Dark Days (Chapter 5)

After Stand Up destroyed Summer’s room he disappeared for a few days which was fine by me. I hated him for how he treated Summer and everyone else. I hated him for how afraid I was of him. He was just an all around shitty person. Whenever I would come to Summer’s house he would ask me to use my car and, little bitch that I was, I let him. What was I gonna do? Tell him no? My position in Summer’s home was tenuous at best as far as Stand Up was concerned. One night I went over there to pick up some dope and when I walked into the living room Cody was sitting on the couch staring at the floor. He didn’t acknowledge me when I said, “What’s up”. He just sat there staring at the floor and hitting his foil. I thought ‘Fuck it’ and walked into Summer’s room and Stand Up, as usual, was there. I mentioned to Summer that Cody was acting weird and she got real quiet and refused to say anything. Stand Up was staring me down. I certainly didn’t want to hang out with them so I bought my dope and went over to Richard’s room. Richard was always fun to hang out with so I figured he was the obvious choice over quiet Summer and evil Stand Up. I asked Richard what was wrong with Cody and he looked over at his door to make sure it was closed and nobody was listening. Then he leaned in real close and spoke in a whisper. “Stand Up had me and Cody go with him to collect some money that somebody owed Summer. I waited in the car and Cody waited outside the front door. Stand Up had a knife and forced his way inside when they opened the door. Cody heard a struggle and then when Stand Up came out he had blood all over his gloves and shirt.” I stared back at Richard horrified. “Holy shit.” was all I could say. Richard nodded his head. “Yea, Cody has been like that ever since we got back. I think he’s just freaked out.” I chuckled nervously. “Yea no shit!” Stand Up was the kind of guy that whenever he left the house he was wearing those little blue surgical gloves, and not because he was out performing surgeries on the streets. He was by all accounts a “Bad Motherfucker” and as I’ve said before, he terrified me. So him being gone from Summer’s was a welcome vacation for me. For a few days Summer’s place turned back into the junkie den I so loved and used to escape the world around me.

When I wasn’t at Summer’s I was with AJ running around Oklahoma City going on what passes as adventures for junkies. There was a little cluster of four motels that sat on either side of Interstate 35 on the south side of Oklahoma City that she frequented and when we hung out that was mainly where we went, although we went all over OKC at one point or another. One of these motels was America’s Best Value Inn. I picked up AJ there and then we went to the motel next door, a place called Plaza, and met one of AJ’s friends Mimi and her friend, Boogie, at a man named Q’s motel room. Q was huge! He stood about 6’7 and totally dominated the room. He literally lived at this motel. He paid weekly rent and everything. He had his whole life in that room and it was filled almost corner to corner with his posessions as well as people. All manner of junkies and prostitutes and burnouts. Me, Mimi, Boogie, and AJ worked our way through the crowd to the bathroom and set up shop at the countertop. Mimi and Boogie smoked their dope, same as AJ, but somebody had given them a bag of china, which she didn’t know how to smoke, so her and Boogie let me do a test shot in the bathroom to make sure it really was dope and boy was it! I almost fell out. AJ was pissed too. She didn’t like when I got higher than her. She tried to make it seem like she was just concerned for my well-being but I knew it was just dopehead jealousy. Mimi told me she would trade me the whole bag for some of my tar and I obliged her although I admittedly kind of ripped her off. I gave her an almost negligible amount but she seemed happy at the time. I think she was just happy she was able to smoke her shit. The whole time AJ was talking shit to Mimi for trading me the dope. Like I said, she didn’t like it when I got higher than her. She was really not a good friend but at the time I felt like I loved her so I put up with it. After I shot up some more, just to piss AJ off, I went and hung out with Q and hit his meth pipe with him and a couple of other dopeheads. Q was actually a pretty cool dude. I don’t remember all that we talked about but I remember I liked the guy, even if he was a little intimidating at first. He noticed I was wearing makeup and dressed kind of like a girl and he commented on it. I told him I was transgender and he seemed to be cool with it, or at least he kept any negative thoughts to himself. AJ came over and told me Mimi and Boogie needed a ride. I could tell she was still pissed at me and I would be lying if I said that didn’t amuse me at least a little bit. I told her I would take them so we all loaded up in my little red Honda and we took off. I drove Mimi and Boogie across 35 to another motel and her and Boogie went up to one of the rooms while AJ and I waited in the car. As soon as they went upstairs AJ asked me, “Why did you trade Mimi that dope?” I laughed. “Because the China is good shit.” AJ scoffed. “Well now you’re gonna be nodding out all over yourself all night and I’m gonna have to take care of you.” Now it was my turn to scoff. “Right.” I lit a cigarette and shook my head. “So what am I gonna smoke?” AJ continued her inquisition. “Oh my god, I still have some tar. Calm down!” I snapped. AJ didn’t calm down. “Don’t fucking tell me to calm down!” She snapped back. “I don’t wanna fucking argue right now!” I shot back and that seemed to be the end of it. I don’t know what Mimi and Boogie were doing in that motel room but they took forever. AJ and I waited in silence.

I had almost entirely stopped going to work. I was still turning in hours but I wasn’t even bothering to fake leads anymore. I didn’t care. I would rather hang out with AJ or over at Summer’s. My veins were really taking a beating too. It was taking me longer and longer to shoot up because I had to keep poking myself in my arms and legs and could never seem to get blood to flash in the needle. I was waking up in places and I couldn’t remember where I was. I had a full on panic attack one morning when I woke up on the floor in Richard’s room and I didn’t know who he was or where I was. I had to sit there and breathe for a few minutes before I slowly started to piece together what had happened the night before and why I decided to sleep on Richard’s floor. I had gotten really fucked up and decided to stay the night at Summer’s. I was spending less and less time at my place. I owed my landlord a lot of money for rent and was avoiding him. On top of that I just didn’t like being alone with myself anymore. It was getting harder and harder to look at myself in the mirror. I was failing at work. I was failing at home. I was failing. Period. At that point my mom knew I was using again, she could always tell. My dad, who lived in Austin and had no communication with my mom, didn’t know what was going on and was still sending me money in increasingly larger increments. I just told him work was slow and I was going through a rough patch. I don’t know if maybe he was suspicious or had a feeling. If he did he never brought it up to me and I continued to take advantage of him. I was taking advantage of everyone around me. My father, my landlord, even Summer and AJ to a certain degree. Summer’s house was normal for a few days, or at least what passed for normal there, but eventually Stand Up came back and apologized and Summer took him back because of course she did. That didn’t really matter to me though because I was starting to become something of a permanent fixture at Summer’s place myself. I didn’t want to go home and risk facing my landlord and Stand Up tolerated me because I wasn’t blatantly ripping Summer off. The fact that he was regularly using my car was just an added bonus I’m sure. They even trusted me enough to leave the dope with me and have me watch the room for them when they had “errands” to run. Usually I didn’t even dig into the stash because I knew they would give me dope later anyways. A couple times I did though. What can I say? I was a scumbag. On top of being the occassional caretaker of her room Summer was also using me on her incredibly lucrative shoplifting venture. She would go to major makeup retailers in different shopping malls around OKC and clear these places out of all kinds of expensive makeup and beauty products then sell those products on the street. I’ve never been an accomplished shoplifter although I have dabbled in the past but that wasn’t my function on these excursions . My job was to go in a few minutes before or after Summer and just look as shady as possible which was usually quite easy. It was winter so I was always wearing a trench coat and then my makeup was ALWAYS smeared and unkempt. I was in stark contrast to Summer who aside from being a junkie was just a preppy little white girl who looked like she should be shopping for makeup. She would go in and fill her handbag to the brim with makeup and other products while all eyes were on me creeping through the aisles and looking shifty as fuck. Eventually at some point Summer would leave and then I would wait a few minutes and go out after her and we would meet up at her car and burn off. Sometimes if she felt like we needed to be quick I would wait in the car and circle the parking lot trying to drive by the doors at the exact moment she came out so we could get out of there as fast as possible. These little excursions were nice and profitable for Summer. Sometimes she would make upwards of five hundred dollars selling that makeup on the street or online and with surprising swiftness. She would pay me in dope which I was only too happy to accept.

I eventually just stopped going to work altogether to either hang out at Summer’s or with AJ. I stopped going home as well. I didn’t call and explain myself to my bosses. I just stopped showing up and let them figure it out. I went to America’s Best Value Inn and got a room with AJ. After we got checked in I realized I needed to get some more things from my old place. I drove over there and loaded up all of my clothes and then my laptop. I was taking the last bag out to my car which I had parked another block up because I knew Hyat would probably be there when he confronted me as I was walking through the kitchen. He wanted the car keys. Looking back he probably had no legal leg to stand on because my name was on the title but at the time I wasn’t thinking about that so I just told him I didn’t have them and that a friend had dropped me off. I told him I was waiting on an Uber and walked outside with my phone in my hand. Hyat followed me out and through the alleyway up to the front of the nail salon. While he was waiting with me he got a call and walked back down the alley to talk to whoever it was. I had this huge bag of my clothing with me that was kind of heavy. I started inching my way out of view of the alley. Hyat walked a little further down the alley but he was keeping his eye on me. I inched further. I saw him start to turn his back to me so I made a decision and ran for it. I heard him shout something and start chasing after me but I had a good head start. I got to my car and managed to shove the bag in the back and get to the drivers seat, start the engine, and peel off before he could get to me. I made a beeline for the highway and spent the whole desperate drive to the motel looking for sirens behind me but none ever came. When I got to the motel I even parked in front of another room so the cops wouldn’t know which room I was in. Like I said Hyat probably didn’t have any legal recourse but I wasn’t thinking clearly and I was paranoid. I discovered too late that I had dropped my wallet, probably when I was shoving my bag in the car, but I didn’t even care. I would go back for it later. For now I was just happy to be safe in my room with AJ who had already gone to sleep. I had so much adrenaline coursing through my body I was shaking and almost hyperventilating. I sat down at the bathroom counter and shot up some more dope then laid down next to AJ and finally managed to fall asleep.

Liar

I used to be so sure, used to be somebody pure.

Now I don’t know anymore, just don’t know anymore.

I am so broken and empty, I cannot see clearly.

I do not know anymore, just don’t know anymore.

I am a thief and a liar, I am a denier.

I am a fool and a whore, I do not know anymore.

I become murderer, a snake and a pervert.

I am a liar. A coward and liar.

I’m a liar.

TAXES!?!?

I walk to the counter at 711 and the girl at the register rings up my 44 oz heart render soda. “That’ll be a 1.09 with tax.” She says sweetly. As I search my pocket for the change to pay her, I am aware of heavy breathing somewhere behind me. “What the fuck did you just say?” a low voice growls. I slowly turn around to see a skinny kid, about 19 or so, with baggy camo shorts, a wife beater, and a fohawk. His face is shaking and red with rage. “Did you just say TAX??” he spits as he drops his extra large can of monster and protein bar. “TAXATION IS THEFT BRO!!!!!!!!!” He wails in anguish as he pushes over the candy display next to him. The lady between us panics and tries to run from the store but the kid grabs her newborn infant from her arms. She pleads for her child’s life but the AnCap pisses himself and YEETS the baby against the wall with an inhuman wail. I step back but the counter prevents me from backing away any further. The AnCap is now screaming incoherently but beneath the cacophony I can make out “TAXATION…..THEFT……FREEMARKET…….FUCK SOCIAL PROGRAMS.” He punches the Doritos display and starts flinging his feces across the store, striking an elderly woman and the store manager.

I run from the store without paying for my drink just as the police arrive.

Dark Days (Chapter 3)

Winter had settled over the bleak grey landscape of Oklahoma City giving even the little ghetto that I called my home the quaint glow that only comes when snow is falling from the sky and blanketing the ground. I love winter. I love snow. I spent the first twenty odd years of my life living in Texas so snow was something I just never saw. I should have been enjoying the winter. Instead, I was only interested in keeping myself wasted on heroin and meth. The meth was almost always free. Summer always seemed to have a huge baggy of the shit on hand and people were always passing pipes and foil around whenever I came by. If not at her place then at John’s, who never seemed to run out of meth and was always MacGyvering these elaborate setups to either smoke or “snort” the vapor through the nose and get these massive hits. Heroin was starting to become a big problem though. I was paying my rent later and later and my landlord was getting really frustrated with me. So far he was giving me some wiggle room and letting me pay him in spurts, normally when I would finally breakdown and ask my dad for the money I needed. Still, he wasn’t happy.

I met Stand Up the day after Summer had come over to my house in fear that he would come looking for her. I had gone to her place looking to hit her in the neck for a free shot as she was having me do on a regular basis now. I remember the whole house had a different vibe when I got there. Richard was hiding out in his room and Cody and the rest of the people there were really quiet. When I walked into Summer’s room he was just sitting in a chair staring me down. Cody and Wade were standing on the other side of the room passing a foil back and forth and looking really uncomfortable. “What’s up.” Stand Up grumbled with a nod. He was a big Hispanic man wearing a white shirt and cutoff khakis. I immediately sensed a darkness around him and knew that he was bad news. I fumbled my way through an introduction and then he asked, “So you can hit her in the neck?” He tilted his head towards Summer who was sitting in her usual place on her bed, also unusually quiet. “Uh, yea.” I stammered. “I usually can.” I added with a little half smile trying to add some levity to the situation. Stand Up’s eyes narrowed and I felt myself shrinking. “Don’t miss.” he said icily. “I won’t” I corrected myself, trying and failing to sound confident. I knelt down to my usual position at the side of Summer’s bed and we proceeded to carry out our usual ritual. The whole time Stand Up was watching me over my shoulder like a hawk. I was so nervous my hand was shaking but somehow I managed to get the needle in the vein and do what I had done I don’t know how many times before. Relieved, I pulled the needle out and stood. Stand Up relaxed a little and Summer gave me my shot which I got in my veins as quickly as I possibly could. I wanted to forget about the ticking time bomb that was in the room with me. Stand Up became a normal fixture in Summer’s disheveled and chaotic world and by extension my own. I didn’t like him at all. He was not a nice person. In fact, he was a bully, and just the fact that I knew he had beat up Summer made things all the worse. He inserted himself as Summer’s enforcer. He even instituted a “no getting high at the house” rule so myself and the other junkies wouldn’t flop out and the place would seem a little less like a junkie den. This didn’t bother me so much because I hated being there anyways now that Stand Up was around but it did make things a little more tricky for me because I would have to shoot up at work sometimes, but still nothing I couldn’t work with. I was starting to perform quite dismally at work and the sales guys were beginning to notice. My job was to put meat on the table for them and the pickings were getting rather slim lately so they started putting pressure on me and the rest of the leads team in the way of altering the way we were paid. If we turned in no leads for the week, our pay went down from twelve dollars an hour to eight. A certain amount of leads would get ten dollars an hour and more than that would bump it back up to twelve, plus bonuses. I wish I could say that I did the adult thing, rolled up my sleeves, and did some serious hustling but alas, I decided to be a scumbag. I signed up for this online thing that was basically an internet yellow pages and would look peoples information up on that and fill out bogus lead sheets that I then passed on up the line. Fuck knows how many times those sales guys went out to an “appointment” only to realize that the home was abandoned or there was no home at all. Not my proudest moment but I did what I felt like I needed to do at the time.

One day Summer had me take her and Stand Up to one of her friends place so she could get some clean needles. Her and Stand Up went inside and I waited out in the car. I wasn’t out there very long before Stand Up came storming back over to the car. He came to the drivers side window and knocked on it. “Move over.” He ordered. Not wanting to upset him I complied and he got in the drivers seat. “Where are we going?” I asked nervously. “Those motherfuckers must think I’m a punk.” He growled. “They paid me in fake bills before I went inside and now when I bring it up he wants to laugh it off? We’re going to get a gun. I’m about to light these fools up.” I processed this information and answered the only way I thought would keep Stand Up from turning on me. “Okay..” Stand Up drove us behind a rundown little house a few blocks away and got out of the car and started screaming somebody’s name. After a few minutes of hollering for whoever he was looking for he got back in the car and pulled out of the alleyway. “God must be on their side today.” He said with a grunt. I let out a sigh of relief and tried to keep from shitting myself.

The day I met AJ was the day everything took a nosedive for me. AJ was a prostitute and at first glance just one out of a long line of the many fiends that frequented Summer’s home looking for dope. She was in her 50s and had lived a hard life but still fairly attractive all things considered. I wouldn’t say it was “love at first sight” when I met her but I was definitely intrigued by her. I saw her as something of a free spirit like me. She was into witchcraft and was totally unabashed about being a hooker, which attracted me as somebody who lives an alternative lifestyle outside of the norm. The first time we ever hung out I gave her a ride to go pick up some meth from one of her “clients.” I can’t remember everything that happened but I do remember us ending up in the parking lot of a Mexican supermarket and her refusing to leave until we “rescued” what she thought was a stray dog that kept running in and out of the store. “You don’t even know if it’s a stray!” I tried to reason with her but she wasn’t hearing it. “She was abandoned!” She shot back. “I can tell!” Long story short, we got the dog in my car and AJ, who was homeless, realized she couldn’t actually take care of the dog. “I’ll just give it to Summer as a gift!” She decided, so we drove back to Summer’s place where AJ gifted the dog to a bemused Summer who really wasn’t at all interested in getting a dog in the first place. But AJ had this power. She could convince you to do something that you didn’t really want to do through just the sheer force of how insistent she was. She never even gave you the option to say no. So that’s what she did with Summer. Here is a dog. This dog is yours now. You’re welcome. And that was that. AJ and I started hanging out more and more and we formed what could have been called a relationship. Honestly it was more of a partnership. We would come up with these schemes that would always seem to end in failure. Like one weekend I bought an eight ball of tar from Summer with intention of selling some to supplement my quickly dwindling income and AJ swore up and down she could help me sell it. We drove around all night hitting up everybody that we knew that did dope and not one single person was looking to buy from us. We picked up one guy at like three in the morning who said he had some friends who were interested so we gave him a ride to their apartment complex. He said he had to go inside and talk to his people and that he would be right down. While we were sitting there AJ and I both had this really bad feeling like they were going to try and rob us so we left and ended up doing all of the dope in less than a day.

One night I went over to Summer’s to pick up some dope. When I got there her and Stand Up were arguing about something in her room so I sat down in the living room with Cody and Richard. Apparently Summer’s other boyfriend, who was in prison at the time, had called Summer and Stand Up had found out they had talked. We could hear the argument beginning to escalate and soon they were screaming at each other and then out of nowhere there was a loud crash. “Goddammit Summer! Look at what you’re making me do!!!” Stand Up shrieked over the din of drywall being pummeled and glass breaking. “I’m not supposed to hit you so I have to do this!” Summer was crying. “Please stop, Christopher, PLEASE!” She wailed. The whole time Cody and Richard and I just sat there. Like cowards. I’m not gonna make excuses for myself. I was a coward. I was terrified of Stand Up so I sat there on the couch and stared at the floor as he ravaged all of Summer’s possessions. Eventually the cacophony in Summer’s bedroom wound down and after Stand Up stormed out of the house I went into Summer’s room to buy my dope. Summer’s room was destroyed but from what I could tell he hadn’t actually hurt her. Just ransacked her room. Even the new flat screen she bought was nearly broke in half. Summer sat there in silence as she sold me my dope. I felt like a monster.

Despair

I have reached the age of thirty. Somehow, after years of mental illness and rabid drug addiction, I have survived. I have reached depths of depravity and debauchery that I never thought were possible. I have been so sick and riddled with infection that it’s a wonder I am still breathing. I have been so low that I didn’t care whether I lived or died. Yet here I am. Alive and well. I wish I could say that I felt happy but without the drugs I just feel hollow. I have a hole inside of me that I can’t seem to fill. That hole exists partially because I have not had a chance to transition or start hormone therapy. I feel like if I had had a chance to explore myself as a transgender individual when I was younger and had my family been more supportive of me I would be happier than I am today. As it stands I am now thirty and time is quickly flying by. I fear I’ll never have a chance to be the beautiful person I so desperately want to be. I wish things were different. I wish I hadn’t squandered so much time filling my veins and lungs with every form of dope I could get my hands on. I wish I had spent more time getting to know myself and learning to love who I am. I wish I had been a better person to myself and to those around me. So much I wish I could change. So much I should have done. It’s hard for me not to think of “God” as a cruel and sadistic bully. Why would you create people who feel as though the body they have is the wrong one? Why would you knowingly condemn that creation to a lifetime of confusion and discomfort? I just don’t know…it seems callous and unnecessarily mean to me. But what do I know? I can barely figure my own day to day shit out, let alone contemplate the nature of a “God” who may or may not exist. At the end of the day I really just want to love and be loved and again, I fear time is slipping by me. I don’t know how to date. It was simply never a life skill that I picked up. I never even went to prom. I was twelve years old the first time I got stoned and drunk and I tried meth when I was fifteen. By then I was a daily pot smoker and I was shooting up by the time I turned seventeen. So no dates. No fond high school memories. It’s all a blur. I sometimes wonder if it would have been better had I died because I don’t know if I have anything left to offer the world. I feel like I’m a shell of what I once was. I’m trying to ignite myself and do my phoenix thing. Fuck I’m trying. I just don’t know if there’s anything left. I’m afraid it’s all ashes. You know what the fucked up part of all this is? I miss the darkness. I miss the needles. I miss the scummy trap houses. I miss being so fucked up I forget where I am in the morning and I miss that flash of terror that shoots through my body when I realize I can’t remember how I got there. I miss the junkies and whores that I called friends. I miss heroin. God I fucking miss heroin. At least when I was on dope I had purpose. Something to look forward to. Now there’s just nothing. A big empty nothing and at the end of that? Death. That’s it. How am I supposed to just go through life and be an adult when I didn’t even have a chance to be a child? How am I supposed to grit my teeth and white knuckle my way through this life when I don’t even know how to live? I don’t know how to do any of this shit! Goddammit! I miss not caring! I miss not being able to feel! I’m so tired of this insufferable monotonous routine! Give me the chaos back! Give me the misery and despair because fuck, it’s better than nothing! It’s better than this empty existence. This cruel joke that is now my “life.” The whole tragedy of all of this is that heroin, that thing that brought me to my knees and ravaged my life to the point of disrepair, is likely the closest thing to love that I will ever feel. Even if I was able to learn how to date let’s face it, nobody is interested in some burned out tranny who never even had the chance to transition before her looks started to fade, and even if I did find somebody who could get past that, all of my mental and emotional baggage would certainly chase them away in the end. I’m afraid this is it. It’s a shame..I could have been so much more.