I get out of work around 7:30 in the morning and I'm walking back to the apartment in the drizzling rain, not really knowing what seems fun yet, but fuck it-- I'm no longer at work, so how back could things be, right? Though I'm not sure which specific route is the most efficient to take in order to get myself home and, more importantly, to the refrigerator where the beer's kept, but I've got something in the neighborhood of 24 hours to kill and decide that if I spend an extra five or ten minutes navigating my way, it's okay. Who knows? I might find something interesting along the way: a strange flyer tacked to a lightpost, a television on the curbside I could salvage, an unopened can of beer, whatever. I mean, it's San Francisco, so one can never quite expect what or whom s/he encounter curbside.
I cross Fillmore and head down (up?) Haight Street in a pseudo-improvised walking tour of my surroundings and know that I'll eventually encounter one of the two intersecting streets that'll guide me back to the correct dwelling. This's always been my favorite way to really get an understanding of a particular area-- hoof it for a few weeks and discover firsthand (or should I say first-foot?) what the various topographies actually entail.
I've learned to look the length of a block in order to determine what kind of appearance to exhibit, but mainly it seems to be a simple matter of common sense. Then again, I've been known to wander into some of the more dangerous areas of larger cities at very inopportune times, so perhaps there's a sharp dichotomy that exists between my thinking practically and having enough booze in my system to where even the most threatening and hostile environments seem manageable at the worst.
I remember the time my friend Mitch and I were invited to hang out with a now-defunct punk rock band (the band's name escapes me right now) whose drummer, Spike, lived in a house-turned-crash-pad on the southern outskirts of Oklahoma City-- the badlands. Mitch was friends with the bass player and I was an acquaintance with a couple of the band members as well. I'm unsure why they wanted to hang out with us that night, but I suspect it was because they'd recently played a few shows, had some money for crystal meth and had no way of getting over to the dealer's location. I, however, had a regular bullshit job, a functioning car, and was suddenly cool enough to hang with the band. This was about ten years ago, when we were 17 and were not very well-rounded individuals.
I don't recall where we first met up that evening, but the plan was that we were gonna hang out at Spike's place and drink some beer while he tried to get the dealer on the phone and arrange a meeting. Evidently, the dealer was a fairly smart guy, as far as drug dealers are concerned, and liked to cover his tracks well.
He was the kind of guy who never stayed in one spot for more than a couple of days and, like G.G. Allin, was perpetually one step ahead of the law. I never caught the dealer's name and I really don't care; it's unimportant I suppose, but let's suffice it to say that after an hour of trying to call the guy every ten minutes, one of the band members finally got hold of him. The guy on our side of the conversation spoke a cryptic language in a hushed voice about a bag of this and a half of that, a quarter of something else. Whatever. How soon could I drive two of them over to such-and-such motel? Ten minutes, tops. He hung up the phone and away we went.
It was getting dark and by then the southside area assumed and entirely different persona. The same place that by day seemed somewhat quiet and hospitable had metamorphosed into an eerie and treacherous proving ground. Initially, I was pretty put off by the street dwellers whose stares sent pangs of fear down the base of my skull and into my guts, but Spike assured me that since he was a local, I was safe so long as I was with him. I didn't doubt his word for an instant, though he had to reassure me a couple of times en route to the dealer's motel room. Yeah, some of those characters were that fuckin' scary.
Finally, I found the right motel and drove around back to the correct room. I was instructed to stay in the car while the band guys went inside and conducted their business. I fought to keep myself from saying something chickenshit like, " No, please, take me with you. You can't leave me out here by myself. They'll kill me!" But even at 17, I was cool, or at least pretended to be. I asked Spike-- did he think anyone might fuck with me? He mentioned that so long as people saw him get out of my car, they'd expect to see him get back into my car and, besides, he'd only be gone about five minutes anyway.
Those were five of the longest minutes I'd experienced in quite a while. Imagine sitting on the middle of a well-lighted clearing in the midst of a dark and ominous jungle. You're staked to a post with nowhere to run, not that you'd make it out of there alive anyway, whichever direction you went. Around you, off in the distance, you can hear the movements of something, someone, lots of them. You can't see fifty feet in front of you, but there are all kinds of eyes sizing you up, ready to take you down. In the midnight summer humidity, nervous sweat beads collect on your brow and you wish you could muster the strength to roll down the window, but you don't dare. In the blink of an eye, you'll disappear, never to be heard from again...
The apartment door cracked open and the band guys walked across the small patch of grass and got into the car. How'd it go, I ask. " Shut the fuck up and drive," they reply. Ah, yes-- I so love the politeness exhibited by the average needle freak.
As quickly as we'd scored the crank, we disappeared into the night.
Back at the band house, someone's car occupied the space in Spike's driveway where my car was earlier. I opted to park against the curb, but Spike advised otherwise.
"Park in the yard," he instructed. What? Why would I want to park in the yard? There's plenty of room on the street.
"If you don't park in *my* yard," he explains, "your car won't be here ten minutes from now. "Oh ghod, this area is worse than I ever expected.
I parked the car on the front yard, we climbed out of the car and advanced towards the house. From the shadows between the houses, a young male's voice hissed, "Hey Spike, you score smack?"
"Shut the fuck up!" Spike returns and mutters something about those pussies in the Riversides gang. I think to myself that if I finish the evening with my life, my wallet, and my car, then it'll make for interesting copy someday.
We entered the house and went upstairs to where the evening began. The rest of the group and a few new people were listening to the Dead Kennedys on Spike's stereo, drinking really cheap beer and smoking grass. Scored, was all Spiked said and we were met with the kind of positive admiration bestowed upon hunters who return to the tribe with the spoils of a successful campaign.
Spike distributed tiny wax envelopes and a single syringe to a couple of the others in the corner. They began tightening a belt around one guy's arm as a makeshift tourniquet. I didn't want to watch them hook one another up, so I turned to Mitch and asked if he'd like to get the fuck outta there. He did.
The band guys couldn't have cared less that we were leaving. They had what the wanted but perhaps felt compelled to repay the favor of my driving them to the motel. Someone offered about eight bottles of the cheap beer to me, and I happily accepted. Mitch and I said our good-byes and wish them well, and got the hell out of there. The car, as Spike promised, was fully intact. I started the engine, backed off the front yard and sped away.
Back on the north side of Oklahoma City, Mitch and I sat watching TV in his living room and analyzed what we'd experienced a few hours earlier in the evening. I gave him the details about the midnight motel run and when an evil sun began oozing over the eastern horizon a few hours later, we decided to call it a night as the Wednesday morning newsreels began barking their first daily obscenities about the world in which we lived. We fell asleep where we sat: Mitch in the La-Z-Boy recliner and I on the couch.
That was one weird summer. Mitch and I witnessed more amphetamines, assaults, opiates, and arrests than we'd even seen, but ya know what-- not a minute of it was ever boring, that's for sure!
I miss those days, I really do. I think.
JOEL