EL:
Paralyzed - that sucked.  I couldn't get up to pee even. I was like partially paralyzed, I could barely move anything and my limbs got all twisted up like. When I would try to walk my feet just wouldn't go flat on the ground, and kind of just kept curling up under me. And my arms didn’t work well enough to hold myself up either. It was either the malnutrition, or having had such a high fever for so many weeks, that did it. I had to go to physical therapy to walk again. I’m such a retard because I was still using even in the hospital!

It started out with just pain and weakness in the limbs and I started to not be able to hold my pee very long (then not at all). Then it just kept getting worse and worse until one morning I couldn’t walk. I called my job and was like...I cant come into work...I cant walk. I worked at the Inkwell.

GD:
Did you think you'd never walk again?

EL:
I never did think I would walk again, but I couldn’t have cared less.

GD:
It’s fucked up that drugs have the pull on people that they do. To not be able to quit no matter how far you've sunk. I imagine for some people, death isn’t enough of a deterrent. I'm sure they'll find a way to cop and get high even after their dead.

EL:
Yeah heroin is a douche bag.

GD:
What event was the final straw that broke the back.  When and how did you finally say enough is enough.

EL:
The final straw nothing happened. It was just another day or a culmination of days. I was staying at a hotel my mom put me up in for the last week before I went to sentencing. The morning of the court date (April fools day 1998) I put all my belongings into the dumpster behind the hotel and got in my lawyers car.

That was it – I never lived in those towns again, talked to those people again or did drugs again.  Except for the dope I snuck into jail in my extra girl pocket, but that didn’t last long and I went through withdrawal as ungracefully as any junkie, and then it was history.

GD:
Are your mother and father still alive?  You talk about your dad being a junkie, what was your mother like?  Did they fuck you up, like the rest of our parents did to us?  Of course they did. That’s what parents do. That’s what I'll do to some degree I'm sure. But was their brand of fucking-you-up, enough to drive you to the street?  Was it better being homeless, than being with your family?

EL:
My father is still alive and there aren’t too many 50 – 60 year old junkies out there. He told me once he had a system to heroin, he said “three days on then three days off” and you won’t get addicted. I haven’t spoken with him or seen him in 11 or 12 years. He has been on the run for that long for a parole violation that would have only had him serve a couple months to a couple years.

My mom was a young hippie mother. Aside from being a crazy moody madwoman and smoking pot with me before the age of ten, she did pretty damn good, and she is super cool and my best friend, now that I live 1.5 hours away from her!

GD:
Where did your creative side come from? Is it from your mom, dad? How have you explored that creative side, prior to creating hula-hoops?

EL:
My mother could write, draw and play the piano well enough to really get my attention when I was young. My father was a bit of a rebel junk artist. He was big on collage. I can remember one time stopping by his one room apartment on top of a bar in Asbury Park and I woke him up after obviously having fallen asleep mid collage. When he answered the door he had tiny magazine pussies all over his face. He had been making a pussy collage. I used to write, paint, collage (thanks dad) play instruments and make clothing – none of which I have done since I was 19.