DEEP HEAT

by Robin Soans

Selections from Deep Heat were first performed at a National Theatre Platform in London on 9 May 2011.

Deep Heat, subtitled ‘Encounters with the Famous, the Infamous and the Unknown’, contains verbatim monologues collected and edited by Robin Soans. The following excerpt is the written voice of PAUL, a thirty-year-old heroin addict from Leeds. Here, he tells the story of how his best (and only) friend died.

PAUL

Rattling or off your head…that’s when you get caught. I went into the Co-op, pulled a gun, off my nut on crack. I took a few hundred quid, but I left too big a slit. The girl on the till recognised me. She got the eyes. That’s how I got done. I got eight years for that. I’d been out ten weeks, and I got done for two shopliftings and a burglary…so I was back inside for fifteen months…out in February last year… back in a flat for a while, but I’ve got an electronic tag on my ankle, so if I go out after the curfew, the alarm goes off in the police station. And I’m back on the gear. By this time I’ve used up all my veins, and I’ve got these track marks in my neck. You have to get someone else to dig you in the neck… you can’t do it yourself…you might end up puncturing your windpipe. Me and my mate Andy used to dig each other in the neck. He’s hobbling by this time, using a stick, ’cos one day, when I was still inside, he’d injected crushed up sleeping pills into his groin. You need a number two needle…it’s like a chalky solution, it won’t go through a number one needle… and you literally have to whack it in you. He’s got it in, and it’s clogged his veins up…the smaller veins in his foot…and he’s got gangrene. They’ve taken four toes off one foot. So this one time he phones me…he’s rattling, got no money… he says, ‘Have you got any stuff?’ I’ve just had a dig…in mi arse, which is about the only place I’ve not been…and all I’ve got left is the wash…the residue left in the spoon…the shit basically. He says, ‘That’ll do, I’m coming round.’ He hobbles in, puts his stick down; I sucked up the wash into the syringe, and I dig him in the neck. He starts going doolally, shouting all sorts and hops out…out of his mind. I can’t follow cos I’ve got this electronic tag on mi leg. Twenty minutes later his mum phones. She’s panicking saying he’s gone completely doolally, like he needs help urgently, I thought, ‘Fuck it’ and run out of the house. I found him outside the block of flats where he lived. He’s thrown himself on to a metal fence. The spikes have gone through his chest. There’s blood coming from his nose and ears. I have to physically lift him off. He’s dead. This is my one and only best mate, and I’ve killed him. I told the police the first I knew was when his mum phoned for help.