south end shuffle

- the speed starts to bring me back to a more solid reality as i listen to the sound of his piss hitting the toilet water in short irregular spurts and begin to realize the full horror of my situation - i know he'll probably be in the bathroom for at least another 5 minutes before he returns to this congested 10 by 10 foot plaster box and i'll be forced to engage in some inane prattling about how his prostate is fucked up from all the drugs - as if throughout all the ages and turnings of centuries there's been no greater travesties or martyrs more worth lamenting than his broken dick - my house is only a short two miles away but i'm pretty sure that by this point there's a recent graduate of slippery rock high school with a $29.99 pixies hooded sweatshirt and a squeamish virgin laugh splayed out on my bed waiting to be consumed by a sweaty italian alcoholic who'll probably take her for someone else as he peers out at her young vulnerability from a splintered confusion of lust and wounded rage - i suppose she'll have to grow up sooner or later and can't think of a better place for her passage into womanhood - i hear the door swing open and announce his return but i don't even bother to look up - the sight of him slack-jawed and red faced is one i'm more intimate with than my mother and i don't really find it necessary to accent the tired absurdity of this post-adolescent druggie nightmare-i think about a possible exit strategy until i realize that there's nowhere else to go and the worst part is that all the powder is gone so from here on out it's nothing but water bumps and listening to this narcissist asshole contemplate the suicide he may have the vanity for but not the balls - i know i won't last long locked in this room with no further stimulation beyond being coerced into expressing some sort of pity for this train wreck of a human being in front of me but i can't possibly leave now - to make a quick, smooth exit with a tip of the hat and a cordiality as if i had been there for a sunday dinner or quick chat after putting away two of his grams would clearly be bad drug etiquette and i'd hate for my name to be smeared among such illustrious an group self absorbed sociopaths and half wits - i don't need yet another bad stat added to the back of my trading card-but still it escapes me how making a simple request to benefit my health and sanity would be bad manners while this jackass subjecting me to his little white-washed hell and bathing me in gallon after gallon of his verbal ejaculate is not - he's going on again by now but i can't even decipher what he's getting at - probably another long, trailing monologue with precariously arranged awkward pauses separating descriptions of past traumas where i'm supposed to place my nurturing encouragements and assurances that everything is all right and one day the world will take him for the truly delicate sensitive artist only i and the others in his “inner circle” know him to be be - playing the role of sycophant he's awarded me in his brain - i remain locked in my position studying the grain pattern on the floor like the second coming is unfolding there in the stain in front of me and do my best to hold the silence - he's arrived at one of his pauses and as he stares at me hanging out there on his words like a hummel figurine that will fall to the floor and shatter if the firm grip of my encouragement doesn't rescue him and i realize my way out-in a wavering falsetto i give him a spiel straight out of some shitty teen drug movie about how i'm 'freaking out' and 'can't be around people right now' and 'seriously need to get inside my own brain and work some shit out' - the kind of banal garbage that has no place in real conversation and would make even a hack screenwriter cringe - and he nods to me – as i get up to leave i look at his face-he's wide eyed and shaky and i can actually see his bloodshot eyes start to water up with tears and muscles in his face involuntarily twitch - i feel a pang of guilt for not having more remorse or even second thoughts about abandoning him but fuck it's just a drill i've been through too many times and my sympathies have either gone numb in repetition or ditched the scene screaming in the face of actually getting to the bottom of him and realizing there's not much more there than an echoing of the vanity and impotence in everyone else - i put my jacket and hat on and practically dash out into the street and for just a minute the light dusting of snow on the road and the soft textures that it's making reflecting the streetlight make me feel half human again-i waver only a minute before making the decision to start hoofing it back to the south end to get more blow - even though i know that getting more at this point could only lead to one of two things - either a possibly disastrous explosion of tension at the end of the night-the kind of thing horrific fables of braggadocio are made of like some jackass breaking into a walgreen's for a pack of cigarettes or laying down for an attempted suicide in a burger king drive thru lane-it's either that or a stretching of the night into days and from days into states and places where time doesn't really exist just sort of melts away and is replaced by emotion and memory and sensory figures that can't be distinguished from each other in the influx of shapes and lights that all come in a solitary moment that never expires exists in eternity even if only in the dark recesses of your brain and the moment won't end or at least recede until the body finally revolts and the muscles throw themselves down and refuse to be utilized and the mind goes into a period of panic like a displaced politician groping madly for support soliciting each nerve until it finally accepts its undoing and lays down tranquil to end the whole debacle never knowing how much irreversible damage its done to itself during its brutal reign - i know that neither avenues will posit anything but calamity but the simple truth is that i need something to occupy my attention and can't think of a better quest - that's the real trick with cocaine - its not a drug you can do and just sit back and enjoy - pop in some shitty movie and 'zone out' or roll around in your bed sheets giggling-you need constant outside stimulation - some well defined purpose or mission - a steel hard resolve to distract your attention from the tempest of panic and fear churning inside your gullet that flings itself upward so its dry brittle crest scrapes the lining of your throat and sucks all the moisture out throwing your body into violent convulsions of coughing and your mind into convulsions of fright - as i walk through soft snow hunched over under all the familiar stoplights and awnings i'm attacked by another one of these coughing fits and i have to sit down on a wall in front of a sorority house for a minute to catch my breath-i can feel the small beads of sweat emerging from the pores on my forehead and the immediately chill and a weakness washes over me - i survey my surroundings while waiting for my body to cede power back to me - the street is practically abandoned - it's three thirty by this point and all the bar traffic is gone cops not even hanging around the bust the few cranked out townies and other well known faces still milling around-all the powerbrokers of tomorrow have retired an hour ago - dicks buried to the hilt in fleshy orange dolls whose minds are swimming in sugary malts their bodies creating clouds of thick odor from the mingling of chemical perfumes and sweat and the dank odor of sex - the kind of awkward fumbling sexual encounters that will be recounted tomorrow afternoon over greasy pizzas and retardedly large submarine sandwiches with such charisma and gusto that even the girls who had been left bleeding in the beds will have no other choice than to quietly smile or offer some 'oh you naughty boy' coquettish glance in complicity with the tale - i begin to realize that this sort of scene is unfolding everywhere around me including the veritable bastion of cooze directly behind my back and a driving urge to get back to the south end returns - it's only about eight blocks away now and the thin blanketing of snow that's collected on my hair has cooled me enough to allow me to regain my composure - i'm up again fast and shoot into a hustle that's so frenzied i almost break into a run a few times-before i know it i'm back on the south end standing in front of tania's house which looks like a norman rockwell painting with the snow flurries swirling about it - all white and serene with yellow light emerging that promises comfort stability and love - tania's is always really well kept up with a neatly trimmed lawn and some seasonal decorative crap like a plastic sunflower placed out on the front porch and if it weren't for the constant stream of gangly fiends and older black hustlers swathed in thick coats with contorted cruel faces constantly flowing through it you wouldn't even know it was a crack house - my place is right next door and i think about going in trying to sneak my way into some floor space unnoticed to curl up in my cold sweats and terror to stare at the ceiling and ride this shit out but the prospect of waking up one of my guests for the evening and having some bullshit conversation filled with giggles and a gross overuse of the word 'dude' turns my stomach even more - i can imagine the place now - pabst cans overflowing with cigarette ash and ironic trucker caps strewn about everywhere and that idiot naif girl in my bed - these were the kind of people who took nothing more out of their 'college years' than inside jokes, stories about smoking weed and some dumb white boi fashion sense and now my house was crawling with the lumbering giants by now deeply asleep exuding noxious odors from the plasticy nacho cheese and steakums they regularly consume at their parent's houses - the image makes my decision for me and i walk around the block to get to tania's back door - avoiding the cop who stakes out the fortress from the church parking lot across the street - i climb the steps of the back porch knock on the screen door and wait - i can feel my skin tighten around me as i listen to the bustling in the kitchen - being one of tania's few white patrons i always worry about being taken for a cop and shot - especially coming over at four in the morning but my need outweighs my fear and i hold my ground firm and steadfast - her mother, a little hunchbacked chocolaty troll answers the door - her eyes are swollen almost completely shut like usual and she strains to look up at me - “who der?”- “hey pat, it's me” she never remembers my name but always recognizes my voice - she's so twisted from the drugs i hardly think she can see at all - or do much else for that matter she's more just a consumptive drone that wanders blindly taking whatever's unfortunate enough to be in front of her nose at any give time unable to realize her instincts and needs as an animal or recall the memories of a time when she was actually a human being - her bedroom window faces mine and in the year i've lived there i haven't seen her light off once- “who is it?” i hear tania from the kitchen- “it's the white boy from next door, the one wit the fucked up clothes”- “oh, come on in baby”- i walk in and see tania next to the counter, grasping it for support looking all warped and lopsided barley able to stand making a sandwich with white bread mustard and six kraft singles - the sight of food sends a cold rush up my throat and i look for something else to fix my eyes on while expressly avoiding the rough landscape of tania's face - the sight of her has always frightened me - she's at once emaciated and grotesquely fat - her sharp high cheekbones sticking up through curds of flesh with bilious breasts that hang over a strained exposed ribcage and a lumpy sagging belly being mercilessly squeezed out from it - her appearance is about as confused and wretched as the product she pushes – looking at her is like the next day and i can't think of a more appropriate ugliness for her - “i ain't seen you in a while, baby, you been locked up?” - i remain standing tensely by the doorway, trying to dodge any expected social interaction- “now, i was outta town for a while” - she looks me up and down and gives me a terse expression, seeing through my lie - the truth is that i hate buying drugs over here and only knock on her door when it's too late or too dry to call anyone else - she does all her shit right out in the open - slinging rocks while her seven and nine year old daughters play with plastic trucks on the kitchen floor and there's a seemingly endless parade of two hundred pound black males - all either her brother or cousin her family is like a fucking clown car - who mean mug me wondering who this faggoty white kid is and just what the fuck he's doing there - “well what you want baby, powder or rock?” - “give me a gram of powder” i say pulling a greasy wad of crumpled tens fives and ones from my pocket - “alright but don't be givin me no change this time motherfucker i know you got the bills” - “it's all there” i say in whisper that's barely audible, marked with the fear and shame that plagues all white suburban kids interactions with black people - she goes into the other room and i stand there watching pat sit at the table her eyes wandering independently of each other not fixed on anything with a bottle of gray goose in front of her sucking her gums loudly looking like a cow chewing cud - tania comes back with a twisted crinkled baggie – the corner of a sandwich baggie probably the same ones she packs her kids lunches with and puts it in my hand “der you go baby, one point two, i even hooked it up fat for you” - “thanks tania, i'll see ya” - “uuuh hu” i hear her groan as i jut out the back door and take a quick bump from the bag with my key - i know it's the stupidest possible thing i do in that situation and tania would have one of her millions of brothers 'waste' me if she knew but i need the jolt of strength to prolong this sick episode – the impulsive urge for more hits me faster than the buzz does and before i can swallow the first drip i'm on my back porch dumping the whole pile of white on the old broken washing machine that resides there – i peek inside the house and can see ass to mouth flashing on the television screen and a pair of sauconies protruding up from the end of the couch – fucking morons – cupping my hands around the pile to protect it from the wind i lean my face down and attempt to get the whole gram up in one sniff which i come pretty close to doing before my head starts reeling and i feel that dry tightness in my throat and the storm in my gut swells out of control sending me toppling off the porch into the thin layer of snow where the carlo rossi from earlier made bitter by all the cocaine starts hemorrhaging out my mouth and the pressure of my muscles on my skull warns me that it'll soon cave and my forty dollars are flowing from my nose like a slot machine mixed with cartilage and blood what's worse is that now there's nothing left nothing to do but lay in this frigid field and feel my various fluids harden and encrust around me pinning me to the ground like guliver but without any meaning or significance beyond my own idiocy and now i realize i have to escape here too even if it kills me i have to go somewhere - so i get back on my feet and drag myself to the nearest grouping of lights - water st - i think the burger king – and i stagger on not knowing why or where i'm going just knowing that its away and that's enough – and i'm right by the street where i grew up and even though i'm not coherent enough to think about it i'm engulfed by a flood of emotional memory by the same houses and shopping plazas and fast food restaurants and decaying side walks that have watched my passage into adulthood and looked down on me scathingly - taunting my every failure reminding me that i will never exist in a place where they won't be my overseers and even if i'm too intoxicated to actively recognize their existence they'll stingingly let me know they're there - i pass through the drive thru lane at the burger king in front of a young black woman who looks at me quizzically as i wander across her parking lot vomit covered and bleeding from my face and i can't help but notice a certain sympathy in her expression and i know deep in my heart that some day she will open to me all the tenderness of her love and take me to a warm shelter where i will be accepted by her family after an initial tense reaction from her parents and we will write chapters of each others lives together our bodies continually intertwined radiating emissions of pure forgiving love – past the parking lot i reach the old field where we used to hide stolen shopping carts from apples and i take off my jacket and wrap myself in it – i don't know why – and i sit down on the ground that's cold but not yet frozen so it's sloppy and it seeps through my clothing and i sit down and think that soon it'll be six thirty and i can get more alcohol and maybe i'll get a bottle of champagne -