Fresh Pack of Smokes

by Cass Blanchard

  Fresh Pack of Smokes

  Fresh Pack of Smokes

  Cassandra Blanchard

  2019

  Copyright © Cassandra Blanchard, 2019

  all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, www.accesscopyright.ca, info@accesscopyright.ca.

  Nightwood Editions

  P.O. Box 1779, Gibsons, BC, v0n 1v0, Canada

  www.nightwoodeditions.com

  editor: Amber McMillan

  cover design: Angela Yen

  typography: Carleton Wilson

  Nightwood Editions acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays. We also gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Government of Canada and from the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  This book has been produced on 100% post-consumer recycled, ancient-forest-free paper, processed chlorine-free and printed with vegetable-based dyes.

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Blanchard, Cassandra, 1987-, author

  Fresh pack of smokes / Cassandra Blanchard.

  Poems.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-0-88971-352-9 (softcover).--ISBN 978-0-88971-142-6 (ebook)

  I. Title.

  PS8603.L35314F74 2019C811’.6C2018-904790-9

  C2018-904791-7

  for my family

  Contents

  Part One

  xxx 17

  Beginnings 18

  The Fuzz 19

  People 20

  Carl Rooms 21

  Tales 22

  The Astoria 24

  Partners 25

  Biographies 26

  Characters 27

  Spanish Villa 28

  Jail 29

  Camp Cupcake 30

  Women 31

  Dramatis Personae 32

  Maple Ridge 33

  Market and Metal 34

  The Drunk Tank 35

  Shelter 36

  Perfume 37

  VGH 38

  Stars 39

  Part Two

  Varieties 43

  Battles 44

  Fear 45

  Love I 46

  Dial-a-Dope 47

  Behaviour 48

  Pills, Booze and Weed 49

  Love II 50

  Don’t Worry it’s Only Psychosis 51

  Streets and Avenues 52

  Love III 53

  Food 54

  Trips 55

  Love IV 56

  Hallucinate 57

  Copper 58

  Love V 59

  Targets 60

  How Goofs get Killed 61

  Lonely Men 62

  Love VI 63

  Rush 64

  Pay Phone 65

  Bunk 66

  Domestic 67

  Love VII 68

  Part Three

  Witness 71

  High 72

  Dealer 73

  Native 74

  Theft 75

  Females 76

  Vermin, Bugs and Birds 77

  Health 78

  Hospital 79

  Hope 80

  Drying Out 81

  Never Ending 82

  Triggers 83

  Detox 84

  Shadows 85

  Upstanding Citizen 86

  Clean 87

  Differences 88

  Streets 89

  Notes 91

  Acknowledgements 93

  About the Author 95

  There is a silence where hath been no sound,

  There is a silence where no sound may be,

  In the cold grave—under the deep deep sea

  – Thomas Hood

  Part One

  xxx

  I must have turned a thousand tricks over those six years, you name it I’ve done it, the perfect whore, young-looking so the men buzzed around me like bees on honey, you have no idea how many men see working girls for a quick blow job in the car after work before going home or taxi drivers or stockbrokers, all kinds like the author of children’s books or the man who was a politician in Native self-government or probably your boyfriend or husband, there are the real cold mean ones and the okay ones who were not that bad and I mostly had middle-aged married white men and I guarantee that you know someone who has paid for sex; once I did a blow job where he blew his load in exactly three seconds or the vampire-looking dude with a foot-long boner that made me almost piss myself, but it’s always been strictly business, I’ve been around the block for sure. At a Québécois rehab centre, there was the gender rule, no breaking gender, as in no fucking with either gender and of course I broke that rule multiple times, at night when everyone was asleep I would slide into bed with my woman and quietly make her cum, I couldn’t not do it and it didn’t help when a chick would get a crush on me, I guess I had to break the rules, it felt so good to be bad—I’ve never even been on a date before, it has always been straight to screwing, I guess it would be nice to go out for dinner rather than sleeping with someone in secret, for two years we were together, the violent psycho and me, the pushover, but damn we clicked in the sack and everywhere too like in a semi or on the bus or outside, the only time we got along was when we were fucking, this bitch was a sociopath, I swear her eyes had nothing behind them but even though I was in danger around her, she made me feel safe and made me feel like I was losing the hamster wheel race, seriously though, I’ve had enough to last me three thousand years and that’s nothing to be happy about, being for sale ain’t nothing to be proud of.

  Beginnings

  In the beginning I had no real knowledge of drugs as they came into my life through a series of bad decisions and being in the wrong place at the wrong time—I look back and think of how naive I was; it all started with a panhandler, her name was Anna and I always gave her change and one day I sat beside her and that became a routine until someone else came by and she was a snaky manipulative thing called Jane. Soon we started hanging out and she cut up a line of crystal meth for us, I was a little drunk and snorted that up rather quickly as I thought it was crushed ecstasy, not jib, and the next couple days were spent snorting and drinking and hallucinating green army men on the mountains, I never smoked crack until a few months later as I realized that meth was destroying me like how jib was coming out of my pores or seeing shadow beings or rotting my mouth, so when a friend lit the pipe for me I was stupid and glad for it as the high was better even though I wanted more as soon as possible, so there it was the beginning of the long spiral down, sometimes I look back and think how dumb I was and how thorough this addiction was and that being too trusting and believing in the good in people was my downfall.

  The Fuzz

  I’ve had my share of dealing with the police and I’ve noticed things over the years, like the fact that female cops are stricter than males, it seems that they’re trying to prove something cuz they’re women and don’t want to seem weak, they search people more too, I admit if I see a cop nowadays my heart does a tiny little jump cuz for so long I kept
six and tried to avoid them as much as possible, and how funny it was when cops walking will clear a block faster than anything—like a scattering of rats—but the most intense encounter I’ve had with the fuzz was when I threw knives at them wanting them to shoot me but they didn’t and instead I got tackled so violently I limped for the next couple months, some are not that bad though like the woman cop that carries around a Ziploc bag of cigarettes who gave me and my friend a smoke instead of telling us to clear out or the cop who talked to me about rehab and treatment or the cop who let me go a few times, of course there are the pricks and cunts who walk around reeking of arrogance and riding a power trip with their flashlights and gloves and handcuffs—once when I was very green and got searched and the cop took my pipe and told me I could be arrested especially if there was lots of resin and then he gave it back to me and told me he was trying to school me and to get lost, needless to say I was small potatoes to him, it’s a contradiction because it’s great not having them around but having them around gives a feeling of protection what with all those nasty predators stalking about.

  People

  Of course this place is full of goofs and predators and victims and murderers and it plays by the rules of money and drugs and sex and you will meet the worst of the worst and learn how cold hearts can be, but there are also those who still have humanity and it’s those people I remember the most, like those who opened their rooms for me when I was cold and messed up or the man who didn’t even get mad when I puked inside his car or those who told me their heartbreaking life stories and who walked always on a sharp edge living in the darkness and rain, women who had children they barely saw, or weren’t allowed to see, and families torn apart by addiction, this thing called life, this sadness carried through time; these people will be forgotten and will disappear and fade away and their kindness will go into shadows.

  Carl Rooms

  She smiled a smile that was all gums, apparently she had the shit kicked out of her and all her upper teeth were shattered and she had to get them all taken out—she was so young it was strange that her mouth looked like an old woman’s and even though I forget her name I’ll never forget her gums, we were in Carl Rooms which was a level better than all those bed bug–infested piece of shit hotels; Tecia told me how the janitors in Carl Rooms would sometimes open the tenants’ rooms, those fuckers were like cockroaches roaming around in the hallways, or the two French goofballs who would use the ladies’ washroom and clog it with shit and piss making the chick who cleaned them gag from the stink of it, you have the pregnant dealer who smoked rock and drank Fireball Cinnamon Whisky or the chick who very carefully injected heroin into her neck and spent the next half hour nodding on the floor; I hear stories sometimes told to me, like a son who shoots his uncle in the head and predators hurting daughters in order to get back at the mothers and twenty-two-year-olds who look like they’re sixty and especially unfriendly eyes that watch from the shadows.

  Tales

  One night in Oppenheimer Park, Dan asked me to shit-kick this chick in the face as she owed money and I said no because I didn’t know who she was and I wasn’t about to play with fire so he sat on the bench then stood up and did a flying kick twice to her chin and she convulsed and passed out he said he didn’t want to spill blood because she had hiv, after a few weeks the woman told me she didn’t remember anything and that pissed Dan off; once I sold drugs for a Mexican who could break bats and I was ten dollars short so he smacked me twice on the street and later I got so bloody drunk I slept with him and couldn’t believe I did that, I will never sell drugs for someone again because it’s like being handcuffed, when I first met Jay we got into a screaming match over something I don’t remember, we became great friends because I helped him out and he helped me out and he told me that not wanting to sleep with him made him want to try even more but one time a white guy—he was one of those men who liked big black cocks—it was like ring around the rosy as I sucked the white guy’s cock and the white guy was sucking the black guy’s cock and I found the whole thing rather strange and I thought how people come down here to procure the services of young girls or young boys or cheap women or black guys or females that look young; I had a violent encounter with a former lover, she is so messed up and cruel though she used to treat me well but that went away when she found out how much of a cash cow I am and she no longer respected me and all we did was fight and get kicked out of every place we tried to stay and then after I came out of jail we only saw each other sometimes and the last time we met I called her a bitch and she put her hand on my throat and was very close to breaking my face with her punch when I yelled out, do it! do it! i want you to do it! and her eyes changed and she didn’t punch me because I gave her psychosis, I know how her mindworks, being high on crack makes it easier to be used for cash, all the faces are just a series of blurs with no names and no identities, all I want is cash, I know how to squeeze money out of men they are so simple and yet so dangerous, you see I didn’t care that much and still don’t really care. That might not be normal.

  The Astoria

  The Astoria is the hotel I was most afraid of and it isn’t what I saw or heard or touched, it was what I did not see or hear, the silence was terrifying and I knew the walls had eyes and ears and rooms with people who seemed to never come out, once or twice I rented a room and once I was in someone’s room and both times I felt there was something frightening outside in the halls, there was a liquor store and a bar at the hotel and there was always some kind of show happening but it was the hotel itself that creeped the bejesus out of me and the East Indians who manned the desk, who knows who the fuck they were; I felt like there were ghosts in there.

  Partners

  Sometimes I would partner up with another addict in our endless quest for drugs, I forget her name but I hung with this one woman for a few days and we would take turns buying crack, and also heroin for her, and we would sit somewhere and do dope, when we had to sleep we stayed at her friend’s place and in the morning he gave us money in exchange for a date and we were on the hunt again, however eventually we parted ways and I was glad cuz hanging with junkies was kind of annoying with all the nodding out and the needles and the constant search for heroin to avoid being sick; there were times I would share my dope cuz I would get stuck in the alley if I smoked rock alone, however sometimes I’d think the person I was with was secretly plotting against me, I just really didn’t like using alone, I was hanging with this guy just as company, nothing else, and we were sitting in the park when cops came and they ran our names and it came up that I had a violent encounter with police so they left us alone but the guy was freaked out as he didn’t like violence so that ended that and it went on like that, person to person, things didn’t work out or they did, of course I sought out other people cuz I was lonely and isolated and needed to feel a connection.

  Biographies

  Candy’s hair was her resumé, she was my street mom and she taught me how to behave in jail, taught me where the good places are on the street and who to avoid, she has many street kids as her children, she is the only person I truly respected in that world.

  Taylor works out of the Sunwest, she told me people have different addictions and her addiction is money, sometimes she carries a bat with her to deal with the goofs and miscreants or people who disrespect the place, I have done dates in that hotel and I have to say it felt a little safer than doing shit in a car.

  Tecia and Sandy are mother and child, it’s strange seeing a parent smoke crack with their kid but this kind of thing happens here, they always let me seek shelter and I shared my stuff with them; Sandy has arthritis and needs methadone and is always in pain, Tecia has a psychopath for a boyfriend who stabbed her with a push stick, beats her up and is generally a prick.

  Characters

  This one girl was slender but strong and obviously wired off her fucking mind and this dealer paid her twenty bucks to knock out his worker who was hiding in the
contact centre behind the Carnegie, she was obviously someone to be careful with and she packed one hell of a punch, and there was an older woman who people called Draco, she told me she was a dangerous person and could sense people’s characters and that she trusted me with her keys which was cool but her room was a dump with mice running all over but it was better than outside in the rain, and Sarah was a pregnant lady who nevertheless still smoked crack and drank whisky and was a local dealer and often cuffed people so there was always someone who owed her money, she was pretty popular and was nice to me despite my feelings about women doing hard drugs while with child, and there was a white chick named Dina who defended my honour and punched out this Vietnamese guy and even spoke the language herself, she was a good person to have on your side and we would go on binges until no money was left but over time she grew more haggard as being on the streets sucks the life out of people, and black men down here are very confident and so pushy that they give me the creeps, there was always some black guy trying to get in my pants but Jay was different cuz he was a gentleman, and there was a chick named Gin who frequented the alley behind the Carnegie and wasn’t someone you’d want to piss off, she was this short Native chick with a weathered face who howled like a wolf and tried to pick fights when she was drunk, and Shelly was a woman who you actually really did not want to tick off and she has fucked up those who did and I lived for a few months in the same house with her and we basically got along and even though she was tough she could not escape an ass whooping when she called the guy in the basement a “goof” and like I said before it was like someone poured a bucket of blood all over her.