Sim made a comment an hour or so ago that made me realise I am living in an inverted world.
"But that will mean we won't be able to afford any gabo tomorrow.".
Perhaps it wasn't so much the words, rather it was her tone. She was stating this as a negative thing. Not being able to afford to score was a bad thing, not a good thing. She saw lack of gear as something that would make our lives worse. We had both forgotten (as I nodded agreement at the time) that the opposite is true. A day without gabo is a day clean, a day towards something greater than what we have at present.
A day with no fear pervading our chilled bones that our dealer may have been busted. That we may forget our PIN numbers and (oh how horrible) have cash but not be able to access it. A day worrying about our credit-rating with a guy who has no legitimate credit rating of his own (True - he had me help him with a couple of credit card applications recently - he was rejected from both. Apart from stints in jail, he has been so off-grid for so long he has left no imprint on society, no credit rating, no medical status.)
So how to remind my love that this is a good thing? Can it be done?
** Finances
So here's how it works, in 2010, a time of relative prosperity for the average Australian, despite there being a GFC (Global Financial Crisis).
A few weeks ago, a girl is notified by her landlord that she has a bill for $220 electricity - $60 from the last unpaid bill - and the landlord wants the full amount in cash, not paid in bits and pieces. Now the girl nets about $580 a week. $255 goes to the aforementioned landlord, leaving a little over $300. Cigarettes and methadone account for $100 of that. This leaves $200 for groceries, savings and transportation to and from work.
Three weeks in a row the girl borrows $250 from her boyfriend's pay, only to spend it on 2.5 $100 packs of gear after the boyfriend's money runs out over the weekend. The landlord is never rung. On the third week, the boyfriend says 'Please ring your landlord, I don't want to keep doing this de facto spending of an extra $200 on gear each week.'.
The girl arranges to pay $100 less rent this week, and, after scoring on an Exhibition holiday, she rings the landlord around midday. Answering machine. After a breakfast and a pack of cigarettes, this money will be everything she has, and she will give it to the landlord.
Two hours after leaving the message, he has not telephoned back. The girl speaks to the boyfriend. They agree that they tried. That they gave the landlord a chance.
But the landlord missed out. If he rings, he'll be told it's too late for today. He can pick up the electricity on Friday. The boy and girl can go and spend another $100 on gear today. A treat, like the old days when they had seven shots a day, when the boyfriend dealt gear all day and all night for years. When they were rich, but at risk of jail.
So this is how she lives. A dollar at a time. The landlord is being dodgy, he does not want the electricity money coming into his bank account. That would suit the girl best, as she could set up an automatic payment each week of $80, and the landlord would have been paid a month ago. But he demands one lump sum of cash, so he waits.
And gear is bought. That is fixed.