The Lights and She

I was rummaging with mortality several nights out of the week downtown near 6th and nothing in order to get away from The Woman back home. We’d have fights over the kids and the kid that wasn’t mine and I’d hit her across the face with poor Astella’s eyes watching, never crying just watching. The tendency to arrive back at the palace in the mornings on such holy Sundays had been increasing as my soul grew further and further from my wife’s and the house rocked back and forth that way. I ran downtown after work almost every night. Dreading the house. I wasn’t scared of that low brow cockeyed Pa of hers anymore. Before I got The Woman knocked up he had made me a promise that if I ever did what was to come, I would get it from him and the whole family. In reality I’d get it from the cousins, even good Vicky too. They would come after me if I did anything to their little girl. 

            I thought I might go insane soon and on one night that I came home from a bar I walked in on the Woman crying and running her nails along her arms and her standing over Astella who was crouched in the corner of what was left in our bedroom next to a broken lamp. Astella had blood dripping out of her ear and swollen scratch marks on her cheeks and her fingers were busted up too, and she was only 5. I grabbed Astella and didn’t even look at the Woman and managed to kick her in the gut onto the kitchen floor when she tried to grab at me. She pounced at me like a wild cat hungry and angry. It wasn't until that moment that I realized the condition the house was in and how stained the carpet was, evidence of the Woman's habits, ash smudged in making spots a terrible grey,  everything from the walls to the floor wreaked of the dregs of The Woman's sorry past and she would often pound with her fists the anger of the weight it held upon her down onto the floor until her hands were sufficiently punished and leaving new designs of a clearer yellow blood. I took Astella to her Grandmothers and made my Ma swear to call the cops if that Woman got anywhere near the house and when I was out of the door I ran. I ran a whole 16 blocks from Hyde down to Stockton, livid still, passing red headed whores and bums that screamed shit like Where you goin, boy? Where you Hiding? What are you running from? 

 Whores everywhere and crooked faced bums reaching their hands out at me like god damned vultures when i slowed down at Market to walk the streets and ease my pace. They’d say god bless your soul anyhow without even giving’em anything but god didn’t have anything to do with them here. They did it to themselves.  And the whores with rouge lips, all they’ve got are these slightly pretty eyes but you can’t tell unless they’re directly underneath the downward moping of the lamp posts anyway on account of all the costume drug store makeup. Looks like they all stepped out of some bizarre erotic horror movie, post rocky horror without the music and all they had was their ripped fishnets and sorry cunts. My woman used to always say that a married girl unfucked is like a corpse whore under the judgment of the Virgin Mary and I figure that these women understood it as well. They called out to me and I told everyone of’em that they made me sick, spat behind me towards their heels, but they went on laughing and shaking the classy off their hips, walking along with the tango of the fog and the shadows of the buildings around them. I went on with my bad breath full of my own taboos and I switched from my right hand a bottle of gin to my left hand to rub my nose to keep it from bleeding, when finally I stumbled into a bar downtown somewhere and I met Caro. 

            When I walked in I could just tell by the people in the air of their business that this was a common place for people who liked to hide in their wallets and at the bottom of beer bottles and shot glasses, people who confined themselves to these holes in the wall to escape from their own leisure. I came with a heavy head all ready and excuses running through my mind for why things ached the way they whistled. I was obviously fucked and got belligerent with the bartender demanding that he bring me 8 scotch vodkas and him screaming shit like Who are you trying to fuck with, man? Who’s job are you fucking with? And I knew he was about to punch some wiser words into my skull when she sat down. She played with her cleavage sitting towards the mirrors behind the wooden bar looking over her bare shoulders, looking for a son of a bitch precisely like me who had plenty all ready to believe in those red lips. Red lips smacked on that pale face of hers like bubblegum stuck on the pavement. She commanded intoxication from the bartender who let my collar go before she could even say “Bruno, you know what I want, two tails on the house woncha?” and Bruno worked his hands on her drinks faster than he would have punched my nose in. She sat two seats away from me. her curly blonde hair illuminated in the blue red lights behind the bar and Costello was playing, and I hate Costello and perhaps she knew and decided to walk in on this very song for me. She wore a torn up flower in her jew curly hair and soothed off the enlightenment of a fourteen year old. I could smell cigarets battled with strawberry sweet perfume from where I was sitting and her skirt was lowered to an area of her back where I later learned was embedded the image of an anchor ornamented by lotus flowers. She looked around and caught me looking at her.

“What the fuck are you looking at?”

Her lips were crazy.

“I’m sorry.”

 I was immediately impaired. 

“That isn’t what I asked you, ass hole. You’re stare is making my skin itch and my back hurt, tell me what the fuck you’ve been looking at.”

I thought that she must be from Brooklyn from the way she sang.

 “What are you doing here?”

Why I would ask such a thing is beyond

“Are you fucking with me?” She asked.

“Everyone seems to say that.”

And then lug ass started walking towards us. 

“Caro, you want me to finish this ass hole?” and she looked at me and gave me a half smile and I sat up a little ready to run and she said “No I want him to tell me what the fuck he’s looking at.” And then Bruno mumbles something like Jesus, this guy? Under his breath.

“So what about it?”

I choked a little and just began to say without realizing it “You hair…” what about her hair? “Your hair in this light reminds me of this movie made back in the 70’s that this real cheap bastard made about an American girl ballerina who moves to Germany to live in this mansion that’s haunted, you see, and there’s a scene where the lights switch from red to orange to blue and her hair is all over the scene, just all over the place’ I waved my hand around my head’ changing along with the lights and the director killed her off so that she all ready looked dead before she ever died.” She just stared at me. One brow up like she was confused or disgusted and she finished her last shot, accidentally spitting a little bit from her lips and said “Are you Italian?”

“What? Me?”

“You’re one real fucking Sajak aren’t you. I’m looking right into YOUR eyes, honey, I’m a Russian Mexican. I don’t kid. Are you or aren’t you?”

“Sorry-“ 

“Quit apologizing! I hate it.”

“Sor… My Father’s Italian and my mom’s a spic. My wife though she’s full blood Italian so my kids, my daughter’s got more Italy in her than I do.”

She started laughing and she snorted a bit and I started giggling and soon we were both laughing, howling, so madly that the whole bar was telling us to shut up but to this day I can’t imagine what was so funny. And Costello, that fucking song played on repeat the whole time. 

She took me to her pad which was a residential SRO off of Howard and something called the Philips Hotel. Rats and roaches and white rooms with red carpets and fuck stains all over but I didn’t mind, Caro said she’d be here for the next couple weeks waiting for her pimp. “He’s real lousy,” she confessed after a couple nights. “Dan’s from some shit town called Felton. It’s a whiles a way south of Half Moon Bay and there are all these cute ranches there with horses and tire swings and hikes to hidden swimming holes. He stayed there for some time recently in his idiot friend Gary’s back house that they turned into a lab but it blew up in the middle of the night when his friend and Gary’s girlfriend were fucking on it and Dan was on the couch passed out. His girlfriend smoked cigarettes while she fucked and Dan swears that the girl was in the middle of her climax when she dropped her smoke into some vat of solution and the whole place went ablaze and Dan got up off the couch and jumped out of the window when the whole place blew up. Ha! The bitch deserved it. Dan’s colorblind now and always mistake’s me for one of our black girls.  But he likes me most. I know it.” 

Caro, Caro. Her name meant expensive in Spanish. Caro was my girl. I could count on her when I got lonely at night and The Woman was at home eating maggots out of her handbags and shoes and designer watches and all that other couture bullshit that women are obsessed with. Spending my bread every which way. But not Caro. It didn’t take me more than two nights to become addicted to Caro. Her lips could cause earthquakes and divorce. She had the softest skin I have ever put my body on out of any woman, which always baffled me because her body was heavily used and always medicated. And she didn’t complain much especially when I brought her food and booze and a whole mess of drugs. Besides she was a true broad, she truly loved sucking dick. Women like that are priceless, at least on this side of the city. We had an agreement that was more special than any kind of relationship that my ma taught me to have as a kid. I would come and tell her all the pretty things I could because she deserved it, that face of hers.

“Benny boy, you’ve got a way with your words you know?”

 “Yes, darling”, kissing of thigh.

“You make me feel like I did when I was back in junior high and my figure was better.” Sniffing of nose, “You know, you make me think that I can be something with you Benny boy, like we gotta get out of here.” 

“Caro,” 

“Yeah, Benny boy? Don’t stop what your doin’ keep kissin’.”

“We should get out of here.”

She raised up a little.

“How about we go to L.A.? I’ve got a friend down there who’d be mad about you. “

“Really, Benny, you really mean that!”

“Yeah sure! He’s got a golden hook from Nicaragua and a pad right near Venice. We can make some moves. We can dance and go to the movies and go downtown and drink around all over. they’ve got this smog there like no other, I swear!”

“Benny, I don’t know, Dan would go nuts trying to find me. Aw, hell Benny boy let’s go!”

“Caro, you’ve got a way that makes me feel old and new at the same time, baby.”

I hadn’t called my wife baby in several months.

“Well that’s good, good for a little girl who only like older men.”

“What do you mean Baby?” and I kept eating her when she finally says, “Well you know it’s hard to get older men to like you when you’re 16 and- OW FUCK Benny why’d you bite me?” She lifted the covers and looked down at me. I was stunned.

“What’s the matter with you!” and she put the covers back down. I stared right into her criminal curse.

“I wanna get a white dress in LA and be in a room covered in white, Ben. I wanna get a make up pen and put a beauty mark on me and I’ll be a real Monroe.”

 I began to get up out of the bed slowly as Caro kept dreaming. “And I wanna go to the Boulevards and buy one pair of shoes, just one with my own money. I’m sure I could hassle the money out of someone and.. where you goin?” 

“I’m gunna walk out and get a pack of smokes darling, get us more booze you stay here okay?”

“Well I’ll just go with ya, I want a fruit drink anyway!”

“No, Marla. No. You stay here. Stay put. Put some make up on for when I get back or something, okay, I’ll get you your drink.”

Marla was the first woman I had an affair with.

“Well all right.”

The Girl hadn’t even caught it.

I stepped out of the hall and into the white red and I could hear porn blaring from the up stares and rats scratching at the walls and a broken muffled radio station and a man hurling painfully the bathroom share and at the end of the hall there was an open door and I looked in and I saw a wolf dog sitting straight up on a bed with floral bedding watching the T.V. and the owner was an older Hispanic woman who looked over at me just standing there with no immediate direction and as I began to walk away towards the steps that led out to 9^th street I heard her whisper “Que Dios te bendigue.” from her rocking chair at the foot of the bed. I walked out the door and right onto Howard and I thought that I may vomit right there with the lights around me flickering and on me glared the neon sign from the tranny club below the Hotel and the blue Chevron lights facross the street and the traffic lights above me, they glowed a nauseating mist from the wet streets and I could see Caro’s room light from below. I started my car and drove towards the 101 highway. 

           *********

I have a reckless time ahead of me. The late hours have reached my solitude. In my car, although I am fucked, I view 101 with a clear eye. This whole area surrounds such a sacred body of water, sacred and polluted, with windsurfing love birds constantly on its ground, animals in cars hugging the roadsides, becoming statistics, risking the danger. Tourists gawk at this land with cheap intentions from travel books and media coverage. Not many people truly understand what it is to grow up in a California land. And that is what my home truly is. California Land. Like a theme park. Compared to the rest of this world California is top notch, grade A civilians with hungry hearts for their own dreams, and enough hard ons to populate a disadvantage being that everything comes so easy to us. Everything at hand. If you want to live a night of luxury, lust, or loathing you merely need to drive a mile or so into San Francisco and you can find anything you want at any given time within a quarter mile radius. Oh the selfishness, even the bums. At least they feed from grade A. 

Caro had curves just like California. Rolling and gleaming like fresh fruit. So bodacious and intimidating, you could almost smell the hills on her skin. She had roads in her blood that needed tracing, I thought of her shoulders with I headed south on 101 from San Luis Obispo where I stocked up on supplies. I was going in through every turn and wind about with such speed so I could feel the force of nature pulling at my insides. Grazing California's hills I almost feel like I am violating the land, along with her mind. What kind of scum was I to deserve this life? Caro was fresh produce here from an exotic mother from south of this border; obviously her roots drew history somewhere in this plane's past. She told me she loved to dance; I Should’ve brought her to Los Angeles with me to visit the nightlife. I had to forget about her eventually, which also stood for the city. A foolish city, that Los Angeles, I could never fall in love in a city who can't view its own mountains. 

The view from the top Los Angeles Mountains is almost dream like, even with its popularity for pollution. There is a sheet of smog that has a giant hypocrisy. It is a fantastic view from the Eastern Mountains looking west onto the pacific. The smog creates a blanket that makes the streets and palm trees and fabulous buildings look as if they are swaying to a song that can't be ignored, eternal and eerie when looking as a foreigner. It looks heavenly with the lazy skies, the sulking July skies that are so fresh you can almost inhale it into your lungs. So that's what I do. I inhale a cigaret and breathe it back in even when I have stepped on it on Sunset Boulevard. So many damn billboards and sirens and all for the crazy dreamers alike. The only thing I can truly appreciate is the fact that no one comes to LA without a cause, even the lost and the lonely for they have come to be lost and alone.

I am glad to be back in the bay area. Truth hits a little harder here without the glam of having Hollywood's glory so accessible. The air is pure and so are its people. Maybe not so much here at home, where I live in Pacific Heights, but if you look with eyes of a native and you find exactly the right nook and people, you get the feeling of a champion, like you are forever right exactly where you are, so western, so modern, it barely hits me until the morning after I arrive back from LA to get The Girl. It is very easy to get lost in its superiority, which is a symptom around here. People love themselves. Their friends, their own lives. So many scandals, so many love stories. Their nice cars and beautiful people and beautiful opportunities. and look! At all the pretty houses! And that bay, and its view. And the gates with gold, and the front row seat to one of the best god damned sunsets in the all of this beautiful world. And to think that I am a bored citizen.  Oh the day, and all its glory! Dear god, do we ever run out of luck in California?

-Bianca Gonzalez

2006 first draft, last paragraph

2007 second draft, story building

2009 first complete draft

posted 2012
back in editing currently 2013

The Fridge

If I have to be honest at any given point in my life it can be now and today and this very moment in writing. My head is rushing and my blood pressure doesn't feel normal. My alarm clock is the sound of skaters in the morning. The songs have been recording are half assed in terms of strength in vocals but take into the consideration that most of these songs have been recorded in my room inspired by lack of sleep and the 90's and nicotine and a weird long slow start to this year.

donuts revisited

the first time i listened to jdilla's donuts was in 2007. Sam and Will were staying at the capri because they wanted to be living in the city and i stayed there one night to eat burgers and get stoned. Justin, being an insomniac, was well fit and plump with inspiration for stories at that motel in the marina district. Will had gone out to sell weed and sam rolled a blunt for us in the bathroom and set up the speakers. Right before he sparked the blunt he put on donuts. 

You know that ecstasy. We all do. When every one of your senses is pierced and you are wholly consumed by not just the music but the moment. 

I remember hallucinating all sort of images with my eyes open, in my mind, lots of video game like scenarios, exploding fireworks, stars, dreams remembers, and when the album was over i couldn't tell if what i had heard was actually in the music or not, that my mind had created an episode from that noise.

the noise.

That's what I try to remind myself during days like these. 

It's about the music.

It's about what comes after the music and what was before it. 

It's a time in my life where I can't ever experience silence. Sometimes I get that feeling, the feeling of silence, like before waking up and perhaps when waking up from alcohol. But the feeling is more like an emptiness that hovers around and about, but unlike a void nothing is missing and the noise is always there, especially in the warehouse and at my mothers when the trains run by, and in the mission when the cars drive and people yell and laugh and cough outside of all those windows. not even in darkness can I find silence like I've tried in forests or in open fields. Still the noise of the all the animals around, and like the waves of the beach at night, exudes the air of a symphony. 

It's been a while since I've been to the symphony but in ways there is one happening anyway.

Henry Miller on the meal, Tropic of Cancer

Walking along the Champs-Elysees I keep thinking of my really superb health. When I say health I mean optimism, to be truthful. Incurably optimistic! Still have one foot in the nineteenth century. I'm a bit retarded, like most Americans. Carl finds it disgusting, this optimism. I have only to talk about a meal, he says, and you're radiant! It's a fact. The mere thought of a meal - another meal - rejuvenates me. A meal! That means something to go on, a few solid hours of work, an erection possibly. I don't deny it. I have health, good solid, animal health. The only thing that stands between me and a future is a meal, another meal.

Lesson number 2

If you're going to run around breaking rules you've got to have guns you can stick to.

SOme CALl it waste

Went to amnesia to see family folk explosion band and watched the disco ball lights run around the tiny bar scattering across squished people. thought about old times on a roof top in the haight and times when i first met people. Charlie said "come with me, it's cool man" and i said all right let me grab my things at home and i'll call you. wondered if he thought i might not show, like they did at work, but i am not that way. words have staples and words hang over open mouths just like those american west grovers said, when they sung into my ear in a van a long time ago in burlingame, that they hang like they're just hanging out and suddenly i realize what they were talking about. the cold shoulders and going crazy in different places like within your self and in other people's minds. it's just that i wished words were unbreakable stones. i walked my ass and my red and blue attire down 24th street for recollection purposes, like how you know that when you've reached home you've reached home. it's a good feeling. consistency is key in life, i have realized, and perhaps it is unhealthy to expect it from all peoples but the appreciation is what matters most. flower shopped my possessions away from the green and concrete world that has held and nursed me for years. shutting the door, i smelled burned tires, and remembers the scientist and the drummer and the best friend and how i know, i know i should be making it out to oakland more often but sometimes you build these things and feel commitment to them in small streets and few street corbers. it's hard to walk away from things that you build. jumped on the 9 which smelled more like piss than i've ever known it too, at least consciously and jonnEE dropped me off wishing me a good time, like, all cool how he is in a plain green sweat shirt not yet painted on. played some blues, and yes they were emotional, about people who are like old road signs that take you for rides and they can lead you to dirt roads, and to the sea, and to ranches, and oceans, and bars that have drinks that take you to the sky. i just stormed out of a bar because i paid good money to hear dopethrone and the bar tender kept turning it off and i thought sweet jesus mother of mine in what fucking hell is it so bothersome to feel relaxed for one fucking minute. i felt relaxed and perhaps laughed to loud when dopethrone came on. of course it couldn't last, it never does. i kept talking about hume and remembered why i liked the story of the whole river and the nine different ways it changes when i attempted to ride the waves of the ocean that nursed my best, dearest, friend for so many long last eternally haunting years, and now i do realize that i spoke of the wrong man. i came to mourn, give my heart to the ocean, my soul to the strings, and my memory to my baby girl. to remember friends.
the only business cards i've gotten here so far are from porn industry people that makes me wonder about politics.
then i remember that i haven't the right.
when, california, did you become so lucky?
i still believe that gold in california is sea blue and green.
my bag is a portable office.
my fingers are bruised and i may have pinched a nerve in one of my left knuckles when i was slicing bread.
let's see what it sounds like.
i call it home.

5 a.m. two months ago

In this mad hour I am awake. The hour isn't defined because I can't work up the energy to roll over and check the clock. My eyes are intent on counting the spots on my wall every three inches up and left and this game lasts what I feel to be an hour until I hear the birds chirping and crows cackling and train yawning with me. The birds sound as though they are laughing outside my window, reminding me that this is quite a serious problem with no solution in sight, a problem no longer worth investigating. There is no end to any dreams for it is too loud to ever be awaken from, the forms too vivid to distinguish themselves from real life, and the visions too riveting to not pay attention so that when my eyes open from whatever painting my mind has created in place of restful dreaming they feel just as helplessly tired as they did when they reached ten thousand dots on the wall. The songs, they are too loud in my sleep that it never feels like I went to bed at all.

all at different times

back in may


Slept in the park the other night just because. made it til morning with my pint and inability to relate to anything in the world right now. Did it because people always tell me I'm an idiot for walking alone at night in the city, that natural biological occurrences should have me dead by now. One girl I smoked pot with at dolores asked me if I thought I was cat woman and I said not really but once in a while I do feel invincible.
Did it because lets face it... I'm fucking bored.
My sister always told me as a child that people who are bored are simply boring themselves and y'know, old girl, she's right.

nevermind

not gunna go there

drug tales

Angel
Mike Baxter

Sitting on a dull green 60's era couch, miraculously unstained, she erratically painted her nails neon orange. She was topless, with her skin tight ripped jeans unbuttoned and unzipped revealing a leopard print thong. Her skin was red with lacerations from constant scratching and fidgeting. Her hair was tied back in a bun, completely removed from her "workspace," which was an antique coffee table with a glass top that had seen better days. As she leaned closer and closer to her fingers resting on the surface of the table, her glasses (which were very chic mind you) slipped all the way down to the tip of her nose. Annoyingly, she nudged them back into place with the back of her wrist, gave the tip of her nose a scratch with an unpainted nail, and then feverishly continued working. Her work was sloppy and ungraceful, with nail polish smeared around her cuticles and splattered on the glass top of the table. Strewn across the table top was a bevy of lighters, empty pen barrels, a near empty pack of cheap cigarettes and a homemade aluminum foil ashtray along with a frightening array of nicknacks and doodads. As to the functionality of these devices, anyone's guess is as good as the next.
A young man named Harley walks into the apartment through the front door. "Angel, babe, you here?" Harley says, wrestling with the keys in his hand and the slightly used stereo under his arm. "Yeah babe, I'm in here." shouts Angel. "Look what I found, some dumbass just left this sitting by their car." Harley said making his way into the living room. Angel noticed how his jaw was moving about seemingly with a mind of it's own. He must be tweaking Angel thinks. She doesn't mind though, she has a habit of her own. Besides, he fucks her like a bull on steroids when he's on that shit. "That's great babe, hey listen," Angel was not at all interested in Harley's find. "I need to borrow the car, Poncho's gonna break me off a half for givin him a ride." "Whatever, as long as all your doin is given him a ride," Harley says glaring at her. "Jesus fuckin Christ, it's not like I'm gonna suck his smelly unwashed cock!" Angel snags the keys and heads straight for the door. "You gonna put a shirt on first?" Harley shouts after her. "Shit!" mutters Angel as she zips into the bedroom. She emerges within seconds and finally makes it to the door. "Love you" Harley says almost sarcastically. "Yeah, yeah you love me, I get it." Angel says while beaming a smile at Harley.
Barreling down the freeway Angel was paying the upmost attention to the road and her speedometer as she was constantly on the lookout for The Man. She was normally relaxed and carefree but with Poncho in the passenger seat drinking a 211 Steel Reserve tall can, her nerves were caught in a vice. If pulled over, one might wonder what a twenty-something-year-old white girl from the suburbs was doing in the car with a half drunk, mid 50’s homeless Mexican convict. The answer was simple really, “oh him? He’s just my heroin dealer, don’t mind him.” This thought constantly raced through her mind as she drove steadily with the flow of traffic trying her hardest to "act natural" and damned if she wasn't pulling it off too. She just prayed that he be done with that tall can before they made the drive back home. “Well, at least he can’t talk and drink at the same time,” she thought.
Poncho broke his incessant rambling only to wave her over to the exit. Angel was in no mood for his small talk bullshit, for she was concentrating way to hard on driving and on top of that, The Sickness was already kicking in. He had to direct her at every turn; she was unfamiliar with the city, even though she grew up just ten minutes drive down the freeway. They finally arrived at a rundown mini market parking lot where Poncho directed her to park. In that same parking lot Poncho’s empty Steel Reserve can found its way out the window.
It’s there they waited, too anxious to talk, too anxious to do anything but stare at the clock on the car dashboard. After the longest seven minutes of Angel and Poncho’s lives, a beat to shit dark grey pick-up pulled into the lot bearing expired tags. She had seen this truck before, as well as the short and plump Mexican man who drove it, this was the man they came to meet. This was the man she drove Poncho to come see every day. This was the man who supplied him with his heroin. Only something was different this time, in the passenger seat was a little boy who couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve. Usually Poncho livens up when Berto pulls up, but this time he was overcome with a quiet sadness. He tried to hide it but it wouldn’t have mattered either way because Angel was not paying the slightest attention to Poncho. He slowly leaned in close to Angel to tell her something. She could tell he was about to speak, but she knew what he was about to say was not like the usual pointless drivel, so she listened. He said, “You see that boy in that truck,” “yeah I do,” replied Angel, speaking softly wondering where this was going, and also why he hasn’t gotten his ass out of the car to go get the shit. “That’s my grandson…only he doesn’t know it.” Poncho hesitated for a moment and continued, “He thinks Berto is his grandfather, a long time ago, while I was in prison, Berto stole my wife and family from me. When I got out, there was nothing or nobody left for me.” Angel didn't know what to say, so she said nothing. Berto got out of the truck, leaving the boy behind. He made his way into the store and Poncho followed him in. While they were in the store Angel started thinking about her father. She hadn't seen him in years, since he kicked her out of the house as a matter of fact. She didn't think too much about her father these days, she just buried the pain under a needle.
Poncho returned to the car and Berto his. "Wait till he leaves to start going." said Poncho. "Aren't you going to talk to him? Your grandson I mean." asked Angel. She almost sounded like she cared. "Nah, it's too late for that, my family is gone now, moved on. I chose drugs over them a long time ago, now I have to live with that. Besides it'd turn the poor little dude's world upside down, ya know?" For the first time Angel felt something for this man. She couldn't help but to relate to Poncho's situation. After her mother died, Angel turned to drugs to deal with the pain of her loss, thus abandoning her father when he needed her most. She still didn't understand why it was so easy for her father to throw her out, why it was necessary to choose one or the other. Why couldn't her father accept his daughter's habit and still have her in his life? But Poncho continued speaking before she could get a word in edge wise, "But hey fuck it, we're in for a treat, we got the real shit, not that black tar garbage. We got some gunpowder. Here's a half for you, be careful with this shit its way stronger then the black." All of Angel's confliction about her own family crisis disappeared the second she wrapped her fingers around that small brown chunk of bathtub manufactured bliss.
Off they went back into town, not mentioning a word about Poncho's grandson, and Angel didn't feel like sharing her own story of similar premise. In fact she wanted to bury those thoughts as deep into her gut as they could go. She dropped Poncho off at the towns central park where he hangs out with all the other local homeless, and promptly returned home. She had beads of sweat dripping out of seemingly every pore in her body and felt like she was burning up. It was a little after three and she hadn't had a shot since last night. She returned home to an empty apartment, Harley's bike was missing, she figured he was out delivering bags of cocaine to help pay the rent. The only thoughts on her mind at this point concerned turning brown powder into brown liquid then sending it off into her bloodstream.
She was already feeling the rush by the time the plunger was only three quarters of the way pushed down. Her pupils immediately pinned and she felt the warm pulsating feeling of escape take her body over as she fell back into the couch. The heroin was good, really good in fact, it put her into a state of nodding, where she is not fully asleep and not fully awake. She began to have visions of her as a young girl at her family home. It was her birthday party and no one was there except for Harley, who appeared the same age he is now. He was rudely demanding paper because he had to write some stupid story for class and that he should have stayed home instead. She became sad in her dream, not because of Harley, but because the one person she wanted there couldn't make it…her father. She began to sob, both in her dream and in real life. She awoke, but found herself paralyzed by tears. Not even in her dreams could she see her father, or even hear his voice. Heroin was no longer an escape from her rotten circumstance, it had become an extension of it.
She found herself fully awake on the couch, with dried up tears on her cheek. Harley was nowhere to be found, that was fine she preferred to be alone right now anyways. She stared at the dope for a good long while, and decided to jump in the shower to clear her head. She liked to just sit under the hot water for at least twenty minutes, and just relax. No one or no thing could get to her in the shower, she felt completely safe. She had never seen the movie "Psycho."
Not to long after she jumped in, Harley came bursting through the door. "Angel, babe, you here?" Harley shouted walking through the entrance. There was no answer but he soon heard the running water coming from the bathroom. He was coming down unusually hard from the speed, and was becoming unbearably depressed. He saw Angel's bag sitting on the coffee table. He had always been curious what it felt like to send the brown substance coursing through his veins. He'd seen Angel do it hundreds of times and thought of the expression of pure relief that came over her whole body when she did it. He decided to fix up, and do the shot in bed, after all he could use a nap.
Angel finally emerged from the shower. She felt rejuvenated, and came to terms once again with the situation between her and her father. She dried off and headed into the bedroom. When she entered she dropped her towel and was standing naked, exposed, staring at a blue Harley curled in bed laying in a puddle of his drool. His lips, fingers and toes had taken on a deep blue hue, his veins were popping out of his skin as if they were screaming for air. She knew immediately what had happened. He was still breathing although his breaths were shallow and few and far between. There was no time for tears as she propped him up and began trying to slap him awake. "Harley, Harley, wake up!" she pleaded at the top of her lungs. This went on for a few minutes but Harley was not responding. Her mind raced trying to remember all the tricks of the trade she had picked up from fellow junkies on how to revive a fallen soldier. She thought of an ice cold shower and tried to drag two hundred pounds of dead weight into the bathroom. Her weak body couldn't budge him, not even with the overwhelming adrenaline pumping through her skull. She franticly slapped him repeatedly in the face screaming out his name hoping for some sign of consciousness, but to no avail. She remembered a story, she thought too over the top to be true but she was desperate, Harley was on his way out. She raced into the kitchen yanking open the freezer spilling the ice tray, sending cubes darting across the unwashed tile. Her body tensed in frustration as she screamed aloud, “FUCK!” She felt something cold against her little tiny toes and picked it up. She cupped the cube in her hand to shrink its size, and made it more aerodynamic. She pulled off Harley's loose fit jeans and baggy boxers. There was no time for shame and awkwardness as she worked the ice cube into Harley's rectum. She pulled his pants back up as if she were covering up a crime scene. The shock of the cube and another mighty slap brought a flicker of life to his eyes and hope to her heart. Harley was slowly coming around as Angel repeatedly slapped him across the face screaming, "Stay with me, stay with me!"
"Why are you yelling at me." Harley could barely speak, and his words came across weak, and whiney. "Come on baby, you need to stand up, your going to throw up." Harley could barely walk, his body was feeble and he had to lean on Angel as he stumbled into the bathroom. He couldn't even make it down to the toilet before he started violently puking in the sink. "I'm so sorry, babe, I'm so sorry." Harley said with tears in his eyes and puke on his lips. "What are you sorry for baby? It's ok, your going to be fine, ok?" Angel said in a quiet soft voice with a gentle tear of relief sliding down her face.
Angel and Harley made their way back to bed. She made him lay on his side on top of towels and next to a trash can in case he had to puke again. She was sitting beside him, not letting him go to sleep. Then she started scurrying about the apartment, cleaning up the mess trying to keep her mind occupied all the while shouting at Harley demanding a response to keep him awake. After a few hours she laid down in bed next to Harley, she told him it was ok to pass out and he was asleep in seconds. Angel lay in bed, the gravity of the events that had just unfolded began to hit her. She thought of her father, what if that had been her lying there all blue with her eyes rolled into the back of her head. For the first time she saw things from her father’s perspective. A man, after losing his wife to cancer, could not bear to watch his daughter kill herself. She drifted to sleep, making a promise to herself that she would never be the one laying in bed turning blue.
"Where are you going." asked Harley as a fully dressed Angel was slipping out the bedroom door. Angel, with a nervous smile, looked him straight in the eyes with for what felt like an eternity and replied, "Home." Harley looked at her with a puzzled face and did not say a word as he watched her leave.
A taxi is waiting for her in the apartment complex parking lot and she tells the driver her home address. The driver immediately picks up on Angels need for silence and quietly heads toward their destination. Angel stares out the window as the cab rolls through her old neighborhood, she had not been to this part of town since the last time she saw her father. All the houses were the same, nothing was new except a few paintjobs and newer SUVs. The cab pulled up in front of her house. It was the second nicest house on the block, one of only two two-story homes. The house was exactly how she remembered it, nothing had changed, it was still the same dull grey color with a light blue-green trim. Angel sits in the backseat of the cab, for a moment ignoring the drivers request for the fare. She stares out at her lonely house, strong but empty, just like her father. "Ma'm, please." She finally pays the driver and leaves him a handsome tip. She lights up a cigarette as her knees begin to shake and her gut tightens as she makes her way up the concrete walkway to the front door. She takes a deep breath and slowly exhales a cloud of smoke as she rings the door bell. A tall man in his early sixties, who looks damned good for his age answers the door. The pair lock eyes and are equally surprised at who's souls they are staring into. Angel is staring at her father, begging with her eyes for him to say something, anything, she just needs to hear his voice. She just needs to hear his voice and it will all be ok.
"You look like hell…" the man says with a discerning smile spreading across his once solemn face.
"I'm ready to come home."