Becoming A Son

by David Labrava

  I lived in that lot for about two months until one night I came back and the city had cleaned the entire lot throwing everyone’s homeless homes away. Everybody who lived there was scavenging around to see if they could find their belongings. Night was coming and I was cold, I knew I had to find a place to stay. I walked to Al and Dereks shooting gallery and they weren’t there. Only that Hooker Blue and her Boyfriend Stewart were there. I negotiated a deal with them to split their room for a quarter a day. That’s like twenty bucks. When Al and Derek came back it was a big argument that Blue won and I got to stay. Al and Derek weren’t too happy about it but they needed Blues money to help cover the rent and she had negotiated a deal with me which she was planning on keeping. So now I had a mattress on the floor in her room. Things were once again looking up.

  The first time I overdosed was in that house. I was in the kitchen fixing with about seven other junkies and I fell out.

  “Better save him.” I heard one of the junkies say, then turned he back to his works.

  “Yeah or else the cops will clean this place out.” Said another.

  Derek and Al picked me up and put cold water on my wrists and neck which revived me.

  “Better not do that again.” Al said.

  “Yeah. Next time we won’t save you.”

  Blue and Stewart helped me to our room.

  “What happened?” I asked still kind of foggy.

  “You fell out. You didn’t go into convulsions, probably cause you didn’t have too much coke in it. Derek and Al don’t want no one dying here so they picked you up and put water on your hands and wrists.”

  “Why?”

  “Cause for some reason that wakes you up. If it’s real bad they would have put a bunch of ice on your balls.”

  “Thank God it wasn’t real bad. At least you weren’t doing the fish.” Stewart said.

  “The fish?”

  “Yeah. Flopping like a fish. Convulsions. When you are done flopping like a fish you are usually dead. When you O D on a speedball it’s intense. First of all, when you wake up, if you wake up, all you remember is shooting up but, the rush has passed. So you think you got ripped off. Then your lungs fill with water and your bladder fills with blood”

  I sat back and took all this in. I was totally wasted.

  “Thank you.” I said.

  “If you really want to thank us you can give us some of your dope.” Nothing was for free. I broke off a little piece. Then passed out on my mattress.

  41

  There was a Chinese Restaurant on the corner of sixteenth and mission on the west side of the block. Next to that was a donut shop that all the junkies hung out in. Then a laundry, an apartment building, then a food counter where all the main dealers hung out at. They supplied the street dealers. This was the place in the city to find Heroin so there was always traffic. And you had to keep moving. If you stood in one spot too long the cops would arrest you for vagrancy. So I would walk up and down the block from sixteenth to nineteenth and back. Walking the streets all day and all night. For days on end until I finally collapsed wherever I landed. Some people tried to save me but I was beyond saving.

  I was sleeping in a doorway and I felt a nudge and I looked up and there was my father.

  “Get up.”

  I got up and he looked at me with disgust. He had moved up to Petaluma and lived with my sister. We were never close. My sister and my dad were close. My mom and me are close. That’s just how it was.

  “l’ve been walking the streets for days looking for you.”

  “Why?’

  “Cause you need help. You’re a mess. You’re mother is worried sick.”

  We walked down mission boulevard and he kept looking back at me in disbelief. I looked the part, just a homeless junkie. He walked up to the pay phone on sixteenth and mission. Just above the BART entrance. That’s Bay Area Rapid Transit, the underground subway to Oakland and Berkeley. He picked up the phone and dialed a number.

  “Reverse the charges.” He said.

  “Hello. Yeah I found him.” He looked at me up and down.

  “I’m looking right at him. This isn’t going to end pretty.” He held out the receiver to me.

  “Here. It’s your mother.” I took the receiver. I hadn’t spoken to my mom in months. I started crying instantly.

  “ Hi mom.”

  “ My son. I miss you. I love you.”

  “ I love you mom.”

  “I had your chart read.” My Mom believes in the stars for real. She goes to this old lady who reads the stars and makes a chart according to what they say. Like fortune telling.

  “And?”

  “And it says you are in it deep. Whatever it is you are in. It says you have been in it for six months and you have two and a half years to go. If you can just stay alive, which apparently is going to be hard. If you can just stay alive for that amount of time she says everything will work out after that. I would help you if I could. I love you so much. But the only person who can help you is you. Please remember I love you. Good luck.” She hung up the phone.

  “Well?”

  “She says I’m in it deep.”

  “That’s obvious. Why don’t you come back with me?” I thought about it for a minute.

  “I can’t. I’m too screwed up. I won’t stay there. I gotta play this out.”

  I wasn’t in despair in my mind, even though it looked like I was in despair. It was all an adventure for real for me. Somehow in the back of my mind I knew I was going to come out of this one day. I was just getting high for now.

  My dad walked with me and bought me a pair of sneakers. The ones I was wearing had the toes cut out so my feet could fit inside. I got them free from the Salvation army. My dad couldn’t stand it me looking like this. Dirty, smelly, one set of clothes. After we got the shoes he gave me about a hundred dollars and got in his car and left. I watched him go and then went and copped dope with the money. I didn’t seem him again for a very long time.

  42

  “SPEEDBALL EXPRESS TAKING OFF.” I screamed as I walked down the block to fix. I was breaking a can in half to use a spoon as I said it. I was way out of control. Junkies are always looking for someone to fix with. It can be a very social drug. Indio linked up with me he had coke and I had dope. That’s how we usually rolled, both splitting with each other.

  A blonde hooker named Sarah decided to come with us. Her loser boyfriend Josh would wait on mission while she turned tricks on Howard street.

  “Where’s Josh?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know. He went up to nob hill to shoplift and I haven’t heard from him all day. I hope he didin’t get busted.” I was sure he did.

  Sarah was a normal girl, real good looking, just worn out. Dope will take control if you let it in your life. She was like a secretary or something before this. Now she was selling blowjobs for twenty bucks and a piece of ass for forty just to get high.

  We crossed sixteenth and went into the alley between Mission and Valencia. This was one of our favorite fixing spots. There was also a parking structure that worked well across the street when this was too crowded.

  We set up or works and Sarah held her syringe up looking at the color.

  “Hit me in my neck.”

  “What? Are you crazy?” I had never even seen that before.

  “Not at all. I don’t have my hand mirror with me or I would do it myself. It’s just like hitting another vein, except the rush is ten times faster.”

  “A hundred times faster.” Indio said. “I’ll do you and you do me.” He said to Sarah as he took the syringe from her and plunged it into her neck. Soon as he pushed in the dope her eyes rolled back in her head and she would have fallen down if we hadn’t have caught her.

  “Wow. That was quick.”

  “Yep. She’s out for a minute. Here.” He held out his syringe. “Hit me.”

  I took Indio’s syringe and hit him in his jugular vein and he almost puked. He stood there spitting for five minut
es not able to talk. Sarah woke up from her rush.

  “That was great. Want me to hit you in yours?”

  “No thanks. Not that I don’t trust you but I don’t trust you. If anyone hits me in my neck it will be me.”

  “Suit yourself. You want a blowjob for another fix?”

  “No thanks. I’m good.” I knew Josh. Didn’t seem right.

  “ I do.” Indio said as he unzipped his fly. Sarah got on her knees and I split. Leave these two lovebirds alone.

  About a month later Sarah made a bad mistake and got in a car with four guys. That is not what any hooker should do. One trick at a time is a general rule. She thought she was going to make some real cash but instead she got gang raped and stabbed and left for dead. She became another casuality of the street.

  The four dudes got caught with the bloody knife in their car the next day. It was a stolen car and when they got stopped the bloody knife was found with some of Sarah’s clothes and the jig was up. The beat cops that walked the mission knew everyone walking the streets and they took it personally. After arresting Sarah and Josh over and over they got to know them as they did everyone on the street, and felt a little protective of the neighborhood, even the vagrants. I never saw Sarah or Josh after she got out of the Hospital. I think they went back to the Midwest or somewhere. They were lucky to get out alive.

  I started carrying my own hand mirror and shooting myself in my own jugular vein after that. The rush was amazing. I was walking around with four rows of track marks on my neck. I had lost about thirty pounds. I used to look at my reflection in storefronts and swing my arms and think ‘I look like a scarecrow.’ Didn’t bother me though. Not much did.

  43

  I felt something wet on my face. I had found a hallway that was open and I slipped inside late that night and fell asleep. I wiped it off and I felt it again. I looked up and one of the tenants was dropping water on me from a cooking pot. Soon as I looked up at him he dumped the whole pot of cold water on me.

  “GET OUT.” He yelled as he ran back into his door and locked it behind him. Starting another beautiful day. I walked out of the hallway and headed towards sixteenth. First things first I gotta do my wake up, so I had to find a spot to do it. I walked over to the parking structure in between Valencia and Mission and went up to the second level. I broke out my works and started fixing. I looked over and there were some Mexican ladies who were watching me. The second level of the structure was at the same height as the first floor apartments and they were watching me in horror. I ignored them and kept fixing. I had saved some dope and coke from the night before for my wake up. Jose wasn’t always so eager to give me my first quarter free anymore so I had learned to save some. Without that wake up shot you are sick all day.

  As soon as I shot it I knew I was done. The rush was coming on to strong and too fast. I threw the syringe as far away from me as I could and I walked over to a puddle and leaned down to put water on my wrist. Only problem was I kept going down. I watched the ground come up at me fast. The next thing I knew I was strapped to a gurney in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. I reached for my dope in my sock to make sure it’s still there and the paramedic grabbed it and threw it out the window.

  “What did you do that for?”

  “That’s what almost killed you. That’s why.”

  I would cough twice and on the third cough nothing but water would come out. They had put a catheter in my dick and there was a bag on the side of the gurney filling up with blood.

  “You’re lucky we got there in time. You would have died otherwise.”

  “You shoulda let me.”

  “That’s not my job. My job is saving you. Apparently your job is killing you.”

  Wiseass. I stayed at the hospital for two days and then snuck out on the third night. The street was calling. I had to get back.

  When you hit the street after two days gone everyone thinks you got arrested. Everyone stays away because they are paranoid. Having the plastic bracelet from the hospital eased them up. Nobody trusts anybody on the street.

  I had found an abandoned building on Divisadero street by the park. It had a big fence around it that I would climb over then it had this brick pattern on it. Some of the bricks would stick out about two inches and I could scale up the wall and into the building.

  There were other homeless people in there. In fact every room in the building was full. There was no electric or heat. As I walked down the hall there would be people fixing in every room. I only used this place to sleep, and only when I needed to. Finding a place to stay was always a challenge. It was good to have a few places all over the city cause you never know where you might end up on any given day. I shared that place with a skinny girl named Tanya. It was really her spot and she just let me crash there when I needed to.

  We woke up one morning all curled up in a blanket because I felt something squirming next to me. I thought I was dreaming till I felt it again. We jumped up and saw a little mouse had crawled into our blanket looking for warmth.

  “Imagine how brave that mouse was. To crawl in the bed with us.”

  “Or cold.” Tanya said.

  I opened the shade so a little light could come in. I went over to the sink and started fixing. Tanya started setting up her works next to me. We both shot dope in our neck, and we would look at our selves in the mirror while we did it.

  I held my breath so my vein would bulge out and tried pushing the needle in. The syringe I had was so dull it wouldn’t go in. I finally got it to go in my neck and now I was going back and forth trying to get the vein. The veins in my neck were so calloused and the needle was so dull that it was not working. I looked at Tanya’s reflection one time and she was staring at me. I looked back at myself and pushed the syringe and the needle broke.

  “Uh oh.” Tanya said. There was half of the needle sticking out of my neck. I reached up to pull it out and my skin moved swallowing it up.

  “Oh no.” Tanya said with a look of horror in her face. I felt my neck and I couldn’t feel the needle. I picked up another syringe and shot my 90 cc’s of a speedball into it and put it in the other side of my neck. I got the vein the first time and sat down to rush.

  “You’re gonna die.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “Yeah you are if you don’t get that needle out. You should go to the hospital now. Like right now.”

  “It aint that bad. I met a girl on the street that the same thing happened to and she said the doctor said there was nothing they could do about it.”

  “Listen. I don’t care who you met. I am amazed you aint dead already. It must be stuck in the callous of your vein. That needle could dislodge and go shooting to your heart at like a hundred miles an hour.”

  “Cut the dramatics.”

  “I’m serious. You better go get that out before you drop dead.”

  I left the house and didn’t think about it again. I went about my business and middled deals all day. I must have shot up forty times that day. Just a normal day. When it got dark I went back to Tanya’s.

  “Did you go to the hospital?”

  “No.”

  “Well I thought about it. You can’t come in here till you get that needle out.”

  “Come on. Don’t be like that.”

  “ Nope. You can die at any minute. We talked about it when you were gone.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Everyone here. You can drop dead at any minute and just cause you don’t get it, we do. If you drop dead here then they will close this place for sure. We don’t want to have to dispose of your body. You gotta go.”

  I knew if she wanted to she could get some of the other people living there to help her throw me out. She wasn’t really my girlfriend or anything. We just shacked up together sometimes.

  The hospital was across town so I walked there stopping in every nook and cranny to shoot up along the way. I figured I would hear what the doctor had to say. I was sure there was nothing they could do abo
ut it.

  I walked into the emergency room and it was jam packed. Standing room only. And it was three in the morning. I waited in line to speak to the head nurse. I was about ten people back. Everyone was getting a number and being told to find a seat. Every seat in the place had some one sitting in it. It took about twenty minutes until it was my turn.

  “What’s your problem?” The nurse asked me.

  “I got a needle stuck in my neck.” She looked at me like I was joking, then she realized I wasn’t.

  “How did you do that?”

  “I mixed up Heroin and Cocaine in a spoon, heated it, put in a filter and drew it up to stick in my jugular vein. The only problem was that the syringe was so old and dull that it broke when I tried to get a vein.” Her mouth was stuck open.

  “The only problem? Honey, you got more problems than that. ORDERLY!” As soon as she screamed orderly two guys came out wearing hospital scrubs.

  “Take him to x-ray immediately.” The two orderlies sat me down in a wheel chair and wheeled me away. They backed me inside and the nurse looked at me.

  “You got insurance?”

  “Homeless.” I said.

  “I’ll send the social worker. NEXT.”

  They took me to x-ray and took pictures of my neck. After that a nurse came over put me right on an I’V drip.

  “You really do have a needle in your neck.” She said. “But don’t you worry. Doctors gonna fix you right up. We have the best surgeons in the state.”

  “I gotta have surgery?”

  “How else you think they gonna get that needle out? Magic? You just relax.”

  They put me on something in the IV because I started to mellow out. There were three doctors all younger than me looking at my x-rays. They were kind of arguing.

  “I’m gonna do it.” One said.

  “No I am.” Said another.

  “You aren’t even on schedule today.”

  I waited till there was a break and I looked at one of the Doctors.