Chapter 82

I know, I know...it's been a while :)

the sound: Jefferson Airplane – White Rabbit, Cowboy Junkies – Sweet Jane, Heroin – Velvet Underground

As Robert’s wounds healed, the two of us spiraled down a narrow path to our own personal and private hells…personal, private and together.

We ate together, when we ate. We fought with each other, when we fought. We slept together, when we slept. We plotted together when we plotted. And we fixed together when we got high. Neither often remembered to bathe and most often forgot to find clean clothes when we got up. We lived on caffeine, cigarettes and whatever we could get our hands on to get on the pitch.

As any junkie will tell you…getting “the pitch on” takes over your life. You never quite feel as good as you did in the beginning, so your life unravels around you and in no time at all…all you are concerned with is trying to get the right pitch on again.

You forget to eat, you forget to bathe, you forget to wash your clothes…all your time and energy is spent plotting the next hit, finding the money, finding the Greek, finding the works, finding.

In Robert’s case it was complicated by trying to keep what he was doing from his family.

Oft time family is not quite as stupid as you think and his was on to us in no time. Possibly it was the steady stream of people leaving the farm bearing goods that Robert had sold them or traded them in exchange for drugs. Possibly it was the ongoing presence of Gus and his evil looking cronies as Robert let them doctor their wares at the house for a “house cut”.

Robert, who’d made all his money running a motorcycle club that sold drugs and had kept them so successful by keeping such firm rules around not doing the product was pushin the pitch right through all the profit that he’d helped the club had make. He talked often of selling the farm and all of his motorcycles…he was his very own version of lets make a dope deal and often the men packed up their families and left simply because Robert had lost his sense of humor and the ability to love the brotherhood.

So possibly it was all the family of riders that slowly over time pulled up stakes and left the farm not wanting to watch what Robert was becoming that tipped his family off.

Rosie was particularly sad during that period…I don’t know if it was about her perception of waste, her belief that Robert had “done this” to me or if it was just her being tired of the lifestyle we were perpetrating….but she was noticeably sad while the rest of the family got mad.

Grey arrived on the doorstep one evening demanding that Robert and I attend a “celebration of life” that was happening in honour of Scurvy D’s birthday. Neither Robert nor myself were interested, both of us knowing that Mrs. K would be there…but in the end I guess we had no choice.