Outburst- a New Years Tale

chapter 2 of Something in the Way

by Preston Peet

posted at DrugWar.com Dec. 31, 2002

fireworks over the Maas river in Rotterdam
photo by Rob Kaper

In some twisted way it makes perfect sense to him. The only way to insure that he’ll go through with killing himself by morning is to piss off those people most likely to really hurt or kill him if he gets them angry enough.

It’s New Years Eve in Rotterdam, 1991. Thomas and his girl had planned an evening at a party with some of her co-workers, but Thomas is banned from the bar where she works. Her co-workers have no trouble spotting the signs of addiction, nor realizing it has been him raiding the office safe. He really doesn’t want to deal with them, so he stands Jennifer up, finding her gone and the attic apartment they share dark when he finally arrives. She’s taken all of their CD's and tapes with her, and he thinks for a second that she's done it to play them at the party, but he can't kid himself. Four hours late, closer to five, she knows what he’s been doing. Everyone in Rotterdam knows by now. He looks like shit, loosing weight, accumulating an air of desperation about him. Even his dealers have been telling him to slow down. Fat chance.

He can't speak the Dutch language beyond counting, and asking for simple things, like beer, drugs, or ordering a chicken sandwich. Thomas must rely on the natives to speak English, or French, which conveniently most of the immigrant Algerian coke dealers speak quite fluently. Down and out isn’t anything new to him, nor is being on the outs with all his friends and acquaintances. This time however Thomas feels he has fucked himself over worse than ever. He’s unemployed, in a foreign country, and loosing his girl. Usually he can float through whatever comes his way, but he can't bring himself to want to keep going this time. He can’t bear the thought of starting over again, leaving behind all the angry, pissed off people in his past and pretending that he doesn’t feel or remember them all. So he’s going to end it, and this time, he’s not going to chicken out.

Thomas has reached these coke depressions before, which can only be experienced by a person who’s given themselves over completely to the drug, or drugs as the case may be. No one can crash as hard as someone who has screwed over every single person they know one way or another for drugs, and is now out of people to beg, borrow, or steal from. Not to mention the black depression a cocaine crash brings, the coke having wrung his brain of all the endorphins his mind needs to find hope.

Thomas stands there in the dark for a few minutes, totally gone into his head, lost in the idea of dying. Damnit, it’s just a bit frightening and a little too much for him, but he knows that he's going to make sure he really does it this time.

Thomas and Jennifer have been sharing an attic apartment above the apartment of a pseudo-skinhead couple they’d met in a coffeeshop their first week in Rotterdam. Going down one flight to their landing, he looks up at the paneling over their doorway. He knows it's possible to rip this cheap material right out of the wall, so he does, with no thought to finesse, nor subtlety. He just wants in. Once he has opened up a space large enough to crawl into, he pulls himself up the wall, stepping onto the doorknob of their front door. Behind the paneling there’s a crawl space that's not really meant for crawling in. It's just the flimsy ceiling panels that make up the ceiling of their apartment. Thomas balances himself on a couple of metal beams to which the ceiling panels are mounted, then lifting one boot, he kicks a panel down into the apartment, dropping immediately in behind it.

His heart is racing, pounding. The adrenaline is so strong, it feels almost as if he's just done another blast, which brings him right back to the problem at hand: finding something in the apartment worth some drugs to his dealer.

No one he knows is rich, and this couple is no exception. There's not much in the apartment worth anything to anybody, much less to a drug dealer. Dealers tend to get the best and newest merchandise offered them all the time. Then he spots the television. It's a big, twenty-inch screen color tv, that while not new, should be able to get him something. Now to get it out of the apartment.

Thomas picks it up off the dresser, turns, and immediately drops it on the floor. The thing is heavy. Struggling, he manages to get it over to the door, under the big hole where a couple of panels are hanging askew from the ceiling. There's no way in hell he's going to be able to lift the TV up into the hole, balance it there as he climbs up after it, all the while keeping it from crashing back down through the ceiling creating another hole, then get it back down outside into the hallway. The door is dead-bolt locked with a key from the outside, so he can't just open up the door, and lug it out that way. Thomas considers for another moment, then shrugs his shoulders. There's no way around it.

Stepping back, Thomas again lifts his foot and delivers a mighty kick, this time at the door instead of a puny ceiling panel. The entire lock mechanism and part of the doorframe stay connected to the door as it flies open and crashes into the wall behind.

Thomas doesn't worry about noise because it's New Years. Everyone is out in the streets setting off fireworks. He grasps the TV and heaves it out onto the landing at the top of the stairs. Pushing the door shut behind him, he sees with some degree of relief that in the dark of the landing the damage to the door is almost unnoticeable, once he has gathered up the pieces of paneling off the floor and replaced them balanced on the wall.

Thomas doesn't expect the couple to return until at least the next morning, and with any luck they won't be back until the day after. Jennifer on the other hand will be back before morning, or at least he hopes so. He wants to get the final pain over with as soon as possible, without any interruption from angry skinheads.

Now to get the TV down the stairs and through the streets to the dealer’s place, a good eight or nine blocks away. Thomas picks up the TV and hugs it close, trying to use his body to help brace the weight of the thing, but after just one or two steps down the stairs he quickly turns around and drops the TV as gently as he can back onto the landing. There's no way he's going to get this thing down the stairs in one piece, much less through the streets and back up the stairs at the spot. He doesn't think he'd even be able to get it back into the apartment where he got it. He's been eating way too little, smoking and shooting way too much. He's got little physical strength left, other than the well-practiced endurance needed to run the streets for days and nights on end, scamming up get-high dough.

Thomas sits down and puts his head in his hands. He's so tired, weary to the bone. Getting high is the only thing giving him an attainable goal at the moment. His life has reached one of those points where everything is burning up around him, because of his drug abuse, and in turn the drugs are the only thing left to live for. They never turn him away. As long as he can pay they give him what he thinks he needs. Total freedom from feeling the pain of being alive. So he needs a plan to get this TV over to the spot.

He'll never manage it alone. There’s nothing to do but go to the spot and see if he can enlist some help in lugging this thing over there. Thomas gets up, and heads downstairs into the street.

His mind is swirling and spinning, his thoughts not settling on any one thing because everything brings up feelings of guilt and shame. The chaos of the night’s New Year celebrations contrasts and reflects his life. Around him the night is full of laughing, celebrating people, drunk on alcohol and the excitement of the holidays. It's a scene out of a dream. There are countless groups of running, shouting celebrants, smashing glass and throwing bottles. Everywhere there are people setting off fireworks and firecrackers. Little kids and adults alike join in, with everyone holding sparklers which they use to light the fireworks. Thomas sees a couple of different firefights between opposing sides of the street with apartment buildings on both sides setting off whole banks of roman candles, bottle rockets, and other assorted explosive projectile-like devices. There's red bits of shredded confetti everywhere like blood-colored snow underfoot, rising above his ankles in places. Sirens scream throughout the city as firefighters race to put out the many fires set off by the fireworks everywhere. Thomas watches as a rocket barrage is exchanged between two buildings directly in front of him. A window shatters on one side of the street, through which a score of rockets then fly, setting the room ablaze. One fire truck fighting a fire just up the street turns it's hoses on the window from which flames are already leaping and threatening the neighboring buildings. The air is full of the smell of gunpowder, alcohol, and hashish. Shadows from the flames dance, huge demonic images on the buildings and upon the throngs in the streets below.

Thomas stumbles on through the night, trying to avoid the brighter, livelier streets until he gets to the spot. Going upstairs, he finds hardly anyone there, other than the dealer entertaining a small cadre of friends, all sitting in his bedroom washing down coke with ammonia for smoking. Crack, the Dutch way. Seeing and smelling this makes Thomas feel all the more desperate. He's aping harder than ever now, and quickly launches into his proposition, telling the dealer about the TV he's not using anymore, of how he’s willing to sell it to the dealer for a small amount of coke if someone will help him get it over here. After he spouts off for a couple of minutes the dealer tells him he'll drive over with him and pick it up in his car, after the dealer finishes up what he's doing.

Great. Now he's got to wait for the dealer to finish smoking his drugs. As Lou Reed once sang, "The first thing that you learn is that you've always got to wait." Tampa, Atlanta, New York, Rotterdam, it's the same all over the world. Dealers always make the customer wait. Thomas does, getting more stressed out and anxious, for nearly an hour before the dealer comes out jingling his keys. They go down to the dealers car and get in.

Immediately, as soon as they are driving, the dealer starts in him. “Are you sure it's your TV?” He tells Thomas he’d better not be ripping him off selling him a hot or broken piece of shit. So Thomas alternates between giving directions to the apartment, and reassuring the dealer.

When they arrive, Thomas is relieved to see that there are no lights on. There’s still no one home. With the two of them working together it's not much trouble getting the TV downstairs into the car.

They drive back to the dealers, haul the TV upstairs and plug it in. Of course there's something wrong with it. The picture comes in fuzzy and swims all over the screen. It seems that there is something out of whack with the horizontal control of the TV. Damnit it, Thomas knew that, but had forgotten in the heat of the moment after crashing into the apartment. Now he's got to talk the dealer into still giving him something for the broken TV.

Thomas tells him it was working fine earlier. Something must have been knocked loose in the move. With surprising ease he convinces the dealer that it won't be difficult to fix. Maybe the guy feels sorry for him, Thomas doesn't know, but doesn't really care as long as he gets something. The dealer picks up a small piece of rock off the table and gives it to him, saying, “Happy New Year.” Thomas thanks him, walks out into the living room where all customers do their smoking, and looks at the piece of rock he's been handed. Now he's got another reason to want to die.

His prize for all the night’s work is a tiny portion of rock. He could get a fairly decent rush if he smoked the whole piece at once, but that would immediately leave him nothing, forcing him to begin the hunt all over, right away. This he couldn't bear.

Thomas sits there long enough to smoke one piece, about half of what he's been given, then heads back to his place.

Jennifer is still not home when he arrives. He sits and loads up both his pipe and his rig so after he smokes, he'll have dope ready to inject to help keep him from running out to try to hustle up more cocaine. Amazingly it works, because when Jennifer arrives a few hours later he's still slouched there on the mattress with his head leaned back against the wall, pin-eyed, slackjawed and dazed. She takes one looks, then quietly tells him it's over, that she cannot take seeing him killing himself, can't take the lying and stealing. All her friends keep telling her to wake up. She tells him she's now awake and knows that there's no way she can go on with him. She says she still loves him so much, as he sprawls on the bed they've shared the last six months together, then she tells him to give her his key. She wants him out. Out of their place, out of her life, first thing in the morning.

This comes as no surprise. He'd known this was going to be the end result of his actions when he'd decided to start smoking coke again. As much as he loves her, he can't share lovers, especially when one is cocaine. The heroin is bad enough, but at least he'd almost kept that in reign. No, why lie to himself, that's not exactly true. It had been to try and break his first genuine heroin addiction, acquired in Rotterdam, that he’d started smoking again in the first place, telling himself smoking coke might be the way to do it. This was repeating behavior which had gotten him into trouble so many times before that by now he knows the whole routine, from beginning to end. He’s given up trying to live, spending the last couple of weeks destroying any hope he might have had to salvage his life. Feeling helpless, trying to deal with the emotions and the facts of life, it is simply getting to be more than he thinks he can or wants to handle.

The time waiting for Jennifer to arrive had not been spent entirely idle. He’s taken an old Bic razor of his and broken it into pieces, freeing the blade, giving him a utensil with which to open his veins. After Jennifer finished giving him her ultimatum, she undressed and curled up in bed beside him, pressed up against him, trying to feel him for one last time. This was more than he could take. The guilt, sorrow and shame, combined with the cocaine crash, made it much easier to proceed with his plan.

With her right beside him in the bed, Thomas takes the razor blade and cuts open his left forearm, the side away from her, cutting as deeply as he can get himself to push. He does it again and again until he feels the blood soaking the sheet under his side. Putting down the blade, he kisses Jennifer on her forehead, closes his eyes, and passes out expecting to not be waking up.

A piercing screech jolts him reluctantly back to life the next morning. Thomas opens his eyes. Jennifer is sitting up next to him in the bed, her eyes wide open in shock, just staring at him. He knows there's something really wrong, but he's still struggling to wake up. He has trouble getting his thoughts together. Suddenly it hits him. Oh yeah.

Thomas looks left, still flat on his back, and sees the sheet completely soaked with his blood and his arm crusted stuck to the sheet. He's immediately humiliated, and worse can't believe he's still alive. Once again he's forced to pull himself together, face his shit, and reap the whirlwind of instant karma.

There's nothing left to say to Jennifer except that he's sorry and he never meant it to turn out this way. He goes and cleans up his arm, finding that what felt so painful and deep was not much more than deep but inaccurate scratches. He throws a few articles of clothing into a backpack, grabs his beat-up, unsellable guitar, and leaves.

Over the previous two, nearly three weeks he's burnt every bridge he could and more. With a will he's gone and alienated anyone and everyone who might have been willing to help him. He couldn't have done himself any worse had he tried, which he basically did. There are now plenty of people looking to hurt, maim, even possibly to kill him. Remaining in Rotterdam is not a good idea if he really wants to try once again to put his life back together. The idea had been to insure he’d carry through with suicide, but all he wants to do is survive and forget.

He’s got no passport because he gave it to an Algerian coke dealer to hold as collateral for the front of a gram, which he has no possibility of repaying. So he's without an identity, which he's got to fix. Thomas goes to the Rotterdam police and reports his stuff stolen, his passport and wallet with all his money. The cooperative Rotterdam police make a report, and give him a copy.

Taking the report the police give him, Thomas jumps a train to Amsterdam, using it to show the conductor why he hasn’t a ticket. He spends the next few months on and off the streets of Amsterdam, throughout the Winter, getting himself as numb as possible in all kinds of ways. Trying to forget the woman he just left behind, another relationship skewered because he can’t trust anyone, not them, but mostly not himself. He works on killing the pain, the fear, and the guilt, simply existing.