Fears of Gun

I felt the edge of the knife press against my throat. He didn’t push hard but I could feel its presence and maybe, if I really stop and try to remember or, more to the point, imagine, I can feel the coldness of the steel. I’d come to buy dope when the whole thing was nascent. I had no idea of the game. Or the rules. Somehow, I found out that there was a dealer around Melrose and Van Ness. I can’t remember how I ever met him, and it seems so unlikely that I’d even have any inroads to meeting him but for a period I had a pager number and I’d call him and he’d either come to me, after a very long wait or I’d go to him, somewhere near that intersection. Over time, other people, his support team I suppose got involved. This was very early on in my junky history and all of it felt so wild and exciting. At the end of the day, it was just me buying balloons of heroin from some Mexican guy in a shitty car but for a moment there I felt like I was in the rarified air of real junkies like Lou Reed or Nick or Keith. Christ, the things we imagine.

              At some point as is often the case I was handed off to some underling and I’d drive slow around those blocks and look for him. He was a corner guy. Not a pager guy. Corner guys are always hit or miss and sketchy. At the end of it all I had a connection who’d show up in minutes and sell me half ounces of dope and bags of cocaine. But that took many years. Such are the dreams and goals of a junky. A steady, punctual connection with good prices; imagine all your life’s goals reduced to this.

              I drove down Van Ness or maybe some other side street and see my guy. He’s with another kid. By this point, he recognizes my car and I pull over and he gets in. His friend, unknown to me gets in the back. Immediately I feel him push forward and press a knife against my throat. It’s a timid but deliberate presence as if he’s trying to impress the older guy, my guy, and he’s scared but feels compelled. My guy (imagine calling someone who is ready to cut your throat “my guy”) tells me to “give me your money!” And so, I do. I’d just pulled out thirty or so dollars from the new bank account that Leslie and I had just opened. It wasn’t easy. We had to get driver’s licenses and all sorts of stuff to open an account in California. I pulled out the cash and handed it to him. That’s it. The knife moved away, and doors opened and closed and they vanished.

              And so, I went back to the bank to get more money and came right back to the same place in the hopes of finding someone else. All of that happened in about twenty minutes. I get robbed with the edge of a knife at my throat and immediately get more money to try my luck again with the same bunch. I really don’t remember if I copped or not, but I suppose I did. If I didn’t it would have made a much bigger impact on me and I’d remember. Not getting high is a tragedy you remember; having a knife at your throat is a mere anecdote in this world I was slowly walking into.

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              Most of these experiences were directly related to me trying to buy drugs. And others were simply karma I presume. Retelling these stories makes me feel like I’ve lived beyond what most people have. They make me feel special and edgy. But the truth is that they only exist because I was a naïve and obsessed drug addict who was easy prey. There’s no tough guy in me. I suppose I can explode with rage like I did with the gangbanger fireworks party but really, that’s an anomaly. I just wanted drugs and when threatened I’d just calmly admit defeat and while handing over whatever money I had immediately began thinking about how to get more. People like to see themselves as heroes in memories of violence or threats of violence but really, at least for me, I just gave up because it got me to the inevitable drugs I was after quicker. Why fight? Just get robbed and go steal or whatever I had to do to get more money. Nothing heroic or romantic about it.

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              After my Dad passed away, my mom came and visited for a month or so. She was checking out LA and deciding if she wanted to move here. I think she already knew that this is where she wanted to be, but she did her due diligence. I was completely strung out when she came. I’d wake up and get well and for the entire day, we’d be in my backyard planting flowers and doing all sorts of projects. When I’m high I’m on fire and a real go-getter. We truly had great days buying little flats of flowers and lovingly planting them in newly dug beds that we’d design together. Every so often I’d go in and get high to keep it all rolling. By the end of the day we’d be done and looking forward to cooking dinner and watching cooking shows until sleep found us. But I needed to cop and so I’d always make some sort of flimsy excuse to leave and be gone for an hour or so. “I’m going to go get us dinner” or “I really want to look for a new book so I’m gonna go to the bookstore in Glendale.” I could really tell her anything because she had no idea where these places were, and she was so tired from gardening all day. I’d always tell her that I’d cook dinner when I got back and “just rest and have a glass of wine. I’ll be back really soon.” Every night I did this. I have to think that at some point she knew what was going on or at least she realized that I was up to something in some way no good, but she never said anything. I remember that period so well because I had such a string of good luck with copping. I’d drive to skid row and park and within minutes I’d find a connection and buy what I needed for the night and the next day. Incredibly good luck. Sometimes I’d be there for hours just walking around trying to find anyone holding with so many old junkies just saying, “It’s hot tonight” which meant that the cops were around, and the dealers were inside somewhere. Sometimes they’d just say “Man, it’s dry today.” But for that month it all worked out smoothly. There were definitely nights where it took longer than any trip to the bookstore would take and I’d lie and say I’d seen a friend and was talking for a while. Overall, it was a pretty good month if such a thing can be called good. I shot heroin around the clock and spent a month planting flowers and such with my mom ending with some beautiful meal I’d cook, and we’d drift off to bed watching cooking shows.

              Much later, after I’d gotten sober again and my mom had moved out here, we tried to replicate the planting flowers experience. Without dope, I was just not into it. I wanted to be. For her but that’s what dope gave me. Excitement for the little mundane pleasures of life. Without it, I needed choirs of angels and beams of starlight to get excited for anything. One day, after again begging off planting flowers with my mom she looked at me and said, “I like you better when you’re high.” I could only laugh, and she did too; she didn’t really mean it but the truth was what it was. I was actually more fun to be around when I had heroin coursing through my veins.

              Eventually that idyllic, heroin and love-filled month ended, and my mom was going back home. Back to Bel Air. Back to the house, I grew up in. I had to go with her. I just had to. I was so strung out that I told her it was a great time to come back and see the home for maybe the last time and see old friends and such. It seemed a given that she’d decided to move out here eventually and it provided a convenient excuse for me to “visit.” I needed some place away from dope to kick. I’d handle that when it came. Claim it was the flu. Maybe she knew. I don’t think she did, but I had to go back to try and get out of this spiral I was in. Fainche still lived at the house although we’d broken up almost a year earlier. The entire month my mom was here Fainche made herself scarce. She loved my mom, but she knew precisely what was going on with me. I think it disgusted her. She never said anything but when I left with my mom there was a look of dwindling hope and steeling herself for some great loss in her eyes. And so, I went back home.

              I took some dope with me but by the first morning, it was gone. I remember it was a hot, humid Maryland summer day and I sat outside smoking a cigarette and crying. I had to tell my mom. I was closing in on fifty and still this lost child who needed to confess his sins to his mom, just like I’d done decades before after the years of torment from being molested. I needed her to know. I asked her to sit with me and as she saw my bloodshot eyes and realized I’d been crying she knew. She simply said, “Oh no.” And so, it was out and my elaborate and hopeful plan of what I’d accomplish within the next two or three weeks was laid out and we both pretended to buy into it.

              I was high the next day. I think I lied and said I was going to a meeting in town, but I went straight to the city and literally went to the corners I knew about from The Wire, the greatest piece of filmed art our species has yet to conceive. Of course, I found dope. I bought syringes with no questions asked in some drug store and I got high. Nothing was going to change. I did this for days. It got to the point where I had to find the car keys and run out and just bolt. Just drive away like a fugitive and turn my phone off to quell the constant worried calls and texts from my mom and other’s she’d reached out to. Eventually, I’d get high and come home and swear it was over. And the next day maybe I’d kick a little. At some point I coerced my mom into asking for Percodan from a family friend because “I was sick.” Christ. I can’t even imagine doing that now and putting her through such a frightened and humiliating ordeal, but the fact is, I still have it in me. I can go south at any moment. There’s nothing good about me.

              At some point, maybe a week or so into the whole fiasco I drove again to west Baltimore after running off with the car. I went to the same corner and was met by the same cadre of Black teenage boys all desperately trying to sell dope or anything to any slowly passing car out of place in such a depressed and forgotten area. Desperation on both sides of the car door. I pulled over and asked for dope and with a nod a kid, maybe sixteen, hopped in and told me to drive around the corner. This wasn’t unusual. The dealers generally stand away from where the little crumpled, brown paper bag of vials of white paper lie wedged behind a rock or trashcan. We turned the corner and he said pullover. Everything was as it always was. Once we stopped he pulled out a pistol from his waistband and put it against my head and screamed, “Give me your money motherfucker!” I was so defeated. I just slowly handed him the thirty bucks I had hoping to get three vials. He wasn’t content with that. He pressed the barrel harder against my head and screamed, “Give me all of it! Don’t fuck with me!” I had a moment. I just said, very unheroically and very honestly, “Just shoot me. I don’t care.” I remember truly feeling the truth of that. It wasn’t a strategy. It wasn’t false bravado. It was just a wish that all of this could be over. All the heartbreak. All the girls leaving me. All the dogs dying. All the dreams ending up in burnt spoons and all the pain I’d forged into my parents. I meant it. “Just shoot me.”

              He was so rattled with that response and the calm tone in which it was delivered he just shorted out and opened the door, grabbed my phone, and ran away. Who knows? The gun may have been empty. He got what he wanted. But in that moment, I was perfectly ok with dying. Just let all of this end and let something stop me from hurting everyone else. Let this sixteen-year-old Baltimore corner boy be the deliverance of my end and the eventual healing of everyone I’d infected.

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              These sorts of things happen from time to time when your main concern is committing a felony multiple times a day to get drugs from people who don’t really care what it takes to get your money. Generally, they’re on the level and you can trust them but sometimes they just want what’s yours and they’ll use whatever’s at hand to get it. I’ve had a guy in a crowded LA alley chase me with a brick that he’d happily cave my head in with. I’ve had guns fired at my car for no conceivable reason only to hear the bang, drive off after getting crack and find a bullet hole in the pale blue roof of my ’67 Fairlane just above the driver’s seat. God knows where that little unknowing and forced into service lump of lead landed. I never found it. And sometimes it’s just karma that gets you. Like coming home from work with Jeff after a day on set and after parking and getting out of my Fairlane being told by two specters from the shadows to lie face down on the street. The barrel of the gun jammed into the back of my head. They took everything we had which was virtually nothing. We had empty wallets, one watch and one trench coat (mine) between us. We called the cops, hardly rattled but it felt like something you’re supposed to do. The cop told us “You should get some sort of protection in this neighborhood. Something that has some range to it. You know what I mean?” We lived in Echo Park and he was telling us to get a gun. We didn’t but I thought about those two lost kids doing the same thing to people who couldn’t handle it and how they’d fuck them up forever, the trauma they’d instill, and I wanted them dead. And yet, who was I to cast blame for pain jammed into people who didn’t deserve it? Is a gun any more deadly than a broken heart?