Superior Ave. II (Horrible Indecencies)

OOO






To earn for the habit is an undertaking that takes every spare minute the day has to offer.  It's work.  Hard, long grueling work.  The payoff is fleeting and hardly worth the hours put in, but rest assured, the job will always get done.  There's no time clock but the returning sickness, which always returns.  It's about the only guarantee in life.  So It doesn't matter how much is earned, scammed, stolen or swiped, it will all be spent on sustaining the high.  When you come down is when you go to bed.  Broke.  Out of food, out of gas and out of smokes.  No matter how much is earned. 

We found ourselves in such a position on a random Wednesday morning in the middle of the summer. 

Waking up to nothing, anticipating a sickness.  Our money spent.  Our calls unreturned.  Out of options and searching for straws to grasp at.  Fortunately, before I moved to Cleveland, Mr. Crowley  had crossed lucky paths with a vicious hawk-nosed crack fiend named Jefferson.  I don't know if that was his first of last name but it's what he went by.  The guy was a big black cannon, firing up torches and glass dicks with white pebbles, a roaring boom of a laugh and 50 caliber riffled barrels for arms.  Jefferson was mixed, black and Chicano so I figured under Jefferson's johnson hung two big black cannon balls, the way he showed no fear making money for his habits.  When I came into the picture, Jefferson was keeping digs on the East side.  On his face were two wide eyes like fried eggs in a frying pan.  His bones were long tubes of marrow that stood firm and tall with a commanding presence.  If I were in the way of a man like Jefferson, walking with beaded eyes directly in my path, I would move out of the way.  He was a master at the art of ID correction and had taken a liking to me at first glance of my numbers. 

“Oohhh, yeah  Nice.”  Jefferson said when he first met me, holding my driver's license in my hand, giving it a once over.  “Alright, look at that...  A lot of 4's, 8's, and 1's and 6's.  Thomas, huh?  Yeah bro, I think we can really do some business together.”  My numbers were malleable, easily changed. 

A local chain of hardware stores allowed returns without receipt for up to $70, paying cash for poorly presented excuses and store product.  One could return up to five times per ID number.  After the limit of returns on an ID was reached, Jefferson would chisel off a portion of a 4 with a razor blade and make it a 1.  Or an 8 would become a 3, or a 6 an 8.  he only had to change one number to get 5 more returns.  Which at 70 bucks a pop, that's a free $350 later.  Then he'd chisel away another 4, polish it all up a thin black sharpie marker beyond the eye's capacity to distinguish the forgery.

A fucking professional.

Jefferson had a strong attraction for the pipe, however and a violently precise schedule to keep.  I met him the first day we were out of cash.  Since working with him was an all day endeavor, Mr. Crowley held out on calling him till our flow ran dry.  He made his way to our building by 7:30 that Wednesday morning. 

Mr. Crowley had weeks ago, sold Jefferson          a thin yellow cell phone we'd found.  It was the ugliest phone I ever saw.  I figure some spoiled little brat “left” it somewhere and told his parents he'd lost it so they'd have to buy him a different one.  That's when Cain walked by and picked it up.  Whatever happened, Jefferson had it now.  It rang this morning at exactly 6:20 am, where Jefferson peeled himself from his east side mattress, flopped into a shirt white and blue button up shirt and .  Stumbled out front to the bus stop with a hot coffee in a styrofoam cup.  He'd come across 1-800 number giving free wake up calls to phone numbers.  Because of this, Jefferson was able to rise from whatever floor passed out on at first sound of that ugly yellow phone.  Anywhere he'd fall over for the night, he'd snap into his morning schedule of cash collecting and connecting routs, like pieces metal pieces of a handgun, snapping into place, ready to do it's job.  With no car at his disposal Jefferson was all day, boarding buses and hopping off, waiting for connections and hitting new store locations all the way out in the suburbs.  Covering remainders from bus stop to store front on foot, in true drug induced fashion.

It was an all day thing.

The man's mind was a clock that was tuned to the churning schedule of Cleveland's city public transportation.  He naturally scurried from store to store each morning, shoplifting and returning the stuff for cash, accurately keeping tabs on departure times, bus schedules and refund prices and sales tax.  The man was a machine to behold.  A true professional.  Jefferson agreed to work with us only if we were up and ready to head west by 7:30 in the morning. 

I was drinking my own hot cup of coffee when he arrived at exactly that time.

“Tweeker... glad to see you bright eyed.”  Jefferson grumbled as he walked in the door.

Cain Crowley, in his ripped shirt and dirty, stringy hair become known to this man and many more as Tweeker.  I could list at least 10 reasons why.  The fact that Jefferson, a cocaine consuming machine, referred to Cain as Tweeker, granted me further insight into the nature of the man that I had joined habits with.  I thought the nickname was fitting and tossed it at him periodically, to Cain's apparent dismay.  He despised the name but would never admit it out loud since it would cause us to use it more often, knowing it got under his skin.  Completely unrelated people in Youngstown called him that years ago.  It was a moniker that followed Tweeker from city to city throughout his lifelong decline into the stuff.

Jefferson waved his massive arm in the direction of the street, his dark skin was puffy, as if just below the surface lay hundreds of bushy cotton balls. 

“C'mon.  We've got a long day ahead of us.”

We took the usual routs over and under bridges to Settler's Landing train station, then to a well scheduled list of hardware stores, most still operating without security cameras.  The stores were scattered throughout Cleveland's urban sprawl.  It took a long time to reach each destination by bus.  We'd be obvious, riding busses with stolen hardware items in hardware bags every morning.  We carried most we stole in a canvas backpack, along with a slew of plastic hardware store bags.  What we didn't cover by bus, we did on foot.  It was a decent way to kill a whole day.

The rundown went about like this:

Jefferson and myself would enter the store under the guise of construction workers on the look for something specific.  We'd pocket specific items adding up to just shy of $70 including tax.  Engraved in the junky portions of his mind was the layout of each store, stash spots, restrooms and a mental calculator estimating sales tax down to the cent.  He knew exactly what to take, how many and the best way to pocket them.  Jefferson's brick shit-house stature gave validity to our disguise, looking to be built like a construction worker.  He was conveniently able to thwart off the helpful advances of watchful sales persons, with a stern hand and a “No thank you.”

For a man that smoked as much crack as Jefferson did, the quickness and accuracy in which he calculated sales prices and tax in his dome, was astounding.  Who ever heard of a crack head having such a precise and steady hand, molding new my ID numbers with an unfailing eye-fooling perfectionist distinction.  He was a pool of talent looking to be focused.  He could have been anything.  Whatever Jefferson wanted, he got with his sharpened sense of experience and sheer force of will.  And all Jefferson wanted was more money for more crack, more product to return and more questionable people with more expendable licenses, ready to go halfers on a fist sized rock... when all I wanted to do with my end was run to the dopehouse, add more stains to my shirt slobber. 

That day and many after, I ran in and out of numerous store room doors, stuffing stuff on store room floors, underneath hoodies hiding long purple lengths of tract marks in the hot summer sun.  At any time, expecting a hard hand on my shoulder, yanking me backwards into the small room down a hallway and into the store's security center.  I was somehow strangely calm in the face of it all.  Looking for the signs to get me the things I was looking for... but I guess when looking for the kind of things I was looking for, IE: open windows, empty isles, blind spots, cheap dope, clean needles, caps of bleach, pawn shops, shoestrings, and back alleys; I was asking a lot. 

We'd slip out the exit doors and around the corner where we'd add up and bag up the merchandise in the store's own bag, then  Tweeker would walk in with a polished excuse and return the product for cash.  Immediately we'd then head to the next store on the list, flashing transfers and switching buses, waiting on benches with bags of stolen shit.  All day long.  It was like a fucking ATM machine, locked on $70 withdrawals.  Crowley and myself would switch places in the process, taking turns facing the cashiers with our forged documents.  When both of us reached the limit of our returns, we'd head back to Jefferson's East side abode and indulge in glorious moments of the burnt spoon.

The routine was polished enough to knowing when problem employees would be on the clock.  Meshing this information with transportation schedules would keeping us running constant for about 8 hours straight.  At the day's final end we'd count the cash and make the split; calling connections for various powders.  At $70 a pop, 5 returns each; that netted us roughly $650 to $700 a day.  The entirety of that money, between the three of us, would be smoked, shot or otherwise ingested before sunup the next morning.

And we did it a lot.

The nights following any all day run like this were long tedious sessions of melting down crack cocaine with vinegar and/or lemon juice for purposes of injection.  Jefferson's 8th floor apartment was a constant clutter of violent conversations, grinding jaws and addicts unraveling stories of recent scores.  Window peakers and carpet diggers searching for that final rock that may or may not have fallen to the floor.  Jefferson's place.  Depot for anyone looking to buy crack.  It was one stop shopping for our connection.  There were several addicts that lived in the building, all knowing at around around 5 to 7pm, Jefferson would return and the connection would be summoned shortly thereafter.  They had a system of phone calls to let everyone know when Jefferson was back home.  His neighbor down the hall kept steady at his 8th floor window, watching for us walking down the sidewalk and into the building on the ground floor.  By the time we'd make it up the elevator to the 8th, all crack heads in the building will have phoned their numbers and should be knocking on our door directly.

The man would swing by Jefferson's apartment and sell to anyone who was patiently waiting on the couch with us.  Convenient to both the user and the pusher.  For this reason, there were circles of rack heads and junkies shooting smack, meth, coke or crack with dancing jawbones, littering the carpet of Jefferson's living room.  I can't count how many sleepless nights of white knuckles I walked up and down Superior Rd. at 4 am, looking for somebody to take notice of my slow stroll with money in my pocket.  Hoping to anything holy this approaching 6'5'' African man with arms like battlefields decides to be a stand up guy and sell me a 50-rock, instead of just ripping me off like he easily could if he wanted to. 

That summer the drugs were always either running strong or running out.  Either way, I was always relieved to find my way back to the Flats where I'd lounge under the Cleveland stars by the light of the skyline, erupting from the ground directly in front of my view.  On a bench, with my feet kicked up on a varnished wooden railing, on a clean deck by the Cuyahoga River I'd spend those summer nights exchanging sedated glances with the blue-lit Detroit Superior Bridge.  The nostalgic wave of warm emotion washing over me, as I sit in a peaceful place and bask in the beauty of the city.

Alone in my junky silence.

The way I preferred it.  The way I wished it could always be.

I think of every moment I spent saturated in complete denial of my surroundings throughout the years.  Lying in vacant furniture of abandoned Youngstown buildings, shooting coke in executive bathrooms, or gazing with a sedated eye at that big bridge lit to a blue hue, hanging across the view outside the building on Riverbed St.  I wonder how it was that I'd lounge back in such shady situations, completely engulfed in nostalgic appreciation that I was living the good life.  Lost, broke and doped to the teeth.  Caught in the sticky spot between simply surviving and truly living.  Merely existing.  Romancing myself  into a belligerent pride of the junky way.

Junky pride.  A questionable term.  The feeling of superiority sprouting from a most vile lifestyle.  A backbone to the delusion, necessary to keeping the mindset that is needed to trick oneself into maintaining a habit.  Junky pride is romantic in nature and paints the user into a portrait of denial and unfounded embellishment of circumstance.  Of course, junky pride only makes sense to another junky.  To everyone else, I'm sure it seems a silly notion.  To somehow be proud of, romance and defend the very sickness that keeps the addict chained to a long line of weak excuses why not.  It is however, most apparently a phenomenon amongst those misguided dope fiends I've known shooting in dark corners and nodding out on pedestals of superiority.  As if theirs was a life to be jealous of.

By the end of that particular and many following nights, I'd lay in my current embellishments, offering smoke onto the warm summer night in the form of a nicotine cloud.  Taking in the view and enjoying the passing moments in complete acceptance of the state I was in.  Telling myself that nothing could be wrong in this sublime setting.  The traffic on Superior Ave., speeding over the bridge like metallic corpuscles moving through the bloodlines of the city.  Like the roads were veins flowing rhythmic patterns to the pace of Cleveland's pulsating beats of traffic through stop lights as heartbeats.

I took the whole thing in on that Wednesday night in the lofty shadows of Superior Ave, content in a skewed interpretation of the good life.  Out of bounds in the game of upright citizenship.  Scoring for big points in the treacherous venture of junky pride.  Stuck somewhere between appreciation and disgust for my current position.  Though basking in the lighter side of my rationalization.






OOO






The bottom is a sticky mess. 

Any fiend will say that supporting a dope habit is a full time job and that is a gross understatement.  I never worked this hard at a legitimate full time 9 to 5.  It's morning, noon and night.  One hustle after another.  Every day.  Without end.  Without break from tradition.  It's a sick and early morning string of quick and desperate moves to get a horrible illness off the back.  Cured now, a search for the high is on; since once the habit is underway the true high is lost and an addict simply uses to feel normal.  Another hour or so of swindling takes place, following another trip to the dopehouse.  Then another.  Then another.  Once shots of cocaine become involved, the day from then on is hairy.  Gears usually change after several intravenous injections, stirring us up into frenzies of violent jawbones and ruthless urges to converse with each other.  Fighting for control of the conversation's floor.

Sometime before the grams are devoured, the drug would have fueled our way into any number of pawn shops, hardware, department and grocery stores on bouts of shoplifting.  Stealing steaks, books, baby formula, saw blades, electrical breakers, power drills, saws-alls, security cameras, CDs, DVDs, stereos, comics, television sets, pocket change from counter tops, tips from tables and car batteries from parked cars.  Trading pills, promises and ill gotten money to the pusher for another hit at the needle tip, until the next time we come back to see him again.  Which will probably only be in a few hours.  Another shot to the vein and the whole process repeats itself.  All day.  Every day.  And when you come down is when you go to bed.  Broke.  Out of food, out of gas and out of smokes.  No matter how much is earned. 

Just like I said before.

As I sit here in the present moment, gripping a clean and sober pen, writing these words on the page, I find it hard to believe I was able to survive on such a healthy and steady flow of expensive drugs, for as long as I did - with no job, no legal income and many times no car.  If it were not for the fact that I remember doing all the things I've done, I'd never believe  such a thing was possible. 

I look back on a dodgy life of excess and wonder how I made it out on the other side.  Alive and anonymous, at the point where all I have to do is refrain from that first hit and I'm cool.  Reflecting back on the hectic insanity of it all, on the terrible tucking of tails, on the horrible cashing in of pride, the pawning of any and all self worth or dignity, it seems like someone else's life that I just read about.  It doesn't feel like it happened to me.  But it did.  I remember it all.  That summer, the closest thing to a bottom I'd ever want to get to, walking the same degrading path of shame every morning to the house that dogfood built.  Dopesick feet on hot concrete.  Holes in one shoe.  Train tracks to 65th & Madison.  Long walks down W 52nd.  Shortcuts where necessary.  Heading always towards the man's house, sooner or later.

... And this is where I fell apart.

On mornings we had no money to cop with, Mr. Crowley would randomly walk up to people with semi convincing stories how his car had broken down a mile up the road.  I remember the first time he did it.  He stopped a middle aged woman putting groceries in her car, asked her for spare change.  It made me want to walk on the other side of the street from him.  I later figured he had been holding back on my account, since after the first time he panhandled in front of me, he did it all the time.  Like it was old-hat to him.  Sometimes people would hand him pocket change, sometimes paper money.  Most of the time they would shrug shoulders and brow beat him down.  A motion that Cain Crowley had long since grown immune to, leaving him indifferent to their condescending stare-down. 

Sometimes people would straight up ignore him.  Which coincidentally, is how I learned was the best way to deal with Mr. Crowley.  He was a man with no pride.  It had all been swallowed in the name of dope to blood.  Or beaten out of him.  From childhood all the way up to the filthy 30-something douche bag he had become.  And still, some people handed him money.  We would set out on our usual 3-4 mile walking trek to the several hot spots we'd cop from, broke.  By the time we'd make it to the West side, Cain would have panhandled up about $12 -$13.  At least enough to fix himself by the time we hit Shorer Ave.

Mr. Crowley hounded me several times a day, intent on getting me to give it a go.  Make money for myself.  I refused.

“What, You have no problem ripping some kid off for two sheets of Acid but you can't ask somebody for gas money? ... You can run through exit doors with DVD players, you can steal a woman's purse from her front seat but you can't beg up some dope money?”

Shit like that.

Needless to say, my free ride on his spare change came to an end rather abruptly.  He fixed me once on a beg to show me it was possible.  Then he said I was on my own.  I refused.  Crowley would shoot his panhandled fix right in front of me.  Curing himself of all that still ailed me.  It was painful to watch him dose while I was still sick, sitting on a milk crate behind a fenced in circle of dumpsters in the back parking lot of a gas station I referred to as 'my office.'  My throat would lump with the harsh reality that I still had hours to go before I'll be able spike up.  Pride in tact with a sickness still at my neck.  I'm the better man, right?

Since Cain was trying to get me to join forces with his powerful hand of hands out for handouts, I'm sure he acted up his level of relief while the sickness was washing off his thin stricken body.  He'd throw his chin back in the air, soaking in obvious pleasure I wasn't feeling, deeply sighing with closed eyes in a theatrical rendition of a $10 bag curing a sick junk addict.  Something like, Aaahhh, this is how you could be feeling if you would just get over yourself.  I couldn't bring myself to do it.  To walk up to some schmuck and ask him for something to spare.  My dignity was worth more than that...  which was bullshit, but I believed it at the time.  Although I knew no one in Cleveland, and was fairly certain I wouldn't see a familiar face, I still couldn't make myself go through with it.

Even if nobody would ever know & I would never be recognized.  I still couldn't do it.   

My pride forced me to hold off until I'd whipped something up illegal and proper.  Go sick until I'd stolen something from some store, some sort of merchandise, something being sold.  Stealing from a nameless, faceless corporation somehow felt less harmful than sticking a gun in some old lady's face... or sticking a hand out for a couple of nickels and pennies.  Hairy pieces of pocket lint.  I needed superiority over that most recently drawn line in the sand to keep me from becoming that which I did not want to be. 

... at least I'm not out on the streets, begging for change.  At least I'm not that guy.

“C'mon man... get off that shit.  You can't get high on pride, Thomas.”  Mr. Crowley would say to me.  “C'mon ... yeah, you know what?  We should give the stores a break anyway.  Our faces are going to be hot on their security cameras.”

Then he'd walk up to somebody in a parking lot, give them an earful I couldn't hear and get a dollar bill handed to him.  Cain would do it shamelessly just to show how me how easy it was to scrounge a $10 fix by swallowing my pride, if need be.  His philosophy as he put it was: 'pride only hurts' and at the time, he had a point.  He was generous and cured me, like I said... just that once on his money made by extending a palm, knowing that if I wasn't sick I'd be more apt to focus on making some real money.  Once I refused to contribute to the panhandling pull, his generosity ran dry.  Two solid weeks passed with Mr. Crowley fixing himself on begged up change.  Pushing off right in front of me, making me sicker than I had to be.  I soon grew tired of him being on my constant nuts about helping with the ongoing sob story.  Over and over he ate away at me about it.  Every day for two weeks.  Mr. Crowley told me exactly what to say.  We're stranded out-of-towners, out of gasers.  In fact he wanted to invest in an empty gas can to carry around. 

“We can stash it behind the building over there.”  Cain bargained like he had the deal of a lifetime for me.  “...Right by where we get off the train.  We'll just store it there over night and get it the next morning, when we get of at 65th & Madison.  Then we can just hit a different spot every day.  See... Like tomorrow we could go over the bridge and hit all down that area.”  Mr. Crowley's arm was somewhere with a finger point.  He was all excited about it.  I didn't want to hear it.

His idea was two needy palms were better than one, we could split up.  Plus if we weren't sick we could spend more time on a bus to the suburbs where the high end department stores were.  He was probably right.  I still refused.  I'd wait until we'd hunkered something up, stolen and pawned something.  Books at a bookstore.  Steaks from the grocery.  Sweat it out till we pulled some drug store scam.  Pocketing and returning make-up or stealing pills from a friend of a friend's house and selling them to a couple of Puerto Ricans in a black Mazda.  Something.  Anything, shit... At least I wasn't that guy begging on the street.  Cain told me again I couldn't do any dope he got by sparing for change.  As if my refusal was a slap to his face. 

I told him that was fine with me.

I'm sure I felt some sense of strength from my refusal to skin my knees, crawling for handouts.  Strong in the shadow of the weakness.  Impervious to the stains that would cover any man willing to stoop so low as to stoop so low.  I am above the kind of people that sleep on dirty cardboard.  Superior.  'Till I had to sit and watch Cain Crowley fix himself time after time, after time.  Slacking off on his urgency to hurry the fuck up.  That was the worst part of it, once Mr. Crowley wasn't sick any more he wasn't in as much of a hurry.  I'd be always telling him to hurry up.  My impatience only fueled his point farther.  I was stupid for letting my pride stand in the way of my high.          The last straw came about three weeks after our money ran out, after watching him get his sick off with me still there in the grip, 21 days in a row.  It was a weekday morning, I remember the commerce being heavy on the streets.  That day Cain begged up almost $30 before hitting Shorer Ave., after running into a lady that took pity on him with a $10 bill.  $30 fucking dollars.

He shot three dimes in one hit right in front of me, slacking off in a train seat.  Lazy, slow to move.  That was at about 10:30 in the morning.  It was about 2:30 in the afternoon before I ran into any real money to get myself well.  Everything that ended up coming up, came up empty.  Until I'd walked out of a department store with a shirt full of DVDs I'd stripped the security sensors from in a bathroom stall.  By the time that happened I was sopping wet with hot summer sweat.  The holy sickness of an angry god on my back.  So it was 5 hours later, goddamn 3:45 in the afternoon by the time I made it from the suburbs to the west side dopehouse with enough money to get well.

By then, Cain had begged up another $30.

I went to sleep that night without really ever getting all that chemically satisfied.  Crowley was so high I couldn't even carry on a conversation without him nodding all over his lose cigarette lip.  I'd barely made my minimum quota of necessary dope for the day, so I was going to bed with out a night cap.  Cain had a wake up shot.  I only slept about 3 hours that night; sitting up in a cold sweat around 4:30 in the morning.  Tossing and turning till 7, when Crowley usually woke to hit the streets.  By about 8:00 that next morning, I was already full blown sick.  Those 4 or 5 hours since I woke at 4:30 that morning seemed like a day in itself. 

The longest nights in existence are those painfully slow dopesick hours of waiting for the sunrise; sick, busted, wishing for either sleep or quicker minutes.  Lying face down on an uncomfortable early summer morning mattress of cold sweaty sheets.  Ready to drop a load of shit in a clean pair of shorts before my day is even underway, with  at least another 2 or 3 hours to still spend sick before I pull another close call as a bookstore bandit. Fun, huh? Sounds like a good time, yes?  I gotta admit..  right about now... Before grunting painful hours hustling up enough money to cure myself, before riding  sweaty bus wheels of withdrawal to the suburbs to scam,  taking trains and tract marks to the connection, before all of that the prospect of somebody handing $10 to cop sounded more than inviting.  I could have the money to score by the time we got to the spot.  Then I could fix myself and focus on making real money, so I won't be sick, desperate and make any desperate moves.  It's so simple it's logical.  Mr. Crowley was right, fuck pride, pride only hurts.  Yeah, you know what?  That sounds good if I don't think about it.

Back sweat soaks and stains shirts.  Hot sun makes me sweat.  There is no way around this.  I was a mess that day.  The drawbridge held me up.  I was impatient.  Cain was already fixed.  He was fine.  I had to stand and wait, contemplating whether today was going to be the day I was going to finally give in and extend a palm.  It was somewhere downtown that I finally did it.  From a silver sports car pulling into an all but vacant parking lot, a young kid stepped forth, looking like a fresh out of high school sweater boy.  I gave him a story of how I was stranded and needed to catch a bus, but my wallet had been stolen at a party the night before.  He gave me two dollars.

And that was it.  I died right there.  I crossed my line, pushing my bottom further down.

I died a little more each time I extended a needy hand for spare change. 

Like a dog, broken by an angry master, avoiding eye contact and lowering his head to the ground in a whimper.  That summer I made my way on my walk of shame down 65th & Madison, 56th & Clark.  Up and down the lengthy E. 105th with an open palm and a pager number to call for a Dominican man who will drive up and meet me as soon as I come up with $10.. I will choke each morning on that horrible ball of disgust lodging itself in my throat until I work up enough to cop a bag of powder for that morning.  Then it didn't matter.  Nothing did.

It was too much that morning, after the night I'd just had and the day I had before it.  I couldn't stand the thought of being sick while having to run the entire gauntlet of what it took to procure it all.  All that bus riding to the suburbs without being waxed first, forget about it.  All that walking into drug stores we haven't hit in several weeks & stealing aspirin, cold tablets and various other medicines from the place.  Gad, I couldn't stand the thought of still being sick hours and hours later, finally selling those boxes of Tylenol to a man who sold them to others at a fraction of the price.  Sure, sure, it's a  lucrative scam but it takes hours.  Hours that would be pleasantly tolerable with at least one begged up dime to wake up on.  Guaranteed that pathetically small amount of dope would make all the difference to the outcome of my day.

It was a stark contrast from the massive shots to the arm my real estate paychecks had supported.  A bold dichotomy has become my life from just a month prior, where I was walking through the home of a woman who was calling me 'sir' because I had a suit and tie on.  Because I was from the bank.  A professional.  A superior man with a well groomed perch.  What a nice man.... yes, he's probably a home owner.  I bet he graduated from college.  Probably pays taxes and loves his wife.  I'm sure his children are beautiful.  I bet he's a god damned gentleman.  Now look at me.  There's dirt on my hoodie when it's too hot to be wearing one.  Yet my tracts are much too defined to be flashing them with an out of gas story.  Look at me now.  Pawned my pride for pocket change and bought drugs with it.

Weeks passed in exactly the same repetitive motion of events.  Every morning we walked the same trail of streets, more or less.  Like a cat following the exact same frequently traveled footprints with every pass.  I am on a catwalk of meritocracy..    A man with nothing in his pocket is a man with nothing to lose.  Stepping off trains with the spare change blues.  Working the area.  $1.00 here.  17 cents over there.  Fucking guy in the blue Cavalier gave me 3 bucks.  By the time we'd make it to the spot every morning, I'd have at least begged enough to fix myself with a dime bag wrapped in a losing lottery ticket and  shot behind a W. 52nd St. dumpster.  Like clockwork.  Timetables. Like physics.  Predictable.  Every day.

Now it was back on the bus, up some street to some store.  Isles and cameras in black bubbles on the ceiling.  Blind spots.  Stashing DVDs in the rug isle, so my accomplice coming in behind me can pick them up and wrap their hoodie around them off camera.  Not being seen anywhere near the DVD racks.  Stolen DVD's get sold at some place 28 blocks away.  Bus hits Storer Ave, 4 blocks east in 9 minutes.  Backpack stuffed with plastic cases.  Off the bus on 9th.  Not sick.  Not high.  Just normal.  But by now the normal is wearing thin.  Movies sold, it's back to the spot to cop.  Dominicans aren't answering the pager.  Long bothersome walks on 18 blocks of sidewalks.  Payphones.  Take a train to tower city, 65th & Madison.  Walk a whole shitload more.  Payphones.  Cop several spider web stamped bags.  Shoot with a rig I'd kept in the spine of a hardback book in my back pack.  Bus back downtown.  Payphones.  Call a few names that are into the same kind of thing.  See what's up.  Who's got what.  Some new shit come in from Philadelphia.  The badlands.  Some kind of stamp on the bag.  6 people already fell out on the shit, now everybody wants to buy it... And this dude's got bundles.

Day in, day out.  That's what it is.

At night I usually procrastinate on couch cushions and lazy boy chairs.  Eyelids all over the place.  Some kind of dopey look on my face.  Cigarette burning down so low I char my fingers as I nod out.  A new tender red burn-mark to go with the others on the insides of my index and middle fingers.  This life is a shit hole where the best I can hope for is to make it back to Riverbed St. with a wake up shot for the morning, maybe one to send me into the deep absence of midnight.  Lights on posts over the bridge, kiss on the tongue the spattering of windows lit up on Superior Ave.'s buildings, shining down like teeth in a boxy city skyline smile.  Drip dreams all over a clean wooden bench along the mucky chill of the Cuyahoga river.  Hitting a cigarette with a nod falling off my face.  Flickering in and out over a long gaze at the blue lit Detroit Superior bridge against the city.  At peace... while the drug lasts.  Sweet smack summers.  Everything is right with the world.  Until tomorrow morning at 7am when Cain Crowley's internal junk alarm will sound, rousting him awake and consequently me from my sleeping quarters like a cow heading to the slaughters.

And we gotta do this shit all over again.

The countless hours spent walking and waiting for junk, getting up at sunrise and grueling out another day, breaking backs to get one more in before the stores closed at six or nine; it was all a compliment to the master.  The master habit that craves attention and demands results.  Fiends for miles were scraping their last change together, running from storeroom isles and sweating the muscle to feed that hole.  It was a commentary on basic human nature to watch it all go down. 
Though I'm not sure what was  being said.

I watched myself grunt through that summer from a third person point of view.  As if these were necessary steps to take in the acknowledgment of a bottom.  Looking for the illusive exit.  The precious dream that addicts keep in wait, suckling on it periodically for a temporary escape from their current situations.  The idea I would someday escape all this was on occasion, the only thing kept me from spiking a lethal dose.  The belief that someday, sometime, if I just hang on a little while longer, there will be a day where I won't have to feed this cycle any longer.  Where I could just wake up and drink down a hot cup of coffee and eat a breakfast in peace.  Read the newspaper and watch TV.  Shower and go to work without  fear or pain of withdrawal creeping up onto my shoulders.

Just like you.

Where I won't have to worry about police cars and handcuffs, security guards and shoplifting charges.  When the dopeman's pager number is not the prominent thing in the foreground of my mind.  That glorious day when I can relax in the privacy of my own home, having found my exit, pushed back in a cushy leather swivel chair with a computer keyboard in my lap, my feet up on a matching black stool.  Clean from the drugs, hidden away in a city where I don't know anybody, writing about all the things I've learned from having to do things like walk the streets with a needy eye on your spare change.  I can not wait until that day when the only thing that matters out of all of this is how I've grown, having gone through all I have done.  How I've made myself a better man due to hard life experience and how I can now live the way life was meant to be lived ... Like everybody else. 

Shit... one of these days I'm going to be just like you.

At least that's the escape plan.







OOO