textfiles/magazines/HOE/hoe-1046.txt

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     $$     .d""b. .d""b.                  HOE E'ZINE #1046
 [-- $$""b. $$  $$ $$  $$ -- ------------------------------------------- --]
     $$  $$ $$  $$ $$ss$$        "Another Profitable Life Experience"
     $$  $$ $$  $$ $$                          by Kreid
     $$  $$ $$  $$ $$  $$                      03/22/00
 [-- $$  $$ $$  $$ $$  $$ -- ------------------------------------------- --]
     $$  $$ "TssT" "TssT"

 - Chapter One

	I turned on the TV.  It said, "PREVENTATIVE ACTIONS MUST BE TAKEN
 IN ORDER TO NULLIFY THE COLLABORATIVE AND DATA-DRIVEN EFFORTS OF
 AFRICAN-AMERICAN DRUG DEALERS." Then, gradually, a man with white hair
 came onto the screen, and his lips were moving along with the speech.  
 CNN.  Channel 9.  Naturally, I took no offense when I realized that he
 wasn't talking to me or to any of the people I knew; he was talking to a
 crowd.  Then there was some clapping from the crowd, and I changed the
 channel.  Channel 10.  It was a documentary on bats.  Fuck yeah!
	Cough.
	Upon that last thought and that last cough, I snapped out of a
 haze that I didn't know I was in before.  Oh, this again, I thought, and
 I was awake.  Then I spied the remote resting on the floor and I stepped
 on the POWER button.  Off. Bats indeed.
	The loud fans in the room blasted white noise into the air and I
 took notice.
	Switch, switch, off, off.  The light was off to begin with, so
 that left nothing on in my room but myself.
	"Om.  Ohhhhhmmmmmm."  Uhm.  I looked around the room for something
 to do.  Didn't find much, though.  The inflatable chair I sat on looked a
 little deflated so I sat down on the floor to blow some air into it.  It
 felt good to breathe the air inside that chair.  It tasted like rubber.
	When I was done with that, I walked out my front door and into the
 town.  It looked to be about 9:00 PM.

 [-----]

 - Chapter Two

	I was singing to myself as I walked on the sidewalk on my way
 downtown: "Hey, man, you gotta joint to sell me?"  Couldn't remember the
 next line of the song by the time I met up with Black.
	"Hey!!" He signaled me from across the street.
	"Hey!" I walked up to him.
	"What's up?  Uh, three."
	"Okay, three.  Here.  Thanks, dude, I'll see you."
	"Thanks man, see ya."
	Now, don't misunderstand me here.  I don't call him Black because
 he's black, I call him Black because his name is Black.  He's a black man
 named Black.  I was walking home.  I sang to myself: "Walking home--"
	Too routine.  It sure was cold out.  I stopped at the liquor store
 on the way home and bought wine.  When I got home, I snapped out of a
 haze I didn't know I was in before.  "Oh, this again--"

 [-----]

 - Chapter Three

	I poured the red wine and turned on the television, reveling in
 something.  The news was on.  I tried to watch it, but couldn't.  I didn't
 want to listen.  TV is a waste of time, anyway.
	Across the floor I saw the phone lying off the hook, as it had
 done for the last few months.  No noise blew through the ear piece anymore.  
 It had been shut off.  Somewhere in my garbage, there were many empty
 phone bills and a few notices of my account being terminated.  No one
 would have ever called me, anyway.
	Just then, Madeline walked in.
	"Hi Dave."
	"Mad."
	"You're mad."  She smiled at me, as if to indicate that she was
 joking, which she was.  I had heard this joke many times before.
	"Eheheheh."
	Madeline and I spent some quality time together in my room.  And
 before long, I realized that I was hungry.  As my routine went, I hadn't
 eaten all day.  Starvation causes suffering, suffering causes happiness;
 or at least, I was testing that theory out.  So Mad and I went downtown to
 get some dinner.  She got some fried chicken and I got some mashed potatoes
 and gravy and we took it home and ate it all with the wine.  Very filling.
	Filling.
	Later on that night, Madeline introduced me to heroin.  She had
 bought it in town from a Hispanic man named Freedom.  We snorted it.  For
 a few hours, I felt like nothing mattered except the two of us.  Of course,
 this is how I usually felt before I ever tried heroin.  We both laid around
 for a while and vomited a few times.  We both did a second line, and then
 right afterwards I did a third line of heroin while Mad did a line of
 coke.  She was up much later than I was that night.

 [-----]

 - Chapter Four

	When she wasn't awake at 2:00 PM, I left Madeline lying there and
 walked out my door.  I had been awake since 10:00.  Spent a few hours just
 touching her on the shoulders, trying to stimulate her.  I really tried.  
 Maybe she appreciated it, unconsciously.  She sure was out cold.
	I noticed that morning that someone had spray-painted "COCK" on my
 front door.  Fair enough.  I wonder who did that.
	It was Monday.  Around 2:07 PM, I arrived at my place of
 employment.  I was pretty sure I could show up there at my leisure; but I
 hadn't talked to the boss in so long, I wasn't sure.  That was a good
 thing for both of us.  My first customer neared only moments after a cop
 car turned onto the street.  The customer was a young white kid cruising
 by in an American-made sport utility vehicle.  It was the first time I had
 ever seen a cop car in Paterson.
	"Yo!" The kid was screaming out at me from across the street.  I
 froze up.  The police car got nearer.  The kid's car idled as he stared at
 me.  He didn't seem intimidated by the cop, and why should he be?  We were
 in Paterson.  This was a perfectly civilized town.
	"Yo!!" yelled the kid.  The cop pulled up behind him.  What the hell
 was going on here?  I walked into the second nearest store, a McDonald's.
 The nearest store was a headshop.  I decided not to go in because those
 stores always make me nervous, and I was already nervous.  I didn't know if
 I could handle myself; and if all went wrong, I lacked the energy to
 outrun a cop.  He was a young-looking cop.
	I woke up from my hazy state of disarray and smelled the poison
 inside McDonald's.  The scent made me feel like I was dying of hunger, so
 I looked at the pictures of the food and bought the biggest-looking
 burger, the Big King, and a lemonade.
	"We don't have lemonade," said the cashier.
	So I looked at the pictures of the beverages that were printed on
 the menu, and I picked the only that didn't have caffeine, Sprite.  Both
 the burger and the Sprite tasted horrible.  The Sprite was far too bubbly
 for some reason, but I liked that.  Swallowing all that air made me burp a
 lot, purging my stomach of old beer fumes and whatever other poisons that
 were lingering in there. The kid from the sport-utility vehicle came and
 sat down next to me while I ate my burger and soda.  When I realized this,
 I almost panicked, but after scanning the restaurant and the street
 outside and seeing no cops, I calmed down.
	"Yo."
        "Yo, I got cash for seven, can you throw me eight?"
	He was looking at me as if I recognized his face.  I didn't.  But
 I was always willing to cut a deal.  The poison I dealt out wasn't worth
 jack shit to me, of course, and I made out very well by selling it.  I
 handed him eight little white bags and gave the friendliest smile that I
 could conjure.  Our conversation had ended.  The kid threw his cocaine
 into his coat pocket, ran out to his car, and rolled away.  "Thanks," he
 mumbled to himself.
	"No problem," I mumbled back to myself on the way back out into
 the street.  And all it happened again and again and again and again, only
 with much fewer complications and much less variation.  Then it rained and
 I walked home.

 [-----]

 - Chapter Five

	"COCK."  I opened the door and came through the threshold, soaked.  
 Madeline was in bed, watching a movie and waiting for me to come home.  I
 think she didn't work Mondays back then, but she didn't have to; we were
 getting by very well on our salaries.  She hadn't gotten dressed yet.
	As soon as she noticed that I had walked in the door, Mad lit a
 cigarette.  This meant that she had been up to something.  "Dave," she
 said, "I think we have to start over with this relationship."
	I was glad that she spared me enough time to ask, "What?  Why?"
	"Well, I think that I made a lot of mistakes over the past few
 years, and things have just ended up all wrong.  I want us to re-discover
 each other."
	I didn't really feel like she sucked the life out of me by saying
 that.  It was more like she was informing me that I never had life at all.  
 Like she was putting me on.  Everything was wrong?  I hadn't realized.  
 What a piece of shit I was!
	"What a piece of shit I am," I said.  "I'm sorry.  I know you
 deserve someone much better than me."
	She smiled, as if I had just given her a great compliment.  Then
 she frowned and said, "I just need a little time to myself.  A couple of
 weeks, maybe.  I still love you."  Then she kissed me.  Then she started
 making out with me.
	I was positive that this making-out was not going to lead
 anywhere.  I broke away, weakly, and said, "Okay.  I love you too.  I
 guess you can have this place until the rent runs out.  I'll tell the
 landlady that you're the new owner, okay?"
	"Okay," she said.  I cleaned the place up a little, making sure I
 didn't leave enough coke behind to last her past one night.  Then I took
 my money, my drugs, and myself out the door.  I remember being in a very
 thick haze and needing to get high in a bad way.

 [-----]

 - Chapter Six

	For the first time in a long while, I had no safe place to go.  
 It occurred to me to go see one of my friends, but I had none to go see.  
 Moving into Paterson, New Jersey was a terribly antisocial gesture.  I had
 begun to see the negative side of this: I had burned all the bridges of my
 high school friends, and I really didn't make any friends in College.  
 There had just always been Madeline.  With her, I didn't want any friends.  
 I refused to go anywhere without her, I refused to spend a dollar if it
 wasn't on her.  And while my friends all got their own places in the
 suburbs, where they grew up, I opted for a cheaper and more isolated life
 in Paterson.  Now, the carpet has been pulled up from underneath me, and I
 was fucked.  Had this been my idea?
	I really needed to get high.  It was about 6:00 and drizzling.
 The sun was setting.  I went to the only guy I knew.
	"Hey!!"
	"Hey, Black, I don't need nothing but a place to hide out for a
 while.  Cops hanging out on my corner."
	"Don't you got a place to stay, dude?"
	"No.  Girlfriend kicked me out."
	I was surprised and proud to see the sympathy in Black's eyes.  
 It was honor among thieves.  Very touching.  Black took an unusually long
 time to think about this predicament.  "All right, dude, you hang out at
 my place.  Number 13 on 9th.  The key is underneath the doormat."
	Amazing!  This guy dealt pot on the street and he kept his key
 under the doormat.  It was also pretty amazing that he was letting me hang
 out there for a while.  "Thanks, man.  You saved my ass."
	He shook my hand after that.  "Forget it."

 [-----]

 - Chapter Seven

	Black<63>s key was not under the doormat, but the window was left
 open a crack, so I entered through that.  He had a lot of nice shit in
 there.  Two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room with long couches and a
 television.  And it reeked of pot.  I saw a hookah and a bong semi-hidden
 in a couple of corners.  I assumed it appropriate at that point to spark
 one up, out of my own piece, of course.  I ended up smoking everything I
 had left.  I felt even more bewildered than I did before, only less
 responsible for it.
	I had no idea what time it was when Black walked in.  I was
 sitting on his couch and very slowly reading a book I found at his place:
 Naked Lunch.  Sure to be in the library of any literate drug dealer.  I
 had read it a million times before, but only once from cover to cover.  
 An old friend of mine once told me that it read more like a bible than a
 novel.  For instance, right now, it was going so slowly<6C>
	"Hey!"
	"Hey, what's up?"
	"Shit, dude, I had a huge day.  I made a shit load.  Stayed out
 there in all that rain, too."
	"Yeah, I noticed.  You made money in that shit, too?  On Monday?"
	"Monday is when I get half my business, dude--"
	"My name's Dave, by the way."
	"Shit, don't you think I know that?"
	"Sorry."
	"Forget it.  Like I was saying, all the white kids get together
 and buy their shit for a whole week's worth of smoking.  Didn't you used
 to do that shit, smoking in the parking lot at lunch and after school?"
	I almost forgot.  I used to smoke and drink with my friends in
 high school all the time, and I ate mushrooms or acid on Fridays.  When I
 thought back to that, I imagined that those were the best days of my life.  
 It made me feel a lot shittier than I did before. "Were there really cops
 on your corner today?"  "Ah, no," I said, "I just really needed to get high
 somewhere."  "Yeah, it sounded like bullshit.  Would have gotten scared
 myself if I didn't know better."  "Yeah."  "Smells like someone's been
 smoking some nigger shit in here," said Black.  "Just the stuff you sold
 me, man.  Hope you don't mind."  He just smiled at me.  "Put that book away,
 dude."  As I put the book back in Black's library, he got out his hookah
 and started packing its enormous bowl full of bright-green herb that I
 could smell from across the room.  I was pretty sure that I was not going
 to be able to handle that much smoking, especially given the amount I had
 done already that evening.  Then Black took out his razor blade and a chunk
 of red opium.  As he dragged the razor blade across the opium, little
 dark-red flakes came to cover the bowl of green leaves. "This is how I
 unwind after a hard day's work."  Black handed me the second hose of the
 hookah as he inserted a plug into the third one.  Holy shit.  I did not
 deserve this.
	He lit the bowl up with a cigar lighter, which melted and burned
 at the drug salad.  As the flame took hold, we both inhaled deeply.  I
 exhaled a giant cloud of strangely delicious smoke.  Black did the same.  
 Everything was suddenly perfect.  Then we took hold and sucked down the
 rest of the smoke.  The bowl was not done with for twenty minutes.
	"Don't worry about that girl no more," said Black.  I was amazed
 that he even had the power to speak.  I couldn't even move my lips, but I
 was smiling.  Black seemed omniscient enough to accept my gratitude, even
 though I could not utter it. I no longer felt the pain of being free.

 [-----]

 - Chapter Eight

	Black talked to me a lot that night, and I listened.  We smoked a
 lot more, first just pot, then opium on top of much less pot.  The next
 morning, I tried to sort through what I had retained.  I wasn;t sure.  
 Things were still very confused.
	Black and I walked to work together.  We said 'hi' to Freedom and
 his crowd on the way.  He ended up selling me a bag of heroin.  Black's
 crowd was waiting for him too.  I was the only white boy there.  I looked
 around at my co-workers and wondered what it was that kept me alive in
 this town for all this time.  In this town of Paterson, ignored by its own
 insignificant police force even since I was a kid, there was justice.  
 Nobody fucked with me because I was an honest guy.
 	"Watch yourself on that shit," said Black.
	"I know.  I just need a little mental health for a while, man."
	Black knew immediately that I didn't know what I was doing.  
 "Hey, someone get this dude a needle, okay?"
	A sealed paper bag with a syringe came into my hand after a few
 minutes.
	"You're wasting your money on that shit unless you shoot it.  
 Know how?"
	I did know how, but only from observation.  I shrugged.  Then
 Black walked me into the bathroom of a Dunkin' Donuts and made sure I
 didn't fuck anything up.  Everything went very well.  I sat down on the
 toilet seat.
	"I need to rest for a while, okay?"
	"See you on the corner."  He left me sitting there.

 [-----]

 - Chapter Nine

	I was high as a kite.  After some time, I collected myself and
 made it to the corner by 2:30.  I cut a lot of deals that day.  Business
 was never big on Tuesday.  Ended up with a couple of hundred in profit.  
 I was off the street at 5:30 because I had to get to my real job.
	Like many drug dealers, I worked a few hours every Tuesday and
 Thursday so that the cops couldn't get me on tax evasion.  Like I said, I
 was an honest man.  Most of us were.  Work was great.  Slow business on
 Tuesdays -- a perfect day to take a couple of shots in the bathroom.
	That was the first day in a long while that I didn't smoke any
 pot.  I realized what it really was to be high, I guess.  Pot seemed to be
 coming to an end in my life.  I admit that I made some mistakes in our
 relationship.  Things just ended up all wrong between us, but no matter.  
 All it took was a day or two to find a new life-partner.
	How fucking idiotic!
	Regardless of how it seemed, all the feelings that I had were
 authentic and pure.  I made eight dollars in tips before the restaurant
 closed that night.  A fair reward for what I had done.  What was "service
 with a smile" worth to the people of Paterson, anyway?
	After work, I was unsure about where I could sleep that night.  
 When I knocked on Black<63>s door, he answered and greeted me like a friend.  
 He even let me use his shower.  Then he put on some Jimi Hendrix.  I was
 flattered that he put on music suitable for Caucasian-listening.  We
 lounged on his couches and shot heroin all night.  Then Black let me sleep
 in his second bedroom.
	This was too much for me.  I took my junk and walked out Black<63>s
 front door.  The sun was rising outside.  I headed back to Madeline<6E>s
 place and passed out on the inflatable couch with the television on.

 [-----]

 - Chapter Ten

	When I was very young, five, I think, I had an episode.  I stayed
 up late one night, until about midnight, and woke up around noontime,
 feeling curiously filthy.  I had the thought that a layer of slime had
 covered me as punishment, because I had disobeyed my parents; I had
 changed my routine.  So, naturally, because I felt dirty and because it
 was part of my daily routine, I went straight to the shower.
	I scrubbed myself furiously that morning.  I made sure no single
 part of my body escaped washing.  I went from my chest to my neck to my
 face; and so struck this episode of mine.  For the first time in my life,
 I got soap in my eyes; and it really got in them badly.  I felt such a
 fear and pain that I collapsed to the floor of the shower, and briefly, I
 howled.  But when I heard my own voice screaming, it scared me more, and I
 clenched my teeth and whimpered, nestled into a corner of the cold shower
 wall.
	Even more clenched than my teeth, of course, were my eyes, as they
 were at the core of all my pain.  After a few moments of whimpering and
 nestling, I found the courage to turn my head at the water and let it wash
 the soap away.  It was a little too hot and it scalded my face, but it
 soothed.  I was relieved of my pain in a few minutes.
	When I got out of the shower, my eyes were still closed.  They
 felt numb inside, and I was scared that when I opened them that I would be
 blind, the stinging soap having melted away my sight.  I stumbled out of
 the bathroom, through the hall naked, and finally into my room where I lay
 down on my bed.  At that point, the episode was about over.
	I don't really feel very traumatized by it at all, but it sticks
 in my memory more clearly than all my birthdays and Christmas' combined.  
 I consider that day a turning point in my life, although it didn't change
 me all too drastically.  From that day on, I washed my face a lot less
 frequently, and I suppose that triggered my personal hygiene plummeting in
 many other ways.  Beside that small detail, I exhibited no reaction to my
 trauma.

 [-----]

 - Chapter Eleven

	When I woke up, there was no one home.  I couldn't tell if
 Madeline had moved out or not, because like me, she would have left
 without taking any of our shit with her.  I was not expecting to be alone
 that morning.  Lately I had been having some incredible luck.  I
 attributed that to the amount of unspent semen that was building up in my
 loins.
	So I took a shower, shaved, got some fresh clothes, and ate a
 breakfast of bread and wine that I had stolen from my restaurant on the
 previous night.  I felt like a king, so I went to see the landlady and
 paid the rent for next months, then left a note for Mad to let her know.  
 2:00 rolled around and I headed out to the corner.
	"Yo!!"
	"Yo."  A girl in a mid-1980's American sedan pulled up the side
 street next to me, knowingly.  When I looked in the car, I saw my best
 friend from high school, Gregory, sitting in the passenger seat next to
 his high school girlfriend. The three of us used to come to Paterson years
 ago to buy pot and coke.  Then Greg and his girlfriend, who I never liked,
 by the way, got hooked on coke for a year or two and we lost touch.  He
 ended up on the right side, though.  He took control of his life, dropping
 out of college, quitting coke, and breaking up with his girlfriend.  When
 he did that, I gained a lot of respect for him, but still haven<65>t seen him
 since I sold my car three years ago.
	Greg's girlfriend gave me a familiar smile and said, "uh, four?"  I
 got into the car.
	"You guys hungry?"
	"No," said Greg.
	"Me neither.  Want to go get some coffee?"
	"We were just about to."
	Greg's girlfriend took off.  Within a minute or two, we were back
 on the highway on the way back to the diner we had gone to.  The girl's
 knuckles were white and wrapped around her steering wheel.
	"So what's up," I asked Gregory.
	"Same old, same old--" I took out four bags and gave them to him.  
 He didn't seem surprised, as he had always gotten things free from me; he
 had always been poor, especially when he was on coke.  "--you still with
 Mad?"
	"Not lately.  We still live in the same place, though."  We were
 barreling down the highway.  I took out my gear and took a shot in the
 back seat.  They both looked at me, aghast.
	"So you're a junkie now?"
	"Yeah, lately," I murmured.

 [-----]

 - Chapter Twelve

	We were sitting in the diner.  Greg and his girlfriend had just
 blown four lines in the car and were now waiting for their coffee.  I was
 not.  I have never been able to enjoy or justify taking stimulants, unless
 you count orange juice.
	"So how's Ben," I asked, genuinely interested in hearing how my
 only other best friend had been.
	John started to smirk and replied, "He grew a moustache, man."
	We both exploded with laughter.  Suddenly I didn't want to hear
 about Ben anymore.
	The coffee came.  Both of them drank it black, just as they always
 had.  We sat in silence for a little while.  I was dreading the moment
 where one or both of them would start running their mouths.  People always
 say the same things over and over again when they're coked up.
	The quiet lasted.  I felt for some reason that I was the only one
 comfortable with it.  I Remembering my old high school temperament, I said
 something completely off- base to break the silence: "In the future, all
 the rocks are gonna be igneous rocks."
	Greg caught on immediately.  "That's just one of three ways of
 looking at the future."
	His girlfriend spoke up: "I think it's more likely to be all
 metamorphic rocks in the future."  Greg and I stared at each other, knowing
 how completely wrong she was.  "If I were a rock, I would definitely be a
 metamorphic rock." Wrong again.  Greg looked embarrassed, but not really.  
 She was the one paying for the stimulants, among other things.
	They each drank four cups of coffee and smoked four cigarettes.  
 The girl went to the bathroom after each cup of coffee.  She had always
 done that.  Weak bladder.  Greg went once after the check was paid. I went
 to the bathroom with Greg and puked.  Away went my bread and wine. We
 didn't spend half as much time in that diner as we used to.  It seemed
 that we were all far more businesslike in our adulthood.  Afterwards, we
 sat in the parked car getting our heads refilled.
	"So how about we all head down to Texas?"  Greg and his girl were
 really enthusiastic about that suggestion of mine for about ten minutes.  
 It had been our fantasy to drop out of high school, move to Alaska and
 open up a gas station.  We all heard the phrase, "You'd be surprised how
 little you can get off of a salary like that," enough times to have never
 forgotten it.  But if we owned the station, and all slept in the office,
 then what?  We would never give it a chance, because we all had planned
  our real futures out long before we even met. And there was nothing
 fantastic about our futures.  Everything had come true so far.  Or had it?  
 "Hey Greg, how do you pay the rent these days?"  "I'm a carpenter."  Yes,
 it had all come true.

 [-------------------------------------------------------------------------]
 [ (c) HOE E'ZINE -- http://www.hoe.nu       HOE #1046, BY KREID - 3/22/00 ]