(On Shooting Heroin with Jim Carroll and Ted Berrigan)
Jim was my age
though I thought him younger
Ted Berrigan was teaching at a Writing Workshop
and wanted to bring him
to Chicago to read in his class
Jim Carroll’s ‘The Basketball Diaries’
were still in Composition Book form
I remember him waking from a Nod
and opening the well-worn leopard patterned
100 sheet lined notebook
to read...
But there had been a problem
Jim was then a Heroin addict
ten years before the Catholic Boy Album
and he was firing a lot of Junk
a heavy habit
I was on Dr. McCabe’s Methadone Program
on Irving Park Road and Western Avenue
I was getting three 40mg Lilly wafers a day
120mgs a day
plus a repeat dose twice a week
It worked this way:
On Monday he would give you 12 wafers
for Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday
480mgs of pharmaceutical synthetic morphine
Then when you came on Thursday
he gave you 3 wafers for the day
and the same on Monday
- a bonus of 6 wafers a week
720mgs of Stalingrad Morphine
(they called it Dolophine in Germany)
The point is you were getting an extra 120mgs of opioid
twice a week - 240mgs
It was like a dope dealers bizarre outside
his office
and the ajoining alley -
Of course there was an Alley.
2.
When Ted Berrigan told me
that there was a brilliant poet
in New York that I really had to meet
I asked about him
This was 1970
He said a young kid was attending
the Writing Workshop at St. Mark’s Place
and all the New York poets thought he was great
Himself, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, the painter Larry Rivers
“He’s a prodigy like Rimbaud,” he said.
“But he can’t leave New York
cause he’s a Heroin addict
and all his connects are there.”
I was a Heroin addict now on Methadone
and I wanted to meet this guy.
“If you could get him here, how long
would he stay and where” I asked.
“Three days” said Ted
“and he could stay at my place.”
“My Place” was Allan Bates’ home at 911 Diversey Avenue
Bates was a play-write
who lived on the second floor with his
once student wife
And visiting Poets In Residence
lived on the first floor
The Poet Ed Dorn and his wife, Jenny
had been the prior residents.
Now it was Ted Berrigan and his brilliant and young
wife, the Poet Alice Notley
They were not separate apartments
with their own entrances
Only a wooden stairway separated the two floors.
“Couldn’t he bring some Junk with him,”
I asked. But it was more of a statement.
Ted chain lit another cigarette
the ashes from the previous one
still speckled his full reddish beard
he wore no mustache
and resembled an large Amish Elder.
“Nah,” he said
“Jim’s a street hustler
and he scores by the day”
I lit my own cigarette,
a Kool-filtered at the time
“Tell him him I’ll guarantee him
120mgs of Methadone a day,” I said
“I’ll give him 9 ‘pills’
as soon as he gets here.”
Jim Carroll would arrive and be
at Ted’s crib
the day before the Reading.
I lived right off Diversey near Cicero Avenue
and took the Diversey CTA bus
at 7PM in the evening
It was getting dark in Chicago.
3.
The Catholic Boy
didn’t rise from the table to meet me
yet I could tell he was tall
lean and still ‘cut’
“Hey man,” I said
shaking hands with a 60’s locked fist
fingers gripping his palm
His red hair was straight
framing his face
like an drawn opened cinema curtain
I reached into the left pocket
of my navy longcoat
and as I withdrew my right from the handshake
my left hand dropped a bulging
manila envelope
like a fat playing card
in front of him
He worked open the clasp
and emptied the contents
on the dining room table
Ten light orange
methadone wafers
scored with quartering crosses
fell into a near perfect pile
He picked one up . snapped it in half
put both halves into his mouth
chewed a few times
then washed it down with Ted’s Pepsi.
The pills were the size and shape of Scrabble tiles
just a bit larger and bulging in the center
He put another into his mouth
crushed it once with his teeth
and capped it with another
hit of pop
“I like your friend,” he said softly to Ted
handing the Pepsi bottle back to him.
He lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply
“Hahaha,” laughed Ted, seeming content.
Then for the first time since I had arrived
Jim Carroll looked briefly at me
One side of his lips curled up slightly.
He took another drag.
This is a shy boy
I found myself thinking
took off my long scarf and coat
and relaxed
“Have a seat, Ted,” I said
“Hahaha,” he answered
took a drink of Pepsi
and did.
4.
When I walked into class the next day
Jim was nodding deeply
His head not jerking up
he must have looked asleep to most
It was apparent that he had done most of the methadone
at one gorging feast
like a Communion sacrament supplicant
wolfing down a fist full of wafers
reaching into the golden chalice
as if it were a bag of potato chips
telling the astonished alter boy with the gold drop pan
to fuck off.
The methadone nod is longer and deeper
than street cut heroin
and this junkie
was later to write
the Pulitzer Prize nominated
‘The Book of Nods’
Berrigan was talking him up
the familiar history
of how he had taken Jim to meet Jack Kerouac
and the line about how Kerouac had said
“the kid writes better than 83% of American writers”
Then -
“Jim will you read some work”
Jim raised his head from his chest
as he had been merely resting
opened his child-like lined Composition book
and read from the handwritten
Basketball Diaries
As I recall, he read the part
where he and his friends
grill burgers late at night
at a drugstore they were burglarizing
He read very clearly
no slur in his voice
and the story was funny
and very good
He read for near 25 minutes
not missing a nuance
as if he was relating
a personal account
just for you.
It was excellent
and the writing class students
applauded
His lips silently mouthed ‘thanks’
and instantly his head dropped
and he was nodding again
I remember hoping
he would read a few of his poems
but he was done.
I had two more classes that day
back at the campus
and outside the storefront annex
I told Ted that I would stop by his place
in the evening
for Jim Carroll had a flight the next morning
back to New York City.
5.
At around 7 PM I was on the
Diversey bus
going to 911 Diversey
I wrote a poem in my journal
on the way.
something about a dead clock in a storefront
window “your favorite hour
jack-knifed onto your face.”
The bus stop was a block from Ted’s crib
at a liquor store
with the EL tracks above
that took you to The Loop
or O’Hare field
if you rode the other way.
I bought two quarts of Old Style beer
and a pack of Kool cigarettes.
I must have gone into that store
30 times over the last few years
first visiting Ed Dorn
Then Ted Berrigan
Let me do some ‘name dropping’
Visiting Dorn I had met Robert Creeley, Tom Rayworth, Anselm Hollo.
Visiting Ted I had met Anne Waldman, John Wieners, and Allen Ginsberg
who I had met before at Lincoln Park
during the ‘68 democratic Convention
while he was passing a joint to Abbie Hoffman
and a group of his friends.
I remember they had given me a hit.
and I remember my first true girl friend, Nilsa Cintron
had baby-sat for Ted and Alice Notley’s first baby
Anselm Berrigan.
Ted had laughed when I had told him
my girl had changed
the baby’s diaper 7 times in 2 hours.
6.
Up the wooden stairs I went
Ted answered the door
Jim was leafing through a journal
that had interesting collages he had created
separated by poems and prose.
“Can you score some some smack” he said
The story back then
was that methadone prevented
you feeling the rush off Heroin
It was bullshit
“Yeah, I can,” I said
I pointed East with my forefinger
“Right down here on Elston Avenue
‘bout a mile away.
Its brown, but powder.” I looked at Ted.
We had done it before
“Its good shit,” said Ted
We put together fifty dollars
“You have gimmicks?” asked Jim
At the time I always carried a eye-dropper
with a .27 needle stuck into it under the pacifier
(we called it a rig, in Chicago, or an outfit or works)
In the summer I
kept it in the handle bars
of my 12 speed bicycle
When the bike was stolen
I hoped the cops would stop the thief one day
and bust him for the rig)
“Yeah, I have works,” I said.
7.
There was no one on the street
on Elston. It was winter and Chicago cold
I walked into a crowded bar across
from the Robert Taylor Homes
a Housing Project area
The bar was full Puerto Ricans
some of whom I knew well
Our Park had helped them
burn down the payment office
after a rent-a-cop had shot and killed
a Latin King Gang leader
a year earlier.
“What’s happening,” said a dealer I knew.
“I need 2 quarters,” I said
“One second” he said
He came back as I was drinking a beer
“You see that girl” he said pointing to
a pretty Hispanic chick in yellow Capri pants
and a black leather.
I passed him the money
“Alright,” I said
and walked through the tight bar to her
She kissed me with an open mouth
pushing 2 balloons into mine with her tongue
“Good to see you again, she said.
“You too” I said, stroked her dark hair once
turned, and walked out into a light
falling of snow.
8.
“Did you score,” said Ted
“Yeah”
He got a table spoon from the kitchen and a glass of water
I tore a thin strip from the edge of a 20
dollar bill, and wrapped the “g” around the tip of the dropper
the needle fit snugly over it.
Jim had opens the balloons
put them into a pile and divided it into 3 equal lines
“good count” said Ted
I cooked up and shot first
hit the vein in my right forearm
after strapping my left leg over it
and leaned forward
to watch my blood blossom
into the light brown mixture in the glass dropper
I squeezed the bulb, emptying it
released lightly as it filled again
this time with pure blood
I jacked it in
pulled the needle from my arm with a flourish
and placed it in the water glass
I felt the rush
within a second
This junk was good
and very strong.
(I just got a hard-on writing this)
My eyelids got heavy
but I stayed awake
A street-punk part of me
wanted to show
this New York street poet
just how good Chicago Dope was...
It was like a civic pride thing
a sort of rivalry
(like Jacobus must have felt when he beat Corso
but a bit less ‘jock.’)
9.
Jim Carroll got very stoned and nodded
(he loved nodding, as did I - The Xanadu dreams sprouting like hero wings)
Ted Berrigan OD’ed and turned blue
but would live another decade
Jim died at sixty
and I’m here writing
this
in a Joe Brainard ‘I Remember’ scene.
Henry Kanabus
08/02/2016
Down South
