Member-only story
Nice Girls Don’t Use Needles
How a junkie saved my life when I didn’t think it was worth saving
George was always very clear: the only thing that made him feel right was heroin. When I met him, he was just out of the penitentiary after doing seven years of a nine-year bit for trafficking heroin. He was quiet. Solid. Steady. He wasn’t like what I thought a junkie would be. He liked to read and still had good friends from back in the day.
One of those friends was my future ex-husband who invited him to live with us in the massive old four bedroom heap we were renting on the west side of Cleveland. George would get up at 4:30 every morning to go down to the union hall and wait to see if any of the drivers would pick him to go out as an assistant on the beer trucks (if you’ve read this story; that’s where it comes from).
I’d been with my husband for twelve years, convinced that no one else would ever love me. Every so often he’d give a good pop in the face, but would always apologize and point out that if I hadn’t said that, looked at him that way, done that, he wouldn’t…
