But here in the Presidio, there’s absolutely no one around. I can’t really understand it. With all the homeless folk in SF, the fact that these woods remain unmolested is sort of a mystery. I remember talking to this strung-out older man camped out somewhere near the Steps of Rome Caffe on Columbus. I was like, “Dude, why are you sleeping on this concrete, man? For one dollar you take a bus twenty minutes and are in this national park.”
The guy turned his head toward me and asked, confused, “There’s a national park around here?”
“Yeah, man, the fucking Presidio.”
“How do I get there?”
I told him, but the next day I saw him back on Columbus—trying to sleep in the same goddamn spot.
So I walk along the trails and small paved roads. There are large abandoned houses all around—but I keep feeling like someone’s watching me or something.
In a way it’s like too serene or whatever—too empty. I feel that familiar feeling of being a dark smudge on this otherwise pristine white canvas. There’s just no way to blend in out here. And then, walking along the street, I feel these headlights behind me. I turn quickly—just glancing back and, sure enough, there’s a car comin’ up slow. I pick up my pace some, but then back off—not wanting to look suspicious. I turn my head again. A wave of nausea sweeps through me and my blood drains as I see the roof of the car—a police cruiser. It’s right alongside me and staying there. I try to remember if there’re any drugs in my bag. I’m pretty sure there aren’t—but there is that screwdriver—plus my arms are so completely covered in tracks. I wonder if they can arrest you for that. It seems like they can pretty much arrest you for anything.
I lower my headphones and look over at the car. They’ve got one of those sidelight things out the passenger window and it is mad shining at me—white and glaring. I stop walking and just stare it down, my arms dangling—not making any sudden movements. The cruiser slows to almost nothing. I can’t see anything but the light. I wait—my heart going, going, going.
And then they drive off.
Just like that.
They don’t say anything.
I’m shaking all over.
I walk back to my car and try to sleep in the backseat. Every twenty minutes or so, I wake up—sure that some cop is banging on my window. When morning comes I have to throw up three times. A shot of heroin calms my stomach, but can’t take away the fear.
DAY 23
It’s Sunday morning, five a.m., cold before the sun is up. I’m shivering, shivering, shivering. Gack and Bullet and I are outside the Fairmont Hotel. We’ve been waiting all night and I’m not really sure how we ended up here. It’s been five days of basically nothing but shooting drugs, selling bags of crystal here and there, sleeping in my car—if at all—eating at Glide, or stealing sandwiches from Starbucks. One day we find half a box of pizza on the ground, another day there’s a plate of rice and fish leftovers wrapped up on top of a garbage can in the Marina. Everyone seems to have forgotten about that Mohawk kid, but the crystal’s still hard to move—plus we’re using so much. I’ve only seen Lauren a couple times, mostly just to drop off a sack for her.
The meeting with her shrink and all is tomorrow morning. I’m nervous about it, but I agree to show up. Honestly, I’m not sure how much longer I can keep doing this. It’s like there are seven candles lit in my stomach. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven candles burning and smoking—lit—seven flames of doubt, fear, sorrow, pain, waste, hopelessness, despair. They turn my insides black with soot and ash. There is something at the back of my eyes—a pressure building, building, building—hot like the flames of seven candles, which no amount of breath can extinguish.
I imagine drinking glasses of water. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. I dive into the clearest pool. I drown myself in the coarse, dry sand. I swallow handfuls of crushed white salt, but the flames burn higher still—brighter, hotter, deeper. Sweat runs in delicate patterns down my back, over my crooked spine and jutting hips. I scratch at the wounds these last weeks have left, but I can’t break free of them. The flies gather and vultures circle overhead. The fire eats away my flesh. The fire spreads. The fire runs through my veins. The fire courses beneath my muscles—my tendons—the marrow of my bones.
I sit rocking on the street corner. No, I can’t keep doing this. I just can’t.
Bullet shoots the last of the heroin. He found out his mom died this morning from her lymphatic cancer and I couldn’t say no. I give him a lot of cigarettes. He doesn’t cry, but he keeps breaking shit. He kicked this newspaper stand to pieces. He’s mumbling about being taken to the park by her as a child. His words are all slurred over the heroin nods. Gack tries to comfort him but Bullet just yells at him. I mostly say nothing. I haven’t changed clothes in three days. I can’t even smell myself anymore. The money is going. My veins are already collapsing so it’s getting hard as hell to hit. I’ve started having to dig around, like Lauren. I’ve even started trying to shoot up in my hands and legs and feet. Gack tells me not to fuck with my legs, ’cause if you miss you can’t walk without being in, like, so much pain. I don’t listen to him.
Anyway, Bullet keeps going on about going to a park with his mom—or that he wants to go to a park—I can’t really tell. But we’ve hiked up California Street past the Fairmont ’cause we are trying to find some sort of park to hang out at so Bullet will shut up about it. I seem to remember a playground up here. It was this huge place with a big orange slide and tunnels and monkey bars. Before we get there, though, Gack and I are gonna do some more speed and we’re trying to decide whether to go into the Fairmont bathroom or not. It’s gonna be impossible to go in there at five a.m. without drawing a lot of attention to ourselves. Bullet shot up on a doorstep down the street, so Gack and I end up going back down there.
Bullet plays watch guard while we shoot up. That’s the end of our speed.
Gack is able to hit somewhere on my forearm and the rush hits me and I’m satisfied for about a minute—then it dies out. I know I’m high, I just don’t feel it. The sun begins to lighten the sky and everything turns clear and crisp and pale—cold. There’s a layer of pink sky on the rooftops. We walk up the hill toward the playground. My legs are sore—my body is giving out.
We walk to the playground and it is so much smaller than I remembered. After all, I was just a child when I was last here. The park is actually filled with people, mostly Asian, wearing sweat suits and moving slow, slow, slow. Arms outstretched, then in. Legs up, out, down—moving like they’re underwater, or weighed down with lead. The three of us stop and stare.
“Tai chi,” I say.
Then suddenly, cars begin pulling up all around us—limousines, town cars, BMWs, Mercedes. Men and women, young and old, dressed in fine suits, tuxedos, long flowing dresses with flowers and expensive purses—they’re swarming around us, going up the steps to…what? Grace Cathedral.
“What the hell is going on?” I ask.
“Fuck if I know.”
Gack runs off to ask somebody. He approaches a young lady in a pink ruffled dress. She looks kindly enough, but freezes when she sees Gack. Still, he gets her to talk to him.
“It’s Easter,” he yells back at us.
“No way,” says Bullet. “Fucking Easter. I gotta go to church.”
“What?” I say. “Bullet, there’s no way.”
“Yeah, don’t you see—that must be why we came here.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think you can go in there like you are.”
“What do you mean by that?”
I leave that one alone.
Gack comes back over and Bullet tells him all about needing to go to church.
“Do what you want,” says Gack. “But there’s no fucking way I’m going in there.”
Bullet asks us maybe ten times what the chances are—us being up here on Easter and all.
“It’s gotta be a sign.”
“Yeah,” says Gack. “A sign that if you go in there
, they’ll call the cops on your ass. Look how those fools are dressed. You wanna go to church? Well, then let’s go back down to the TL.”
But Bullet insists and so we watch him disappear into the crowd.
I laugh.
I laugh and fucking laugh and Gack does too.
“This is all so pathetic,” I say. “We can’t go on like this.”
“What else is there?”
“Should we wait for him?”
“Nah, fuck it.”
We walk back through the playground and back down the hill and the sun is up and the sky is clear.
“I love this city,” I say.
“Yeah,” agrees Gack.
“But it’s gonna fucking kill us.”
“Yeah.”
“You ever think of getting out?”
“No.”
My feet hurt so bad—there’re blisters everywhere from walking so much. I tell Gack all about Lauren and having to meet with her family tomorrow. I tell him I’m thinking about getting clean again. He tells me it’s a waste of time.
“What is life for, if not for living?”
“Is this living?”
“We’re so free.”
“Sort of.”
Back in the TL the streets are already crowded with people looking to eat, or get well, or whatever. There’s no sign of Easter here. I smoke cigarettes while Gack goes up to his room to get some shit. I wanna try to take a shower and change clothes maybe before seeing Lauren—maintain some semblance of looking like I’ve got it together. Gack isn’t allowed visitors in his hotel anymore—so we’ve gotta find somewhere else around here to take a shower. Most of the apartments have communal showers, so it’s just a question of getting through the front gate.
Gack thinks he knows someone a couple blocks down who’ll buzz us in. He brings down a Snickers bar for my breakfast.
The apartment house is maybe five or six stories—white peeling paint, warped siding, a white painted gate blocking the stairs from the street. Gack pushes one of the buttons on the call box, but it just rings through. I smoke another cigarette and wish I had some water. After trying a few more buttons, we still can’t get inside. We walk around the back of the building. Gack thinks maybe he can climb one of the drainpipes up to an open window, but there’re cameras back here and the whole thing just seems sketchy as hell. The back door is just as impenetrable as the front. The alley smells like beer, or piss, or both. It dead-ends at a big concrete wall circled with barbed wire.
After discussing our options for a while, we see a very voluptuous-looking black woman with long extensions click-clacking in high heels up toward the rear entrance. She stops there in front of it and tilts her head back. She’s wearing a lot of makeup.
“Hey, Kevin, man—gimme the fucking key!” She yells that up at the building. “Yo, motherfucker—the key!”
A bald man sticks his head out the window and tells her to be quiet, then lets a key chain fall down several stories next to her. She picks it up delicately with her pink acrylic nails.
She gets the door open and starts to walk in and Gack runs up to grab the door. She turns and lowers her eyes at him. “Nuhuh. I don’t think so.”
“My cousin lives in there,” says Gack.
“Then yo cousin can let yo ass in. Step back.”
Gack does and the door is closed in his face.
We go around to the front again.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s forget it.”
But just then, as the sun clears the top of the building and the street is washed with noonday light, an old Asian woman—stooped, with silver hair and thick glasses—exits the building with a metal cart and several bags. I rush up to hold the door for her—ever the chivalrous one—and Gack does the same. We watch her leave, then go into the building. It looks the same as all the other cheap fucking run-down places around here—smoky, stained carpeting and uneven hallways.
“The showers are in there,” says Gack. “Here, I got you a towel.”
He pulls this crumpled damp shredded rag outta his bag and I thank him. He’s also got a bottle of some shampoo. I take the stuff and try the door to the bathroom, but it’s locked.
“Fuck, you think someone’s in there?”
“Not likely.”
He knocks and there’s no response.
“Let’s try the next floor.”
We turn to find the stairs, but then there’s this man standing there behind us. He’s tall, with a paunchy belly and a red Mohawk—though he must be in his late thirties. His eyes are bugged somewhat and his lips jut out—as though he had puckered up to kiss somebody and his mouth just froze like that. He’s wearing an Asian print silk robe that doesn’t conceal very much. His chest and legs are thick with hair.
“Oh, yes,” he says. “They started locking the showers so kids would stop coming in off the street to use them.” His voice sounds very, uh, lazy—tired, or bored, or something. He speaks like he sees everything that is going on and it is very tiresome indeed. I guess you could say he sounds haughty. Yeah, that’s it.
“You gotta key?” asks Gack.
“Yes, but you may as well come along and use mine. I have a bathtub with soaps and whatnot. I’m sure you would find that preferable.”
“Sure, thanks,” says Gack.
There’re eels slithering through my belly, turning and flicking their tails. But Gack doesn’t seem worried, so I follow them up several flights of stairs.
“You’ll have to excuse the place,” the man says. “I just moved into this room from a smaller one and I haven’t unpacked yet. Also, an ex-boyfriend is asleep in the kitchen—well, passed out really. I’m sure you understand, boys.”
True enough, there’s stuff all over the room—boxes and blankets and clothes and trash and shit. In the small kitchen, a younger-looking boy is out cold, naked on a pile of clothes and magazines and things. I have to step over him to get to the shower. The bathroom is cluttered with lots of soaps and shampoos and things. There’s a wood-handled scrub brush and razors and lotion and whatever. There’s no showerhead, but an extendable nozzle that comes from the faucet. I have to sort of crouch down, balancing on the balls of my feet. It reminds me of all the showers in Europe. There’s a small window letting in shafts of light. I do the whole bathing thing.
Around the time I’m washing the shampoo out of my hair, the door opens and I kind of freeze a little. The man with the robe comes in and says, “Don’t mind me,” then goes over and takes a piss in the toilet. His cock is very big and the veins are sticking out grotesquely. I try not to notice that he’s staring at me. I keep going with the shower. The guy stares and stares. Finally, he walks out.
I breathe a little more easily.
So I finish and dress and go back into the main room. That one guy is still passed out in the kitchen. I step over him again.
Gack is on the floor messing with this little radio or something.
“You ready?” I ask.
“Sure, sure, sure.”
We start to leave and then the man has his hand on mine—gently pulling me back. “If you should ever need a place to stay sometime, I’m sure I could make it worth your while. Here’s my phone number. My name’s Daryl, by the way.” He hands me a little piece of paper and I stuff it in my pocket.
“Yeah, thanks.”
We get outta there and I feel this nausea in my throat.
“What a fucking creep,” says Gack.
“Yeah, word.” But my options are running out. Soon fucking guys like Daryl is gonna be all I got. Not that I can say anything about that to Gack.
The two of us take a bus down to where my car is abandoned and I change clothes and shoot the rest of the heroin. Gack thinks we should re-up on speed to try and make some money, but I’m so broke I think I’m gonna wait till tomorrow.
Still, he convinces me to at least hook up a gram to get us through the night. We walk up to Haight Street and there’re people everywhere—shopping and whatever. I feel act
ually fairly normal, even though I can tell I’m nodding a little as we walk. I’ve already dropped my cigarette, like, ten times. Anyway, Gack goes and scouts around for some crystal and I head into Amoeba.
It’s a little overwhelming, all the CDs and people and everything. I go to the “just released” section. There’re tons of albums I see that I normally would buy—or would have anticipated buying. The Secret Chiefs 3 have a new album out—as well as Trevor Dunn and Eyvind Kang. Obviously I can’t buy them now. I realize I have no idea what movies have been released or anything. I’m so isolated—insulated in this world of scrounging to get money so I can buy drugs, to get high, then start all over again.
But Gack manages to get us a gram for fifty bucks from some kid in the park. The kid is wearing a thick, dirty jacket with safety pins all over it. He has a red-orange beard and wide, paranoid eyes. The stuff he’s got doesn’t look really good but there’s a lot there. It definitely isn’t short.
So we buy the drugs and I have only a couple hundred bucks left. Gack and I go and shoot up in the bathroom of a taqueria off Clayton. Shit gets me high—that’s what I can say for it. The emptiness in my stomach—the well digging down—the nausea—the aching won’t leave me. It’s profound—consuming. I feel like curling up, serpentine on the floor, crying. I need a thousand pounds of heroin. I need to drown myself in methamphetamine. I need pills, weed, vials of liquid acid.