Kicking Dope at The Empress

Been thinking a lot the past few days about dope sickness...thinking about that god awful feeling, the fucking pure hell that the sickness really is. Puking, cramping, nausea, diarrhea, and of course the entire mental anguish of it all.

My son had a stomach virus, and as it is taking care of a sick child with a stomach ailment, I was literally up to my elbows is puke and shit....memories flooding back onto me, with totality of the smell... I remember kicking in the Empress once, kicking for a few days at least, until something turned around, or turned back up, or whatever the case may be. So many days I spent kicking in the Empress....

And this particular time, I think the room was on the first floor, down the main hall to the left. We got there right before the sickness set in...the next few days spent in a living bile hell. We tried to flush the toilet, but when we pushed down on the handle...nothing. I remember laying my head over that toilet after two days of its ejected poisonous bile from both puke and shit, smelling it all as I layed there, puking up my broken and burned guts. My feet on the wet floor, and my head rested on the lid of this toilet that was unflushed, broke, for two days of withdrawal and hell, smelling all the piss and shit and puke, strong and acidic, still could not bring up enough bile in this barren and empty stomach of mine to really make a dent in the madness.

Too sick to call anyone to fix it. Too sick to do anything except puke and shit, cry and whimper. One the third day, he rose again from the dead, as the call came ringing through...money, dope...and the sweet, sweet combination thereof. I gathered myself together, pulling and tugging at my matty and dreaded hair back into a semblance of a ponytail, and shuffling through all the clothes on the ground, searching fro something dry. Brushing my teeth, and trying to pull it together...to go out into the bright Louisiana sun, and wait on the corner for the man. God only knows how long I could be waiting...but, I tell you...I know, it ain't gonna be long now.

After scoring, I came back to the Empress, and I stood up front, chatting with Bob for a moment, trying to feel normal...as I knew normal was sitting right there in my pocket. Then, he tells me..."Oh, I forgot to tell you, that handle on that toilet goes up to flush, not down. I guess you figured that out, though!"

Damn, I went into the bathroom as soon as I returned, and the whole bathroom had that distinct odor of rotten, nasty bile and all that was once inside that has been ejected out, poisonous landfill, disgusting human secretion...and I pulled up on the handle...and it all swirled down, leaving us with a clean and sparkling toilet. I filled a cup with water, and went to make everything better.