San Bernardino Dreams

           Tonya was a mother, a daughter, a heroin addict, a provider and a prostitute. I could tell by the insincerity in her voice when she introduced herself that Tonya wasn’t her real name.  Prostitutes rarely go by their given names. How and when she arrived at “Tonya” as a suitable pseudonym I’ll never know.  I was new to San Bernardino, and hadn’t yet established myself with the local dealers, but I knew they were out there. Any city as filled with pawnshops, motels, and adult bookstores as San Bernardino is, is bound to have its fair share drugs. So I got into a taxi, and asked the driver to take me to the Casino Morongo, I figured I would be able to score there. Halfway down Interstate-10 I told the driver flat-out what I was after. He agreed to help me, this is how I met Tonya.  We met in the parking lot of a Baker’s fast food restaurant. She was leaning up against her car. She had long brown hair, sun kissed California skin and some acne around her mouth and on her forehead that was covered in a heavy layer of caked on powdery foundation and makeup. In her late twenties, she was wearing a mini-skirt with fishnets, a halter-top and had on a pair of higher than high heels. I pulled up in my taxi; I was looking for cocaine, while she was waiting on some heroin.

         I said to her nonchalantly, “You know where anything’s at tonight?”

         She replied “Yeah, I am waiting on some D right now.” Our relationship consisted strictly of convenience, she had the connections for the drugs, and I had the means to purchase them. I got into her 1991 Toyota, and off we went into Downtown San Bernardino’s drug underworld. Her car smelled of her, of her cigarettes, her cheap perfume, her layers of makeup and of sex, that distinct odor of sweat and flesh fused together.

     First we went to get the black-tar heroin. After we stopped in a gas station’s bathroom, where she gave me a tutorial in how to smoke it off of a piece of tin foil. I had never even seen tar-heroin, I was used to East Coast dope, which is China White: a fine white, off white or sometimes brown powder that you can either sniff or shoot, while tar is exactly as its name describes, a soft but tough black substance. She made sure to burn the foil first, warning me that if you don’t, you could get Alzheimer’s. I chuckled to myself at why a heroin addict would be concerned with long-term anything, let alone long-term consequences like Alzheimer’s, or that she even knew what Alzheimer’s was. She took a rolled up dollar bill, put it in my mouth, made a V-shape out of a piece of foil and held it a downward angle. She flicked the lighter igniting the flame under the foil. The small glob of tar began to boil, then ran downwards, giving off a gray fume upon its descent. I put my face close to the foil, placed the dollar bill just above the dope and pulled, inhaling the smoke, when she stopped the flame she instructed me to me to hold it in a little. I complied, then exhaled a plume of smoke, and was left with a sour, burnt vinegar taste in my mouth. We repeated this process a few times, passing the foil back and forth. By the time I took a seat back in her car, I began to feel my muscles relax and my anxieties melt away, and I was filled with an overwhelming sense of passive acceptance. Next we went to get my base from one of her friends who went by the name “Pleasure”. After we had successfully bought all of our drugs, we went back to a motel room that I had rented, in nearby Colton.

         I entered the motel room first, followed by Tonya, who made sure to shut and lock all of the five locks on the motel door. The dead bolt, the latch, both chains and of course the one inside the doorknob, just incase. She quickly took of her heels, placing them on table, and took a seat a on the couch. We got high together, I distributed to her hits of the base, going as far as to place an amount that I saw fit in the pipe, then handed her the pipe and the lighter. She told me about her three kids, one she’d had with her current man, and how he doesn’t treat the other two the same. She also told me about her mother who is also “in the game”, meaning is also a prostitute. While she spoke, I looked at her arms, which were covered in track marks and huge dark abscesses, some of which had a slight yellow discharge, and her teeth that had a gray, almost black, tint to them. Then we parted ways.

         The second time I saw her, she picked me up with her mother who was applying make-up from an empty Cheeze-its box that rested on the floor in front of the front seat filled with various eyeliners and lipsticks. Her mother, who either had the flu or was dope sick, claimed she was on her way to Baseline Road to, “make some money” as she put it. This time I would meet Tonya’s man. They came into my motel room in their constant state of bickering, with all the tools of their trade, that trade being IV drug use. They delicately laid them out on the nightstand: a spoon, several used syringes, a lighter and a few blueberry-sized red balloons filled with black-tar heroin. I wanted so bad to get high, I wanted to nod out like I had seen her do. And I knew that it wouldn’t happen by simply smoking the dope. I would have to take it up a notch.

         So I asked them, “Do you guys have a clean rig?”

         “No, but I can run to the gas station and get some bleach,” suggested Tonya.

         I didn’t want to take the chance of contracting any disease(s). So after Tonya returned, I poured the bleach into one of the plastic cups that the motel provided, and filled a second with water. I drew the bleach up into the syringe three times, and flushed it with water three times, as I had been taught to do in some rehab that I had attended.

Then I was ready to have her man inject me, since I didn’t know how to do it myself. He did a little fishing around before he found a vein. From a glance this would appear to be arbitrary, but it was actually very calculated. I remember the force it took to insert this dull needle into my flesh. I remember looking at him with this needle in my arm. This needle that had clearly been used so many times the numbers on the side were worn off. But I had my eyes on the prize, and couldn’t care less. When he found a vein, he pulled back, saw the blood come up into the syringe, and pushed off.  He then took the needle out of my arm, and with dirt-encrusted fingernails proceeded to take his fingers and push on the injection site claiming, “You have to push this shit in”. Disgusted I stood up immediately and looked at my arm, and could see one of my veins was protruding and darker than the rest, so I took his advice, and applied pressure with my three fingertips to the injection site. I tasted the vinegar-urine taste of the black-tar heroin, and I felt a warm rush come over me. They told me I should sit down, but I remained standing for a few minutes. This warm, fuzzy almost itchy feeling engulfed me. My eyelids became heavy, and I started to nod. So I sat on the bed, while Tonya and her man were curled up together on the other bed, both high. I watched the two of them; the way their bodies were woven together as they basked in an opiate-induced bliss. How their arms were wrapped around each other, and how they both were covered in corresponding dark brown abscesses and track marks. How nothing mattered to them at that very moment, how whatever it was, it could wait until tomorrow. I also realized that once the drugs wore off, they would be fighting again. It occurred to me then that heroin isn’t about feeling good or bad. It’s about feeling nothing at all, even if only for a few hours, knowing full well that everything that is temporarily relieved will return. It’s about that short reprieve.