FROM THE PAGES OF STILL DAZED:
FROM ERIC PETERSON’S JOURNAL for his Chemical Dependency Psychiatrist Dr. Horowitz in STILL DAZED:
That’s right, Eric Peterson, artiste extraordinaire, grunge rocker, wants that which will make detox and survival equally impossible.
I did not ask to come through the door, clenched legs pulled open with my passing, pulled into the light without a thought I might have been better off left to shadow. Who has handed her my fate? What makes the cutting tear down my face following the jagged crevice from a previous tear no more receptive than the one forming beneath the bloodstain, each unprepared for what awaits? From where I lay, wrapped in the cocoon of blankets, I see nothing really; only the existence which I will attempt to destroy and more than likely succeed.
I knew from the biblical pages of the junkie handbook if I began using again I wouldn’t have to readjust my thinking. You know, shit like, as one vein collapses, the smaller one will do, and after a while, there isn’t a needle thin enough that won’t rip apart what is left. But who gives a fuck? I wanted more than anything to get off, just like the guys spiking their dicks because all else had wasted into an ugly unusable road map.
I had a little voice in my fucking head saying you know you’ll feel better if you just do a little. You already fucking know each time you quit it gets harder, you know it, so slash the superior junkie routine. And you know you don’t want the sickness no matter how much of a tough-ass you think you are.
I keep telling myself people change so they can learn to let go. But I really know better. True freedom comes from the clarity of passion when the bond is broken. Addiction makes too many mistakes to undo, for no real reason, but I am a junkie. In the long run all junkies get to be like me. Stuff destroys relationships, and it’s like plunging the spike on a lucky hit if someone cares about you in the end. I envy what I could have. But I realize it isn’t truth. It’s the knowing I will always need to score, fucking paradise when the shit can be found, and a dog paddle in the deepest ocean of fear if it can’t.
I sit on the porch in the cold, cold rain, waiting for Kristelle to come home. I have done just what Dr. Horowitz has asked me to do. Keep a fucking journal. I never have written down any words I thought were worth reading. I do write lyrics, and they are easy since I can be a real lazy ass. I button up my flannel shirt, but the wind slips right through me. I’m not sure if my mom will ever come home, not in this dream or any other. Forgiveness hasn’t come easy, if at all.
Even in happiness, we remain slaves to our memories, swollen with desire, demanding, as if a lover’s lips are still locked to ours. Nothing ever quite clears the confusion of how we shared the contours of our bodies and how we were left behind, never asking to be breathless in the first place and certainly not asking for an end. In Kristelle, Bud’s death left it impossible to return to a different kind of kiss. In my world, the tears swell, hot and salty for much of what I can never repair.
I feel like I’m spinning in the whirlwind of my life. Instinct? Experience or lack of? Why think at all, Eric? Why keep writing in a useless journal? If it’s to diminish my fear then fuck this shit, I won’t ever be frightened again. You like that Horowitz? Have we exchanged enough testosterone this round? Ding, ding, ding goes the fucking bell at the edge of the worn stage.
Feeling will always be too intimate.
On smack, you get that feeling, and it is fucking euphoric, and where else is the memory going to stick? And why the fuck wouldn’t you want its mercy to linger for all of eternity? You can’t spend every second of your life jacking off.
Feels right, feels like two bodies in love’s after light, wanting to repeat what makes it feel right,
It’s a long way from blue, it’s too far from you.
DAZED just feels fucking right.
I thought I knew what depression feels like. I thought it would never be so unexpected because I have been down all of my life. But what I’m feeling isn’t the same. I don’t recognize the slide back into the abyss, so different, never echoic before at such intensity. Depression doesn’t feel this way, like a warning of impending chaos. Instead, its lack of emotion expands the rift between madness and blame. And I truly am to blame for all that has happened.
I should curl up in a fucking little ball and die.
I should do it right now while I still have the imagination.
I am too fucking helpless to stop myself. The total absence of discomfort that comes with smack has leaked from every pore. I don’t give a fuck! I hurt so much! I can’t stop no matter how fucking hard I try!
I think there might be beauty in the little things, a gentle breeze, a stratocumulus cloud, the fifty fucking shades of green in the lifeless hole, but when I look deeper, I see only sadness that has drained the beauty from me… The sharing of sex, the feeling of unspoken ease, fidgeting, sprawled on the couch, sick as you wait for a call back. Then Pop! The realization I’m alone and hurting. No TV. No radio. Stuck with my memories I’d call dreams if they weren’t nameless.
I am nameless.
Wish I could live up to my enigma status.
Being strung-out sneaks up on you. You’re just chipping, maybe copping a place to crash because the underpasses are full of scary crack-heads who want your throat. Then one day you fucking wake up with the fevers, drenched in a river of sweat, and you fucking just know a shot is all it would take. You’re for sure strung-out, and if truth be told, here’s the deal. You line up the hottest man next to the face of death; his matted, greasy hair covering eyes that watch you from a hollowed place and you’re going to choose the fucking face of death. You can’t warm the chill or turn off the intense body heat. You can’t end the shakes. Even with a stiff dick and drooling as you stare at the hottest man, you go straight for the bum. He’s got the dope.
Not even a tight hole can make me think I’m invincible.
But a spike?
The fucking pathetic answer.
That’s right, Eric Peterson, artiste extraordinaire, grunge rocker, wants that which will make detox and survival equally impossible.
