by Doug Weaver
I remember that just being inside this church before entering the confessional seemed to satisfy a deep need for meaning in my life as well, like the overt trappings of ritual with all those hundreds of candles flickering at all hours, the vaulted ceilings and the incense was just what was missing from my impoverished existence. I confess that I’ve led a life seriously in need of meaningful reflection. But for an instant once inside this church I felt a slight shiver that I suspect will always arrive unannounced into the bedrock of unshriven souls who may find themselves – for whatever reason – considering the end of life. I instinctively pulled back on the reins of my thinking, turning for a few moments toward thoughts of a pathetic life shaped mostly by avarice or sloth or pride rather than more virtuous qualities – and again shook off those thoughts by forcing myself to imagine an impossibly handsome, athletically oriented thirty-something priest who’d hear my confession. And he would be questioning himself too – his faith. And here I’d be, appearing in this confessional as if by magic – to smooth his transition from ignorance of the flesh to ultimate and abandoned knowledge – the satisfying element of his ecstatic curiosity. My presence would amount to a providential answer to his prayers; and his mine. So I was happy to make this little cubical my home for the moment, even though it was pretty clear after I’d awakened in the morning – and having been illuminated with the shrill light of sobriety – that the only thing missing from my life at that moment was cab fare.
So I won’t judge Jimmy because I’ve been there. Jimmy doesn’t seem to have outgrown this facet of meth fueled sex questing, though, and unfortunately for him he’s become known to most law enforcement in quite a few areas of the city as somebody who creeps around private property trying to peek into windows looking for the perfect orgy. You get the feeling that the most interesting thing Jimmy’s done in his whole life is watching game shows on TV, that and committing some really basic, unimaginative crimes like stealing bikes off the street or shoplifting stuff from Macy’s. I don’t think he’s ever even forged a prescription. But again, he still looks pretty good from a distance.
It must be an unwritten rule: battles with gravity will inevitably push you farther and farther eastward. Los Angeles realtors know the value of youth, their mantra being: The Wester the Better – unless of course you might be, due to some kind of overt protest against the tyranny of valuation, lured in the opposite direction all the way down to Santa Fe and St. Julian where Skid Row is, where dick is cheap and plentiful. It’s because of crack. Crack just makes shit weird, and the common denominator down on Skid Row is crack – I mean, besides that whole poverty thing, which probably has a lot to do with everything. It’s probably a combination, the stupidity of crack and all that poverty. I’ve been down there a few times when I couldn’t find any crystal, and you kind of need to have a guide with you who knows some local people because it’s different down there. Things are flattened out. Definitions are basic, like you get the feeling that people who live on Skid Row will place your fucked up old pickup truck into the same category as a Rolls Royce. Four-Wheel Vehicle = Four-Wheel Vehicle. Period. There’s almost a kind of elegance in its simplicity – almost. In West Hollywood or Silver Lake when you meet somebody you want to have sex with, there’s like this awkward little confession time when you have to say whether you have HIV or not. But down on Skid Row, you try to be responsible and good citizens and divulge your HIV status, they just look at you weird, not because they’re turned off or anything, it’s like they just don’t want to hear it. Period. They don’t say anything, but you get the feeling they’re thinking: Jesus! What the fuck! Why did you have to complicate things any more than they already are? Like they’ll insist on sucking your dick anyway, but there’s an added level of complication there that you get the feeling they’d just as soon not know about, and they pretend that they didn’t hear what you just said.
The few times I got high on crack, I was lucky it didn’t do anything for me. Just made me stupid. One time I drove my truck into a gas station and I got out and it was like I completely forgot what you’re supposed to do at a gas station. I walked around my truck in circles like a moron trying to remember why I was there, but the crack made me too stupid to even be frustrated. I finally remembered that I was supposed to pay money and get gasoline but it took a minute. I didn’t get all self-conscious and freaked out – I thought it was funny, even though I felt like when people looked at me they saw like a Picasso painting with eyes bunched up over on one side of my face and my mouth all crooked and bloated somewhere on my neck. And I guess I’m lucky though that I didn’t go inside the little minimart and see if they got the joke too, like “Man, I got stuck on stupid for minute – get it?”
Another thing about Skid Row, the air’s always smoky down there – and you kind of suspect that even smoking crack out in the air wouldn’t create clouds of smoke like there is down there, and it smells like fireworks, but one thing for sure: no crackhead is gonna light firecrackers or cherry bombs or anything – that would be hilarious, come to think of it. Even if they had anything to celebrate down there, they’re not going to light off fireworks because that would ruin the evenness of their little high – like it’s a really strange version of that saying that used to be on a bank building in Hollywood that’s from Lao Tzu: The Even Tenor of a Well-Run State, and it is kind of a state down there but the kind of state where all the citizens spend their waking hours quietly and earnestly looking for pebbles or pieces of drywall on the sidewalk or in the gutter or in the pile of the carpet because it might be unharvested pieces of crack that providence has overlooked, or walking around with these crazy-looking wild eyes, like they just shot their best friend in the face because they stole a piece of Chore Boy steel wool from them or stepped on their pookie or some equally serious transgression. Crackheads are like manatees, but really dimwitted and really slow manatees. Even if they’re incredibly hot handsome guys with muscles and big dicks and they probably had girlfriends or wives in their pre-crack lives, crackheads will suck your dick and will totally be your lover even if they never thought about fucking around with a guy before if you can make them think you’re their ticket to a few more pieces of crack.
I leave Jimmy S. to flop around in his stupor and I finally make it back to Korn’s back room where the action is.
Billy B. consoles Sanchez who’s been crying in the bathroom – he cries a lot, but there’s no judgment here. Everybody has issues. Billy’s trying to get Sanchez to finally accept the reality that RoyBoy isn’t getting out of jail any time soon – his bail is over $100,000, even though nobody except Billy thinks that’s why Sanchez is crying. He just cries a lot – I think he wakes up crying, which creates a kind of low-grade curiosity as to why he cries – although nobody really wants to go to the trouble of investigating the reason though – kind of like being mildly interested in a novel but because actually reading it would be kind of a chore, all you do is speculate on what it’s about, using only the title or the cover art as clues for discerning its “aboutness.” So without inquiry, any opinions about the cause of Sanchez’s weeping would be as accurate as saying Moby Dick, by virtue of its cover art, its title and its mythos, is about a search for a giant white whale or about hubris or revenge – all three of which, while technically not incorrect, come as close to the truth about the novel’s essence as claiming that capitalism, if left to grow on its own without any meddling from legislators, will sometimes sprout tiny delicate buds of altruism instead of its normal meat-eating blossoms that blot out most of the sunrise because they never sleep because they’re always eating, eating, eating – devouring everything in sight, even the stuff that’s probably not good for them, they’re so damned hungry. A couple of guys have posited that Sanchez (who three weeks ago spent a meaningful nine-hour stretch at the baths with RoyBoy) cries because he realizes that if RoyBoy is seen outside the confines of the county jail anytime within the next six months,
it’s because he’s probably given one or more of us up to the cops, so his freedom won’t bode well for anybody and Sanchez may not want to accept the fact that Royboy has feet of clay, at least as it relates to his standing as a dope fiend. Poor Sanchez. Nobody’s got honor these days. Everybody’s a snitch and a snake. They’ll all steal your dope and then help you look for it, and everybody will give you up if it’ll keep them out of jail. But Sanchez’s crying probably has nothing to do with Royboy – or anybody else for that matter. He probably just wants to get high. I mean everybody’s kind of sad right now because nobody really knows how to act when there’s no dope around, but this sadness usually manifests in maybe taking out the trash or heading over the needle exchange or doing other necessary, mundane stuff. Not one of us, though, even considers for even a tiny sliver of a moment that he might be crying because he’s ashamed of what’s become of his life – either that or the opposite, that he’s begun to see exactly how weird it is to live life as a human being on planet Earth, especially if you insist on being fucked up all the time.
Sanchez looks at me with these sad red puppy eyes, and with a voice that’s wobbling and cracking like it’s suffering from timbre failure he asks me if I have any shit, “shit” meaning crystal meth, to which I answer in the negative. “Sorry,” I say, then add that I’ve got a ton of Wellbutrins, which is a low-grade psych med that guards against depression and is a drug that the AIDS medical community views as necessary as air itself and that guys locked up in the gay section of county jail, in an attempt to at least pretend they’re getting high, smash up and snort together. The jail cops started doling out Wellbutrins to prisoners right after the state made it illegal to smoke cigarettes in jail because it’s supposed to smooth the transition into becoming a non-smoker, and transitions that are smooth instead of rocky, I guess the thinking was, makes for more peace between prisoners. Snorting Wellies objectively gives you less of a rush than maybe closing your eyes and running around in circles, but try to do that in jail – even one of the gay tanks where almost all the legitimate fags have AIDS – “legitimate fags” meaning that there’s a large percentage of straight guys who’ve made it to Treasure Island because they know it’s easier to do time in a gay tank than in the general population, and they know enough about fag life that they pass the sheriff’s totally lame Gay Quiz with ease, which is like the equivalent of a gay GED test. These idiot sheriff’s deputies – all of them that are assigned to administering this Gay Test – are rookies. They’ll ask you questions like: “What’s Micky’s?” “Are you a top or a bottom?” the answers to which are “gay bar” and “bottom” because what else could Micky’s be, and if you say you’re a top, these young deputies, having the imaginations of cantaloupes, assume you’re straight because of their belief that no straight guy, convict or not, would admit to getting penetrated, anally speaking – especially on the record, especially if it wasn’t true. And criminals, straight or not, being their own unfiltered charming selves, like it’s no skin off their asses, will swallow their pride and admit to climbing the dick tree every time if it’ll keep them out of general population. If the cops were even a tiny bit more cunning about this test they’d ask a couple of questions about AIDS medication: “What regimen are you on?” “Do you take it on a full stomach or empty?” But they don’t. They’re not cunning. They avoid any questions about AIDS because they’re probably afraid that it might be understood as some artifact – some palimpsest of compassion from some earlier millennium and there must be no doubt in anyone’s mind that this jail facility has just about zero tolerance for anything resembling compassion, especially for guys of the homosexual variety. Running around in circles even in a gay tank would still be considered totally uncool.
My offer to share my bounty of Wellbutrins snaps Sanchez out of his pity party and, like he’s at the leading edge of an extremely effete, super fatigued low tide of ill will, lashes out at me but it’s hard to identify whether he’s lashing out with that kind of sleepy slow-motion meth-freak hatred that struggles to roil just under the surface of the sleep deprived consciousness or just plain old garden variety ennui. Bringing up the rear of several sighs are the slurred words: “What the fuck! What the fuck do you think this is? The fucking Thunder Dome? What the fuck am I gonna do with fucking Wellies…”
And then, just like somebody flipped a switch somewhere, Sanchez hiccups quietly and announces in the friendliest of tones that he’s going to take a nap. And this announcement is delivered in a way that’s like zipping up your windbreaker in one seamless motion: zzzzip – silence – end of conversation. He heads off to a couch in an adjacent room, and just as he does the doorbell chimes followed closely by Korn’s phone ringing. “Fuck” Korn hisses. As he reaches for the phone, he faces me with arched eyebrows and makes a turning door knob motion with his right hand silently asking me to see who’s at the door. He doesn’t say the words, but everybody knows what he means: This traffic is gonna get us busted.
A little while later we’re sitting around a coffee table that’s really just a giant kidney-shaped mirror with spindly black legs. It’s cluttered with overflowing ashtrays, opened packs of cigarettes, and those long pastel-colored plastic straw-spoons they give you when you buy 7-Eleven Slurpies. Javier, who just arrived, shares with Korn, me and Kirkuleaz – and anybody else who wants to listen, that he’s just left the local Neighborhood Watch meeting over at McKinley High School in the cafeteria there. Javier’s an interesting guy. He stopped using drugs about nine months ago – he goes to NA meetings and he’s totally sober all the time for several months now. But for some reason he feels totally connected to Korn, like he can’t bring himself to pry himself away from Korn’s house, so he still shows up here every day. He says that this Neighborhood Watch meeting was packed, and he hung out in the back because he didn’t want to be ID’d as somebody who had a connection to this place because let’s face it: Javier isn’t the most masculine Latino aspiring drag queen in the world. That, combined with the fact that he could never be mistaken for being attached in any way to Korn’s Jewish neighbors – except as maybe Esther Shapiro’s ballroom dance instructor.
Three or four detectives from the LAPD were there in the auditorium giving kind of a presentation about keeping bad elements out of respectable neighborhoods like this one. And Korn is paying pretty close attention because he totally owns this house, and he especially listens close when Javier’s voice gets a little bit quieter and he says that the main subject that the crowd wanted to talk about was Korn’s house. And to underscore this point he takes a piece of paper he’s got folded up in his back pocket, unfolds it and reads from it – it’s the meeting’s agenda. On top of the paper there’s the seal of Los Angeles, but it’s in Xeroxed black-and-white instead of the really colorful real one with the stars and stripes and the red rampant lion, the golden eagle and the brown bear, but still it looks kind of official. And there’s several entries that mention the height of people’s hedges and stuff and how Home Depot sells automatic light dimmers for not much money, and these dimmers will fool would-be crooks into thinking somebody’s inside the house when they’re really over at Norms eating dinner, or over at the temple, which will cause the thieves to stay away. But Number Three on this agenda – with no context or preamble or anything – is the address of Korn’s house – just the street address, 2045 South Kenmore Avenue – this house right here. And with just the mention of this address at this Neighborhood Watch meeting, which everybody there knows by heart, the whole auditorium kind of erupts into rowdiness, with people demanding when the LAPD was going to do something about “those dope addicts” who live here. And the people who were the loudest were the ones with the religious-looking stuff, like Jewish prayer shawls and long side locks. Javier says that an older guy with a beard and wearing a black hat started screaming that he’s certain that we’re here in their neighborhood because we are God’s punishment for some sin they’ve committed. And these
detectives, trying to be respectful but still wanting this guy to shut up, they just smiled and nodded, confessing that they didn’t really know too much about God’s plan to punish the people on Kenmore Avenue, but that they understood the man’s concerns. A couple of the other men in the audience then tried to calm this guy down, and he stayed quiet for a while until he’d had a minute to think about the situation again. And once more he stands and tries to sound rational at first, keeping his voice on an even keel and kind of quiet, but it starts to crescendo and ejaculates into blisters and pustules of hatred, like he just can’t help it. He’s comparing Korn’s arrival into their neighborhood with all the historical instances where Jews had been persecuted and he’s screaming that Korn was exactly like the Christian cross that’s planted in the open field that’s right outside Auschwitz concentration camp; that the Gentiles have always hated the Jews and this proves it; that the cross there was just a symptom of a greater form of hatred that’s always existed; that he understood completely that the Catholics lost a few hundred people at Auschwitz, and then he got quiet for a minute – “a few hundred” he repeated quietly a couple of times, and then he starts repeating the same thing each time getting louder: “A few hundred. A few hundred… a few hundred Catholics and a handful of Carmelite nuns compared to the hundreds of thousands of Jews who’d burned at the hands of the Nazis at Auschwitz. We” – and he gestures around to everybody in the auditorium – “are the Temple,” he says, “and – these drug addicts – these hippies – these filthy diseased fagelas, who’re all free and breezy and do as they like, they’re here to tear it down.”