Diary of a Drug Fiend

CHAPTER II OVER THE TOP! It was only about a quarter of an hour before we reached “The Dog’’; but the time passed heavily. I had been annexed by the white maggot. Her presence made me feel as if I were already a corpse. It was the limit. But I think the ordeal served to bring up in my mind some inkling of the true nature of my feeling for Lou. The Smoking Dog, now ingloriously extinct, was a night club decorated by a horrible little cad who spent his life pushing himself into art and literature. The dancing room was a ridiculous, meaningless, gaudy, bad imitation of Klimmt. Damn it all, I may not be a great flyer, but I ama fresh-air man. I detest these near-artists with their poses and their humbug and their swank. I hate shams. I found myself in a state of furious impatience before five minutes had passed. Mrs. Webster and Lou had not arrived. Ten minutes—twenty—I fell into a blind rage, drank heavily of the vile liquor with which the place was stinking, and flung myself with I don’t know what woman into the dance. A shrill-voiced Danish siren, the proprietress, was screaming abuse at one of her professional entertainers —some long, sordid, silly story of sexual jealousy, I suppose. The band was deafening. The fine edge of my sense was dulled. It was in a sort of hot nightmare that I saw, through the smoke and the stink of the club, the evil smile of Mrs. Webster. Small as the woman was, she seemed to fill the door- way. She preoccupied the attention in the same way zO