Six years before, Jason had said, “There’s an art to needles.”
We were in Jason’s house then, too. He was studying a new batch of needles. His movements were slow and precise, almost tender. I already realized that he kept his world small and manageable. Within the walls of his studio, he was absolute master. Within his rooms Jason controlled chaos. This was his oasis. Los Angeles was shut out, totally erased. Here it was always a late afternoon in an indeterminate but warm season. Jason had built a water fountain in his front room. Goldfish and turtles swam. I could hear them through the water in the darkness, just before I fell asleep.
Over the years I learned that Jason’s studio is a museum of his personal life. Here the eras of his existence are preserved for possible study and reflection. Jason has been using the painting props for more than a decade. For more than ten years one woman after another has posed with the green surfboard near her shoulder or thigh, sending shadows rubbing against her breast like a live thing, a vine perhaps. For a decade one woman after another has lain on the beach towels with her legs spread or softly curled while the surfboard casts shadows against her flesh, shadows now red, violet or something heavy, a rancid-looking dark green.
In the beginning, I wanted Jason to teach me about needles. I wanted him to teach me about the goldfish that swam in his living room and the flowers and vegetables he grew in his garden. I was empty then, washed clean and ready for Jason.
I would prove I wasn’t easy to erase the way all his other women had been, the interchangeable women who posed for him and whom he let stay briefly, until the painting was finished, until he found someone who excited him more, offered him more, if only a slightly different voice or flesh history.
Six years before, Jason had stripped the needles from their disposable plastic shells. “These, see”—he pointed—“they’re too big.” He picked up another needle. “Perfect.” He held the needle near my face. “You’ll know the size next time.”
I didn’t memorize the size. I wasn’t planning on a next time.
Then everything came to a halt. There were two of me. One of me was sickened with fear. The other, the outside one, sat calmly, as if taking notes. I watched Jason move through the late afternoon shadows.
We were sitting at a different table then. This was before my father spent one month stripping the table he would find years later, stripping it back to the original oak, slowly, with infinite care, bringing back the dark wood grain, the grain that was etched and smoothly polished as a sea stone wearing the embrace of waves.
Jason pulled the kitchen curtains closed. He walked through the house and returned with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a bag of cotton. He filled a glass of water and tested the plunger again. He sorted through the hall closet and came back with a pale blue bathrobe belt.
“You know the bad reputation needles have?” Jason asked me the first time. “Well, they deserve it. Are you sure you want to do this?”
I nodded again, certain. I had a sense of the enormity of what we were going to share. There would be a bond in this. There would be discovery and change. There would be blood. Something would be decided.
It was a new world. The old forms had failed. There could be no decisions made by judges in courts of law, no marriage or baby. We had to develop our own bonding rituals. Our laws were a return to something primitive, the law of shared blood.
“Needles are their own world,” Jason said. “You get into paraphernalia. It’s part of the trip. The grinding up. The spooning in. You’ll appreciate it later.”
I wasn’t planning on later. I was only doing this once, as a rite of passage, a special sealing ceremony, nothing more.
Jason was satisfied with the grinding. He drew two sample lines of cocaine on the mirror. With a knife he guided the powder from the mirror into a spoon. He dropped a small piece of cotton into the spoon. Slowly, concentrating, he measured 2 cc of water into the spoon. He put the syringe into the spoon, drawing the liquid, the cocaine and water, up through the cotton.
I extended my arm. It lay on the table in front of me like an alien object, a piece of driftwood, perhaps, curved smooth and white by the pressure of water.
“Me first,” Jason said.
I watched him pull the bathrobe belt around his arm. He used his teeth to tighten it. He flexed his hand open and closed, open and closed. “Watch me,” he said. His veins stood out like the blue ridges denoting rivers on a map. He rested the needle against his vein. He pushed the needle in.
Blood jumped up in the needle. The blood was very thick and very dark. “Blood shows you’ve registered. Hit the vein.” He was letting the belt fall loose and drop to the floor. “As soon as you register, drop the tie,” Jason said, pushing the plunger.
Jason took the needle out. He took a deep breath. His eyes went wide. He took another deep breath.
“You O.K.?” I asked. We would ask that of one another often across the years.
Jason nodded. Slowly, as if the floor wasn’t solid, he walked to the kitchen sink and ran water through the needle, then alcohol and water again. “Got to clean the needle. Remember. Always clean it.”
He sat down at the table. He dragged some white powder from the mirror to the spoon. He poured in water. He took the second needle. He tested the plunger.
“I’m only going to show you once,” he said, filling the syringe with liquid. He tapped the sides of the needle, tap, tap, tap, tap. “That’s the rule. I only shoot people once. From then on, they’re on their own. Tie up your arm.”
I picked up the terry-cloth belt from the floor. My fingers were not my own. They were useless slabs of flesh. They could be part of some other form of animal, something with flippers. Jason helped pull the belt tight around my arm.
“Pump,” Jason commanded. And I pumped my fist, now open, now closed.
“You’ve got no veins,” Jason observed. He held my arm and turned it toward the light, studying it from another angle. He looked disgusted. “These are the worst veins I’ve ever seen,” he pronounced. “You’re not in this game for long.”
Jason poured alcohol onto cotton. He swabbed my skin, just like in a doctor’s office. I watched his face. He was intent, concentrating. He might have been gluing the mast onto a toy model of a ship.
“O.K.,” Jason said. He was the man at the loudspeaker at Cape Canaveral. He was going to push the button and hurl the rocket into space. He was announcing all systems go, green and counting.
“Let go of the tie when I tell you.” Jason was holding the needle against my vein. I started to turn my head away.
“Watch,” Jason commanded.
There was a stab of pain. Blood came into the needle. I stared at my arm. The arm did not belong to me. It wasn’t really connected to my body. Jason was holding my arm, balancing it against his raised knee.
“Let go,” Jason said. I released the belt. It slid onto my lap.
There was a hot wind. Slowly, I realized the wind was within me. It was every wind I had ever known. It was the wind of childhood, the wind that brushed my six-year-old face when I skated the sidewalks of Philadelphia in autumn. It was the wind that came in the middle of the night in the east, in November, a wind rippling with the cool promise of the first snow. It was a wind tangled with greasy pronged summer oak leaves. It was a wind pitted with the charred bits of the oak leaves and maple leaves later, stained by sun in autumn, falling broken to the earth and lying there like severed red fists.
“This is your fit.” Jason put my needle on the table in front of me. He had put it back in its plastic shell. “Take care of it.”
I nodded. I knew I wouldn’t have to take care of it. I was going to do this thing now and only now. It would be over at dawn.