Pubdate: Mon, 26 Sep 2005
Source: New York Magazine (NY)
Copyright: 2005 New York Magazine
Contact:  http://www.newyorkmag.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/803
Author: Colin Moynihan
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?136 (Methadone)
Note: On webpage is link to photo journal of 11 pictures with captions

THE HEROIN DEN NEXT DOOR

Eight Months In A Flatiron Shooting Gallery.

The shades were always drawn on the ninth-floor apartment at 4 West 22nd 
Street. "Shhh," Mike whispered from his dingy mattress as the sun rose one 
morning. "If you close your eyes, you can pretend it's not happening." 
Morning was a time for "getting straight," which actually meant getting 
high for the rotating cast of a dozen addicts who hid out in this 
unlikeliest of heroin dens.

For years, a 2,000-square-foot, rent-stabilized apartment steps away from 
the Flatiron Building provided refuge to a family of sorts. Neither the 
stately facade nor the prime address offered a hint of what went on inside: 
"Tricks, smoking crack, snorting dope, shooting dope, hustling-it was a 
24/7 party," recalls Jesse, a pretty 32-year-old who lived there for two 
years. "You couldn't close your eyes for a second. Every moment was 
survival, despite whoever or whatever you had to walk over."

Old Joe had held the lease since 1973 but slept on the couch after his 
housemates took his bedroom. Everyone thought he came from money, and when 
times were good he grew zucchini and tomatoes on the roof and was happily 
surrounded by young gay men. Things went south for him four years ago, when 
one of them-his boyfriend-jumped out of the apartment window. Soon Joe was 
doing as much heroin as others would give him and letting just about anyone 
stay for free if they'd help him shoot up, since he couldn't do it himself 
anymore.

Sometimes that was Jesse, who was grateful for Joe's hospitality after a 
decade of street life. She and her boyfriend Mike heard about the place 
from other users, but her journey there began in high school. Jesse had 
been home-schooled on a boat by hippie parents, and when they docked in 
Northport, New York, to take care of an ailing relative, her new life was a 
shock. "I didn't know what Guess jeans were," she recalls. "I didn't know 
what cheerleaders were." Drugs gave her an identity.

At Joe's place, she shared a bedroom with Mike, the singer for the punk 
band Murder Junkies, who grew up in middle-class Mount Vernon, New York. 
His younger brother Joey, who first shot up at 13, lived at old Joe's 
place, too.

At first, Jesse and Mike tried to clean up the apartment, and Jesse worked 
in an antique store to help pay the bills. Soon she lost her job. When 
nobody paid Con Ed, they turned to candles or electricity stolen from the 
emergency stairwell. Joey got mad and punched holes in the drywall, next to 
a tacked-up picture of his 8-year-old daughter. Needles were everywhere.

"It felt like perpetual night-but not in that soothing, bedtime way," says 
Jessica Dimmock, a 27-year-old graduate of the International Center of 
Photography who spent eight months shooting these pictures. "It doesn't 
ever feel like it settles into stillness there."

In June, a year after Joe stopped paying his $1,200-a-month rent, the 
owners kicked everyone out. Old Joe wound up in a hospital somewhere, and 
young Joey was last seen on the Lower East Side. Over Labor Day weekend, 
Jesse's friend Sean died after drinking a bottle of methadone. Mike's in 
jail, and Jesse now spends days in Union Square and nights sleeping on 
church steps. Compared with her concrete bed, Joe's hellhole now seems like 
the Waldorf. "As crazy as it was, I was also part of something," she says. 
"But it really got out of control."
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MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman