with an extension cord around her neck, who woke up and asked Candy if she was interested in buying an extension cord. Noah said he would be gone a few minutes but was gone for hours. There was no power. She sat in the dark and saw mice brazenly run across the counters. Noah finally came home, and she went off on him. He brought her to Elizabeth’s to calm her down. After they ate, Noah started this shit with wanting to go and get clean with her. “They just keep going back and forth about it. She’ll be like ‘I’m going by myself.’ And then Noah will be like, ‘I agreed to help you and I want to.’ Then she cries. It never ends.” Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “They won’t fucking leave.”

“All I can imagine is babies wailing, and Noah and Candy passed out on the floor with lit cigarettes in their mouths and the stove on,” I said.

“Men our age are giant pussies,” Elizabeth said. “I need a real man. Like an old-school dude who won’t put up with my bullshit, you know? Someone who can take control of my life.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, pouring the dope onto a copy of The Rum Diary.

Lying on the bed. Giggling, on our bellies, swinging our feet. We were two girls at camp. She said, “Oh, Maya, when will we be swans?”

Elizabeth’s clavicles were pronounced. She had long dark hair. She could have been a model. Sometimes I wanted to touch her stomach because it was perfect, how flat it was. Her shirts hung flawlessly because nothing was there to push them out. Men fell in love with her. Men followed her down the street trying to guess her name, like in a movie.

She always dated men who were losers and assholes.

Haven’t you, haven’t you seen it all before?