House-Call From Dr. Dixon
Posted: January 12th, 2011, 7:02 am
House-Call From Dr. Dixon
The first real needle-freak that I ever met was Dixon Dean from Norman, Oklahoma. I had read Junky and was about to start Naked Lunch when he showed up on my doorstep in Denton with his little black kit.
I was introduced to Dixon on one of my trips to Norman on behalf of pot and politics. The radical underground railroad ran from Austin to Norman by way of Waco and Dallas and Denton. It was the Silk Road of the Sixties in this region. Student activists would travel from rally to rally and bring their cargoes of reefer going north and LSD going south, the fuel of the revolution, along with the folklore of the counterculture.
Dixon wasn't much into politics. He was into shooting up. He preferred Methadrine but anything would do. I saw him and a bunch of his fanatic friends trying to shoot hot water and peanut butter because there was no actual dope to be had and somebody had heard a rumor that Skippy worked in a pinch for just a short rush. My nausea prompted me to leave.
There was an amount of suspicion in the underground surrounding Dixon. The politicos didn't really trust him because he had no ideology and the hippies thought he might be a little too hard-core. So when he showed up at my little cottage in Denton unannounced, I took a breath but let him in. He was on his way to Austin, he said, and needed to take a little break from the road. What he needed was a place to top off his crank-case so he could stay awake for the five hour drive to Austin.
Dixon placed his black kit on my coffee table. Inside were little compartments, in one an alcohol lamp, in one a silver baby spoon with its handle bent to make it sit level, in the long one at the back were several syringes. After I had declined his offer of a shot of meth, he proceeded casually to his ritual. First a tiny pile of crystal powder in the baby spoon. Dixon Dean never stopped talking. Even as he prepared his shot the rambling monologue continued. In a way it was entrancing. He lit the alcohol lamp and looked me square in the eye, "So, what do you want?" This question always disarms me in any context. It's so wide open. He didn't wait for an answer, but continued, "You know you can't get to straight ends by crooked means." This coming from a drug-addict with a notorious lack of morality seemed a strange pronouncement. He heated his shot over the alcohol lamp explaining that alcohol burned clean and didn't leave the bottom of his spoon charred like a match or a butane lighter or a candle would.
The whole process of shooting up still made me squeamish at that time in my life. I had never done it myself and still looked at the practice as too unnatural to fit with my hippie orthodoxy. I still associated shots with the pain of a doctor's office, but Dixon had long since transcended this bourgeois prejudice and connected the injection ritual directly to the pleasure centers of his brain. Underground folklore has it that when a speed-freak starts dissolving his brain with crystal, the first things to go are the higher cognitive powers like morality and ethics. All dedicated drug-addicts suffer this reputation whether it's true or not. I have met both honest and dishonest drug-addicts and the degree of their moral turpitude usually corresponded to the depth of their pockets. Addicts are like anyone else, they do what they need to do and then try to justify it later. Why was he asking me, 'What do you want?' anyway? Did he think he was my shrink or my pastor?
Some people called him Dr. Dixon. He looked like a scrawny old croaker as he drew his shot up into one of the syringes. It was a glass syringe and not one of the plastic disposable ones that most junkies use over and over. He left the cotton wet and removed the surgical tourniquet from his kit. He tied off, slapped his arm once and it was over in a blink. Dixon was one of the few needle-freaks I've ever met who used alcohol on his skin before and after a shot, and as I tried to decide if this was foreplay or good hygiene he began again, 'Nope, you can't get to straight ends by crooked means. If you want the whole white picket fence deal, better get a job as a teacher." What did he mean? All Dixon knew about me was that I was an 18 year old aspiring poet who went to political rallies and sold a little pot to his friends.
Dixon was only in his late twenties but he looked like some mad sage who wandered out of El Topo or the desert of drugs and demons. Plus he had the same infectious, manic intensity as most amphetamine users. Speed is a drug built for salesmen. So, his simple question resonated with me. What Did I want?
Dixon had just injected a quarter-gram of pure crystal methedrine directly into his bloodstream. I could see his hair growing. Anything was possible, anything in the world. He was like a man staring directly at God. He wasn't going anywhere until I answered him. He produced a yellow legal pad and began sketching the Periodic Table of Elements. Dixon had been a Chem major in his student years at OU. He was still in touch with some of the young stars in the department who supplied him with his very fine psychedelics and also his crank. "It's all about Chemistry," he said. "I can make you believe whatever I want you to believe if I put the right chemicals in your brain." I didn't doubt him for a moment.
"I can make you think you are In Love or On Mars or in the presence of Jaysus hisself. I can make you ambitions or content. I can make you feel hungry or horny or like you just been fucked and fed. I can make you hate your mother or believe that every woman in the world wants your body. BELIEF is chemistry. It's all chemistry."
I couldn't argue with him. I knew that a little piece of LSD smaller than you can see with the naked eye can strip your soul naked and hang you like a nerve exposed on the cross of your chosen mythology. I knew that one puff of marijuana containing less than 100 micrograms of THC can propel one with enthusiasm throughout the day. I knew that I could smell four parts per million of my love's pheromones in one waft of her scarf. I knew it was all chemistry, yes. Or you could say that it's all energy or even all Belief. But that gets us back to chemistry. Dixon was right, you can't get to straight ends by crooked means. The means themselves always become the ends.
I told him that all I wanted was to be a real poet. I meant a REAL poet who would put Whitman on notice and plumb the deepest wells of the human heart with his words. Dixon started packing up his hit-kit. "Well, yer in trouble there, son. Artists are the worst junkies in the world." Maybe he was right. Maybe all I wanted was a civil service job and a trouble-free girlfriend. I didn't see the sense in suffering for my art any more than was strictly necessary for authenticity. "Artists have a habit they can never kick," he said, "They'll lie cheat and steal, even kill for it, themselves usually."
As he folded himself into his rusty Ford Falcon, he said, "Well, kid, I'm off to crooked ends. Do yer homework." That's the last time I ever saw Dr. Dixon in person though I heard stories about him for years where someone had seen him in jail or selling dime bags at a Tim Leary concert or arguing with some rookie professor at an ethics seminar. For some reason I have carried his words with me through the years like a war-time penny. And they have always proved true. "You can't get to straight ends by crooked means."
The first real needle-freak that I ever met was Dixon Dean from Norman, Oklahoma. I had read Junky and was about to start Naked Lunch when he showed up on my doorstep in Denton with his little black kit.
I was introduced to Dixon on one of my trips to Norman on behalf of pot and politics. The radical underground railroad ran from Austin to Norman by way of Waco and Dallas and Denton. It was the Silk Road of the Sixties in this region. Student activists would travel from rally to rally and bring their cargoes of reefer going north and LSD going south, the fuel of the revolution, along with the folklore of the counterculture.
Dixon wasn't much into politics. He was into shooting up. He preferred Methadrine but anything would do. I saw him and a bunch of his fanatic friends trying to shoot hot water and peanut butter because there was no actual dope to be had and somebody had heard a rumor that Skippy worked in a pinch for just a short rush. My nausea prompted me to leave.
There was an amount of suspicion in the underground surrounding Dixon. The politicos didn't really trust him because he had no ideology and the hippies thought he might be a little too hard-core. So when he showed up at my little cottage in Denton unannounced, I took a breath but let him in. He was on his way to Austin, he said, and needed to take a little break from the road. What he needed was a place to top off his crank-case so he could stay awake for the five hour drive to Austin.
Dixon placed his black kit on my coffee table. Inside were little compartments, in one an alcohol lamp, in one a silver baby spoon with its handle bent to make it sit level, in the long one at the back were several syringes. After I had declined his offer of a shot of meth, he proceeded casually to his ritual. First a tiny pile of crystal powder in the baby spoon. Dixon Dean never stopped talking. Even as he prepared his shot the rambling monologue continued. In a way it was entrancing. He lit the alcohol lamp and looked me square in the eye, "So, what do you want?" This question always disarms me in any context. It's so wide open. He didn't wait for an answer, but continued, "You know you can't get to straight ends by crooked means." This coming from a drug-addict with a notorious lack of morality seemed a strange pronouncement. He heated his shot over the alcohol lamp explaining that alcohol burned clean and didn't leave the bottom of his spoon charred like a match or a butane lighter or a candle would.
The whole process of shooting up still made me squeamish at that time in my life. I had never done it myself and still looked at the practice as too unnatural to fit with my hippie orthodoxy. I still associated shots with the pain of a doctor's office, but Dixon had long since transcended this bourgeois prejudice and connected the injection ritual directly to the pleasure centers of his brain. Underground folklore has it that when a speed-freak starts dissolving his brain with crystal, the first things to go are the higher cognitive powers like morality and ethics. All dedicated drug-addicts suffer this reputation whether it's true or not. I have met both honest and dishonest drug-addicts and the degree of their moral turpitude usually corresponded to the depth of their pockets. Addicts are like anyone else, they do what they need to do and then try to justify it later. Why was he asking me, 'What do you want?' anyway? Did he think he was my shrink or my pastor?
Some people called him Dr. Dixon. He looked like a scrawny old croaker as he drew his shot up into one of the syringes. It was a glass syringe and not one of the plastic disposable ones that most junkies use over and over. He left the cotton wet and removed the surgical tourniquet from his kit. He tied off, slapped his arm once and it was over in a blink. Dixon was one of the few needle-freaks I've ever met who used alcohol on his skin before and after a shot, and as I tried to decide if this was foreplay or good hygiene he began again, 'Nope, you can't get to straight ends by crooked means. If you want the whole white picket fence deal, better get a job as a teacher." What did he mean? All Dixon knew about me was that I was an 18 year old aspiring poet who went to political rallies and sold a little pot to his friends.
Dixon was only in his late twenties but he looked like some mad sage who wandered out of El Topo or the desert of drugs and demons. Plus he had the same infectious, manic intensity as most amphetamine users. Speed is a drug built for salesmen. So, his simple question resonated with me. What Did I want?
Dixon had just injected a quarter-gram of pure crystal methedrine directly into his bloodstream. I could see his hair growing. Anything was possible, anything in the world. He was like a man staring directly at God. He wasn't going anywhere until I answered him. He produced a yellow legal pad and began sketching the Periodic Table of Elements. Dixon had been a Chem major in his student years at OU. He was still in touch with some of the young stars in the department who supplied him with his very fine psychedelics and also his crank. "It's all about Chemistry," he said. "I can make you believe whatever I want you to believe if I put the right chemicals in your brain." I didn't doubt him for a moment.
"I can make you think you are In Love or On Mars or in the presence of Jaysus hisself. I can make you ambitions or content. I can make you feel hungry or horny or like you just been fucked and fed. I can make you hate your mother or believe that every woman in the world wants your body. BELIEF is chemistry. It's all chemistry."
I couldn't argue with him. I knew that a little piece of LSD smaller than you can see with the naked eye can strip your soul naked and hang you like a nerve exposed on the cross of your chosen mythology. I knew that one puff of marijuana containing less than 100 micrograms of THC can propel one with enthusiasm throughout the day. I knew that I could smell four parts per million of my love's pheromones in one waft of her scarf. I knew it was all chemistry, yes. Or you could say that it's all energy or even all Belief. But that gets us back to chemistry. Dixon was right, you can't get to straight ends by crooked means. The means themselves always become the ends.
I told him that all I wanted was to be a real poet. I meant a REAL poet who would put Whitman on notice and plumb the deepest wells of the human heart with his words. Dixon started packing up his hit-kit. "Well, yer in trouble there, son. Artists are the worst junkies in the world." Maybe he was right. Maybe all I wanted was a civil service job and a trouble-free girlfriend. I didn't see the sense in suffering for my art any more than was strictly necessary for authenticity. "Artists have a habit they can never kick," he said, "They'll lie cheat and steal, even kill for it, themselves usually."
As he folded himself into his rusty Ford Falcon, he said, "Well, kid, I'm off to crooked ends. Do yer homework." That's the last time I ever saw Dr. Dixon in person though I heard stories about him for years where someone had seen him in jail or selling dime bags at a Tim Leary concert or arguing with some rookie professor at an ethics seminar. For some reason I have carried his words with me through the years like a war-time penny. And they have always proved true. "You can't get to straight ends by crooked means."