Disco Dan

It was Dan Fine who first got us into skin popping. Dan was a year or two older, a pre-Law student at NYU, tall, boyishly handsome, and had his own apartment in an expensive co-op on Bleecker Street. A couple of my boys that lived in Rubin Hall on Fifth Avenue Knew him. I would often hang out there, and I was known to the guards and dining hall staff, so I could usually eat free there, telling them I'd left my ID upstairs.

Dan used to sometimes eat at Rubin Hall, and that's where I met him. He was from Riverdale, an only child and had a sense of humor; cool with everyone in a political way. But there was no depth to it. I liked him because he always had cash on him, and he was quick to spring for Space Invaders or pool games in the lounge. But whenever we went out to St. Mark's Place to drink and hang out he disappeared.

Dan was into photography, and had a studio in midtown that he shared with a couple of artists. He used to take college girls there to do  'modeling' shoots. This impressed me greatly. He did well with chicks, and once when we lived in the same apartment building he appeared at my door with an urgent grin on his face, asking if I had any olive oil in the house. Slouching timidly behind him was a disheveled, smokey-eyed brunette I recognized from the dorm. 

One day I was about to go find something to eat when he knocked at my door and told me to come over to his place. But first he asked me if I had any money. I had just been paid from my job at a small record label and actually had cash on me, so I followed him down the hall. He was with Amos Cohen and another guy named Bruce, who had dropped out or been kicked out of NYU and who I knew to be trouble. I was happy to see him, and the three of them had an imminent air about them.

As I entered his dimly lit apartment, Bruce who was always impatient and not one to mince words chortled, 'Yo, we're gonna throw down...you down?' He had beady little animal eyes with pale bushy eyebrows, and as he squinted at me he looked like a demon. I looked at the other two for some kind of explanation, and they both smiled like Cheshire cats. Refusing to not know what it meant, I said, 'You know me...always down!'

This brought nervous chuckling from all three, as Dan pulled three small white packets from his tight leather jacket and put them on the kitchen table. At first I thought it was blow, but the bags were too small, and didn't look right. 
Heroin? 
My mind caromed in a few directions at once: The evils of junk, repeatedly impressed upon me since Middle School; The addicts on the Lower East Side defying gravity with their stuporous 'junkie lean'; Needles, which had always made me squeamish. I picked one up, it was thin and light; it felt exciting. A smudged red stamp on the bag read 'Menudo'.

'You guys are shooting dope?' I asked. I looked at Dan. He smiled sheepishly. There was something reassuring in his deep set brown eyes, he was such a nice looking boy.

'Just skin popping', he said. 'It's not as bad as mainlining...mainlining is for junkies'.

I was thrown, not so much that they were doing this, but that they had been doing it and I didn't know. Dan took a small pen knife and slit the tape that sealed the packet of dope, then opened it carefully, letting the white powder land into a spoon I hadn't noticed before. It just materialized out of his sleeve it seemed. 

'So you down or what?' He asked rhetorically.

'I'm down yo. Down, down down!' I said, rocking heel to toe in my chunky Doc Marten boots and giving Bruce a slap on the back. He scowled his squirrel eyes at me, a world of mischief lurking behind them.

I watched as Dan produced a thin white syringe with a blue cap. He removed the cap and dipped the needle into a glass of water, sucking the liquid up and then squirting it back out. The ritual was time honored, like a tea ceremony, and he knew the tools, customs and etiquette...but how? Then he squirted the amount of half the syringe onto the dope and started to cook the clear liquid by running a BIC lighter back and forth slowly under the spoon, producing a dense black carbon smoke that came roiling up as the mixture started to bubble. He took a small piece of filter from one of his Marlboros and dropped it into the cooling liquid. Placing the needle into the filter, he sucked the dope back into the syringe and held it, needle up, while tapping it with his right finger to get any bubbles out. I made mental notes the whole time.

With syringe in hand, Dan looked at me and said, 'Twenty bucks'. I quickly took a twenty out of my pocket (a quarter of my weekly wages) and tossed it on the table. Smiling, he then told me to take my pants down.

Say what?

The others started laughing, and Dan explained that my back side was the best place to skin pop, as it had the most flesh. It felt weird, but I did what I was told - hooked before I even took a shot. With my Sta-Press pants bunched around my knees, I lifted up the tails of my oxford shirt and looked on, completely absorbed as Dan slid the needle into my flesh with a small jab, and then pushed the heroin into my ass.

I felt nothing. My instinct was to just act like a junkie. I closed my eyes and slowly started to buckle my pants up. Then I opened my eyes and looked at them. Dan was already preparing the next shot, but the other two were watching me. I had a moment of intense sadness and I thought maybe I got beat (exactly what they were wondering) when suddenly the warmest sensation I ever felt came over my body, rushed through my head and settled in the back of my throat. I coughed, and then they started laughing. The dope was good.