Znegative
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2010
- Messages
- 6,019
Confessions of a Speed Addict
from a tortured heart
Part I
Speed, crank, Dexedrine, adderall, focalin, methylphenidate, dextroamphetamine, methamphetamine, tweak, propylhexadrine, ice, Tina, go, dope, rittalin, cocaine, mephedrone, MDPV…. The many fractal faces of a demonic succubus, that I, dear reader from the future (be it five seconds from now or five hundred years!), have come to know all too well. She haunts me in my dreams and causes havoc in waking nightmares. Reality becomes a blur, hallucinations an accepted part of life. We shall refer to her as Speed, goddess of beauty, lust and chaos, for the sake of simplicity-though simple, she is not.
I, my friends, and enemies (for there are many out there, I assure you, myself being the greatest), was born on the east coast of a country called the United States of America. The ‘State’ from which I was spawned was known as New York, a cold, fast paced city of sin and debauchery. Competition was a must, progression was key, caffeine a necessity. Oddly enough though, by the time I was of age and in the thick of a heavy junk addiction, methamphetamine was a foreigner who had not yet entered our ports in the great city of immigrants. Yes, she had figured her way into the homosexual bars and sex clubs, but to the general community of hard core drug addicts, meth was a midwestern tornado that we all prayed would soon head east and destroy us all, but for reasons unknown, did not.
I remember sitting in an outpatient program and looking at pamphlets on the wall. One of them entitled ‘Hurricane Tina’. Dramatic, as the mistress has a flair for the theatrical, and enticed I was.
I picked up the fifteen page, poorly constructed, tastelessly written manual of warning, and was seduced. I read of meth mouth, I read of microwaved babies, DEA busts where in one house 12 bath tubs filled with human feces were discovered as the cook had a propensity for slamming speed and stuffing his rectum with random objects until he could contain no more. This, was a drug for me, I thought as I sat there, sweating in misery from the shot of cocaine that I had administered four minutes prior in the facility bathroom.
I did not meet her in true form until my relocation to the bay area, but I did, in the summer of 2012, begin to ‘dabble’ (lie-BINGE) on her more mild manifestations, amphetamine salts and propylhexadrine. I was amazed at how my performance boosted in my field, which was that of an artist, a sexual nuisance I had not yet become, and in fact, found it difficult at this point in time to even maintain an erection.
It is laughable, looking back, but I did not even understand how the drug could cause sexual inhibition, or arrousal in general. No, for the time being, the only thing sexual about the amphetamine family was that I would squirt them up my sphincter for propylhexadrine can be fatal to use intravenously, and amphetamine salts are just too rough of a ride to shoot.
I filled up several diaries in the course of weeks, Volumes 1-18 of my daily, unremarkable life, that could have all been summed up in one paragraph:
Today I went to the methadone clinic. Stopped by Union square, bought four
adderall pills off of Tarzan, squirted one up my ass in the bathroom. I was supposed to head
right back to the apartment to cop dope, but wound up talking about the fact that I may
have anemia which is how I then was convinced to muscle some steroids in the bathroom of
Starbucks. Upon coming home four hours later I picked up some heroin and shot it. Did nothing for
four hours until finally I decided I was bored with being half dead, and squirted some more
amphetamine up my ass, which drove me to research the history of the AID’s epidemic,
various serial killers from southern California, and to draw diagrams of what I imagine my
asthmatic lungs to look like when inflamed past the point of albuterol sulfate being a useful remedy,
and in desperate need of a steroid like prednisone or methyprednisone. Then, more heroin was shot.
And so it went on. Eventually I acquired a prescription for adderall from a local quack that was ‘recommended’ to me by some methadone buddies, and all was well until I lost my medicaid, and apartment. It was then that I relocated to the bay area, where I would lose my sanity and put my life and others’ at jeopardy multiple times both in reality and fantasy.
But before all that, let’s travel back in time, for I had on one occasion gotten a taste of the action, the real action.
The first time I did methamphetamine, had actually occurred several years earlier, when I visited my girlfriend in Oakland. I had missed my flight back to New York City, and in a drug-driven craze, rode the BART (piss poor excuse for public transportation), back to East Oakland, down by the (now famous) Fruitval Station, where I then had to walk about four miles up a hill to one of the Mexicans’ houses that I had been regularly been shooting tar heroin with. I wanted to shoot up coke, but when I knocked on my friendly acquaintances door, no one answered, and so I waited on the balcony, anxious for his arrival.
After about fifteen minutes passed, a car came swerving wildly into the apartment complex, almost crashing into one of the beams that supported the balcony. Five Mexicans lept out of the car, the largest one was named Chad, and he, was who I had hoped to find.
I descended the staircase to say a friendly ‘what sup, bro’, but the huge beast charged at me, and his four friends had to hold him back. He accused me of challenging him to a fight, ludicrous idea it was, as I, dear reader, am 6’ tall and weighed at the time about 120 lb.’s.
It took ten minutes of convincing, but finally, I along with his dark skinned comrades finally persuaded him that I was a friend, and not only a friend, but one who wanted to get high and share the wealth. I asked whether there was any crack or cocaine available for consumption, to which I was told there was not. Chad’s neighbor however, had an abundance of crystal meth, if I was interested.
These were just the words I had wanted to hear. ‘Yes’, I cried, and so we ascended the staircase and entered the second apartment where I handed over a Jefferson in return for what I now look back on and assume was a dime bag’s worth of crystal methampetamine. We then went next door to Chads mother’s apartment, and quickly, in silence, tried to walk past the sullen old woman and into Chad’s bedroom which must have looked ridiculous, five full grown Mexicans and a 23 year old white boy. I wonder, dear reader, what the mother thought we were up to?
Once inside Chad’s domain, which was a typical junky pad equipped with a stained mattress in the corner, rigs and speed pipes strewn about on the floor and walls and ceiling covered in coagulated blood drops, I split open the not and gave half of the speed to Chad and his cronies, and threw a half of what I had left into a spoon, and crushed it up with the back of my plunger before drawing it up. I told them I’d never done tweak before, at which they laughed, and assured me I was in for a good time. Convinced, I found a vein between my knuckles and slammed the tweak into my blood stream. I coughed and felt electricity and rainbows shoot forth from my cheeks. My voice seemed to be lost, but I managed to get out the words, ‘God Damn’, to which the Mexicans again laughed, and slapped me on the shoulder.
And so we went on to talk about my life, what New York City was like, how 9/11 happened, and other cheery subjects. By the end we were all best friends, each Mexican giving me his address and pleading with me to please contact them, and that they would surely soon be paying me a visit in NYC, where I would be their guide, taking them to the statue of liberty, the empire state building, and other such boring tourist traps no real New Yorker wastes his time with.
So that, dear reader was my first experience with Methamphetamine, and what a lasting impression it left. For the next two and a half years I would dream of her chemical seduction, until finally, in the winter of 2014, I would arrive again in the Bay Area, one hundred dollars to my name, and at the utter mercy of the cruel Goddess’s of fate. And what a ride she had in store for me.
Part II
I will not speak much of my homeless struggles, and junk driven missions here. If interested, readers may refer to my autobiography entitled ‘The Age of Narcotic Utopia’. Let it be known, however that I had become homeless in Oakland, strung out on tar heroin, and already living what most would consider rock bottom. Let it also be known, that there is no such thing as rock bottom, as the pit continues to crumble deeper and deeper in such an intolerant society, that even death, would be considered a step up, for at least there would be relief.
In this section, I, the author, will recount my most dazzling moments of shame, bravery, and insanity, in respect to my almost daily intravenous use of methamphetamine. I’m I a better man for it? No, but one of the few delusions I never had was that of being a saint.
Incident: I
Hydraulic Fueled Death Machine Conspiracy
My girlfriend and I had been running heroin from our tent for one of the suppliers in the west Oakland area. This had created some tension and envy among some of our peers, as well as an escalated use and abuse of heroin, methamphetamine and multiple benzodiazepines.
One night, I was sitting in my tent, tweaking as usual, working on one of my panhandling signs. Little Joe had stolen me a nice set of paint markers, so I was going above and beyond the normal, ‘Homeless, Hungry, Broke and Grateful’ that one often saw sloppily scrawled on a piece of damp card board. No this was to be a masterpiece, the word ‘Broke’ written in a slick italic golden font fit for the Gods. Not the sign of a poor man for sure, this was to be a money maker.
Outside I heard my friend Chucky talking to a tweaker we all knew as ‘Bobby’. Their conversation was just background noise at first, until I heard a strange humming sound that seemed to come from the depths of the Earth. I knew however, somehow, that this was no earth quake. I looked over to my sleeping girlfriend, and then continued to work on the sign, trying to ignore the deep growl, that reminded me of some type of primordial monster from another dimension, ala Lovecraft.
After a few more minutes the hum, or growl, stopped, and I could hear Chucky and Bobby talking again, and what they said caught my attention for it was very disturbing.
“Those faggots don’t have to do shit all day, they just sit on there ass, make money, and do drugs for free.”
“Yeah, they don’t realize how vulnerable they are you know, a big open space like this with only one exit, it’s the perfect set up really-if you think about it.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I’m talking about a lick Chuck-Chuck, I say we take ‘em for everything they got.”
Alarmed I sat up straight and pressed my ear close to the side of the tent. The sweat that had felt so uncomfortably hot before, now began to chill my bones.
“And how are we gonna do it?”
“It’s perfect Chuck Chuck, I got the perfect thing for them…And when it’s all over, they’ll wish they were dead, when they’re rotting in Santa Rita.”
Suddenly, I experienced a moment of extreme clarity. My synapses surged and what had once been loose ties, now connected to form a fuller understanding of the conspiracy which had been brewing right in my midst. My friends had set to rob and frame me. Their envy had turned to jealousy, and the jealousy to burning hatred. They were going to torture me, and probably rape my girlfriend, and somehow get the police to arrest me for dealing drugs. I heard Bobby fidget with what sounded like a bunch of wires, he grunted, and then I heard what sounded like a switch being flipped. Suddenly the deep hum began again, though this time it was louder and seemed to pulsate.
“A beauty ain’t she”, said Bobby.
“They’ll never know what hit them.”
There were several ‘Swishing” sounds, and suddenly three areas on my tent lit up. It looked as if there were some type of electrodes hooked up to the exterior side of the wind flap that glowed in and out at different frequency’s of brightness.
It became clear that Bobby had, in a moment of meth'ed up grace, summoned the intelligence to build some hydraulic fueled murder machine. I shivered in terror and grabbed my girlfriends shoulder, squeezing it tightly to waken her.
“What?” She asked, annoyed.
I tried to explain to her in a low whisper, should Chuck and Bobby hear from outside the tent, that there was a conspiracy, and we were to be its victims. My girlfriend muttered something like “I know, it’s ok, just go to sleep.” Frustrated by her seemingly resigned attitude towards betrayal, torture and jail time, I grabbed the crow bar from underneath our pillow.
“You know what you have to do” I heard Bobby say, menacingly.
“Are you sure it has to come to this?” Chucky asked, there seemed to be some hesitation in his voice, and for a moment a small flower of hope sprouted in my chest. Perhaps he had reservations.
“You know it does Chuck Chuck, it’s up to you now, don’t fuck this up.”
“I- I won’t let you down.” I heard Chuck say.
The humming grew louder, the electrodes beamed brighter, I was in a state of panic, adrenaline and meth rushing through my blood. Again, I grabbed my girlfriends shoulder and said between clenched teeth, “He’s going to fucking kill us.”
“I know, it’s alright babe.”
Furious now, I grabbed the crow bar and clenched it tightly with sweaty palms and crept towards the doorway of the tent. I could hear Chucky’s foot steps getting closer. ‘It’s us or them’ I kept telling myself, knowing that the only chance I had in this drugged up version of David vs. Goliath was to take a cheap shot at the back of Chucky’s skull when he tried to enter the tent. The foot steps stopped at the entrance flap.
“Hey Zach”, Chucky said, “Are you awake?”
“Yeah.” I said, tears welling in my ducts.
“Can I get a bag?” He asked.
I unzipped the top of the tent and peered down to see him holding a twenty dollar bill which greatly confused me. I was crying uncontrollably, albeit silently (for that is how I suffer).
“Chucky man, why are you doing this to me..You’re like the older brother I never had. I fucking love you dude, why are you doing this??”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Chucky unzipped the tent to see me crouched there, crying, holding the crowbar which was practically slipping out of my hands due to the amount of sweat I was secreting.
“What’s with the crowbar man? Have you gotten any sleep? What do you think I’m going to do to you?”
I explained my whole theory about the conspiracy to rob and set us up, as well as mentioning the murder machine that Bobby had built. Chucky told me to go to sleep and that it was alright, he’d never let anyone hurt me.
Two days later I got robbed by Bobby, who also hit Chucky over the head with a metal pole.
Incident II
Necrophelic Sex slaying Witnessed in front of my Tent
The entrance to this camp (for there were three camps in the parking lot at this time, which were generally divided among race and drug type-I.E. The Philippino camp, which did tweak, the black camp, mostly crack but some heroin, and then the white camp, which did heroin, meth and crack), was a small cut out hole in a wired gate that surrounded the lot. Our tents were set up against the wall that the lot shared with the tube's wall, and there was always a constant rush of traffic and noise that ceased for about half an hour around three am every morning.
Our tent was the middle one, sandwiched between our friend chucky and Little Joe's tents. We had become practically immobile in the month prior to when this story took place, as we had been running heroin for one of the popular west Oakland connections, and were doing alright for ourselves in regards to our habit. We were never sick from dope or benzos at this point in time, and so involved had we (and here I use the term to include the whole camp) become in our enthusiasm for using speed that almost no one ever had to pay for it, and if they did, no more than five dollars was lost. Best of all, I was responsible for this sudden resurgence in speed use, as I had been the first of the 'junkies' to get plugged in with the meth connects.
The reason for this was rooted in the fact that in the past, most of Oakland's heroin addicts used crack cocaine instead of methamphetamine, and for the first year I was there, the junk addicts scorned speed users and I was something of a rarity for a while, a lone tweaker in a crowd of crack heads. This also made me one of the few heroin addicts that hung out with both junkies and tweakers alike, and through these friendships I was introduced to the more popular meth dealers long before most other dope fiends got on the meth wagon as well.
By the time methamphetamine was becoming a sought after chemical I had long since developed rather strong relationships with the speed dealers, who were in reality, just glorified bums and meth addicts themselves. Because of the high demand and the lack of sources that my fellow heroin addicts faced, I began middle manning the speed, which won me lots of favor in the eyes of the crystal dealers who I started visiting upwards of seven or eight times per day. Because I was bringing them so much business (although I myself was usually spending at most a meager five dollars at a time), I got privileges from some of the dealers, especially when concerning the Philippino tweakers, who's leader was named Mel. Mel would front me whenever I wanted, and would often times get me high for free and give me meth to take back to my camp. Another time, Bill, one of the older tweakers who had been a smack user back in the day but had switched over to meth in the past decade, came by and gave me a 'teener' of crystal (1.75 g's), just because I was one of the few familiar faces still around, and had a mutual friend in a man named Lance.
All this background serves to illustrate a point in time where my accessibility to meth was constant, and at practically no cost, which I took full advantage of. There was not one issue of smack I did that wasn't a goofball (a speedball mixing heroin with crystal instead of cocaine), even when doing my 'night time shot'. In fact, so constant had my crystal use become, that it would sometimes have a paradoxical effect on me, and have me nodding out instead of being spun. This was not to say that I did not suffer from the various ailments caused by sleep deprivation, as this story clearly makes a case and point of.
On this particular night, a junkie named Steve who had recently become a customer and friendly acquaintance, had been supposedly ripped off by another mutual acquaintance named 'Ty'. As the sun was setting we saw Steve walk off with a lead pipe in his hand, declaring for everyone in the camp present that 'he was no pussy', and was, 'born in North Philly', so he 'was going to beat the piss out of Ty'. None of us said anything in response to the drama unfolding itself before our eyes, and we went back into our respective tents to get loaded.
So high I had gotten, in fact, I forgot completely about Steve and his conflict with Ty, and did not remember again until quite some hours later (at around one or two a.m.), when Steve appeared again, metal pipe still in hand. He paced back and forth in front of our tent for a few minutes, before sitting down right in front of our 'doorway'. I watched his silent silhouetted figure for a moment, slowly rotating the pipe in his hands. I was disturbed by his silence and assumed that he had not succeeded in beating 'the piss' (or any other form of bodily excretion) from Ty. I sat up and asked him if he was okay, and in response he looked to the ground and shook his head, while mumbling something about being dope sick. At this point I sincerely did care for Steve and so I offered him a few of my cottons that had quite a bit of tar residue left in them. Steve declined, but continued to mutter that he was dope sick, and that the dope was shitty and didn't get him or his 'friend' Brian 'well' (Steve and Bryan seemed more like a couple than just two friends).
I started to become annoyed with this banter, but again offered him the cottons, which he again declined. When he still continued to complain about the dopes quality I started to become angry, I explained to him that while I liked both him and Bryan, I did not need their business, and to please get there dope elsewhere if what we had was not up to par with their expectations. I further went on to explain that we had no control over the quality of the tar, we did not cut it, we did not bag it, we did not fuck with the dope in any way(which was true). It was simply given to us, pre bagged, and our job was to get rid of it at $20 a piece.
My small outburst, which was really nothing more than self defense against a possible insinuation of tampering caused an exchange of words between Steve and I, and when it was over, Steve woke up Brian and announced in defiance that they were leaving. What happened next was really strange.
As I watched their silhouetted figures pack their things, I became aware of the uniform efficiency with which they seemed to work. Each of them moving as the other did, packing and consolidating their surprisingly large amount of belongings into several suitcases. They looked like soldiers to me, which I found creepy, but what was more disconcerting was the fact that upon completion of their 'task', they did not leave, but instead each walked behind my tent and then crept forward towards the front so there was one of them posing menacingly on either side of the doorway. I looked to my girlfriend, alarmed. She seemed equally disturbed by Steve and Brian's behavior. "What the fuck are you guys doing?" We both asked. No response, their figures just crept closer, Steve was still holding the lead pipe.
"Hand me something big and blunt" I shouted to my girlfriend.
"I can't find the crowbar!"
My mind racing I scammed the ground of my filthy, crowded and diseased enclosure for a suitable weapon. At last my eyes fell upon a steel u-lock, the type for a bicycle. I grabbed it and without hesitation swung wildly at the wall of the tent as a warning that I was not afraid to use violence if necessary. I saw Bryan jump to the ground, and then, body writhing like a snakes, he mozied his way towards the back left corner of the tent. Steve was still standing and looked about ready to swing the pole at me, but I acted preemptively, and swung the u lock at the wall where I thought Steve's head was. I heard him cry out "what the fuck!?"
At this point, the noise of me swinging the u lock against the tent had woken up our friend chucky who camped next to us. Thinking the noise was caused by Steve and Brian, he screamed at them "stop making that fucking noise, and get the fuck out of this camp!"
Steve started to protest, and in the meantime I watched Bryan's figure, which was crouching over a box, his hands fiddling with some sort of device which I took to be a crude explosive. With chucks words I felt encouraged, and decided enough was enough. I jumped out of my tent, my girlfriend following me, took aim and threw the u lock right at Brian's head, which bounced off his jaw. "Yeah, motherfucker!" I proclaimed in triumph, "get the fuck out of here, both of you!"
Bryan lay their tending to his jaw, Steve went over to him but looked back at me and said, "you're fucking crazy man."
"Go fuck yourselves, like I'm sure you already do". I responded and went back in my tent. I heard Steve and Brian walk off towards the front of the parking lot, and soon afterwards, the sirens of an ambulance. I looked at my girlfriend, dread chilling me to the bone, "you don't think he'd snitch on me do you?" I asked.
"I don't know", said my girlfriend, always one to comfort me in times of duress.
I heard Steve being lifted onto a stretcher, and soon I heard the motor start and the ambulance took off into the night. For another hour I still dreaded that the police would be notified, and I stayed up in anxious anticipation.
Then another peculiar thing happened. One of the speed dealers from the black camp whom I suspected of being gay, came over to the tent asking if he could buy a bag for $10 and pay me the other 10 later. I thought I saw him holding a knife, and so I said in a pleasant voice that, sure, no problem at all. Don't even worry about it. The black man, (well call him G), then remarked upon the strange fight that had broken out between me and Steve and Brian. I can't recall what he said, but something in his tone accompanied by the fact that I believed he was holding a blade up to my tent, made me think he was siding with them. In any case he walked away, and my girlfriend urged me to finally come to bed and get some sleep. I told her that wouldn't be possible, what with all the drama this night had brought so far, I'd be unable to sleep for fear of attack. She rolled her eyes and curled up in the sleeping bag. I stayed in the middle of the tent, standing watch, u lock tightly gripped in my sweaty palms.
An hour went by without anything remarkable happening, and I at last began to feel fatigued. It was just I was about to lay down that, would you believe it, Steve, Brian, G, and a forth person who's silhouette I could not identify through my tent walls, appeared. Even more abhorrent, was that the four lined up, with G at the back, and the unknown man at the front. They all disrobed, and to my disgust and horror, began to penetrate each other anally. Then I watched G "withdraw", and walk to the front of the "chain gang", and place a rope around the mystery mans neck. He twisted it in a way that began choking this poor dissident soul, and I immediately swung my u lock at G's head. This time the impact had little effect, and in fact seemed not to phase G at all who continued to strangle the man to death as I watched. When the body stopped jerking from what I presumed were seizures, I saw G's silhouette unsheathe the huge blade he had held to my tent earlier, and begin to carve a line starting from just below the collar bone down past the belly button by several inches. He then, with both hands, reached inside the rigid corpse and desembowled it. When his work was done he silently stood up and gestured to the body. I watched Brian nod his head and walk towards the dead man. He lifted the corpses legs into the air, and began sodomizing the dead body. In turn Steve began penetrating Brian, and likewise, G penetrating Steve. Sickened and terrified by this necrophelic orgy, I sat their mouth open in awe for one hour straight, just waiting for this deadly lust game to turn on my girlfriend and I. But as the sun began to rise, I suddenly noticed that the orgy must have ended, for G, Steve, Brian and the dead man were gone, with not a trace of evidence of the brutal sex slaying to be found.
I found myself feeling very tired, and as I fell into a dream, I wondered if any of it had happened at all.
When I awoke later I realized that there were several holes in the tent where I had swung the u lock, which proved that not all of the nights action had been the product of delirium. But I never met anyone else who claimed to have seen the homosexual, ritualistic sex slaying that was performed right in front of my tent and near bye four of my friends' tents.
Incident III:
The Bra-Wearing Duck attempts to enter the Alameda Tube
One fine day, early in March, though the year in truth eludes me, I walked outside of my tent for a cigarette; after a long night of jerking off and writing rallying cries for an imagined junky revolution which would result in the legalization of heroin.
To my disbelief, there, in the middle Island of the camp, between the two lanes of traffic that merged into one lane that entered the tube to Alameda, stood a large white duck, with a bra around his neck.
Slightly disturbed, but not completely surprised, for such things do happen in Oakland, and in hallucination’s which were by now the normality, I walked over to my friend, Little Chris Miserables’ tent, to see if he was awake. My precaution was absurd, for we had all been awake for days, but these facts elude us at times, and even in a junky camp, there are rules of etiquette. Little Chris unzipped his tent, where I saw him blowing out billowing clouds of speed smoke from his mouth, and asked what was up.
“Oh it’s nothing really”, I said, and asked perhaps if I could come inside and join him.
“There’s not much left”, he replied, “but sure”, and handed me another cigarette as I climbed into the tent. We sat there in silence, both looking at the walls of the tent and feeling very uncomfortable, before again, I spoke.
“You know, a few moments ago, when I left my tent I saw the funniest thing.”
“What was that?”, Chris said between a hacking cough he had developed recently.
“Well, it’s nothing really, in fact, it might not have even happened.” Chris shrugged his shoulders.
We sat there in silence a little longer and I noticed my fingers beginning to tremble. Nervously, I looked out the back window of the tent, just in time to see one of the parole officers park her car behind the gate like she did every day, and probably murmured a word like ‘shit’, under my breath. Then I peaked out the front window of the tent. Once again, I saw the duck, standing there in the medium island, but this time he was starting a slow and surely disastrous voyage into the tunnel.
Seeing my face turn corpse-pale, Chris crouched down besides me and peaked out the opening in the mesh himself. “What the fuck? Is that a duck?” He asked in astonishment.
“I think so”, I said, both of us staring in disbelief.
“What’s he doing?” Chris asked, unzipping the tent. We both stumbled out into the sand that paved the inclined plot of dirt that was our camping ground. Steadying ourselves, we trudged down the little hill to get a closer look.
“It seems he’s trying to go through the tunnel!” I said, “We gotta do something!”
Chris nodded, understanding the graveness of the situation. “It could cause a massive traffic incident.” He added.
And so we stood there without talking or moving for ten minutes until finally a cop car came and parked along side the duck. Two Oakland Police Officers came out, and for a moment looked like they were going to try to catch the duck, but realized it was too much effort and gave up, retreating to their car, where they sat parked along the side of the right lane.
“It’d be better if we went back inside”, I suggested to Chris, who nodded his head in agreement.
Back inside the tent I asked Chris for the speed pipe, even though I was getting progressively sicker and sicker from heroin withdrawals. I muttered something to the degree of ‘I hope my girlfriend is almost finished making our dope money’, to which Chris said nothing and gestured towards the speed pipe which I handed back to him. I laid down in the cramped quarters and tried to make myself comfortable despite the increasing restlessness I felt in my legs. Chris was talking about something, but I wasn’t paying attention, I had entered a dark and depressing place, and no one wanted to hear about it.
A while later our friend Little Joe entered the tent. “You’re girl only needs five more dollars”, he told me. Chris passed him the speed pipe, which he hit. “It’s about time”, I complained, and then, “Here, let me hit that again.” I took in a deep cloud off the pizo and blew out, shouting obscenities and whining of my withdrawal. Joe looked out the window.
“You wanna go head up there?” Chris asked, “She’ll probably be done by the time we walk up the block.”
“Yeah”, I responded miserably. Joe looked out the window.
“Is the duck still there?” Chris asked.
“Duck?” Little Joe looked at us confused.
“Never mind”, we both said in unison, and walked out of the tent.
We walked along the leveled sand of our camping ground and opened the gate that led us out onto the street. Across from us was an old parking lot which had long since been abandoned, and there to our disbelief, we watched as an Animal Control worker chased the duck, who still had the bra around his neck, with a large net. As we approached, she finally captured the rebel bird in one giant swoosh, and pulled him up to her chest.
Chris and I went up to the woman and explained that we had been quite worried about the bird, and told of his failed escape attempt from Oakland to Alameda. The worker ignored us, but did say that the duck had a broken wing and would be brought to a veterinarian clinic. This satisfied us both, and we walked up the block, and into the abyss, satisfied that our senses of sight were not to be completely untrusted, and that sometimes, real life is more surreal than fantasy.
Part III
Final Humiliation
(a.k.a Alone, even with You)
The author eventually left the streets of Oakland, upon finding out that his father had stage four small cell lung cancer. It was not an easy progression from the streets of a savage inner city to the bland and boring Midwestern suburbs where one can see finely whacked lawns fade into the vanishing point of what seems to be infinity. It was not a transition without heart break, the author stresses this point, for two weeks prior to leaving Oakland, he came upon his significant other in one of his speed connects tent, with his female companion being fondled right in front of him, by this intellectually inferior, fucktard-waste of humanity. The author had known and loved the girl for five years, had lived with her for four, in an apartment for two, and out on the street for another two.
The author had thought that they were a team, imperfect, yes, but one of the few examples that proved that love could prevail and get humans through the thickest times of hard ship. The author still believes in the latter statement, but no longer believes love to be a prevailing experience, or a long lasting one. There is either something inherent in the authors’ personality that makes his romantic interests want to cheat on him, or the author figures, that the only alternative is that he seeks out women who will let him down and crush his heart.
The author kicked his junk habit upon transferring to the midwest, and got on buprenorphine maintenance therapy. Though he has not used meth, the author still does, at least once or twice a week, tweak, on propylhexadrine. The last CNS stimulant that is still available OTC in almost all pharmacies nation wide. Through a crude prep using lemon juice (or any acid for that matter), the author extracts the propylhexadrine (a.k.a Hexahydromethamphetamine) from the cotton rod, and drinks the foul tasting cocktail in order to achieve a smooth, and relatively long lasting tweak. It is not out of choice that he no longer uses crystal, but rather credits it to the fact that the author is not a man who knows how to drive, and is therefor stuck in his families home most of the week, and has not formed any connections in the Columbus area.
Propylhexadrine brings the author a fleeting (for all things worth while seem to end far too fast), but still meaningful and useful, sense of contentment that allows him to pursue the creative endeavors he struggles to achieve without stimulant aide, due to his depression and apathy.
The author appreciates his solitude. He is a victim of nostalgia. Certain colors, smells, and sounds can sometimes bring him close to the brink of tears, though he does not allow himself to cry anymore. The author wishes to shut down and compartmentalize his emotions.
The author is not a man of his day and age. He is not an ‘American’, and wonders often, if he is a human being at all. The author is like Johnny Thunders in that, ‘society makes’-him-‘sad.’ Watching young students from OSU go about their daily routine with cheer, brings out an empty feeling inside his chest. Let it not be misunderstood, for the author has few regrets in regards to his drug use and lifestyle, no. The regrets that the author has are more troubling for he regrets, and resents at times, being born. He rejects the society which he was brought up in, finally, after many years of wishing he could be a part of it. There is no place for him, and there never was. Not in a girls’ arms’, not at a university, not in New York, or Columbus Ohio. Maybe, just maybe there was a place for him in Oakland, but the author treads cautiously with such thoughts, for nostalgia can paint a very different picture than what reality was and is, and make a fool of a man.
Facebook, makes him sad.
Instagram, makes him sad.
Hospitals, make him angry and sad.
Doctors, make him frustrated.
Psychiatrists, make him overwhelmed and powerless.
Art, reminds him of how he can never be good enough.
Music, makes him nostalgic.
The author sees beauty in struggle. He see’s beauty in chaos. He see’s beauty in those who are true to themselves. When spun, a man is vulnerable, both to his own insanity and insecurities, and to the will of those around him, if they are bad company. But the author finds beauty in this too. When one has gone so far that they no longer trust their own senses, and choose to resign themselves to death (if it be their time) rather than suffer the humiliation they would find in seeking comfort in others’ assurances, the author finds grace.
On a final note, the author would like to address a question that some readers might have. Aside from nicknames like ‘Christina’, ‘Tina’, etc., why does the author refer to speed as a female? The answer is that speed must be a female, for only a female can be a bitch, and the author is her lonely son.
