Saint Newport, Long
by Cole Shuherk
You were itching before and you are scratching now. Muggsy scratches and cries at you. She has been crying. She needs a walk for her sanity and you need a walk for what remains of yours. You need to exercise and get out of the house, now just the room where the empty bottles stare at you and judge you and frighten you. White twist-on hats, warning labels unheeded. Their contents tethered you to propriety and dignity. You made the bottles empty and made their insides yours, and pissed their souls away. Their contents kept you stupid and happy in the room until they got empty and left you itching.
You took their sleep, and they ’re upset with you. More than upset, they are starved, they are irritable, they are judging you. They are the only ones who know what you are and how you live.
Dust hangs in the room’s air. Piss, dirt, grime, clothes drowned in dry sweat. Yours.
Shit piles up like the books you don’t read, like the work you don’t do, and should have done, and should be doing. Shit floats in and out of the room like the thoughts in your mind that coalesce into words when you’re lucky; like alphabet soup, stir and stir and you get something legible if lucky. Something to write down.
10-by-20-feet of safety, littered with piles of detritic failure.
Attempts to run from, and around, and through what you are— how you are.
Evidence of your presence in the room: failed attempts at painting something worthy of hanging, failed attempts at writing something worthy of reading, failed attempts to sort clothes for laundry, and empty bottles.
Turn that knob and you are letting the world in and letting yourself into the world, and letting the world into you. The world is the sum of all your fears. People like you are the sum of all of the world’s fears. If the world were like you, there would be no world to speak of, and if you were like the world, there would be no you to speak of.
Your room is a cage and a hospital bed. It is a commitment. You’ve been committed to your room. The psychiatric department of your mind committed you to a 4,320 hour hold. They let you leave twice a day to walk your dog and visit the clinic downstairs for your adjunct treatment.
In your room you are safe. No one can see you. You can’t hurt anyone. No one can hurt you. If you fall in the forest; OD, grand mal, hanging, gunshot, you will not make a sound. Your room– its cum-stained mattress on the floor is a dereliction– of your convoluted pride in all of it. A totem of your rejection of decency, propriety, and worldly things.
You made this bed. If only you could sleep in it on its fitted sheet with its cough syrup stain the approximate shape of your shame, refracted as the facade of dignity you maintain by way of anonymity. There is safety in shame. You’ve broken the bondage of shame. Rejected decency, propriety, and worldly things in favor of an ascetic, monastic life. There’s dignity there. A hermitage. A space for indefinite reflection and constant prayer and occasional sleep. You are proud to live this way. Living this way is proof that you are not like them. They are brainwashed. You know the truth like God knows every hair on your unwashed head– you know the truth like a schizophrenic who stopped taking their clozapine.
Your ultimate delusion and truth is that this is an exercise in liberty– the freedom to be a shut-in.
You chainsmoke Newport longs on your walk. A Newport is a snorkel. A disposable, combustible iron lung. A gas mask for the real poison– that waits for you– that claims to be freedom– that pretends to be fresh air. Panic will seep into your blood and kill you through the freedom– through the air– if you let it. Through your lungs. So you breathe in smoke instead.
You hand the Newports out readily to anyone who asks. An act of charity, you tell yourself. God’s work. You used to smoke Camels, but a beggar asked you for a smoke once, and turned down your Camel. Said nah man, I need a Newport. Then it was Newports. It’s been Newports for three years.
Tar pools in the bottom of your lungs and winter steam spills out of your mouth and you blister your thumb on the frozen lighter. A blood blister pops on the lighter. You find the butt you tossed and kneecap it. Your shadow stalks your footsteps. You can’t look at it.
If you see it, there will be six more weeks of you.
You are afraid of the dark. You can feel its eyes, and its posture. It lurks around every corner and inside every recess of your mind. Look straight ahead. Ignore it. Walk south and hand out smoke. Avoid conversation past toothless God bless yous. Let frozen tar collect on your lips and catch your words and strangle them like dinosaur bones.
Cross 118th and you start to feel like every step you take is a step further from home, a step away from safety, you worry. But don’t forget the itch.
Every step you take from your piss-soaked cum-stained litter-strewn safe is a step towards total oblivion. Every step you take away from home, God flips a coin. Decides whether or not to reverse gravity to fuck with your head. Eventually he’ll land on heads, and you want to be home for that. Let your mattress smother you to death on your ceiling. Squash you like a bug. Smother you like some mother in postpartum psychosis, doing the reasonable thing– saving her newborn baby boy from the horrors that await him in the free world. But you keep stepping.
There’s a reward waiting for you at the end of this walk. You need the reward or you will die. So you bat these thoughts away– foul them off like curveballs into the backstop of your mind. Muggsy smiles at everyone on Morningside Drive. People smile their distanced smiles. In Harlem, she has a nickname. In Harlem, they love a pit bull. They’ve had a pit bull, in Harlem. They grew up with a pit bull. By the time you’ve hung a left into Harlem, you have smoked 6 Newports and handed out 2. The fear behind the walking smiles in Morningside Heights cocoons on Cathedral.
By the time you’ve hung your second They call her Red in Harlem. They used to have one just like her, growing up– before the world got too big and they had to shrink.
How you doin’ Red? How’s my girl? That’s my girl.
Some leer at her like she’s a ‘68 Mustang. Some admire her like she’s a quarterhorse. But the rest love her– and the Newports you give them. She is Muggsy the Red-Nosed Pit Bull. You are Newport Santa Claus.
Saint Nicotine.
Saint Newport Long.
Your Newports disappear by the time you hit Amsterdam– all gone. Toss the pack. Good. You hate smoking by kids. Babies. Anything innocent. Kids at the park sometimes. You don’t wanna set a bad example.
Walking without a Newport between your teeth puts fear into your throat. But you’re close to the clinic. Hang another left on 125th. 3 blocks until the doctor will see you– you walk through the valley of the shadow of death and fear evil like you fear yourself. Your salvation is imminent. It’s waiting around the bend.
The clinic is fifty feet below home– below safe. You earn your appointment with a walk around the block. Bodega General, where you see Dr. Ethanol. He will see you now– regarding your itch. Dr. Malt Liquor will see you now. His nurse, Lucia– she loves you. You are her love. You are ‘bebe’. Sometimes you are ‘handsome’ – sometimes you blush. How was her birthday?
She’s an aquarius, Lucia. Never forget her birthday. She’s as important as Dr. Ethanol. She tells you to get outta here unless you’re gonna take her on a date sometime, huh? No flowers? She’s a cashier, but to you, maybe the 3rd most important person on earth. She tells you to get outta here. You can’t get out of here until you see Dr. Ethanol.
He checks your blood pressure. Asks how you’d like to papercut your liver today. The sun sank slowly as you made your way to the clinic and the air got cold. You don’t have the shakes. You are shivering. You set Dr. Ethanol’s papercutters on the counter.
If it’s the Belarusian guy that owns the place you say: andapackanewportlongs.
Then it’s: right away, my friend. Say: thank you.
If it’s Lucia it’s a slurry: whatchuwant bebe?
Say: packanewportlongs, and it’s: yougotit, my love.
If it’s one of the deli counter guys, it’s a curt: packanewportlongs.
Then it’s yougotit boss.
Say: thanks boss.
You’re not sure who the boss is anymore, but you know it’s not you. The boss is probably Dr. Ethanol. Dr. Budweiser, Dr. Karkov, Dr. Cheapshitplease-I’mFuckin’Broke. He doesn’t charge much. You don’t need health insurance to see Dr.Cheapshitplease-I’mFuckin’Broke.
You round home base with the spare change from your appointment rattling in your pocket when you see the world’s prettiest beggar. Hollywood handsome, he is. A movie star, he would be. A different life, he would have– if it weren’t for that purple, railroad-spiked sack of potatoes he calls his left arm.
He is not nice.
Does no dance.
Has no beggar’s mantra.
Doesn’t really truly beg.
Just smolders with those Clint Eastwood eyes of his like he is above it.
He does not need your money.
His back to the scaffolding on the hot vent by the fruit stand. No sign, no gimmick, not even a cup for coins. You just hand him money like you would a drug dealer. He doesn’t thank you for the $5. Nothing reeks like desperation. Go home and drink yourself to sleep.
Wake up dried out. Hung. Take some speed. Muggsy demands another walk. You oblige. You sidestep your usual route. Head down into the park. The sun is shining and paints the air warm. You’re feeling unafraid of your steps. You’re feeling adventurous.
Spent syringes everywhere. Orange caps. Pink plastic bags you could balance on your fingertip. Someone at Zip-Loc corporate knows exactly what those little pink bags are used for. Too small for anything but the powder. The streetsweeper they use to rid the park of all the dead junkies at night never catches the spent needles. Make sure Muggsy doesn’t step on one.
It is the broadest of daylights when you round a corner and see him, leaning against a slab of manhattan schist. The gorgeous beggar, tying one off. He bites the cap off the syringe. Clamps his teeth on his belt, pulls tight. Jabs his sack of potatoes over and over and over until he finds a decent vein. You worry– pretend you’re not paying too much attention, but you worry. You paid for that bag. You are liable, and the world is short on beautiful people as is. You think, cops? Call them? 9-1-fucking-1? Are you a narc? The fuck happens if you narc? No. You breathe in Newport while he finds a good vein. You keep walking, but you circle back. You circle back and there he is. Standing tall. Must have been a speedball.
Back to your nest, smoking stains into the ceiling. Mind that no matter how deep you sink here, how low you go, you’re doing it in the capital of the world. So it is cool. It is sexy. It’s a story to tell sometime, about the time you spent rotting in a bedroom in Manhattan. It will pique interest. It might get you laid. Underbelly shit is as good as high-society is as good as working a desk job– it is all New York. It is all bankable, branded merchandise. Bankable, necessary misery. This city will cut you. The blood will coagulate just in time for the city to cut you again– or contort you into ripping the wound wide open. The blood will drip and dry and you wear it like a service stripe. A purple heart. You take as much pride in it as a veteran of an unpopular foreign war. The only sin is bitching about it.
The sun sets on the rest of America, and you embark again to Dr. Ethanol’s clinic. He will see you after hours.
If he made house calls, you would never have to leave your room.
You hand out your Newports, as you do. You round the corner on Cathedral, you’re in Harlem, and you see that beautiful junkie, there he is, buying dope off the man who calls Muggsy Red. A circle of life as beautiful and complete as your own. As beautiful as your safety.
As beautiful as the failure it contains.
Cole Shuherk is a Columbia MFA graduate and Henfield Recipient. His short fiction and poetry have been published in Hobart Pulp, Expat Press, Maudlin House, Burial Magazine, and others. He lives in New York City. He is writing a novel.