4--From House to Apartment

The days and nights blended all together. There was almost always crack around. We smoked and all measure of responsibility was lost. My writing went to the side. Frank ventured home to get rent money and to score from his crack connection. The guys at the house were always smoking crack or waiting to get it.

Frank came over in the late evening with some crack. I had said I wasn't going to smoke it anymore. I told him not to bring any crack to my house. But he did and I smoked it. He filled the pipe and then passed it to me. I couldn't refuse smoking a loaded crack pipe.

He was smoking with the boys at the house. Hugo had a connection on the other side of town, and since Frank had the only car, he took the boys to the crack house on several occasions. The ride across town became just a part of the ritual for him.

On one of these trips, Frank pulled into a convenience store because he and Hugo wanted a beer. They both went into the store, and Frank left the car running. It was past 11:00 and they had planned to come right back to his house and spend the rest of the night smoking.

When they came back to the car, the car wasn't there. They were a long walk from home. They opened their beers in brown bags and drank all the way. They didn't assess their situation till the next morning, as the crack was smoked as soon as they got back to the house.

Frank's Cadillac was gone. He had left his smart phone, which I had just purchased for him, in the car. It was gone. His driver's license was gone. The money in his wallet was gone. He reported the car missing, but never expected anything lost would be retrieved.

There was a report on the news that a man had been killed from being between two DART trains in the downtown area. The driver's license that was found on the man was Frank's. The police contacted Frank's ex-wife with the news that he was dead because of the DART train accident. The police and Gweneva came to Frank's house in the night the next day. Frank was asleep inside.

He heard the commotion outside, grabbed a baseball bat and went out front to tackle the problem in his jockey shorts. He was drunk, as usual. The next morning, he recalled the sequence of events as a dream. When he came to my house, he related the story, not as a dream but as something that had actually happened. He had been reported as a dead person. He found this amusing, but it was a foreboding of what was yet to come.

We cut down on the amount of crack we were smoking. Neither of us had money anymore. When he needed to go collect rent, he would ask me for gas money, and I would give him a $10 bill. He didn't use the money for gas. He bought beer. He was a drunk and a crack addict.

He reminded me that I was the one who introduced him to crack. I retorted that his smoking crack was an inevitability. The boys at his house had graduated from pot and beer to crack and beer. He was doing exactly what his roommates were doing.

He liked being told that he was no good. He thrived on being told he was worthless and hopeless. He would keep me on the phone for as long as he could.w
When I got mad and let him have a dose of possible regret. He relished these conversations, and I realized he had something in his past that had put him in this state of mind. I didn't understand, but I could tell he thrived on being told he was no good. It didn't make sense to me, but that was definitely a part of him. He wanted to be told he was a worthless drunk and druggie.

Frank looked bad. He had lost more weight from smoking crack. His pants were falling off, even with a belt. His eyes were sunken in, and his color was a shade of gray. When he was at his house he would smoke crack. When he was at his house, I didn't. He would return to my house with rock, and I always smoked it with him. At some point I realized the damage it had done to both of us, and I tried to stop. I told him not to bring any more crack to my house, but he did, and I smoked it.

Finally I had the courage to stand up to his free delivery service. I felt bad about what my life had become, while he was enjoying the lost life he was living.

For the third time that year, I told him not to bring any more crack to my house. That was fine with him as he ended up getting high with the guys at this house.

The three roommates had gone from pot and beer to pot and crack, and then they took the ultimate jump to pot and heroin. I was interested, but I stayed away from his house. Frank said Hugo was always sick. If he wasn't high, he was sick.

I didn't talk to Frank on the phone anymore. When he talked, he didn't make good sense. One evening he said he was going to teach me to tempt him with crack. He got the situation in reverse. He was tempting me.

"I'm going to hide in the bushes outside of your house and stab you in the neck with a screwdriver."

I was afraid. There was enough detail in the threat that I thought he just might do it. I never went to his house after that. He was no longer welcome at my house.

I told my bankers that my life had been threatened. Shannon, the assistant trust manager, took the initiative to ask me if I wanted to move. Frank had been raising the windows in my house, and had left some unlatched so that he could gain entry if I wouldn't let him in. He came in one window, but I never knew how many of the windows might be unlocked. I was done with crack. Frank wasn't.

Within 30 days I had packed up my belongings with the help of a professional organizer. The garage had been filled to overflowing. Frank had taken it on himself to move some of my possessions into the garage from the sunroom. I didn't know exactly what was in the garage, and I told the organizer to trash everything in the garage. He threw away all of my Christmas stuff. He threw away my little red wagon. He only did what I told him to do. I thought he would use a bit of discretion in what he trashed, but he trashed it all. I never got over the fact that he trashed all of my Christmas items. But that was that much less to move.

I moved from a house with 1600 square feet to an apartment with 1400 square feet. I left behind all that I could. The apartment was overflowing with possessions. I finally had a room to call a library. All my books were on five bookshelves. I was impressed with myself for finally having a library in my home. When I was in elementary school, I visited a friend whose father was an attorney. He had a room designated as a library with a big desk and bookshelves full of books. I had always wanted to have a library, and I had finally done it. I hung my diploma and my "Teacher of the Month" awards on the wall. I was very pleased with myself.

I didn't call Frank. I didn't even think about Frank. I was getting my home and my life together. No more crack deliveries. No more crack. I was smoking pot, but I didn't drink. I began to feel better about myself.

Frank already looked like the living dead from his drinking and drugs. I didn't want to see the result.

Continued "5--Background History"