Junkie Love by Phil Shoenfelt Read Free Book Online Page B

grounds that I was more addicted and fucked-up than any of the friends I was selling to or scoring for. As I said, people in the drug world have a curious system of ethics. But as far as Iwas concerned, it was a matter of survival, not of profit, and I disliked Julia and her crowd of “sophisticated” friends. Everything was “darling this” and “darling that”, and I couldn’t prevent myself from playing the uncouth street yob, so thoroughly did they annoy me. After this little episode, Cissy wouldn’t talk to me for two or three days, beyond calling me an arsehole and a shithead.
    But we were mad for each other, and this argument was soon forgotten as the summer passed in a haze of colours, sounds, concerts, clubs and restaurants. We went out together all the time, and were rarely apart, except during working hours as I endeavoured to keep my job at the T-shirt factory. Cissy herself had moved out of her flat and had taken a job as a barmaid in a local pub, which provided a large and comfortable room for her above the premises. It turned out that the flat had not been hers after all. The lease was in Jed’s name, and since the night of the argument no-one had seen him, or had any knowledge of his whereabouts. Even though we had repaired all the broken windows and bought new furniture the landlord had somehow got wind of what had happened, and was unwilling to continue renting the flat, either to Jed or Cissy, and so it had been necessary for her to find alternative accommodation. The pub job came along at just the right time, and each night after work I would go there for free drinks and food, courtesy of Cissy. I’d stay there until closing time, after which we would go on to a club or an after-hours bar to meet with some friends and continue drinking until the early hours of the morning. I slept mostly in Cissy’s room above the pub, returning to my own place only occasionally for a change of clothes, or to pick up something I needed, and as I wasn’t getting a lot of sleep, I found myself doing more and more speed in order to keep awake whilst driving around London. However, I wasn’t shooting the stuff, only sniffing it, and I still considered myself to be clean and relatively drug-free.
    It was during the Reading Music Festival, at the end of the summer, that I realised Cissy had begun to use smack again. She had travelled there alone, on the Thursday, in order to see all the bands, and as I was needed at work to make deliveries before the weekend, I decided to go up on the Saturday, and had agreed to meet her at a pre-arranged spot.
    The weather had turned cold and grey, and it was beginning to rain as I entered the grounds of the festival. I’d been stopped and searched by the police as I left the train station in Reading, but luckily they hadn’t found the packet of speed that I’d hidden in one of my socks. Now, I was looking forward to being with Cissy again, and watching the bands together, as even a separation of a day or two drove me crazy. She herself was like a drug for me, and I had a physical hunger to touch and hold her that ate away until she was in my arms once again. She was such a tiny girl, almost doll-like in the perfection of her beauty, but fiercely independent, with a restless, rebellious energy that would not accept any interference in her plans. As possessive as I might feel about her, she would not allow me to stifle her: if I believed that a particular course of action she was taking was stupid, or wrong, she would go off and do it anyway, just to prove that she was right, that she was strong and free enough to look after herself. She could be a pain in the neck at times, but I also admired this stubborn streak in her, this insistence on freedom at whatever the cost. The fact that I could never wholly possess her, or control her, made me want her all the more.
    I finally caught sight of Cissy, not in the place we had agreed to meet, but at a spot towards the back of the crowd