The Book of Drugs_ A Memoir - Mike Doughty [48]
Swaz was a terrible performance poet. There’s a certain kind of would-be artist who chooses poetry because of its materials: to make a film, you need a bunch of people, a camera, lights, a script; to write a song, you need a guitar or a piano, and you need to learn how to play; to write a poem, you need a piece of paper and half an hour. Swaz’s performance involved undulating while she intoned in a ridiculous sexy-fairy voice. In poetry, she found a way to vend her sexiness.
She performed around London, sometimes just a few blocks from our place. I could’ve gone and been good and clapped and kissed her. But I never went. Lousy, lousy boyfriend.
Since then, she’s become a kind of quasi-academic. She gives performance poetry workshops all over Britain, and the world: Bogotá, Sarajevo, Dublin. Vending your sexiness works in any medium.
At that time in Britain, it had become near impossible to find good drugs, unless it was cocaine. Swaz had the country’s last decent Ecstasy connection, a bug-eyed, chubby guy named Alfonso who seemed totally hapless and sometimes wore a bolo tie over a Hawaiian shirt.
I was in a club, sitting on the floor, rolling my jaw around and obsessively feeling my skull. A guy came up, shouting over the music.
“Whadeegetyapah,” he said.
Ha ha, what? Ha ha.
“Where did you get your pill,” he repeated.
Alfonso!
“What? Who?”
This guy named Alfonso. Ha ha ha.
“Where is he?”
He’s, ummm, I don’t know, he lives . . .
“Did you get it here?”
No, no, we called him. My eyes crossed and uncrossed.
“You don’t give a fuck, do you, you daft cunt?”
Ha ha ha.
“You fucking twat, you don’t even know where the fuck you are, do you?”
Ha ha ha. Eyes rolling and rolling.
(I don’t do E anymore. I’ll hang out with you when you’re on E. But if you start rubbing your face and telling me how amazing your face feels, I will make fun of you.)
Alfonso called, sounding coked up and disturbed. He said he wanted to be an artist, he wanted to design CD covers; you make CDs, can I design your CD cover?
Um, Alfonso, why don’t you bring some art over next time?
“Can I come over right now?”
Ah, no, right now we’re . . . um, we’re . . .
“I want to make a positive change in my life,” Alfonso said. You could hear his heart pounding in his throat.
Swaz told me that she heard voices. She had sudden, bug-eyed outbursts: she’d burst into tears and shriek at me. She had an evil streak. She’d say something innocuous that would devastate, and she pretended she wasn’t trying to hurt me.
I’d go back to North America to play shows, mostly in brown, cold cities on flat terrain; at the end I’d fly from Columbus or Cedar Rapids back to London. I would be exhausted by the weeks on the road with the band that hated me. I smoked lots of weed and barely wanted to move off the Major Couch. Swaz mocked me cruelly for being crippled. She was a versatile mocker.
We went out to clubs, taking Alfonso’s pills. We heard all the great jungle DJs of London, a scene in full flower. We dropped the pills, the high came up, and I desperately tried to get away from Swaz. I was frightened when my druggy eyes looked into hers. She reached out and pulled me to her face. She kissed me. She’d been dutifully swigging water, as a cautious E-taker is supposed to: the inside of her mouth was cold.
I fled, and went around asking for sips of peoples’ drinks, greeting everybody with ostentatious fake love, being the most annoying person on Ecstasy you could imagine. Particularly considering how unapologetically E’d-up I was, when everybody else in the place was probably on adulterated cocaine.
When I got back to Swaz’s, and the high was coming off, I hated myself for the idiotic, chemical affection.
She poured me a glass of Scotch to ease the internal clatter. I refused, but she was persistent. I drank.
It tasted like adulthood. This is really nice, I thought. The jitters smoothed.