The Merest Samplin

 

I had quickly made friends in Abilene, and I was not shed of them completely when I returned to the Dallas area. Nor did I seek to avoid them. I had not left near as much wreckage in that west Texas town as I had in the other places I have lived up to that point. I had only been back in the Dallas area about a week when I received a call from a girl in Abilene. She was coming to the metroplex to get an abortion and wanted me to keep her company for a couple of days. She told me she had ample funds and party favors for me. I’m never one to ignore a cry for help, so I felt it my Christian duty to play host to such a delightful host-organism. She was one of the few women towards whom I had ever felt a romantic attachment, and I thought I might make some headway in that regard by being so attentive in her hour of distress. I don’t think I ever considered such a mindset mercenary, but upon reflection I might rethink that view.

Abby followed me to my new home and told me she had a present for me. She came into my apartment and produced a syringe full of dilaudid, which she graciously administered herself – I hate playing nurse to my own arm, though I am more than competent where others are involved. I had never done dilaudid, but I’m always open to new experiences. Besides it was a gift; I didn’t want to appear rude. The needle was not even out of my arm before I felt a pleasant warmth pervade my whole body. This was quickly followed by a truckload of euphoria running over my body and leaving me smiling and wanting to puke. The next three days are somewhat of a blur. We did copious amounts of heroin and cocaine and drank round the clock. I vaguely remember being in a one-room apartment in Dallas where we stayed for the better part of a day doing heroin and smoking crack. I ended up living in that same building a few months later, though it seemed to be in much better shape by the time I moved in.

I rode with Abby to Ft Worth to have her abortion, and she returned to Abilene shortly thereafter. I betrayed her confidence to someone in the Abilene social circle, and she has since not spoken to me. I don’t blame her. I don’t have any feeling about it whatsoever.

One of my old girlfriends from high school came to visit me about this time. She is a story in herself, but I’ll tell that another time. As she stood in my doorway looking out at the parking lot a look came over her face and she turned to me and said, "Frank, somebody’s cookin speed around here."

"Nonsense" I said, "ain’t nobody in this complex but a bunch a drunks. They just keep weird hours. You’re imaginin things cause you’re such a fiend yourself." She persisted in her assertions, and I allowed as how it was possible that there might be the odd speed freak in my complex – it was certainly out of the way and quiet enough. But it was impossible that any large quantities were being moved in my vicinity, because my razor-sharp sense of the criminal would have picked up on it. I was so blind. I’ve always prided myself on being a quick study and very perceptive. The truth is I don’t recognize the underlying patterns of things until they are presented to me in wide-screen technicolor with a bouncing ball spelling out the lyrics.

I don’t recall how I got acquainted with my next-door neighbor, RW, but it turned out that I was living a few feet from the largest crystal meth dealer in the area with a constant traffic of illicit product issuing from his door right under my nose. I should be a cop, I’m so stupid. Perhaps I just don’t have a suspicious nature; consequently a career in law enforcement is out of the question. For the same reason I’ve never been prey to the bouts of paranoia so prevalent among fiends I’ve known. I think I offered my good neighbor a beer at some point and invited him into my hovel to enjoy my company over a Red Dog. I’m an easy person to know, and I don’t shy away from introductions. I wasn’t particularly interested in joining the hosts of speed demons - who as it turns out were crawling all over the complex - so much as I was simply interested in knowing what was going on and thought that it couldn’t hurt to be on the man’s good side should I ever want just the merest samplin as a medicinal comfort for the stresses of my workaday life.

 

I think I smoked a joint with RW as a way of showing common cause and giving myself an air of harmlessness and face-validity in his eyes. I don’t remember exactly, but it seems like the kind of thing I would do even today under the circumstances. Like most people in his shoes he had an all-pervading paranoia coupled with a sense of his own invulnerability. I never brought up crystal. I figured it was more important to establish a rapport with him as a neighbor. I am patient in such instances. What really broke the ice for us was the arrival some days later of an old acquaintance of mine who happened to be coming to RW’s to make a purchase. I greeted him at my door, which essentially joined my neighbor’s own. I invited him to come visit once he was finished with his business. He returned a few minutes later with RW in tow and we all sat down to break real bread. All pretense was dropped at this point, and my character was vouched for by one of the most heinous gangster types I’ve ever known. He’s also one of the sweetest sociopaths it’s ever been my pleasure to talk to. This same man who introduced me to RW’s inner circle has held me in his arms while I cried like a baby in broad daylight in a crowded parking lot. His name is Jim Bucher*, and I believe he’s serving a mandatory twenty-five year sentence as an habitual offender now here in Texas.

My doorway opened obliquely to a view of the Dallas skyline. There were trees to the right which shaded the parking lot where it ended just short of my apartment. Two more units stretched past mine towards the levee of the Trinity River just a few hundred yards away. The ground sloped off after the last unit and disappeared in a tangle of trees and undergrowth that was impenetrable to most normal folks but habituated by speed freaks who had gone native and lived in a semi-feral state. They appeared every so often to re-up and then dissolve once more into that scorched green soup. Behind my home was a thickly wooded area which was just as uncongenial for afternoon walks. The floor of that urban forest was littered with broken glass pipes thrown from apartments in fits of sudden paranoia or in favor of newer instruments when the soot and accumulated dregs in their bowls made them unpalatable.

There was no lack of true fauna in the neighborhood. Once while I was tripping alone in my apartment – one of my favorite ways to pass the time, I became aware of a scuttling noise in the ceiling over my kitchen. I assumed that there was a pretty healthy rat going about its rounds up there somewhere. Next to the center of the flourescent fixture in my kitchen there was a small hole about two inches in diameter where once there had been an incandescent light with a globe. I was peaking, and my vision was becoming at best fluid. I was having a little difficulty keeping objects fixed in my focus, but I placed a chair directly under the hole and climbed up to investigate. I thought perhaps I could catch a glimpse of the vermin, for what purpose I cannot fathom. I had no means of dispatching it, even if it had remained still and allowed me to do so. I had managed to get my face within about a foot of the ceiling by standing on tiptoe when a furry little hand shot out towards me. I screamed like a little girl and fell flat on my ass on the floor. There was a raccoon in my ceiling. I learned from the neighbor at the furthermost end of the building later that it was a large female with distended nipples and an evil disposition. I count myself fortunate to have survived the encounter intact. I immediately gathered up as many cans of household chemicals as I could muster and sprayed them at the opening in an effort to make it an unpleasant portal of ingress. I eventually settled down a bit and was able to view my guest with uneasy ambivalence. The landlord finally ran her off by tossing cotton balls soaked with fox urine into the ceiling space. I hope she didn’t kill any binkers in the river bottoms after her departure.

I became somewhat better acquainted with RW as time went on and found myself once again experimenting with sleep deprivation as a means to heightened awareness. After three days the growth of trees and grass becomes discernible to the naked eye. Conversation becomes difficult, at least in the customary sense. A new language develops through an economy of words and poor enunciation. I began to have visitors at odd hours. I guess it became known that I was one of the tribe, and my apartment became a safe place to escape from the kitchen light for all those cockroaches.

One of the feral binkers came to my back door one night late. I let him in and continued to smoke as he watched porno and mumbled to me in an effort to become better acquainted. Porn is like the background noise to my experiences with the evil E. I have never taken much of an active interest in it otherwise, but there is a certain level of masturbatory insanity that goes hand in hand with doing crystal. I shared with him some of my own experiences and allowed as how the distinction between the two sides of the coin of sexual orientation was a blurry line for me. I forget the guy’s name, but he had a girlfriend who would follow him from place to place and increase his torment. He was always running from her at night and pursuing her in daylight. Neither of them were much to look at, yet I will assert that everybody has some aesthetic value which is increased exponentially after several days and nights of smoking speed. He surprised me a little by making advances of his own. I was not in need of company, but I found it an interesting diversion.

Speed does strange things to people who otherwise would fall within the parameters of normal sexual behavior. I have seen this evinced countless times with guys who I thought I knew well after many years acquaintance. This guy was no different. He excused himself from my presence and returned a few minutes later with a little overnight bag from which he produced a few articles of women’s clothing. He insisted on doing a little dance for me in a lacy little teddy and then got on his knees and begged me to take him like a twelve year-old whore. I told him I wasn’t up to the job, but I was sure he was a good little girl. He then produced an instrument from the bag which I think was a dowel rod of about an inch and a half diameter wrapped in duct tape. He asked if I would perform the act with this as my proxy. I declined once more but told him he was welcome to do whatever he liked in my presence so long as I was not a part of the process. I find this kind of thing fascinating, and while I don’t encourage people to push the envelope, I’ve never discouraged it either. I cannot describe the scene with any justice, but it was two hours at least before I finally made him stop and take leave of me as it was getting close to time for me to go to work. I found out a couple of days later that my late night visitor was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. He continued to come around from time to time and then eventually wandered off when things got too hot for him in Irving.

 

There is a density to time in these matters which is difficult to explain to the uninitiated. I was a resident in this community for no more than two months, yet there was a compactness to my experiences there that expands that period a great deal. Normal chronology does not apply in recounting these episodes. They are filed away in zip files in my mind. When I try to access them they continue to expand and I discover bits of data which were otherwise obscured before retrieval.

The situation with my neighbor began to deteriorate within a short time. Someone borrowed his car for about two weeks. Upon its return a horrid stench arose at our end of the parking lot. Rumour had it that someone had been killed and left in the trunk for an extended period in the early summer heat. The car had to finally be removed and no more was known of it, at least by me. A few days later I was puttering about the kitchen after work when a crowd hustled past my front window and stopped in front of RW’s door. They were all men and dressed in black with helmets and stern faces. I wasn’t completely aware of what was going on, and the entire episode occurred within a few seconds. I heard a loud noise and saw a bright flash outside my window accompanied by a great deal of shouting and scuffling noises. I thought it impolitic to close my blinds or evince any other signs of undue distress which might call attention to myself, though I was only a few feet from the scene and in full view. I did my best to behave as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening. After a few moments I went upstairs to my bedroom. My desk was at the window which overlooked the scene below. I sat down to call my father and tried to close the blinds in front of me. They were jammed. My heart was racing a bit. Below me was the entire tactical squad of my town with the occupants of RW’s home spread upon the grass. I felt as though I were the new fall line in a department store display window. I was clean and without a pang of consciense, of course, but the last thing I wanted was to be lying in that lawn attracting chiggers and being threatened by the local Hitler Youth. I stayed in view as long as I thought proper and then nonchalantly got up and laid on my bed to await the departure of the boys in black and a return to normalcy.

It turned out that the bust was a dry run. As far as I could discern they came at a time when RW was out of stock and awaiting the delivery of the next batch. He didn’t actually cook anything at that location. I’m glad of that in light of the volatility of the process and the negligence common among cooks. RW continued to deal a bit longer, though in a much diminished fashion. I never crossed his threshold again. I skipped out of that complex a week or so later amid much remonstration from my landlord. I pointed out to her the wildlife in my apartment and next door and told her to send any bills on absorbent paper in order that I might make better use of them. RW moved out about the same time as I did. I arranged his move for him and realized a handsome commission on the job. I have never been back to that neighborhood and doubt that I will. I don’t know what happened to my nocturnal visitor, but I trust that he is leading a normal, productive life somewhere and is a boon to his community.

 

*I learned on 13 August 2001 that Jim had passed away from cancer the previous May. He had been released from prison. He was the kindest, most sensitive, and perhaps the most murderous man I ever called my friend. I loved him very much.