But he was too busy to answer. He took a sunglasses case out of his pants pocket and removed a syringe, a few small wax-paper bags bound with a rubber band, and some alcohol swabs. He pulled a soup spoon out of a moldering bowl out of what was probably Cheerios two weeks ago. He cleaned the spoon with the alcohol swab and then stuck the syringe in a glass of water he had nearby, filled it up with 1 cc of water, and emptied it into the spoon. I crept toward him, with my eye on the syringe.

         'Don't even fucking think about it, bro.'

         'Just wait, man. Let's talk this out.'

         'Either shut the fuck up or get the hell out.'

         'You're destroying yourself. Do you want to die? Do you to spend all eternity in the void?'

         'No, I just don't want to feel like this right now.'

         'Is that needle even clean?'

         'In the sense that no one other than me has used it, yes. It's pretty hard to get an infection though, and that's the only risk.'

         'Other than dying, that is....When did you start this?'

         He emptied the wax paper bag of off-white powder into the spoon and held a lighter under it. His face was suddenly more animated, 'About two weeks ago. First of all, asthma shut down the usual sinus-bronchial route. And I was just so sick of not writing, of Eliza, of the whole stupid fucking pseudo-sophisticated, pseudo-degenerate scene. And I wanted to see what this was like, if only so I could write it. I went to the Harm Reduction Center on Avenue C and got some spikes... Let me tell you, it's a lot different from snorting. I ended up being incommunicado for a week. And then Eliza ditched me. But none of it's as bad as it sounds.'

         'Gordon, please don't do this,' I implored, and again considered overpowering him. But what good would that really do? I couldn't involuntarily commit him to a rehab. All I could do was get him angry and who knew even how much dope he had in the apartment. This was going to be a long struggle and I needed to retain his confidence, so I resolved just to let him go.

         The dope in the spoon bottom had disappeared. He put it carefully down, resting the handle on the cereal bowl, put a tiny, balled-up piece of cotton in it, and sucked up the solution through the cotton with the needle. He took his belt out of his pants and fastened it above the elbow with the loose end in his mouth. His arm was covered with huge, overlapping, billiard ball-sized purple bruises with yellow edges.

         He noticed my gaze and mumbled, 'When I first started, I'd sometimes miss or stick it too far in and shit. Those are old.'

         He tapped the side of the syringe so the bubbles came to the top. After expelling a little spurt from the tip, he stuck it into the big vein on the inside of the crook of his arm.

         'First the skin, then the vein.'

         A little plume of blood rose in the needle. He pushed the plunger. Ten seconds passed. He was utterly transfigured, looking joyful and at ease.

         'The face of God.'

         'More like the force of depravity . Gordon you need to go to rehab.'

         'Fuck that. You know, they say you can only stop when it's not fun any more and I'm thankfully nowhere near that point... But you know what I'll do for you? I'll let you make your fucking film.'