English 280: The Journalistic Essay

By Chris Ayala

With a flick, flick, flick his cigarette will ignite. It will exhaust a puff of carbon monoxide into his mouth. His lungs will expand with a familiar burn, and then he will breathe it out. His lips will curl on the ends as he smirks. His body will not crave the nicotine for at least another hour. He stands on the stoop of his apartment in Boston, waiting. For what he does not know, but what he does know is that it is coming soon. His fingers begin to twitch uncontrollably. The nicotine is coursing itself through his veins. Absorption, that’s the process he is most fond of.

His body begins to shiver. The alcoholic that lives next to him begins to talk. He doesn’t hear him. His body is beginning to heat up, but yet he cannot stop being cold. Each second the man who is talking goes unheard. He steps backward as if he was going to turn around and go to sleep. It comes a little sooner then later. He collapses on the ground. There is a swirl of lights in the distance moving closer, and closer, and closer. They vibrate and tear through his entire body. Finally they come to an abrupt halt. This is the beginning of the end. The end of his addiction.

Shortly after the night of his withdrawal Perohlin finds himself lifted from the college life and thrust back into the world he thought he had placed behind him, the right half of a duplex in his hometown. He had come here to heal after his collapse. Time heals all wounds, but in his case time stands still and his wounds run deep. Each day as he lies in his house starving, sweating, and shaking, all while he watches his mother. Something is different with her. She doesn’t seem healthy. He cannot think about this now. To him it feels as if each pore on his skin is secreting flaming hot needles. His eyes begin to throb each day with the intrusion of light. He stands up and moves to the window and clenches the cloth of the curtains in his fingers. They dry the sweat from his finger tips as he pants and squints his eyes. The world outside knows not of what sits behind that window. The pain behind the pane. He staggers back to his bed and collapses in-between the sheets. He begins thinking to himself “life without heroin is very surreal.”

His mother is coughing a lot now. She isn’t the same. The way she moves is different. The way that she speaks is raspy. This begins to hurt him more than the withdrawal. Day after day she takes care of him. Loving him when he needs to be loved, and showing him he can make it through this. She will close the door to his room, and walk down the stairs. She will cough. She will keep coughing. She will shrug it off and hold her head high. This woman loves her son and will not let some ailment keep her from bringing him back.

Perohlin finds it in himself to sit up. He gazes around a room that seems so unfamiliar. It has heard his cries and seen his shivers. These blankets have housed his recovery. He walks down the stairs and sees his mother sitting there. He knows she is sick. He has known for some time. The look of her skin isn’t what it used to be. He slides his feet across the hardwood floor to the table she is sitting at. Silence fills the air and vibrates his body in an all too familiar way. She raises her head and looks him in the eyes as he tries to pass off a crooked smirk. Her tear ducts getting a healthy amount of use in recent days, she lets out a series of not so subtle coughs. She composes herself and tells him what he wants to hear least, “I’m afraid I have cancer, and not too long to live.”

He shakes his head and lowers it. This is what it feels like to be defeated. He now knows what the bottom of the barrel looks like. He is prepared to be there for the longest of times. He asks her how long she has to live. She doesn’t have the answer to his question. It is times like these where he would turn to heroin. He feels it erupt inside of his stomach, clawing all the way to the back of his throat. His body begins shaking again. The familiar call that comes with addiction is screaming louder in his ears. His mother coughs and lets him know that she is still there. He relaxes. The next amount of news comes as an even bigger shock. It turns out his mother had been talking to his father about the entire withdrawal. The terms provided were that Perohlin is to go home to Hungary and spend time with his father. This is his punishment. The terms have been laid out in front of him, and to him they are very unreasonable. He will leave his dying mother, alone, for months.

It is important to state that Perohlin does not feel very fondly towards his father’s side of the family. Dislike isn’t the word but it will have to do for now. He arrives in Hungary and is almost immediately placed on a methadone treatment for his drug addiction. Fighting fire with fire is not a wise decision in the case of drug abuse. To think that this all started with a displaced disk in his back. Oxycotin, to coke, to heroin. This is a reasonable rate of exchange. In Hungary the age of alcohol consumption is 18, but this is rarely enforced. This does not seem like the ideal place for a recovering drug addict. Not the right place, and certainly not the right time. Fear of relapse is circling overhead, constantly clawing its way through logical thought. It isn’t something he needs to think about at this moment, not when he is about to reunite with Hungary once more.

It is here that he acclimates himself with methadone. A clinic gave it to him in order to weaken the withdrawal. He takes heavy, unnecessary doses, but nothing is as bad as heroin. To him there is a wonder and awe surrounding methadone. He loves it.

Some time ago, he met a Hungarian girl in America. He decided it best to meet up with her in her home of Budapest. It is often that he goes to see her. They lay around all day in bed, together, as if there is not an outside world to affect them. Within her arms he feels safe. Untouchable. There was no addiction as far as he is concerned in these brief moments, but considering the amount of methadone he is taking it wouldn’t really matter. To him these days with this girl, not caring about anything, are “euphoric as fuck.” Rightly so for an addict coming down off of heroin. He clutches firmly onto her arms as he looks up at her. She glances down at him with a quaint smile on her face. He moves forward and presses his lips gently into hers. Suddenly home does not feel as far away.

Since his arrival he has been doing remedial labor to keep his mind off of drugs. It has been working. Since he has had his job he has not been taking methadone. He has put his nose to the grind and been really focusing in on responsibility. He rakes leaves. Wet leaves that do not cooperate well with a rake. It’s frustrating to think that these leaves have become his current life, but once the day is done he will go to the pub and have a beer. He may go visit her afterwards, and tell her the troubles of his day. She will listen to him go on and on about it with a smile. Support is what she is providing endless amounts of. He thinks of this and smiles right before he closes his eyes for the night.

It is no secret to anyone that time goes by. It happens at different speeds at different times, but it is certain that it is something that cannot be stopped, and with this unstoppable force comes change. It is inevitable and for the Hungarian people political change is something that is ever present.

The Hungarian Prime minister had been lying. He was caught admitting he had lied to get elected, and had kept up the lies throughout his time in office. He was in a closed party meeting when he admitted that he had “fucked up.” Over a year ago television station news promised to air a petition for some protesters. They failed to honor this promise and as a result the protesters demolished the television station.

A year later on October 23rd 2007, a peaceful protest had been scheduled for the same reason. Peaceful isn’t a word that is usually used when it comes to politics in Hungary. Perohlin attends the rally to be active. He shouts and he pumps a fist in the air and decides to call it a day. He skulks into a nearby pub that he frequents in Budapest. He opens the door smiling at his attempt to change the world with the sound of his voice. As he glances up he sees a group of soccer hooligans.

In Europe, soccer hooligans are some of the roughest men around. Super fans to the most violent of extents. They will not think twice before caving in the face of any opposing fan. They are the men behind the team. Only violent when provoked against something they believe, and this particular group was very politically active.

Perohlin continues through the bar with his head down not looking to start any type of scuffle between these men. There is shouting and cursing and spit flying throughout the bar. The smell of intoxication is one that cannot be mistaken.

He shrugs and orders a beer. All around him the men are getting more and more angry at what they see on the television. Perohlin sips his beer thinking of the accomplishment he had made with his shouting and yelling. It was at this time that the hooligans decided to participate themselves. They coerced Perohlin to exit the bar with them and in formation they began walking towards the police barricade.

Police in Hungary are not known for being the nicest of people. It is common knowledge that they will beat a man for the pettiest of crimes. The men at the barricade were not wearing identification numbers. Perohlin thought to himself, “This is going to be bad.”

It was seconds within arriving at the police barricades that the protesters began rattling it. Perohlin understands that the rioting will not get their point across, but the police today are just there to enforce the rules not for safety. They begin to take out their riot batons and swing them into the crowd. Eventually they break through the barricade, and the riot gets worse.

Perohlin pulls his hood over his head and tightens a scarf around his mouth leaving his eyes the only visible part of his body. The police begin to shoot tear-gas into the crowd. This only blinds the men and women, but does not stop them at all. The beat goes on. The police decide to launch more tear-gas. The rioters have a response to this form of tactic: The moltov cocktail.

The cocktails get tossed into the air smashing hard on the ground. The alcohol leaks out accompanied by the fires attached. They spread and burn any car, building, or ground they are smashed against. The police scatter, only to grab their riot shields.

A group of men begin flipping a car. It’s a team effort that will not get anything done. Perohlin knows this as he screams at the top of his lungs for justice. His cries fall on deaf ears. There are moltovs flying by as well as the tear-gas canisters. It’s a regular war scene in the streets of Budapest. This happens during most riots. There are rioters in the streets being beaten. Cars flipped and on fire. Nothing is being solved. Perohlin stops and looks around. There is smoke everywhere. This is what chaos looks like. All they want is a government that won’t lie, and that will protect them. Not cops that go unidentified and beating their people.

All of these thoughts go through his head as a tear-gas canister lands right in front of him. He looks down at it as the canister explodes right into his eyes. To keep it from spreading amongst his fellow rioters he kicks it into the direction of the Hungarian police. The burn of the smoke fills his lungs. He cannot exhale without an immediate burn following afterwards. This is what drowning feels like. He panics and covers his face with his arm. Frantically he swings around the other one looking for some form of salvation. His eyes fill with tears and burn. He lets out a painful cry and feels himself dry heaving up a lunch that he hasn’t had. He feels as if he is dying. There is a constant noise and he thinks to himself, “nothing is getting solved.”

He stumbles off of the street and away from the crowd. His breaths are short and violent. His eyes still burn but he is away. Away from the chaos, and on his way home, at least, to his fathers house.

The paranoia sets in. He sits around everyday waiting for the police to bust in his door and take him away. To be beaten is not something he needs right now. His mother is in bad condition, and he knows this. The only thing he wants to do is help her, to reach inside of her body and take the cancer from her lungs. To him it is understood that this is not a Disney movie, and that there will not be a happy ending.

Perohlin stands up and moves out the door to his job. He uses the wet leaves to distract himself from his troubles, but each time he hears sirens go by, he looks over his shoulder.

He finishes each day with a sigh and moves forward. One foot in front of the other until he reaches his father’s doorstep. He opens the door and walks in. Everyday for quite sometime now. Routine is not a phrase he is fond of. He slumps back into a seat and just waits for the next day. Today, however, is different. His father comes in and tells him that he is going home to America soon. Perohlin looks up and thinks to himself, “I finally get to take care of my mother.”

With his bags all packed and a quixotic outlook to the States, he straps on a backpack and a smile on his face. He’s clean and ready to start again. His work ethic is better, and he is more motivated. He is a better person now and his future is clear to him.

He walks onto the plane never looking back, except for one thought, the girl whom he spent most of his nights with. He thinks about how much he will miss her for a brief second while he boards the aircraft. They are still in touch.

He has been in the States for quite some time now. A good month or two. He spends his days looking for work, and taking care of his mother in between her chemo treatments. It’s ironic how she took care of him during his withdrawal and now he’s doing the same for her. The only difference is she doesn’t have much time. She can’t have some type of epiphany to change her life around. He thinks to himself the things in their relationship he took for granted. Every second spent in an argument with her burns inside of him. It’s a second burn he is becoming too familiar with.

It will be an entire semester before he can return to school. Hopefully soon he will find the school that will be best for him. It is clear to him now what career path he wants to take. Given his life experience already he wants to be a psychologist to help recovering addicts. It’s a wise choice, but in order to do this he’ll need to remain clean. It’s not hard for him now but when things get dark again he really hopes he can remain clean. Something he hasn’t been able to do in the past. This time, however, he has run out of excuses.

The conversations Perohlin and I have had to compose this article cease. He has told me all that he is willing to part with . I do not push the subject any further. His ironclad will is only strong on better days. Currently he is waiting for his mother to die. She only has less than a month of waiting left. At that point he will have no real family in America. He will have a family he does not look fondly upon in Hungary and more than half a year before he can return to school. There is no ending yet for him, but one single thought. “I hope I don’t relapse.”