Friendless hiding, starvation, and the descent into true Withdrawal

pivotal · ~Aug–Nov YDAU

• When: ~Aug through mid-Nov YDAU (the dumpster behind the I.B.P.W.D.W. Local #4 Hall in Fort Point; then the Armenian Foundation Library men's room, Watertown Center; the syrupless day = 14 Nov)
• What: After the heart affair, hunted by Wo's world and marked by Emil, Poor Tony can trust no one to cop for him and cannot show a feather anywhere. His couriers fail one by one (Stokely dies; Bridget is shipped to Brockton; Lolasister goes down with hepatitis-G in October) and the heroin supply "dried horribly up," so — "wholly friend- and connectionless" — he begins for the first time since seventeen to actually Withdraw. He weighs 50 then 45 kilos, "the color of summer squash," incontinent, hiding first in an apple-green Empire Displacement dumpster and then in the Armenian Foundation Library men's-room stall, holding true Withdrawal at bay with Codinex Plus cough syrup (its grain alcohol the eventual seizure-trigger). Time itself turns monstrous — an orange-eyed wingless fowl squatting on the stall, the "Old Cold Bird," time becoming the diarrhea moving through him. A sustained, load-bearing anatomy of opioid-plus-alcohol Withdrawal.