on needles

My dad is from a messed-up, low-rent, irish-catholic family of nine kids and a hefty handful of parents and extendeds. Every single one of them is more of a character than the next. Most tragic, some just colorful. Some so stupid that I should be embarrassed to even mention any of them, and some so witty but 'esprit d'escalier'* , that I should post every-crazy-thing they've ever said more regularly. My Uncle Mickey was the youngest boy, 8th ( i think) in the long litter.

I cannot say how it was that Mickey got fucked up specifically, but I'd bet that his recipe was everything I've said above.

One summer day we were having a backyard bbq. I really don't know how old I was. Somewhere between 6-11. I went upstairs to my bedroom and Mickey was on my bed lying down. I went in and saw he was struggling to take his sock off. I helped him take it off. He then took out a hypodermic needle and stuck it into his ankle/foot. I asked him what he was doing. He said he was sick and taking his medicine. He said to me, with a crying face, " I hope you never get this sick". I sat next to him for a little while, upset that he was sad, and then went back out into the sun. I never saw him the rest of the day.

My mom was crying the next day because he supposedly had stolen her wedding ring. (I heard all of this by picking up the receiver upstairs, which I always did). Mickeys mother, my grandmother was defending/arguing on his behalf. My grandmother was wrong. I'm certain now.

Mickey continued to be a drug addict and cruised the parking lots of fast food restaurants on the CT portion of I-95. I moved to Ny in '91 and was on my way to CT and ran into my Uncle Mickey at a McDonalds rest stop. Right now, I don't remember who recognized the other. But I do remember that our bond was just as strong as it was with his crying face on my bed many years before. He died shortly thereafter of AIDS.

*(this is a new term that i am in love with, brought to me through a long series of events, more on that later)