Why I Committed Suicide (41 page)

Dan lives with this girl that he knocked up named Carrie. She’s a manager from Jersey that we used to work with at the Tomato. My actions with heroin (Dan always preferred “girl”) are driving Dan away and I feel bad about that. I’m sure he could use a friend to talk to since he’s got a kid on the way but I’m pretty much useless with regards to rearing young’uns and if I get too involved I’m sure to bring drama down around their heads. I’m happy for him and he’s scared but I always secretly wished Dan could have been my dad, so I know he’ll be a great father. He’s just a good guy. I also gave him Kirk’s rocking chair to store, it’s the only piece of furniture I salvaged when Bryce and Kirk abandoned everything after I fucked up their lives. Hopefully he’ll pass it back to Kirk if he ever sees him again.

I’ve started working the graveyard shift at the 7-11 on Oak St. down from the old Delta Lodge. It’s always been a dream of mine to wear the red and green smock and be a stern yet lovable 7-11 clerk, but the reality is extremely exhausting. At night most of what I have to do is count everything that was bought or stolen during the day and then send in orders for the new stuff. All the expiration dates have to be checked and it’s more like a supermarket stock boy position since there are hardly any customers to deal with after the bars close and everyone goes home. It’s nice to get a beep and have the people meet me up at work to sell a little weed though. I’m the only graveyard shift herb master in town that I know of. I envision a day when the American people can legally go to 7-11 and buy a pack of whatever flavor pot they prefer from the stern, yet lovable clerk behind the counter. I’ve heard a rumor that’s what Capri cigarettes were originally designed for back when legalization
almost
happened in the 70’s.

I’m back on the stuff again. No matter how hard I try to get legit, H still creeps back into my life somehow. I’ve used it to the point where my habit almost matches Jenifer’s. We drive her “new” new car around and talk about moving away but it’s so hard to have the same old fucking conversation about something we’re never going to actually do. Is our love strong enough? I am lowering my guard again slowly and loving life a little more this summer instead of worrying about the future. I go down to Dallas with Jen to see the dopeman whenever I can and our ride together helps us bond which sounds stupid and ridiculous but it’s actually sort of romantic in a fucked-up Sid and Nancy sort of way. It’s about as close as we get to being physically united anymore. Riding with her and feeling the sun on my shoulders and face, squinting from the light and listening to loud music reminds me of our glory days (daze) together, before life hit us with a 2 x 4. God, I still love her so much but I’m scared we won’t escape this, so I’m trying to value every moment and second we have left together. We depend on each other a lot now, since sometimes I have money and sometimes she has money (mostly her, unfortunately). We’ve even learned to work as a team and steal together again, robbing the huge evil corporations of their wares in a life full of everyday narrow escapes and dodging bullets. It’s finally getting almost intimate with us again but it just can’t last can it? Even the pecking order has been reestablished for the most part but her friend Lori still intrudes on us along with anyone else just hanging on for the ride.

Every evening we separate and I go out alone among the usual band of wolves to face the night before work. I stay with whoever will have me and the odd hours I keep. Some nights there’s this wonderfully nice girl that lets me stay in her bed. She’s attractive and we have sex on occasion if she initiates it, but my lack of passion for it disturbs her. There’s a guy who lets me sleep on his floor but he went through my backpack (I’ve consolidated) while I was out one day and he found some of my needles, so now he thinks he wants to do heroin with me. I don’t think I can handle that. I’ve talked before how I’m not good with the virgin needle thing. One guy lets me sleep in his bed with him at his grandma’s house but we don’t fool around. He’s just another nice person who feels sorry for me and I can wash some of my clothes there. My only other friend is Bobo, yes that’s her real name, who used to live with the nice girl that lets me sleep in her bed. Bobo’s mom has cerebral palsy so she moved back to help take care of her and I’m allowed to sleep in the back room of their house sometimes. Bobo’s really cool, she’s just always had bad taste in boyfriends.

There are no plans, no ambitions, no hopes, no dreams, no future, no chance at life in any of this and yet here I am.

My predictions of doom have been realized, but thankfully not until another full and glorious summer passed along. I got fired from 7-11, not for selling weed to the customers, not for missing work, not for stealing food or cartons of cigarettes and not for cooking and shooting heroin in the bathroom. I got fired for
actually
doing something dumb that I couldn’t foresee, double cash lottery tickets.

People would bring in their winning scratch-off tickets and I would punch a hole in the ticket, pay them their money and put the tickets in a special drawer. Well every so often I would “forget” to punch a hole in one of the tickets and it would ‘magically’ fall into my pocket instead of the special drawer. Nothing big in the winnings department, just enough little payout tickets to save over time and have in reserves. The managers would barely freak out when they counted out our registers in the morning because small stuff slips through the cracks in every business and graveyard is technically the last shift of the day.

Since I am locked out of being able to have a bank account (thanks to a minor misunderstanding with First State Bank) I go to a check cashing place by the highway that also sells lotto tickets to the illegal Mexicans or degenerates like me that have no other place to get their money in usable form. One payday I brought along the tickets I’d been saving and tried to cash them in. The lady looked up the serial numbers and told me they were previously accounted for and that she couldn’t pay me. She also kept them.
Uh oh!
I didn’t know they checked the tickets or did anything with them after they went in the special drawer.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I said “fine,” made up a quick story about buying them from somebody and getting ripped off.

The next day I got a beep from 7-11 to go to an employee meeting, but it was the middle of the day and I was still sleeping so I blew it off. They know I work the night shift so I’m normally exempt from early morning meetings anyway. When finally I showed up late in the afternoon I could sense the vibe in the air as I walked in. They’ve apparently already talked to everyone but me and in the back there’s a guy in a wheelchair who’s been waiting all day just to talk to me. He tells me how 7-11 hires him to do nothing but sit and watch store videotape all day long to monitor any hi-jinks, and that he knows what I was up to. I play dumb at first but after while we both agree that it was pretty stupid to cash my paycheck with all my information on it and then try to turn in some stolen lottery tickets, especially since they have me on videotape doing it. I guess that explained why I was getting pages from work in the middle of the day. Blah blah blah, I just opened up and told him everything, saying I needed some money and thought a little extra lottery cash might help me out. I also tell him that I’ve given away a few packs of cigs to some friends and that I’ve had a couple of cokes without paying for them. He appreciates my honesty, calculates the value of the stolen merchandise, deducts it from my current check, pays me the rest and then fires me.

I’ve got to hand it to 7-11, there was no fuss and no legal problems, they handled the mess I created internally, with class, and we parted in our not-so-amicable ways. That’s the way America should do things, by golly! Instead of whining to the cops about every fucking thing just handle your own business. On the positive side, it means I no longer have to bite my tongue anymore when Officer fuckhead Goldberg comes in for free donuts or free drinks and still has the audacity to shake me down or make light of what he did to me before.
FUCKHEAD!
I guess I hadn’t mentioned that perky part of the job, but we all have our challenges and he rarely worked the late shift anyway.

Since then I’ve moved around a lot, mostly alternating between the same crew of people or staying at Bobo’s house. I try to stay out of her hair though since she’s got a lot of responsibility and she does a lot of smack that she mixes with some of her mom’s medicine and it puts her in a virtual coma which scares me. Everyone I shoot up with has been in a position where they would have died recently if another person hadn’t been there. It’s so easy to just fall asleep the wrong way or while doing the wrong things. That if there isn’t anyone there to wake you up in the bathtub or pull your face off the pillow or put some coffee in your belly and smack you around a little to wake your ass up, you can drift away and pass on. I believe the medical term is respiratory failure, but that just means the body gets so relaxed that it forgets it even needs to breathe. That’s
really
fucking relaxed and it’s also how you get to see heaven. White lights dance around, angels sing and everything you’ve ever done while alive will appear before you while your body is free and totally at peace. Fighting back to reality (or getting dragged back) can give you one motherfucker of a headache, but can you really put a price on touching the loving hands of God?

I’m writing this in New Holland Dallas County jail because I was arrested for shoplifting again, this time at a Kroger. On our way to a movie I ran inside the grocery store to buy some snacks to smuggle into the theater with us and I ended up in line behind a lady who got popped for stealing steak or something. They thought I was with her and pulled me upstairs and searched me for stolen merchandise also. I happened to have some heroin in my pocket and the next thing I know I have an instant felony. Possession of a controlled substance under a gram is the official charge. The fucked up part is that the lady who was
actually shoplift-
ing
got to go home with just a ticket and I got her cab ride in the back of a squad car to the Lew Sterrit Justice Center downtown.

Since this will be a first time felony conviction it should be automatic probation and if I had money for a halfway decent lawyer I could make this charge go away based on the mistaken search. I’m more worried about a misdemeanor theft charge from JC Penney for a couple of shirts that the State has pulled out of their ass from somewhere. Apparently I was a wanted man and while it’s nice to feel wanted by somebody, there’s also a law that says if you get convicted for the same misdemeanor three times the charge can be bumped up to a 2
nd
degree felony or something worse. This is my second minor theft charge in Dallas and if the State decides to count the one in Denton, things could get seriously heavy. Not that my life isn’t serious enough but I’m talking some BIG TIME big-time-down-south-heavy here.

I’m sad about the whole deal, I was really looking forward to the movie, and Jenifer is rightfully furious. She’s mad at me because the encouragement I’ve been around to give her is suddenly gone again. She knows I still love her but there are so many questions about my ability to remain stable enough to be of any use to her and jail is keeping me pretty unreliable. No duh, right? I guess I take too many risks when I see her in need and although I probably should have been busted before now the worst part is that she actually thinks I was trying to steal candy for our date.

I wish I was one of those tears there,

I could be born at your eyes,

Live on your cheek,

And die at your lips.

So, when I walked into my new tank, the first thing all the old black men asked me was, “What drugs do you do?” A clean cut white-boy walking in with an education is a dead giveaway (and if you think that you can’t tell if people are educated by the way they walk, you haven’t been paying attention). When I tell the black guys that I am in for possession of heroin, they’ll usually say something to the affect of “I can’t be messin’ wit no hair-on.” That’s how they ALL pronounce it, without exception. “Hair-On.” It’s the strangest thing I have ever heard, and I can tell some of them do “fuck wit the hair-on,” no matter what they say.

A guy came into here today that looked a little worse for wear. An older black man with a fucked up Snoop Dog haircut, obviously kicking a smack habit. That “hair-on” got him. He calls himself something strange like “Cavity” or something. Cavity just wanted some chocolate and was having a hard time managing his bowels. I sympathize because I just went though that same bit about a month ago. It’s a very, very rough go but he’ll be fine. Looking at him makes me realize how serious this shit is. I don’t want to be an old man junkie, still getting tossed in jail, waiting through the living hell of kicking the habit again and again, my shaking bones huddled in the corner like a frightened child.

I’ve met some nice guys, I played a few games of cards and word got around that I was alright. That’s the thing. You’ve gotta interact. Play the card games. Don’t hang with too many white people. Don’t hang out with just the black people and give the “what’s happening” head nod to the illegal aliens and Mexican drug dealers. Try to be cool with everyone. Don’t smile too much and don’t start any shit you can’t back up every day with your life. When something serious goes down like a fight, riot, extra food or a smuggled joint, I want to make sure I know about it. If people don’t know you, then you won’t know about anything and next thing you know you’re getting gang-raped in the shower. Just make a couple friends in each faction and you’ve got folks to watch out for you or at least people who’ll leave you the fuck alone when they are going after certain people.

Facts are: Jail is a freaking ghetto microcosm where
I’m
the minority. Blacks have the numbers and the learned patience of previous generations in jail. They fit in here because some member of their family has been or is currently in jail right now. It’s a familiar territory to them that they have learned to accept as a fact of life. The blacks I’ve talked to convey that in their families it’s not a matter of whether you’re going to jail, it’s a matter of when and for what. They outnumber everyone else in here by far. I think TuPac even says “stay away from the black jails” in one of his songs.