150 The Diary of a Drug Fiend
August 20
I am so tired, so tired, so tired! ...
My premonition was right about Lamus. There
was a very unpleasant scene. We were both frightfully
wretched when we got there. (I can’t get my hands
and feet warm, and there’s something wrong with my
writing).
Peter Pan thought it best to remind him in a jocular
way about his remark that we were to come when we
needed him, and then introduced the subj ect of what
we needed.
But he took the words brutally out of our
- mouths.
“You needn't tell me what you need,” he said.
“ The lack is only too obvious.”
He said it in a non-committal way so that we
couldn’t take offence; but we knew instinctively he
meant brains.
However, Peter stuck to his guns, like the game
little devil he is. That’s why I love him.
“Oh, yes, heroin,’’ said Lamus; “cocaine. We
regret exceedingly to be out of it for the moment.”
_ The brute seemed unconscious of our distress. He
gave an imitation of an apologetic shop-walker.
“ But let me show you our latest lines on
morphine.”
Cockie and I looked at each other wanly. Morphine
would no doubt be better than nothing. And then, if
you please, the beast pulled a review with a blue cover
out of a revolving bookcase and read aloud a long
poem. His intonation was so dramatic, he gave so
vivid a picture that we sat spell-bound. It seemed as
if he had long pincers twistedin our entrails, and were
wrenching at them. He gave me the verses: when
he had finished.
‘““You ought to paste these,” he said, ‘ ‘in your
Magical Diary.”
So I have. I hardly know why. There’s a sort of
pleasure in torturing oneself. Is that it ?