Joe Bowles

Joe Bowles probably saved my life on more than one occasion by showing me the proper attitude to take when doing dope. I met Joe in 1987 when I was living in the heart of Dallas for the first time. I moved into my apartment on May 1 and was in a drug treatment center by June 25, so the time of our initial acquaintance was brief by normal standards. However, thanks to crystal-methamphetamine I can safely double that timespan with little more than a wink at the calendar.

I was smoking free-base on my first night at my new apartment, so clean living had gone by the wayside without much fuss. At that time I would hook up with just about anybody if the prospects looked good for maintaining a long-term supply of chemicals. I had been hanging around with a guy called One-Thumb Bobby from the bar I drank at. He was a hustler and an acquaintance of several years. He was bringing his tricks over to my place and sharing with me the dope they paid for. In exchange for this I gave him free run of the bedroom while I stayed in the living room shooting coke and continuously peering out the mini-blinds for whatever it is that fiends look for. I was new to the life at that point and still succumbed rather easily to paranoia. Bobby’s game quickly got old, and he wandered back to his wife in East Dallas. I struck up a friendship with Joe Bowles who lived immediately upstairs.

Joe Bowles and I took an immediate liking to one another. There was no physical attraction, but we enjoyed each other’s company a great deal. Joe had a connection for the best speed in Dallas at the time. That’s a story in itself which I’ll have to expand on at another time. Joe Bowles was not his real name. It was the name of some child who had died shortly after birth in the Pacific Northwest. Joe had a tendency to take off for the west coast periodically and ride the rails collecting benefits in several states before heading to Alaska to work on the fishing boats for a few months. Eventually his conviction that the FBI was after him would ease, and he would return to Texas. His real name was Mike M., but he had already established so much credit for himself under Joe Bowles’ name that he kept it even when he had no more use for it. I didn’t know his real name until some time later and continued to call him Joe out of mere habit and a fondness for the handle. He lost the ability to use the name with impunity when his true identity was revealed to the authorities by the infamous Black Widow. But that was much later in California.

The biggest, most formidable shot of dope I ever did was at Joe’s hand. We both agreed that it was best to do thick shots with less dilution and thereby minimize the number of return trips to the arm. We were in Joe’s apartment upstairs. Supplies were plentiful at this point, and we were not faced with having to make a run for more any time soon. We had some decent coke, the best crystal available in Dallas at the time, and some homemade skillet speed that we referred to as "peanut butter". The home brew was nasty and gave me the feeling of an icepick in the back of my head, but it tended to draw out the wire and add some filler to the shot. We decided to mix the three together and do it all at once. It amounted to about a gram of dope in a 75 unit shot that looked like honey.

No school-trained phlebotomist ever held a candle to a dope-fiends skill in finding and holding a vein. And no dope fiend could match the skill of the inimitable Joe Bowles. I’ve seen folks jack the needle back and forth in uncertainty, fearing a miss. Not so with Joe. I always kidded him that we shook in unison and were synchronized. One register for blood to verify the aim and, whoosh! Then out the needle came and the taste diffused into the back of the throat. Vapors rose into the lungs as the blood made its way. And then the wave with a roar in the ears like a flood washing over me. I got up from the toilet seat where I was sitting and made my way into the main room of his efficiency apartment. I made it three steps before my knees buckled. I lay on the floor convulsing and drooling. Joe was no chipper. He was the one who taught me that the greatest danger in this macabre business was to let the wave overwhelm you. The trick is to relax and ride it. The terror is what gets most folks. I got closer to death at those moments than at any other time in my life. It was pure bliss. A crushing orgasm carrrying me away into utter darkness.

Joe was the only person I ever did dope with who knew not to bother me in the middle of the rush. It was sacrilege in his eyes. I knew that if I died he would be miserably sad, and would promptly put me in my own apartment or in the dumpster out back. I didn’t confuse that type of necessary callousness with a lack of affection on his part. That was just the way of things.

Joe waited a few minutes until my seizure subsided. I was lying quietly on the floor staring at the ceiling blindly. I heard his voice as though through a mile of tin pipe. "Mugtoe, you gonna make it?" I raised my hand as a sign of cognizance on my part. After a few more minutes elapsed I sat upright. It just now occurred to me how much true love of another it took for him to defer giving himself a shot while awaiting the outcome of my own. No one but a true fiend would recognize the type of restraint that must have required. To know what awaited and not allow the desire to overcome the care of another. He never hovered though. He sat in the bathroom looking on. I was pale and dripping sweat in buckets. My voice was weak as I looked up at him from the floor and uttered the words that must echo every drug addicts thoughts after such an experience and brought a great laugh out of Joe then and thereafter.

"I think I should have done another 10 units."

Joe and I had many experiences afterwards and did much more dope together. But we ever after referred to that moment as "The Shot Heard Round The World."

4 July 1999