Member-only story
Denial is a Drug
It can be as destructive as any other
I bathe my two-week old nephew in the kitchen sink. There is a ledge in the basin, but he keeps slipping down. I cradle his head, all wobbly on a useless neck and wipe down his newborn body. I watched my mom this morning and know to gently clean all the creases where baby dirt hides. Ten toes and ten fingers, sort of, the ring man and pinky finger on the left are webbed to the first knuckle, but otherwise he’s healthy. I’m afraid of breaking him or making him cry. At eighteen he will be addicted to heroin, but for now he’s smiling and placid in a plastic tub of sudsy water.
I once met a guy at the gym who told me he was a former heroin addict. I nicknamed him Mountain Man when discussing him with my girlfriends. Solidly ripped with a long brown braid, he was training to climb Mt. McKinley. He both attracted and repelled me, smelling of b.o. and wood smoke—his need for everything felt urgent. I met him a couple times for coffee and cut off his braid because he let me. Then school was over for the year and I left town.
I do not have an addictive personality. If anything, I am addiction’s opposite — all control and measure. There was a time, my “Summer of Coke” when my two older sisters and I did cocaine. They introduced me to it. Sitting around my middle sister’s dining room table they cut lines. The…
