A UKC STAFFER
"What are you doing, Steve?" I had to shout at him to get
a response. "It's just that...when I smoke rocks, I always think
I've lost some," he said. By this time he was examining my HIV pills.
I had visions of him trying to down them all in one go.
I couldn't imagine what was going on in there. But I could guess. I have
a ten-a-day nicotine habit. I like - I need - a cigarette before I go
to bed. Sometimes I've found no fags left in the packet when I'm already
undressed. I've gone round the flat looking for a cig I know isn't there.
Now imagine that craving turned up to a deafening noise that drowns out
everything else, and that you've chosen the drug that socks you with the
most vertical rush of all, but lasts only minutes...
I start getting a bit firm. "Look, Steve, you'll have to go. I don't
think you really want sex." I'm not scared of him, or not much, but
this is too weird.
"I tell you what, I'll just...I'll just nip down the road and score
some more. Then it'll be all right," he says, and tries to get some
money out of me. When I refuse, he gets aggressive. "You're just
like one of the workers at the rehab," he says. I am no longer someone
offering even the illusion of kindness or pleasure. I'm just another smug
bastard reminding him that his life doesn't work. Finally he pulls himself
together and with a mutter of "It's gonna be alright," he wanders
out into the hostile London streets.
"Look, when I come back, I'll just get nice and off me face and then
it'll be good," he had pleaded. "Just make it go the right way,
not the wrong way."
I think one of the reasons people take drugs is to avoid sex, or rather
the experience
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of it. Maybe for you the pleasure of sex gets swamped by guilt. Or maybe
