The other day a friend of mine was playing with his cat. He got out a laser pointer and was zipping it’s little red light along the floor for his blonde kitten to pounce on. That stupid laser pointer reminded me of a crazy experience I had not that long ago. A few years ago I was living in Kansas. It was a short-lived stint in Lawrence, but while I was there my ex-boyfriend and his buddy drove down to visit me. This ex and his buddy were both very funny, good looking, junkies. Junky #1 (the ex) had long hair that occasionally gave him the- oh so appropriate- look of Kurt Cobain. He had arms covered in scars and track marks. He was amazingly soft but also a sarcastic ass. He and his buddy both had a great sense of humor. Junky #2 (the buddy) was a hobo looking guy with scruff on his face and glasses. He and the ex enjoyed walking around shirtless in the summer. Partially because it did get so hot, but also because the buddy’s car wouldn’t run properly unless the heat was running full blast. Heroin was a daily habit of theirs and I told him before he came that they wouldn’t be allowed to shoot up in my house. For whatever reason people have this crazy idea that heroin is a no-good drug that should be kept out of suburban households. Go figure. You mean stealing form your family to pawn stuff, spending time searching for drugs and not working, and lying to everyone around you isn’t ethical or acceptable? Huh. When he finally got to our house he assured me that it would be fine. “I brought booze and that should hold us over.” Later the liar told me they had bought a ton of smack to ‘hold them over’ and the booze was a cover. Sadly, like any good addict the large amount they had purchased for the trip just made it so they could get that much more high before hand, and not have anything to feed their cravings when they got here. I watched, as the boys slowly got more and more sick. They were there for about a week and each day they went without a hit they got more and more gaunt and pathetic looking. Grabbing their skinny stomachs, moaning and bitching about their aching bodies, headaches, nausea, classic horrible with drawl symptoms. The ex would spend his nights sweating so bad but shivering from cold. I had to wash my sheets on a daily basis. Not because of funky lovin or anything but from his pools of sweat. So at one point the ex announces he is going into the city. He wants to go sight seeing ie: looking for dope. I decide to go with them to make sure the kiddies don’t get into too much trouble. The buddy was driving, I was in the passenger seat, and the ex was in the back grabbing his tummy whining about the pain. I remember wearing pigtails and a marijuana shirt. We had an out of state license plate and were 3 white kids in the slums of Kansas City. If you want to look out of place in the ass hole of Kansas City just get a few white kids together and place them in the street. I asked them how they knew where to go if they didn’t know the city. They told me all you need to do is go to the worst part of town and people will pop out of the woodwork. Well they were right in some respects. The further and further we got away from the business section and headed towards the ghetto houses, the more it became apparent that people were dealing stuff. Far away from tall buildings and chic he restaurants where the little shanty houses cramped the streets, people were trying to score. Whenever the car would slow down men would start walking to the car like you would see prostitutes do. People were asking if we were looking for any crack, or wet (which is PCP), meth, or pot. The minute the kiddies dropped the H-bomb people would recoil. Crack-heads would declare “Hell no! I don’t touch that shit!” It got worse and worse. At one point we followed this crazy man around cause he claimed he could find something for them. In his large brown olds mobile with his three children in back he led us all over town. He stopped at apartments and got out to get something, what it was he needed I have no idea. There was a small scene in front of one of the apartments having to do with some lady and her cheating bastard man. There were actually clothes thrown out a window and a lot of swearing and “no he dint’s. The big black man that took us there had surprisingly tiny children. A boy, and a little girl, and a tiny girl probably about 2 years old. The ages probably ranged from 2 to 4 to 6. The little boy had a space ship shirt on and the little girls were clad in a variety of non-matching pink stuff. Soon the little boy got restless and got out of the back seat and into the front. He started dicking around with the stuff up front and the car started rolling backwards. Thank god Buddy had enough sense to jump out of his car and get to the olds mobile and stop it from rolling back. He slammed his hand on the brakes and the big black man who we had been following ran towards us yelling and flailing his arms. When he got there he thanked Buddy and then turned to the little boy who was cowering in the back seat. The boy started crying and the man started yelling. He then began to backhand the little boy and the cried even harder. We all sat there a little shocked. To this day I still feel bad that I didn’t say shit. I just sat there surprised that anyone could hit such a small child. I wish I had stopped him or said something but the man was very intimidating. He wasn’t so hard on the boy in front of us but he made a lot of threats about what would happen when they got home. I just prayed to god that the mother was a little more compassionate. I had a feeling she wasn’t. I think about that man a lot and about the pitch the little boy had in his begging voice. It still creeps me out. So after that little episode the man left to grab his keys and we tried to cheer the kids up. Buddy was really cute and good about offering toys and making jokes. He went into his trunk and pulled out a duffle bag. He showed me a few happy meal toys he had saved for whatever odd reason and handed them to the kids in back. He tried really hard to make them laugh and stop crying. I could tell he felt just as bad. The ex was suffering bad at that point and wasn’t doing much but lazing about the back seat. At one point he casually opened the door and vomited something real gross up. It started getting darker and we had been out hunting all fucking daylong. I couldn’t believe these kids were still going strong. After a while the big black man ditched us and we found our way to a seedy gas station that looked like the place to go if you were looking for something dirty. I remember a crack head coming up to us offering some rock and him smiling a toothless smile and holding out a dirty hand. We asked if he knew where we could get some heroin and he flinched. He pointed at his skinny but trackless arms claiming. “I don’t put that kind of shit into my system! These arms are clean.” Ah yes, the high and mighty crack head. So finally we get this guy who says he heard we were looking for shit and that he could help us out. He jumped into the back seat and told us where to go. We ended up in the back driveway of some sketchy looking deserted house. He told us the shit was inside and that we should give him the money. The ex handed over the cash and then all of the sudden the guy got weird. Things didn’t register right away but I became aware of the fact that there was a little red dot skimming its way all over the car and our bodies. I looked up and out the window into the dark to see this man’s figure holding a large gun. My senses suddenly became aware of the little things. How we all smelled salty from sweat, how my heart skipped 5 beats, how I woke up to my surroundings. I felt amazingly ghetto. Little white girl wearing her pot shirt down in the grossness that is ghetto KC MO. The little red dot was coming from this gun. Every time it was held on my face or on my chest I could feel the heat form it. It was a freakishly eerie feeling. Both the ex and his buddy started talking at the same time. A mix of “hey man” “what are you doing” “it’s ok man” “I just want some dope”. This only made matters worse. The tweak reacted like a frightened puppy. His eyes tried following all of the conversation and he became skittish. At this point I am certain that this guy tweaked out on something. Probably PCP. The best way to treat a tweaked kid is like you would treat a five year old. Well, a five year old with a gun. You don’t want to sound demeaning, but you need to talk like a kindergarten teacher so they don’t feel threatened. It went something like this Me: Hey what’s up man? Tweak: Don’t what’s up me you fuckin whore cop! Give me all your shit. Give me all your wallets! Me: Naw, naw, you got it all wrong we’re not cops. Are you kidding me? Do we look old enough to be cops? (I’m trying really hard to sound cool and calm. My heart is racing but I know that freaking out won’t help) Tweak: No you don’t look like cops, you’re probably rats. You guys are snitches huh? No one comes looking for heroin. Only cops would look for something that hard. And what the hell, three white kids with an out of state license plate? Fuck all of you! (At this point he is waving his gun around making sure it lands on each one of us for a good long time.) I hate rats. (He takes all of our wallets but doesn’t take my cash or card. He just looks at our licenses, verifying, I guess who we were.) Me: Naw you have to listen to me. I know you’re probably freaking out, I mean three white kids looking for smack…way out of the ordinary, but just look at these kids and you know we aren’t pullin your leg. (I then make the boys show Mr. Tweak their arms so he can see their track marks.) Soon he is calms down and gives us back all our shit. He even hands the money back to the ex who hands it right back to Tweak saying, “man please can you get anything?” Stupid, stupid desperate boy hands his money back to the guy who just tried to pull a gun on him. The Tweak is obviously smarter than the ex cause he sees this as an opportunity to get a little money out of this deal. So he tells the junky that he can get him shit and then dashes off. We wait, and wait, and wait and he never comes back. Finally we leave the city without dope, short $50, and having had a gun pulled on us in the back alley somewhere in KC MO. When we get home the boys go straight to the bottle and proceed to get drunk. And I am left with an odd phobia of laser pointers.
Wow. Er, are you sure your bloodstream ended up intact, being that you were intimate with a heroin addict? I hope you escaped that relationship unscathed in every way.
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