Houston

Houston is a practical waystation in the narrator’s circuit of drug procurement, linking a trusted local source to the onward journey toward New Orleans and Mexico. Its significance lies less in permanence than in recognition, access, and the bodily cost of obtaining and using the drugs that keep the journey moving.

The Houston Connection

The narrator arrives in Houston knowing a druggist, despite having been away for five years. The druggist recognizes him at a glance, nods, and directs him to wait at the counter. After the narrator sits with a cup of coffee, the druggist comes over and asks what he wants. The encounter is conducted with little ceremony: familiarity replaces the need for an elaborate introduction, while the pause at the counter makes clear that the transaction proceeds on the supplier’s schedule.

The narrator asks for a quart of PG and a hundred nembies. The druggist tells him to return in half an hour. When the narrator comes back, he receives a package and is told the price is fifteen dollars, along with a brief warning to be careful. Houston thus appears as a point where an established relationship can still provide access after years of absence, but the exchange remains a risky, tightly bounded drug transaction.

Preparation and the Road South

The account immediately explains why the package is not a simple, ready-to-use commodity. Shooting PG requires the alcohol to be burned out and the camphor frozen out before the remaining brown liquid can be drawn off with a dropper. The narrator describes injection as carrying the risk of an abscess and identifies drinking it with goof balls as the better alternative. The procedural detail places the Houston purchase within a material routine of preparation, rather than treating supply as an abstract matter of finding a seller.

Afterward, the narrator and his companion pour the PG into a Pernod bottle and start toward New Orleans. The route passes iridescent lakes, gas flares, swamps, garbage heaps, and motels; the description makes the drug journey part of a landscape marked by roadside commerce and decay. In New Orleans they find The Man, stock up on heroin, and turn back toward Mexico. Houston is therefore one link in a larger circuit: it supplies the next leg, but not the journey’s destination.

Place in the Drug Network

Elsewhere, the narrator presents addiction as a dispersed network that connects users and suppliers across cities and countries. That larger account names Houston among places within the transnational reach of the junk connection. The city’s role in the journey gives this network a concrete local mechanism: a returning customer, a druggist who recognizes him, a half-hour wait, a priced package, and a departure south.

The episode also belongs to a narrative in which drug time repeatedly displaces ordinary schedules. The Houston seller sets the interval before the package is ready, while the broader account of addiction describes users’ time as organized around need and unpredictable supply. The stop is brief, but it shows how a route is assembled through these contingent encounters—and how movement onward depends on access to the next dose.