HEROIN

It was 1992, and I was vulnerable. I had just returned from Seattle, where I delivered the eulogy for a friend of 20 years who had died of AIDS. My local laundromat in Boston's Fenway neighborhood was one of my first stops after my trip. A handsome bearded man with puppy-dog eyes flirted with me. My relationship with heroin had begun.

PJR, possessor of those puppy-dog eyes, said he was a long-recovering addict when we met. The thing which caused me to break my steadfast rule against dating anyone with an addiction history was his artistic talent. He was a painter of large, stunning canvases. They emitted their own light. Abstracts of clouds and sky which seemed alive. 

His shambles of an apartment was jammed with his work, stacked on the floor against the walls. He had no furniture. His kitchen cabinets were empty with the exception of paint supplies. He slept on a lumpy futon thrown at an odd angle on the dirty hardwood floor of the main room. Perhaps my vulnerability to his charm was rooted in the images of all the messy artists' garrets I had seen in melodramatic films about misunderstood Parisian geniuses. 

We dated. He seemed quite stable and earnest. After several months, my lease in the neighborhood was up. I asked PJR if he would like to to share an apartment in a better area. He was working a telephone solicitation job for little money to pay his bills, but he said he could just about swing his portion of a shared rent. He assured me his gallery in upper Manhattan would also be buying some more of his work. Yes, he had been a successful painter ... at times.

All the while, PJR seemed quite seriously sober. I even attended AA meetings with him and met his sponsor, who was a stern lesbian with no-nonsense manners. We moved into a high rise building with two bedrooms and two baths on the 15th floor. It was a nice change from the cockroach-infested Fenway, which was then still on the verge of gentrification. Our new address even had a 24-hour concierge. 

I had just been promoted to a supervisory role at the AIDS hospice where I had worked for two years. That salary was not high. However, I had been maintaining a modest antiques business on the side for some years. It wouldn't have paid my bills, but the two jobs placed me in the middle class. My new location allowed me to open a group shop with two other dealers on a nearby street at the base of Beacon Hill. Frankly, since I had been completely broke twenty years earlier, I felt prosperous. I was even saving money for a future down payment on a house.

The trouble started shortly after we moved into the high rise. PJR made a strong case for taking the south-facing master suite with en suite bathroom as his studio. I was amenable, since my packed schedule kept me away from the apartment a lot of the time. I also figured a studio meant actual work on his part. PJR, who had been living in that hovel when we met, spent the next two months obsessing on decorating and equipping his studio. But no fine art resulted. 

Then came the shocking news at rent time that he had been fired from his phone sales job several weeks earlier and was broke. My sudden illusion of affluence was destroyed. A series of calamities ensued, which diverted my attention from PJR's steady decline. I was treading water between my job, my shop and keeping a livable environment at home. PJR took full advantage of my lack of vigilance. 

A ray of hope broke the gloom after a couple of harrowing months. PJR asked me to drive with him to Manhattan with some paintings for "his gallery". The gallery owner was a shrewd older woman covered in gold jewelry. Her Upper West Side establishment was crammed with inventory. Her commercial clientele bought multiple works for office buildings and condominium developments. Her expression when PJR walked in was telling. I knew I was in real trouble. 

The ride back to Boston with all but one canvas, which the gallery owner had taken to keep PJR on the hook, was silent. I realize that PJR was craving a fix the whole way. His personality had flipped from Pinocchio to Rasputin. 

The remaining months of our relationship were dotted with horrors and revelations. PJR was back on heroin. My things were stolen. Our apartment became a frightening place for me, rather than an oasis from my demanding hospice work and shop business. I dreaded each new discovery of PJR's addictive personality. The beautiful master suite was destroyed. Airbrushed paint was on walls and parquet floors. The en suite bathroom looked like the bathroom of a seedy auto body shop. 

The concierge staff stopped being polite and solicitous. I could only imagine why. PJR did not sleep and was frequently AWOL, sometimes for a few days at a time. My offers to secure him a rehab bed were met with feral rage. I looked forward to the periods of several days when he slept in the studio without emerging. But then there were the times when the body odor coming from that space was so bad I had to drag him to his shower. Then I had to deal with the raging and sulking aftermath.

It lasted two and one half years in all. My persistence to gain my own goals despite PJR's addiction paid off. My first home purchase coincided with an end to our relationship. He lived in the basement of the tiny house I managed to buy for two months. Then I set him up in a studio apartment several miles away. Security deposit and three months rent. Frankly, I did it for his two unfortunate cats, whom I had grown to love, despite my allergy. This graceful exit from PJR's life left me totally strapped for money. He didn't last a year there and disappeared with rent owed. I had to fend off his outraged landlord. 

About four years passed without a word from PJR. In that time, I had been told I would die of AIDS, had left my job, had sold my house, had nearly died of pneumonia, had recuperated miraculously in Provincetown on new medications, and had moved back to Boston. The phone rang on a cold October evening. I had managed to buy a shabby condo with down payment money obtained from selling my life insurance when I was dying. I had just unpacked with great effort. 

"I bet you don't know who this is," the slurred speech set off a visceral reaction in me, but I was at a loss to identify the speaker. "It's (PJR)." The fact that I didn't slam the phone into its cradle still astounds me. Instead, I said, "Where are you?" The boilerplate tale unraveled slowly between short periods of nodding off. PJR had burned all his bridges once again. He had chosen heroin again after an extensive time in rehab, paid for by his wealthy family. He was squatting with another addict in an abandoned warehouse in New London, CT. "I...I...jus' wanted to... thanks...that apartment...if that landlord calls you just tell him to fuck off..." And so on.

"Take care of yourself." My last words to PJR, as I hung up. That was about twenty years ago. I haven't heard from him since. I have no idea whether he is dead or alive. I do not care. That is the bald truth.

A first-time addict who is young and stupid can be seen as a victim of his/her own naivete. However, addiction is a choice to become diseased in an adult who either knows his/her genetics leave him/her prone to it or knows he/she has been addicted before. I believe too much sympathy is squandered on recalcitrant addicts today. I know, because I did it myself. Not enough understanding is given to those whose lives are plowed under by the addict's behavior. That includes society at large which pays a huge price for the results of recalcitrant addiction on families, schools, hospitals, governments and businesses. Society and those associated with the repeatedly addicted are the true victims of addiction.