I know its been virtually forever since I’ve posted…. some of it is my job, some I could blame on friends and family… but mostly I just got tired of writing such narrow fiction strictly about sex and drugs… so changes are in the works.  stay tuned.

This is more of a character study than a story though I’ve tried to work in an interesting biographical narrative… Part Three is coming soon. Part one should be read first : http://proseandconz.com/post/6543321122/ob1

When I got home I worked my way through a moderate panic attack — all those books and courses on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy had started to pay off. I didn’t hide, isolate, vibrate, cry, or brood. I just played the cerebral-video tape of the event over and over again — noticing the strangeness of it all: 

Gordo and I had made the deal when I was still living in The Big Smoke — when I’d drive into Steel-City a couple times a week to re-up. The last time I had tried to contact him his old lady told me he was facing 3 to 5 for trafficking (oh what luck! I thought at the time, free pills or at least years of amnesty on the front). I supposed people gossip in jail, though I reckoned the bookish “Rocket Scientist” moving home to clean up wouldn’t rate. So how did he know I was in the Hammer?  Furthermore, my attendance at the clinic was even fresher — a year and a half. And, I was currently only there to drop a urine sample once a week now. So, either the fates were conspiring against me, or someone had ratted me out. I called Syd and he smelled a snitch: 

“Mick, I hate to tell you this, but you’re just not that popular. No one is tracking your movements — you haven’t used in quite sometime.”

“So you figure it was a set-up?” I asked — always master of the obvious.

“Yeah Budnik, you got set-up.”

Syd is tall, lanky, and looked like a junk’d out medieval Jesus Christ - pale skinned, blue eyes, perfectly shaped brown beard and matching ringlets past his shoulders. He had been fixated on the allure of heroin and opiates since we were both fifteen. When I was dreaming of locking myself in a music studio tripping balls on LSD and recording the results, he was always about giving his life to the needle and spoon.

“Sure LSD is probably an amazing trip Mick. But, heroin — she’s the queen, king, and god of all drugs.” he would prophesy.

“Don’t you think that’s a little, I dunno, hardcore?”

“Why do anything halfway?” he responded, “would you half-way fuck a girl? Stop half way through? Leave her begging and your balls aching?”

“Probably not.”

“Heroin is the orgasm — the climax, the golden elevator all the way to heaven.”

“And, it can kill you…” I retorted.

“In excess,” he dodged,”cheeseburgers can kill you in excess.” 

It wasn’t until after high-school  that he’d meet his mysterious courtier. Whilst I was thousands of kilometers east burning at my brain with MDMA and all numbers of mushrooms, blotters, and cannabinoids — he was starting his love affair with the spike and plunger. He dove right in: Dilaudid, four times more powerful than morphine. Crushed and shot easily and safely — given a little bottled water and a piece of clean cotton. At, around ten to twenty bucks a shot he was soon procuring daily from a whore and her cancer patient husband (another story for another time). 

Syd truly earned his street-cred after he found a loop hole in the narcotics disposal system at the pharmaceutical warehouse where he was employed. Soon the streets of Steel-City were flowing with ratio fentanyl, morphine ampules, oxycontin syrup — every opiate and benzodiazepine in every form you could imagine: transdermal patches, tablets, extended release capsules, oral syrups, and IV fluids — and lots of it. 

But, all customer’s need a clientele and if you’re selling junk ninety-nine times out of a hundred the customers will be junkies. Junk fiends are not a reliable group: they bargain, steal, “borrow” (read: steal directly to your face), and order more than they can pay for without telling the retailer until it’s time to pay. But, the lies they say are part of the disease — crackheads are not. 

Unfortunately, along with every group of junkies you always find a few crackheads, and a bunch that enjoy indulging in both — the doctors, counsellors, and social workers call it “multi-addictive concurrent disorders”. Along with these coke-’piate addicts there’s violence, thieving, super-ratty behavior, and crack — a cornucopia of ivory rocks. It started with a couple of tokes to seal a deal, or prove he wasn’t five-o. The high propels your spirit upwards without a parachute and the only way to keep from splattering on the pavement is more crack. Otherwise you’re left with a painful crash, an unbearable hunger and  an emptiness in your chest where your heart would normally reside. And, as it does with many hopes, dreams and lives — Syd’s business burnt out at the end of a resin stained glass cylinder. 

Ultimately, it was his nervous, dim - witted brother who had parked in an empty, closed, Beer Store parking lot while Syd happened to be on his run that attracted the police — whose jail (and offices) resided directly across from the car-park. But, upon his return after finishing his drops, it was the rock rocket that put him in shackles.

I still wonder if Syd had ignored “the hard” how long those beautiful days of cheap ‘scripts, and designer pharms could’ve lasted? Certainly weeks, months, maybe years — his employer was forgiving of his drug addiction and oblivious to his thievery. In retrospect, it very well could’ve been the death of me — of both of us.

“Every time I can’t score, or have to pay through the nose for junk I wish we were still in those glory days,” he would lament from time to time.

“We would have died,” I would scoff.

“Maybe,” he’d chuckle, “But I would’ve died happy, and rich — so fucking rich.” 

Syd’s parent’s let him rot in jail for three weeks. He went through opiate and cocaine withdrawal on concrete floors, and steel cots. Vomiting bile for a week into a stainless steel shitter. Bones aching, brain seizing and sputtering in his skull — a fish air-drowning underfoot in a tin dingy. Eventually his family relented, though their home became collateral ensuring his appearance at trial.   

Shitty police work ( a couple of illegal searches), and a decent lawyer ( about ten grand) got him three years probation all served at home. During those years we’d go “shopping” in tandem, each with their eyes on the other’s back — everyone involved watching for the black and whites. Even though it could’ve cost him his freedom he never stopped “doing favors for friends” or “grabbin’ a little taste for himself.”  

There’s another detail about Syd — that usually stays under-wraps — but is essential to this tale:

 Syd is gay — not that you’d ever suppose with his savior in a sweatsuit attire. 

He is neither flamboyant, nor does he sit in the closet waiting for a better tomorrow. He owns it, and owns it well. I once asked him:

“So do your parents know you’re gay? your brothers? How’d you tell them?”

“Listen Mick, once you have the ‘I’m addicted to crack, and I shoot dope everyday’ talk — the ‘blow-jobs and anal’ talk is a breeze.” he chuckled “They just told me to use condoms, and not to stick anything or anyone weird up my ass.”

I chuckled.

“Really what more could I have done wrong?” he laughed, “maybe fratricide — or shit, skipping out on my bail leaving the family homeless — if we could get through my arrest making the local paper, going to court, and sliding by like O.J. we could get through gay.”

Syd spends most nights drinking his demons unconscious at OPM the only gay bar in The Hammer — and rather ironically named — at least for Syd. Due to a chance meeting on the bar-stools Syd got outed at work: When the new assistant manager “there to dance with her friends without getting hit on or grabbed at,” said she’d “keep it quiet” what she really meant was: she’d tell everyone who cared to listen. Once his boss found out Syd became the packaging plant’s whipping boy — errand after errand, meaningless tasks again and again. After a weeks harassment at the smoking pit — he quit. 

“She’s a fucking cunt, I’d love to fuck her husband just to make a point, or tattoo ‘bigot’ on her forehead just to make a point.”

“I’m sorry Syd,” I replied.

“Not you’re fault — and it was a dead-end piece of shit job anyways,” frothing at the mouth.

“All the same, if you ever need to vent …”

“That’s what I’m doing.”

We both break down laughing.

Being unemployed gave Syd more time to keep his ear to the asphalt, lay out some cheese and try and catch whatever rat set me up. The third day along he called me up — lungs pumping hard, his breathing audible, cellphone speakers cutting in and out. 

“Do you know Tyrone?” he asked, “Tyrone the Hustler.”

“No” I chuckled, “Not to be overtly racist but I’m guessing he’s probably not nearly as black as his moniker would make him out to be?”

“Nah, snow white, almost pretty” he replied, “only don’t tell him that. This kid is a hustler in the pre-hip hop definition of the word.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you seen ‘Midnight Cowboy’?” he asked.

“Yeah, but I’m still not sure I understand what you mean.”
“Let me put it this way — he could offer you drugs lure you into an alley and beat you until you hand him everything you own worth anything. But, he’d rather suck your dick and lift your wallet while he’s at it.”

“Seriously? Like a gigolo?” I queried.

“Lips like an angel, and the hands of a pick-pocket — not a bad skill set when you’re living on the street.” Syd chuckled, “he sold you out for a red-shaker.”

“Seriously!” astounded, “that’s like what? forty bucks?”

“About.”

“I would’ve paid him at least fifty to keep his mouth shut.” I muttered, voice raised, anger and ire rising making my blood boil. “Yo, Syd, I’ll buy your methadone all week if you keep tabs on ‘Our Friend’ best you can. Watch out for Gordo too — he’s playing dirty pool.”

“Done!” he replied, “Set a trap for the rat, and keep eyes on the ‘Sewer King’”

——————————- End part Two of Four —————————————-

kellyoxford:

Best photo from last night’s riot in Vancouver.

Photo by Rich Lam/Getty Images

As time goes on the methadone clinic starts to lose it’s appeal. When I first entered recovery it was a safe and easy way to be close to my old social scene, taste the danger of my old life. At the same time, as sobriety enters into your life you realize that each wrinkle, crag, scab, scar, and pock on the faces of the passers-by are themselves cautionary tales — yet another reason never to fill my body full of the panacea of the poppy ever again. 

Nowadays, I keep my head down. I ignore the pushers — lurking amongst the smokers by the front door. I get in line — eyes on my laces — and announce my name through a piece of metal mesh set in bullet-proof plexi-glass.

“Mick Ford is here to leave a sample! He’ll also be seeing the doctor — so rush the results.” The receptionist shouts to no one in particular. 

I enter the first available washroom. There is a small closed circuit camera in the top left corner of the closet sized washroom aimed directly at the urinal to prevent the swapping out, or tampering with the urine samples (which are tested for temperature, sex, and twelve different drugs). The staff assure us the cam is just a “live feed”, that it doesn’t record anything. Either way, I have mixed feelings about giving the piss-test girl a close up of my manhood. A tiny window opens presenting me with a small plastic cup — I return the cup full of urine back through the sliding window. I avoid the other patrons waiting for my named to be called to see the doctor. There are about a dozen people waiting around — too lazy, or stoned to make an appointment. Some use it as a social hub, others view the clinic like a market place selling their wares or making plans to “hook up later.” 

Lately, I’m more apt to view the clinic like a church: a congregation of people there for a singular purpose, to achieve a common goal — sobriety. Wrapped in sin, seeking pharmaceutical, divine or any kind of relief. There are many congregants that continue to use drugs — every day — but as many times as they fall down they continue to get up again — slowly scratching their way towards salvation or at least a life better than that of a grey skinned puncture filled powder-veined addict. The pews may be plastic, and there is only bullet-proof glass — no fancy stained glass for us. Speaking to the doctor is our confessional, the methadone — communion. The patrons of the church that I go to now may be unkempt, haunted by their pasts, and worried about their futures. I think you’d find that in any church — but at the clinic we don’t dress up or wear masks. 

Everyone is simply themselves from the mundane to the deranged.

As my thoughts run away with me I hear:

“Mick, you can see your doctor now!” the receptionist always shouts. 

I’m buzzed through a video surveilled stainless steel door.   

I talk to the doctor:

“How are you?”

“Great”

“Have you been using?”

“Nope, I drink once a month or so — but in small amounts — I’m aware of the risk of overdose.”

“Good. Your test came back clean.”

“Perfect.”

“Anything you’d like to change, any new cravings?” he queries 

“Nope”

“See you in a month — good luck.” Both our chests swelling with unspoken pride.

There were times only months ago these conversations would take close to half an hour —sometimes longer. Hell, sometimes I’d even cry. I get my script and leave, move through the stainless steel doors, and get in line for the “juice” bar. 

So it can’t be snorted, shot or otherwise abused, methadone is prepared as a liquid mixed with Tang — which makes it like Jonestown juice, suicide style laced cult Kool-Aid. 

Waiting in line I here a familiar voice:

“Hey! if it ain’t the Rocket Scientist!” 

My nickname on the streets of Steel-City stemming from a time particularly paranoid crackhead would enter my car to go get some oxys because I might hold him up: “with sum kinda rocket launcher or lasers or some shit. Look at his glasses — they’re huge!” All in earshot laughed, and the moniker stuck. 

“D’ you remember me?” the familiar voice queried.

“Of course I do Gordo!” I said with the gusto saved for people you wanna fuck, or are going to fuck you — hard. “You became a ghost four or five years ago. I figured you finally made it west.”

“Nah, east, Kingston — a nickel for a pharmacy hold-up”

“Sorry to hear that.” Maybe he won’t remember, maybe he won’t bring it up I prayed.

“Meh. You didn’t rat me out fuckin’ rat” he hissed, “Fuckin’ Terry— what a goof.”

“Yeah that sucks man.” I turn to step away.  The smile evaporates from his face. 

“But, fuck man, if I recall we’z got something that needs settling.”

“What was that again?” I played dumb.

“Oh just that thirteen hundred for forty 80s if I recall,” he smiled maliciously.

“I don’t really have all that dough.”

“Well there are choices:” he grinned, “work for me; find forty oxys; or disappear — unless you can scrape’er up.”

“Fuck!” I relented, “meet me at the BMO around the corner.”

I winced as my fingers hit each metal button on the pin pad. Each monotonous bleep — another funeral bell. The steel monolith sorted and spat out five-hundred bones — my daily limit. Next, I offered up my credit card to the faux silver cash spewing altar. Years ago, I would have thought nothing of taking a cash advance — a little help from my homeys at VISA. Now, nearly two years sober, the anxiety builds in my neck and shoulders, then the headache starts. I feel nauseas. 

My father, a veteran banker, considers interest a disgusting term.

“Hey Dad, I borrowed five hundred bucks at 24.5%.” would garner a similar reaction to “Dad there’s a dead hooker in the car — I need the hose and 300 bucks for a discreet detailer.”

Explaining this to him and my mother, running to the Bank of Mom and Dad another time … not for new drugs, but for a debt that I had forgotten though clearly it had been haunting me. 

Gordo counts the cash back in the video taped glass confines of the bank. 

“20, 40, 60, … shit um, 100, 160, 200 — fuck is this a little short?” he pauses. “That’s what she said. Ha!” he exalted

“Can we get away from the cameras dude?” I ask. 

“Shit oh yeah…” he puts his hood up and exits with all the grace of a ballerina — as if it matters now. 

“So I still owe you three bills but my cards are maxed out, and you have the lion’s share.”    

“Lion’s share?” he asked

“The majority, the nut, y’know — most of it,” I explained.

“Yeah that makes sense, lion’s share, shit that dude’s king of the jungle!”

I wondered how I ever spoke to these people on a daily basis.

“Okay” he states “I’ll text you in exactly 48 hours.”

“Done”

“Two days don’t forget!”

“I’m the sober one Gordo — I’ll remember.

“Oh yeah” he stops, “that’s weird.”

“What’s weird?” I ask. 

“Just that you were a junkie — and now you’re not.”

“You just have to work hard, fuckin’ push it, and it fuckin’ sucks for a long time dude.”

“I guess that’s why they call you ‘The Scientist’” he takes two more steps and stops again. “Oh yeah, but here’s the thing:  I’m  trying to stay underground — I don’t want ANYONE to know I’m out of the joint. Well you know, debts and all.” he laughed, “ I’ll make sure you can find me though. Cool?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Heh, heh, a plan for a rocket!”

“Good One dude.” I feigned a chuckle.

 Walking back to the car I hoped I had enough gas to get home. Gordo sauntered off into a herd of crackheads one leg dragging behind the other in a faux I’ve been shot in this leg more times than 50 cent strut. One grand richer — my grand richer. 

—————————————— End Part One ——————————————-

Again any and all feedback would be awesome, Part two should roll out by the weekend.

Thanks,

Mick Ford.