Conversations with Junkies
Gutter Snipes Say The Funniest Things
Having spent most of my life in the company of gutter-snipes, scallywags, rapscallions, ne'er-do-wells, ladies of easy leisure, and all manner of good-for-nothings, I’ve built up quite the notebook of conversations (I use that word generously) I’ve overheard or been a part of with such people. Here are a few of my favourites.
If you remember any similar exchanges from your own time in the trenches of failure, feel free to share them in the comments. Any especially good ones will be stolen and passed off later as my own. Cheers.
Heidi: “Can you hurry up, Storm, I’m rattling here, and I haven’t got all day.”
Storm: “My dad died this morning. Can you give me like, thirty minutes?”
Heidi: “You can’t keep using that as an excuse, Storm.”
Becky: “The best methadone is the stuff with mercury in it.”
Me: “Methadone hasn’t got mercury in it. It would kill you.”
Becky: “That’s probably why it’s so hard to get hold of.”
Victor: “Heroin saved my life.”
Dean: “You sleep on a fold-up bed, you’ve never worked, you haven’t seen your wife and children for about ten years, you have hep C, and you look like a skeleton.”
Victor: Wind your neck in, Dean, you’re missing the sawdust for the logs. That’s what I’m saying; without heroin, I’d have to deal with all that, and it would kill me. Vis-à-vis, heroin saved my life.”
Anna: “Pass me my works, Scott.”
Scott: “Maybe wait until you’ve stopped breastfeeding the kid.”
Anna: “He doesn’t care, he’s in his own little world when he’s feeding.”
Benny: “Do you think it gets in the milk, the gear, like?”
Anna: “Na, he’s good as gold. He just sleeps all the time.”
Gary: “Can you lend me a tenner?”
Jake: “You owe me a tenner.”
Gary: “Give it me, I’ll pay you back.”
Jake: “I might as well just keep it.”
Gary: “Sure”
Jake: “We all square now?”
Gary: “Yeah.”
Rob: “Do you want a fuck?”
Claire: “You’ve only got one leg, Rob.”
Paul: “Hurry up with that, I’m going to shit myself any second.”
Adam: “Well, for that very reason, I’m not going to hurry up.”
Paul: “Why not?”
Adam: “Because you’ll be walking around all day with shit in your pants.”
Paul: “No. I’ll just go around the old tit’s house and have a wash and that.”
Adam: “It’s not a problem, then, is it?”
Paul: “Not really, no.”
Adam: “Have you shit yet?”
Paul: “It’s none of your business.”
Adam: “Ha ha, you have, you have! I can see it on your face. You’ve got shit myself face.”
Rob: “Do you want a fuck?”
Kerry: “Why?”
Gerry: "Yesterday, I put shit in my mouth for fifty quid.
Leon: “Why are you still here?”
Gerry: “I was begging on the last train into Charing Cross, and these three blokes, suits, you know, city types, were the only people in the last carriage. And I did the old ‘Can you help me raise some money for a hostel’ routine, and they asked what I’d do for twenty quid. After a little bit of banter, it was agreed they’d give me fifty quid to put a bit of their shit in my mouth. I thought it would be like a little nugget or something. But he goes into the toilet and comes out with this steaming shit on a bit of newspaper, like a big, brown log of shit, and they make me kneel on the ground, and he holds it like it’s his cock, like down near his real cock, and I take it in my mouth, and he fucked me with it. I tried not to let it touch the sides, but he proper shoved it in, and I gagged like I was sucking his shit-cock.
Anna: “So?”
Rob: “Do you know how to inject in the neck?”
Claire: “Nope.”
Rob: “Will you inject me in the neck?”
Claire: “Sure.”
Jake: “Who would be at your perfect dinner party, living or dead?”
Rob: “Living.”
Jake: “What?”
Rob: “Living.”
Jake: “No, if you could have anyone at a dinner party. Anyone! Er…Liam Gallagher, Jodie Marsh, you know, anyone, who would it be?”
Rob: “Probably Christmas, you know, turkey and that, all the trimmings.”
Kerry: ‘Do you ever think about dying?”
Adam: “Nope.”
Kerry: “Me neither.”
Seth: Can I have your filter?”
Terry: “Er…well…you can, but I’ll have drawn everything out of it, so it’ll just be a filter.”
Seth: “Yeah, but don't; leave some gear in there.”
Terry: “So you don’t want my filter, you want some of my bag.”
Seth: “Can I have your filter?”
Terry: “You just asked me that. You can’t just pretend the conversation hasn’t progressed because you didn’t like where it went.”
Seth: ‘What the fuck are you talking about? I just want your filter. I’m sick, and it would take the edge off so I can go grafting.”
Terry: “But I want it, all of it, so the filter will be clean. You might as well just take a clean filter out of the box there.”
Seth: “OK, cheers.”
Terry: “No problem.”
Seth: “Can you give me a bit of your bag?”
Terry: “For fuck sake. No. I want it all."
Seth: “Can I have your filter?”
Terry: “Jesus.”
Seth: “What did you get, Tina?”
Tina: “Two dark and two light.”
Seth: “Can I have a bit of white? Or I’ll take a blow-back through a tube so you don’t have to touch me.”
Tina: “I can’t spare it.”
Seth: “You said you had two of each.”
Tina: “What I said was that I had exactly the right amount for me.”
Seth: “Do either of you like movies?”
Rob: “Have you ever thought about what it would be like to have sex with a one-legged man?”
Gina: “Yes, I have. I thought about having sex with you, weirdly enough.”
Rob: “What did you think about it?”
Gina: “I thought the one-leg aspect would probably not be the worst part.”
Rob: “Do you want to find out?”
Gina: “No. It’s hardly going to be a surprise. You’re an exceptionally unattractive, I’d go as far as to say repulsive, man.”
Me: “What’s that?”
Pharmacist Andrew: “This is a pill crusher. Since you confessed to your keyworker that you hide your Subutex in your mouth and then spit it out when you get outside, so you can buy heroin, I’m crushing it so you cannot.”
Me: “But I don’t want it crushed. I want to hide it in my mouth, spit it out when I get outside, and then sell it so I have money to buy heroin.”
Pharmacist Andrew: “The idea of supervised consumption is to ensure you take the medication. You’re being maintained on Subutex, this isn’t meant to be a way of you procuring funds to buy the very drug it’s meant to be protecting you from.”
Me: “You’ve made a mistake there, Andrew. I only see my keyworker so I can get the Subutex, so I can sell it and buy heroin with the proceeds.”
Pharmacist Andrew: “Well, you can’t do that now, look, it’s powder, open wide.”
Me: “As much as I’d like to pour that hideous stuff into my mouth and then be, what was the word, ‘protected,’ from the horrors of heroin, I am in fact going to protect you, Andrew. Because I care. In The British National Formulary, it states that it is illegal to change the form of a scheduled drug without prior written permission from someone higher up the ranks, and I’m going to take a guess you haven’t got such permission. So thanks, but no thanks.”
Pharmacist Andrew: “Jesus! I’m trying to bloody help you.”
Me: “And I appreciate that, I really do. But I am also trying to help me. But your help and my help are quite different things, so can we just do the usual charade so I can get out of here?”
Pharmacist Andrew: “I might as well be giving you heroin.”
Me: "Well, if you’ve got any?”
Thank you for giving this a read. I really appreciate your time. What I really appreciate is a LIKE and a COMMENT A SHARE on social media is the God Touch - it does me the world of good when looking at the bigger picture, which is rather small. Thanks again.
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I'm thinking of becoming a junkie just so I can hang out with Rob.
Those snippets gave me a right chuckle. Nice one DF.
These were really good. This should expand, great format, great idea, tight, even though I didn't get some of the British jargon, I laughed. At the horror. You can make me laugh at horror, and that is the only reason human beings made it this far. Keep up the good work