Airports hold a special sense of horror for me. They rank in my top five least favorite places in the world. They are especially awful if seven days ago you kicked heroin cold turkey in a shithole motel called the Deville—you and your junkie wife puking into the toilet, the sink, the shower, watching reruns of The Golden Girls and Judge Judy, curled into agonized balls in opposite corners of the room, masturbating and crying to pass the time.
Airports rank alongside the post-OD ride in an ambulance, pumped full of the Narcan that has ripped you from the mouth of endless white light and deposited you into that instant, chemically induced cold turkey so severe they had to strap you down to the gurney. Airports rank alongside the East LA crack house where, at seven in the morning when the money and the rock have run out, you sat twitching with a bunch of coke-crazed lunatics, terrified to exit into the unforgiving LA sunlight and figure out just what the fuck you are gonna do now, hopelessly combing the filthy carpet for a rock of crack you are convinced you must have dropped earlier in the session.
I find airports THAT awful.
It’s the brightness and the sterility of them. The way everyone looks so fucking STRAIGHT and HEALTHY, like they have never so much as experienced a minute as awful and degenerate as your last year has been. The insinuating way the airport security staff talks to you and look at you: like they KNOW you’re up to something. It’s almost like they think they are doing you a favor by letting you travel to another country. The unspoken question of “Why should we let a scumbag like YOU cross international borders?”
That edge of twitchy paranoia is increased a thousandfold when you feel as raw and as fucked up as I felt that day, preparing to return to London from Los Angeles. Out of options, we had decided to flee to England’s friendlier climes. At least there we could receive treatment for our addiction. In the United States we were thrown to the lions: even the “free” methadone clinic on Hollywood Boulevard expected its clients to show up with twelve dollars a day, for each dose of methadone. When heroin is only seven dollars a bag downtown, and the clinic won’t even provide enough methadone to keep you out of withdrawal…well, you can do the math. Susan’s mother was eager to see us leave the United States, even paid for our plane tickets. Susan and I were convinced the airport cops were gonna pounce on us before we even made it to the plane.
“There the bastards are!” they’d yell. “Trying to skip the country!”
They’d hold us down and read the litany of crimes: my being in the country illegally for over a year. Possession and use of controlled substances. Thousands of dollars in bounced checks, ripped bank accounts, unpaid rent. The $15,000 stolen from Susan’s old job. Maybe they’d even show up with every heroin and crack dealer we still owed money to in LA, for a bit of summary street justice. That bill alone had to amount to tens of thousands of dollars—double, triple the amount worth killing us for. Holy fuck, the sweat was running off me as I handed my passport over. Dripping from my nose. Soaking through my shirt and onto the crumpled suit I wore in an attempt to look inconspicuous. Only the suit was red sharkskin and had dark bloodspots on the trousers from shooting up. I don’t think it had ever been cleaned since I bought it, high on crack, a year ago. I was the most conspicuous person in the airport, almost comically noticeable.
“You have nothing on you,” I told myself. “Calm the fuck down.”
“But wait,” my paranoia piped up. “You packed in a hurry. What if you left something in your clothes by mistake? A balloon? A rock? An old syringe? And do you really trust that junkie bitch? What if she slipped something in YOUR luggage? She’s done dumber things! They have sniffer dogs…X-rays…. They’ll bust you before you can get out. You’ll never leave this fucking city. It WANTS you. In a crack house or in a prison cell; doesn’t matter: it’ll HAVE you.”
I bought a book waiting for our flight to be called. Why the fuck didn’t we score some smack before we left? One balloon to make the flight bearable? Bullshit bravado, that’s all it was. We were terminal fools. The book was a trashy paperback about—what else?—a couple who sinks into heroin addiction. I figured it would pass the eleven hours until I hit London.
We made it onto the plane. Right up until takeoff I expected the pigs to rush onto the plane and bundle us off. The pilot to announce: “Ladies and gentlemen…do not panic. We have fugitives on board and they are about to be removed…. Do not interfere with the apprehension of the suspects.”
When the plane picked up speed on the runway I had the sense of the Devil itself chasing the jet, snarling and slobbering and snapping in frustration as we climbed just out of reach. The sky, though, provided no sanctuary from my toxic thoughts.
The fat American businessman next to me took up half of my seat as well as his own. Susan was anxiously looking out the window. Even with her hair washed and clean clothes on, she looked like a junkie whore. Aw Jesus, I had to tell my parents that I was married again. This time to a fucking junkie! The crash from the cocaine was dwindling to a throbbing sleep-deprived headache and the relentless hum of post-heroin-withdrawal anguish was returning, as I knew it would.
Jesus, it was hot.
Aren’t planes supposed to be air-conditioned? I tried to get comfortable but either hit Susan’s bony elbow if I moved too far left or the businessman’s hammy arm if I slithered too far to the right. My squirming and jostling for position was obviously irritating him. He stared at me, round and pink and disgusted for a moment, before returning his attention to some banal magazine aimed at men. Cars. Gadgets. Women with big tits and white smiles. A world as alien to me as that of ecosystems at the bottom of the ocean. I smelled. I smelled like a man who had been shitting and vomiting and sweating out the heroin for a week and cleaned himself quickly in the sink of a motel with a ratty-looking washcloth before he left for the airport. I smelled like a man whose last act before leaving that dark cave was to take one final hit from the pipe and watch his face carefully in the mirror as he exhaled plumes of white smoke, while a cab honked outside in the parking lot. A man who had vaguely considered just staying there and trying to rustle up more credit for crack, just stay in that room and just be. To simply wait until the cops or death came and put an end to the whole sorry mess.
He cleared his throat, irritated. The fat pig was irritated by my presence. This tub of fucking lard that was taking up half of my Goddamned seat with his flab—flab no doubt put on over expensive business lunches and good brandy—was irritated by me! Self-righteous anger bubbled up inside of me.
Who was the real monster? M or this self-important cocksucker? This businessman? This evil corporate dick-sucking bastard? WHO WAS THE REAL MONSTER?
Calm down. Breathe. You’re crazy right now—you’re sick. Keep it together. Order a drink and shut the fuck up for the next eleven hours. You need to make it home without getting arrested.
Suspended somewhere in the sky I sat in the tiny toilet and looked at myself. I looked as if I hadn’t slept in years. I jerked off quickly and brutally—it was over in seconds, one of the odder effects of heroin withdrawal. The climax sent a small rush of serotonin to my brain, giving me relief for a few seconds at least. I knew in a few hours I was going to arrive at Manchester airport to see my parents for the first time in over a year. Then I was going to return to London in an attempt to somehow insinuate myself back into the music industry. Beyond that, I had planned nothing. Especially here, absurdly suspended in a toilet thousands of feet in the air, I knew the idea was ridiculous. I wondered vaguely how long it would be before I fucked up again.
Someone rapped on the door, agitated.
“How long you gonna be in there?”
I stood up and washed my hands.
“Not long,” I replied.