Dopefiend. Tim Elhajj
outta here,” he said.
I balked. Why had I been truthful with Roberto? I needed treatment, not a homeless shelter. When he saw my distress, something in Roberto’s manner softened, but he stayed firm about the shelter. I had to go.
I rode the train to the East Village. The shelter was on Saint Mark’s Place. About a dozen homeless people wandered about in a damp and cavernous room with soaring black walls, large hand-painted hippie flowers, and purple peace signs.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“The Electric Circus,” said a slight Latino with glassy eyes. “A night club from the 60s. Hendrix played here.” A disco ball hung from the ceiling and fold-out cots were clustered in twos and threes on the dance floor. Looking around, I thought, one thing’s for sure: Jimi don’t play here no more.
Food was scarce. Weekdays, everyone would sit on the front steps to ask passers-by for change. I couldn’t bring myself to beg. One morning, I went to the corner deli and slipped two ice cream sandwiches into my jacket. I could see little tornados of trash and fallen leaves swirling up the street.
“You,” a tousle-headed man from behind the counter said. “Put those back.”
I feigned innocence, but his dark eyes shone fiercely. “The ice cream in your jacket,” he said. “Put it back.”
I did as he asked and headed for the door.
“You hungry?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he sailed an ovensoft roll over the counter toward me. His kindness made my face burn with shame.
Weekends at the shelter, they held dances to raise funds. These lasted until 3:00 or 4:00 a.m., and you couldn’t set up your cot until they were over. I just wanted to hide from all the handsome people, so I went to the basement, which everyone called the Dom. I was told the Dom had been Andy Warhol’s, “Exploding Plastic Inevitable,” as if this explained everything. Now the Dom was home to round-the-clock recovery meetings.
At one meeting, the chairperson started reading a passage from the program literature, then abruptly, without missing a word, he got up and headed to the back of the room, where an old homeless man had fallen asleep holding a lit cigar, setting his overcoat ablaze. The chairperson only stopped reading long enough to swat the flames out.
Good God, I thought.
In Pennsylvania, I had boosted a pair of Nikes: hi-top leather, white-onwhite, my favorite kind of sneaker. I considered swapping these to another homeless guy who might have had some dope. As I was trying to decide what to do, the person in charge at the shelter, a beautiful Puerto Rican woman with an ugly scar that ran from the left side of her mouth all the way to her ear (this meant she had snitched), asked everyone to help decorate a pathetic little plastic tree someone had rescued from the trash— our Christmas tree.
There were no ornaments or lights: just newspaper folded into origami and some macaroni noodles threaded with string.
I decided it was beneath me.
Sitting in the corner, I cupped my hands to light a cigarette. I could hear the wind begin to rise and swirl around me. If everything worked out exactly the way I wanted—best case scenario—I would be high for a few hours, and then. . .
I would be barefoot.
In the city.
In December.
I decided I had better start decorating that ugly little tree.
Two weeks after arriving in New York City, I watched a dark blue van with side windows pull to the curb and idle in front of the homeless shelter. The woman on duty said I should climb in. I was going to the Bronx for treatment.
I piled into the middle seat of a van fully loaded with people: all of them sullen, quiet, and black. We wound through early afternoon traffic. Wipers slapped cold sleet from the windshield. I watched the gaily decorated downtown cityscape grow more desolate: soon we were passing lone tenement buildings, defiant hulks squatting in the middle of trash-strewn lots. We drove past the ornate splendor of Yankee Stadium and the Grand Concourse, a testament to better times. Soon the streets twisted and looped, making me feel as if I were entering a great labyrinth.
Nestled on the side of a hill, the Rockford facility was an enormous building, its steep walls rising up from the street below like the ramparts of some ancient castle. I could hear traffic on the Cross Bronx Expressway and trains rumbling past on the elevated Number Four line. Getting out of the van, I discreetly stretched. I was grateful to be out of the shelter, but wary of my new surroundings, and didn’t want to call undue attention to myself. Waving his thick hands, a large bald man with gold caps on his teeth climbed out from the front passenger seat and directed us inside. From the way he seemed to enjoy flashing both his grin and his authority over us, I assumed he was a counselor—though I came to learn he was a client, like me.
In the lobby, people carrying clipboards directed those of us who had come from the van to sit on a raggedy collection of castaway furniture. Everyone holding a clipboard was black. I wondered what I had gotten myself into. Several women, some with hair braided into thick ropes, all with dark and gleaming skin, lingered in one corner of the lobby, quietly murmuring to one another.
Gold Teeth curtly barked orders to his co-workers. To those of us who had just gotten off the van, he showed a benign indifference, walking through our midst like we were pigeons clustered around his feet in the park. But to his peers, those other clipboard-wielding men, he behaved menacingly, demanding answers, calling for paperwork, and looking generally displeased with everyone’s performance. It occurred to me he might be showing off for the women. This insight surprised me. I felt no sexual attraction toward this raw gang of women. If anything, they frightened me. More than one had lumped-up purple razor scars running across the fleshy skin of her arm or back. Some had bruised, ashen faces. But most unsettling was their sturdy and silent indifference, as they stood with chins jutted out or fists curled into plump hips.
That night I lay in the bottom half of a bunk bed in an open dormitory. Someone flashed the overhead lights to signal they would soon be shut off. There were at least two dozen of us packed into the large second-floor room, which had bathroom facilities at one end. Bunk beds were pushed against all the walls and people mostly stood in the center aisle of the room, chatting or milling about as they got ready for bed. Outside I could hear the low hum of traffic from the expressway and the occasional siren wail from somewhere in the city.
Considering where I was, I felt generally pleased and optimistic. The room was crowded but warm, a huge step up from the damp shelter on Saint Mark’s Place. I felt as if it would be okay to remove my street clothes before I went to bed, which I hadn’t done since arriving in the city. Dinner had been a baked chicken leg and thigh, a plop of mashed potatoes, and diced carrots. Because I was new, those in charge let me get seconds. I had bagged the bulk of my clothes and dropped them in a great canvas cart, ready to be laundered. My court appearance in Pennsylvania was scheduled for late February, about ten weeks out. I had done all I could to ensure I wouldn’t end up in jail, and now felt certain the worst of this adventure was behind me.
Just as the lights went out, I heard three or four dull, popping sounds from the street below.
There was a lull in the dormitory conversation, but nobody seemed concerned by this noise. I immediately got off the bed. Gunshots? But the popping noise seemed so innocent, not at all like the crack of gunfire on TV. In a hurry to look out the window, I had to make my way to the room’s center aisle and double back between bunks.
Someone called out, “Where you going?”
“You hear that?” I asked. Arriving at the window, I found my view of the street blocked. I turned and headed across the room; somewhere there had to be an unobstructed view.