Sweet William

 

 

How about little Sweet William? He started out so seemingly together and ended up being taken away in an ambulance. The whole affair left me scratching my head a bit. At first I thought he was rather charming. He was a waiter, and it was nice of him to bring all those credit card numbers over and order all that Chinese food delivery, even though I wasn’t a bit hungry most of the time. He gave the best head of anyone I’d ever been with bar none, even if he wasn’t the greatest piece of ass I’d ever had. Besides, he was Brian’s ex, and I thought it was fitting at the time. Brian was a former roommate and running buddy who had left owing me money and trashing the back bedroom where he had stayed with his trick d’jour for two or three months.

I don’t know how many days we stayed up, but it was far from a record – seven, I think. But they were the concentrated days of amphetamine use. We’d shoot coke and speed mixed to improved the rush of the crystal and stretch the wire of the coke out a bit to avoid some of that hateful jones feeling. William would get on the phone and dial one of those sex lines and invite guys over to my house. I wasn’t particularly interested in messing around with a stranger, but I didn’t object to William screwing everybody in town. The sight of him getting sportfucked in my living room and the memory of my late grandfather sitting in the recliner a few feet away was a strange juxtaposition of images for me.

My ex-boyfriend Rick showed up one evening, and he and William hit it off pretty well. They ran more guys through that house in one night than even I thought appropriate. I just kept doing dope and drinking and talking with a friend of mine with whom I had grown up while the two of them gave of themselves energetically by firelight just a few feet away. Rick was beautiful, but he was dumb as a post and about a half a bubble off level. I felt a certain proprietary responsibility for him that I didn’t entertain towards William, so I called him away before the night was over and told him to cleave unto my bosom for the remainder of his stay. This left William a bit nonplussed, but he seemed to cope with it admirably.

This was near the end of our little run. Towards mid-morning we were visited by some friends who had some time to kill while they waited to score. I had finished off the dope during the previous night’s debauch, and my guests made a thorough inspection of the house to verify that I wasn’t lying. I was happy to let them do so. Brian had been such an inveterate skitzer that I was never surprised to find a sixteenth of coke hidden in the paneling or under the carpet somewhere in the house. My visitors were Nairobi and some ex-con acquaintance of hers. Nairobi was a black drag queen who was known for her acrobatic performances on bars and pool tables and her willingness to drive thirty miles to score a twenty-dollar bag to split between five people. I enjoyed her company at the clubs, but she was not the first person I wanted to see at ten in the morning when we already felt like hammered shit and she looked to be in a similar condition. However, she always managed a genuine smile and called me "Frankietank!" with a spasm of her entire body and much jiggling.

William had been acting withdrawn ever since the sun had come up. Late the previous night Brian had shown up and given us some GHB. I had never taken it before and was unimpressed. After so much time awake regularly injecting fifty units of coke and crank so thick it looked like honey and knocked my knees from under me in a drooling seizure, the little vials of GHB had the effect of a cheap caffeine wire on me. William however, seemed to be feeling something entirely different. I had been doing a great deal more dope than he did for the previous week, partly because I have a greater tolerance and weigh quite a bit more. But also because I was buying and didn’t feel like playing host organism to anybody, no matter how talented they were at fellatio.

Things had gotten quiet around the house, and I suddenly noticed that William was nowhere to be seen. I went back to my bedroom and found him cowering between my bed and the wall just under my open window.

"What’s wrong, baby?" I asked.

He only muttered, but he looked terrified. I got that feeling of impending drama that I REALLY hate when I’ve been travelling the chemical path for some days. I hated what was happening. I sat up across the bed from him and turned away for a moment to think. I was going to have to talk him through this and minimize it, or I’d be babysitting him all day.

I turned back around just in time to see him disappear through the window. He was shaking his head and muttering, "I can’t… I just can’t stay in there."

And then he was gone.

I ran to the window and poked my head through. No William. I ran back through the house and to the front door. I looked up and down the street from my porch and finally caught sight of him several houses down in my neighbor’s driveway. He was talking on their cordless phone while they worked on their truck. He looked like one of the undead standing next to those two rednecks with the flag of Dixie proudly displayed from their living room window. I shuddered.

I walked calmly but quickly towards William. He finished his call and just stood there shaking his head at me. I pulled him out of earshot of the guys under the truck – I knew them both from high school, but didn’t think they needed to be privy to this current disaster of mine.

"William, you’ve got to come back to the house right now!"

"I can’t. I’m so sorry."

I was confused. But I tried to be sympathetic. "What’s wrong, babe? I just don’t want you to get into trouble out here."

He had a pleading look in his eyes. I was apparently oblivious to some danger that he saw very clearly. "There’s something bad in there, Mugtoe."

"You think I don't know there's a nigger drag queen and an ex-con in my house that would trade your mama for dope?! Punkin, now come on with me and let’s go back inside. Please!"

I thought I had made some headway. I felt a sense of impending denouement to the whole affair. I turned to lead him back to the house and almost walked right into a cop.

I then realized that there was also an ambulance, a fire truck, two cop cars, and people on every porch in sight. Great! Fucking great! He had apparently been making a 911 call from the neighbor’s cordless. I saw Nairobi and her cohort driving past us with Rick in the back seat looking out the window with that blank stare of a child being abducted into the circus that he always had under any circumstance.

William was quickly attended to, then hauled off in the ambulance. This left the local constabulary with nobody to talk to except myself. Great!

They escorted me back to my house. I invited them in. Why not? If there had been anything worth finding, Nairobi would have sniffed it out before they ever could. I had a nice pattern of tracks up my arms, but I was wearing long sleeves. I’d been up for about six or seven days, but I was fairly lucid and articulate. The presence of law enforcement in any capacity always seems to have that affect on me. I couldn’t have helped them if I had wanted to. I never bought anything out there in the burbs anyway. Still, I have always found that it doesn’t do to get into a pissing contest with a cop if I can help it, and it’s always best to appear stupid. I don’t need to count coup on them. They looked about and found nothing worth hauling me in for.

They took my papers and some calcified rigs and split after making threatening statements for about fifteen minutes leaving me alone in the house. I did the dishes, got religion yet one more time, and stayed clean for almost a year thereafter. Well, okay, maybe six months. It was that long as well before I saw William again. He showed up one night very late pounding on my bedroom window and tripping on E. He burst in when I opened the front door and gave me a pretty memorable blowjob, but I didn’t let him hitch his cart to my horse again.