Tag: New York City

Dude Wore a Kimono

Part 1

We didn’t know it then, but at least we still had the glinty white sunlight of the 90’s to fall back on. I was 22, and it had been a while, a bit more than a year since I’d dropped out of college. I’d left to work at a stock footage archive. It was a cool job. Interesting. Fun. And my desk was tucked in amongst the rows of ¾ video cassettes and old timey film canisters. It was all mine too. I didn’t have to share it with anyone. But now I was quitting that gig. Quitting to move back in with my mother. I was leaving NYC, going to rural Massachusetts to get off drugs. Going to the tiny house I’d grown up in, in a small town north of Boston, because I could no longer keep it together. It was January and I was about to go cold turkey. I was about to try and kick my first real dope habit.

Continue reading “Dude Wore a Kimono”

Arthur Fiedler Was a Firebug

Or a less salacious title: Chris from Rosi, Rest In Peace My Friend

Fuck man, it sucks leaving some dudes behind. Chris, I wish you could have stuck around. You were a good dude. I feel like we would have stayed friends…

Los Angeles, 2015

I used to have this friend. Like 20 years ago now. He wasn’t my best friend or anything, but he was a good dude. He was from Boston like I am, and he’d gone down to New York for college, also like I did. That’s where I met him, down there in New York. He’d gone to Columbia where he was a friend of my friend, Kyle – that was how I originally met him. I knew Kyle because he dated my good friend Adelle from high school. Adelle was my connection to that whole crew up at Columbia in the first place. While I was at NYU, I’d go uptown every now and again to hang with those people.

Continue reading “Arthur Fiedler Was a Firebug”

Christmas Is Coming – part 6 – Copping “Bat Dope”

After 15 endless minutes – mostly spent trying to decide who in this crowd is going to rob me when I leave – I reach the Plexiglas wall at the front of the check-cashing place. I shove my paycheck, all two hundred and sixty five dollars of it, along with my Massachusetts driver’s license through the little scooped out divot carved into the counter. The stone faced, rail-thin and straight up tough-looking, black woman on the other side of the glass examines the check and then pushes my documents back to me, along with a ballpoint pen with an extra twelve inches of grey duct tape extending from the top of it. I sign my check, noticing the stream of heated air coming through the hole. It feels nice. The proprietor of this establishment must not feel compelled to provide heat to us – the animals – on the other side of the glass.

This is the 6th entry in a series. It stands alone or you can start from the beginning. Find part 1 here and part 5 (the previous entry) here.

Continue reading “Christmas Is Coming – part 6 – Copping “Bat Dope””

Christmas is Coming – Part 5

And with those words from my boss, “See you.” I’m done. My work responsibilities are over and time itself becomes something different. Time is a resource, something to be viewed dispassionately, to be used to solve my problem. That problem, as always, being how to get hard drugs into my body quickly.

This is the 5th entry in a series. Find part 1 here and part 4 (the previous entry) here.

Continue reading “Christmas is Coming – Part 5”

Christmas is Coming – Part 4

The walk to work is endless in the bitter cold. I must will myself forward, re-commiting to the journey with every step. I so badly want to call in sick and just lay around the apartment watching tube – high – but I have to make it to work. I have to get that paycheck, have to get it to the check-cashing store, have to get the drugs in order to get right. Choice has nothing to do with it.

This is the 4th entry in a series. Find part 1 here and part 3 (the previous entry) here. Be forewarned the following is a 4400 word entry (although it’s worth every second).

Continue reading “Christmas is Coming – Part 4”

Christmas is Coming – Part 3

My walk from home to work, from Avenue C and 4th Street to 5th Avenue just below 23rd, takes a little more than a half an hour. It can be a real bitch of a walk, especially on a cold day like today. There’s no subway that helps to cut down the travel time in any substantial way, so I’m stuck hoofing it twice a day, every day, unless I spring for a cab, which I’ve done like… once, maybe. Continue reading “Christmas is Coming – Part 3”

Race War, It’s personal – part 1

The black people won’t stop coming. One after the other I kill them. I dole out a torrent of hyper-accurate punches, kicks and head-butts. I take blow after blow in return – to my face, body, kidneys and spleen – but in the end I vanquish the mother-fuckers. I’m the one left standing atop my assailant’s corpse. Still, there’s always another black man behind the one I’ve just bested.

Continue reading “Race War, It’s personal – part 1”

Christmas Is Coming – part 2

You can read part one of this entry here.

I come to sitting on the living room couch. It’s time to leave for work. Despite the clouds outside the tall windows and high ceilings in the loft allow for plenty of ambient light. It’s almost too bright. The apartment is disgusting. You can clearly see a sheen of dirt on the hardwood floors. My rush is over. Not that it was all that much of a rush to begin with. I’m in maintenance mode. I shot just about a half a bag of dope a couple of hours ago. Which is really not very much, but it’s the state of the state these days. It beats withdrawal.

Continue reading “Christmas Is Coming – part 2”

Fire in the Hole

Saturday morning I emerge from my tomb-like bedroom into the living room. Will is sitting on the couch in his underwear. He’s lithe and strong with no body fat. I wouldn’t want to have to fight him, but then I pretty much don’t want to fight anyone. I’ve seen him and his brother go at it. They both gave as good as they got and fought each other to an draw – it looked exhausting and painful – not to mention pointless. Continue reading “Fire in the Hole”

More Billy Joel? Or more Elton John?

As much as I’m a fan of getting high, I know it’s a two way street. If you want to play, you gotta pay and usually in more ways than one. Right now I’m paying big time for letting my habit get out of control. Every day it gets more difficult to keep up. Instead of just doing it, getting sick and going through withdrawal, I’m stumbling through my weeks without enough cash to use the way I want. I can only maintain. I know that at some point, I’m going to hit a wall.

Continue reading “More Billy Joel? Or more Elton John?”