As all of us go on about our lives, we leave our mark upon others' lives, to some degree or other. Sometimes, it's to their benefit, other times to their detriment. As I round the corner in the race of life, heading for the home stretch, I think back upon a few people whose lives I influenced, with The Touch of Evil.
I wasn't, and am not, a intrisically evil person. However, when people get on drugs, they do things which are not in their nature. I was no exception. Even if one does not believe in the absolute concept of good and evil, it's still easy to see how ones' actions cause bad things to happen to another, with long-term consequences for them.
One time I was staying at this fleabag hotel Du Jour in San Diego, the infamous Barry Hotel, and was aquainted with the night manager. He ran a amatuer porn studio, paying young girls in meth to fuck and suck on tape. On a side note, one day he was showing me some tapes, when he asked whether I would like to see my girlfriend sucking someones' cock on video. Hah hah, lol, that was NOT funny at the time. I knew she was a whore, but I didn't need to see the evidence smeared on her face, the slut, lmao. Anyways his son, a 15 year old kid, came out to live with him for the summer. I can't believe his Mom could have known what kind of hornets' nest she was sending him into. The Barry Hotel was in the roughest part of the Gaslamp Quarter, surrounded by cracktown on one side, tweakers everywhere, and junkies and other riffraff living in the hotel, basically just a shooting gallery.
When he got there, I used to hang out with him and smoke dope, sometimes I'd take him cleaning windows. I had some professional tools, and that was one of my legit hustles, I had a route. Anyways, one night I had scored some crank, and as usual was preparing to get spun, when he stopped by my room. I am ashamed to say this, but I turned him onto speed, the very chemical that ruined most of my own life. I gave no thought to the consequences, I was just partying with him. As the summer went along, he was doing more and more. Just snorting, but I know from past experience it makes no difference. Then I did something I will forever regret. I knew this older dude, gay, and rich. He had a penchant for sucking young boys' dicks, he was a chicken hawk. He was always asking me to get him a hustler, but although I knew everybody, kids in his age range were in short supply. He offered several hundred dollars, if I could set him up with the kid. So I did. I took $100, and a hotel room for a couple days, and gave the kid $300. Thus, in one fell swoop, I turned him onto drugs, and a very dangerous and distasteful way of paying for them.
As the years go by, I wonder did the kid make it back out of the scene that I exposed him to, or did he become a tweaked-out junkie? Did my actions that day, prodded by my own need for drugs, ruin his life? Did he go home, and go back to school, college, get married, have kids? Or did he catch aids, brought on by hustling for the drugs he may never have tried if it weren't for my own selfish actions? I will never know, but I do know this- I will NEVER put another human in that kind of danger again, and I am sorry for what I did. I had the Touch of Evil.
Another time I was in posession of a dime of meth- not enough to get me high. As it was a rock, it looked pretty good, and all I had to do was find a sucker to purchase it for $20, then I could go get what I needed. I met this dude at the hotel. I asked if he got high, and he replied, kind of unsure of himself, that he did. He didn't look too street smart, so my antenna went up, alerted to the possibility of a quick scam. I asked him what he did- he asked me what I did, answered a question with a question. I told him I did meth. He stated he did as well. I said how do you do yours? Again, he asked me how I did mine. I still did not realize this guy was mentally ill, and had never done drugs. I was too focused on how I was gonna sell him a 10 piece for $20. I stated I slammed mine, and he said he did, too. So I produced this rock and sold it too him, and fixed him up. As soon as he did it, he began to act very strange, more so than a tweaker with his usual poison- this dude was making no sense. He was in the corner doodling for about 15 minutes, babbling incoherently ( for all you folks inexperienced with meth, it doesn't make you babble totally nonsensically. It might make you act high, but not insane), and I thought by the way he was working with the pen and paper, that he was an artist of some sort. I've seen alot of tweakers produce some pretty good street art. Anyway, he askes if I want to see a portrait of his family, and I say sure ( I wasn't the least bit interested, I was making arrangements for my own score now). He shows me the paper, and it in incomprehensible, a scribbling and that was it- not even stick figures, looked like a parkinsons' victim drew it. He says, that's my Mom and Dad. So I tell him, look dude, you gotta go. Very strange, I thought. So a couple 2 or three weeks go by, and I'm walking by the hotel, and about 30 feet from the front door, sits this dude. He is covered in filth- urine, feces, dirt and grime, thin a rail, much more sickly than when I saw him, apparently healthy. He was babbling the insane ramblings of a madman, still drawing on the paper. A friend of mine said he knew him, that he was suppoesed to take medication for his schitzoid condition, but for some reason, had stopped taking it.
My heart sank. I knew why he stopped taking it. Because I sold him some drugs he had never done before, and probably would not have done had I not ran into him,and injected him- sending him tumbling over the edge into insanity with my Touch of Evil.
Would this man have had these problems anyway? Or did my actions alone cause him this awful condition? Where is he now? Did he recover? Could I actually be responsible for ruining another Mans' life? I don't know. I do know this- I will never allow myself to do this sort of thing again.
I don't know what happens when it's game over for us all, but I do know that even if I can't take back the bad things I've done, I can choose to learn the lesson of not repeating them.
Misery loves company- that's how the Touch of Evil becomes contagious. One person infects another, then he another, and so on, roaring through peoples' lives like a tidal wave of destruction. I stop this portion of the chain now.