Fiction: 1 "Sonny's Colors"

A note to readers: This was written for a literature class in my sophomore year at A&M. This is written from the perspective of a character in another story, titled "Sonny's Blues," written by James Baldwin. Please, PLEASE let me know what you think. On that note, here goes.

Bliss.

The sharp, slanted edge of the needle slid past the thick, ebony layers of my skin.  I gasped, my eyes clenching tightly shut.  I pressed my finger hard down on the plunger of the syringe, wanting the drug to hit quickly.  There was most definitely no way of turning back now.  I was in for the long haul, and I thought I was ready for what was going to come my way.  But waiting felt like a century when, in reality, it was only a few seconds till it started taking its true effect.

My head lolled forward, a heavy weight as my chin hit my chest.  I was beginning to understand why they called it being “on the nod.”  My arms and legs felt heavier than normal.  They swayed just slightly at my sides.  I don’t even remember the sound of the syringe hitting the floor.  Warmth spread through my body, slowly at first, then faster and faster until it was burning at my fingertips, toes, and along the outside shell of skin at my ears.  When the heat faded, it left behind little trails of tingling sensations that made me smile something goofy.  I probably looked a damn fool; something like a blind man in a garden, my eyes shut and my mouth shifted into a curve of content and what is clear to me now as mock happiness.  For the first time in a long while, I felt good about the world, and I felt good about me.

That was the first time that horse found itself running rampant through my body.  To be quite honest, I was scared shitless.  I had been told by my pal Johnny Mack from the club down on North Main Street what would happen, that I would just “feel good about everything” afterward, that it was the closest damned thing to “being born again.”  Of which, I am not really sure how Johnny Mack would know, but the assumption felt pretty accurate to me, so I went along with it. 

When the horse went wild; when it discovered the planes of the body that had never been touched before by any man-made substance, I felt like I was taking my first breath of life.  I felt like I knew everything and nothing all in one moment of pure, uninterrupted…

Bliss.

At least that is what it was like in the beginning.  After that, as is per usual when life settles into a person’s being, it was all downhill from there.

I am not really sure why I chose to start with heroine.  I had an exotic variety of drugs laid out before me that day in the back of a Volkswagen van, and I decided to go with the dulled needle at the end of the rug.  It was calling to me, it seemed; I was drawn to its fatal promises.  The disease possibilities were endless.

This was two months after I left my mother’s house to live with Isabel’s family.  The conversation I had had with my older brother after my father’s funeral left me in a certain state of awareness.  I knew that going into a career for music probably wasn’t my best bet, but I had been wanting it real bad for quite a long time then.  I was good at what I did on the piano, and people knew it when they looked at my hands.  I have long fingers and small palms, good for reaching chords that not many people could reach.  But a musician’s life was to be a hard one, whether you were good at what you did or not. 

This is why I went into the navy before I ran off to some music Mecca to pave my way to stardom.  I was too young by a year or so at the time, but they didn’t care.  As long as you told them that you were aged right, and that you really wanted to serve your country, you were admitted.  I got slapped around quite a bit in the first few months until I took a heavy-fisted swing at a two-ton private- with an overbite and a beer gut that swung both ways when he walked- who called me a ‘nigger.’  They knew I could handle myself right then, and Marshall (the two-ton idiot) and his gang took me in.

By then I had quite an unhealthy addiction to the junk I had shot into my left arm only a few months before.  I was doing it every other day, sometimes more, sometimes less.  The skag came from a dealer within my camp who got it from some guy he saw when he was on leave before we were shipped to Greece.  Because I had saved his ass when a lieutenant almost found his stash, he decided to split it entirely with me for a small price.  I never told him that I saved him just for that purpose.

A couple of years later when I got kicked out of the navy for going on the nod while I was assigned guard duty, I met back up with Johnny Mack and a few of our old pals.  We would shoot up, ride the high, then bang and strum and blow away at our instruments till dawn.  All of us worked during the day at various establishments in the city, so it was easy for us to live life this way. 

After going about like this for a few months, I started finding myself needing the heroine more than I was actually wanting it.  Without shooting up after a short time, I would start getting withdrawals.  I would go into little spurts of cold sweats coupled with goose bumps; I was irritable, shaky, and skittish.  Just like the first time I decided to shoot up, I was scared shitless.

I packed up and went back to NYC to work and to try and get off the horse while I was at it.  But the need for the drug was too strong, and I did not have the will to throw it off all at once.  Sometimes I found myself shooting up with the remnants of an old fix just to get a little bit of a high until I got some more to finish the job.  I was killing myself.  And the worst part about it was that I knew what I was doing.

I knew very well that I was shooting my own death into my veins.  I knew that it was killing me slowly and quickly at the same time.  I knew that I needed to get help from someone who cared.  I needed help from someone who knew what to do for me.

So I checked myself into a rehab clinic outside of New York City and started the long and very painful process of getting my ass back into shape.  It was hard, to say the least.  The meetings, the detoxifying processes, the cruel nurses, and the pitiless doctors all made me want the poison more and more.  I was rude, spiteful, violent, and lethargic.  I would not open up to anyone that I came into contact with, not even those who had been through what I was going through right at that moment.  I did not want to know how they felt since it was over.  I did not want to know that it all gets better after this.  I did not want to talk to anyone who wanted to talk to me.  I felt that the world was against me in all ways, that I was alone in my recovery, that I did not have anyone anymore.

But as it turns out, I was wrong.  The people who had been trying to get me to open up to them made me realize that I was forcing myself into loneliness.  They explained to me that they were not there because of sadistic ill-intent.  I was reassured that these people, these gentle nurses and these sympathetic doctors, they were there for me and all the other junkies finding refuge in their establishment.  In the end, that is what fueled my desire to be normal again.

            When I finally finished my rehabilitation, I decided to move back to New York City and reconnect with my brother.  I discovered that he and Isabel were doing well and that their children were growing up quickly.  It made me wonder, seeing them, what all I missed when I was away.  Abe and I fought quite a bit in the first few months.  We never physically hurt each other, of course, but the emotional damage was enough to make up for it.

            One night, after a good talk between the two of us, Abe and I went down to the only nightclub on a short, dark street, downtown.  Weaseling in past all the movers and shakers, the drug-takers and the money-makers, we made our way to the main floor.  Creole, a man I had met while I was in rehab, came to greet us properly.  My brother seemed lost in the dim lights of the club, squinting to avoid getting smoke in his eyes, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his coat.  I caught his eye and smiled briefly before being dragged up and onto the stage.  Sitting at the piano, I looked out into the crowd, trying to find Abe.  When the lights flashed, drowning out everything but the instrument before me, I shook my head and turned back.  The bar hushed, and a silence thick like molasses hung over the crowd.  The only thing I could hear was the buzz of the lights overhead and the heavy breathing of my band mates behind me.  They were waiting for something.  And after a moment, I turned and found them all staring at me, smiling.  They were waiting for me.

            My fingers struck the first chord, and for a moment, I was scared shitless once again.  Arms and legs, heavy with anxiety, I felt warmth rush through my bones, leaving a pleasant prickling sensation behind in its wake.  For the first time in a long while, I felt good about the world, and I felt good about me.

            When the music came streaming from my fingers, I felt like I had taken my first breath of life.  I felt like I was being born again, brought into the light, getting my third or fourth chance at redemption.  I felt like I knew everything and nothing all at the same time during one perfect moment of pure, uninterrupted, unspoiled…

Bliss.