vaseline
when you are in recovery and involved in AA/NA you are exposed to a plethora of catch phrases, mantras and mottoes, all designed to help you keep your demons in the closet where they belong, not floating in a spoon awaiting the needle or stuffed in the end of a crack pipe. there must be a million of those little phrases-"it works if you work it, so work it you're worth it", "keep comin' back", "easy does it", and my personal favorites, "one is too many and a thousand is never enough" and " the insanity of the addiction"
the former is a true symptom of the addict. basically saying it is the first drink, or hit, or shot, or line, or pill - whatever method you used to feed the demons, that gets your addiction going again. the latter is just a label that goes with the crazy things people do to get high. as i am rubbing KY jelly onto my ass so that i can smuggle heroin and a needle into the jail, it is that phrase-"the insanity of the addiction" that echoes in my mind while i gently slide the package into my rectum. rectum? damned near killed 'em!
the use of the anus for the smuggling of drugs in prison is one of the most degrading things imaginable. while some guards will surmise that you have earned the right to get high, going through all that to get a fix. others will exploit the fact and continually make jokes and such to continue the degradation that you have already gone through.
once, in elmira prison, a guard thought that he had caught me smuggling a package in the visiting room. he spoke into his radio, "i've got one boofing a package on the dance floor". 'boofing' is the slang for sticking the package up your ass, the 'dance floor' is the visitation room. i was immediately taken from the room. my visitor, the niece of another inmate who had see me in a picture from the yard with her uncle, and had decided that i was cute and wanted to meet me, was taken from the visitation room to a cell with a toilet that did not flush. coincidentally there was a piece of toilet paper on the floor under the chair next to mine, that had vaseline residue on it-from another boofer. they insisted the paper was mine as further proof that i had something inside of me. they took me to a room and strip searched me. after i refused to admit that my visitor, nicole , had given me anything, they decided to let her go. but, they told her, that if it turned out that i had anything inside of me when they made me defecate into a bucket , they would let the chemung county district attorney's's office know and felony charges would be pressed. they took me to a room where the toilet couldn't flush and told me the sooner we got this over with the sooner i could return to my cell and get back to the normal routine of the facility.yeah right, i thought,after you beat my ass on the way to the box. i admit, i got a little shook, i did not know how i was gonna get out of this. nicole's uncle had hired me to smuggle weed into the facility a few months' ago and i was worried that this could get me killed. they brought me my lunch and with it i received a note from troy, nicole's uncle. it read," good job T, way to keep your cool. don't worry about niki she's at home safe and sound. give the package to the trustee when he comes back for the tray and just relax-Big Troy" so i shat it out and gave it up. the staff Sargent came to see me after a few hours. he questioned me and told me that he had to believe his officer and that after dinner we would be going to the infirmary to settle the matter once and for all. after i defecated in a bucket, one of the officers had to go through my shit. i loved watching the pig squeezing my shit as he searched it for contraband. they fed me a laxative and told me i would have to go two to three more times. they took me to a room that had a chair in it and made me sit on it. the guard from the visitation room was becoming increasingly agitated. he would bet his right nut, he kept saying, that we would find the stuff. the chair revealed nothing, 0 for 2. the laxative they gave me was very strong and i was on the toilet fifteen minutes after i had ingested it. this time the guard who 'caught me' was told to search the poop, again i smiled as he squeezed the evidence, and laughed as he retched. he deserved every bit of what he got. after the third trip to the flushless toilet the Sargent told me i would be sleeping in this cell until i passed another sample tomorrow that way there would be no arguments surrounding whether or not i had been caught or it was just a misunderstanding. after i was through in the morning the Sargent apologized as the guard who had really caught me fumed behind his back, while he stared at me with murder in his eyes. on the way back to my cell, Sully, the guard, said "i don't know how you got away with that but i am gonna catch you, i'm on to you now mister" i laughed more out of nervousness than anything else, then he said " i know what you did you nasty little fuck, you shitted it out , then you ate it." to which i silently smiled until we got back to my tier, and then in the safety of having witnesses i whispered ," naw, sully, i shit it out and then your girl swallowed it". and i laughed and laughed as he stomped away. when i turned around , Big troy had a nice sized joint in his hand, and he said "welcome home, soldier, niki says hi and wants you to call her". i was the celebrity on the tier that day as i relayed the story of my capture and eventual release by the enemy. i never told anyone how i was able to get rid of the package, i just kept saying that i never had anything to begin with . that they just wanted to scare people who were really doing it, just for the ears of the jail house snitches. those bastards, the snitches, really make me fucking sick to my stomach, siding with the very people who are paid to keep you down. and for what? an extra slice of fake bacon on sundays? to me these people are as low as the pedophiles that are locked up in PC-punk city or in pigs' terms protective custody.
so niki and i laid off on the smuggling for a bit and she brought a friend, jessika, that i hooked my friend, larry, up with. so the show never really stopped , there was just a new guy in the starring role. larry was more than happy to bring the stuff in, he was a real lonely guy. his family had pretty much written him off when he got arrested for selling drugs. his folks were rich and didn't understand why larry would stoop to such a low thing. " why did you do this to us?" his mother asked from a letter, the only letter he had received since he was locked up. " i can't even show my face, i am so embarrassed i have to do my shopping in a whole different city now....." it went on and on like that. larry acted like he thought it was funny but i could see that it hurt worse than a shank to the gut. to get the letter off of his mind i told him about another time i was smuggling dope from new york city to ithaca, ny, my home town.
i had gotten a ride from a friend, mikey, who owed me forty bucks. i told him he could work it off by giving me a ride to the city. he was bored and had nothing better to do so he agreed.. mikey's car wasn't inspected and his license to drive was suspended so i was real nervous the whole way down that we'd get pulled over and i would have to explain to some hick cop why i had over $3000 in my pocket. after we got to the city and i had bought the dope i had decided to boof it in case we got pulled over on the way back. i had also made sure to save enough money for bus fare back home on top of the expenses we'd need to get back, just to cover my heroin filled ass. i put a gram of dope in each balloon, which, after i cut it when i got back would be 2 1/2 grams per gram. enough for fifty bags. since i was doing over thirty bags a day myself, i figured if a package broke open i wouldn't die , i'd just get real fuckin' high. so, i had 20 one- gram packages of heroin in balloons and i put four balloons in a rubber, greased up the rubber with KY, not vaseline because vaseline will eat away at the latex of a condom, and boofed it.we got home without a problem and mikey laughed at me for doing such a disgusting thing. i said "laugh all you want, but , you would have been in just as much trouble as me if i had gotten caught with that shit because of your illegal-ass car, mother fucker". "well,... since you put it that way...", he smiled.
i drank a huge cup of coffee and waited. i hit the toilet. plop- one, plop- two, plop three, uuggh, i pushed uuuunnngggh, i pushed harder.UUUUNNNGGGH! i saw stars, but still no more packages came out. i was a little worried, i didn't want the dope to get ruined, and i really didn't feel like od-ing on eight grams of heroin. my girl told me to relax and wait , "have another cup of coffee, it'll come," she said.
so, i drank another cup of coffee and i waited, ...... nothing. i sent her to the store for some laxatives. i ate a piece and waited........ still nothing. being strung out on heroin dries you out. it becomes really hard to move your bowels. sometimes you won't shit for a day or two and when you get backed up like that it can be painful, so you have to drink more water than you usually would to keep regular. something you sometimes forget, being all fucked up on drugs and all. mikey suggested getting some cocaine. he said " coke always makes me go, man. it'll work, trust the old mikester". i pull twenty bucks from my pocket and tell him to go get some, and he says " twenty bucks?! c'mon cheapskate kick down at least a fifty , i ain't going down into brown town for no twenty stinking dollars!" i gave him a look like your father does , when you do something stupid and he feels like smacking you, i snatched the twenty from him and gave him a fifty and said "do not stop to talk to anyone but the dopeman, and hurry the fuck up." mikey's an alright guy and all, buthe is easily side tracked. i was notfeeling like waiting an hour for this to work-little did i know the end of it all.
while mikey was gone i ate another piece of the poo-poo candy and tried my luck on the john to no avail. my girl told me to stop or i would get a hemorrhoid or a hernia or something. so i just waited for mikey. now normally when you're waiting for someone to come back with the drugs it seems to take a long time. the whole time you're silently cursing the person that left. come on asshole, you say to yourself, hurry the fuck up,mother fucker. when you are waiting for someone to come back with something to help you crap out eight-grams of heroin, time CRAWLS. it feels like they are never going to get back, ever. believe me, i know!
finally mikey gets back with the coke. now, long ago i had made a deal with the Big Man Upstairs that i would NEVER shoot cocaine again. i won't go into the details because that is a different story all together, but, basically it went like this: "if you let me live, i'll never do it again". a bargain to which, at that point, i had lived up to. so i told mikey to rock it up, which he was happy to do, the little fucking crack head. then the fucker tries to take the first hit! "gimme that!" i yelled at him, giving him the 'what the fuck are you thinking?' look. mikey had a tolerance to coke, he's a garbage head- if it'll get you high, he does it. it's what earned him the nickname mikey, his real name is al. so i take the hit he has packed for himself and i feel like my head is going to explode. i run to the john and sit, but i am scared to push because i am paranoid that if i do, i'll do some kind of internal damage to myself, like blow out a major vein to my heart. i sit and wait , nothing. when i come down a little i try to push, nothing. so i go through the whole process over again. it still doesn't work. now i am totally wired on crack, a feeling that i completely despise, and i still can't poop out the drugs, so i do more heroin to come down and give the rest of the coke to mikey. which makes him a very happy boy. i myself, am miserable and worried. i send mikey on his way and wonder what is going to happen. maybe the rest will all break open and i'll be out of my misery, after i die the remnants will come out and the coroner will say, "see this here? this here is your cause of death". while holding a half-chewed ham on rye in his hand.
my girl suggests that i let her put on a glove and retrieve it manually. she too, is scared of the consequences of a prolonged exposure to the inside of my anus will have on the heroin, or me. i deny her this awful duty, for now, before i let her do that, i'll do that myself, i tell her. i call a friend who is familiar with the workings of this procedure in the smuggling scheme. he suggests using a suppository. i try it, the whole time fearing for the dope- not my health, and this too, fails. at this point, the dope has been up inside of me for over eight hours. i am sure it has been ruined. another friend of mine, opey, shows up. i tell him the trouble i am having. his reaction is something i did not want. he explains in a panicked way, how i have to get that shit out before i die. "no shit?! tell me something i don't already know,you fucking asshole!". now i am more worried, and after he buys his shit ,i send him on his way.
well, i say to myself, i guess it's time to go treasure hunting. i grease up my fingers and start my painful,degrading search. i feel almost like a rape victim, but at least it's my fingers up there, and i am being damn sure gentle about the whole thing. i search and search to no avail, and i realize what will happen next. feeling lower than low, i give my girl permission to do what she's been suggesting for the last hour and a half. but her fingers are shorter, and thank god smaller, than mine and has no luck herself. i sit down on to my couch and stare at the television but all i can see are the two packages nestled away inside the darkness of my anal cavity. if i had a shotgun at this particular moment in life i may have damn well used it. after an hour or so, i passed out. i woke up to someone knocking at my door, it was 8 am, opey was at the door, on his way to work. he needed his morning fix,when i answered the door the first thing out of his mouth was, "did ya get that out yet, bro?" with genuine concern on his face. my girl was gone, as she went to work at seven in the morning. i went to the john while opey fixed his morning shot in the living room. i tried to reach the packages again. i felt something and i got a finger behind it, it was the ring of a rubber. slowly, gently i coaxed it closer to the exit, slower, slower... i got it!!! i was so relieved, i broke it open right then and there to inspect the dope. to my surprise it had not been ruined one tiny bit. i was so happy and opey was too, so we celebrated by doing a real nice shot of raw.
i handed opey a cup of coffee, and he dropped it. he bent over to pick it up and smashed his head on my glass table three times. i was yelling at him, "yo! what the fuck are you doing you asshole?!" one look into his eyes told me the whole story. he was fucking od'd. "aww great this is all i fucking need.", i said out loud to no one, because the only person in the room besides me, was the fucking asshole who was dying.i slapped him a couple of times to bring him around,he was alittle too high,not over dosing. i went to pick him up to put him in the shower to try to wake him up, and he starts biting me on the shoulder. "yo!" i yell again " what the fuck are you doing?" he says, "what are you doing to me?" i explain what happened and tell him he needs to help me, help him, by standing up. which, thank god, he does. one of his buddies comes to the door and knocks, they are late to work, he gripes. "take him.", i tell his buddy who knows what is wrong by taking one look at him. "well this is just fucking great!" he says sarcastically as he helps opey walk out to the truck, bitching at him about being all fucked up. the cold winter air does him good and he comes right around. "hope you get the other problem taken care of T",he yells, sounding like a drunk as the truck drives away.
i head back to the bathroom, hoping that the next one comes out as easily as the first one did. i feel another ring, but it keeps slipping out of my grasp. i go through this, one, two three, four, five, six times. finally, i get a nice good grip on it with my pointer and middle fingers, i squeeze and i feel a pop. i look at my fingers and they are covered in blood. i collapsed into a ball and burst into tears. oh my god, i am going to get some kind of nasty infection and die now. i call up my girl and tell her what has happened. she is sympathetic and then reminds me that gay guys are way rougher than i have been, and that i should be okay. this calms me down and i stopped crying, but i was still scared to death deep down inside. i give up searching for the rubber and decide to just let it pass naturally. fuck it, the first one came out unscathed, the second one will too, i tell myself.
finally at around four in the afternoon, while at work, twenty-two hours after first going up inside of me in a hookers' bathroom in brooklyn, the final four grams of dope came out. it was such a relief to finally get them out of me that i almost cried again.
i would like to tell you that i said i would never do that again, but it would be a lie. even after all of the tears and fears and desperation, degradation and humiliation. i wish i could say that after that i got clean, but that too, would be a lie. but at least everything came out alright in the end.after my story, larry stood there silently, shock all over his face.for the first tiime sincei had met him, he had nothing to say. a guard interrupted the silence," Ward, Sidle, Kastenhuber, Frank, Jones...visitation"we went to our cells greased up and headed to the dance floor.