I lived in Mexico City for eighteen months, down in the loco barrio del muerte. There were kids -- sometimes five, sometimes hundreds -- all of them runnin round the streets like screamin death.  They were everywhere, hopped up little rats stealin change from the gringos unlucky enough to pass through the neighborhood.  Everyday, everywhere, they held up cardboard boxes yellin at you:  Tú quieres chiclet!  Tú quieres puta!  Hace frío a noche, y tengo hambre!  The little beasts terrified me, but I was broke in more ways than one, so eventually, they left me alone.

By the time I/d been there six months, my life had begun to feel like one long day broken by hot, painful droughts.  Early in the day when the junk came, I heated a needle and filled it with rainwater from a cup and I tied a vein and I pushed back dusk so I didnt have to hear the ringin footsteps run down my street so I didnt have to watch the gunmuzzle flash lead into kneecaps.  Late in the day, I listened to tiny metal shavings bump through my veins.  My hearbeat came in slow deep thumps like a tribal drum.  Outside, in the dark, when my stomach burned for a score, demandin a fix, I watched that crazy neighborhood of death and its children, and I hated the way both of them mocked my living.

I moved there for one reason:  junk smack horse heroin.  The junk came cheap in Mexico City, and pure -- so fine that sometimes you forgot it was bad.  Like a beautiful woman or a fast car.  Compared to the fix, though, everything else was free:  rent, food, clothes, hate; all of it.  What was left over, well, that didnt matter:  the writing, the fucking, the friends, and so on.  By the time I moved there, the only thing that mattered was the fix -- I/d given up on the writing, I/d forgotten about the fucking, I/d thrown away the friends and everything else except the ache and the fix.

In New York, royalties from my book rolled into an account; my agent wired me cash, dollars not pesos; I sucked the cash into a syringe and squirted it on the fire in my guts.  In Mexico City, the fix-it man came to my door -- a shadow-mexican who hung around the local bar where I sucked my beer and swallowed tapas for dinner.  Hed usually get enough boom for five or six days, so I was obliged to treat him well.  He gave me a large cut for less than the goin price -- I was a known writer; he liked handjobs from famous people.

One day, almost a year and a half in, my fix-it man, Rigo, shows up on the doorstep, ten grams taped to his hairless nutsac.  He pushes the doorbell with his signature ring ring riiinnng ring, but I havent had boom in a coupla days so Im in a terrible way.  Sittin on the toilet, shit sprayin out like I have five gallons of water floatin round my guts.  Every few minutes, I look down in the bowl and the thick stench wafts up and makes me gag, and then, I lean down between my legs and puke on the scabby little dick hangin there.  Im runnin outta veins, and I am concerned about gettin an infection in one of the veins in my prick.  The phlegmy, yellow puke probably doesnt help.

When I finally catch the doorbell ringin, I clamp my ass-cheeks together to pinch the flow, and I stumble over to the bathroom window and jam it open.  Pullin up my boxers and pants, I pray that the terrible shitting has slowed, and if there is a god, I also ask that the liquid doesnt come flyin out when the deal goes down.  Rigo has seen the darker side of junk hunger, but I dont need to hear stories about the famous writer who shits himself.  The doorbell buzzes, and I yell at him to hold on for another motherfuckin second.  We both know that I need him more than the other way around, so its in my best interest not to keep him waitin.

When I open the door, he says, I been waitin a lone time, man.  Why you keep me waitin in dis hall like dis, he asks glancing toward the end of the hall, at a drunk sleepin in a doorway, at the black-haired kid pickin through his pockets.  We both watch as the kid pulls an empty bottle out of the drunks pocket, as he holds it up to the light.

You won me to come here, Rigo says, you gotta be ready when Im ready . . . and Im ready.  I got ten grams of go for you -- the bess shit you ever see, he says pointing his hand towards his crotch and starin at me with his black pupils.  What?  You doan won it now?  I can sell it; plenty hombres who do anyting -- anyting at all -- for dis shit.  Rigo backs outta my doorway, actin like hes ready to leave, like hes about to set up the kid.

Whoa, whoa, hold on now, I say, theres no need to be unreasonable Rigo. Ive just gotta touch of the revenge, you know.  I laugh and rub my stomach.  Rigo steps through my door, casting a nervous shadow on the floor, like the ghost of sun through tree leaves, and once inside, he clears snot from the back of his throat and turns his nose up like a dog testin the wind.  Hey man, he says, you really shit the place out.  He chuckles at my expense, and then, all serious-like, he says, you wanna to try dis fine mexican white or should I jus sell it to da drunk in the hall?

On the couch, I have the money out, but I make Rigo promise that I can shoot before jackin him off; hes happy to oblige me, just this once.  As soon as I shot the dope, its like a pound of pure pleasure pouring straight into my guts, soakin up the liquid down there like concrete churning into cement.  I sink into the cushions like loose change, heavy with the fix.  Every thing turns all right:  the abscess growin in a hole in my arm -- for once it stops pounding like an infected heart; the sky becomes the limit . . . and I fly towards that limit hopin to never look back.

Curious, though, I look down on myself from the ceilin:  splayed out on the couch; needle hangin from a vein in my ankle; my right hand slowly strokin Rigos uncircumcised cock; him standin and facin me and passin the money from one hand to the other.  For a moment, I see heaven and hell, here and now.  I know this has to be the best fix Ive ever had, hands-down best ever.

Just when I feel the high is gonna peak and mellow, just when I think its over, it kicks me like a big boot full of feathers and Im gone, totally.  Im coastin over the cheap seats on a shot of white smack so deadly that it wont let me come down, ever.  The room crystallizes beneath me:  Im starin down into my building, the building next to me.  A mile up, above the barrio and Mexico City, the open watertower looks like a mirror.  Then, all of a sudden, Im so high that I cant control myself, and before I realize what Im doin, Im takin another boot and this time, the white-junk god grants me sight and I can see down into every house, every building, everything in Mexico.  People are visible like specks of light, pinheads, needleheads, and I know every nuance, every mundane moment in their daily lives.  I spend days, months, years it feels like, above these people, watchin them work together.  Like an army of maggots, they are beautiful and grotesque.

When I come down theres nothin left.  Ive traded everythin to Rigo for as much of the fine-white boom as he can score.  My ratty old couch . . . every American dollar I have squirreled away in sock-drawers and condoms . . . everything.  Ive even given him a one-time-only blowjob for his efforts, and because he demanded it.  Earthly possessions no longer interest me.  Ive witnessed something beautiful, and Ive proceeded to burned it away with two months of high.  But coming down wasnt that easy -- I didnt just give up.  No one ever does, do they?

You wanna know what stopped me?  The visions.  I/d booted pure white heroin for two months.  Two months spent starin down at the small people goin by.  One night, I go out among my people; one night, I thought myself invisible.

In Bar San Pedro down the block from my hovel, Im sittin at the grimy bar when I overhear two mexican dudes bitchin back and forth.  I slide up next to the one with brown leather chaps and a Nike t-shirt.  The other guy, a plump-faced cat with a car-bumper for a forehead, hes talkin about poachin somethin on some ranch south of the city.  Around here, land privileges are far more strict than in the States.  Here, men sneak onto government lands to poach food guarded by automatic rifles.  I couldnt make out what animal they were goin to catch, but they called it el snipo.  So I ask the two dudes what theyre talkin about.  Fathead looks at Chaps and raises an eyebrow in disbelief.  I ask again, but this time Chaps cuts me off, You, senoir, has never bean to hunt the el snipo?  You has no lived til you hunt the el snipo.  I laugh at him because he delivers his lines so seriously -- those mexican cats, always posing so serious.  We take you, Chaps says, how much dinero you got?  We take you to hunt the most meanest animal in Mexico, he says.  I politely refuse -- I wanna spliff and a boot before bedtime.  Poachin in some rattlesnake pasture doesnt sound like my idea of a good time; automatic gunfire scares me.

Outside the door of Bar San Pedro, two stout hands grab me under the armpits and drag me around the corner, under the shadow of an old tin shack.  Im usually terrified by muggers, murders, rapists.  Not this time, though -- Ive been flyin for so long that I cant even see the ground.  Fathead stands a good six inches above me, and looking down into my eyes, he says, Mr. Sealby, me and Juan hear things from Rigo, things like how you suck a mean cock for bein a famoso writer.  I smile at him hopin he will kill me before it comes to that.  He twists me around facin the wall and sticks his hand into each of my pockets:  five dollars American, a wallet with a clipping from the New York Times about fiction being alive and well, the corroded key that works the lock to my apartment.

While Fathead searches my pockets, Juan presses one hand firmly into my back as the other slides down the front of my pants.  He grabs ahold of my cock and squeezes until I can feel the fire stokin under my belly, and he says, Feel like a dirty gringo cock, and then he laughs and adds quietly in my ear, you a putana; you like fucking fag asses?  He finds the gear taped to my thigh, grabs it, and pulls it out.  The needle shield pops off, and slowly, he cuts a slice up my thigh, through my pubic hair, and across my belly.  Hopin to delay certain death, I speak into the cinderblock wall:

Man, I got some primo shit back at the place.  Fresh gear for both of you and a guaranteed good time.  Or, if you want, you can sell it.  Good fuckin stuff, dont pass it up, I say.  Fathead pulls his hands outta my pockets.  Juan takes his hand from the middle of my back and jams the needle into my ass cheek.  I feel the thump and the dead heat of the needle before the pain kicks in, but after it does, my legs give out like Ive been shot, and I fall to the ground.  Im lyin on the ground, writhin from the heat stickin out of my ass like a dart, and Fathead steps over me and starts to piss on my head.  He laughs, a warm stream of piss arching down upon me, and as hes zippin up, he says, you cook up first, gringo, I ain gonna die cause a no junkie.

Back at my place, Juan and Fathead are sittin on a piece a foam I stole from my neighbor, and after all thats happened, my highs startin to wear off, and in my gut, the hunger starts to burn.  The second hole in my ass and the coals under my stomach are blazin up like a forest fire.  I break out two new sets of gear I bought at the Farmacia del Fuego -- two syringes, two needles, two chances to clear up that throbbin vein in my prick.  I also take out some bottled water -- the guests are eyein my cupful of rain, real suspicious-like.

In my bathroom, I towel the piss out of my hair with a rag that smells like onions, and I stare into the toilet bowl.  I realize that the seat has been up for two months straight -- theres a few brown spots hardened onto the rim from that night so long ago.  Thats when it hits me:  I havent shit since the night Rigo dropped off this fantastic junk.  Chills crawl up my legs and worm their way into my belly.  I pull out my reserve stash and look at how small its become:  theres more than enough boom for three dope fiends, probably five or six days left just for me.  I figure there/ll be enough left for a morning fix, if these guys dont kill me before they take off with my dope, so I wrap a little taste up in a piece of toilet paper and throw it up into the light fixture.  I hope there/ll be enough left over to give me time to work somethin out with Rigo.

I return to the other room, spread the dope baggy out on a piece of cardboard Ive rigged up like an opium table -- four inches or so off the ground.  I figure thats how Ive spent my days here -- four inches off the ground at all times.  I cook my spoon and heap a third of the junk -- more than Ive ever had -- into the liquid, then I tie up, pop a vein, and ride the wave.

Im in a real good way, flyin over those seats again, not even worried about whether Ive just OD'd, when out of nowhere these creatures come flyin through the window.  Theyre like those stingrays they have in the ocean -- one side of their bodys got a mouth and the others got eyes, and theres one pigeon leg on each side.  These things are super fast, though.  Theyre runnin, sprintin, flockin around my apartment, dartin under baseboards, crawlin through the walls, shittin on everything.  Everywhere they go, chartreuse shit.  I catch one and look at it.  Its the most godawful thing Ive ever seen.  Its got skin with hair like feathers, but theyre not feathers.

I look over at the guests and Juan and Fathead are bootin themselves and Ive forgotten to warn them not to boot as much as I do but its too late and I feel that Im kinda goin paranoid and I realize Ive just killed a couple a guys with an OD and its all okay because these guys arent seein the flyin things yet so the shit aint goin crazy for them and maybe we/re safe for awhile and maybe Im imagining it, and then -- like they were never here -- the chartreuse shittin little bastards are gone.  I dont even see them leave and I dont even remember seein them come but theyre gone and then Im out -- dead to the world of the living.

When I came down, there was nothin to do so I left.  I remember a blindin flux of people passin me by, living their lives by the moment:  Kids flockin by like birds; women thrashin laundry against river rocks; boys hustlin for smokes on the corner.  They never approached me:  I had become a ghost, hauntin the night in seedy bars and pleasant whorehouses.

During my time there, I realized theres a shadow world between the dead and the living, that sometimes you can walk within that shadow, and when you do, you bounce between both, pickin up little bits of each as you go along.  When your walk is done, though, the hardest part is deciding which one to choose, deciding which one will fit you best.  Thats something I could never say in my own writing -- that maybe I chose the wrong one. . . .  Hell, maybe, one way or the other, I guess, we all choose the wrong one.  Our pain, and our memories of pain, become the only thing we can write about, and in a way, this is how we forget the wrong decisions.

I wake up.  The sun shines like heaven through my window, and this is the first time I havent woken up with a hot junk sickness fingerin my intestines.  I have the rusty needle in my right hand, and theres a thin spattering of blood that covers my arms and speckles my shirt.  Over on the foam, Juan and Fathead have melted into the floor.  Well, not melted, their just dead.  Their bodies are kind of slouchin down towards the lowest point.  Its not like they tell you when youre a kid:  these guys have shit themselves, filled their pants.  All their blood has started sinkin toward the lowest point of gravity.  Grey like ghosts, they are.  Fathead still has his needle stickin out of one arm, but his eyes have been ripped from their sockets and jammed in his mouth.  Juan, on the other hand, has his dick hangin between his teeth -- a permanent look of shock on his face:  OH! how did dis dick get in my mouth!

Im scared witless:  two dead bodies and nothin to boot.  I know Im not thinkin clearly, so I sit down across from their bodies, and I try to figure a way outta this mess, a way to get away with murder.  I start to roll a small joint with some stems and leaves and a piece of newspaper but my fingers are thick and jittery and I cant get the paper to roll, so FUCK IT, I throw the goddamned joint against the wall, and all I can think about is the hot junk sickness that will be coming my way in a coupla hours.

Thats when I remember the little taste in the light fixture.  Light fix-ture, ha!  Light fix, I think, walkin into the bathroom, shuttin the toilet lid for the first time in two months, feelin round in the shadows of the bulb for a piece, a taste, a little get-me-by.  My hands are surgeon-calm while I unwrap the toilet paper, heat a spoon, and suck it through a needle.  My mind stays blank as I sit across from the dead bodies, thumb-snappin the bubbles out of the syringe.

When I finally look at the bodies, when I see their expressions -- their eyes, the color of their skin, when I think about what it would smell like if someone came into the room -- the tang of death and shit and burnin dope, I wonder if maybe its not such a good idea to be shootin at all.  Before my hands get jittery and things go all weird on me, I find a needle shield, pop it on, put the gear in my pants pocket, and I make my way out of the apartment hopin to cross the street to a phone outside the Bar San Pedro.  Sometimes, the only way out is to leave it all behind, even when you can think of nothin else to do.

Outside, sunlight floods the world, turnin up the color on everything.  Ive become a rabbit in gods headlights, and its so painful that opening my eyes makes tears stream down my face.  Inching down my steps, I shade my eyes from the yellow rays reflecting off everything, including the goddamned dust in the air.  Instantly, once Im at the bottom, there are children surroundin me, cardboard boxes jammed against my chest, beggin me for change, askin me to buy gum, tellin me their hungry and its cold at night.  Under the cardboard, I can feel their little rat fingers diggin in my pockets, searchin for anything that can be sold.  Im so fed up, so lost, that I dont care; I dont even act annoyed or yell at them.  Just as their soft fingers start to feel like a massage, they get tired, annoyed, and leave me.

One boy, a little black-haired rat, stands in front of me with his hands behind his back, starin me in the face.  Hes filthy with grime, missin a few teeth, and thinner than the shadows between my fingers.  Whatta you want, I ask, but he just continues to stare at me.  I aint gotta goddamned dime, I say, and he nods his head like he already knows.  Why dont you get your ass outta here, I say, but he doesnt make a move.

The sun is killing my eyes, and the heat in my blood is beginnin to boil up under the sun.  I sit down on the steps to my building, hopin the boy will disappear, but when I look out from under my hand, hes still standin there.  Whatta you want, just tell me, I say.  At this, the kid pulls my fix from behind his back, and he cracks a smile.  A cool sweat raises up on the bone above my eyebrows, and I can feel sweat-lakes beginning to run down my back.  Im suddenly very nervous, scared that this kids gonna run away with my last fix, leave me stranded in the sun, dying from a heat stroke.  Come on kid, I say, you shouldnt be playin around with my medicine.  Thats my insulin, I say, I will die if you steal it.

The kid laughs and walks up to the edge of the staircase.  He carefully sets the syringe on the banister, and then he turns toward me and sticks his tongue out.  A group of children come runnin down the other side of the street, chasin a mangy dog with sticks, and when the kid sees this, he runs after them, smackin his butt with one hand and twirlin the other above his head like a lasso.

After he disappears around the corner, the heat in my gut begins to blaze up, and I stare at the syringe on the banister, at the cloudy liquid more beautiful than the sun itself.  I think about grabbin the syringe, poppin the shield, and juicin the liquid straight into my temple -- mainline to the brain.  Ive heard that the real diehards always choose this path when theres nothin left.  I wonder if theres anything left.

While Im sittin there, a young American kid comes along, his backpack filled with dirty clothes and similar dreams.  Hes starin at a map, tryin to find his way, unaware that hes in the wrong neighborhood.  These kids come through here pretty often, get their asses kicked, or killed, and I never miss them when theyre gone.  He sees my light skin, the hand covering my gringo eyes, and he waves at me.  I leave the syringe sittin on the banister, and I walk over to him.

Youre lost, I say, and he nods.  You shouldnt be here, I say, and he nods again.  Youre gonna get yourself killed, I say, and he stares at me without nodding.  I/ll tell you how to get outta here for some change, I say.  He fumbles around in his pocket, and then he remembers the money belt, and he fingers around in the waistband of his pants.  He pulls out a wad of bills, dumping half of them on the ground.  He offers me what he has left, but I only take a few bills and some coins.

What do I do, he asks, after Ive taken his money.  I can tell hes a little frightened, but not a complete blubbering idiot.

Stay outta the shadows, I say.  Dont let those fuckin kids steal your change, I say.  And most importantly, I say, when everything else fails, take a taxi.  I turn toward the phone booth in front of the Bar San Pedro and leave the young Americano to find his own way.

In the phonebooth, I stuff a few pesos in the slot and dial New York.  My agents secretary picks up and pushes me through.  When he answers, he says, Oh, Its soo good to hear from you, Hubert; we havent heard from you in so many months, please tell me you continue to write each night.  And by the way, how is it going?  How is the writing?

Great, great, I say.  No, terrible.  I gotta have cash to get home, Anthony.  Anthony, I say, send me some cash, and set up a visit to the clinic.  Anthony, I say, Ive gotta dry out.