I knew I had to get out. I used to walk around looking down at the ground. Always looking down searching for something, anything, money, dope, whatever. I know what I was really looking for. Dope. It’s a real drug addict thing to do. I was in the mission on a mission.
I was walking on the mission looking on the ground like I always did and I saw a crack in the sidewalk. In the crack I saw a brown paper bag. I reached down and picked it up and kept walking. I looked in the bag and couldn’t believe it. It was full of balloons of dope. I put it in my pocket and walked down the block. I crossed the street and walked back up the other side and went in the burrito shop across the street from where I found the bag. I bought a burrito and I sat there and waited. In about ten minutes a bunch of dealers walked over to the spot where the crack was. One of them reached down and freaked. They all started looking around. I sat back and ate my burrito with a smile. I knew the dope I had found was real.
I walked over to a friend of mine named Jay who lived a few blocks up on Mission boulevard. Jay was an older degenerate junkie, about sixty years old, living on the mission for years. We rebagged all of the balloons. In each balloon was a gram of dope or coke in a piece of plastic, then it is burned shut, then it goes into the balloon and gets tied with a knot. So it is about the size of a green pea. That way you can hold a bunch in your mouth and swallow them if the cops show up.. I had to change the color of the plastic and the balloons on all of them. There was about twenty grams of each. It was almost an ounce. This was a BIG come up.
Jay called one of his friends who bought ten grams of each off me. This gave me enough money to get a hotel room for a few days. I went a holed up in the hotel room for a few days just shooting speedballs. I would wake up and hold my first breath, look in my hand mirror and plunge the needle in my neck, then sit there rushing out. Then do it again. Over and over and over. My whole world was the needle.
After a few days my money ran out again. I got kicked out of the hotel. I was once again homeless on the street. Staying in the hotel made me remember what it was like to live indoors.
A few days after that I was shooting dope in a parking structure with a few other junkies. We had all filled up our syringes and were just about to fire up, when six cops came running into the parking lot. Everyone went running in every direction but the cops caught us. As the cop grabbed me I sprayed my Speedball out in the air, so all they got me for was drug paraphernalia. There was not enough dope in the syringe to charge me with possession. It didn’t matter though. I had been busted enough that the judge gave me six months. It was probably the best thing to happen to me in a long time.
I knew I was going to do at least four of the six months. I got sent to a way bigger state jail than what I was used to. It wasn’t the pen, just one step under.
There’s no big story to tell about being locked up. Basically time stands still for you while it goes on for everyone else. Jail is like gladiator school. If you came off the street you weren’t too freaked out by jail, at least I wasn’t. Don’t get it wrong jail is not the place anyone wants to be. But if you came off the street, which is a monster, jail is a place to rest up, sleep and eat. Imaging how bad life has to be for jail to be a relief. Real bad.
I had zero money when I got caught so I was put on an indigent program. I got two pencils, two pieces of paper two stamps and two bags of skittles.
The first thing I did was draw on the two envelopes and start my hustle. I would sell one envelope fully drawn for two items on the commissary. Same hustle different jail. The drawing gave me something to do to pass the time. Everybody wanted something drawn on they’re envelopes. There were other guys that did the same hustle and we all sat at the same table drawing all day long.
Nights were harder. I couldn’t sleep. I don’t think I slept for a year. The speed freaks, crankster gangsters would come in and sleep for days, miss every meal. The dope heads couldn’t sleep at all. The usually stayed up all night partying. I mostly couldn’t sleep cause I was thinking about dope. I would lay there and dream about it all night. It was torture. I was torturing myself and I knew it. But I lived for it. I couldn’t wait to hit the street again.
They gave everyone an intelligence test in the jail. I guess that was to help you see what you were capable of, what you could accomplish on the outside, when you got out. In all the times I had been locked up, I had never had any kind of rehabilitation done. This was the first time. Usually the only thing you do inside is TIME.
There was another guy there with the same birthday as me named Danny. Same age and everything. We became friends.
Everybody was getting called in to have an interview after the test. Some guys were all about getting help, being rehabilitated, not coming back. Some guys had more lessons to learn. I got called into the interview room. There was a young black man sitting behind a desk. Younger than me.
“Sit down. Relax.” I sat down in the chair in front of his desk. It felt like the principals office.
“How are you doing here? You like it?”
“Is that a joke?”
“Not at all. I am wondering why you are here. You see, you scored higher on the intelligence test than anyone ever did in the history of this institution.”
“You’re putting me on. For real?”
“Yes for real. You only missed one question. So I ask you, why are you here?” I thought about that.
“I like getting high.”
“A little too much. I see you have gotten arrested quite a few times in the last year and a half. If you keep going the way you are going, you are going to be spending a good portion of your life incarcerated. Is that what you want?”
“No sir.”
“Then I suggest you use your brain, because you have a good one, and figure something else out. It would be a shame to waste what you have. I can’t change things for you. Only you can. This test was designed to help you figure out what you are capable of doing and what you would like to do. You on the other hand can do anything you want. I would think you have gotten high enough by now. There is nothing left to learn doing drugs. Time to learn something else.”
I sat there thinking for a moment. For some reason his words had some impact. I got up to go and I turned back.
“How did Danny Williams do? He has the same birthday as me.”
He flipped through the files, read a page and looked up.
“Not as good as you.” I turned and left. For some reason I thought since were born on the same day we would score close. Guess not.
The days passed quicker than I thought and before long I was walking back down the mission. That is some shaky ground to be walking on. Fresh out of jail, old stomping grounds. First day back. Old habits do die hard. I had a friend put a hundred dollars on my books for food which I never spent. I saved it for this day to buy dope.
I was walking up and down the mission deciding if I was going to dive back into that pool. I knew I wanted to get high, I just didn’t want to go back to what I was. I was done being a junkie. I didn’t want to be that anymore.
The street was changing. Crack had now been invented and the street had got more ruthless with crackheads all over it. They are a different breed.
When I got inside I wrote down all the dealers numbers I could remember. It was about ten guys. I saved that piece of paper till now. I walked over to the pay phone on seventeenth. I used to walk up to this same phone and use the chrome as a reflection to shoot dope in my neck. Soon as I would start cleaning it off every junkie on the street would run.
“You’re gonna bring the COPS.” They would scream at me. I didn’t care. But now I did care.
As I looked at the phone I knew I didn’t want to go there again. I had to make a calculated plan. I knew this wasn’t going to be in any way easy. In fact this was going to be the hardest thing I had ever done. Taking my life back. I decided then I would not use the needle anymore. I was dying to get high so I decided I would back track one step at a time. I would smoke dope
like when I first started. On tin foil, chasing the dragon. And no more coke, no speedballs. Just dope. Heroin. I would retrace my steps and regress back into what I was before this all started. That was my plan. It seemed like the only way to become what I once was. If I lost my keys I would have retraced my steps till I found them. I figured I would go in reverse and retrace my steps till I found my life again.
I picked up the receiver and three of the seven numbers I had answered. I ordered three grams, one from each dealer. And I made the appointments fifteen minutes and a few blocks apart.
I met the first guy on Seventeenth and South Van Ness. Mario. I used to knock people out who owed him money for a quarter gram of dope. He owed me a few quarters that he never paid me, from before I went inside. He would get me to knock them out then not pay me.
“Weddo. Long time.”
“You got it?”
“Yeah. You got the money.”
I showed him the money. He took out the gram and I grabbed it from him.
“What you doing ese. You gonna get killed like that.” I put the gram in my pocket and knocked him out cold.
“Who’s gonna get killed? Not me. I owed you that.” I met the other two guys separately and did the same thing. The second guy took off running as soon as I took the gram. I used Pete’s tactic on the third guy, as soon as he looked down to his pocket I knocked him out cold. People always look down at their pocket when they reach into them, it must be physics or something.
I took off running out of the mission as fast as I could and ran all the way to the Greyhound bus station. I bought a Nestles crunch bar because it hand tin foil wrapped around the chocolate. It was the only candy bar that did that. All the junkies liked crunch bars. I went in the bathroom and smoked some dope. It was as sweet as I remember. I got loaded and I felt that I was on my way to recovery. I had a plan.
I figured I wouldn’t come back there after I robbed those guys. In reality there was a revolving door of guys coming up and down from Mexico. They never stayed long. It only took a few months till they either got caught, deported or split on their own. I probably would have never seen those guys again, but I wasn’t coming back.
I had to get out of the city but I didn’t know where to go. I had been living out doors on the street for long enough. I couldn’t go home. I didn’t want to go anywhere that I had done dope already. I thought it was a geographical problem. It’s not. I was the problem.
I had a friend from Miami, Joey Vomit who lived in Tacoma and was painting houses. I called him up and he said his boss would hire me. I figured I would try it up there. I just didn’t want to be where I was, doing what I was doing, so I split. I got on that bus with three grams of heroin, the clothes on my back and a habit.
I was sad as I left the city. It was night and I was watching the people walk around living their lives. They all looked so normal. I felt anything but normal. I was sad but excited. I guess I like a challenge. The previous challenge was to get high. Now the challenge was to not. Challenge accepted. As we pulled on the highway and headed north I was more excited than I had been in a long time.
49
“Come on get up. We’re gonna be late.” Joey said as he ran into the kitchen to grab some coffee. I had another sleepless night. I don’t think I slept through the night for over a year. I would lay there, night after night and think about dope. I would fantasize about getting high tossing and turning all night long.
The first year was the hardest. I was off the needle and hadn’t done dope in a long time. I relapsed once in the first year. Anyone who says they put dope down and never picked it up again is either a liar or as strong as the rock of gibralter, or stronger than me
It didn’t take me long to find dope in Tacoma. There was a block downtown where people were slinging dope and coke. There is a street in EVERY town where people are slinging dope and coke. And a junkie will find it. I found it. I would take my check and buy enough dope on Friday and get loaded all weekend, then be worthless all week. I would beat myself up for letting myself down.
I did this all in secret, never letting Joey or his wife know. They had just had their first kid and she was pregnant with the second. We were painting two houses a day. We did two interiors or two exteriors or one of each every day. I was a functioning junkie. I had taken part of my life back. I was working and paying rent, living indoors. I was off the needle but still smoking it. This was a big step. I still wasn’t off dope yet. My body had taken on a new chemistry.
Like I said you can only become a junkie once. I still couldn’t see past getting high. I couldn’t see the aftermath, which was that I had to lay down for days afterward and recover. Hibernate. I couldnn’t even crawl to the bathroom. It felt like I was run over by a truck. It takes a while to see the whole picture and the whole picture aint pretty, in fact it is more like a horror movie, and I was the monster.
I looked out the window and it was pitch black outside. That’s how it always is at four in the morning. Dope is a great motivator. It got me up every day at four am to go work, then work my heart out all week so I could buy more dope. I was still screwed up and I knew it. I was working to get high. Not good.
I painted houses and lived with Joey for a few months. Once again I knew I had to get out of there or sooner than later or I would be back where I was.
Me getting high near Joey and his pregnant wife and kid was not the best place for me and I knew it. I had to make a new plan. As soon as I found dope in that town I knew I was done. I was still running. Running as far and as fast as I could from myself.
I used to skateboard all over. I had a Z deck that I shaped myself with a jig saw with independent trucks and Kryptonic wheels. Real old school. I have been surfing and skating since I’m nine, and I was still addicted to the adrenalin rush of bombing hills. There were plenty of hills to bomb in Seattle. I had never been up there so me and Joey took the bus up there to skate around. We spent the whole day bombing hills, smoking joints and just being normal. There were all kinds of kids skating in the city, there was a little city made skate park we found.
“Cool board.” A guy walked up and was checking out my skateboard.
“Made it my self.” I held it out. I had designed the deck with magic markers.
“Nice. Where you guys from?”
“Tacoma.”
The guy’s name was Kenny and he worked for a moving company. He offered me a job and I took it. It was time to leave Tacoma for me and keep running. I was copping dope every week, spending my entire paycheck on it, then portioning it out for the whole week and Friday doing it again. It was a vicious cycle that I wanted out of. I tapered my habit down to almost nothing and made a plan to move to Seattle. I didn’t know anyone there, I didn’t know how to find dope there and I decided I wasn’t going to look.
I went back to Tacoma, got my stuff, smoked the last of my dope, threw out the remnants, swore to myself I would never do it again, AGAIN, said goodbye and took the bus to Seattle.
I took a room in a hotel on hotel street. Hotel street is like skid row in Seattle. It was where all the cheap hotels were. A lot of Alaskan fisherman were staying in the hotel I was in when they would be in between voyages.
Kenny picked me up in his truck the next and took me to work. His boss hired me on the spot and sent us out to move a house. I can tell you that moving houses aint no easy work. Try moving a piano down a flight of stairs. Then up another one. This was hard work. Harder than I had ever done. And neither Kenny or me was any type of muscle man.
The moving companies would take the customers to the cleaners. They were charging about two hundred dollars an hour and they would estimate how long it would take to move the house, which was usually about eight hours. I wasn’t getting paid enough to get out of the hotel so I started making deals with the house owners. I would get them to pay me and Kenny each a hundred dollars in cash and we would shave an hour off the estimated time. It was the same price either way for the customer, only the moving com
pany got pinched. Me and Kenny had to work extra hard to make up the hour but we did it. It took the moving company about two weeks to figure it out and fire me.
I had enough money to stay in the hotel for a week then I was back on the street. One of the fisherman talked me into going on an Alaskan fishing voyage. He had just come back with a huge check and was telling me how easy it is. I went to downtown Seattle and went to three interviews over the next week . I had no idea what I was about to get into. I got hired and I came back with my orders. I showed it to the guy who got me the interview.
“You don’t want to go on this boat.”
“Why not?” I asked him. I was already a little freaked out about going into the open sea. The Bering strait. Crab fishing.
“This is this ships maiden voyage. It’s first time out. You never go on a ships maiden voyage. Bad luck.” He showed me some pictures of what I was about to do. It didn’t look fun. On the deck in rain gear, cold as can be.
“Last maiden voyage I was on, the lead got loose and came flying across the deck. Hit my buddy right between the eyes. Split his head wide open. He died instantly.”
Scratch the Alaskan fishing voyage. I probably would have died out there anyway I thought.
My money ran out and Kenny let me live in the moving van. He would park it at night in the yard and I would climb in before he locked the fence. He was the first one there and the last one out each day so no one knew.
The door of the truck swung open. The light was blinding.
“Good morning.” Kenny said.
“For you maybe.”
“Listen. I don’t know how long we can keep doing this. I think one of the workers saw you leave the other morning and I can’t lose my job.” I was devastated.
“Give me another day or two.”
Becoming A Son Page 23