These Chains

CHAPTER 8 : THE BOURGOIS GAME
In  New Orleans finding an upper crust lady looking for a little loving wasn't hard and most of them were lonely housewives to old farts that couldn't get it up anymore. Being a guy that looked pretty darn above average and well built I was a favorite among them. I got passed around their little circle often enough and got paid well enough to do it too, no pun intended of course.

I remember one lady specifically, she was the sweetest thang I'd ever laid eyes on, young too. Old man that had her on his arm was old school cash and a big wig down at the court house. She was given to him in a per-arranged marriage by her father and uncle. Two old family names coming together to make one big old family. She was lonely, left to her own devices because the old rat bastard couldn't be bothered to even try getting it up enough. He was happy enough having her as a trophy on his arm rather than a real wife with real feelings.

I loved her in a way. Her pretty blonde Suzy Q curls and the flowing summer dresses she wore even on the rainiest days. She was pretty and articulate. Not one of those dumb blonde types at all. Well educated but under appreciated. She was a wild cat in the bedroom to the point that even I had a hard time keeping up to her.

What I loved the most was the dewy smell of her skin after a good romp in the bedroom but what I loved more was her ability to hold a good conversation about everything and nothing at all. I felt bad you know, taking her money because it felt like we were both doing a service for each other when we knocked boots twice a week. We both kind of fell into taking care of each other both emotionally and physically and getting paid to take care of a lady like that felt like a carnal sin more than the pimping myself out, especially a classy lady like her.


The day we got ourselves caught by the old cantankerous prick was a day that I don't care to remember but can't seem to forget. We were laying in the marital bed, sweaty and spent when the old bastard came clattering in screaming obscenities. He pulled out an old .22 pistol and waved it around in my face while grabbing her by those beautiful Suzy Q curls and yanking her out of the bed.

She thumped to the floor with a whimper and he started slapping her around like a rag doll, it got my blood boiling to the point I flew out of the bed with my heart hammerin' in my ears and slammed full force into the old bastard hard. I was jealous, raging jealous and pissed that the old man couldn't see the beautiful thing of a wife he had. If she had been mine I would have treated her like a Goddess like she deserved.

Unfortunately he was older than dust and when I slammed into him and he hit the floor hard he decided to have a goddamned heart attack that very moment. Sprawled out on the bedroom rug clutching at his chest wheezing accusations and cussing us out like we was little kids that got into his prized and expensive booze supply.

“Suzy Q Curls” told me to get gone and she'd deal with the issue at hand, that I had to disappear. Was the last time I ever saw her. Naked, clutching her dying bastard husband's head in her lap while begging and crying for him to forgive her. I miss “Suzy Q Curls”, under different circumstances and maybe lifetimes we could of been something right good. Maybe she could have even saved me. Somehow.



CHAPTER 9: DOWNWARD WE GO
After the incident with “Suzy Q Curls” I actually found a job, a decent one too. Though it stank to high heavens working in the craw daddy factory near the Mississippi river it supplied the fix nicely. It limited my ability to get the fix on a regular basis but at least it seemed I was heading on an upward spiral for a bit. Even going longer periods between getting high. My drinking dried out on its own because of the job but morphine highs are easily hidden when you know how to hide em.

I thought I was moving on up but all that came crashing down right good on top of me when I went on a three day bender after Claudette died that first summer on the job. I couldn't cope with her death, we was close her and I and she was one of the only ones left who still talked to me despite my bridge burning days.

I lost my job due to that bender. Got arrested too for disorderly conduct and public intoxication. I was lucky the rookie cop couldn't seem to tell the difference between hooch drunkenness and drug highs. I only spent ninety days in the local po po lockup for that one. I could have done worse considering I was violating parole conditions and all.

I missed Claudette's funeral because of that bender too. I regret that more than even slapping that girl around back way when. I don't got no closure on her death and now none of the family want nothing to do with me anymore, won't even make eye contact on the street and even cross it when they see me coming the opposite way. All the bridges got burned by that time and I literally hit rock solid bottom for two years.

Being a bottom feeder in the barrel of rock bottom is the hardest trial on a man. You ain't worth nothing, you ain't got nothing and nobody want nothing from you save those who either want to rob you, kill you cause you owe them something you can't pay back or they are looking to take what you ain't got.

The streets of New Orleans are not a forgiving mistress, not one bit. Cold and rainy most days and colder and rainier most nights. The homeless fight among themselves for what little space there is in the back alleys of Bourbon Street and and the shelters fill up fast round these parts. I still shiver remembering those nights wedged between a couple of dumpsters trying to pull the thread bear jacket around my shoulders while shivering away the night.

One night in particular come to mind of those two years out on the streets in Rock Bottomville. The night I met her, Blue Eyes. She had these biggest, bluest baby doe eyes you could imagine. All round and beautiful and full of shiny interest. She was young but legal and made a great druggie side kick. She came from the foster system, ran away as she told it. Not that she told much except to say her mama was an addict herself and papa was a rowdy drunkard who liked to diddle the little girls behind closed doors if it fancied him any.

She came from a broken home, went to an even more broken strange home then ran off at the age of sixteen. I met her when she had spent some hard five years as a street kid. Her poison of choice was pretty much anything she could get her little girly hands on. Roofies, Black Maddies, Ecstasy, even old school Yellow Mollies. Kid was as messed up as messed up could be.

We enjoyed each others company though, if you catch my meaning. Often times she'd sneak me into the back way of the shelter she managed to get a spot at most nights. We spent a better part of the year hanging out at the shelter and passing porn fliers out for money from the local smut perv running one of the last 900 phone number shams in town.

CHAPTER 10 : THE DEEP-ER END
As suddenly as she entered my life Blue Eyes left it. Just up and disappeared one day. I tried to make some inquiries into where she might have gone off to but either nobody was talking or nobody knew. I didn't think I could fall apart anymore than I had when my sister passed on but fall apart I did. Just when you think rock bottom was where you hit you'd roll off a crevice and find yourself falling even deeper.

I suppose she might of found herself a better side kick when she up and suddenly disappeared. Maybe someone a little younger and faster on the uptake. Someone to suit her better than an aging and raging dry alcoholic with a morphine fetish.

I stopped eating, I stopping drinking but I didn't sure as shit stop drugging and I'd started booze hounding again too. I'd metaphorically laid myself down in the street to die. I was done, didn't want no more. Didn't think I could take no more of this shit stained life. I wanted out so badly that I did everything I could to off myself. Those three months were the purest, blackest hell I'd ever come to live by.


Spent most of it getting either fall down drunk, so high I couldn't get drunk or Baker'ed. Now if you don't know what “Baker'ed” means that's when they hold ya in a psych ward for 72 hours. Got the Florida people to thank for that prettied up term for involuntary psychiatric hold.

Sometimes they can manage to hold ya for fourteen days if they could prove the benefits of it. I got fourteen day Baker'ed twice for going off the deep end in those three months. In all rights I should have spent a good chunk of time in a mental institution way before this but falling through the cracks was my gift so to speak. I was good at it, telling them what they wanted to hear and how they wanted to hear it to get out of the “he's psycho” noose they were trying to tie around my neck.

I even spent some on again, off again forced detox here and there both in the psych ward and in the hospital. Landed my old and broke Creole ass in the E. R. a few times over dosing every so often. Like I said, them was some hellish three months for me trying to kill myself dead. One or two of the nurses said they could set their watches to when I would come barreling down the E. R. corridors taking the OD gurney ride with the medics white faced and shitting bricks. Hell, some of those old biddies would just shake their heads in my general direction and cluck those mother hen tongues with distaste. They would even tap their watches and give that all knowing look my way while softly whispering it was a crying shameful waste.