Patrick ONeil - Gun, Needle, Spoon

PRAISE FOR PATRICK ONEIL

Gun, Needle, Spoon is a wild, tender ride of a memoir that youll never forget. Fierce, funny, and true to the bone, ONeils voice is as real and memorable as they come. Read it.

Emily Rapp, author of The Still Point of the Turning World

Gun, Needle, Spoon is like having a near-death experiencewith Patrick ONeils life flashing before your eyes.

Craig Clevenger, author of The Contortionists Handbook and Dermaphoria

Gun, Needle, Spoon grabs the reader from the very start and doesnt let up until youve turned the last page and are left moved, disturbed, and a little out of breath. This harrowing, brutally honest, and unexpectedly redemptive debut firmly establishes ONeil as a truly original voice in contemporary literature.

Rob Roberge, author of The Cost of Living

Reads like a novel, a crazy, funny, perverse, heartbreaking memoir youre both relieved and reluctant to have finished. The jarring truth that it all actually happened is what takes it one step beyond into the realm of the mythic. You must read this.

Scott Phillips, author of Hop Alley and Cottonwood

Gun, Needle, Spoon is told the only way drug memoir should be told: nonlinear and disjointed. Paranoia is your friend. A gun is your ATM card. And like every drug story, its a love story, told through a hole in the arm.

Bucky Sinister, author of King of the Roadkills and Get Up

Patrick ONeil has managed the unusual feat of writing about a battle-scarred life with both toughness and vulnerability, but without posturing or sentimentality. Gun, Needle, Spoon brings to mind Denis Johnson and Jim Carroll without sounding exactly like either. This book has the spare, lean energy of classic crime writing and is both entertaining and full of insight. A great read.

Jesse Michaels, Operation Ivy

GUN

NEEDLE

SPOON

GUN

NEEDLE

SPOON

a memoir

PATRICK ONEIL

5220 Dexter Ann Arbor Rd.

Ann Arbor, MI 48103

www.dzancbooks.org

G UN N EEDLE S POON
Copyright 2015, text by Patrick ONeil.

All rights reserved, except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Dzanc Books, 5220 Dexter Ann Arbor Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48103.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ONeil, Patrick, 1956

Gun, needle, spoon: (a memoir) / by Patrick ONeil.

page cm

1. ONeil, Patrick, 1956- 2. Drug addictsBiography. 3. Heroin. 4. Drug addiction. I. Title.

HV5822.H4O54 2015

362.293092dc23

[B]

2014013384

Published 2015 by Dzanc Books
First U.S. edition: June 2015

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Portions and/or excerpts of the memoir were previously published in the following publications: The chapter Last Day was published in New Plains Review, Fall Issue, 2010. The chapter Learning New Behaviors was published as Las Vegas, 1966 in The Survivor Chronicles, May Issue, 2010. The chapter Wake Up was published in The Coachella Review, Fall Issue, 2010. And the chapter Looking Back: Anxietys Greatest Hits was published in Sensitive Skin, Number 10, 2013, and as The Scent of Death in The Citron Review, September Issue, 2009.

ForJenn

PART ONE

I never thought I was gonna live to thirty.

Patti Smith

L AST D AY

S AN F RANCISCO, J UNE 25, 1997

Chunks of the door frame fly through the air and fall on either side of me. I stand there, immobile. A hundred cops outside, some in uniform, some not, guns drawn, faces and bodies tense. A tall, heavyset blond police officer steps forward through the doorway and smacks me in the face with the butt of her shotgun as more cops push past her and into the apartment. I lie on the floor, a foot across my throat, a knee in my groin, a shotgun and a 9mm leveled at my head.

A plainclothes policeman shouts, Where are the guns, motherfucker! His badge, hanging loosely on a chain around his neck, swings back and forth over my face. Are you alone? asks another. Before I can reply I hear Jenny, oblivious, slurring her words, wondering what all the noise is about. A finger to his lips, the plainclothes cop points toward the bedroom. My stomach tightens and I fear what the cops will do to Jenny if I dont try and make her understand what is happening. I put up my hand, palm out, motioning for him to stop.

Jenny? Jenny! I shout. Could you come out here?

What for? she asks, and then theres the crash of breaking glass, furniture being shoved, voices shouting for her to get down on the floor. They must be coming in through the windows. Then someones turning me over, handcuffing my arms behind my back, and Im being liftedhalf carried, half draggedout into daylight.

On the street in front of my apartment building are a dozen police cars, lights flashing, radios blaring. A small group of my neighbors watches from down the block, a few pointing at me as Im dragged to the nearest patrol car. Over my shoulder I can see my friend Dolan spread-eagled, being searched on the hood of another car.

Tossed into the back seat, I try to sit up and ask the nearest cop for a cigarette. He slams the door in my face. A minute later a man in a suit walks up, opens the door, introduces himself as a detective and apologizes for the other cops behavior. Then he calls me by my name, says hes been watching me for some time now. Ill see you down at the station later on tonight, Mister ONeil, he says, then he shuts the door, tells the driver to take me downtown, and stands there staring at me through the window as we drive away.

I keep thinking that this isnt real. That none of this is happening. That the cop whos driving the car will pull over to the curb, unlock the handcuffs, and set me free. Every turn of the wheel makes me lose my balance and I push up and off the seat with my elbows to keep myself upright. The cuffs dig into my skin. The monotone of the police dispatchers voice coming out of the radio is the only sound piercing the oppressive atmosphere in the car. My heart pounds, the motor accelerates, an abrupt stop sends me crashing into the metal cage that separates the back from the front.

I feel helpless. I feel like screaming. I feel like crying, only I dont know how. I want a cigarette so bad I cant think of anything else. I start to get angry. I start yelling. I call the cop a motherfucker, tell him that this is all a mistake, that I havent done anything. I kick the cage, tell him hes got to believe me.

San Francisco passes by: the Ferry Building, the waterfront, the Bay Bridge, Harrison Street. We arrive at a parking lot behind the Hall of Justice, pull into a space marked Official Vehicles Only. The cop opens my door and I feel the cool air against my naked chest. Without saying a word, he grabs my arm and drags me out onto the ground. Two more cops walk up and theres a kick to the ribs, sharp pain in my shoulders as Im raised up off the ground to my feet and shoved toward a large metal door.

One cop pushes the intercom button and waves at the camera above our heads. The other presses my face against the coarse stucco wall, his gloved hand firmly on the back of my head. With a mechanized hiss, the sally port slides open and the smell of jail hits me: dirty feet, unwashed bodies, rancid food, exhaust fumes, and human shit. Pushed along by a hand on my shoulder, I stumble down a hall lined with empty holding cells. The cop signs a couple of forms at the booking desk before handing me off to the sheriffs who run the jail. My anxiety had been holding the heroin in check, but now the pills I also took are starting to kick in and Im fading. Slurring, I mumble my name, address, social security number as a woman in uniform types it all into a computer.