Page 7 of Rat Park
“What for?”
“Just come ’ere!”
Dominic followed him, still grumbling but curious until they were far away enough from the rest of the group to have some privacy. “What is it?” Dominic asked as soon as they stopped.
“Patience is a virtue, Nickie,” Mason responded cheekily but dug something out of his coat pocket before Dominic could complain further. “Look what I got.”
Dominic looked. It was a small baggie filled with white powder.
“The hell did you get that?” Dominic asked. Pot, heroin, crack, even pain pills—those were common in their town. Cocaine? Not so much. Not when its cheaper, dirtier cousin was so popular.
“Friend of a friend. You want some?” Mason asked, his eyes bright, and Dominic wondered if he’d already taken a sample of the offering.
“We don’t have anything to do a line off of,” Dominic said. Cocaine may not have been the drug he had most commonly seen, but everybody knew how to do a line.
“Don’t need it. Here, hold the bag open.”
Dominic took the baggie and pinched it so its mouth gaped open. Mason fished around in his pockets again until he took out a set of jangling keys. Dominic watched him as he dipped the tip of the key into the white powder and spooned a little out. He lifted it to one of his nostrils, pushing the other one shut and snorting quickly. The white powder disappeared.
“Whoo! Yeah, baby!” Mason laughed, blinking and shaking his head a little before looking at Dominic. “You wanna try?”
“Sure,” Dominic said.
They exchanged the baggie for the keys and Dominic mirrored Mason, dipping the tip of the key in before lifting it to his nose. There was a moment of hesitation as he pinched his other nostril shut, the image of his mom, strung out and eyes red, coming to mind. But Mason was watching him expectantly, eyebrows raised.
He shut his eyes and snorted.
The powder went right in and seemed to hit the back of his throat. He tilted his face up slightly. He didn’t know if it was the rush of cold air or the coke or just the manifestation of his expectations, but Dominic swore he could feel the powder light up his nervous system.
“Whoa,” Dominic said.
“Do another one.”
“All right.”
They returned to the group after putting everything away, Mason’s arm over his shoulders and grinning in their shared secret. Dominic wasn’t sure what he was feeling, if the drug was having any impact at all. He kept waiting for something momentous to happen, some surging euphoria, but instead, it was like a coffee rush that just kept going.
Suddenly, he realised he wasn’t all that cold anymore, although he wasn’t sure if that was because his hands and feet wouldn’t quite stop moving. Some of the girls had joined the group and Dominic was talking to one of them, talking and talking, he was talking way too much and too fast—he could see it on her face. He was freaking her out a little; he felt bad about it but didn’t, nothing really mattered all that much because he had things to say and places to be, he had togo.
It felt good. It felt good not to care. It felt good to have his thoughts rush so fast that none of them had their usual impact. Everything was good and bright, Mason was laughing, and then so was he.
Dominic felt, for the first time in a very long time, simplygood.
*****
For people who weren’t used to having heroin in their lives, the drug had a bit of a reputation. Its name was said with some sort of hushed fanfare, the white kids of another life attaching dark-movie drama to it, a spinning, hazing camera, young bodies slipping away to Nirvana.
It’d been the drug of choice when the War on Drugs had started, and its face was on all of the Wanted posters.
In truth, heroin was common as shit. It was just another drug, and if anything made it more nefarious than the rest, it was the fact that most people injected it, and the sight of needles, recreational or not, would add an edge to anything.
Still, even the first time Dominic tried it, the sight of the bubbling spoon and the long needle didn’t really phase him. Ever since that night with Mason, he’d been chasing some sort of high. Some sort of way to feel that again, to be able to step away from his body and his life and himself for a while.
There was nothing romantic or pretty about heroin, but fuck did it feel good. Cocaine—either as a powder or in crack rock form—was too quick. It was a burden, trying to chase after its short high. Heroin, on the other hand, had layer upon layer, stretching you until you were thin and inconsequential.
First, it was thatrush. The nerves and the anxiety and every single other aspect of life was washed away in a wave of pleasure. Not physical pleasure—not the way touching and wanting and stroking elicited—but a soul-deep pleasure that was thoughtless and weightless and good. The feeling didn’t last long, but even as it dissipated it left you in the sun, lying on warm grass, floating. Nothing mattered in that place, but there was a costly tariff to get inside.
The pleasure was an acid that ate everything else away. It seeped through to consume the thin film of his waking moments, of his nights. The heroin had sliced a part of Dominic off and it walked around now, soused and soppy with the brown liquid, a watchful spectre over his shoulder. It pressed its dead, wet body against him in class, making his mind splinter. When he talked to his friends, it’d be breathing on his neck, pulling him away. Dominic went out to take a walk, the day sunny and perfect, the breeze threading its fingers tenderly through his hair, but Dominic wasn’t there. His mind scratched at the infected wound of his obsession, wondering how he’d get money for his next hit, what he could do to get it.
