Diary of a Drug Fiend

Indian Summer 165 But I am crying, only the tears won’t come. I’m snivelling like a woman I once saw when I visited the hospital. I haven’t got a handkerchief. I can’t bring myself to wash in that dirty cracked basin. We've brought no soap. The towel’s soiled and torn. I must have some H.... I’ve just been to see Lillie Fitzroy. How can men give her money? Her hair is gray, crudely dyed. She has wrinkles and rotten teeth. She was in bed, of course. I shook her roughly to wake her. I’ve lost every feeling for others, and people see it, and it spoils my own game. I must pretend to have the kindness and gentleness which I used to have so much; which used to make people think me an amiable fool. Some one told me once that adjectives spoilt nouns in literature, and you can certainly cut out that one. She’s a good sort, all the same, poor flabby old thing. She only takes M., and only gets that in solution ready to inject. She saw I was all in, and gave me a dose in the thigh. It doesn’t touch the spot like H., but it stops the worst of the suffering. She never gets up till tea-time. I left her a fiver. She promised to see what she could do that night with the man who gets it for her. She got very affectionate in a sentimental, motherly style, told me the story of her life, and so on, for ever it seemed. Of course, I had to pretend to be interested to keep her in good humour. Everything might depend on that. . But it was awful to have to let her kiss me when I went away. I wonder if I should get like that if I went on with dope. What absolute nonsense! For all I know, it may have prevented her going faster still. She must have had a beastly rotten life. The way she clawed at that five quid was the clue to her troubles; that and her ignorance of everything but the nastiest kind of vice and the meanest kind of crime.