Fresh Pack of Smokes. Cass Blanchard
me when I was cold and messed up or the man who didn’t even get mad when I puked inside his car or those who told me their heartbreaking life stories and who walked always on a sharp edge living in the darkness and rain, women who had children they barely saw, or weren’t allowed to see, and families torn apart by addiction, this thing called life, this sadness carried through time; these people will be forgotten and will disappear and fade away and their kindness will go into shadows.
Carl Rooms
She smiled a smile that was all gums, apparently she had the shit kicked out of her and all her upper teeth were shattered and she had to get them all taken out—she was so young it was strange that her mouth looked like an old woman’s and even though I forget her name I’ll never forget her gums, we were in Carl Rooms which was a level better than all those bed bug–infested piece of shit hotels; Tecia told me how the janitors in Carl Rooms would sometimes open the tenants’ rooms, those fuckers were like cockroaches roaming around in the hallways, or the two French goofballs who would use the ladies’ washroom and clog it with shit and piss making the chick who cleaned them gag from the stink of it, you have the pregnant dealer who smoked rock and drank Fireball Cinnamon Whisky or the chick who very carefully injected heroin into her neck and spent the next half hour nodding on the floor; I hear stories sometimes told to me, like a son who shoots his uncle in the head and predators hurting daughters in order to get back at the mothers and twenty-two-year-olds who look like they’re sixty and especially unfriendly eyes that watch from the shadows.
Tales
One night in Oppenheimer Park, Dan asked me to shit-kick this chick in the face as she owed money and I said no because I didn’t know who she was and I wasn’t about to play with fire so he sat on the bench then stood up and did a flying kick twice to her chin and she convulsed and passed out he said he didn’t want to spill blood because she had hiv, after a few weeks the woman told me she didn’t remember anything and that pissed Dan off; once I sold drugs for a Mexican who could break bats and I was ten dollars short so he smacked me twice on the street and later I got so bloody drunk I slept with him and couldn’t believe I did that, I will never sell drugs for someone again because it’s like being handcuffed, when I first met Jay we got into a screaming match over something I don’t remember, we became great friends because I helped him out and he helped me out and he told me that not wanting to sleep with him made him want to try even more but one time a white guy—he was one of those men who liked big black cocks—it was like ring around the rosy as I sucked the white guy’s cock and the white guy was sucking the black guy’s cock and I found the whole thing rather strange and I thought how people come down here to procure the services of young girls or young boys or cheap women or black guys or females that look young; I had a violent encounter with a former lover, she is so messed up and cruel though she used to treat me well but that went away when she found out how much of a cash cow I am and she no longer respected me and all we did was fight and get kicked out of every place we tried to stay and then after I came out of jail we only saw each other sometimes and the last time we met I called her a bitch and she put her hand on my throat and was very close to breaking my face with her punch when I yelled out, do it! do it! i want you to do it! and her eyes changed and she didn’t punch me because I gave her psychosis, I know how her mindworks, being high on crack makes it easier to be used for cash, all the faces are just a series of blurs with no names and no identities, all I want is cash, I know how to squeeze money out of men they are so simple and yet so dangerous, you see I didn’t care that much and still don’t really care. That might not be normal.
The Astoria
The Astoria is the hotel I was most afraid of and it isn’t what I saw or heard or touched, it was what I did not see or hear, the silence was terrifying and I knew the walls had eyes and ears and rooms with people who seemed to never come out, once or twice I rented a room and once I was in someone’s room and both times I felt there was something frightening outside in the halls, there was a liquor store and a bar at the hotel and there was always some kind of show happening but it was the hotel itself that creeped the bejesus out of me and the East Indians who manned the desk, who knows who the fuck they were; I felt like there were ghosts in there.
Partners
Sometimes I would partner up with another addict in our endless quest for drugs, I forget her name but I hung with this one woman for a few days and we would take turns buying crack, and also heroin for her, and we would sit somewhere and do dope, when we had to sleep we stayed at her friend’s place and in the morning he gave us money in exchange for a date and we were on the hunt again, however eventually we parted ways and I was glad cuz hanging with junkies was kind of annoying with all the nodding out and the needles and the constant search for heroin to avoid being sick; there were times I would share my dope cuz I would get stuck in the alley if I smoked rock alone, however sometimes I’d think the person I was with was secretly plotting against me, I just really didn’t like using alone, I was hanging with this guy just as company, nothing else, and we were sitting in the park when cops came and they ran our names and it came up that I had a violent encounter with police so they left us alone but the guy was freaked out as he didn’t like violence so that ended that and it went on like that, person to person, things didn’t work out or they did, of course I sought out other people cuz I was lonely and isolated and needed to feel a connection.
Biographies
Candy’s hair was her resumé, she was my street mom and she taught me how to behave in jail, taught me where the good places are on the street and who to avoid, she has many street kids as her children, she is the only person I truly respected in that world.
Taylor works out of the Sunwest, she told me people have different addictions and her addiction is money, sometimes she carries a bat with her to deal with the goofs and miscreants or people who disrespect the place, I have done dates in that hotel and I have to say it felt a little safer than doing shit in a car.
Tecia and Sandy are mother and child, it’s strange seeing a parent smoke crack with their kid but this kind of thing happens here, they always let me seek shelter and I shared my stuff with them; Sandy has arthritis and needs methadone and is always in pain, Tecia has a psychopath for a boyfriend who stabbed her with a push stick, beats her up and is generally a prick.
Characters
This one girl was slender but strong and obviously wired off her fucking mind and this dealer paid her twenty bucks to knock out his worker who was hiding in the contact centre behind the Carnegie, she was obviously someone to be careful with and she packed one hell of a punch, and there was an older woman who people called Draco, she told me she was a dangerous person and could sense people’s characters and that she trusted me with her keys which was cool but her room was a dump with mice running all over but it was better than outside in the rain, and Sarah was a pregnant lady who nevertheless still smoked crack and drank whisky and was a local dealer and often cuffed people so there was always someone who owed her money, she was pretty popular and was nice to me despite my feelings about women doing hard drugs while with child, and there was a white chick named Dina who defended my honour and punched out this Vietnamese guy and even spoke the language herself, she was a good person to have on your side and we would go on binges until no money was left but over time she grew more haggard as being on the streets sucks the life out of people, and black men down here are very confident and so pushy that they give me the creeps, there was always some black guy trying to get in my pants but Jay was different cuz he was a gentleman, and there was a chick named Gin who frequented the alley behind the Carnegie and wasn’t someone you’d want to piss off, she was this short Native chick with a weathered face who howled like a wolf and tried to pick fights when she was drunk, and Shelly was a woman who you actually really did not want to tick off and she has fucked up those who did and I lived for a few months in the same house with her and we basically got along and even though she was tough she could not escape an ass whooping when she called the guy in the basement a “goof” and like I said before it was like someone poured a bucket of blood all over her.
Spanish Villa