My Blog

Showtime!

Thanos — Fri, 30 May 2008 00:24:07 GMT

During the 80's, before I really went southbound to the gutter, music was a pretty big part of my life. I was learning (slowly) to play guitar, and was really beginning to form musical tastes that would last a lifetime, for better or worse, lol. Anyways, I mostly listened to rock music, with very little jazz, and blues. I hated the new sounds of rap, punk, and new wave. Back in the day, there simply weren't all these different types of rock, there's so many now I can't keep track. back then the types were limited to Rock, easy listening (Eagles, Jim croce, etc., hard rock, Nugent, Kiss ( yes, Kiss was good at one time, believe it or not), heavy rock, such as Sabbath, Deep purple, Mountain etc. there was a new sound that i fell in love with, Metal. It was fathered by a band called Judas Priest, and held to dark and forbidding territory like sabbath, but incorporated a sharper sound, technically proficient giutarists, and something that was soon to be all-important for every band- A look. Later it was revealed that the lead singer was gay, (gasp!) and had taken the stage apparel from S&M shops in london. It's a good thing I never made it to the backstage show I tried so hard at getting to, I probably would have woke up with a rubber hanging out my ass, and complaining the cheap beer made my cousins' ass hurt, too. LMAO. Anyways it was my M.O. to score a $60 ounce of mexican weed before every show to sell. Nowadays, you probably couldn't give it away, cos everything is all fancy stinkbud. Truth: You can get good and high on Mexican Sativa. Anyways, I used to bag it up into nickels and sell it at the show, smoking for free and doubling my money. It wasn't dangerous, either cops or rip-offs, it was quite a normal scene- we just walked around and asked nearly everybody we saw whether they wanted to score or not. The cops in San Diego didn't give a fuck abou that, as long as you were discreet, not flagging down cars, etc. If the show started and we went inside, the nickels became dimes, cos of demand. It's so different today- people have to hide to smoke at shows, it's all very expensive stink bud. So there's never the ubiquitous pipe that gets passed around for all to toke. Now it's hush-hush, the bowl costs twenty fucking dollars to fill, so people don't want to share willy-nilly like in the day. It's just a bad scene now. I went to # doors down and Lynrd Skynrd a couple years ago, and it was a joke. First of all, there was hardly anybosdy smoking, cops were hassling people that smelt of weed, and everybody was drunk and stupid, nearly ruining the show for me. Why is it OK to get shitfaced drunk and be obnoxious, but smoking a bowl and minding your own business is a fucking CRIME? It was the drunks who made it a lame show. If weed were more prelavent, there would have been happier, mellower people, less fights ( there were alot) and drivers would have been better apt to not crash, duh. Anyways, I went to see a band I liked at the time called, hehe ,heh AC/DC. I was of course homeless at the time. So the show is on Saturday night, i have had tickets for about a month to go with my best friend, a dude name of Fish. I met him under the marquee at the no gone California Theater in san Diego. It's friday afternoon, and he's whing, we don't have money for weed, beer, where we gonna stay, how are we gonna ger to the Sports Arena, etc, etc. We are out of pocket. I said "dude, quit whing like a little bitch. We got 36 hours to pull it together. Leave it to me, and be here this time tomorrrow". He didn't seem confident in my abilities as a player. So I head up to Balboa park, where I begin my Friday night. I worked, selling, scamming and hustling, all night long. Sure, I spent a bit on crank to keep me up. I was a tweeker- what else could I do? I admit, a bit of it was luck, but anyways, come dawn, I had nearly $250. I rarely made that much, and if I did, it went up my arm, but not this time. I went to see shorty, a 5' tall Mexican guy who worked the cash register at a convenience store at 11th abd Broadway. I bought a Pepsi for $51, and he included an ounce of the bud du jour. Then, i called the REAL dope man. I said I need an 8ball of the shit. He agreed to meet me under the marqee of the California theater just after noon. So I'm set, i'm feelin' good, so I'm gonna pull some shit on Fish, LMAO. I show up at the agreed time, with a long face. he asks me, "did you get anything? How'd you do"? I says," dude, I got nothing, I'm down the ramp. I ain't got shit but the tickets". He starts to snivel and cry a bit, but I couldn't hold it. I says, "man, I got an ounce of bud, and the dope mans about to pull up with a huge sack of drugs!". He didn't believe me, but just then ol' dude pulls up in a convertable and I jump in, spinning around the block and jump out. I says, " he says he's got a room for two days down by the sports arena, but got paranoid and doesn't want to stay there, so he's gonna give us the room, a ride to the show, and this huge sack of rocks! And by the way, i stll got about $40 for beer!! Whos you fucken daddy now?! LOLLOL He almost fell out, swearing I'm the best thing to ever hit the streeets. What better frienf than one with a place to stay, AC DC tickets, weed, drugs, beer, and, some actuall loyalty, cos he really was my friend, in pocket or out. So we get to the room, and I bag up all the weed, about 35 nickels ( dime bags inside) and we begin to do some crank. I'm using and bagging. I think I got about 20 bags and some for the head. By this time, we split for the show. I go up to get some beer at the liqour store and aqquire from the clerk a huge pin-on button that says " I'm proud to serve you" on it. I prompty pin it to myself. Man, we hit the crowd out doors and pulled up alongside the dumpster, selling weed on the left, crank on the right. People would ask, how many do you have? ( I never answed that question) I'd say how many do you want? I had a huge pocket full of money before the show started, but because of the crank, I was starting to get paranoid. Weed was cool, but speed was a ceertain bust, and really, didn't lend itself well to the overall feeling of the show, but it was too late. We moved inside and began to party and drink heavily, taking a bit of the edge off. What little weed I had left, we smoked to no effect cos of the speed. I began to see security in the rafters, and other "suspicious" people eyeballing us. It ruined the show for me, and I spent the opening act White Lion, outside dealing. They were a hair band of the day, but this particular band had an exceptional guitar player. When the show was over, we somehow made it back to the room. Then I began shooting speed in earnest, lol. I gave my buddy all he wanted. People were knocking to score- I was paranoid to the max. Then i met a dude close by in a room who had some eccelent cocaine. i normally do not buy coke. I found it a waste of mone, and that night was no different. I quickly went through all the money we made. When dawn came, this one dude who had been buying from me, and pissing me off, came by again. I wrapped up a piece of pizza crust in a bag and sold it to him. For some reason, i had it in for him, i can't remember why. I stepped outside and said," here, dude, here's... DUDE! Lookout ( I played it like this) The manager is down the way looking at us, he's onto us! He was paranoid as me, and put it in his pocket and ran. I got $30 for the pizza crust, and he got beat. When the dawn came, we had one last bag of speed, which of course I bogarted for myself, $30, which was ill-gained and we left the room trashed with needles sticking in the wall like a dart board, and had wrote in some hookers' lipstick on the mirror before we left- AC DC ROCKS. There's not much of a moral to this story, other than if you want to have a good time at a concert, don't bring any speed- it just makes everthing a bummer, what with the paranoia, and everythings' about the drugs, the show is just incidental. Gone are the days of just enjoying the show with a couple joints, or even some psychedelics at the proper event, but now it's all just drinking and more drinking. Ruins everything. I'm going to Judas priest in a couple months- you can bet it will be a bust for pot smokers. In fact, people know it and don't even bring that much weed anymore, it used to be you could smell it everywhere. No more. Thanks for ruining the show for us, Uncle Sam, asshole.

The Lives I touched ( With the Touch of Evil)

Thanos — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:56:53 GMT

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.

Ghost in the Ruins

Thanos — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 13:21:35 GMT

It was the late 80's, and I was in a bad way as usual. I was in the habit of hanging out in Balboa park for nefarious reasons, and had a few scams to get me by. The last week had been a bad one for me. They were all bad, but I discovered two friends of mine, as real of freinds as one could have under the circumstances of drug addiction, had come down with Aids. In those days, it was a death sentence, especially if you didn't have the money for the newest class of drugs on the market. In those days, there was no compassion for people afflicted; you were either gay or a junkie, or both, and most people just didn't give a fuck whether a person in those categories lived or died. Some cheered for their deaths. Now, I wasn't born gay or a junkie, but did work my way into it ( the junkie part) and I didn't feel like a bad person who needed to die. I had freinds who were obviously gay and born that way- how could someone wish them to die? It wasn't their fault, and others needed medical care for thier drug addiction, and many wished them dead, as they had "brought it on themselves". Such was the attitude of the day. I was shooting dope in a hotel room with a friend of mine when, as we loaded our hits, he began to cry softly. He was a hard man, and not in the habit of breaking down publicly.I asked him what the problem was, and he said " I got it man, I'm positive. I got the aids". What a bummer. he said "I'll be dead soon, my t cell count is real low". I didn't know what to say. I liked this guy- if it weren't for the drugs, we both would have been decent human beings. Of course, I immediately took my rig and marked it, got my own water and spoon. I didn't want to treat him like a leper, but he saw what I was feeling, he said, "it's OK bro, I don't want you to get sick". You don't have to share rigs, if you rinse your works in the same glass of water, your done. High as I was, I didn't want to make a mistake. Then later that week another friend anounced he was sick as well. Why all the good guys? Why not some of these other no-good, ripoff pieces of shit? Where was God? Why didn't he punish those more guilty? These questions wieghed heavily on my mind as I roamed to and fro in search of more drugs to ruin myself with. Then as the weekend approached, I saw a dude I used to know, but he had dissapeared. I barely recognized him as he shuffled by, disheveled and pushing a shopping cart full of trash, muttering incoherently. Last time I saw him, he was not in this condition. I spoke to him, but he did not answer, at least in an intelligible way. What happened? The answer came, as an aquaintence told me he caught aids, and came down with toxo. Toxpoplasmosis is a sort of parasitic infestation of the brain that causes dementia- it's common, but people with weakened immune systems can't shrug it off. That was it for me, I fell into a dispare- all my friends were dying, and I was undoubtedly on the reapers gathering list of pathetic losers who would soon be purchasing a ride across the river styx. I did not have the courage to test myself, but I redoubled my attempts to not infect myself. I even tried to get clean, but beds in rehab were for the wealthy. Beds were always available in jail for me, though. Apparently, the legislators making these assinine drug policies never considered that if I didn't stay clean, I might have sex with one of thier daughters, and bring the misery to their home, then thier policies would come home to roost. But anyways, I was currently involved in my latest scam: Parking boxes. I would walk up from downtown on 4th or 5th street, with a pair of hemostats. I would approach a parking box and shine a light quickly into the area where the dollar bills go. I previously cut off the chain and poker that people use to stuff the dollars all the way in, so there was always a couple that were slightly sticking out. Then I used the hemos to remove them. I walked up to hillcrest, couple miles, 2 or 3 i guess, repeating the process. When I got to the top of the hill, if I had over $20, i would spend it on beer if I was thirsty. then I would walk back towards downtown, picking up the money (which I stashed away from the box in case of a bust, I would not have torn dollar bills on me). This particular night I had been up for days, it was about 3 AM. I was hallucinating a bit as one does from lack of sleep, basically amphetamine psychosis. I was feeling really down, and very mortal. As I passed Balboa park ( I had gotten a ride from someone) I witnessed the most horrible vision- I thought I had really lost it. I look out into the grassy area of the park and I saw thousands of gravestones, floating through the fog that hung low on the ground. I knew right then and there I was done for. It was the most haunting, spooky feeling I have ever had. I was already dead, just a Ghost in the Ruins. I went downtown, scored, got high and in the morning walked back up to the park to face my fate, another score, or my doom, I didn't know which. I got to the park in the morning, and I have never been more relieved about anything as I was when I witnessed this: Thousands of gravestones! They were real! Not a figment of my imagination or some sort of prophesy. They were made of paper, each inscribed with the name of someone who had recently died of aids. They were put there as a temporary monument. What a wake up call for me. I still havn't figured out where God was, whether he was watching me, helping or damning, I don't know. I like to think he was with me, but truth is, I don't know, can't know, cos I'm just human. Better human than a Ghost in the Ruins.

5 Gallon Piss-Bomb

Thanos — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:36:22 GMT

It was around 1989, and I was massively strung out on crank, homeless, jobless, and clueless. We were squatting in an abandoned medical center- it was 3 stories tall with a large open central courtyard. the place was locked up, but we were able to gain access by several means. Me and a buddy of mine ( who fell out of favor due to his tendancy to try and suck my dick) were staying on the 3rd floor. The only way to get in was to go to the roof and crawl down onto the ledge and scoot over about 30 ft., to our window. Then climb in the window. Quite secure- the side facing the courtyard was boarded up really well. No one could find our squalid hovel, let alone access it. We sold dope used dope and slept, (well maybe a couple times) there for months. One major issue was sanitation! We had one room set aside down a ways for shitting. For pissing we had a 5 gallon sparklets bottle. Now, you guys who have done crank know that when you get strung out, your piss turns brown and real stinky, cos of the drugs, poor diet and poisonous byproducts and metabolytes coursing through our viens, and consequently, our piss. There used to be a bunch of fools who hung out below our window selling dope. We didn't say anything, cos we didn't want to give away our squat. But we wanted them gone becqause they were drwing the law. So when the 5 gallon piss jug was full of the nastiest, rankest piss I have ever had the misfortune to smell, we loaded it up to the window and heave ho! 40 pounds of toxic waste gained speed in free-falll, and then, BOOM! It hit the sidewalk and basically exploded! It sent a toxic cloudy spray of festering human waste wafting over a wide swath of the block.You could not get close to where it hit. Rank is the understatement of the century. It was so fucking gnarly, they couldn't use that corner anymore, and I had to abandone my squat forever, becuase of the stench of 5 gallons of tweaker-piss.

The Wrong Shot

Thanos — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:35:19 GMT

Londg about 20 years ago I had been up for days. I didn't know what day or time it was, I was in hotel with the shades drawn tight. Now, I had been in the habit of carrying around a vial of bleach to clean my rigs with, a practice that is undoubtedly responsible for me being alive today. That era was the middle of the aids scene. It was dark in the room, as I loaded up my hit. I dropped the dope in the spoon, and hit it with water. Then I proceeded to get the bubbles out of the rig, holding it up with shaking hands, cold sweat dripping off my tweaking, skeletor-looking face. As I pushed the last bubble out, a drop of dope squirted out of the business end of my deadly accoutrement. Being a joneser of the Nth degree, a could not waste it.... so I licked it up. That's when it hit me, the unmistakable scent and taste of bleach!! AAIIEE! I turned on the lights and saw that I had mistakenly mixed my shot of dope with 30 units of bleach instead of water!! I was about 30 seconds away from death. Once again I had cheated the reaper from a qualified victim, wether through divine intervention or dumb luck ,I don't know. I do know that although I had a deadly habit, hiding little bottles of bleach everyewhere I used to shoot dope saved me from Aids. Most all of my "freinds" from that era are gone now, due to aids, OD's violence, suicide, and other mishaps that befall the woebegotten TWEAKER!

Swan Dive on Christmas Eve

Thanos — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:33:54 GMT

It was Christmas eve, 1984. I was working at the restaraunt still, and wasn't yet removed from my place of residence, although the threat of eviction loomed evercloser. I had just finished the lunch rush, and was due for a break. of course, the dealer had come in and relieved us all of our tips, while suppliying us with some screamin' biker dope. With the monkey on my back screaming at my brain, I ran up the hill to the pad I shared with cousin gary. As I got towards the apartment I noticed an ambulance, and a small gathering of women fro a bank next door. With expectations of a large amount of high powered drugs soon to be coursing through my polluted viens, I jumped up on the wall, taking a shortcut to my back door. I will never forget what I saw, and I will never forget my reaction to it. There lay in the street a man in a huge, spreading pool of blood. The paramedics ahad just arrived. They were trying to decide where to put an oxygen mask on this strangley deformed person. He had climbed to the roof of our apartment building, and jumped, on Christmas eve, despondent over some undoubtedly trivial matter, not worth his life. Now he lay at my feet, a shattered wreckage of what once was a living breathing human. All his worries were over. His head was the size of a red, messy pumkin, and I didn't give FUCK. I stated, "well, he's dead meat". The ladies from the bank were teary-eyed, looking at me as if i were some kind of monster- and I was. I went in and did a huge shot of dope and didn't give a second though to the poor soul who was so bummed out he thought it would be better if he splattered his guts all over the sidewalk. It wasn't until years later that I realized the significance of my reaction to this suicide. That's what meth does to you- It robs you of what it means to be human, empathy, concern, compassion for others, the ability to give a thought to anything or anyone beyond who's got your next fix. Not your Mommas' Christmas story, but an important one nonetheless, The Swan Dive on Christmas Eve. Fuck meth- that shit will kill you.

Donut Thief

Thanos — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:31:35 GMT

There was a donut shop downtown that offered a sack of day-old cinnamon twists for the price of $1. You could get full for a buck, so it was popular with the street people. It was my habit to get a sack of them almost everyday I wasn't tweaked out. Several nights up at the bum camp, I would fall asleep with my little sack of donuts, and in the morning they would be gone. I hid them in the bushes near me, they were found. I hid them in my clothing, they were found. It seemed I could find no place safe from this ravenous crook!I got pretty pissed off, ready to bash in the skull of the tramp so bold as to steal my breakfast out from under my sleeping self. This happened about a week or two in a row- I could never catch him. Then one night I fell sound asleep, and began to dream... I was dreaming of a cat I used to have in the days before I became a sort of sub-human, out of the boundaries of a "normal" lifestyle. I was dreaming he was curled up on my chest, and I was petting him, telling him he was a good kitty, etc. I should mention that particular night I slept with the sack of donuts under my arm to prevent this outrageous thievery from depriving my already malnourished self of a proper breakfast. Anyways, I opened one sleepy eye to find a HUGE rat, about 5 pounder with a 10" tail, on my chest, scarfing down my donuts. For a brief moment, my bloodshot gaze met his two red villainous eyes, and then we both shot straight up un the air, each running theopposite direction at a high velocity! And so, the mystery of the donut thief was solved. Later, I would watch him crawl along the top of a chain link fence, creeping to and fro in search of sustenance. Then one day, i was minding my own business at the camp, having lunch. By lunch, I mean couple 25 cent boiled eggs and some King Cobra beer. Anyway not40 feet from me, a falconflashed by and grabbed the miserable theif and carried him away to his doom. It happened so fast, I couldn't hardly believe it. Anyways, he never stole from me again, the bastard

Night of the Street Cleaner!

Thanos — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:29:47 GMT

I was in San Diego, up in Balboa park, about 2 am on friday night, trying to get something going so I could score! Balboa park was a hang out of tweakers, hustlers, tricks, crackheads, and general riff-raff of all types. Mainly, lots of people drove through there, looking for sthier favorite vice. I knew where it all was, I was the man on the scene. I could direct a person to hookers, men or women, score coke, heroin or meth in minutes, I could get weed instantly, and if I felt you needed to be relieved of your hard earned cash, I had a variety of scams with which to do so, all effectively polished to a razors' edge. Usually, in order to gain repeat business, I got people what they wanted, and used the "triple play". The triple play involved me getting their sack from a dealer who rewarded me for my business with a small piece for myself, then I would pinch their bag, and then I would make them pay me to get it. The shit was good, they got a better deal than the next loser offered, and everybody was happy. On this particular night I was walking on the curb, looking for some biz, when I passed a buddy, Dirt Dog Dave. He showed me a large rock of meth, and inquired as to wether I would like to purchase it. I replied in the negative, since I was broke, and he declined to allow me to sample it. As I left, he was tweaking over this rock, presumably deciding to do it or not. I came back about thirty minutes later, and Dirt Dog was in a state. He had dropped the rock in the street somewhere near the curb, and it was dark. He said he did not leave the curb, it couldn't be anywhere else but beside the curb. Now he offered to split it with me if I helped him find it. Having just witnessed the existence of this dope, and knew he actually had it, and wasn't full of shit as he usually was, I started searching. It was dark. I pulled out a lighter, and began crawling along the curb, when I saw a flashing light about a half mile away. Ever wary of flashing lights, Dave and I quickly realized that it was not the cops, but something worse! A street cleaning truck, lumbering our way! Dave flew into a panic! He ran to and fro up and down the curb looking for this rock. I intensified my search on the area where he had been standing. As the truch approached, you could hear the giant bristles chewing up the trash and buffing the curb clean. Dave began to lose it; he was near tears. The truck was a gundred yards away, I gave up, and sat down on the graas. This huge leviathan passed by, and dave fell out sobbing, "my rock, my rock",, wailing in the night. I was kinda pissed,too, cuz if I had more time I would have found it, and kept it for myself. That's what tweakers do

Just Another Day on the Block

Thanos — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:27:20 GMT

Here we go again. We all used to shoot dope in the bathroom at Dennys restaraunt, but after the manager called the cops on us a few times, we decided it was best to do it outside. One fine summer san diego day, me and this cat named JW ( God or Whomever rest his nappy soul) jumped over the chain link fence behind Dennys to fire up. Below us was Junkie Jungle, where all the heroin addicts did thier dirty business. We stayed up top looking down into the JJ. Splitting up our stuff, we got high. Now as we began to spin out, this dude comes up and says hey, you got a rig? So I says sure, gimmee a dollar, and I gave him the dirty rig. He walked off about 30 feet away and began to do his thing. I wasn't really paying attention to him, I was pretty high, but I did notice he was cooking his dope in the bottom of a soda can, so it must have been heroin. Well, after this dude fires up, he stood up and began yelling something to the effect of, I'll kill that motherfucker, that shit was bunk, blah blah. That's when the wierd shit went down. He got this strange look on his face, like a cross between bewilderment and uh-oh. Then he fell face forward, BAM! into one of those spiked palm trees, and didn't move. Me and JW looked at each other like, wow, you see that? So we went over to where ol dude was, and he was out, scratched up on the face from where he hit the tree. We checked him out. He was, in fact, dead. Don't know if he OD'd, or did a hotshot, or what, but he was DRT, dead right there. I says to JW, he's dead, see what he's got in his pockets ( ever the practical one, i figured if he was dead, wherever he was headed, he wouldn't need to be encumbered by material things like, say, money or drugs). Now JW says, i'm not stealing from a dead man. I says to him, JFC dude, you steal from everybody! See what he's got., and be quick about it! JW was a downright thief, never met a trinket he didn't want bad enough to steal, lie some hopped up hobbit from the hood ( hoodhobbit? lol?) But we decided to bail .Within a couple days, I forgot about the incident completely. Then I was passing dennys two days later, and I smelled a godawful stench, and remembered, oh yeah, there's a dead guy back there, putrifying in the sun, his rotting corpse billowing the stench of death across Denny's parking lot. It was either that or they had a couple hundred pounds of bad sausage. Still, I said nothing to anyone. The next day i passed there, and the coroners van was picking up his sun-dried, bloated corpse. Anyways, that's how little you care for life when you're on that shit... you just don't give a damn. Just another day on the block.

The Rise and Fall of Frankie the Waiter

Thanos — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:24:41 GMT

It was about 1981, I was fresh out of the Navy with nowhere to go and nothing to do, and I felt fine. I was well aquainted with the pleasures of crystal, but not yet familiar with its sting. That would come sooner or later- in fact, sooner rather than later. I wandered into a job in downtown San Diego, in a restaraunt. There were two owners, both gay, and they liked to have attractive young men working there. I applied for the job, and after refusing the "couch test", I figured I would be looking for work elsewhere. To my surprise, Eddie, one of the owners, says, " that's OK, your hired". That was the one and only time they ever tried to hit on me. I ended up working there for quite awhile, unmolested, and they were really cool people, fair and honest. I had quite a few adventures there, and learned a few lessons. Here's one. Joe and Ed, the owners, were quite well off, and had a couple guys living with them about my age, Dale and Frankie. Thier living arrangement was that Dale and Frankie were well taken care of, cars, jewelry, expensive toys, private sleeping quarters, the best hours and best tables at the restaraunt ( they were usually waiters), and more. In return they got their dicks sucked every so often. Now, that might not be my choice of methods for providing food and shelter for myself, but I don't blame them. That's just the way it was. They were my friends, such as they were. Now my cousin Gary and me, we work cooking and waiting tables, trading duties and shifts. that restaraunt was one big party, what with the weed, coke ( very much the scene then) and crank. Frankie got all the good tables and made great money. So did Dale. We partied with them at their home every so often, it was cool, nobody bothered us with gay come-ons. Then we turned Frankie onto speed. Frankie was the envy of us all, he had ,apparently, everything. He had 2 more years to work before earning a quarter stake ina successful restaraunt, drove to work in a brand new T-top vet, he had the status,the chicks, the cash, the diamonds, big mansion and swimming pool, had it all. And Eddy had him. He had give Frankie a huge gold ring, with enough diamonds in it to spell a capital F. But Frankie was beggining to use more and more. His doom was upon him like a hyena on a zebra, but he did not recognize it. The signs were forthcoming. He even came to the slums, a fleabag hotel that me and cousin Gary shared to buy and use meth. We slammed dope- he did not, and consequently he looked down on us "junkies". He wouldn't try it- never did, and yet he was beginning to come unraveled like a ball of yarn, and meth was the cat. He had alot more money than us to blow, and blow it he did. One day Frankie was on the grill, he'd been up for seven days, and was utterly spaced out- Eddy had to know, but didn't want to admit his boy was going down like Ellen Degeneres on Ann Heche. The burgers were burning, the line was falling apart, so Gary runs over to save him, starts taking over the grill, when Eddie runs up-"what's going on here? Gary?! Go Home!" Sent poor Gary home thinking Frankies fuck-up was his. Frankie just let him take the fall. Shortly after that Frankie arrives to work in his vet, all spun out, with his guitar, and takes it to the pawnshop. The dealer is making more and more trips into the place to "just say hi".Then next week, Eddies' driving him to work, the vet is gone "having some work done". The last straw was, we were working lunch when in comes the dealer- Frankie spies him and they go to the corner, and Frankie takes off that big diamond ring- all shiny and full of everything that made Frankie who he was,and hands it to the man. At that moment, he must have known the jig was up, but he had too much momentum to stop. I watched him fall like a pile of jenga blocks played by a parkinsons' victim. He must have been doing a couple hundred a day- all up his nose and still looking down what was left of it at us "junkies". He couldn't be strung out, could he? He didn't shoot! Frankie went down the ramp, so to speak, lost his job, his stake in the business, his health, all his possesions, until there was nothing left. No girlfriends, no cars, no cash, and no self respect. Just him, a shattered crypt-keeper looking tweaker, all skin and bones, begging for a bump, huddled in a shit-and-piss filled doorway in downtown San Diego, waiting to either score or die. Which ever came first, at that moment, I'm sure he didn't give a damn. That, my friends was the Rise and Fall of Frankie the Waiter. Here's the lesson: 1) It doesn't matter how you consume your drugs. Up your nose, down your throat, smoked, bumped, or stuck up your ass, they're still drugs, and they will still fuck you up. The only difference is you can't catch aids from straw. 2) The use of crystal will take you down a path that you could never imagine yourself on, one step at a time, so you never see the destination coming. That destination is utter ruin. You think this couldn't happen to you? That's exactly what every junkie that ever used thought. So what makes you think you're different? That shit will kill you.

Me and Junkin' George

Thanos — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:21:12 GMT

met Junkin' george in the summer of '88. I was tweaking around the inside of the abandoned medical center, in the courtyard when i ran into him, cooking up some skag amidst the piles of garbage and refuse. I kinda knew him, said hey, dude, what's up and that. He was busy cooking up something new to me: Heroin. I announced I would like to try it, and paid him a few dollars, not even $5, and he hit me with a wee bit of his stuff. It came on slow, about 2 minutes to full effect, spreading over and through me with the most euphoric feeling I ever had! Why, this stuff was great! Better than anything! We bullshitted for a bit, then I skateboarded down the long hill from balboa Park to downtown, riding the high and the board with equal enthusiasm. As time went by, Junkin' George and I became better aqquainted, friends if you will, and occasionally crossed paths. Normally tweakers and junkies do not associate with each other, they are gutter dogs of different breeds, nothing in common. tweakers come out at night and hide in the day, junkies are the opposite. They are just birds of different feathers. One day I saw george downtown, he says hey, you got a rig? So I produced my works and he jetted off into a tower. It was his M.O. to score his junk, and since he didn't look too bad yet, he was able to infiltrate the bathrroms of a skyscraper and shoot up there. So I'm waiting, and waiting for him, he doesn't come out. After about 45 minutes the cops come, and exit the building with a very intoxicated George! He told me later he didn't have a lighter, used a match to cook the dope and somebody smelled it ( there was no smoking allowed in the building) and after he did his hit, he nodded real bad and couldn't make his usual getaway, cos the skag was too good, and they called security on him. They didn't keep him long. One night about 2 AM I'm downtown and this gay dude, drunker than a skunk, rolls up in his car and announces he wants to score some crank, and proceeds to describe various sexual acts which he might enjoy engaging in with me. Now, I have nothing against gays, but this dude was an asshole, loud, abnoxious, and intent upon buggering me repeatedly. So I told him what he wanted to hear. I told him the dope was around the corner, you don't have to put up the money. Gained his trust, the fool. then I ran around the corner and who do i see out late: The Illustrious Junkin' George. He's got a couple bunk bags on him- he give 'em to me, swearing me to come back with some money. So I go around the corner and sell the crap to this fool, and as it's in his hand I tell him, don't look-the cops are right behind you! Hide the dope, quick! So he shoves it down his pants and doesn't look at it. I tell him i gotta take the money back around the corner, which I did. George is right there waiting! I never laughed so hard in my life, lololol LMAO. Fuck him, try to cornhole me, will you. Anyways, we go through all my dealers trying to get some meth, no can do. I got the jones on bad, $ in my pocket and no dope.George offers to call a guy he knows, and he does so. the dude shows up with this bag of stinky, purple wet-sand looking dope, with yellow rock in it. What the fuck is this, I say? It appears I will be bunked out of my hard-earned cash as well. They both swear by it, so I score. Now we have no rig except this huge animal syringe, and on top of that, George announces he is getting sick and needs some skag. Can't get the junk until dawn, so i give him the money, just to settle him down. Now he knows he can score, he feels better. We go into Denny's order coffee, and I make a break for the restroom. I try to use this rig, but it's not an insulin syringe- it's some kind of frankenstien works,! I miss abit, youch!! I get off, and come tweaking out to the table. The shit is good, just very dirty. Chock full of ruinous chemicals and poisonous by-products from hell. I can't sit still, bouncing and fidgeting, looking to and fro, tweaking my ass off. Everybodys' watching me, I know it. They're on me. George wants his cut, but I'm too paranoid to hand it to him. He don't care anyway, meth is no good to a junkie, except to sell for more skag. We see the cops pull into the parking lot, and we just get up and run. I jump the fence over into Junkie jungle and we split up- they won't chase us there unless it's important, cus they won't go in there, only in force. I escape. We had a few more adventures, and then I didn't see him for awhile. I asked around, and somebody told me he shot somebody, killed 'em. I didn't believe it. Not George! He never hurt a fly, wasn't violent at all. Sure, he pulled a few scams, but murder? No fucken' way. I went to the bar where it supposedly went down and asked. Apparently George was dealing to support his ever increasing habit. I did not know this. Some body robbed him of his dope during a nod, and he got a gun, walked into the bar and enptied the clip in the dudes head, unfuckingbelievable. How he thought he would not be caught, I don't know. I guess he didn't care. That was the last i heard of him.

Jewelry jimmy Rides the Bus

Thanos — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:17:30 GMT

Of all the tweakers I have met, Jewelry Jimmy and his dealer, Cardroom Greg, stood out of the crowd. I met them in San Diego in the early 80's. I'm certain they are dead now, hardly anyones' got the kind of luck at staying alive that I did. Cardroom Greg was a meth dealer who ran a legal poker room, and Jewelry Jimmy was his runner. Cardroom had a connection that we all envied. He got his dope from a Hells Angel named Billy, who was a bad, bad, motherfucker- all business. You rarely saw him, but his dope was the best. He did not allow his dope to be cut by Greg of Jimmy. He had rules, and if they weren't followed, very bad things would happen. Anyway, Cardroom sold dope on his job, and Jimmy tried to steer most of the business away from there and covered areas and times that Greg couldn't. They both made lots of money, had lots of dope, and were INCREDIBLY strung out. Now tweakers, and especially these two, were known for "aqquiring" items such as watches, necklaces, rings, and other pieces of jewelry of questionable value. They love to pour over this mostly useless crap, endlessly shining and playing with it, and trying to find someone to trade dope for it- it's a methamphetamine ritual, twaeking over shiny items, and Greg and Jimmy were so high, and had so much dope, that they were actually giving out bumps for this stuff. Most dealers will not accept stuff like that, they'll tell you to kick rocks and come back with some cash. Jimmy would walk around with a dozen watches on his arms, like some kind of Starsky and Hutch cartoon character. He had more necklaces than Mr T, and enough rings to keep Liz Taylor giddy, and though there probably wasn't a carat total in there, he sported them religiously-they were his trademark. That's how he got his name. He had earings galore, but the pierings were all in his arms. He had long since given up the pretense of being anything other than he was, a full blown junkie, with more tracks than santa Fe. Greg as well, running around the cardroom, making change, tracking games and players, and trying to nonchalantly sling bags meth, all at a speed Einstien himself would have puzzled over. Sweat dripping of his face, eyes dialated to massive saucers- missing teeth, sunken, hollow cheekbones, pasty skin. They looked like figures in a Ceaser Romero zombie movie, even down to the dazed, thousand -yard stare of the living dead. They were the epitome of the classic tweaker, except they still had a place to live, and lots of dope left. People would take the items they had appropriated to Greg or Jimmy, and trade for dope- they mostly took jewelry, but also traded leather clothes, or stereo stuff, which ironically they couldn't use, cos tweakers can't stand loud noises- it interferes with thier ability to try and hear somebody creeping up on them. Can't hear your audio hallucinations properly, lol. Well, one night about 10 pm I had somehow gotten ahold of $40, and although I was already tweaked to the maximum, the monkey on my shoulders had rather rudely indicated that I should score more, right fucking NOW. So I went down to the cardroom. To my dismay, I discovered the situation not conducive to an immediate score. Greg told me to split, and he would re-up Jimmy after work at midnight, and I was to cop from Jimmy about 12:30. Now I started to jones. I knew I would be able to score, so I refrained from using another connect and waited. I went up to my weekly hovel, a 3rd floor room within sight of their crib, and the cardroom. I had, of course, covered the windows with tin foil and cut little flaps in it with which to eye-spy the nieghbohood. This facilitated my tweaking out the windows without anybody knowing I was tweaking, LMAO. Like windows covered with foil downtown with flaps opening on and off wasn't obvious, anyway. Well, at least I stood in the dark and silence, tiptoeing around, perhaps once in awhile, getting on my hands and knees to look under the door, or through the keyhole, lest another tweaker try to get the drop on me! Anyways, as the time to score drew near, I got ready to hit the streets. I was supposed to meet him half a dozen blocks away at 6th and market. It was midnight- he'll be scoring from Greg now, so I'd be scoring from him within minutes. My stomach tensed, and I had to take a shit, like a psychotic version of Pavlovs' dog, slavering in anticipatuion of a juicy, thick shot of the Devils' cum coursing through my viens. For a brief moment, it would deliver me from my suck-ass life of misery. Just one more shot would be the escape I needed ,before returning me to the exact same state, but a couple steps closer to the boneyard. But what was this?! There were sirens sounding close! Not that that was unusual, it was fairly routine, but this was coming from the area where I was suppposed to score! Goddamn it, that would scare Jimmy off for sure, and who knows where or when I would be able to find him later. I took off out the door, and before I left, I saw out the window that the whole block was lit up like a christmas tree with flashing blue and red lights, cops, fire trucks and all that stuff that anybody wired up for days would avoid like the plague. All right where I was supposed to score, Son of a Fucking Bitch, damn the luck! Little did I know, compared to Jimmys', my luck that night was like a lottery winners'. I jogged down to the area to try and head off Jimmy, who would no doubt be exiting the area as fast as his tweaky little feet could carrry him. That's when I ran into a dude who also had the same idea, only he had some grievous news. I approached the comotion as close as I could get, and saw Jimmy being loaded into an ambulance. I couldn't see for myself exactly what happened, but the dude told what went down. Jimmy had been up for days, and he had the habit of walking on the curb, exactly on the curb, like a boy balancing himself on a railroad track, only Jimmy didn't quite have the dexterity he needed. As dude and Jimmy were walking, a bus approached, one of those huge buses that was jointed in the middle so it could swing around corners. The bus drew near, Jimmy lost his balance and fell directly in it's path (much to the dismay of 'ol dude, who hadn't copped yet, cos me and him went elsewhere to score, while Jimmy went to the boneyard). Jimmy always wore a heavy biker jacket, and thick leather belt. He wasn't a biker, he just liked to look a little tougher than his 120 pounds allowed him to look. Anyways, dude said it split his belt in two, and tore the thick leather jacket to shreds. And so later in the night after Greg got the news, he wasn't visibly upset at all, just looking for a bag whore to suck on his undoubtedly flacid, diseased johnson, and wade through the lines of tweakers seeking the opportunity to be his next runner. Such was their relationship, road dogs, crimeys, and roommates, but if Jewelry Jimmy happened to unfortunately die, it was good that he did it before he re-upped, instead of going to the morgue with Gregs' dope on him, rudely forcing Greg to nearly fall out of pocket. Actually, Jewelry Jimmy didn't die right away, he spent 6 months in the hospital, and re-appeared on the streets to continue his career as a tweaked-out loser, as did I. He supposedly robbed some Italians with connections, was caught and "whacked", but how mch of that is true, I don't know. I just don't see him surviving his sad, albiet self-inflicted situation. As the years went by, Greg lost his job at the cardroom, was arrested numerous times for petty dealing, caught aids and spiraled downward. He was already old for a mainlining tweaker, about 45, and looked 70. The last time I saw him, he went from his perch as the man on the scene, to a homeless, , friendless husk of a human, still selling dope. I scored from him the last time, but the deal was shit. He lost his connection and was just another loser trying to milk the last dollar out of an already nearly worthless bag of speed. I'm sure he's dead. What a waste of life. The moral of this story is that while you're strung out on meth, someone you're tight with isn't nearly as close of a friend as you think he is. People turn into thieves, rats, and are just simply willing to write someone out of thier lives at the drop of a hat, despite swearing they got your back, never do you dirty, ertc., etc, ad nauseum. Their aren't many REAL FRIENDS when you're on meth, despite convincing yourself otherwise. They are so far and few between, as to be nearly non-existant. Of all the tweaking friends I've had, only two stood the test of sobriety and time, and one of those was lost to alcohol. Meth sucks