Superior Ave IV (Hands out for handouts)

OOO





It was the last day before we were to be out of the place.

Quite possibly might have been the lowest point of my life up to then and probably since. I've been down a lot worse in the years to come but in retrospect this day sticks in my craw like bad sausage. I was in a rough spot as it is, the chemically induced multitude of times incessantly examining the addictive wheel in my head, how I need to quit what I'm doing, how I need to change my situation, would make it that much worse. The drug would trap me under the microscope of the harsh reality of my bottomfeeding, not letting me turn away or ignore it. Preventing me from averting my eyes from my own horrible and pathetic truths. With all my urgency intense and heightened by the whirlwind of thoughts and needing wants that cocaine injections harbor up their nasty little sleeves. With my head down, scraping the dirty streets for a spare cigarette butt. Without care to the wicked world around me, in my junky pride handcuffs and naïve feet walking blocks for dime bags pushed off behind parking lot dumpsters, this morning was quite the lowest I've been and still... I officially don't become homeless until tomorrow.

And then, I've got miles to fall without a safety net.

I woke up this morning at the ass crack of dawn, like I did every morning. Not sick yet but anticipating it. I laid on my formless feather blanket for an hour and didn't move. Through my fabric wall, I could see the sunlight creep burglar feet across the floor. There was no motivation to be. I simply didn't want to. I just wanted it to end, right there like a poorly concluded movie. Black screen and credits, roll 'em Danno. Movie's over, get the fuck out of the theater. Instead as always, it just kept going, and going, and going. And the days spin to another sick season of life in a cesspool. In the hour I laid motionless, waiting to hear Mr. Crowley rising from his sheets and coughing lungs of phlegm into a bucket by his bed, my dopesickness rose like Hitler in Nazi Germany to the task of making me feel like complete shit.

So I got up, hopped in a shower-stall down the hall and holding the soap like a Mossberg pistol-grip, I scrubbed myself of many things. I was forced to dry off with a small washcloth since I forgot my clean towel down the hall in the apartment. There was a blue towel belonging to who knows, hanging up in the community bathroom. It was stale and crusty, keeping the shape of the towel bar like an upside-down U when I lifted it from the rack. From being deprived of a washing machine for so long, it stunk of mildew. So I ended up patting down with that tiny dry washcloth and brushing my teeth with my shirt sticking to my back. Then turned out the light.

When I re-entered the apartment Robby was planted on the couch, hunched over silverware, dishing out white powder to himself. I jumped startled muscles when I opened the door and saw him, an involuntary reaction of catching an unexpected person in my sights. Cain, as far as I knew was sleeping when I'd gone to shower. I had left the door unlocked so I could get back in and now look what we got right here... Robby tube socks. Scavenger amongst pigs. Mr. Why-the-fuck-you-on-my-couch. I was surprised to see him there, Cain was kind of a dick to him last night. Speaking of Cain, where the fuck is he? He should have long been up by now.

“Where the fuck is Crowley.” I growled at Robby, a bit put off that he'd just let his homeless self in unwelcomed... but then, he did have quite the pile of powder there in a waxed paper fold on the coffee table. I didn't wait for an answer, “What 'Chew got there?” I asked him, walking to a chest of drawers where we kept the spoons. I grabbed one and pulled up a couch cushion. And just like that Robby was my best friend, with his peace offering in the form of... what... what is that, coke?

“They call this cocaine, my son. You want maybe to try a bit?” Robby was in an unusually chipper mood.

“Maybe I do want, yes. Although I gotta say, between you and me, I wish you were carrying some dog food, buddy. The longer I'm up the sicker I get. I've got those hot and cold heebie jeebies, skins crawling... Can't shake it.”

“Well, maybe this will help. Save half of that for Cain.” Robby said, wanting to make it all right again. “There should be too healthy shots in there. I figure this'll at least get us up and moving so we can find some money to get well. I'm sick too. This stuff just fell into my lap this morning on the way over here.”

“Shit, that's convenient.” I tapped out a mound of white into the spoon and squirted 20 units of water over it, dissolving the stuff into nothing, like the breath of a prayer.

“Yeah.” Robby ended the small talk, saying nothing more in return. There was business to be done. Besides, small talk was painful for Ole' gym-shorts-and-long-socks. He wasn't exactly sure of who he was, so he got nervous any time he had to imbue the conversation with any real personality. His fear of speaking caused him to miss his flow of thought to tongue, leaving him to only catch reactions from the rest of the faces in the conversation. From then on, he just felt stupid, saying nothing. Robby didn't like himself because he didn't know himself. So when meeting new people he naturally figured they didn't like him either. In defense, Robby projected an indifferent attitude toward those he met, like a preemptive strike. You may not like me but I don't care and I didn't care long before you didn't like me, so... It was kind of like that. This attitude caused most people to dislike Robby when they first met him.

Robby Taylor, the self fulfilling profiteer.

“So where is Crowley?” I said, tapping out half the cocaine in the mouth of a spoon. “I don't want to be waiting around forever, I want to get moving.”

Robby already had his needle poised. “I don't know, I thought he was in the shower. He's not still sleeping, I know that. His hammock is empty. We're the only ones here.” This was the most I had ever heard Robby speak in one sitting. I figured it was due to anticipation. “When do you guys have to be out of here?” Robby asked me, plunging the cocaine vein.

I had an arm out and was searching for a place to hit with a thumb pressing into my skin. Many of my veins had collapsed into swollen off-colored bruises. Finding a suitable one to push off in was a tedious task. I was drawing blood back into the chamber when Robby stood up with a terrible gasp of air. He turned his back to me and started walking away from the couch, saying nothing.

“... Tomorrow, we've got to be out of this place tomorrow. Whoa, you alright?” I squinted, pushing my own blood back into me.

There was about a three second lapse where I pulled the needle out and reached down to rinse it with bleach. I was in a beautiful silence before the shit storm. Like the decelerated hang time of a motorcycle jumping 37 busses, where the film is slowed down and the bike kind of floats through the air amidst mud and brown wingless dirt angels spinning from the tires, I waited in three long seconds of suspended animation before the drug hit my blood. There was peace and quiet, soft lullabies and cotton balls, smiles and sunflowers and all the pleasantries one can stuff into three seconds, before the freight train, crammed into the main cocaine brain vein, sends as all the screwy red cells of blood rushing to my head. They crashed the party in a totally different wave than I was expecting. Instead of the euphoric climb to speed induced heights, rocket man teeth grinding in the most beautiful of tin can symphonies, I felt as if a stoned roadie on the Jimi Hendrix sage of my head cranked the volume on the knob of my dopesickness to excruciating levels, wailing down a maelstrom like a hailstorm of frozen cold back sweat. A bad backwash of nauseating bile rising. My stomach wrenched and kicked, anticipating the heave. The same amplification of rush, in the opposite direction I was expecting.

“What the fuck, Robby?” Angrily I shouted as I scurried to the a utility sink we called a kitchen and violently puked more from my stomach than I'd eaten in days. It stunk, instantly. Like old tarter sauce and shoe polish.

“I don't know, man. He said it was coke when he gave it to me.” From the tone of Robby's voice I could tell he was under the same duress, feeling like me. “Shit, what if it was cut with something fucked up.”

My brain scrambled, calculating the possibility that I very may well die right here on the same warehouse floor that we were about to lose tomorrow morning. Dead as Dillinger's dead dog for injecting into my bloodlines some powder that could have very well been Commit cleanser for all I know. I hadn't tasted it before shooting it, I'd just trusted Robby that it wasn't strychnine or battery acid. I became panicked and started throwing up again. Bathed in sweat streams. I bent over too far into the large basin of the utility sink and a good chunk of vomit became lodged in my nasal passage; the territory of my face that isn't mouth, throat or nose, just somewhere in-between. Somewhere right around my gag reflex. That sent puke shooting out my nose in about 4 more hurls into the sink, jamming mini ice picks into the soft spot behind my eyeballs, sending a taste like an old shoe bottom up the back of my face. It was a horrible way to start off the day.

With watery eyes falling down my cheeks I grabbed at a towel and patted myself clean.

“Aaghhhh, that was terrible.” I cried out, opening the small refrigerator for a clear plastic gallon of drinking water. The fridge was empty. There was no water, nothing safe to clear this horrid taste from my tongue. The pipes were lead lined so the tap water wasn't safe. Which meant we had to purchase clean water in gallon containers over the bridge and several blocks down, at a shell station we both agreed to never steal from... it being the only place to buy smokes, quick snacks and drinking water in quite a long walk. Don't shit where you eat, was the idea.

“What the hell is going on?” Robby's intensity was a distressed tone of voice.

“I don't know... oh my gad.” I plowed, dropping into the couch cushions. “I need to rinse my mouth out with something, this is disgusting. I'd give a lead nut for a glass of water that won't turn me into a pencil.”

“I don't know man, I think we may have already been poisoned.” By now, both our rushes had reached a plateau, calming down a bit but still, something was definitely not right. We were awash in a heinous urgency. It was a feeling a can not wrap a word around. “I'm serious. This ain't right.” Robby stressed.

It was then that the door swung open and like an genie with wings granting wishes, with choirs a blast behind him, echoing voices and trumpets a thousand strong, Cain Crowley stood all Paul Bunyan style, chest out like he'd just saved the day, gripping at his sides, two brand new cooler-chilled gallon containers of drinking water.

“Woah, Robby, what in the hell are you doing here? Don't you have a mommas nipple to mooch off of?” Mr. Crowley had come to new conclusions after the other day. As far as Robby goes, pay to play buddy, pay to play. This was the first time we'd seen Ole' head rocks and gym socks since Cain and him had it out while Crowley was crawling out of the tree last Tuesday. “Eeeww... what smells like shoe polish?” Cain flared his nostrils.

“Me and Robby are dying over here.” I said, standing up and walking over to the utility sink to find a clean drinking glass. “You're a goddamn savior man, how did you know I needed water.”

“I didn't... No, just woke up tasting like someone took a shit in my mouth so I got up and walked to the gas station.

The analogy of a steaming pile of shit in a mouth, for some reason turned my usually strong stomach. Maybe it was being back by the sink that did it, that smell was disgusting. “Aaaah,c'mon man. I just got done puking up everything I ate in the last two days. My stomach is week right now.” I wanted to vomit again but went for the gallon of water and instead rinsed the taste from my mouth.

“Fuck you puking for? You're pushing off and you didn't save me any?” Cain had noticed the two needles on the table but didn't see the small fold of paper I'd squared back up and set safely in a dry envelope. “That's pretty low Robby. After all that shit? Really man?”

“Naw man. I think we got a bad dose of coke.” I corrected. “I don't know, man I don't feel right.”

“Me neither.” Robby chimed in.

“Well that's what you get when you shoot cocaine when your dope sick, numb nuts. Don't you know that makes you 12 times sicker? Ha... you do now, don't you.”

Neither Robbie or myself said peep.

“You knuckle heads. Gad, is that what stinks? You know, that's what you get for trying to shoot all the shit before I got back too, you rotten motherfuckers you. That's karma coming back on--”

“There's a hit in that envelope for you, shut the fuck up man.” I snapped before he could finish. “What are you talking about coke makes you sicker.”

“Well doesn't it? What do you think.” Cain was all mouth today.

“I didn't know that.”

“You can't shoot no goddamn girl when you're dope sick. It'll make you sicker. C'mon man, every junky knows that.” Cain was an expert on what every junky in America thought, felt or knew; always spouting fabricated statistics, slanted to whatever slope he needed to prove his point.

“I didn't know that either.” Robby backed me up.

“Well...” Cain stood up and drained the rest of his glass of water. “You do now. Aahhh, right then....” He picked up the white envelope and slipped it into his pocket. “I'll be saving this for after I get well. Thanks Robby.” He nodded to the couch with a tone in his voice. Cain Crowley, local comedian cock sucker.

A shiver shook my spine and I wrapped my arms around myself. Goose bumped and leather skinned, I shook from within. Mr. Crowley walked to the edge of the apartment and fiddled with something. It was silent for several moments until I spoke. I pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and used it to get warm. Directly after, I became flushed with heat and pulled it from my shoulders, standing up instantly.

“So, what can we do to get rid of this feeling, this shit sucks.”

“Ha... you've got to get some dope in you man. You're going to feel like that 'till you get well. A shot of heroin will take that right away though. Hea...” Cain one grunt laughed. “And we're fucking broke, so we've got to panhandle a fix buddy.”

“Well then what the fuck are we waiting for.” I picked up my point and slid it into my sock, standing and turning to the door. “C'mon, let's go.”

I grabbed a filthy hoodie from my laundry basket on the way out, since my tee shirt wasn't doing the trick. The sick shivers I had earlier were now amplified and draining me in cold sweats. I pulled it over my head and walked out the door, the cocaine's adverse reactions doing a despicable jitterbug in my blood. There were holes in the wrist cuffs where I pushed my thumbs through We headed down through the Flats to Settlers Landing train station, thus beginning our palm-out, degenerate walk of shit. While on the train into Tower city, Cain twisted up a joint of Youngstown Brown - that compressed flat, shitty, overly seeded commercial brick weed. Low class, man. Low class. The kind of pot that doesn't get you high, just a scatterbrained with a paranoid headache. He was licking the joint shut as the train doors opened and I jumped up from my seat.

We took another train to 65th and Madison and got off, then quickly decided to hit a different neighborhood, since yesterday I'd asked a tall, neatly shaven young man for something to spare. Couple of bucks for the tank. The kid said something like:

“Funny, your car was out of gas yesterday and you asked me the same thing.”

The guy didn't look familiar to me. I knew sooner or later it would happen, we combed the same blasted streets every day. Mr. Crowley and I decided it would be more lucrative to hit a stretch of streets in an upscale shopping district on the edge of downtown. Give this area a break for a while. So we decided if Mr. Crowley could scam us back onto the train then we'd hit a different spot. We had at lest another 15 minutes to wait until the next train came pulling into the depot. Until then, we passed that smoking joint of shitty weed between the three of us, killing it dead like a roach motel.

Robby paced around in circles with his long, stringy unwashed brown hair, a stocking hat and headphones on. I sat down on a train station bench, eying Robby's high end yellow Walkman, the shock and water proof, expensive piece of equipment that it was. I was surprised he hadn't sold it for dope yet and wondered how long it would be until I would. I couldn't sit still and stood back up. The vile, urgent and gaping hole that sucked in my chest, pleading to be filled by the one and only thing that could grant me serenity at a time like this. The almighty god of heroin. The opiate, a dissipating bandage for the broken soul.

Of course I was out the money to even buy a 35¢ cigarette, let alone a 10 dollar bag of smack. So every spare nickel that came my way was going toward the cause... and lemmie tell you, when only stacking spare nickels and pennies together at a time, the $10 cause may take a while to reach. I had already mooched up 5 degrading dollars on the way to the 65th & Madison station. Half way there. I could barely swallow, my mouth was cottony with white spit. My forehead and back were covered in sweat. I had taken off my hoodie and sung it over my shoulder in the heat. In two minutes I would crawl back into it, trying to shake of the shivers. We had a moment before the next train would roll in so I jumped off the bench and started pacing the raised platform on which we were waiting with cold blooded skin on a scaly lizard's back. The malignantly misplaced shot of cocaine had knocked my system off kilter, sending me speeding & craving the cure worse than I could ever describe.

To keep my mind off my discomfort I jumped down from the platform while the depot was still empty, kicking small rocks out of the way in my search for a discarded Marlboro. I'd blacken crippled fingers on oily rocks under the wood platform, finding a half smoked Newport, partially stained a yellowish brown; hopefully a reaction of rain water and tobacco & not from a dog lifting its leg on my smoke. Feeling like genuine gutter trash, I picked the cigarette up and lit it, dragging on the dirty discarded, probably piss stained filter. My fingernails were layered in the whole morning's dopesickness. With my thumbs pushed through the sides of the wrist cuffs in my ragged blue hoodie, I was able to hide the tract marks on the tops of my hands, the side that naturally faces the ground as I stick a shameless palm out for a spare quarter.

A couple of locals climbed down a set of stairs that led to the platform of the 65 & Madison train station, hidden down in the trees of a steep, thick wooded urban hillside. It was out of the way and secluded from the city, under the shade of green oak leaves. The couple invaded our dope sick privacy without acknowledging us. There were two of them. A crop-cut, high and tight chisel chin, looking fresh out the army & his curvy 5 foot nuthin girlfriend, holding hands and shooting dehumanizing looks at Mr. Crowley as we waited out paranoid coke jitters in the shade of the summer sun.

It was obvious to me that the two had no spare change to give to a man like me, so I didn't ask, which was fine since I hated doing so. I just sat there, smoking someone else's dirty, diseased & rotten cigarette in my eternal search for the bottom.

The Bottom

I know of no real bottom. I do not believe one exists. The term is thrown around in meeting halls and rehab rooms to describe the lowest point of a man's addiction. The single most point of depravity. A total absence of personal freedom to abstain or a general lack of self control that a man or woman reaches in their tenure to junk, drink, smoke, sniff or whatever. It's that line drawn in the proverbial sand, personally put down as a boundary to say 'this is as far as I am willing to go.' But rest assured, this is a malleable boundary, one that is inched back and redrawn every time the line is crossed. And then, like a sick limbo stick, the bottom drops a bit lower and so does the addict, sinking farther to his new personal point of degeneracy.

Different for everybody...

When I was a young do-gooder, innocent and fresh on an elementary school playground somewhere around 8 or 9 years old, I can remember being so proud that I never broke any of the rules on the Catholic's 10 commandments list. With a child's innate and unlearned love for God, it was testimony that I had never used the lord's name in vain. I can honestly remember being a kid, thinking to myself I'll never say such a thing regarding the big man upstairs. It was an uncrossed line for me at the time. I was hanging from the 3rd grade monkey bars with a kid named Joel when I busted out with the big fucking No-No. I said it, not out of disdain - but to look cool in front of Joel. Which, now that I think about it was probably a swift kick to God's holy teeth, since Joel, the kid I was trying to impress, wasn't that cool at all.

'Goddamn' is now a permanent and often used word in my vocabulary.

When I was 15, I was personally proud that I had never stolen anything ... until I swiped a lighter from the corner store. Then I was proud that I never stole anything from another person 'till I took $5.00 in quarters from my mother's change jar. My personal I won't line was moved again, until I started sealing meat from the meat coolers and DVD's from the book store, clothes from department stores and anything else I could find for dope money. I was a good kid with a high bottom, 'tll I got strung out and was forced to readjust my values once more. I stopped keeping track of my personal 'yets' once I was in on stealing my first car.

Lines drawn in sand are easily erased by the rising and waining tides of addiction and necessity. It's as true as anything I can put into words. But let's be sure that any one thing that a man holds as sacred will be sold, any line in the sand will be crossed & all people are capable of anything... no matter how prim, proper or pampered that person may be. That includes theft, degrading behavior, downright dirty nights of sleeping on street corners, to violent and cold blooded murder... given the right circumstance.

If I may stray to prove a point... Let's say circumstances were that no legal money could be earned and the family did starve for food. A mother or father would surely steal bread to feed their young. Those same parents, were their spouse or newborn endangered, would most definitely be capable of murder. To protect a loved one, a child? Foo-get aboudid. Killing a predator would cause that parent to do something they've always said they'd never do... not to mention breaking several 'thou shalt not's.

With a horrible sickness upon a man's back, the lines of right and wrong do lose luster in the structure of the personal belief system. Lines bleed, bend and disappear into the inescapable fact that the most important thing to do is to quell this horrible sickness. It is the only prime objective there is. Anything else is secondary, if it exists at all. There is always lower one can go... and given enough time on the stuff one will most probably pass that low point on their way to their own version of a personal bottom. It's the sad and rotten truth.

After what seemed to be several sweaty eternities, an eastbound pulled up and opened the doors. The couple waiting on the platform with us got on, paid for a ticket and took a seat. Cain got on after them and started his spiel, waving wild hand gestures and letting his urgency get the best of his facial expressions. The conductor wasn't buying it.

“NO. You were on this line last week telling me the same thing, you don't even recognize me,that's pathetic.” The guy's face was a grenade going off in the front of the train. “Go get off!” The conductor shewed Crowley off, fly swatting his angry hand in the air. “And if I catch you trying that again on my train, money or not I'm kicking you off, understand me?”

The doors hacked shut, leaving us standing helpless on the platform. I could see the couple that had been with us. The girl looked at me and shook her head in a superior snub. She had the ladder in full effect, swinging high above the shit hole I have fallen into, clutching onto her boyfriend's paycheck for a steady safety net. She was better than me, it was obvious to her. Her boyfriend knew it too. They were watching out the window, from the comfortable security of their safe and clean perch as Cain approached us.

“Well, looks like we're walking.” Cain grumbled. “I guess we're going to have to hit the same area again.” It was like a toothpick going into my ears. I didn't want to hear that.

“That was bound to happen. I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner but why the shit does it have to happen right now.” I was about to give up. Suicide is an approaching option. The big fuck it. Not this slow suicide, heroin ride but a nice 45 caliber high-speed to the back of the mouth. Splatter the wall with my thoughts. A blood trumpet, singing a song of defeat. I give up. I watched as our ride to a lucrative neighborhood pulling off down the rusty tracks to the penetrate Cleveland's east side.

So there we were, left to comb the same tired streets we'd worn out weeks ago.

I could spell it all out, step by step, pan by handle, each leg of the long walk of shame. I could tell you all the foul tasting pride I had to swallow, digging up that hit that would finally cure me that sour excuse for a morning. But it would all be redundant. Of course, just like every day that summer, I did what I had to do to get the dope I needed to cure myself. My medicine is more expensive than my dignity. My pride a shambles. My life a joke. After about 45 minutes of walking, I'd begged up enough for a dime bag and I revived myself in my office behind the wood privacy fences of a west side gas station's dumpster.

There are no sufficient words in existence to wrap around the relief I gathered from that small amount of powder, fixing my system of that heinous shot of coke. All the jitters, the sweats, nausea, cravings and panic floods, washed away with one euphoric needle plunge. In an instant I was fixed. Barely. Needless to say, after Cain got well, shooting his boy in a bruised forearm, his girl was just another beautiful cocaine lady to shoot. Crowley will of course act up the part of a very satisfied junky, as the drug brings chemical head rings and freight train rushes. While Robby and I just sit there, hardly well. Not high, just not sick.


That right there is a perfect portrait of that entire summer. Me there on the shit-end of the stick, toes barely over the line of on the well-end of sick. Mr. Crowley, having been repeatedly dealt a shit-hand has become accustomed to the shit-end. Crowley sits nicely perched on his thin-ribbed end of nothing at all. Happy in his nothing. Robby is just happy to be getting a hit of dope that he knows he really doesn't deserve and me... like I said... shit end of the stick, my friend. Shit end of the stick. Gone from executive shirts and real estate offices to scraping knuckles on concrete sidewalks like homeless men do with tin cups. I will try and chase away this sickness but it will no doubt return tomorrow in similar fashion. My safe and clean perch up top has dwindled nothing. I am funded by loose change. I am less than a day away from a cardboard box. This is the life I have chosen. A life on the shit end of the stick.

After all the days running around for more headaches and poverty paychecks of pocket change the three of us headed back to Riverbed St. Robby pulled a laggard stroll behind Mr. Crowley, not listening as Cain told another endless Hollywood story: “No, I'm serious.” Cain always grappled with the truth like a foreign object. “I was standing right there when River Phoenix died When he OD'd. I was standing right there on the street corner, under a purple awning... it was a terrible scene.” And blah, blah, blah, blah. I didn't believe him. I never believed him. I just followed behind, dropping back a good 500 feet, isolating myself. By the end of that day we had scavenged enough to keep me more than high for the night but still, I had no wake up shot for the morning. I was tired of the rigmarole and wanted out. But then what? Where would I go? Even if I do run, I've got to spend a horrific three or four day stretch in a motel bed, kicking sweaty sheets. Then what? Wait, motel room, how am I going to afford that? I can't even afford a 10¢ sponge bath from a city park homeless hag.

I am a hot mess. My life is a shit hole, where I sit and roost in my own feces. Swearing to god that it doesn't stink as bad as it obviously does.

I kept my head down, walking and feeling sorry for myself all the way home. Somewhere along that hot dry path was a thin street lined on both sides with large rusty two and three story buildings. Several of them must have been storehouses on the way to the landfill, full of discarded rotting trash that caused the whole street to take on a foul odor. We never cut down this street while junksick, only on the way home since the sense of smell is intensely heightened during the illness. When sick, I could pick out every ounce of shit in that heap house of trash. It was the nastiest leg of the long walk of shame but the road was a fairly convenient shortcut, so we were on it now that we were as well as we were getting for the day.

As we puttered to the end of the road, a biting blast to the face came fast with the stench of a dead rotting body somewhere in the piles of trash in one of the buildings. It was a hard smell to take, catching the back of the throat in a Boston strangler choke hold. A deep pungent suffocation that probably would have had me puking my lunch onto the sidewalk if I'd had money to buy a sandwich. As we walked, the air was filled with that unmistakable smell of a rotten corpse.

“Eeeww, that's a dead body.”

“That's not a dead body.” Robby interjected without missing a beat, cutting Cain off from his story. Cain stopped talking and yanked his head up from the asphalt he'd been staring down at for the whole walk. If Robby was talking to me and I was talking to Robby, who was listening to his River Phoenix story?

“That's a dead fucking body.” I argued.

“No.. no it's not.” He sniffed a few times in the air, waiting for me to catch back up from where I'd lagged behind. Robby Taylor, the bottom bound bloodhound. “No... that smells pretty bad but that's not a dead body.” Little Long-socks was unusually sure of himself. I dropped the subject.

“So anyway, we were standing out there outside of the Viper room. There were several people, lets see... Christina Applegate was there... uuhhh, lets see who else?...” I figured Cain, while renting a place in North Hollywood years back, had seen some after school special on River Phoenix and now that he was back east in Nowheres-land he'd wow us all with his big names and shiny stories. Another whiff of death hit my nose.

“No man, that is a corpse, Robby. That is a dead fucking stiff.”

“Look, I'm just saying....” Robby was insistent. Robby was never insistent on anything. Robby didn't stand for anything but more. More free dope, please. That's it. Maybe a 'can I sleep on your couch'... but thats' all Robby stands for. And now he wants to argue with me. “... I've smelled a couple dead bodies before. And that's not one... it stinks to high hell but that ain't no body.”

“And how would you know this? When did you smell these two dead bodies?” Cain had scrapped his previous narrative and had gone straight for the throat. Mr. Crowley was a liar, as was I. A liar spots another by the stink of his bullshit.

“'Ts not the point. I'm just saying, that's not a dead body.”

I twisted up my face, giving thought to the fact that we'd just met this junky street kid a few weeks back, that we don't know what Robby Taylor is really about, I mean the kid never talks. I hear serial killers don't talk all that much. “Is there something we should know about you, Robby?” I joked.

“Yeah, that he's full of bullshit. When have you smelled a dead body, Robby?”

“Look, I don't want to talk about it, I don't care if you believe me.” And just like that, Robby snapped. Free dope be damned. We were about to be just as homeless as he was, now he had nothing to lose. Now Robby's mind will be spoken. He started talking like he'd been holding back all this time, like he'd been waiting a long time to say what he was coming out with. “... I'm not like you Cain, I don't feel I have to constantly prove myself and sell myself and build myself up with constant bullshit about where I've been and what I've done. I'm not like that. So if I don't feel the need to tell you why I know what a corpse smells like, I'm just not going to tell you... that's it. End of story ... and you can think what you want and make fun of me behind my back about it....”

“I will...” Cain retorted, actually happy to see Robby stand up for himself.

“I'm sure you will, I don't care... I'm just saying to you ,” Robby turned and pointed to me, “That is a rotten smell but it's not a body.”

There was something in Robby's voice, in his assuredness. Look at this, he was putting his foot down. It was in Robby's voice, he'd not be taking us pushing him around any longer... you know... if that was OK with us. It was the fact that we were about to leave Robby for the day and go back to our home where tomorrow we would wake up homeless. Just like Mr. Skull cap and tube socks. The next time Robby would see us, we'd be down on his level. We'd be no different than him. More importantly, Cain Crowley was no longer going to be superior to Robby in anything but intelligence. And maybe skill. And balls. But, what's this? Is Robby a new man? Now that we're down on his level has the indentured servitude of junk favors come to an end? Will Robby even come around if there are no scraps falling from the tablecloth?

Tune in, same junk time, same inhuman frequency to find out.

“You wanna bet?” I turned to Robby with a hand out to shake on it. “C'mon man, I'm just as broke as you. Money where your mouth is, bro. 20 bucks says that's a dead body in there.”

There was hint in my voice that acknowledged Robby's stand for independence. There was something buddy-buddy in my delivery. Mr. Crowley rolled annoyed eyes at our exchange, partially because he hadn't been included, partially because his River Phoenix story had been destroyed just before the real meat and potatoes of the thing came to light but mostly because Robby had made it known, all in the tone of his voice, that he was done being Little Robby Tube Socks, bitch boy for free hits, worthless homeless fool that nobody respected. From here on out nobody gets respect. None of us. Not here on the bottomless bottom where nobody even respects themselves. Now, we were no better than him.

“That's stupid.” Cain broke in. “How are you even going to prove whose right? It's a dead bet. Why not bet a thousand dollars, he's never going to pay it anyway. ”

“No,” I broke in, neutralizing any response from Robby. “Then it will be a dead bet. Twenty bucks is payable. That's a bag, Robby. From one broke junky to the next, I'll bet you a bag that's a rigid corpse in there. We'll just watch the news, if anything comes up dead...” I looked at Cain with a face. “It will be on the news. There's no way somebodies not going to smell that. That shit fucking reeks.” I stopped with a stiff finger pointing into the warehouse.

Robby came up and shook my hand. “Fine, a bag then. You're gonna lose though Thomas. Decomposing flesh has a distinct smell, nothing else smells like it. Once you smell it, you don't forget it. And you know it when you smell it... that smells bad but I don't know what it is.”

“Aaahh, I wouldn't worry about it,” I had fulfilled all requirements conversation-wise and now I was to slink back a couple hundred feet and keep to myself for the duration. Reeeal strategic like, slow and easy. “...I'm sure it's just my rotting soul I sold. That's probably what you smell,” I said, slowing my pace, dropping farther behind the pack. “My decaying last chance I have to salvage my pride and do something constructive... something meaningful with my life before dying strung out and homeless... end up getting stabbed for my shoes on a park bench with a newspaper for a blanket. Yeah,” I said, backing up slowly as I talked. “I bet that's what we're smelling here, Robby.”

Nobody said anything. I used the silence to drop a bit further back. I was sure that Mr. Crowley, hearing that I was at a further distance than a viable ear-shot, wouldn't be able to shake the chance to jump head first into some head-wrangling, focus-devouring story, ended with the obvious moral, Cain Crowley was one to stick close to... Cain Crowley was the one with the real plan, and even while roofless homeless and hungry, Cain Crowley would be the man to talk to if somebody wanted that fast track to the stars, or that big break that was only a phone call away to his good friend on the West Coast.

Mr. Crowley was a cold hearted, lie weaving junky. He was good at what he did. It kept him fed. For this reason, if you were a junky looking for junk then yes, Cain Crowley was the man to talk to... if you wanted to get ripped off. Which, I really can't complain about since he'd usually give me half the dope when he did rip someone off. On his other hand Cain was a generous man looking for a friend in the black mire of addiction, just one person to connect with in this lonely trudge through the thick void of the tar pits. Probably the worst place to look for a friend. Either way, I was certain he would not be able to handle the silence and would ensnare Robby into a story about something, leaving me to rot back here in peace.

“I bet it's my real estate career you smell going to hell, huh? Maybe my last chance at a good life with a strong job I already worked like hell to get? Huh? Yeah... maybe it's all the shit that's floating around my whole life as I flush it down the toilet, Robby. I bet your right. It's not a dead body, it's the decay of my stinking life you smell...”

Crowley rolled his eyes again, tired of my complaining.

“Quit your crying, little girl. You'll not have anyone to listen to you now...” Cain turned to Robby and started talking. He was right. If ever I was on my own before, since moving from my parents house the day after my 18th birthday all those years back, I was on my own now. As this, the last night with a roof I can prove is mine passes by. With me kicked back with feet up on a brown wooden railing on the west bank of the Flats, relaxing into the view of Cleveland's night-lit skyline rocketing like projectile vomit from the ground just before me. The blue lit Detroit-Superior Ave. bridge stretching like a broken spine over the river, a tattered rib cage of some enormous concrete animal that is rusting just as fast as the rest of the cities in the great lakes region.

“... So anyway Robby, I'm there on the sidewalk outside of the Viper lounge. And I guess River was inside the bathroom getting high at the time but...” Here we go. Robby pulled up next to Cain and kept walking. He was going to need a shovel to get passed this mound of horse shit. I was on my own, mission accomplished.

I walked at my own pace and batted around all that stuff I just said about my stinking, rotting life. I thought about the fact that even though I said it as a joke, it was probably the truest thing I'd said all morning. This is where I should make my home if I wanted to fit in. Here with on this side street with the decaying deadbeats, with my chances at a respectable life withering in the slow suicide ride I kept in motion by this tedious habit. The degenerate day by day.

I'm jealous of whoever it is rotting in that trash heap. I thought to myself. I was serious.

Whoever he was, he was now free. Done. Off the ride. No more pain. No more struggle. No grueling work days, unloving spouses or purposeless days. No more hopeless sense of unimportance, scraping the bottom for whatever it was he used to sustain himself. Whatever reason it was that got him out of bed was now irrelevant. Whatever it was he spent his life searching for didn't matter, he'd have to search no longer. Now it was the big sleep... or more probably, some sweet sense of timeless, spaceless, blissful oneness. Some all knowing coma of comfort and perfect resonance, complete remembrance and divine consciousness. Death, the true life eternal.

“Lucky stiff.” I said out loud to myself, kicking a stone down the hot asphalt street. “Shit's gonna earn me a bag though.”

I said it under my breath with only half a smile, contemplating how pathetic it was that a bag, free or not, was about the only thing that excited me those days; that everything I did was measured in how many bags of dope any single thing might net me. I gave thought to how I was only truly happy for the 5 to 7 minutes it took to prepare, inject and feel a shot of dope... and how all other minutes and hours of the day were spent on anticipating that short span of happiness.

“Who am I kidding, I'll never get blood from that turnip. Robby ain't got shit and is not the type to give it freely.” I thought.

I dropped back a bit further and watched my only two friends walk ahead of me half way up the street, thinking how lucky that dead guy was that he didn't have to worry about friends like these. And how terrible it probably was that I was in the position to be envious of a dead man because his game was over and mine was still droning on. It was like that all the way back to the loft where I'd spend my last night as a respectable human being.

I walked the remaining way home reviewing my life and other pressing issues. Like how that corpse was probably dumped off in that trash-pile storehouse by some guy that swore up and down to himself he'd never dump a dead body anywhere. Probably the same guy I'm about to ask for a handout, after he'd told his wife how giving spare change to bums is out of the question, forcing me to do some shit that I swore I'd never do to get the money. Causing me to move my new bottom to:

“Well at least I never fucked a fat chick for dope.”






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