- 4 - [09 Aug 2003|09:57pm] Drugzilla was outside my door, smoking a joint the size of a baby's arm and striking sparks off the kerb with the steel caps of her big stompy boots. Drugzilla is six feet tall even without the immense black boots she lives in. The mass of fused-looking black and purple cables that may once have been her hair falls to her arse. Drugzilla is technically bulletproof, in that she was shot once and didn't notice for three days. Her job, as she and a surprisingly large number of other people see it, is muse and icon. She simply has the greatest tolerance for narcotics that anyone has ever seen. I first met her at a media party four years ago. It was supposed to be very exclusive. She lurched in, got bought drinks by everybody, stuck a straw into a bag of cocaine and sucked it down like a milkshake, punched out a waiter, fucked a male TV writer until he cried, made a female installation artist give her a hundred pounds and then jumped out a closed window, went boot-first through the roof of a parked police car and walked away. We were regularly having sex for about six months, three years ago, before I started seeing Rajiv and he got jealous. I still have pictures of her on my phone, naked except for the boots, sprawled and half-posing on the floor. Looking at me with those black, black eyes. Maybe it's the drugs, maybe it's just the way she's wired, but you can never ever tell what she's thinking. "I'm tired," she said. "Got anything?" The flat was starting to heat up. I flipped on the big fans and tracked down the little brown bottle of Dexedrine. She raised one carefully drawn eyebrow when I showed it to her. "Oooh," she said. "Prescription goodies. Aren't you classy now." I threw the bottle at her. She snatched it out of the air. "Drink," she said, trying to juggle the bottle, the cap, the tablets and the joint. I found some vodka -- bad stuff, from the Russian community in Manchester -- smashed some ice into two large glasses I stole from a Christmas party last year, poured a shitload over each and gave her one. She sniffed experimentally, and with a fuck-it curl of her lip sank half of it and flopped down into my good chair like a rag doll, crunching ice. I sat backwards in my work chair and watched her. "How long have you been awake?" "'Bout a week. Been modelling for a computer game. Retroporno third-person." Retroporno was actually pretty new. People were taking it as the start of a new wave of interest in Americana. The US porno industry would take popular movies and games, alter the names, and make sex-film versions. WHITE MEN CAN'T HUMP, EDWARD DILDOHANDS, you get the idea. Last year it was ruled that all these things were now public domain. An awful lot of creative property was released into the wild because, in legal terms at least, the controlling corporations, the country of origin and its own legal structure no longer existed. So Drugzilla was the scanned-in and recorded star of the game of the porno of the film of the game -- LAURA CRAFT, COCK HUNTER. "Is that like a job, Zil?" "I know no job, darling. It was a fun way to spend a week, I learned many things, they put money in my bank, I had some sex and they brought me drugs. I don't need the money, but drugs are an important food group and you should look after that sort of thing." "I take it you're still a kept woman, then." "I'm an oracle, darling. You have to look after your oracles, or they go off and oraculate for some other bastard, several times a night." Which is, of course, how she kept her various sponsors in line. If you're not covering her rent, then she'll turn up to the next big Brick Lane gallery opening with someone else, which means someone else will get their photo in the magazines they care about being seen in, and, you know, it's all pretty much meaningless to me, and then and now I had nor have any real understanding of how she lives her life... "You've got that look in your eye," Drugzilla said. "You're going somewhere." "What look?" "You're spaced out. Like you're already gone. What's the gig?" I didn't see the point in not telling her. "America." She clasped her bony hands to her breast. "My God. You're doomed. We must have sex immediately." "Really?" "No." She waved her empty glass at me. "More. And then you can tell me why you're committing suicide by going to The Land Of The Dead. Maybe I'll whisper the story into someone's ear and you can be a TV show. I think you'd like that." "Doesn't it bother you that you generate ideas that you never get credited for?" "Credit isn't important. Living the life is important. Actually doing things is important. Getting your name on them isn't. More of this muck, please." Every photo my camera panes take is stamped with my name and a copyright symbol. She coughed on her spliff. I turned on the gear long enough to take the photo, just to make a point. To myself, anyway. © Warren Ellis 2003

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