JUNKY CHRONICLES

Narcissus and Goldmund

2012-01-28T02:33:00.000-08:00

Jan 28 2012
I have a best friend who Ive known since high school, somwhere down the line I started to call him CeeDee. CeeDee and I have been through what all good friends have been through, I could tell stories that would mostly make you laugh and only one or two that might make you cry. DeeDee went Christian on me a few years after we started hanging out, he stopped smoking pot which was our main thing but he married a beautiful woman and now has two kickass kids. Over the years of being friends smoking pot and talking drugs we both went through our phases. I somewhere decided that using heroin would be a good idea and he like I said went the God route. CeeDee is a respected artist, father, and husband now. You will all someday be familiar with his work.
CeeDee and I have so much in common but our beliefs have been like Yin and Yang, constantly circleing eachother but just barely touching. CeeDee turned me on to the book by Herman Hesse called Narcissus and Goldmund which tells the tale of two young men on very seperate trails in life and at the end of the book nothing is clear as there is no clear winner. The yarn always reminded me of our relationship and just as in the end of the book I wonder who took the right path. I still wonder who took the right path.
We were both having a beer at the bar last night when CeeDee laid something pretty heavy on me. He looked up at me from the barstool and in his own words expressed a bit of jealousy at the freedom that has come with my lifestyle. Being jealous of all the right things he had chose in his life over the years, that someone had for once seen that all the bullshit Ive done and put myself through, my life isnt so unimportant.

chrisdeanmotherfucker@chrisdean.com

Christmas Homeless.

2012-01-27T20:59:00.000-08:00

Homeless Christmas in Detroit.

Im not a regular on the streets, homeless anyway, Ive had my moments when my lifestyle has brought me to the streets where I’ve had to live in abandoned buildings or abandominiums. This year for Christmas I found myself homeless, at least without a lease or contract saying I have a place to stay. I have a longtime lover that puts up with me for a few days out of most months and another love who puts up with me a little more. This December things were looking good for us and she agreed that I would have a place for the entire month, but after five days of me invading her space I found all my belongings on her back porch. My month was up as far as a warm place to stay with a hot water shower, kitchen, laundry, and warm bed with my one true love. She often bites off more than she can chew.

I didn’t have any places to crash for the night so I bagged my stuff up in plastic as best I could and left it in her back yard and headed out to the abandoned across the street from the dope house I frequent. My new crib didn’t have heat or electric but it did have two other friends of mine from the street who stayed there, that I trust enough to not steal my backpack or Gary Fisher bike, but more importantly they had my back if things got serious when someone decided to try and put a coup’de taut on our abandominium.

While I was out and about showing an intern reporter from Denmark the underbelly of Detroit someone burned down our abandoned, which we called The Clubhouse. The Clubhouse was gone so I made my way down to One Eyed Michelle and her man Deaf. We call him Deaf because he’s almost deaf. A few days there and it was Christmas Eve. We have One Eyed Michelle, Deaf, Cheech, and myself all hanging out in our abandominium. A small room with two space heaters, radio, and a work light served as the main sleeping and living area. Someone had spent $50 on getting a guy who knew electric to hook up the electricity at the pole. Water is brought in by the gallon, the toilet was always a creative endeavor unless you just had to take a pee.

The day before Christmas was a good one as it usually is. Michelle and Cheech were panhandlers and people tend to be generous during the holidays. Cheech always held a sign on a popular off ramp and Christmas Eve he brought in over $200. Cheech shared and made sure everyone got a blow or rock. We are mainly all heroin addicts so the blows are most important. Crack came second and that was never my game. We spent the Eve crowded in the small room speaking on past Christmases, our favorite all time gifts as kids, where we got out trees from and how, and how much money they would make on actuall Christmas day. The holidays always brought stories of how generous rich folks drove around Detroit giving out $20 bills, $50 bills, even $100 bills wrapped on candy canes and stuffed in Christmas cards. No one had actually seen anyone get a $100 but every year the rumors got bigger. Non the less the holidays always brought excellent panhandling.

Cheech and I stayed up most of the night bullshitting and by 7am Christmas day he wanted to buy me breakfast at the closest coney island. We searched out the three most likely to be open and found ourselves on Third and Peterboro where White Grove was also closed. As we started to make our way to Cass Park Cheech saw some dealer who owed him $170. Cheech got in his face even though he was a full foot shorter than the shit talking dealer. The dealer offered him a deal on six blows and he took it. Cheech gave me two of them but I had no new points or bleach so mine had to wait. Cheech brought me to a small shelter made of an old camper top where he fixed his heroin in his cooker and shot it in to his groin as he always does.

Walking down Third to Cass Park a group of homeless gathered around a mini van. A church man was giving out new pairs of socks and cups of hot chili. The chili was delicious but the socks were a little small on my size thirteens but I made them work.

We mingled for a few minutes with the other down and outs then made our way to another off ramp near MGM Casino. Cheech pulled a hand drawn cardboard sign out of his jacket and went to work. Cheech has a beard which seems to be his good luck charm as he seems to make twice as much as anyone else claims to. He seems to carry an elderly Santa Claus vibe with him and sure enough, as I watch him walk out to the island two cars in a row stop right next to him at the light and roll down their windows to give him a few bills. I wait and watch from a distance and then notice flashing lights are on him. I walk over to see whats up as the cop rolls down his window. Cheech starts to speak when the Sergeant barks “Fuck all that, get your ass up and move on, if I see you around here in 15 minutes your getting locked up” The Sergeant rolls up his window and drives off. We both agree that he’s pissed having to work Christmas morning instead of watching his grand kids open their gifts. We give him a pass and stop speaking of him.

Cheech counts his $10 and change as we walk back toward Woodward to catch the Mack bus and head back to the new clubhouse. While on the bus I check my e mail on my phone and realize my sister has wished me a merry Christmas and letting me know theres a $100 waiting for me at Western Union. Chritmas is looking brighter. I pick up the money and buy everyone a blow and pocket the rest for the week. Deaf and Michelle had just walked in with a few plates of food from another church. We all eat more chili and nod off into a William Burroughs type holiday nod. We all have our Holliday’s one way or another. One Eyed Michelle, Deaf, Cheech and myself spent the rest of Christmas day together in a small room in an abandoned ouse listening to WJR and Coast to Coast with smiles on our faces. Many folks would be upset that people like us had a chance to smile and enjoy ourselves when we should be out looking for jobs or entering a rehab for drugs and booze. We know that’s not going to happen so we smiled anyway. I was blessed with friends to spend Christmas with, that and a few blows. At the end of the night, Michelle and Deaf crawled into their own beds, I took the swivel chair with my feet resting on a milk crate. Cheech made himself a bed from old cushions and blankets in the room with no heat but we put a space heater on him that I swiped from my ex-girlfriend. I was surprised at what a decent Christmas it was.

Murder across the street, cops in my abandoned..

2012-01-07T23:01:00.000-08:00

    The four of us were waking up and getting our high on and figuring out the days plan. One Eyed Michelle, Deaf, me and a loner from the burbs who had stopped buy to use our house to smoke his crack were all there. Michelle was leaving our abandominium with Deaf when I heard her yell back into the house that the cops were out front. I quickly gathered any obvious paraphenilia and quickly hid them in the back room. By the time I walked back out of the back room the black and white cop team were in the house and barking orders telling us how discusting our way of life was, asking us where the drugs were, where we got our drugs. The good cop bad cop team were in full effect like I was in an episode of a bad tv cop show.  We had nothing to say as you cant really have a conversation with a cop when hes in his zone of kicking ass and looking for the evil drugs. The white cop, the bad cop as he obviously was portraying immediately walked up to me and shoved his hands in my pants pockets. I was now scared, if he poked himself on one of my neeedles I knew I had an ass kicking coming. I straight up raised my voice to him "dude, be careful, I dont want you to get yourself poked" He realized his total rookie mistake and let me pat myself down to make sure I had no needles on me. He again went in my hoodies pocket and found a few old empty lotto packs. Im still not sure if good cop black cop was actually cool or just playing the part, I tend to think he was actually cool. I couldnt help but think about the regulation that had been passed a few years back letting outsiders join the DPD. Years ago you had to be a resident of Detroit to be a cop in Detroit but now they took anyone and there were a load of young suburban kids who wanted to experience being a badass Detroit cop. They stuck out like a sore thumb. These suburbanite cops just want action while the regular cops who live here tend to be cool. The regular city living cops have seen it all and they dont need any excitement to put under their belt, they just want to do their job and get paid. I love real Detroit cops for that very reason, the suburb living cops, not so much.
    The black cop, being the good cop gently asked me where I got my shit, and how long had it been since Id gotten high. I told him about an old spot I used to cop at about eight blocks away and he seemed to know about the place. I wasnt bout to tell him about where Id been getting my dope that day as I liked my life safe as possible.
The cops took our IDs and went to the car. Bad cop was always the tough one, his opinions were all he wanted us to hear it seemed. A few minutes later he called me over and gave us our IDs back. Apparently they had another call and we were small potatoes, bad cop wanted bigger excitement.
    I left for most of the day right after that to do some work for a friend. I didnt get back till just after dark and when I rode up there were cop cars, ambulances, and a tow truck carrying away a light brown Ford with its drivers side window broken out. As I rode up another dude on a bike I knew explained that some old dude got two shots to the head right out back of the dopehouse. I didnt want to ride past on my bike to walk in my house which was right acrosss the street, I didnt want to have to talk to cops anymore than I had to while they were on duty. After they had cleaned up the whole mess, took the body away and the car I finally went into my house not 20 yards from where the dude was killed. Michelle was inside sleeping or nodding as you can never be sure. She said the whole thing went down minutes after I had left that day.
   Word is it was an argument over scrap metal, argument was it was over pills, I tend to think it was probably both. The killer is apparently known and has killed before but got off on a techenality(sp) back when he was 18. The dopehouse shut down for two entire days and sent all local addicts into a tizzy while all the nearby bullshit dealers reaped the rewards of the good shit spot being out of business for the moment.

The intern.

2011-12-26T21:36:00.000-08:00

So Ive been giving some tours of Detroit which Ive been calling Underbelly Tours Detroit. Ive had several young journalists from around the world contact me and hire me to show them around Detroits old buildings and neighborhoods. Depending on what theyre looking for Ill sometimes bring them to houses that have squatters/users who live there. My friends who live at these houses are usually cool with being interviewed and I make sure they get paid a few bucks for their trouble so they can get a blow. I always charge on a sliding scale depending on how much they can afford. generally $50-100 a day will make me happy. Ive had several reporters, photographers, and even a novelist hire me over the past two years. Last week the BBC hired me to give a tour and watch their backs as they were afraid for their safety as well as their camera equipment when they needed to get some video of abandoned schools and other unused city buildings. They paid me very well and also hired a friend of mine just to follow us around and watch the van with their equipment in it while we were exploring the Fisher Body plant, Highland Park police station and Fire Department which had both been abandoned a few years back. Ive always enjoyed giving these tours.

I was recently contacted by someone who didnt know about me giving tours for cash but did want to hang out in the D and ride around. He came from Europe and about a week ago we went out for the day on bikes. I explained while riding that I do this as side work for extra income as I know all the old buildings and the East side neighborhoods as well as a lot of the characters that inhabit my area. We took an extensive tour of the Packard, One Eyed Michelles squat house and shooting gallery, as well as the house I was squatting that week and other places. He didn't offer to pay me anything, didnt offer to buy even lunch or a beer.

We talked a few days later and him being an intern for the biggest paper in his country he wanted to change the story he was writing and photographing to something having to do with Michelle who I had introduced to the week earlier. I explained that I give tours for money and have to spend my time making money for myself and didn't really have time to show him around for free again. He offered me $30 for another full days tour and $30 to Michelle for hanging out and interviewing her. I turned him down, $30 for two days work playing bodyguard and tour guide for a guy carrying a $2500 camera and wearing fancy cloths in the ghetto just wasn't worth it.

A few days went by and the house I was squatting in had burned down so I moved in with Michelle and her friend as well as usually one other random person who needed a warm place and who could spare a couple of blows. We were all living together pretty well and four of us had a great Christmas together. I came home today to find my guy from Europe sitting in my chair talking up Michelle. I didnt have much to say to him as it was obvious he was paying Michelle for her take on homelessness in Detroit. As most any squat there were people coming and going, doing their drugs and what not. I was busy at my computer trying to get a story together and then finished up, jumped on my crappy little bike that my girl had loaned me. My Gary Fisher was in the pawn so I was riding a 1970s girls Huffy. 15 minutes after leaving and meeting my girlfriend I get a call from the intern asking about his bike. It was stolen out of the house while he was interviewing Michelle. I told him flat out I didnt know anything about it and can understand why he would think it was me as I wasn't real happy with his earlier offer of $30 for two days work. He explained it wasn't his bike and if I thought he owed me something I should say so. He didnt owe me anything but we made a few texts back and forth but I have to say I didn't feel real bad for the guy. I had warned him about Detroit, that he should stick with me but it would cost at least a few bucks, he refused and went around my back to a contact and was ripped off in the process of visiting a dope house by himself.

I can understand that he's just an intern and isn't making the big bucks yet but working for the biggest paper in his country, which tells me hes probably got some pretty fancy college under his belt. The only real bummer to the story is that the bike was borrowed from some chick he was
staying with here in Detroit and I wonder if will she will be reimbursed for the bike he got ripped off.

Poor poor pitiful me

2011-12-01T16:07:00.000-08:00

Most of my posts are of old and I've had some comments asking where I'm at now with my life. I'm going to reflect on something more recent here.
    Ive been accused of glamorizing my life as an addict and maybe this will explain better what its really like, nothing pretty or exciting.
     I had been planning on a trip out of this years Michigan winter for over a year now. Cambodia was my goal as I know the heroin is cheap and plentiful, the beaches beautiful as the women and the cost of living made it cheap enough for me to live on a small monthly check I receive. The Cambodian government is more like a working anarchy than anything, which meant even if you were caught doing something that might be considered Illegal it would only cost a bribe with the local cops. I had a sponsor who bought me a round trip ticket to Phnom Penh leaving out of Chicago for only $800 in early November and coming back in March, I had my paperwork in order, but in order to get an expedited passport here in Detroit I went downtown and paid $195 which my sponsor also paid and was told by the agency the next day it would be ready for me to pick up in the late afternoon.
   The next morning while on my regular route to pick up my wake up shot I got a phone call from the passport agency here in Detroit. They had passed a law a few years back that I was unaware of. Any past due child support over $2500 would automatically make you ineligible for a passport. The man on the phone telling me this news also explained that I would not be getting my sponsors $195 back for the passport application. There are no refunds once you give them your money even though a majority of the money as itemized is for the actual passport book itself which I never received.
My heart sank as I talked to the brother on the phone explaining the bad news to me while riding happily on my bike back to my place. I had only a temporary place to stay, my income, my "job" was already terminated as I was leaving for the winter. The house I was staying was not ready for a new tenant. I essentially was homeless, only able to depend on a girlfriend for the new November cold.
I had been homeless in Detroit before but not without a vehicle. At least with a car you can crawl inside and warm up if need be, get around easy to get to a warm couch of a friend, but all I have is my bike and with no income. I soon had pawned the Gary Fisher bike to keep myself from getting sick, my computer went next but not before my camera. In the pawn shop waiting in line I kept thinking of the beaches in Cambodia where I should have been, strolling through Angkor Wat, the two young dark haired beauties I imagined sitting on each of my thighs with my arms around their waists in some seedy bar in Phnom Penh while more beauties danced onstage, or my friend who lives there in PP waiting for me to show up ath the airport so we could collaborate on a writing project while getting drunk in the back of a tuk tuk. I walked out of the pawn shop with $50 and no bike. I walked to the spot and got my blows, did them up and then to a friends house to borrow a small girls bike from the 70s. Try to imagine a 6'4" hulk riding a 17" girls bike around Detroit. I officially felt like a true loser, I wanted my "BORN TO LOSE" tattoo, I felt I had earned it.
The past month I've been scraping by but just barely. There's an abandoned house I share with two street hustlers who I can trust most of the time. I hadn't been on an exit ramp holding a sign stating I'm homeless and asking for money since I was in a wheelchair five years back after falling down an elevator shaft. Im a big man with a bad back and one working eye but I'm not useless, Ive always hated begging and only in the most dire situations have done it but it was Thanksgiving and the Turkey Day Parade in Detroit brings almost a million people from the burbs and they often feel compelled to help out a guy on the corner asking for it. I swallowed my pride and wasn't to proud to beg. I made $30 while my fellow hustlers made well over $100. Turkey day wasn't a total bust though as a friend asked me to come up to his place in the burbs for his annual Thanksgiving Day dinner and I almost cried when he picked me up. Fuck that dick in the Dos Equis commercial, The Most Interesting Man In the World, my friend is him. He gave me a sweet pair of pants too, loaned me a 20, and fed me Jim Beam and Turkey dinner as well as keeping the bong filled with nothing but skunk.
Back to poor poor pitiful me, if you ever had a nagging cavity among your teeth, have gum issues that cause pain, especially in the cold of an unheated abandominium then you know what hell is, we piss off the front porch and shit out on the back lawn in the rain, this week anyway. There's a couch and a plastic covered mattress which three of us share. There's no electricity so we take turns buying candles from the gas station down the way so we have light to cook our dope and find a vein by. There's no lock and the smell of money often brings thugs on check day, everyone keeps a makeshift weapon handy. We share tobacco and vodka but rarely will anyone share a pack of dope as thats personal. I have girlfriends living nearby in the hood who have warm houses but who wants to ask if you can sleep on their couch when you know they know who you are and have the rep of being a junky. The tooth pain spread to my head like a migraine in the cold, its been raining for three days and the nights I do get invited to sleep at their house I feel like I'm supposed to preform for them, and after I do they're ready for me to leave.
   As I write this, the song by CCR is now playing Who Will Stop the Rain, a major song in my trials. Tonight I have a warm bed with my longtime all time love who understandably cannot handle me being around all the time. I have to preform, and in my state its not always easy but I can lick like a motherfucker so I get down. She does love me though and she always will as I do her and always will. Betty has always been a blessing my father sent me.

I'm thankful for the friends I have but paying them back for what they've done for me seems so impossible. I get paid Thursday and will hopefully be able to rent a warm room for the month. Things are not so bad but I don't want to be known as the guy who glorifies this life. When someone asks me about using heroin I tell them that its a one way door.

First time using heroin

2011-11-10T17:22:00.000-08:00

I had been working at a bar in Ann Arbor as a bouncer. The pay sucked but the benefits were good. Hundreds of women came through every night and many were just there to get laid. I wasnt a bad looking guy so I had my share of fun with the ladies and they had their fun with the big bouncer when they needed a fix. I was on the straight and narrow as far as everyone else was concerned there at the bar. They knew I smoked my nightly joint with Stan the Mad Hatter up in the sound booth when everyone was leaving at the end of the night but I was a bouncer and that crew hung out at the gym and shot steroids, bragged about how badly they beat some unruly patron up one night long ago and how the court case was coming for the assault charge they received. I didnt really fit in with the regular bouncers.
   There was a day crew that cleaned and maintained the bar during the day and I got to know one of them. Riggs as I call him was a tough, he had his ins and out with the law, a devil tattoo on his arm, wore a old school crew cut, drove a white Rivera which he swore was the pimp, and at the time had come into a little money. He and I were soon snorting lines and I was all about buying for a dollar and selling for two. Id buy an eight ball through him at a crazy price and cut the shit with vitamin B just to make a few bucks selling 1/4 grams. At the time it made me feel like a drug dealer and I figured this is how one makes inroads to better connections. After a few weeks he explained he liked to spike his coke. I had always been afraid of needles just like most everyone but after seeing him put that needle in his arm, draw back the blood to the plunger and pump it back into his entire system of veins, heart, and brain, seeing him in the throes of oblivion and ecstasy, seeing him with the look of absolutely nothing touching him, no pain but not exactly joy I got curious. Something in his eyes said he had everything he needed at that very moment and happiness could be attained for a second. I wanted that and was soon shooting cocaine for the first time.
   I sometimes think about the possible guilt someone might feel turning someone on to shooting drugs. When you shoot a drug there is no going back, you broke a wall down that cannot be repaired. Someone has to show you how to cook up the drugs, how to buy a syringe at the CVS, how to find a vein, how to actually inject it. Every IVDU (intravenous drug user) out there was taught by some other IVDU addict. I wonder if Riggs feels any guilt over showing me how to inject drugs. I myself have shown friends, true friends how to use a syringe but I somehow dont feel much guilt. As I know myself, I am a drug user who has always experimented and those that want to try shooting drugs will no doubt find an instructor.
   Now that Im older I dont give lessons anymore but there was a time when I did, and I wonder where my karma lies, I wonder about the people who have come through my life that Ive shown heroin and where they are now.
   One late morning I stopped by Riggs place and was knocking on the door but didnt get a response. I started banging with no result. I went from window to window knocking on the glass worried to shit he had overdosed and was lying dead in his kitchen. I went back to the door and started to bang again when he finally opened the door. His eyes were black and blue. "Dude, what the hell, I was worried to shit about you, what the fuck happened to you, did you get beat up, your eyes, they're black and blue" I asked him. Riggs rubbing his eyes barely coherent explained he did some heroin the night before and thats why his eyes were probably a little black an blue. "You did what?" I said to him. I was astounded, I could understand smoking some pot, I could understand snorting some rails, and hell I for some reason could even understand using a syringe for shooting cocaine. Riggs shrugged his shoulders and we went into the kitchen. I started to ask some questions like, what does it feel like, are you addicted right away, and probably within 15 minutes I was asking him if I could snort a little bit.

   That was the moment my life changed, when I decided that I wanted to experiment with something so obviously life changing that its warned about in schools and by parents and even Nancy Reagan. I remember one night at the dinner table sitting with my folks and my little sister, my Dad explaining what drugs can possibly do to someone and how they ruin lives. I was about 11 years old and had never even thought about smoking pot let alone shooting heroin. I nodded to my folks in an effort to explain that I would never do drugs. They seem content with my response.
   Riggs got me my heroin to snort the next day and a week after that, after watching him shoot his heroin and lay back into the couch in an apparent oblivion I asked if he would do me up. We had just eaten pizza and after my first shot I walked outside and gently put the pizza I ate back onto his front lawn.
   Riggs is clean now, working at a rehab for addicts. He was the type that couldn't handle being dope sick. If he couldn't get his fix he would just go to a dope house with a gun and pistol whip the dealer then take his shit and run. Deep down Riggs is a good man and he's proving it working in that rehab hes at now.
   It took me a few years before I got my habit. I chipped for years getting it here and there when it came around. I eventually went to Thailand where I got my first mean habit, the one that never really went away.
As I sit here writing this Im looking at five nickle packs on the table in front of me. I swore I wouldnt use them until I finished this entry to my blog.

   Adios

I love this building. The Grand Trunk on St Aubin and Ferry in Detroit.

2011-11-05T22:45:00.000-07:00

The last time I saw out of both my eyes was in this building. I had been scrapping late one night in the rain here and was on the 5th floor. I was opening up old valves in this burned and abandoned cold storage unit when I took the bolts off of one valve to see if there was any brass inside it. The valve wouldnt come off so I gave it a whack with the back of my pipe wrench. The valve exploded under the pressure letting out hundreds of pound of pressure of refrigeration grade ammonia. The burst blew me back across the room and filled it with ammonia causing a lack of oxygen. My eyes stung incredibly but I knew the building well and was near the stairwell so I started climbing up to the roof where the rain was coming down. I collapsed on the roof as my eyes, throat, and lungs were filled with with ammonia. As I was finally able to breath in the fresh air on the roof of this building I finally got my breath and realized my eyes were swollen and clouded to the point where I could only see shadows. I had lost my flashlight in the confusion and after I had rinsed my eyes in the rain I felt my way downstairs through the crumbling staircase blind about seven flights of stairs.
I made my way home that night by feel and streetlights that I knew were close to my house. I laid in bed for about three days thinking my eyes would recover on their own but apparently Im not that smart. My eyes had totally crusted shut and had to peel off the built up eye gunk in caterpillar like strands. I was almost completely blind and extremely dope sick. On my third day of being so sick that I couldn't take care of myself I made my way down to my ex girlfriends house to ask for $10 to get some drugs. She was horrified at the sight of my eyes and face but only would drive me to the hospital. I wasnt willing to go through any more dope sickness so I went down a few doors to Mr Ks house and asked him for $10. The sight of me must have scared him because he gave it right to me. My ex drove me to my dope house where she had to direct me to what house I wanted as I could only see shadows. When we got back to her place she helped me fix my spoon and rig and with some instruction put the needle to the vein I told her to and I plunged it in. It was only then that I would agree to go to the emergency room. When we got to the hospital the doctor rinsed my eyes for over an hour but told me I may very well be blind.
In the end and after many daily visits thanks to my dearest ex who drove me daily for three months at 6 am to the Kresge Eye Institute I gained partial vision in my right eye and can now see on a not too bad of level.
I still go back to the Grand Trunk but with extreme caution and that was the last time I scrapped. I went the other day and shot this video while holding the camera on my bike seat and rolling it down the isle.
This was one of my three Thanksgiving nightmares Ive mentioned earlier.

One eyed Michele and the kids. A slice of life.

2011-11-02T16:26:00.000-07:00

Walking down through my old hood heading to my regular spot to cop my shit I had been regularly running into this chick who was probably a few years older than me but looked at least a dozen. She rode an old school bike tattered with only one gear and no brakes, it was more of a childs bike but it got her around. Michele was her name and I still run into her at gas stations asking for change sometimes. Michele has had it hard enough as she lost one eye in a car accident and the streets have not treated her well as "the streets are not good to women" as one broad I know and love put it. Michele comes from a small town next to my hometown which back in my day was considerd the sticks. She keeps one eye closed most of the time to hide the fact that she had lost her fake glass eye long ago. For all I know a crack dealer may have thought it funny to trade a nickle rock of cocaine for the glass eye she had. I can just picture some dealer on the street knowing that Michele is sick as a dog for some heroin and the dealer offering her a pack of dope for the glass eye right out of her socket purely for the dealers entertainment. The young dealers are the worst, they want to be the soldiers, want to prove themselves a badass, they're dangerous and I dont do business with them, unless I have to of course. Ive heard of young dealers like that, trade a small $5 rock for the entertainment of someone elses embarrasment or even pain. One offered a jonesing addict a fix if he could punch him in the face as hard as he could and the addict got high that night. It all reminds me of the disparidy of what happens in a warzone, and this is war, the infamous war on drugs.
    Michele has stringy straight dishwater blond hair which keeps it shape from the natural oils not washed off by even a monthly shower. She might have a sip of beer but Ive never seen her drunk. Rock and heroin are her DOCs (drugs of choice) but she wont hook on the street, somehow she has drawn the line there. For her age the wrinkles are her biggest setback or possibly asset. Michele looks very street worn with her tattered cloths, pitiful bike, one working eye and the wrinkles only years of abuse can manufacture, Michele can make better money panhandeling with her looks as is than she could clean cut with two working eyes and skin thats seen care.
   I ran into Michele on a regular basis near the dope houses in my neighborhood and she always found an abandominium to squat in nearby. She was always hanging out with a younger kid all but about 20 years old but I didnt know why. Jason was always hanging out in a vacant house around the way doing his drugs and Michele was never too far away. Jasons a good lookin kid, kept his hair cut but seemed to live with Michele. I soon noticed there wasnt just one Jason but two. I had been getting the two kids hanging around with Michele mixed up and soon realized Michele had two sons in their early twenties who looked quite alike. It was your typical single parent crack smokin, heroin shootin, inner city Detroit family. Jason and Tyler were there names. I had been asked from them for smokes every time Id seen them but never noticed they were not the same person.
   Jason and Tyler still hang out sometimes but for a few years they lived in abandonded houses with no power, water, or heat except for a few candles and eachothers body warmth under the covers in the winter months. Jason has since been put in jail in Livingston County for a year, Tyler still brings his little 16 year old girlfriend down to smoke crack but usually doesnt stay too long. Tyler is the one who has it together as far as that familys concerned.
   By earlier this past summer Michele and I had become friends of sorts. I tried to help her get her ID so she could apply for a Bridge Card and possibly disability but she has a hard time doing the legwork. We were walking down Chene when she burst out in tears, "Im pregnant Pigpen, what am I going to do" After learning she was already three months in and smoking crack through the whole trimester I didnt have much hope for anything. Dad was a crack feind as well so there was no awnser there. I told her where to go to possibly take care of the situation but she hasnt wanted to speak on the subject since then, and I dont blame her but somehow someone intervened and there is not another addicted baby waiting for someone to take in, but there is still two out there.

Jamaican marijuana in Jamaica and a young smugglers dream.

2011-10-08T02:29:00.000-07:00

I had just turned 16 and my parents took us on a trip to Ocho Rios Jamaica. It was a fifteen
story hotel in one of the bigger tourist cities on the island. We took a bus from the airport
to our hotel which included a stop at a small jerk chicken stand along the ocean. All the
white, or "fresh" American tourists piled out of the bus with their fanny packs and water
bottles to start ordering whatever was offered on the hand painted plywood menu. The cleaver
wielding Rasta behind the table violently chopping up chicken parts and serving up some of
the dishes had singled me out and started asking me questions in his best English but I
couldn't understand a word he was saying through his thick accent. I kept asking him, over
and over "What, Im sorry, what do you want?" "Hey Mon, we git da erbs, wacha wan Mon, its
all Irie?" After about five exchanges of me asking him what the hell he was saying I finally
understood, he was offering to put some herbs on my jerk chicken plate. Ohhh! Yeah, put some
herbs on my chicken I said, what the hell, I love some Jamaican herbs on my jerk chicken.
Rasta curled his long bony finger to point me around the corner to a more secluded part of
his ramshackle operation and then pulled out from under the counter about two ounces of
fairly nice green Jamaican marijuana and asked for four American dollars, thats $4 for about
two ounces of decent Jamaican. I was no stoner at that time but I knew that that amount
would bring hundreds back in the states. My parents were standing ten feet from me so I was
amazed by his brazen offer and soon realized that marijuana was a part of the culture there
and not a dangerous drug that Nancy Regan was trying to tell kids back in the states to
"just say no" to but I politely declined his offer. It was at that moment though that I
realized that a cheap, naturally grown product could be bought in a third world country
and possibly resold in America at a huge profit. About four years later I would return to
Jamaica on my own with business to be done.

2011-09-30T02:55:00.000-07:00

I had brought back a nice little amount of #4 Burmese heroin from a hilltribe Northern Thailand and was surfing Seedys couch at EMU in Ypsilanti. We had known eachother for some years and he initally turned me on to a few drugs Id never tried back in high school. I always looked up to Seedy, he knew the trade and had connections but he was in his Christian phase at this point and wasnt using anything really, until that day. "let me toot a dot of that stuff you brought back" he asked me, I was surprised but knew he was the type that knew the dangers of starting in on this type of stuff., I knew he could handle it. I laid out a dot and he sniffed it up and went off to jam in the basement with some other friends we knew from high school. Seedy called me on the phone the next day in a panic, "dude, I was jamin with friends in the basement and Ding Dong (as I call him) was askin why I was fallin asleep in the middle of my solos" he told me. Well yeah I said, so what, thats normal, what did you tell him? "I told them I did a little bit of your shit from Thailand, no big deal I thought, but Ding Ding got all crazy and said hes going to call the cops unless you flush all you got down the toilet" My throat went dry instantly, I couldnt believe it, Id known Ding Dong for years, I may have set his locker on fire in high school but it was an accident. DD really thought he could do his part as a good Christian by threatning me with the law. Seedy says to me "Dude you got to get that shit outta the house" I hung up the phone and started making phone calls to find a car. I borrowed a car and drove to the woods, sealed all but a small amount in a mason jar and buried my shit near a big ghetto palm in the woods near the river.
For the next two days Seedy apoplogized profusely, I of course understood, no one saw that coming but sure enough the door bell rang and three Ypsilanti cops were at the door "are you Matthew Davis " they asked me. I admit they intimidated me for a second and actually stepped aside so they could come in like I would let anyone in the house. It was a bad idea. The lead cop told me he had gotten an anonymous tip that I had brought back heroin from Asia and was selling it. I shook my head and he kept asking me about drugs in the house. The other two cops quickly started moving about the room looking around without touching anything. I finally got my head together and asked what the hell they were doing. The house was clean so I wasnt worried much except that I had a triple beam scale on the floor next to a blanket. The cops wanted to look around the house so that they could call it a night and leave me alone from then on out. I promptly told them no, opened the front door for them signalling that they should go. I gave them my quick little rant on how the drug war is a load of crap and I resent the fact that they think they can come in my house and search my place. They smiled and left, thankfully without seeing the scale at the end of the couch. The next day I drove to Detroit and started looking for a new place to live, I figured I could easily sell my dope down there with no problem. I wound up in a fleabag behind the Fox Theater for the next few months and never heard from the Ypsi cops again. It took me a decade for me to forgive Ding Dong even though the little fuck has never apologized.

Bone infection

2011-09-08T00:37:00.000-07:00

Working at Paratransit as a delivery driver all over the Detroit Metro area was perfect. I was using about $30 a day in dope from the city and the job gave me access to a van with free gas so I was able to get downtown while on deliveries and pick up my shit and get right back to work.
     I was unfamiliar with any kind of needle exchange at the time so I relied on storebought bags of U-100 insulin syringes which cost about $3 for a bag of ten. I often didnt have $3 to spare and would use my own points over and over until the needle was so dull it wasnt worth it and only then would I use my precious dope money for a new set.
     Somewhere down the line I started having some back pain. I didnt think much of it at first as I did a lot of lifting, Im a big guy and always used to like showing off how much I could move or lift. Over the months the back pain got worse. On top of the opiates I was injecting I was taking ibuprophen five pills at a time. I shouldnt have been in any pain with the amount of drugs I was injecting but the pain was shining through. I eventually had to quit my job the when pain was so bad. I went to the emergency room two or three times explaining that I was a heroin addict but I was not there to get drugs, that I was in actuall pain and needed help. They would give me a script for some vicodin and send me on my way. By this time the only thing that would ease the pain was hot baths and I took about six a day. As the weeks went by I became more and more depressed with my situation. I didnt have any money coming in except for a few dollars here and there dealing mushrooms or nitrous oxide. I somehow got a hold of a very large gauge syringe and put it in my arm while in the hot bath and was trying to bleed myself out as I had had it. The pain, the addiction, the unemployment had me cornered and I was ready to give up as long as it didnt hurt to much. The needle clogged and Im still here, I figured I must have not been that serious but at the time it did.
     It was about 3AM and my back was especially bad. I was in tears it hurt so bad. I woke my room mate and asked for a ride to the emergency room again. I couldnt walk and I had to scoot down the stairs on my ass to get to the car. Mark dropped me at the emergency entrance and got me a wheelchair. At the admissions desk I was hypervenelating and crying in pain. They finally admitted me and did a blood test. The doctor came into my room and explained that I had a very serious infection somewhere in my body. I knew right away it was from using my own syringes over and over, that bacteria had somehow built up in one of the syringes and was now a full blown monster obviously in my back. The doctor came and told me I needed to be admitted immediately then gave me a big fat shot of fentynal and life was again good. They kept me feeling right for the rest of my stay at St Josephs.
     The first week at the hospital was an endless series of tests, MRIs, CAT scans, putting needles in my spine to extract the infections juices. They had given me my own room, no roomie. They turned on my TV for free and telephone as well, I was able to order food 24-7 whatever I wanted. I wonderd why they were treating me so well when I realized that I had been to the emergency room at least twice before they took me seriously and ran tests. They were afraid I would sue them for not treating me properly. They were also afraid I would become paralyzed as the infection had eaten all cartilidge between two of my discs in the lower back. They treated me like a king once they realized I had the upper hand if I felt like bringing on a lawsuit. They offered me a nicotine patch but I wanted my Pall Malls so I would sneak down to the main lobby and head outside for a smoke. They also kept me fairly doped up. They actually gave me a choice of morphine, fentynal, or diluadid. I took the shots of morphine along with a fentynal patch. If your not familiar with the patches they have the dope in the patch which seeps into your skin over a three day period. Soon after they put in a direct IV line that went into my upper arm going straight to my heart so the anti-biotics would work better. Three times a day a nurse would come in and hook up a bag of very expensive Vancomyacin, the main anti-biotic which took about 30 minutes to put into my mainline.
     After another week I was getting bored and calling friends. My main man Randall didnt know how to score dope in the city so he always took me down there where I would cop and he would hook me up in return. Randall started coming to the hospital, I would sneak out and we would go downtown where I would of course score for us. When he would drop me off with my dope Id put it in the big syringes that screwed right into my mainline and shoot my dope right to my heart. I couldnt have dreamed a better system for shooting up, no needles and a direct line to where it needed to go. By the fourth week I was bringing in enough dope for a few days and the nurses were getting pissed that I was leaving the hospital. They knew what I was doing and a doctor was sent up with a security guard right after I got back from one of my trips to the city. He found my half pint of vodka in my dresser and poured it out into the sink then went through my room, my clothes, my bedding and personal shit. He never found my stuff as I had it hid in the ceiling tiles, I just smiled like an asshole the whole time he was searching my room, he was determined and would have loved to have caught me dirty.
     The fifth week I was still being treated like a king, I had friends over, I had women in my bed, we would watch movies on the VCR and order double cheese burgers and milkshakes for everyone at 3AM. It seemed I had card blanche. The days went on laying in the hospital bed flirting with the thick nurses trying to get them to give me a sponge bath. I kept myself entertained but when you have that much time on your hands you start to scheme. The fentynal patches I realized had a gel inside the sticky band aid. I pulled off my fresh patch and cut it open with a razor, squeezed out the gel into a spoon and sucked it up into one of the screw type syringes that fit onto my setup that ran into my arm, I then screwed the syringe into the tube hanging out of my arm and did it up. I basically did three days worth of opiates in one shot. Im very lucky I didnt kill myself as later in life Ive heard about Ppl ODing on this very same shit. The kicker was that my Aunt and Uncle came to see me in the hospital about an hour after I did that shit up. They saw how obviously stoned I was and assumed it was just the drugs the hospital gave me, they didnt stay long but I do vaguely remember them being there. I remember smiling at them.
     The doctors knew how much it was costing them to keep me in the hospital like that but they were afraid of me using that tube in my arm to shoot my street drugs and therefore could be liable, they put their lawyers in a room and drew up a contract for me to sign, that in case of my death I would be responsible. After six weeks in the hospital they finally let me go to spend three more weeks at home with enough bags of anti biotics to cure me completely of the spinal infection.
     When they finally relaesed me my buddy Sebastian from work picked me up from the hospital to finally take me home. As I was leaving the hospital my ex girlfriend showed up. She hadnt come to see me once in the hospital after she dumped me for another tall skinny dude. I had been thinking of her constantly while laying in bed over the weeks, she had heard I was being released that day and decided to make an apperance. I broke down when I saw her and she held me.
     Sebastian dropped me off at home and helped carry all my stuff up into my apartment. He somehow got a glimpse of my refrigerator and saw it was empty, asked if I needed anything. He really wanted to make sure I was okay but I wasnt worried about food, I wanted drugs. My friend left and another one came by to go downtown to score some dope. We went downtown and made our business and I came back home. When I opened my fridge I found some lunchmeat, bread and mustard. Sebastian had gone out and bought me some food cause he knew I had no money for anything but drugs. He always puts a smile on me. Sebastian.

2011-09-07T02:17:00.001-07:00

Gay crackhead with a boxcutter gets the best of me.

2011-09-07T00:25:00.000-07:00

I was living in a warehouse in Oakland. The building was originally built for building ships for WWII. Over the years the area of West Oakland had deterioated into a Detroit like landscape. A local artist and piano mover Steve Heck had taken over a portion of this building called The Pheonix. Steve and his crew had built small rooms and preformance spaces throughout the building he rented. As the years went on it dwindled down to a space for speed freaks and boozers. I came into the place while on tour with the Grateful Dead after a show at Shoreline. I met this cat who was heading up to the Eel river for Reggae on the River. I decided to tag along instead of heading South to L.A. where the Dead were playing next. The dude who let me come with him was a bit of a rich boy, he had no real need to live in the warehouse he brought me to but he did. I instantly fell in love with the place, 50 foot ceilings and over 200 pianos adorned the walls, in fact the pianos actually made the walls as Steve was a piano mover by trade. I met the boss Steve and we hit it off. We were both drinkers of whiskey and I at the time had been clean off heroin for over a year. Steve introduced me to the crew of tweekers, scientists, musicians, artists and good old fashioned freaks straight from the 60's. We all hit it off well and I found a small room tucked up into one of the corners of the building to be my own.
    Living drunk is a lot of fun and I took it seriously, I was about 23 and I wanted fun. I had left my camera behind in Michigan so I started to write. I was on the Bukowski kick that many young wannabees jump into while in their 20's. I wrote every night with a fifth of whiskey and read out loud in the middle of the night to my roomies whatever had come out of my pen. Sometimes the guy upstairs would throw down ciggs for me, sometimes the warehouse just got deathly quiet. The biggest compliment I ever got from my night time readings was from a tattooed rocker in leather and stockings, makeup, and brill cream in his hair. He said "that one was pretty good".
    We lived in total reference to ourselves, we drank, we did drugs, we shared as best we could with eachother but not to the point of denying ourselves first. It was a fuck you to the 60s and their we share everything because we all knew that wouldnt last, trying to share.
   Middle of the day one summer afternoon I was trying to sleep off my hangover when I heard a rattling outside the building. I peeked out the window and I saw Gay Crackhead Anthony tryin to pull a part off of a car in front of our building. I got up pissed that he woke me up and pissed this gay crackhead motherfucker was tryin to stael from us. I went downstairs and into the parking lot where I found him trying to pry off a sideview mirror from one of the cars in our lot. I was pissed and ready to go. I grabbed him by the collar of his dirty crackhead t shirt and told him what I thought of him and where he should go. Anthony and I were between two cars with my back to the wall where I was trapped. Anthony didnt take kindly to my bitchin and pulled a box cuter. The neighborhood kids were there in the street by then cheering on the black man screaming "cut him Anthony, cut him" I was wondering how I got myself into this situation while at the sametime trying to kick him with my new Doc Martins wherever I could. I saw him with that box cutter come down at my leg with one fell swoop. I didnt really notice a thing until Anthony realized what he ahad done to me. I had in the mean time picked up a shovel and was now in the middle of the street waving it at him. Then I looked down at my leg and realized why he had given in so easily, he had slashed a 12" gash down the front of my shin and blood was running down my leg as if a tap had been opened. The kids in the street went silent when they realized what they had been shouting for had really hapened. Anthony went away and my friend took me to the hospital where I received 18 stitches.
Funny thing is that the entire time I lived there in the Pheonix I only had two intense events like that, the day I moved in when a different crackhead pulled a steak knife on me in some weird instance and my last day when Anthony cut me with a box cutter.
   That was my last day at the Pheonix warehouse, I pulled out my stitches a couple of weeks later in Eugene.

Beaten and fucked.

2011-09-05T03:55:00.000-07:00

After getting back from Thailand without my score I wound up on the
streets of Ann Arbor, the homeless shelter located on Huron to be exact.
I had built up a sizeable habit of China white heroin in Asia and now
was sweating it out cold turkey in bunk beds with a bunch of other
junkies, drunks and theives who slept at the shelter and also swept
through the room at night going into pockets of the other destitute,
stealing what they could and in the day they pretended to be your friend
while they showed you the latest laser pointer that had been yours the
night before. If it was worth the fight to get your shit back you started
one, if not you were a punk
I got to know quite a few of these likeable characters as we slept together
in the two big rooms provided for us by your tax dollars every night,
ate breakfast at the church together every morning, and saw eachother on
the easy streets of college town everyday.
I still had my interest in photography and was able to hold on to
my Minolta X-700 while stealing 35mm film from the Krogers when I
needed it so I had something to keep me feeling like I wasnt one
of them. My old instructor at EMU would let me use the darkroom so
I was able to keep shooting film on the streets. Carrying that camera
around actually got me laid once in a while with the U of M college
hotties while I looked like a photographer with a job. Getting small
jobs was easier too as I played the starving artist which is exactly
what I was. Carrying a camera around my neck and the knowledge to use
it gave me gave me an air of decency, it seemed to give me a berth from
the homeless situation I was in.
I was in the church eating my free breakfast of Cherrios
with all my buddies and I decided to start taking some pics of my
favorites. The womens shelter was different from the mens but we all
ate together in the morning so I had the gamut of the streets all in
one place to photograph, as Ive always been a street photographer.
I snapped a few pics of the locals eating cereal while kids
working off their community service for getting caught with a bag of
weed served the orange drink and day old doughnuts while the nuns
poured powdered milk on our bowl of cereal. After a minute or so of
shooting pics I had a slightly younger than me black man in my face
asking me what the hell I was doing taking pics. He knew me, most
everyone in the church knew me by then. Black was in my face questioning
my motives. I explained my usual rant that Im a street photographer as
well as on the streets. He stepped in my face some more but seemed
surprised when no one was behind him, backing him up and his accusations.
They all seemed tired of his bullshit partly, the other
half seemed to know I was one of them. I stood my ground and stayed calm,
not giving him a chance to go off. Im sure my size over him had something
to do with the fact that he didnt do shit.
Black and I had another run in or two, usually when he was drunk but he
seemed to know exactly when to stop. He was a kid not much younger than
me. Black wasnt a bad kid, he just wanted to be bad.
A month or so later I was hanging out in the shelter office with Malik,
one of the workers there who I had made friends with. I had done some
photo/graphics work for one of his poetry reading fliers so we had
a decent rapport. As I was leaving the office Black was limping around
the corner, his legs bowed and face pummeled black and blue and both
swollen shut. It looked as if someone took a two by four to his face
in a fit of rage. His arm was in a sling and his other hand held his ribs.
I dont think he could even see me through his two bloodshot eyes, he
walked right by me with an aura of shame instead of his usual learned stone cold
stare and badass demeanor, he just turned the corner and limped into the office
to talk with Malik.

I later learned that Black had been beaten raped and beaten again, I never
heard the deatails but the understanding was he had snitched on someone
involved in drugs and that person had finally gotten out of prison and came
back for revenge on Black. I believe Black had been hiding out
in the shelter which is often times common practice for people who dont want
to be found. His past had caught up with him. I have no doubt drugs were
involved in the original deal which pisses me off to no end. Another
sub-victim of the war on drugs.

2011-08-27T20:52:00.000-07:00

Grateful Dead was playing in DC, I was there a day early to check out The Wall. It was so surreal seeing the names of every single soldier killed in VietNam, almost 40,000 in all carved into one piece of marble. I took my Fathers rubbing and cried.
The next day I found myself with two sheets of decent LSD at the show the next day and needed to make some money as well as find a ticket to the show. About two years earlier I had brought back an all cotten hand made shirt from Thailand that had secret pockets on either sides which were sewn into the hems, it was amazingly perfect. I had owned the shirt for two weeks before I even noticed that there were these hidden pockets. I had a sheet of acid hidden in each pocket. I was in need of a ticket to the shows that night so I followed the traffic comming in. I was on the off ramp going car to car asking if anyone had an extra ticket. While I asked each car of concertgoers I would check them out, follow my gut and either ask them if they needed doses or I would move on to the next car. I came across one car with three college kids and they had a ticket, I asked if they wanted to trade doses and they were down. I ask if I can jump in the car to do our business and I look up the off ramp and I see a DC cop driving down the shoulder towards me standing on the shoulder selling acid. I can tell hes lookin right at me so I get in the car of these strangers and he pulls us over right away but my head is in the right place. I dont panic, I know hes just another human being. I know that what Im doing is as natural as selling a bag of chips at the 7-11. He pulls us over and I do the talking, Im smiling and explain that Im just looking for a ticket to the show. Hes just another person, doing his job and I know that Im not really doing anything wrong, Im just trading some LSD. He wasnt a young spitfire, he was in his 50s, he had seen it all. The cop asks me to get out of the car and I of course do. He starts asking questions and I explain everything except the fact that I have 200 hits of quality LSD hidden in my shirt. The cop is cool but has me palm the hood of the car and he frisks me. I didnt worry too much as a sheet of acid is pretty hard to find if your just patting someone down. I didnt so much keep calm because I wasnt worried though, I kept calm to keep him calm. The cop tells me that I have to get off the off ramp and as he walks away I trade a few hits of my acid for that ticket to the show. They played Casey Jones that night, something they havent done in like 13 years. It was a great show.

2011-08-21T08:48:00.001-07:00

Picture 2 - Squirt, Don't Poke

2011-08-05T14:54:00.000-07:00

My street fight at 40 yrs old.

2011-06-23T00:09:00.000-07:00

Tonight, for the first time in my life I stood toe to toe in a street fight, on McDougall X Frederick in front of the party store I've been going to for years and sometimes provide budsforpeople. I have to say the fight was exhilarating, because I didnt back down. He had a couple of years on me, definitely some prison time, but I had a few pounds on him and my youth. He swung first and pulled the hockey move with my shirt over my head so I couldnt see but somehow I had him pinned buy the time I could rip my shirt off. I offered amnesty as I had the full advantage, I let him loose and he came again and we danced in the street. I swear it was right outta Every Which Way But Loose, trading punches and asking eachother how they felt. I have to say he got I believe 2-3 more tags in on my face than I did him but my punches tend to weigh more and I got at least six in. This fight was a beautifulthing for me, I was able to let loose of my fear of fighting, my instinct took over, I did the best I could do.

It ended when he pulled out his belt and started swinging that thing around whipping me with a big belt buckle, I felt that unfair and my only recourse would be to pull my knife which was open and stashed in my sock. Im not going to jail for stabbing some drunk as I am ding dong so I jumped on my bike and split. Some would say I should have stuck around and taken that belt from him, some would say "you shoulda stabbed that nigger" Im just glad I did as well as I did. For the first time I walked away with my head high after being confronted violently. We fought and I smiled at him every time he tagged me. Im looking forward to seeing his face tomorrow, and Im hoping his is more swollen than mine.

Im such not the fighter but down here I cant afford to be called a punk.

2011-06-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

Smack and love

2011-06-02T09:57:00.000-07:00

After my second trip to Thailand I came back to Michigan broke and homeless. I spent some
time on the streets and in shelters. I divided my time between Ann Arbor and Detroit. In Ann
Arbor I could make a few bucks and in Detroit I could buy my dope. I eventually found myself
living in a small room in the Cass Corridor of Detroit, The Hotel Ansonia Rent was $55 a week and had a bathroom down the hall. The first floor was an afterhours which sold beer and pints of cheap whiskey and vodka after 2 AM. They also offered short stays, rooms by the hour for the hookers and their clientele . I lived as best I could with a dope habit until a friend offered to get me into a methadone program, his church was willing to pay. I had never been on methadone but I soon was thriving in a fairly clean life and made my way into a better apartment building after living out of a car a friend had given me.
Photography was always my thing and throughout all my time on the streets I managed to hold
on to my Minolta X-700, minus a few stints in the pawn shop. My old photo instructor had a soft
spot for me and would let me use the darkroom at EMU and once told me my shit was better than Larry Clarks, so I continued to shoot the streets from the streets. After I felt I had a good group of black and white shots I went to the Metro Times magazine downtown and they agreed to give me two pages of my pics and let me write 400 words. http://www2.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=11500 It was my first claim to fame being published, even if it was a small local magazine.
Whenever I had a few extra bucks I would stop by the Cass Cafe and have a pint or two of beer, the bartender there was absolutely fine, just for me, brunette with curves and a spitfire attitude, she liked me and her smile ruined me. The friend who had gotten me into the methadone clinic was taking me for lunch at The Cafe, Betty was working and gave me that smile. She brought us or beers and food and when she walked away I leaned over to Chris and said “someday when I get my shit together Im gonna ask her out” Luckily I didnt have to wait that long.
The day my issue of the Metro Times came out with my pics in it I went to the Cass Cafe to pick up a few issues for my portfolio. but Betty, my brunette shoved herself and her assets in front of me explaining that I couldnt just take 13 copies of the paper for myself. I explained that I had a two page spread in this issue and need a few extra copies for friends and family. Betty laid down the law and explained that I could either give her a kiss or take the 13 copies. I stole the kiss and got my copies of the Metro Times at another bar.
The next day I had to stop by again to The Cafe in hopes she was working, the chemistry between us was electric, she told me told me to meet her after work so we could go to her place, talk for a bit and then have sex, the next morning I woke up in her bed. I didnt want to recognize it but I was in love, she fit me perfectly, and I told her so.
She found me work, and she promoted my art, we pretty much moved in together from that first night together. I bought a truck, she started a clothing line, we had eachothers back. Soon she had bought a run down house on a promising block of people who gave a shit about Detroit and we fixed it up. Betty knew of my heroin addicion and had no problem with me being on methadone to keep me off the dope. After three years together we decided that I should start weening myself off my heroin substitute and a year later I was clean, but I was hurting. I lasted about eight months before I found myself looking to score some dope, after almost four years off of heroin I was using again and I hid it from her for an entire year until she noticed a syringe in my pocket. I tried to stop, our fights continued. I drank more and more. I really thought that my love for her could fix my addiction. Everything was so physically perfect between us, I had too much love for her, too much need really. We floundered for several years, me getting clean, me going back to using. I started scrapping metal out of the thousands of abandoned buildings in Detroit and was making some pretty good money but I eventually was too strung out for her to handle, I started to steal a $20 here and a 20 there from her, sometimes I could pay it back and sometimes I would just promise myself I would pay it back later. She gave me the benefit of the doubt many times, most likely ignoring her better instinct. I had injuries, falling down an elevator shaft breaking my femur, wrist and jaw but was taken care of by Betty. I blinded myself for three months and she took care of me until one eye finally worked again. I was in and out of her home, I did what I could for her but I was a dope fiend from way before I met her. I thought I could make it right. I thought the love would be enough. I thought I could make it.

Smack and love

2011-05-21T21:53:00.001-07:00

Getting to Thailand Part 5

2011-03-15T21:27:00.000-07:00

After leaving Mae Sai on a bus I headed for the West side of Thailand. I had read there was a lot of drug trafficking near Mae Hong Son. I rented a small scooter near Chang Rai and headed out west with no map, just a few bucks and a change of cloths, I left the rest in a guest house. I had heard there were some great caves to explore a hundred miles East of the Burmese border and did some looking around but my mind was elsewhere. I wanted to get the drugs so I could enjoy the rest of my time in Asia. I stayed a night in a small cheap guest house. It was about 6 pm when I had a panic attack. My mind was telling me something was wrong at home. I laid in my bunk trying to relax but I had to call home. I found the old woman running the house and made her call the United States and was soon on the phone with my Mom. "is there anything wrong Mom" I asked, "is everybody okay" Aunt Glenda had had an attack of some sort but that was par. Twenty years later and she still has at least one crisis a year and the whole family hears about it and all agree that she will ever die. Shes a sweet old lady but a bit of a hypochondriac. I decided to take out the scooter and see what I could find. Riding down the road there was a two track trail that went off into the woods. I jumped on it and followed it back a few miles. The land was green but scrubbish for the most part, once into the lightly scattered trees I rode another mile and noticed an older man walking the trail. I slowed down hoping to be flagged down for some conversation or a perfect moment. I had heard about the perfect moment in a film featuring Spaulding Grey. Every trip must have a perfect moment, an experience that beats all the others and would define your trip. When back in the States that moment would be told over and over to friends and anyone curious about the trip you had taken. The perfect moment was a must and it must be defined and recognized. As I slowed down the old man excitedly yelled "Ganja" to me. I thought it weird he knew the Jamaican word for weed and used it to clip my ear. I suppose its a world wide word, I just didnt realize it until then. I stopped my bike and he caught up with me. His wrinkles were outstanding, his skin golden from years in the sun, he wore the standard flip flops and shorts with a shortsleeve button down shirt. He carries a plastic bag but have no idea what was in it. He smiled huge and said again "Ganja" as a question. I smiled back and he climbed on the back of my scooter and he spoke in Thai while I spoke in English neither of us understanding anything except that one word, ganja. He pointed toward the huts made of grass that were his hill tribe and I steered the bike toward them. The old man was about to take me to my perfect moment..

It all works out

2011-03-15T20:53:00.000-07:00

Somehow it always seems to work itself out. I never try to rely on karma or the secret to get me out of jams but sometimes I know that Im going to be out of money and prospects the next morning but will still do my last little bit of dope the evening before. I believe in Karma, I believe in something because somehow, someway, Im never sick for too long.

Getting to Thailand PART 4

2011-01-28T20:10:00.001-08:00

Getting to Thailand PART 3

I had Luk sit down on the bamboo chair in my room. He was a thin man of about 50 years old and wore conservative black rimmed glasses, the kind that were given to US soldiers during the Vietnam war, almost Buddy Holly style, they were practically unbreakable. He seemed very relaxed and in turn made me feel at ease. In his very good English he asked what it was that I needed. I started small and asked about opium, if he could bring a small amount of opium. Luk smiled as if what I asked for was as simple as fetching a fresh towel. What about heroin, can you bring a small amount of heroin. Again Luk smiled. Twenty minutes later Luk was at my door with a small ball of opium wrapped in a piece of plastic, then he produced a small metal capsule like the one I had bought in Chang Rai. I snorted a small dot right there in front of him, it was sweet in my nasal cavity, and in about 10 minutes I was in a heavy nod. I was young and fairly inexperienced with heroin but there was no mistake that this was pure and straight from the jungle lab. I asked about buying 20 grams, I didnt realize it at the time but he had no idea what a gram weighed, I mind as well said 20 pounds. We bargained a price of $200 for 20 grams. Luk lived across the bridge in Burma and crossed everyday to work here at the guesthouse. He had to bring it the next day but needed some money to buy it. I agreed to give him $100 and he would bring half of it the next day and if I was happy I would give him another $100 to buy the rest the day after that. Luk was very cool through the entire deal, he had an aura of completeness, I assumed he had worn the traditional Buddhists monks robes as a kid and took it seriously. At the same time I was admiring Luk and his easiness my mind filled with thoughts of Thai prison and the stiff penalties for drugs that Thailand had adopted, their was no room for mistakes and luck was important.
The next day Luk showed up at my door and produced what looked like a full bagged ounce of fluffy virgin white heroin, it was twice what I had expected and he had only brought half of what he was supposed to bring. Like I said, he didnt understand what a gram was, he just bought all he could for probably $50 and kept the other $50. I thought this was some kind of scam for a second but I tried it and it was as beautiful as the heroin from yesterday. It was too much, something was wrong I thought. This would easily go for $1000-1500 a gram back home. Then I felt I was being set up and my paranoia set in. I gave the bag back to Luk and told him to keep the money. I gently opened the door for him and packed my bag and quietly left on a bus for the West side of Thailand.

2011-01-20T13:32:00.001-08:00

Getting to Thailand PART 2

1-20-11

My original plan was to travel South East Asia, I wanted to see Vietnam where my father was killed, I wanted to see the Wats of Cambodia, Phnom Pehn, and the vast poppy fields of Burma. When I was on the boat working six hours on six hours off I daydreamed about travelling from country to country but the more I thought about it and the money I could make I got greedy. I would make this first trip three weeks long, try and find some of the highest quality heroin in the world and bring it back to the States where I would make enough to take off for as long as I wanted. In Michigan I got rid of the last few sheets of acid and booked a flight for three weeks in Thailand. I flew out to Seattle and caught my flight out.
    Stepping out of Suvarnabhumi Airport into the early evening heat of Bangkok was brutal, it was the same surprise every, time walking out of an air conditioned airport or plane into a new environment which is much hotter than the one you just flew out of. I took a tuk tuk to Kao Sahn rd, backpackers Disneyland. I spent a few days shopping, buying a new tailored suit and visited one of the many massage parlors. As much as I always wanted to be a brute I never really was, it was always a disappointment.
  On the Train North to Chang Mai I met a few seasoned travellers from the UK. We all bunked in the same car and had a few drinks. In Chang Mai we rented motorcycles and rode to the highest Wat just outside of the city. Golden Buddhas, monks, and Farang’s (tourists) mingled. We took our shoes off and entered the Wat, me checking out the art work and finally leaving alms and asking for safe travel home.
On the way back down the mountain we took our time and found an old radio tower. It must have been left over from the Vietnam war era. It was about 150 meters tall, the four of us climbed it and I carved my name into the old wood that served as a plank floor at the top. I grabbed on to the railing and with all my 240 pounds shook the tower as best I could, it swayed in the wind and creaked. Europeans were grabbing for anything metal and screaming to stop, they were white with fear and they were pissed. I smiled, muttered “pussies’ as I climbed down the ladder.
    On the way down the mountain I noticed an old wooden sign, faded and barely readable it said in English Opium Museum. The UK crew wanted nothing to do with that so I took the turn down into the village and found an old man who spoke a little English. He smiled and brought me to a wooden shack. Inside were pictures of opium fields and the farming tools used to grow poppies. There wasn't much to see as it doesnt take a whole lot of equipment to grow and collect opium. The old man soon enough offered to his place to have a smoke. We started out the door and outside was the most beautiful little girl, about eight years old dressed in traditional tribe wardrobe.of bright reds yellows and greens. She smiled and held her index finger to her thumb making a circle. “she wants a coin” the old man said. I produced a few baht and gently gave it to her with a bigger smile. I still think of her for some reason, now in her late 30s and wonder if she is as beautiful as I remember.
   The old man took me in his small clapboard home and shooed his wife out but not in a mean way, he was gentle also. I laid down on a rolled out bedroll and with just the smallest streams of dusty light coming through the cracks in the wall and an oil lamp to light the room he found his old opium pipe. The stem of the pipe was made of bamboo, about two feet long. At the end of the bamboo was a ceramic ball with a pinhole on one side. The old man took a small ball of opium and rolled it, warming it in his fingers and placed it on the tip of a small metal rod. Pushing the metal rod down into the ceramic’s pinhole he held the opium to the ball and pulled out the rod. placing the bamboo to my lips and the other end to the oil lamp I inhaled as much as I could. It was a hard sweet pull. It didn't feel as if I was getting anything in my lungs. I took another and another as the old man smiled and I finally drifted off dreaming of a budding young beautiful woman with a smile just for me.
   The next day I woke up in the hotel in Chang Mai and and caught a bus North. I would stop in Chang Rai and buy my first heroin off a young addict with track marks like Ive never seen. He spoke a little English and brought me a dollars worth of #4 heroin in a metal capsule. I spent the next five days nodding out on that dollars worth of dope inside a small hotel room. There were other Americans there and they saw me in my state and stayed away from me. I wasn't looking good for public consumption so I caught a bus North again to Mae Sai, the border of Burma. Mae Sai was an old popular smuggling route for drugs before the drug war. It had an old school feel to the small growth city. Stalls of fried food and rather nice trinkets lined the main street that lead straight to the bridge crossing the Mekong River into Burma. There was a 7-11 store on the way into town which was my reguge while staying there. Walking into 7-11 was like walking back into the United States. Waliking out of the thick wet heat of Thailand into the air conditioned green and white store sucked you back into the comforts of home on the other side of the world. Everything they had back home at 7-11 they had here, the slushies the hot dogs with DIY chili and cheese, the clerks in their uniforms. I often stopped by just to get away, it was a vacation from the vacation.
    Checking into my guesthouse the manager showed me to my room. It was $4 a night, bamboo shack upon bamboo shack built on the side of a hill overlooking Burma. The Mekong was just across the street and the other side was Burma, then the largest producer of heroin in the world. Luk was the managers name and when he brought me in the room I was about to rent he asked me if there was anything I needed. I told him I was all set, thank you, its all good. Luk told me again if there was anything I needed to just ask. I shook my head no, and then he said again looking me in the eye and in a serious tone”If theres absolutely anything you need, anything at all, I can help you. Then we sat down for a conversation, I was always a little slow on the uptake.

Getting to Thailand PART 2

2011-01-20T13:27:00.000-08:00

Getting to Thailand PART 1.

2011-01-19T22:26:00.000-08:00

1-17-11

Getting to Thailand.PART 1

I had been touring with the Grateful Dead more and more in the early 90s. It was a good time, I got to see more of the United States but it became more about the money and less about seeing the shows. I wanted to see more of the world and I needed money to do it. I had heard about working in Alaska on the fish and crab boats in the spring and coming home with $10,000. I knew it was hard ass work but I was young and strong, it was perfect for me. I sent away to an advertisement in the back of Rolling Stone for a list of companies in Alaska, fisheries that commonly hired grunts but my $10 didnt get me anything in return. Just after Christmas I bought a bus ticket to Glenwood Springs Colorado to start working my way Westward. I figure I could get a job working in Aspen during the ski season, make a few bucks and continue to California and then work my way North along the coast until I found a job on a boat. I stayed in a kickass little hostel in Glenwood Spring and hitch hiked into Aspen every morning to work a ski mountain. I was given leeway on the ski hill because I had some sculpture experience in college, they had me working on a snow sculpture at the bottom of the hill I worked, the piece I did was a car, an Excalibur type, full size and it took first place. I collected part of the winnings, left the rest for a party for my crew and stuck my thumb back out to head further West. I slept in new sewer tubes that were waiting to be put in the ground, it made a nice shelter to get away from the falling snow. It took me about three days and somewhere around Elko Nevada a young guy picked me up at a rest stop and drove me all the way to Humboldt County California. He gave me a place to stay for a few days and I eventually fell in with another house in Eureka. I stayed for over two months but couldnt find any jobs on the dock. I again headed North and stopped in Portland but the paper didnt hold any promise for fishing jobs so I kept heading North. I got a ride all the way to downtown Seattle. I enjoyed the market and Front St with all the rug stores I decided to hit them up for work. It was still a little early in the season to get a job an a boat but Seattle seemed to hold something special, even in the gloom of late winter and its constant rain. I made my way to the University District figuring I would feel more at home there having just dropped out of college myself back home. I walked the streets up and down looking for shelter. I had $200 in my pocket but that wasnt for bullshit like hotel rooms, I needed basic shelter from the rain, nothing more. It was getting late and I couldnt find anywhere to crash. Id worn out my welcome at the coffee house and was desperate. I started down an alley near the 7-11 looking through the drizzle for an empty garage a vacant house with a poarch, anything to get me out of the rain. I was at wits end, my feet had blisters and the rain was starting to soak through. I did something I hadnt done since I was a kid, I asked god for help, I told him I wouldnt make a habit of asking but right now I needed his help. No sooner than I was done with my pitiful little prayer I looked back up the alley I was walking down and someone had turned the corner and was walking behind me. I slowed up my pace and a guy of about 30 said ‘hey’. His name was Daniel, he wore a truckers hat on top of his greasy black hair. He had a silver dangling earing in the sillouette of a woman leaning back, It was a common mudflap Id seen on 18 wheelers, the silver woman. I eventually nicknamed Daniel Mudflap, and he liked that. Daniel showed me a place to crash, a front porch of an unused home and we both slept there. I stayed on that porch for over a month before the owner of the home stopped by and kicked us off. I moved down under the Ravina Street Bridge and eventually into a house where the other renter didnt mind me crashing in the empty room. Daniel was heroin addict and he coped for me a few times, I had never had a habit. and it would be a little while before I had one. I always kept tabs on Mudflap but years later when on a return visit to the U district I found that Daniel had nodded out in a coffee house and died in his chair. He was a good dude, never did me wrong and he taught me a bit about the streets, he also taught me how to shoot Mexican tar heroin.
    Sometime in April the phone rang and a woman was looking for me. Birting Fisheries needed three new crew members to work in the factory aboard The Ocean Roaver. I needed to come in for an interview. I considered cutting my dreads off I wanted this job so bad but the woman sounded a bit desperate to fill the position. I was six foot four, young and in great shape from riding my bike all over Seattle, living on the street actually got me in the best shape Id been in since working on Nantuckett as a masons hoddie busting my ass and swimming the ocean everyday. I figured I the job was a sure thing. I kept my dreads, tied them back as neat as possible and headed for the interview the next day. The office was in Northern Seattle near the water and very upscale, this wasnt going to be a small boat with cramped quarters, this boat was going to be a nice boat, probably a big one. The interview went great, she kept a smile on her face for me the whole time I was there, I think she liked me. I just had to go drop a urine on the South side. That night I went to see a new friend of mine, she was pregnant so wasnt using any drugs.I had her fill up a condom of her clean pee for me. I warmed it up in the microwave and kept it under my armpit on the way to the medical lab the next day to drop my pee. I got the call the day after that to show up it pier # 38 at 8am and to bring enough clothing and books to last about three months. I had finally gotten my job on a boat.
   The Ocean Rover was her name, 250 feet long it was a good looking boat, fairly new in its current life . It was an old hull bought from Scandinavia and refurnished to a modern factory trawler. The boat caught the fish, cleaned the fish, packaged the fish and froze the fish. When the freezer was full we headed in to offload. I worked in fish-meal, taking fish guts, heads, and tails and cooking them into dust to be used as fertilizer and in cow feed. I worked a few days weighing fish fillets, and a few weeks in the galley as a favor to the head day chef. I think my favorite was working in the freezer. It was about 60 yards long and 30 wide with 15 foot ceilings and we packed it to the top with box after box of fish. It was a flash freezer keeping at a very cool -30 degree Fahrenheit. I worked with one other guy stacking boxes and we had plenty of time off to dick around and smoke cigarettes and even have a few drinks. The hours were six on six off and we went for weeks like that, and at the end of each 24 hours the daily catch was posted in the galley explaining how much we made each day. Sometimes we made nothing and others we made $300. Everything we needed was on the boat, working in the factory we never even needed to go outside on the deck. I made one friend on the boat who I would stay in touch with over the years. Alan looked like Jerry Garcia but worked for the government counting fish. The government wanted to know we were not catching too many of the wrong kinds of fish. Alan and I smoked the little pot we could get together and had a few drinks listening to the Gyoto Monks with incense burning. After the boat We would spend Christmas together up at his shack in the hills of Oregon. Alan had an outhouse and plenty of land, and its still one of my favorite places in the world.
    We fished along Northern California, Oregon, and Washington for the first 3 weeks, after that we steamed up to the Bearing Sea and fished there for the next two months, offloading in Dutch Harbor every few weeks. Dutch Harbor was an island with nothing but scrub brush. Eagles flew above everywhere it seemed. Nothing but Vietnamese cab drivers selling cocaine and weed, hookers charging $1000 a pop, the toughest bartenders in the world and hotel and restaurant workers stayed on the island. Mostly seasonal workers, very few people actually lived on the island. We spent any extra time off on the island drinking at the Elbow Room. The Elbow Room was listed in Playboy as one of the top ten toughest roughest bars in the world. I bought a t shirt.
    After about eleven weeks on the boat we were flown back to Seattle where our checks were waiting for us. A friend and I went down to SanFran to see the Grateful Dead and buy 200 sheets of quality LSD. I turned that over between Seattle and Ann Arbor and bought a ticket to Bangkok. I had been smuggling hash oil out of Jamaica for years, this time I wanted to try heroin from Asia.

2011-01-06T04:22:00.001-08:00

Jan 08-2011

Just rode my piece of shit mountain bike with one malfunctioning gear down to the closest dopehouse. I would no doubt ride a longer distance in any other circumstance to get my heroin on this piece of shit bike if I thought the dope might be a little better, but I know it wont today. It seems every dopehouse in the city is selling bullshit. I read on the internet that even Europe is in a drout of decent heroin, evcry junky in the modern world is sick. The dope Im buyin this week will be shit, and I know a little bit about dope, what jungles or mountains it comes from, how many middlemen it goes through, how many times its marked up, how much cut these fucks put into it. Fact is you cannot trust the Afghanis ar Mexicans dealing their drugs anymore than you can trust the government and their regultion of banks or anything to do that involves your money. Im not speaking of of 14 year old kids on 7 mile slingin rock, we can forget about them, and the bitches who supply them may ride in an Escalade or a Lexus in purple glitter with curbfeelers. Those same dealers, the middlemen in the dopetrade are the ones bitching about the CEOs and the Bernie's who have ripped off everyone with a buck. The dope trade is no different than the cunts at Chase Bank who take a $100 out of your account each month and give you a reason only a proffessor in math of cartography could understand.

Back to the street, we buy heroin cut so heavily that the profits are only in the folks who regulate the poppy fields, the ones who let the military carry the kilos through back to the states. I can guarantee there is a huge stockpile of heroin sitting in warehouses around the world waing for the right CEOs to say, Okay, time to sell. For now, the crime rate will go up while junkies need a bigger fix.

What is the reason for the lack of heroin?

I know this problem effects no one worth caring about. This is a junkies problem. I agree, but shits going to get worse because the dope is shit. Crime will go up. Junkies tryin to get their fix is no joke.

I beams are worth cash money bitch.

2010-12-27T23:25:00.000-08:00

In the deep fall of 2006 I was pretty heavy into scrapping metal. The prices were at an all time high, Detroit had a glut of abandoned burned out usless buildings with steel I beams ripe to be cut and taken to the scrapyard. I had met John, a brother with an old tan van and a newly aquired knowledge of cutting steel using oxy acytelene torches. I had been cutting for a while and scrapping even longer so we hit it off. John was unlike most of the brothers I had met in the scrapyards. John didnt drink or use drugs, he had a family but didnt have a job so he was learning the ways of scrapping metals. He had an air about him I could relate to, no slang, never using the word nigger, and he saw me as an equal and someone he could trust and learn from and I knew he was the same for me and Id like to think he knew that. I was the outsider, John had grown up in the city but you would never know it from the way he spoke in his proper English. At first I thought he was putting me on, what kind of brother whos scrappin doesnt have some ghetto slang in them and so he was a mystery for a while to me. In the month that followed I figured it out that he just must have been raised in a strict household with a solid mother and father. With most people in the hood you just keep a constant guard up unless you know them, with John it only took a few days to realize he was for real, John wasnt looking to get over on me, he just wanted to work a good day and bring home some money.
I hadnt had my truck working in a while but I had torches and tanks to cut with, John had the van and another set of smaller torches. We started in on a few smaller buildings, cutting out old water tank props and small overhead cranes. John had been exploring a building near Eastern Market and said its worth a check. We walked the entire place with flashlights from basement to roof and soon decided that the second floor had the biggest and best I beams, 3/4 of an inch thick, 20 foot and there were about a dozen of them, we figured about two grand current price at the scrap. The first day went great, I cut them off the ceiling. When your cutting down I beams of that size you cut one end almost all the way through leaving just enough to let it hang in the place its been for the past 75 years, then you go to the other end and cut it just right from bottom to top at an angle so as not to get caught on itself. You want one end to fall and the other end to break from the fall of the other end. They were all falling beautifully and once they were down on the ground John would cut them into smaller pieces so we could move them easily. One 20 foot I beam most likely weighed a half ton so being up on the ladder cutting these down was a bit nerve racking, espically that last inch of cutting because you knew how much force was behind it, it being a 1000 pound beam swinging down past you and your ladder till it hit the ground where the impact of that one end hitting the ground would cause the break on the other end of the I beam so it came down hitting and breaking concrete and jumping back and forth like you dropped a chopstick on a tile floor. The sound was deafening and I eventually took a break and climbed down off the ladder. John was busy cutting and like I usually do when a bit stressed I went for a stroll. I walked into the next room where we had never explored. The sun was shining bright in the room we were in and I walked through a little door into a harsh shadow where I couldnt see much. I took a few steps and I was falling straight down. By the time I realized what was happening I said to myself "damn, Im falling a long way" I think I bounced a little when I hit the floor almost two stories down and realized I couldnt breathe, the wind had been knocked out of me. My head hit the floor pretty hard but didnt knock me out. I couldnt move my mouth very well when I tried to suck in oxygen, I gasped for air and it eventually came and I tried to understand what had just happened. I had walked into a dark room with a huge hole in the floor and fell a story and a half. I tried to get up but it wasnt going to happen, my leg was messed up bad in some way. I reached for my leg and my wrist limped like a fag. I figured it was time to start screamingf for help. John found me and called the EMS, they came right in the building to get me. I spent a few days in Receiving getting several operations wiring my jaw, putting pins in my wrist and placing a titanium rod within almost the entire lenght of my femur (thats the big leg bone attached to your hip). It took me six months to realize that those doctors did me a big favor and pulled out some rotten molars that had been causing me hell. That all happened on Thanksgiving weekend, and exactly one year later I lost my vision scrapping metal. Seems I had just gotten out of that damn wheelchair.

2010-12-18T18:27:00.000-08:00

12 18 2010
Shut up and Swallow continued. Last instalment.

Things were fucked to say the least. I had enough dope to last me a while but nothing like the 20 grams I had brought back seven years earlier from Thailand. I didnt have time to go find a hill tribe that would sell to me, I was scared the customs agents would have me flagged because of the cop in Mae Sai. I was heading back to Michigan with nothing to sell. My apartment would be gone and I was heading for the homeless shelter with a good sized habit which I couldnt maintain.

I took a bus South to Bangkok with the little dope I had left. Using the bathroom in the back of the bus I used a needle fairly well considering the bumpy ride. I nodded the entire 15 hour trip. I grabbed a cheap room near Kao Sahn Rd. and went out looking to spend the little money I hgad left on more dope. I hated buying in Bangkok. Scammers would set you up for a bust by the cops for a small reward and the shit was always cut pretty bad, not nearly the quality that comes from the jungle. I should have stayed away from the cities from the start of this trip. I followed the advice of a Lonely Planet travell book and went to the part of town that your not supposed to go to, it was known for drugs. I walked around for a while and made a connection. I got on the kids motorcycle and wound up exchanging money for drugs in the parking lot of the world wide Amway Convention. It all went smooth and did a little sight seeing after hiding my shit carefully in the guesthouse I was staying at. The temples in Bangkok are amazing, Buddahs galore but Patpong I, II, and III is where its at. Patpong is the red light district. As I understand Patpong I is the first street which caters to straight males looking for action, Patpong II is a mix, where you might bring your girl to get down if shes into that, Patpong III is straight gay, little boys and that kind of love. Patpong I is the most popular, its like Vegas. Neon signs and touts hang outside all the bars hasseling the farangs trying to get them inside. Some touts have signs in hand explaining what they can expect once inside. Pussy shoot ping pong, pussy swallow telephone and make call, pussy eats fire, pussy does whatever you can imagine. If you came up with a crazy enough idea for a vagina to do no doubt some poor Thai girl would be her room training her pachoocha how to do it. Inside the bars the girls walk in a trained circle on stage in one piece bathing suits with numbers pinned on them. Give the bartender a number and that girls yours, very efficient if your into it. The girls are pricey here in Patpong. I had a few beers mainly just to say Id been to Patpong and checked out the girls and saw a show. I eventually made my way back to my guesthouse. Walking up the stairs a cute little girl noticed the cuts and briuses on my legs, she spoke enough English to get by and demanded she take care of me. Her name was Lanie and was about 19 years old. She showed up at my door with new bandages and peroxide. I sat on the bed and she kneeled next to my wounded legs and dabbed them with peroxide soaked cotton balls, she was right, my roadrash had started to get infected. Lanie cleaned the wound expertly climbed on the bed leaning over my lap to clean the cut on my hip her ass was a bit in my face, I didnt sense any uneasiness when I laid my hand on it to caress. Prostitutes dont kiss as a rule but Lanie kissed me, she never asked for money but that was understood. She wound up spending the night with me and in the morning in my arms it felt like a hookup with someone I had been wanting to sleep with forever. I had a lot more important things on my mind than pussy so I gave her a thousand Baht and said goodbye. Ive often thought of her.
I took the heroin I had from the day before and neatly taped it to some notepaper in three seperate small flat bags to distribute the weight evenly within the envelope. I bought an airmail envelope and sent it home, it was all I would get back to the states, my nerves were shot. I wasnt about to swallow an ounce of heroin in condoms and walk through customs. More importantly, my gut told me not to, my karma was fucking me back, I wasnt sure at the time what for but it was fucking me. I did a last bit of smack for the day and got on the plane home. The plane has a 3 hour layover in Japan, its there I go in the bathroom and pull out the condom from my ass. wrapped twice I wash it off and my hands. Inside is a clean condom ith my last hit of dope. I didnt carry a syringe so I had to snort it. Leaving Thailand is a breeze, its the customs in the States you have to worry about. Back on the plane I fully enjoyed the nod home. Walking through customs they had me pegged. One female agent was going through my bgs reding my journl, another one took the orders to tke me in the next room, one with no windows. "hands on the desk" he said "drop your pants" he said as he pulled on some rubber gloves and snapped them into place making sure I heard the rubbers crack. It was a ploy, trying to make me sweat, they had no evidence other than I was coming back from Thailand after two weeks and my luggage was crappy, nothing was new. I was obviously not there for pleasure or business, legal business anyway. I had nothing to hide and rubber glove man didnt go any further, just got me with my pants down. Next I was taken into another room, again no windows. It was straight out of a movie, the tough guy agent actually turned his chair around backward and straddled it while he smiled at me and explained the different ways people smuggle drugs, he also had a harsh desklamp shining in my face. "some strap it to their body" he said, "some are packers, putting it up their anal cavity" he said, "and then some swallow their drugs" I said yeah, thats great, can I go now? He laughed as if he was just starting in on me and I was going to be there for days. I just kept thinking to myself that I will always trust my gut, I will never be put in this position with a stomach full of dope. I dont know what I would have done if I did swallow that trip and found myself in that chair. I would like to think the agent thought I had a stomach full of condoms but couldnt prove it because I was so cool but the fact is I wish I were that cool. He eventually cut me loose and I stepped into the cold Michigan air with no money and no place to live. I caught a cab from DTW and when we got back to Ypsilanti I stiffed him.

If you want an idea of what Kao Sahn Rd is like its documented well in the movie The Beach.

.

2010-12-10T09:13:00.000-08:00

Tears for Freddie Mercury and One Eyed Michele.

2010-12-02T22:18:00.001-08:00

I ran out of my Thai heroin on New Years Eve 1995. I was staying in an old hotel in downtown Seattle. It was a place right out of a Bukowski novel. Everything was piss stained wood, the stairs creeked and a retarded man did the rounds going door to door waking people up to remind them the rent ws due. There was a bathroom down the hall and the lobby made for a hangout for the retards friends. Seattle downtown was busting, I was nearing broke and shot the last of the precious heroin I had brought back from the golden triangle six months earlier, it was the end of a big chapter. I didnt really know what kicking heroin would be like, I had done my share but never had a habit until I brought back that 20 grams of pure china white. The first of the year wasnt so bad, I had gotten some sleep and was ready to travel back to Michigan. I had a plane ticket to Detroit out of San Fran for the day after the next, I bought a bus ticket and got on board the Greyhound. Kicking a serious dope habit on a bus wasnt a good idea. By the time I got down to Portland my eyes were watering and the chills were starting to set in. The next leg of the trip didnt start till the next morning so I spent most of the money I had on a cheap hotel around the corner from the station. By the time I got in the room I was leakin pretty bad, my eyes were watering nonstop, sneezing nine times in a row was happening every 4 hours or so, I was pissing out my ass and sweating so bad I could wring out my t shirt in the sink. I was freezing cold, I ordered a pizza and turned on the TV hoping to take my mind off of what was happening. Chills ran non stop so I turned on the hot water in the shower and sink, the room actually had a thermostat and I turned it up to the max trying in vain to shake the chills. I stood shakily in front of the bathroom mirror at my young sweaty face wondering if this is what my life was going to be like. I looked up to the top of the mirror and said out loud "Theres a syringe in top of this cabinet" I reached up and felt on top of the mirrored cabinet and sure enough there was a rig, left behind by most likely a junky or tweeker. I thought for about a quater second that if I put some water in that syringe and shot myself up it might take away the heebie jeebies a little bit. The thought of HIV quickly set me straight. I showered for as long as I could stand up which wasnt long, the heat of the water was my only comfort. My pizza showed up and pizza guy looked at me weird because I had the heat to the max and the showers hot water on full blast to give me a little extra boost of warmth, steam fille the room. Kicking cold turkey is a cold experience as I was finding out and wearing my winter coat inside the 84 degree room seemed pretty necessary. I didnt sleep that nite, I didnt sleep for the next month in any real way. I sneezed, and sweated, chewed the sheets as they say, all nite long. I caught the next bus South to San Fran and was even in worse shape than yesterdays bus ride. I wore all the warm cloths I could. I started with a t shirt and underwear, a long sleeve shirt and long bottoms were on next. Another long sleeve shirt and a sweater came next. A pair of sweatpants with Levis on to completed my bottoms. I wore a wool sweater and black North Face winter coat to top everything off. I of course had a winter hat and gloves. I sat as still as I could so I wouldn't sweat but kicking heroin means cramping of legs and other limbs, I was jerking around like a marionette. My habit was equal to about $200 a day, the shit I had brought back was pure driven #4 heroin straight from the hills of Burma, I had been using it non stop since I bought it i Northern Thailand about four months earlier. My withdrawal from this evil was an experience I dont want anyone to experience.
The bus traveled South on 101, I sat next to a kid of about 13, he shared his handheld video game while I tried to hide my jerking legs. The bus stopped at Garberville California, we all got out to stretch our legs and grab a bite to eat. There was a bulletin board outside the bus station and I looked it over trying to pass the seconds that were slowly passing by. A simple picture, a Xerox copy of a fallen hero Freddie Mercury from Queen had been stapled to the board. His music of course was genius, had affected me over the years. Freddie's simple black and white picture brought forth in me five gallons of respect, a head full of memories consisting of myself rocking out to Bohemian Rhapsody. I started to cry, Freddie Mercury had been giving me headbanging joy way before I even knew gay was a lifestyle. Freddie Mercury's death made me cry at a bus station.

I Figure Ill Stop Scrapping

2010-11-25T16:13:00.000-08:00

11-25-10 Thanksgiving

My Three Thanksgivings.

Five years ago Thanksgiving I was trying to come up with some copper to turn into the scrap yard the next day for my fix. The building behind mine was falling down and hadnt had anyone in it as long as I could remember so I climbed to the roof and down through the hole the weather over the years had provided me. Once inside the copper was everywhere. I started cutting it out when I realized that some of it was still live. I carefully unhooked the three connectors to the 440 coming into the building when POP, a loud fucking explosion of light and power filled the room. The wrench I was using had touched another metal plate. My rubber boots and gloves saved my ass. It no doubt would have killed me. Shaken badly I had gotten the power off so I c ontinued to pull the copper. Part of me knew this was wrong but when your heroin fix is the one true love in your life you can sometimes rationalize things. Looking back I knew I was wrong taking that copper but Im not here to apologize. Putting the big peices aside I went to the basement and started cutting smaller wires when I heard a door open upstairs "POLICE" I heard, I hid behind some machinery thinking Detroit cops wouldnt want to go through the entire building. I was probably right but it wasnt the police just the owners with Glocks and handcuffs. It was my first and only felony, it haunted me for years and was jailed several times for breaking probation due to dirty urine. Thanksgiving in a Detroit lockup.

About 364 days later, a day before Thanksgiving I was again scrapping an abandond building in Eastern Market. I had my torches and was cutting heavy I beams. Things were going great, the sun was out and it lit up the third floor very nicely for me and my buddy to work in. I went to check out the room next door and walked down the hall into a shaded area. My eyes couldnt adjust fast enough before I realized I was falling. The next thing I remember thinking was "Damn, Im falling a long way" I hit the ground about two floors down. I gasped for breath as the wind had been knocked out of me. After the fear settled I felt that I couldnt move my leg and it hurt like hell. My face hurt and my wrist hurt too. I spent the next three months in a wheelchair. I had broken my femur, wrist and jaw. A titanium rod was inserted into my femur, pins in my wrist and my jaw was wired. To top things off I lived in a house with only a woodburner. I was chopping wood from my wheelchair all winter.

Flash forward one more year to the next Thanksgiving. (you can look up my medical and police records if you dont believe me) Im again scrapping the Grand Trunk Building on the seventh floor. Its a refridgerated building with no lights, no windows. Im trying to unbolt a brass valve. After taking the bolts out I tried to wiggle it out by hand, no luck. Grabbing my hammer I gave it a good whack and an explosion of pure ammonia blasted me in the face. The room filled with the gas and I stumbled to the upstairs where fresh air was coming in through the roof. My eyes were burning. Luckily it was raining and I was able to flush them out. About 75% blind, I managed to make my way down through the pitch black seven floors and out to the parking lot. From there I somehow made it home. Before I went to the hospital I stopped at the dope house and spent my last $10.
I was blind for about three months in both eyes until my right eye healed fairly well. My left eye didnt do so well and am still blind in that one today three years later.

True story.

2010-11-23T18:53:00.000-08:00

Shut up and swallow. (continued) The $200 cop in the big hat.

2010-11-23T18:36:00.000-08:00

CONTINUED 11-23-2010

I waited inside my small room made of bamboo, on the floor as told. When the cop told me to get on the floor in a subserviant position I kind of laughed at him, like "Really, you want me to get below your level, on the floor? Your so insecure that physically having someone on the floor at your feet makes you feel better? " It was that kind of smile I gave him, and there was a chuckle also. Matt the Missionary was outside my room discussing the situation with a cop who held the next 12 years of my life in his fat little hands. I quickly decided that I shouldnt laugh at his demands anymore, I put my best sorrowful look on and waited for the outcome non the floor in the corner with the bugs.
Matt came in first and explained partially what I already knew, that I had been caught with a small amount of heroin and that I was looking at 12 years in prison in Bang Kwang Prison in Bangkok. Imprisoning foriegners was a good warning using the media, that Thailand is a drug free zone and should not be messed with, Americans especially as if we were the albino rhino sought by hunters everywhere. Im not sure if it was the dope or I was just stupid but I was thaking everything with a grain of salt. I figured either I was getting out of this mess and going home the next week or I was going to have a 12 year story to tell my Grandkids, if I made it through the ordeal. My life back in Ypsilanti wasnt exactly rosy, I figured I'd mind as well look at Thai prison as another inconvienent experience, either that or I was high. I do have to say that my calm demeanor seemed to be rooted in something spirtual, as if somebody upstairs was looking after me, and he was solid, and I knew it. Matt laid out the situation as if he hoped I was learning a lesson. $200 he said, he wants a bribe. I said no problem but Ill have to send home for it, Ill have it wired somehow. Matt agreed to have it wired to his account so I wouldnt have to pay a Western Union charge and he went out and talked to my cop. When the cop came back in the room I put my best combination painful and worried look, he shook my hand as if a deal had been brokered. In all the cop turned out to be a pretty cool guy, he never showed back up to collect his money when he was supposed to three days later. I think he felt sorry for me and my wounds and that I was actually using the dope as pain medication. Now I had an extra $200 but I had to figure out how to get back at least a little dope back through customs. I couldnt come back empty handed but at the same time I wasnt about to swallow a bunch of condoms full of dope after Id had contact with the cops, I figured I might be on a hotlist when I went through Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok. With the motorcycle accident, the gang of kids who now ran the dope business, my being set up and getting caught with the heroin, I figured someone was trying to tell me something and I wasnt about to swallow this trip. My karma was kicking my ass and I was paying full attention. After the cop left I thanked Matt profusely and explained my whole situation of how I was losing everthing back home while unable to work and that smuggling just seemed to be the obvious solution. Matt was an understanding soul, he let me off easily. After he left I went up to the hong naam which is the bathroom. I brought clean water, my Thai soup spoon, lighter smokes and cotton. I grabbed the heroin I'd hid in the bushes and sat in there and did myself another good load. At least I had gotten to keep the big stash.

More to come. Please make sure to start from the beginning to read the full story of Shut Up And Swallow, along with other crazy adventures of a dope fiend.

Shut up and swallow. (continued)

2010-11-20T21:12:00.001-08:00

11-18-10

Mae Sai is a small town on the Thai. Burma border. At one time it was the main smuggling route for Burmese heroin but now is mainly a tourist area. Small shacks and shops sell cast iron statues of Karen hill tribe dancers, small Buddha necklaces which can be brought through customs legally unlike all other Buddhas which are illegal to export. Food carts and brothels line the side streets and tall new hotels are being built one after another, the smell in the moist air is of burnt incense and burnt food which is distinct but not unpleasant. The town is alive with business and a small gang of kids run the drug trade. I limped down the guest house stairs to the main road into town and took a taxi in. I went barefoot because my toenails had gotten infected from being cut too short. Getting out of the cab with my huge size 13 feet and legs covered in road rash and contusions, the locals couldnt help but stare at me. I didnt get a peacefull vibe. I believe my bare feet were a rude way of being, especially being a guest in their country but I was beyond caring. I limped slowly down the sidewalks pretending to look at the goods being sold, I stopped in a pharmacy and purchased a few syringes for myself getting the stink eye from the young beauty behind the counter. I walked and waited until a boy of about 15 approached me asking me how I liked Thailand. After a few minutes of small talk I knew he could get me what I wanted. I bought a small bottle of heroin that must have been #1 heroin, which is the lowest grade with #4 heroin being the most high grade heroin you can find in all the world. Things had changed a lot since Id been here seven years earlier. The town was smaller and the drugs flowed pure and cheap. This trip I wound up paying a stupid amount of money for this bottle and the quality sucked compared to the last trip. It didnt matter, I was desperate and too injured to travel to a better source in the hills. I scheduled another delivery for the next day, I told him I wanted four large bottles and we would talk price at my room.

The next day the kid came by and I told him what I would pay for the four bottles, he laughed in my face and I told him I was sorry we couldnt come to an agreement. He left but came back about an hour later. "OK" he said "four bottles at your price" I produced the money and he gave me the bottles. I pulled out my last new syringe and cooked up a small dose not knowing how potent it was, it took me four shots before I knew how much to use next time. I went to the bathroom up the steps outside my room and hid all the bottles in the bushes near the steps. Once back inside my room I laid down with a pack of Kung Threps to smoke and settled in for a nice few days of nodding.

Something woke me up, then I heard it again, KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. "Who is it" I said "Police" I was so high I did'nt panic, I also didn't realize I had left a little powder and my syringes on the nightstand. I let the fat little cop in and asked in English what he wanted. He didn't understand what I had said but he pointed at the powder on the table. I hammed up my pain knowing full well my injuries were very hard to miss. I moaned when I crossed the room and limped extra special just for him. He was pointing at the ground, in the corner of the room. I didn't understand what he wanted. I towered over the man who now had taken off his over sized policeman's cap, It reminded me of Rick Moranis' Darth Vader characters huge mask in the movie Space Balls. It was as if your hat was bigger you would wield more power. He was balding badly underneath and I noticed his teeth were yellow and crooked when he smiled at his fortune. He kept pointing the the ground in the corner and realized he wanted me to get down on the ground, for me to look down at him was an insult in Thai culture as he was my superior. I grimaced and squatted down in the corner. Satisfied he went for the few hiding spaces in the room while speaking in Thai. He seemed to be looking for something specific, then he held four little fat fingers up and thought hard, "fooer" he said and thought some more waving his four fingers at me. "fooer boots" and thought some more "fooer bootls" and I knew what he was looking for. The kid had set me up, sold me the heroin at my price then went to his friend the dirty cop to come get it back for him knowing the cop would get a bribe or a conviction. "I gave him a quizzical look shrugging my shoulders. He turned the bed over, looked in the curtains and then seemed to come to a conclusion with a smile. He made the motion of throwing something out the window and shook his finger at me with a grin thinking I was a quick enough thinker to have thrown the bottles out the window down to the river below as soon as he had announced through the door that he was po-lice when in reality I didnt even think to just blow the small amount of dope sitting on the table into the air, it would have taken just a second to do and there wasnt enough that it could have been collected off the floor if I did use my breath to scatter it.

Crouched in the corner I was trying to figure out what was going to happen next. The cop pointed at my wounds with a painful look and then Matt showed up. Matt was another guest who stayed a few doors down. He was a Christian missionary who I had talked to a few times the week before. We had something in common that neither of us could believe, we were both born in the same hospital in Ypsilanti Michigan. Matt spoke fluent Thai and quickly inserted himself into my problem with the officer, they went outside and spoke.

To be continued.

It was a great day to be dopesick.

2010-11-11T14:45:00.000-08:00

The cool October wind is rushing past my window, howling at the trees who make spitfire shadows on my cigarette burned laptop. Its been a nice day except for the fact that I have no cash, and I have to go for credit with the dickhead down the street. I dont want Strict dead, or even jailed, just realized.

2010-11-11T14:38:00.001-08:00

I once.

I once was doing such a large amount of a very pure heroin I had brought back from Thailand that I constipated myself so bad I did not shit for an entire 7 days. In the end it still wouldn't come out on its own. In Asia if you have the runs the locals will often give you a small ball of opium to swallow, works great. Too bad I didnt have access to a small ball of opium, I had to pull my shit out by hand.

Almost Busted

2010-11-11T11:07:00.000-08:00

Almost busted.

So the summer before last Ive got a lousy $7 in my pocket and I go to the spot. This spot is an old dilapidated two story thats fallin apart near McDougall and Warren where an old couple I know sells their shit for the main guy. Ive been buying this same product for years and I trust it, but I do feel sorry for the old couple doin the sellin but their old heads and they know the deal. I ride up on my bike, walk around the side of the house and put my money in the cup on a string and yell up "yo, one blow" I hear something resembling a "yeah, okay" and I wait. "Hey man, I need one blow" and I wait, and I wait. I keep hearing them up there but their not haulin the cup up to the second floor with my money in it. Ive got to get to work but this is the best blow around so as I decide to keep waiting I hear screeching rubber up front of the house. I see a big black van and a bunch of brothers in black, and one sister all jumpin out of the van. My body was movin toward the backyard because I knew who they were. I crept slowly with the intention of sneakin around the abandoned house next doors back yard and maybe get to the alley where I could make it to McDougall. "Get the fuck up to the front of the street white boy" screams a pudgy little sister in regular police uniform. I got the impression she was somehow the caretaker of this narco crew because everyone else was in black para-military garb with the bloused pant cuffs in the combat boots and heavy belts loaded down with maglights pepper spray, handcuffs, and other toys. I automatically had my hands half up way and walked toward the front of the house where I was cuffed and told to sit on the curb. About five of the narcos had taken the door with a huge crowbar type tool and were now upstairs searching the place. I just had to wait, as I wasnt in the house and I hadn't even gotten my drugs yet, shit, my money was still in the cup. I was thinking I was free and clear when I started to think more clearly, FUCK, I had eight 1/8 ounce bags of weed all bagged up in my backpack. If it were even an ounce of weed in one bag it would not be a problem but eight seperate bags meant intent. I didnt have any underwear on beneath my shorts, that meant I had to go through seven days in D-Block downtown without any underwear, and my socks werent washed yesterday either. Everyone in the jailhouse would be givin me shit for the next week but it didnt compare to the hell Id be going through without my dope. At least when I got out my tolerance would be low.
The brothers started searchin me and found my shit right away, I told them it was medicinal just tryin to get a laugh out of them, trying to lighten the mood as I knew some weed was no big deal. I didnt tell them about my $7 in the cup on the side of the house hoping they wouldnt find it and of course take it. They kept me cuffed for another 20 minutes, wrote down all the info they could out of me in a big black handwritten ledger meant to categorize all the so-called street thugs then unhooked me.of I rubbed the blood back into my hands and grabbed my bike An obvious elder of the cops motioned me to the back of the black van, out of sight. He seemed like someone I might know, he had medium length dreads, obviously a longtime undercover. He looked me up and down and asked me what I did for work, I said I was a carpenter of sorts. Dread didnt feel like a cop to me but he was, he felt like one of my hipster acquaintance from the Cass Corridor. Dread asked if Id like to make some money, I swear to god when he asked me that question he seemed ashamed, as if he knew I wasnt of this street stock, that I was something more, something on the level of himself and he was asking me to be a snitch for money. I said no and he motioned for me to go. of I rubbed the blood back into my hands and grabbed my bike. As I got on my bike I looked at the cop who had hooked me up "Can I get my weed back now?" "Oh man we got a joker" he said with a thin smile. "Its medicinal man, Ive got pain" I didnt wait for his response, I just rode off while the head female threatened me with the cuffs again, she didnt like jokes, for her it seemed this drug war was actually real, as if she was really making a difference. I rode away with a smile.

$20 in my wind.

2010-11-11T10:57:00.000-08:00

Before scrap metal prices went through the roof in the mid 00s and every scrapper was considered scum I had a truck and made my way cutting steel out of burned out and un-salvageable buildings. I took a big blind fall in one down a hole in the floor. I broke my femur, wrist and jaw. A titanium rod was put in my leg and I spent about three months in a wheelchair. I was out of work and I had my habit, and I was sick. I could feel the bile in my stomach churning around and my legs wouldn't hold still, my nose and eyes were running and I was sneezing eight times in a row. I wheeled myself down the street on that frigid December day while carrying my aluminum extension ladder resting on the arm of my chair. I headed down to a spot I knew where the man would sometimes trade tools for dope. I sat outside and waited for him but when he showed up he didnt want the ladder. I was at wits end sitting on wheels on McDougall street in the blowing cold praying for my father to send me something from above. My eyes were running so bad I couldnt see and my body arched with my sneezes as I looked in the street to see a bill tumbling with the wind right toward me. I franticly pushed myself toward vector with the tumbling green blur and caught it under my wheel. Reaching down I pulled up a twenty dollar bill so I looked up and thanked my Pop. I blew it all on one fat blow and worried about my next need when it came. Somehow it always works out.

First Time

2010-11-11T10:55:00.001-08:00

My first time.

I was buying coke off a new friend named Reyn and turning it around. I wasn't making shit doing this but it felt good dealing in drugs, as if this is what I was supposed to do. As many dealers as there are out there I could not find steady suppliers with decent prices and was always getting ripped off. I loved dealing in drugs though.
I went over to check on my friend with the coke connection and when he opened the door I saw his eyes were black and blue. "Dude, what happened to you, who beat your ass" I said. Reyn was just waking up at 3 pm and said "Oh man, I'm okay, I just did a little heroin" I was half pissed half intrigued. "What the hell is wrong with you doin heroin? I can understand doing some coke, even shootin it like you do but heroin?" A few days later I was asking how much it was, what it felt like, what a speedball felt like, and a few days later I snorted my first and last dot of heroin. A week later I had him boot me up and it was all downhill from there.

2010-11-10T23:14:00.000-08:00

This is the beginning of some stories I have. I hope you like them. They are all true to the best of my memory. Please subscribe. My grammar is terrible and I plan to go back and fix it if I get enough followers.

2010-11-10T23:04:00.001-08:00

Po lice

2010-11-10T22:07:00.000-08:00

10-24-10

I had quit college about two years earlier to follow the Grateful Dead and reap the benefits that prohibition of drugs brought those willing to risk it. I had brought back a nice little amount of Burmese heroin from Northern Thailand and was surfing a friends couch at EMU. We had known eachother for years and I called him Seedy, he initally turned me on to the drugs Id never tried back in high school. I looked up to Seedy, he knew drugs, the trade, and he had connections but he was in his Christian phase at this point of his life and wasnt using anything really, until one day. "let me toot a dot of that stuff you brought back" he asked me. I was a bit surprised because he was all in Jesus mode, for the past three years in fact he had stopped smoking pot with me, it was a real bummer because I missed my friend and our daily sessions . He went from not smoking pot with me to trying some badass heroin, I knew he could handle snorting a spot, he wasn't the type to go off the deep end and start using everyday, that was my type, Seedy was a cerebral dude, he wanted to try my stuff purely because he knew it was pure, straight from the jungle, un-cut, something that comes once in a lifetime, Seedy was a connoisseur of psychedelics and sometimes heavier drugs. I laid out a dot and he sniffed it up and went off to jam in the basement on his guitar with some other friends from high school.
The next day Im relaxing on his couch drinking a beer nodding out and I get a phgone call from Seed, "Dude" he said, "listen carefully, I was jamin with Ding Dong and Dang Dang in the basement last night after you gave me that line and Ding Dong was askin why I was fallin asleep in the middle of playin" Well yeah I said, so what? you were nodding out, whats the big deal? "I told them I did a little bit of your dope, no big deal I thought, but Ding Dong got all crazy and said hes going to call the cops unless you flush all your shit down the toilet, he's on a moral crusade". I couldnt believe it, Id known Ding Dong for years, I may have set his locker on fire in high school but it was an accident. DD really thought he could do his part as a good Christian by threating me with the law. Seed says "Dude you got to get that shit outta the house" I hung up the phone and borrowed a car and drove with all my shit out to the woods and found a nice secluded spot and buried my shit right in the ground.
For the next two days Seedy apoplogized profusely, I understood he didn't realize a friend would be willing to put one of us in jail to answer the calling of Nancy Regan and her Just Say No plan or the brain on drugs in the frying pan rant. We weren't sure if Ding Dong had actually called the cops but sure enough the door bell rang the day after and three city cops were at the door asking me about heroin in the house. They had been told that I had a load of heroin and would infect the city with addiction. The crib was clean so I wasnt worried much. " Mr Davis, can we come in" the head cop asked me. " We got a call that said you were dealing in heroin and if you just let us have a look around your house Im sure we can clear all this up and we can leave you alone" I had already let the three cops in the front door, and one was already walking around the family room with his eyes peeled for anything suspicious. I gave the looking cop a dirty look and told them that this war on drugs was a load of crap, a wast of money and resources, that supply and demand will always rule and they should be out catching criminals, but I had no heroin. The head cop was suspiciously courteous, nodded and left. The next day I packed what little shit I owned, and moved to Detroit to a $250 a month shithole behind the Fox Theater, it was all I could afford. I figured it would no problem unloading my dope down here in the city but a twenty one year old white kid from the burbs with $20,000 worth of heroin just doesnt jive in Detroit. Life had turned to shit overnight.

2010-11-02T23:49:00.001-07:00

How Snowbank got his name.

2010-11-01T04:14:00.000-07:00

My friend Mark is a drinker like I am a heroin addict. It was December and a cold night. We were hanging out at my girls house, watchin TV, drinkin 5 o'clock vodka when we started to argue. It was routine for me to kick him out or for me to leave when Mark had passed his point of no return. Mark left that night to walk home about eight blocks through the ghetto in the cold and snow.

The next evening I went home and Mark was still shaking off his hangover with a new pint of 5 o'clock "Oh man, I woke up this morning lying in a snowbank with a German Shepherd licking my face" he said. I started laughing and asked if he thought the dog was lookin for a meal. "no, I think he was actually looking to see if I was okay, he was tryin to wake me up before I froze.

Later on when we were all hanging out, my girl says to me in her smart ass tone while pointing her finger at Mark "He probably was so drunk walkin home last night that when he fell down into the snowbank he said to himself, Damn, this is kind of nice down here in the snow, I think Ill stay here" Mark got a huge grin and said "thats exactly what happened"

That is how Snowbank got his name.

Addiction is a disease dumbass. Its not cureable.

2010-11-01T03:54:00.000-07:00

I know so many Ppl who have been consumed by drugs. They've lost their jobs, soul, house, tools, wife, Camaro, kids, homies, family, and often times their lives. Others who dont know what the disease is all about assume that thats the way they want their crappy little drug addicted life to be. They should just quit if they dont want to live that way" they will say, "go to NA or AA" they will say.

Any addict can get clean, I dont know of one who hasnt gotten clean for a time or three. Staying clean day after day is a brutal fight and the disease does not need rest. The disease does not need sleep, food, water or a family. The disease has no depression or weaknesses, it is a constant force with one priority, to seek relief for the hosts body in a buzz, a high, a relief of the worlds pressures that most men can take in stride and confidence. Even us addicts know that those men are only men, they have their own to deal with.

Addiction is not a curable disease. It can be managed sometimes but odds are not in their favor. The best recovery centers in the country cannot produce better than a 5% success rate, thats just the facts, and its usually lower.

Harm reduction and compassion are the best solutions I can see. No one wants to give an addict a way to rationalize a destructive path but there should be a point when we realize tough love isnt going to have an effect. Tending to the wounds is best you can do for a sick and often dying person. If I thought my friend Snowbank had a chance of turning his life around before this winter I'd try my best to help him that way but I know him well and its highly unlikely. I just want to see him in the spring. Who knows, maybe he will tackle his demons after the snow melts. In Russia they call them snowflakes. When the snow melts in the spring the bodies show themselves and they call them snowflakes.