The Man Who Mainlined an Ant

Hello, you lovely people. And the rest of you.

First of all, I think this is one of the best shorts I’ve ever written. It’s a true story I was reminded of while discussing needle sizes in hospital recently. Nice life.

If you enjoy it, please like and comment. It really helps. A restack is the golden goose, though.

Ten-minute read.

Tripping Francis was also a friend of stinking hippy and liar-for-sex type Timothy Leary, as well as a founder member of Soma, a pro-cannabis group named after the drug in Huxley’s novel Brave New World. Huxley himself famously took LSD on his deathbed while he was dying from laryngeal cancer. Unable to speak, he wrote down instructions for his wife Laura. They like to say he wrote: “LSD, 100 micrograms, intramuscular.” But it was probably something more like “If there’s any of that nice red liquid acid left, be a darling and jab a nice big one in my arse cheek.”

Tripping Francis even put his name to a letter to The Times in 1967 arguing for drug law reform. I’m not convinced. Once drugs are legal, and you’re picking up your little box of crack with your Pepto-Bismol from the pharmacy, you can say goodbye to the Velvet Underground et al. I say keep all recreational drugs illegal - controversial, yes - but I haven’t thought it through, so I don’t care. But on the subject of illegality, Tripping Francis was the inspiration for the biggest LSD manufacturing conspiracy ever, the multimillion-pound factory in a Welsh farmhouse that was smashed by the Operation Julie raids of the late Seventies.

If I was a cook during such an operation and the place was raided, I’d be sure to tip over a few fifty-gallon drums of LSD - perhaps blowing them up with pre-applied C4, soaking the place and everyone inside with the stuff, and see how things are going thirty minutes later when two of them are giggling their tits off wearing their handcuffs as glasses, half a dozen are huddled around a police radio convinced they can hear aliens talking, and the rest simply wandered off. Meanwhile, I casually wander into the back room, take off my respirator, step out of my HAZMAT garms and into a freshly pressed shirt, my three-piece suit, and cordovan boots, before jumping into my Aston Martin and zooming back to London to spend the night in my LSD-funded Hampstead mansion with three Hampstead mansion-grade ladies of easy leisure.

I once made a discovery of my own. Unusually, the Dark Web had let me down. The ten grams of Burmese No. 4 heroin I was expecting was an empty envelope. Heartbreaking. It was the exact same envelope as always. The same fake branding for some holiday company on the bottom left, and the same two Dutch stamps on the top right. So when I saw it come through the letterbox as I crouched down beside it, shivering, sneezing, and a few other early withdrawal signs, I got that glorious stomach pang ‘Oh thank fuck!’ followed by the most hollow, unbelievable whack of reality. I knew as soon as I picked it up that it was empty. I cried. My girlfriend saw me cry. And bless her, she was even offering to lend me the money to fly to Amsterdam or some nonsense as I pulled on my parka and left the apartment.

A problem. Ten grams would have lasted me about twenty days, and I’d overlap the orders so as not to get caught short. But my system was disrupted because I was arrested on a poxy possession charge and held overnight because the police station doctor said I was ‘obviously on drugs and not in a fit state for an interview’, knowing full well that by morning I'd no longer be on drugs and would be fit for nothing other than dragging my body out to score as quickly as possible. And now I was going to have to buy some bitcoin, place another order, wait for that to process, and then wait for it to get from Amsterdam to Soho. That could take a week. And what if the bloke who nicked the product was on to me, and was waiting in his Royal Mail booth for another fake holiday junk mail to come from Amsterdam, addressed to Khun Sa, Lexington Street, to do the same? Balls.

Street-scoring means dealing with street people, making a frustrating situation almost unbearable. And when you finally score, it’s jank. Cut to pieces with brick dust, gravy, coffee, any brown powder that’s close to hand and cheap; it really doesn’t matter. As long as there’s some heroin at the end of a long list of adulterants, it will get you through a few hours. Brown heroin isn’t even heroin. I guess legalisation would have some benefits.

Up to Oxford Street to the most favoured pitch outside Lush Cosmetics, which sells soaps cut with cheese-wire, have scents like laudanum and oyster, and cost about the same as crack on the quarter-ounce. And there sits John, the most popular name for homeless people around Soho, although they have this annoying habit of telling you that ‘Everyone calls me ‘The Crab’,” or something equally surprising that no one calls them. John told his sleeping dog he’d be back shortly, scraped up the loose change from a hat leaning against a sign saying ‘Ex-Armie. Plees help. Not 4 drugs’, and off we went. Within no seconds, we bumped into a moving pile of rags, and John asked him if he knew where John was. The rags extended something handlike towards me.

“Hello mate, they call me The Jackal.”

“Hello, The Jackal,” I said, putting my hands in my pockets.

“Nah, it’s just The Jackal.”

“OK. Good to meet you, The Jackal. I think John is asking you something.”

“Have you seen John?” said John.

“It’s just The Jackal. You don’t have to say ‘the’, it’s just ‘The Jackal’.”

“Gotcha.”

“Have you seen John?” said John.

“In the alley. Why, you scoring?”

“No,” said John as he grabbed the shoulder of my coat and pulled me as we continued walking down Oxford Street.

“Why do you want to see John if you’re not scoring?” said The Jackal, knowing full well we were scoring.

“I’ll tell you when I get back; look after my pitch and the dog, yeah?”

“Alright.”

“Cheers, John,” said John.

We crossed the road as if there were no cars or buses. Apart from a few car horns and shouts, there may as well not have been.

“Interesting bloke, The Jackal,” I said.

“John? Yeah, not to be trusted though. I wouldn’t trust him with my favourite crayon.”

“Eh?”

“What, you haven’t got a favourite crayon?”

“I do not,” I said.

“Me neither. But you get me, right?”

“But you trust him with your pitch and your dog?”

“It’s not my dog.”

“Whose is it?”

“It’s Melon’s dog. And not only that, he’ll make more grafting my pitch in an hour than he will on his in a day.”

We walked up the alley near the end of Oxford Street, opposite Tottenham Court Tube. It’s not a regular scoring ground; it’s a place where people with no money wait for people with money and no available dealer. Buy them a bag, and they’ll get you what you want. So, for my two street-quality bags, I’m looking at buying John a bag, and another one for John. And that’s twice, maybe thrice daily, until my holiday brochure from Amsterdam arrives. Why don’t I just buy twenty bags now, get John and John a bag, and then I’ll have enough to see me through, and only get mugged off once? Yeah, you already know. As nice a bloke John is, I’m not putting two hundred quid in his hands that will go into someone else’s, then someone else’s… you get the idea. Even handing over the forty quid I'm gripping moist in my hand is a gamble. They don’t think long-term. Don't knock me, and you've got a free bag every day until I don't need you any more. And even though he’s never knocked me before, handing over two hundred quid is almost rude - like I’m asking him to do the off with it.

“Why have you got Melon’s dog?” I ask, not knowing who Melon is or why I care.

“He’s dead.”

“Oh. Sorry to hear that. They’re dropping like flies around here. Fentanyl probably. You only need a lab and a few chemicals. Somewhat more efficient than growing thousands of acres of poppies.”

“Not Melon, the dog,” said John

“Right.”

We turned the bend in the alley, and I took a punt that the one-legged bloke in the army parka, shredded joggers, a face that was more scab than skin, and balancing on a crutch was likely to be John.

“Hello mate, you got anyone on?” said John.

Ignoring John, he swung himself over to me with the efficiency of someone who’d long since mastered life on one leg. Not because he wanted to get to know me, but because he knew it was me who had the money.

“Hello mate. They call me The Berk. I know everyone. And if I don’t know them, they’re not worth knowing. Except for Paki-Jackie, but she’s dead”

“Hello, The Berk.”

“No, I’m The Berk. You don’t… “

“Is anyone on? He’ll buy us both a bag if we get him one,” said John

“Two bags,” I said

“He’ll buy us two bags if we get him one,” said John.

“No, I’ll buy you both one bag if you get me two.”

“Black Cunt’s on, it’s good gear too. Holds you all night,” said The Berk

“He takes all day though, Black Cunt. Anyone else?”

“Percy Um Bungo’s holding. And he’ll bring it here.”

“Do it”, I said.

Yep. With the agreed cuts and only the necessary cleaning:

Junkies always say things like ‘It’s good gear’, ‘It holds you all night’, ‘It’s proper clean’ and the like. It’s ritualistic play intended to establish a level of experience in the game, but always has the opposite effect.

Actually, no, I’m pedalling back there. It has exactly the intended effect. The utter bullshit performs exactly as intended. To say something so meaningless, something that, for reasons queuing up to explain, cannot even take a seat in the dancehall of truth, let alone tango, and say it with such unquestionable conviction, actually demonstrates a level of experience in the game. It’s not that you’re speaking the truth; it’s that you’re lying. That is how you demonstrate you know the game.

“Give me your phone,” said The Berk, his scabby, filthy hand extended, trembling, malnourished, rattling. Giving him my eight-hundred quid iPhone didn’t feel great; he was hardly going to do a runner, though. I unlocked it and handed it over.

“Fuck me!” he said, seeing the homescreen photo of my girlfriend. “Is that your Mrs? I’d fuck her so hard she’d be shitting my kids!”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah mate…” he said, still looking at the photo and not calling Percy Um Bongo. “You’ll know if I’ve had a go because she’ll be walking sideways.”

“Make the fucking call,” said John, who was taking a piss up the wall. “Who fucks one-legged people?”

“I would,” said The Berk as he swung himself out of earshot to arrange a deal, probably getting five bags for forty quid, giving me two, John one, and himself the remaining two.

“We’ll go halves on that extra bag,” said John, like I didn’t exist.

The Berk came back, handed me my phone and said ‘five minutes’, which, at best, means thirty minutes, at worst, never. And we all sat down.

Chuck a limited vocabulary of words connected to drugs, homelessness, violence and utter stupidity in the air, grab what you can and form sentences with them. That’s the game we played for the next three hours, punctuated by the occasional phone call to Percy Um Bongo, who said ‘ten minutes’ every time until he turned his phone off.

“Try him again”

“He’s turned his phone off. Once it’s off, it’s off. He’s done for the day.”

“For fuck sake. There must be someone. I’m right in it now,” said John, sneezing and retching between words. I was feeling worse too, my stomach cramping, my arse threatening to lose control. The bad news certainly upping my downer.

“Jeeves has been calling me every fucking day,” said The Berk, “But it’s moody.”

“Why didn’t you say before? (sneezes six times) Jeeves is the nuts. On time, good gear. And you’ve had us waiting all day for Percy fucking Um Bongo!” says John, dry retching hard. I know the pain in his ribs well as his body strains to expel the nothing that’s not there.

“Something’s not right with Jeeves. He wants thirty quid for a point two. And he said it’s fucking white - he reckons you don’t need citric or heat. Sounds moody, right?” said The Berk, earning his name.

“That’s white heroin, Burmese No 4. Why the fuck didn’t you say that when we first came here?”

“What the fuck is white heroin? It’s probably crack. And…”

“Point two of white gear will do the three of us about four times a couple of bags of shitty brown. Call Jeeves,” I say, handing him my phone.

And within thirty minutes, we’re all three squatting in the natural habitat of the Junkie, a dim, dank bin area behind a Chinese restaurant, surrounded by torn bin bags, spewing their contents as we sat on them, a million cockroaches and the blinding smell of a thousand pisses.

I open the bag. If there’s one rule in this game, it’s this: until the stuff is in your brain and giving your dopamine receptors the bath they so desperately need, you’re not out of the woods. It looks the part. I smell it. It smells the part. I’m ninety-nine per cent certain it’s Burmese No 4 heroin. Thank the lord.

“We’re good,” I say.

“I don’t know,” says The Berk.

“No worries, it’s not obligatory to have some.”

John gets out a Superdrug bag, pulls out some spikes, some filters, a little bottle of water, and a spoon.

“I’ll put a hit together, we can all pull from the same filter, then we’ll divvie up what’s left.”

“Filter? Why are you using a filter?” The Berk said.

“To filter what I’m about to put into my bloodstream. It’s high-quality gear, but it’s still manufactured in the woods somewhere in Laos. We’re using a filter.”

“That’s how he lost his leg,” says John.

“I don’t like filters. They take all the goodness out of it,” said The Berk, like only a berk would say.

“Hasn’t losing a leg demonstrated your logic isn’t quite as sound as you think. Imagine you lose the other one.” I say, prepping the hit, giving the spoon a good once over with an alcohol swab.

Junkies don’t use swabs to clean the muck from their injection site as intended. They use them to heat brown heroin. They touch the flame of a lighter to it, the alcohol burns, and there’s usually enough in one swab to break down the heroin for injection. Disposable lighters have an annoying habit of melting halfway through cooking a hit, causing the spring-loaded flint wheel to ping out, hit the underside of the spoon, and make a noise so loud that you jump, throw the whole lot into the air, and start crying as what you've been waiting all day for ends up everywhere except in your bloodstream.

“Then I get one of those little electric cars I can drive on the pavement. Lose only one leg, and all you get is a crutch.”

“And a leg.”

I break down the chunk in the spoon with the back end of the syringe and give it a stir. It’s clear water, exactly what I wanted to see. And I could smell the fumes coming off the product. Whatever that means.

I go first. It’s only a 1ml syringe, so I pull up my full 1ml. John has a 1ml too and pulls up his. The Berk pulls out the most ludicrous works I’ve ever seen. It must be at least a 23-gauge needle, one of the biggest you can get. It’s only an inch and a half long, but it’s so wide you could probably drink a milkshake through it. He nudges the filter to the edge of the spoon with his spike, and then I see an insect climbing over the edge of the spoon, into the spoon, and into the drink.

“Hey, there’s a fucking ant in your hit,” says John, laughing

“Who cares,” says The Berk and pulls up all the remaining fluid, about one and a half ml, and the ant into his syringe. As he’s flicking it to remove air bubbles, you can see the damn thing swimming around.

“I dare you to shoot it,” says John.

“No dare needed,” says The Berk. And we all stand up, drop our trousers and pants, fiddle around for our femoral vein, pull blood into the syringe and slowly depress the plunger. I can do this without looking, which is handy because I’m marvelling at The Berk, who, without a care in his one-legged world, injects an ant into his bloodstream.

The relief is incredible. I’m back to normal and even managed to stash away a bit for later without them noticing.

No one says a word as the various aches, pains, and melancholy of early withdrawal dissipate from our lives. After a minute or so, I break the tranquillity by asking The Berk how he feels about an ant swimming around his bloodstream.

“It wasn’t an ant. It was a springtail,” he says. “There’s thousands of them in here.”

“OK, how do you feel about a springtail - whatever that is - swimming around your lungs, your heart, your entire circulatory system?”

“It’s never caused any problems before,” he says.

“You’ve done it before?”

“Loads of times, but with brown gear, the heat and the citric usually kills them.”

“Why do they call you The Berk?”

John laughs.

“I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it,” he says.

The End

Chris Dangerfield

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Chris Dangerfield