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"Digging the Vein is mining diamonds for the crown of the king of hell." (John Giorno of Giorno Poetry Systems, author of You've Got to Burn to Shine, Balling Buddha, Cancer in My Left Ball)
"Reading it, I could taste the LA smog. Here, pain comes at you like a Mack truck--relentless and unavoidable. Don't blink. Keep reading." (Dan Fante, author of Mooch, Chump Change, Spitting off Tall Buildings, Short Dog)
"This book will take you inside the mind, heart, spoon, pipe, and needle of a junkie. Tony has cooked down the life of an addict and injected it into these pages. It brought me back to the streets, back to the hell of craving and bliss of getting a fix." (Noah Levine, author of Dharma Punx)
I put the needle in my arm and got a register. I fixed and lay back on the bed. It took me a while to realize that Genesis had stopped talking. I enjoyed the silence at first; just the rumble of traffic on the 101 interrupting my thoughts, and it started to sound like the roaring of some distant sea, so I didn’t mind.
I suppose she may have gurgled a little when she went under, but I don’t remember. I’m pretty sure she didn’t convulse or gasp because I didn’t rouse for a while. Actually, it was the silence that started to bring me around, because she never remained quiet for that long. When I finally sat up and looked at her, she was turning blue, her eyes completely unfocused and looking in two opposite directions, towards oblivion. When I say that she was turning blue, I mean that literally. Her lips where purple, her cheeks the same colour I remember my grandfather’s being when they laid him out for his wake in Ireland, and flecks of drool and vomit crusted around her mouth.
I was in the bathroom trying to drag her nude body under the cold water pouring from the shower, screaming at her to wake up and stop fucking around, panicked by the reality that she may well not wake up, my yells reverberating off of the blood-splattered tiles. I prayed to God for her to live and started trying to figure out what I would do if she didn’t.
She seemed to be breathing when I left, but I still couldn’t get her to talk or focus her eyes on me for more than a few seconds at a time. I got the idea into my head that she might have suffered brain damage. I laid her on the bed and tried to shoot her with some crystal meth I found in her purse. Her pulse was too weak for me to get a register so I shot the mixture into her muscle instead, not knowing if it would have any effect. I took the rest of the speed and mainlined it. With the methamphetamine rush came an almost unbearable rush of paranoia and a certain drug-fucked certainty that I had scrambled the girl’s brains. I looked at her on the bed, lying on her side, breathing shallow, looking like a mess, her skin beyond white, make-up running all over her face. She looked like a coroner’s photograph, and with that thought I bailed, grabbing handfuls of old syringes and any of the drugs that were lying around and I got the fuck out of there.
I drove to a porno store called Stan’s Adult World high on speed, Xanax, and heroin, watching a video of a seemingly endless gang bang, shoving dimes into the slot, wedging my foot against the booth door to deter any offers from the other guys for a five-dollar blowjob. I drove around the entire next day going from hardcore theatres, to Mexican dive bars, to scoring spots … not sleeping, in a narcotic half-conscious state, drinking whiskey in The Gold Room, watching off-duty cops play pool at six in the morning at the Short Stop on Sunset, Willie Nelson on the jukebox, endless scenes of girls and guys fucking in relentless close up, twisted permutations of asshole and pussy and cock and balls on video screens and LA talk radio crackling out of my stereo, “Lord Jesus I can feel my power coming, my power coming …” At some point I found myself parked by the gas station on Alvarado and 6th with a dealer called Raphael in the back seat talking tequila–cocaine nonsense, buying crack and heroin, and still later again I was parked on a dark street with my car’s interior light on, trying to fix in the gloom.
Read more reviews and interviews from Suicide Girls, Book Fetish, Laura Hird, Grumpy Old Bookman, and UK's Scarecrow review and interview.
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