Destiny

In all of our lives, there are moments that seem to be part of a great cosmic plan of misery. Ppl used to ask me all the time how I ended up in San Francisco. It wasn't destiny. I used to listen to the Doors "the End" on acid and think one day I will go out West. The real reason I ended up in California was that someone was going to kill me and I had two choices: New York or San Francisco. Those were the only places where I knew to get heroin. 
I had an apartment on Mcmillian in Clifton. The neighborhood was a mixture of college town, Gay district, place where mentally ill and whinos congregated. I had an apartment there because I was pretending to go to college in between drug binges. My apartment had no real furniture except a matress on the floor and a broken couch. Graffiti and handprints were on the wall. Basically if you were over the age of 18 you came to my place to get fucked up. If you were under age, you stayed on short vine.
I barely knew this person, a friend of a friend. We were hanging out one night when he confided in me that he had $2,240 in his sock. He had owed the loan shark $2,500 but he was coming up short. He knew what that meant. This person had been in prison for burning down buildings. It just so happened that he didn't really care if the people were in them. There were many problems with my evening. The main one happened when this person woke up without his money. Another transient at my shooting gallery clipped him. 
He held me hostage, this person, this friend of a friend. "Bitch if I don't have this money these people are going to kill me so I am going to kill you". After a few hours of looking for the paper trail " you know what, I'm not going to kill you bitch. I'm going to put your eyes out so you can live the rest of your life and suffer."

I didn't lose my life that night or my eyes but I was on the bus to California as soon as I could scrape together the money. I was a fast learner- don't steal, don't trust anyone, and don't stay in one place. I thought it was destiny that made me come to California but really it was fear. Fear that I wouldn't be able to escape far enough without an ocean and a dirty spoon

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Black Tar Heroin 10 questions answered

Image
I want to get this in one place. Here you go When was the film made? The film was made from Dec 1995 to Dec 1997. Originally the film was supposed to be for one year but I believe when HBO picked up the film they wanted two years. How were you picked for the film? Steven met a bunch of different people at the youth needle exchange. He wanted subjects that were slightly younger than me. He filmed a few other people  that never made it into the final film Were you paid for the film? No. I was not paid for the film. he bought me a hotel to stay in for a week and bought me lunch a few times. I think they left some money for me when I was in jail too. Documentary film makers, in general, don't pay their subjects. Was I friends with the other people from the film ? Sort of. I never knew Alice. I met Oreo when he was 15 or 16. He was VERY young when the film was made. His mom used to work the desk in one of the hotels I lived in. Jake and I used to hang out. At one point h...
Read more

Ben (revised)

Image
Ben was heroin addled fantasy from a time when I would rather be with someone that barely loved me than be alone. I had just been released from jail after six long months. I had been using in the jail up until the last 45 days. This is did not give me much time to construct any type of recovery. I had spent most my time of planning for things that would never happen. My first week in jail was spent recovering from surgery. When I was arrested, I had four large abcesses. An abcess is a place where bacteria gets under the skin and the flesh starts to rot. I had to have surgery on my arm. When I took of the bandage, I cried. Not because I was in the hospital, not because I was in jail. I cried because they had sliced open my tattoo! The horror of it all. I used to take a sterile needle and cut them open myself. Needless to say, my nickname was the abcess queen. When I was back on the streets, I felt hopeless. I gave up my homeless encampment living for a hotel with some financial ...
Read more

Jamie

   Being able to fall apart is a luxury many people don’t have. They carry their burdens until it breaks them.  Miss Jamie was one of the most aesthetically pleasing  women I had ever seen in my life. She simply glowed. When she entered a room, everyone had to stop to pay attention. She took that space over. Her smile was radiant. Her energy was infectious. She was a fireball of a human. Her petite frame was always draped with carefully selected skirts, dresses, and form fitting sweaters. She paired this with her signature plum lipstick and acrylics.  She always came late in the day, usually when I had the lowest energy. Yet, I never refused her entrance. I was happy to see her. Happy to listen to her while she held court in my desk area.      On this day, Jamie was wheeled into the clinic by a person I had never seen before. Instead of scrubs, he looked as if he had woken up on the streets. He looked left like a caretaker, more like a pe...
Read more