There was a guy named Mason that had real long hair. I think he was from Kansas or Montana or somewhere in the Midwest. His trip was stealing bicycles. Nice ones. Then sell them for dope. He rode up on a new Cannondale.
“Nice bike.” I said.
“Four hundred.”
“I aint buying it. I’ll trade you some dope for it.”
“Nope. I’m gonna get four hundred for it.” For some reason I wanted that bike. And I knew how to get it. I waited all day till he was out of dope. He couldn’t sell the bike and he came back to me.
“Wanna do that trade?”
“What trade?’
“You know. For the grams of dope.”
“Don’t have anymore, not enough to trade anyway.” I lied. “But if you give me the bike, I’ll fix with you.”
He thought about it for a minute.
“OK.”
“Get off the bike.” He got off the bike.
“Let’s go.”
We walked to an alley and fixed. Soon as he was done he jumped up.
“Where you going?”
“To get another bike.”
I fixed some dope then rode the bike all around the city. The adrenalin rush was amazing flying down the streets in San Francisco. I was having a blast like a little kid. I rode back to the mission and was cruising around on the bike when two beat cops rode by slow. They see me every day walking up and down the block so they knew damn sure that wasn’t my bike. They slowed down and cruised next to me.
“Better get rid of it.” The cop said before they took off. They must have got a call or something, either way I knew next time he saw me he would arrest me for this stolen bike.
I rode across town to a real big bicycle store. I walked the bike inside. There were a bunch of kids working and one old man.
“What can I do for you?” The old man asked me.
“How much is this bike worth?” He looked over the counter at the bike for a moment, then at me.
“About two grand new. Why? You looking to sell it?’
“Yeah. I’ll take four hundred for it. ok?”
“No problem, as soon as you can show proof of ownership. Like the receipt from where you bought it, or the bill of sale from who you bought it from.”
“I’ll go get it. I’ll be right back.”
“Sure you will.” He said sarcastically. I wheeled the bike out of the store. He knew it was stolen. I got on the bike and one of the kids from behind the counter was outside waving me around back. I rode over to him and he held out four crisp hundred dollar bills. Neither of us said a word. He handed me the money and I got off the bike and walked away. I was so happy my feet could barely hit the ground. On the one hand I was glad I had come up so hard. On the other hand I knew I was just digging a bigger hole for myself to get out of.
I got back to the mission and Indio was waiting on the corner.
“How’d it go?”
I flashed the four crisp hundred dollar bills. Indio’s eyes lit up.
“Lets go carnan.” We took off and met Jose on Seventeenth and Howard and got some dope and coke.
“We just got this.” Jose said. “ My brother just got back from Mexico. Try to sell a lot.”
Me and Indio took the dope and took off running.
“Lets go to the bart station.” Indio said. We used the bathroom at the bart station a lot. You didn’t have to have a ticket. You just ask the girl in the glass box at the gate if you could use the bathroom and she would buzz you in.
“You first.”
The girl buzzed me in and I went into the bathroom. I set up my works on my porcelain desk. That’s what I called the tank on the toilet. I bet at this point I had shot up in every bathroom in the city. Some more than a few times. I looked at myself in the mirror. I was a mess.
“It will be better in the next life.” I said to myself. I wasn’t trying to die or anything like that. It’s just what I said when I shot up. I guess I was hoping out loud that it would be. I plunged that syringe into my jugular vein and saw the blood run into it and mix with the water. Once again I woke up on my back. I heard a mans voice.
“Boy. I didn’t think I was getting you back. You were as blue as my jeans.” A paramedic was looking at me. I was laying on my back with my shirt cut open. I looked out the open door way and there was Indio and about twenty people looking at me.
I stood up real quick and was breathing hard. Really hard long deep breaths.
“You might not be so lucky next time.” The paramedic said. There were two paramedics with all their life saving stuff all spread out on the floor all around me. They started cleaning up.
“Can I go?”
“You probably should before the cops get here.” He said. “You know somebody probably called them.”
I walked out of the bathroom quick and up the stairs out of the bart station. Indio was following me.
“What happened?” I asked him.
“About a minute after you went in some lady got off the train and wanted to use the bathroom. I didn’t even know you fell out. She started screaming ‘Man down” and that she could see your feet through the vent in the door. The girl in the booth called the paramedics. I took them about ten minutes to get here. When they got the door open you were blue homeboy. I mean it. They worked real fast and blasted a shot of something through your chest and in like one second your eyes opened.”
“No shit.”
“That was real shit homeboy. I never seen anything like it.” We got away from there and went a few blocks away so Indio could fix. I was kind of dazed from overdosing and still breathing hard from whatever shot they gave me. That was the third or fourth time I almost bit the big one. The only thing I thought was sooner or later I probably won’t be so lucky. Part of me didn’t care. Part of me wanted out. It was an internal battle and I was losing.
47
Indio got busted for the third time and they sent him upstate. To the big house. The penitentiary. There was a revolving door from the street to the pen. Big prison issue killers would get out go right back to the street. They would head straight to the mission and hit the street hard all rested up. Been doing pushups for years.
There was a six foot seven inch black guy with real light skin named Albino. He wasn’t albino, that’s just what everyone called him on account of him being so white. Albino was ruthless. I’ve seen him hold dealers up by their throat with one hand till they gave up all their stash and money. I was standing on nineteenth and mission the first time we met.
“What you got Homeboy?” he asked me. He was standing there with some young girl.
“Quarters and dimes. Dope and coke.”
“I got sixteen bucks. You give me a dime of each?” I thought about it.
“Sure.” I figured he might come back, become a return customer. I spit out two balloons and gave them to him. I stood there waiting for another customer. That’s what I did. I stood on a corner and sold dope.
“HEY HOMEBOY! I WANT MY MONEY BACK!” Albino was screaming at the top of his lungs as he walked back up the block. I stood where I was. Maybe he wasn’t talking to me. He walked right up to me and kept screaming. He towered over me and he out weighed me by about two hundred pounds.
“I WANT MY MONEY BACK HOMEBOY.”
“Why’s that?” I stood my ground.
“Cause those dimes were too little.”
“No they weren’t. They were fine. Nobody else complained.”
“CHECK IT OUT HOMEBOY. YER GONNA GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK.” He was making a commotion towering over me screaming. People started looking. This aint good I thought.
“IF I DON’T GET MY MONEY.”
Then I heard a loud CRACK and Albino fell to the floor. A skinny white guy named Pete was standing behind him with a ball peen hammer. He had cracked Albino with that hammer on the top of his head. It didn’t knock him out though. Albino was too big. He got up on one knee dazed. Pete wailed him again this time knocking him out cold. A pool of blood s
tared to form around his head. I was sure Pete broke his skull.
“Come on. Let’s go. Before the cops show up.” Pete said and we took off. Pete was a prison issue dope fiend in its purest form.
“I been waiting to get that piece of shit for a year.” He said as we ran down the block. I heard he got cut loose. He robbed me last year when he was on the street. I been waiting. I knew he would show up. I was eating a burrito and I heard him yelling. I walked in the back of the restaurant and the first thing I saw was that hammer. The cooks were yelling at me to get out so I grabbed it and ran.”
“Thanks.” I was truly grateful.
“He’s lucky that hammer was the first thing I saw. If I saw a knife he’d be dead right now.”
We found an alley and fixed dope and then hit the street. Albino got taken to the hospital with a busted skull. Everyone on the street was talking about how Pete was gonna be dead when Albino got out of the hospital. Pete wasn’t tripping though.
“I can’t wait to see him again.” He would always say. I stared running with Pete for a few weeks. I would stand on a corner and Pete would be a few blocks away looking for a customer. When he found one he would walk the guy over to where I was standing.
“What you got Homeboy?” Pete would ask me. Like he barely knew me.
“Quarters and dimes. Dope and coke.”
“You got the money?” Pete would ask the guy, and as soon as the guy looked down at his pocket, BAM! Pete would hit him with a knockout punch. Usually the guy would be out on his feet sucking air in as he fell to the ground out cold. We would rifle his pockets and take off. Pete would knock out six or seven guys a day, every day. He broke his hand one time and that slowed him down for about an hour. He wrapped it up and continued his assault on the neighborhood.
The days started running one into another fast. I didn’t even know what month it was let alone what day it was. My life had become a constant pursuit of getting high and not getting arrested.
I had a new place to stay. I would go down the escalator to the bart on the south east corner of sixteenth and mission. Halfway down I would hop up and crawl into this real small space where no one could see me. It was just big enough for me to lay down in. I lived there for a few weeks. It was getting cold and I would stuff my clothes with newspapers and cover myself with whatever I could find for warmth. I was totally sick of this life but I had no idea how to stop it.
There were these bible crusaders that would walk around trying to save junkies. Twice a week they would walk down the mission and take anyone back to their house who wanted to go with them. They had a big house on Cesar Chavez avenue, and it was communal living. This was my first attempt at getting clean. I walked down to the house and knocked on the door. The guy who answered had seen me on the block a few times. He knew my story probably better than me.
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes you do. Or else you wouldn’t be here.” He opened the door. “No drugs in this house.”
“I know.” I stepped inside. We walked over to the kitchen table and sat down. There were kids all over the house. Everyone was cleaning. Everyone was looking at me.
“Here’s how this works. My name is Rick Anderson. I’m a counselor here. This is a state run facility to help people like you. People on drugs. This is communal living, do you know what that means?”
“Everyone works together.”
“Exactly. Everyone works together. We do a bible study twice a day.”
“What if I’m not a big believer?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s all about finding a higher power than drugs. You can call that higher power whatever you want. We also do missionary work in the streets three times a week.”
“I know. I’ve seen you out there.”
“How strung out are you?”
“How strung out you think? Strung out bad.”
“How bad?”
“I shoot about forty speedballs a day. From the minute I wake up then basically whenever I can.”
“Expensive habit.”
“You’re telling me.”
“You are gonna get sick. Have you got any drugs on you now?”
“No.” I lied. He probably knew it.
“It’s almost dinner time. Why don’t you get cleaned up and I will introduce you to some of the guys. After dinner we have a meeting.”
“What kind of meeting?”
“Nothing formal. We just talk about what we’re feeling. How grateful we are to have found the lord and to not be on drugs.”
“Oh.”
I got up and went to the bathroom. I had two dimes of dope and a dime of coke. I mixed it all up and shot it. I looked at myself in the mirror as my eyes were rolling and I had to grab the sink so I didn’t fall down. That was my last shot I said to myself. I threw the syringe and works out the window and they landed in the alley. I came out of the bathroom and everyone was just sitting down. I sat down next to a kid named Robbie that I knew from the street.
“I thought you got arrested.” I said.
“I did. They gave me three months in Bryant street. When I got out I hit the street, copped some dope from a guy from the tenderloin. He came back ten minutes later with his buddy and robbed me. They beat me senseless. I guess I had enough. I remember these guys walking up and down mission so I thought I would give it a try. Been here ever since.”
“How long is that?’
“Almost three months.”
“Wow. Long time.”
“Seems like three days. Time seems to stand still here. On the street time is flying by. Probably cause we are wasting so much of it. Flying by so fast we can’t even notice it. “
I thought about that while I ate, how much time I had wasted. I had been living outside for almost two years. Hadn’t spoken to anyone that I knew before. A couple of my friends had come out from the East coast to try and save me once. They heard how bad I was doing. You now you are doing bad when the news travels across the country. I started drifting thinking about the past. It seemed a million years ago.
About six months earlier I was walking out of an alley and I looked up and saw a friend of mine named Big John walking with Albino. Now John was 3500 miles from home and Albino is not any friend of mine so I stopped walking. Albino pointed me out.
“THERE HE IS!” I started to take off.
“Where you gonna run?” John said.
“What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.”
Me and Big John had gotten high plenty of times together. John is like six foot six and used to sling dope called Original Formula on the Lower East Side. I met him in Miami years earlier when me and a few other people, A.J. and Joey Vomit lived in a night club called the Junkyard. This was the poor peoples night club. It wasn’t all glam like the other clubs above fifth street. Doing dope was how we passed our day.
John handed Albino twenty dollars and he took off. We went to a restaurant in the height and had lunch. I went into the bathroom three times during that lunch to shoot up. There was no helping me.
“You ok?” Rick said to me. I looked up and everyone was looking at me. I had nodded off thinking about the past.
“Yeah. I’m ok.” I ate my food in silence. After dinner everyone cleaned up together. This was the first time in a long time that I didn’t have dope in my pocket. The anxiety was growing every second. It’s in my body or in my pocket. I got it or I’m on the way to get it, or I just got back from getting it. That’s the drill.
We all gathered in a big room and it was exactly like an NA meeting. I never been to an NA or AA meeting, but that’s what they said. Everyone was sharing their past experiences, and talking about how grateful they were to have not done dope today.
Hearing their stories just made me want to get more dope. One thing I knew for sure was I had to get off dope myself. I couldn’t do it with help. Then I figured I would always need that help. I wanted to be in control of myself by myself
.
I waited till everyone was asleep and I snuck out of my bunk. I tip toed to the front door and opened it quietly.
“If you go out that door you can’t come back.” I almost jumped out of my skin. It was Rick. He was standing in the darkness. He stepped into the light.
“Those are the rules. It’s not a revolving door. Once you go out there’s no coming back. This is a big decision for you. You can go crawl back into your bunk if you want. No one will know.”
I thought about it for a moment.
“Thanks.” I said as I opened the door.
“Good luck.” Rick said.
I hit the street and ran back to the mission. I literally ran like it was a race. The whole way back all I could think about was getting high. Getting well as fast as I can. And how difficult this is going to be to take my life back. I had just failed my first real attempt.
48
Hitting the street with nothing was like starting again from the beginning. I had to middle deals and come up again. I did all the dope I had before I went to the rehab. It was getting harder and harder to be a street dweller. It was taking it’s toll on me. I was just getting sicker and weaker on my liquid diet. I was hungry. I needed food, a place to stay.
I would get a to-go container and stand outside a nice restaurant and wait till some people left the table with some food on their plate. Then I would run in and take the food before the bus boy would grab it. Nine out of ten times I would get chased out by the staff but I ALWAYS got the food. I knew which stores threw out the food with a one day expiration date on it. One day old isn’t bad I thought. So between stealing to go plates and dumpster diving I would manage to eat.
Life was getting harder and harder on the street. There was always a new influx of people moving in and out of the neighborhood. It never took long for the street to chew people up. I saw these two French kids show up. They made music, like they had a CD of their own music. They thought it was cool to get high. It took about three months before she was giving blow jobs on Howard street while he waited on mission for her to finish. There are literally hundreds of stories like that. THOUSANDS. The street is a monster that is chewing people up.
Becoming A Son Page 22