April 5 - abandon the book project, with a sigh of relief if truth be told. In no state for this: nodding off over my computer keyboard, addressing potential sources in a funereal narcotic slur. Clarence House controls too tightly anyone connected in any way to the royal wedding ceremony. The major newspapers are paying thousands of pounds for interviews. We can't do anything. We tried - it's like detective work, trying to unearth sources. Fun while it lasted. Made a little money.
April 9 - Lazy enters his 26th year a peeled ball of exposed nerves. Pain returns; laughter returns; feeling returns; lust returns - a whirlpool violently churned as they pour back in. I laugh while my skin crawls and the cold burns and that awful twitchy electric sensation spread. This is easy. It's almost comical, how easy it is. I freeze inside and shiver, and then I pour with sweat; me and the gypsy princess are gonna go and visit S___, so I get my coat ready and giggle hysterically and wait for a hot wave to hit before emerging into the cold outside. How can a mere drug do all of this?
[Interlude]
In a city far away, a city with minarets and hazy yellow sunsets and dust hanging in the air, a city that smells of sewage, opium and jasmine... (This is a highly romanticized way to describe Peshawar, for that is where we are...)
Zeb owns the cigarette shop by the cemetary, sells me charas from Kabul, and is a dirty old bastard. ‘Hey Michael, can your friends in England send us some blue videos? Here the copies are always shit.’ - ‘Hey Michael, do you fuck that girl, whats-her-name? Can I have a turn one time?’ - ‘Hey Michael, we’re going to get a girl - only 50 rupees each. What do you mean, no? Don’t like fucking? Everything is possible...’ - ‘Hey Michael, look at my dick, it’s covered in sores. I caught something from a dirty whore. Your father’s a doctor, you know about these things, you look at it and tell me what’s wrong.’
Today, it's ‘Hey Michael, are you a Muslim?’ I shake my head. ‘Repeat after me,’ Zeb says. "La-illaha-illalah..." He recites the creed with Mike H repeating, stumbling over the Arabic lams and ‘ains. Zeb nods his head, satisfied. ‘That’s it?’ Mike H asks. - ‘That’s it.’
Zeb fixes a carefully packed cigarette laced with Afghani black into a magnificent wooden cigarette holder and lights it. He sits there like a fat, greasy Buddha and clouds of blue smoke rise around him. His features relax into an expression of profound peace and tranquility.
‘Sometimes, Michael, give also thanks to God,’ he says, smokes with great relish, passes the joint.
[end of interlude]
April 11 - Sometimes, give also thanks to God. I thank God for the soft and warm figure of la gitana to hold me through the first difficult nights. I thank God I still have friends. I thank God for my job (no regular hours; I remain absolute master of my own time and cannot imagine the regimented hell of a real 9-to-5 life) and that it is one thing I haven't lunched out. I thank God I still have money and am credit-worthy and for the £1000 cheque that arrived in the mail today; I thank God for the bottles of vodka I can easily afford, the eighths of skunk, the diazepam, temazepam, tramadol and methadone that I need to knock myself out. I thank God, for all that I have been a junkie and border-line insane, that I have been self-contained and self-sustaining and that I don't lay my trip on others.
I'm going away soon... I feel... I feel... stretched...
April 9 - Lazy enters his 26th year a peeled ball of exposed nerves. Pain returns; laughter returns; feeling returns; lust returns - a whirlpool violently churned as they pour back in. I laugh while my skin crawls and the cold burns and that awful twitchy electric sensation spread. This is easy. It's almost comical, how easy it is. I freeze inside and shiver, and then I pour with sweat; me and the gypsy princess are gonna go and visit S___, so I get my coat ready and giggle hysterically and wait for a hot wave to hit before emerging into the cold outside. How can a mere drug do all of this?
[Interlude]
In a city far away, a city with minarets and hazy yellow sunsets and dust hanging in the air, a city that smells of sewage, opium and jasmine... (This is a highly romanticized way to describe Peshawar, for that is where we are...)
Zeb owns the cigarette shop by the cemetary, sells me charas from Kabul, and is a dirty old bastard. ‘Hey Michael, can your friends in England send us some blue videos? Here the copies are always shit.’ - ‘Hey Michael, do you fuck that girl, whats-her-name? Can I have a turn one time?’ - ‘Hey Michael, we’re going to get a girl - only 50 rupees each. What do you mean, no? Don’t like fucking? Everything is possible...’ - ‘Hey Michael, look at my dick, it’s covered in sores. I caught something from a dirty whore. Your father’s a doctor, you know about these things, you look at it and tell me what’s wrong.’
Today, it's ‘Hey Michael, are you a Muslim?’ I shake my head. ‘Repeat after me,’ Zeb says. "La-illaha-illalah..." He recites the creed with Mike H repeating, stumbling over the Arabic lams and ‘ains. Zeb nods his head, satisfied. ‘That’s it?’ Mike H asks. - ‘That’s it.’
Zeb fixes a carefully packed cigarette laced with Afghani black into a magnificent wooden cigarette holder and lights it. He sits there like a fat, greasy Buddha and clouds of blue smoke rise around him. His features relax into an expression of profound peace and tranquility.
‘Sometimes, Michael, give also thanks to God,’ he says, smokes with great relish, passes the joint.
[end of interlude]
April 11 - Sometimes, give also thanks to God. I thank God for the soft and warm figure of la gitana to hold me through the first difficult nights. I thank God I still have friends. I thank God for my job (no regular hours; I remain absolute master of my own time and cannot imagine the regimented hell of a real 9-to-5 life) and that it is one thing I haven't lunched out. I thank God I still have money and am credit-worthy and for the £1000 cheque that arrived in the mail today; I thank God for the bottles of vodka I can easily afford, the eighths of skunk, the diazepam, temazepam, tramadol and methadone that I need to knock myself out. I thank God, for all that I have been a junkie and border-line insane, that I have been self-contained and self-sustaining and that I don't lay my trip on others.
I'm going away soon... I feel... I feel... stretched...
