I walk immediately into the kitchen, unceremoniously dumping my belongings on the counter. I locate a clean plate, set a pot of water to boil, and shed my jacket as I proceed to my bedroom to retrieve my stash.

I’m not about to tell where I hide my stuff; after all, you might come and rip me off, especially after I’ve bragged about the quality and variety of my collection. Worse, you could be an undercover narc. Suffice it to say, it is well concealed.

Less Japanese Red left than I thought; better save that for when the weaker stuff is gone, to overcome my tolerance. More Hydrochloride, on the other hand, than I recollected, at least a half V. I start with the Blue Anasket, primarily because it is the most plentiful, though “weak” isn’t really an accurate description. Blue Label is indicated for veterinary anesthesia for use on goats and larger mammals. In spite of recent gains, I am still somewhat smaller than a goat, so a vial should render me unintelligible for the next few hours. I crack the aluminum seal, unplug the rubber cork, and empty the tiny bottle onto the plate, adding just a few drops of vanilla extract for taste, and set it gingerly on the pot.

I activate my lighting system, consisting of strobes and “smart” lasers, which oscillate to the beat of the music, as well as liquid wax wall holograms, and a large-screen TV with a panoply of psychedelic DVD’s in the player. I select a two-hour program of computer-animated weirdness prepared by a friend to the hard-trance tracks of Astral Projection’s Another World. As an afterthought, I flip on the Jacuzzi, though by the time it sufficiently heats, I’ll probably be too fucked up to crawl into it.

Damn shame to be doing all this by myself. Ah, well, that’s what you get for being a player. Some days, no one else wants to play.

Razor blade. Mirror. Straw. Vick’s inhaler. A plastic bottle of water. A pack of clove cigarettes. Remove all sharp-edged furniture.

Check.

The pot is nearly bubbling over, so I turn the heat down a tad. The K has already begun to curdle. I rake it gently, mixing the solidifying portions into the liquid. Won’t be long now at all.

I go to the bathroom and use my electric nose hair trimmer, not for vanity but to clear a path, and run a few drops from the tap through each nostril to lubricate a vigorous noseblowing. I wrinkle my face at the greenish-brown slime on the tissue, dotted with black flecks of winnowed hair. Why must bodies produce so much…gross…gunk?

I watch the last whitish bubbles pop and flatten on the surface of the plate, then extinguish the burner and remove the plate with terrycloth oven mittens.

Not really needing anything like a full vial of K, not fresh out of the bag with no tolerance, I scrape about a third of the pale, plastic-like film from the plate to the mirror. The translucent crust readily converts to opaque white powder. I shuffle the pile into a neat rail.

I aim and shoot.

Bullseye. I throw my head back in pleasure/pain.

Half the line remains, but I am so overwhelmed by the power of what I’ve already had, that I decide to leave even that for later. How easily is grandiose ambition subsumed! How humbling, to be knocked upside by a fingernail length, not even a proper $20 bag. Why, back in the day…but there is no arguing with my spinning head and queasy gut.

I stumble to the recliner.

The world dissolves.

That must be, say, Objective Boulevard, the pile of rubble a block ahead of me where the jetskaters are risking their lives, or at least necks, with insane obstacle-evading maneuvers. That’s right, the Cafe Ennui is still falling eternally to pieces on the corner, 1110 Illustration-which means I need to go five blocks the opposite way.

Illustration Avenue-more popularly known as Religion Row, the Row, the “R.R.” (which also stands, cynically, for “Rejects’ Retreat”) and-by police-Area 1-A-is a four block strip of converted storefronts occupied exclusively by low-rent nonprofit concerns, primarily drug culture joke religions and crackpot political endeavors.

The proprietor of the region was, and surely still is, the infamous Harrison Ridley IV, maverick scion to the fortune attached to his name, and, prior to his father’s death, a closet hippie and social libber. When probate court had confirmed his owning the entire holdings of his land-grabbing father, he emerged from the gold-plated wardrobe garbed in tie-dye and ankhs and, repudiating everything his tycoon forebear had stood for, insisted on being addressed as Crazy Bear, though he was convinced by friends and his own good-natured paranoia not to commit himself to that name on legal documents.

No one could talk him out of his plans for Illustration Avenue, however. Dear old dad had bought up all the property along both sides of the decrepit drag at pennies on the dollar, dreaming of a business mecca in the heart of the ghetto, where cheap labor would be available. He bulldozed slums and raised storefronts and keeled over while getting head from a warty hooker behind the planned Ace Hardware.

Junior went one better in shaping his world; declaring that any association of people that was not explicitly non-profit was dedicated to capitalistic exploitation, he canceled negotiations with Crown Books and Taco Bell Express, and offered leases only to groups which fit his unique specifications-that they be entities firmly committed to financial insolvency-at ludicrously low rent. In some cases, it went beyond nominal, to the utterly surreal-one group was contractually obligated to supply their landlord with five organic zucchinis, to be grown in their on-site hydroponics lab, each month.

~ )))0((( ~