Something Special

" I want us to do something special" he says. 

I am sitting in a doorway in the cold. I have on shorts, leggings, wet converse high tops, three shirts, a sports Bra week old panties I will surely throw away, and an Adidas jacket.   

It has been raining for days. I have been sleeping in parking garages and doorways. I can't escape the rain. My wool blanket sucked the rain off the pavement like a sponge. I woke up to pee because I was shivering in the cold, damp darkness. I am coming down from a week on a speed run. I collapsed here yesterday. Now I have to pee so badly after sleeping nine hours under a wet blanket. 

It is after two in the morning. I can tell because the hustlers are out and the bars are closed. Men circle the block to survey the selections. They are not interested in me. I am not afraid sleeping here. Well, I am not afraid of strangers. The rent boys look out for  me when they can. I woke up and found a home run pie and a milk next to my head. Someone cared for me. Cared that I existed. 

I shuffled back from peeing between two cars. I can feel eyes on me but I cannot see more than a few feet in from of me. I lost my contacts a few years back. I am so nearsighted I cannot make out anything but the edges of my environment. I sit back down on a piece of cardboard. I feel the eyes on me long before I see him. 

Here he is- the bane of my existence. My lover and my tormentor. I still have not recovered from when he busted open my face. There is blood on the second shirt. I covered it with a third. He wanted my drugs on the second day. When I didn't do what he wanted, he grabbed me by my hair. We would fight, is his version. I wasn't really fighting. I was defending myself. The more I tried to get him off me, the more determined he was to get me. Then it happened. 

"You are a punk bitch."  

My mouth always got me in trouble. Calling someone a punk was different to him. He had been to prison for manslaughter as a 17 year old. I suspect he had been a punk to a lifer. He had found a way to survive in prison. He hated that term. With precision, he punched me so hard I saw the stars and the moon before my eyes. Blood began pouring down me face and on the hands I used to shield myself. 

There was no one to help me. We were in a public area on a busy street. He stuck his hand down my shirts as if he owned me to grab for drugs. I would "hide" them in my sports bra. He took the contents- my last $20 and a single twenty of speed. He pushed me to the side as if to say he would be back. 

And there he was. He was back. Six days later. I had wiped the blood away with alcohol wipes but my eyes were slightly black. He ignored my injuries. It was if he only looked into my eyes and saw the damage. He brought me flowers. Flowers for fucks sake. I was homeless and he brought me flowers. He handed them to me as if to say everything will be fine. 

"I want us to do something special" he said. 

I threw the flowers into the doorway. Fuck you. What now. 

He asked me to open my mouth. He wanted to see if I trusted him. If I would let him in. Would I let him close to me. He crouched down. I never saw his face. I wasn't looking at him. I could smell the cheap cologne. He had been on a date. Or two. I hadn't seen him in days. I hadn't eaten in days. I wanted my milk. I wanted my home run pie. I closed my eyes. I tasted the bitterness. Acid. He gave me acid. I haven't eaten and he gave me acid. A date must have given him some acid. Now I am going to trip through a world I can't see with a man who beats me and yet I am forced to trust him because this is my life. What a trip. 


Comments

  1. dukettaFebruary 7, 2014 at 3:11 PM

    Holy freakin' cows, Tracey! I hope you at least got to eat your pie, and drink the milk. Acid on empty after a speed run? Yikes!

    ReplyDelete
  2. RocketQueenFebruary 8, 2014 at 11:32 PM

    Wow. I can relate to this post on so,so many levels im in tears... Love your writing. Keep fighting the good fight.

    ReplyDelete

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