“I recently found pieces of notes i used to write during my bad years. This explains the first half of December 1998”
It’s pretty cold about this time of year in Philly. It’s pretty cold in a lot of places this time of year. But the winter weather adds a lot of despair to problems that already seem unbearable. Around this time, Paul had robbed a house for a lot of money…and he was nowhere to be found. I was staying at bills and doing heroin from time to time, and still huffing that bullshit tywall. Around my birthday, Jill came over and gave me a little something in Bill’s garage. She also brought some coke and hung out for a little while. I was sleeping in Bill’s basement which was also his room. He had a job at the deli shop around the corner. I had no job. Everytime I went to look for one, I just ended up finding drugs and coming back to Bill’s and we get high together. I knew his whole family from back when I was 11 years old. His brothers Bobby and Michael and his sister Kristen. His mom was a real nice person, her name was Donna. Jill saw the direction we were going with the drugs and she didn’t want to go into that downward spiral with us. So she went on her own little way….which I accepted and understood totally.
My birthday is December 8th. I think on the 9th, Paul showed up at Bill’s with about $15,000.00. It was all that was left from the money he stole. He got me and Bill and he ordered a Lincoln Town Car, with a driver from the yellow pages. The driver came and we went on a tour to get a shit load of drugs. We picked up about 15 sheets of acid, 5 8-balls of coke, 1 pound of weed, alcohol, beer, and a small bottle of tywall. We started soaking up the drugs immediately. We went toSouth Street, (a popular shopping area in Philly) and went to a tattoo shop. I was totally twisted on all the chemicals I had been absorbing, and I got a tattoo. Paul paid for it of course. I couldn’t decide what to get, and then in a quick decision…I got a panther on my right calf. I remember sitting in the chair and these girls hand feeding me little pieces of the acid sheet. I don’t remember the whole tattoo process, but when it was done it looked good. We went to a party later on in the Northeast; actually it was about 4 blocks fromNortheastHigh School. We went to this guy’s house that Bill and Paul know and we were getting drunk, as the acid was wearing off. Then later in the night….Devin walks through the front door of the house as we are all sitting in the living room. Apparently she was seeing the guy that actually lived there. It was awkward, but I handled it the best I could, especially with all the toxins my body had been exposed to. One of the guys made a homemade tattoo gun out of a remote control car engine, and various other pieces of things, including a pen tube. Everyone was putting jailhouse tattoos on themselves. And once the gun came to me, I didn’t know what to put on me or where. I just started drawing on my hand, and it became a star somehow. I put in on the web between my thumb and index finger on my left hand. After the booze depleted, and drugs wore off. We all passed out in the living room. I passed out on one side of the couch and Paul passed out on the other. Bill and the others, including Devin were on the floor or in the other chairs. Then about 20 minutes into my sleep, I heard Devin getting fucked by her new man. He didn’t seem to be doing a good job. She was a screamer, and I knew it, and I was happy they were having shitty sex. But I do admit it fucked with me for a little while.
December 10th: Now we are back at Bill’s and we get a Limousine, a few Town Cars and a lot of drugs for the big night. We got in the Limousine at around 4 or5pm and went to North Philly to get a lot of coke. We still had coke and acid and weed left that we forgot about. But it seemed like a good idea to get more. I think it’s pretty rare to buy street cocaine and angel dust from the back of a limo. The driver was cool with it….he didn’t give a fuck. He was actually cool. Paul even gave him a $500.00 tip when we were all done, mostly for letting us smoke weed and huff some T in the back. We drove around picked up people that we knew, got them high and dropped them off again. We drove downKensington Ave,Frankford Ave,Allegheny Ave, and all over the neighborhoods that we call our own with the Town Cars following. We even went downDyre Street, but of course no one was on the block at all. I kinda wanted them to see me in a limo. I felt important for a little while. I started huffing the tywall out of habit and got stuck. I just sat there worthless and then we arrived at the Lincoln Motel a few hours later. Once we got in the room, Paul said that he got 2 hookers to strip for us in the limo, but I was passed out and wouldn’t wake up. Paul then took me to the end of the hallway and we went down some steps to a place of the Motel that was under construction. We moved some boards and let in the rest of the crew. Apparently, we picked up a lot of people. There were about 25 people at least coming through the cracked doorway. The tywall and acid were still hitting me strong. When they were coming through the doorway, it reminded me of something out of a horror movie, like Night of the Living Dead. I controlled that spurt of fear, and went back to the room.
This is what makes Paul a sick, but clever man. At least at the time…I thought it was a good idea for him to think up. Apparently, earlier in the morning he took Devin and her friends to this same motel, and put them up in a honeymoon sweet. They had mirrored walls, mirrored ceiling, and a huge bed, with an ok-sized hot tub in the bathroom. He brought them here, and gave them enough drugs to survive off of until he got back.
This is how he knew about the flaw in the construction down the hall. Well anyway, once we got back, he put some people in our room and others in Devin’s room. (I’m using her as a reference, because I don’t remember anybody else she was with.)
But our room was the average looking cheap motel room that you’ll find way up north onRoosevelt Boulevard. The people in the honeymoon sweet really thought that they were making out in the deal. But Paul kept going over every 30 to 45 minutes with enough drugs for half of them, and he enjoyed watching them fight over whose turn it was to get high.
Meanwhile in our room, we had enough drugs to make the whole motel overdose twice. We made a line of coke that went from one side of the table to the other. It must have been an inch high, 2 inches wide and 4 feet long. Until then the only time I saw coke like that was in movies. I got on one side, bill got on the other and he said to meet him in the middle. I barely made a dent in the line and had to back off for a while. But I did enjoy filling up a cellophane wrapper from a cigarette pack for the next room. I went over, walked in and there was Devin. She was shocked to see me and I cared less to see her. I immediately made fun of the fact that I heard her fuckin the night prior. But when I walked in she had just got done fuckin someone else. Well, we went in the bathroom, locked the door and sat on the edge of the hot tub that was filled with moist towels, beer cans and god knows what else! She started telling me that Paul was treating them bad and they wanna go, but can’t go. I told her that the reason he was doing this was because of all the shit she put me through during the relationship, and the fact that she turned into a hoe after we broke up. She apologized for the way we broke up and I asked for some sex. She declined, and I’m glad she did. I really didn’t want anything to do with her again. But I really felt sorry for her in a distant way. I dumped out some coke on a tissue box, and we did a few lines. I gave the rest to her and said that I’ll do what I can to get more shit into the room. She begged to come to the other room, and I told her no. It’s my birthday party, but its Paul’s rules.
After a few days of this, the drugs were officially gone. I woke up with $600.00 dollars in my pocket, extreme distorted vision, and morning breath like it was coming from my ass. The room smelled like a brewery, and there was still coke residue on every piece of furniture in the room. A window was broken, there was blood on the carpet, and Paul’s arm was wrapped up in a messy bandage. There were people fully dressed with jackets on while they slept because the window had been busted. Yet others like myself, just had on their pants and socks. It was snowing and raining bad outside. Yet I didn’t feel an ounce of chilliness. I sat on the bed, put on the TV and the news came on, and Holy Shit…it was December 15th! Apparently, we had been in the motel for 5 days. I tried remembering things but I guess the drugs kept me in line. Then I thought about the others in the honeymoon sweet. I put on my shoes and went to their room. There were only a few others left, and Devin was gone. I remember promising her about getting them more drugs. I hate breaking my promises, but I’m sure she understands somehow.
I got in a taxi and told the driver to head to Bridge and Pratt. I wanted to see what had happened in Frankford, while I was in a coma at the motel. On the way there I seen the tattoo that I had put on my hand. It seemed to be peeling out of my skin. I pulled it off and it made a cool looking star shaped scar. Then I remembered the tattoo that I got on my leg. I pulled up my pant leg and seen this wretched, dry, panther crawling up my leg. I realized that I had fucked it up. And I’m probably gonna regret it to the day I die. I get to Frankford and I don’t realize the time. It was only about 7am on this Tuesday morning. I went to Dunkin Donuts, because I honestly cannot remember what and when I ate last. I ordered my usual. A bacon, egg, and cheese croissant and a small coffee. The weather didn’t seem like it was going to let up. I went house to house in the neighborhood, and nobody seemed to be up to do anything. So, I get on the bus and take the long way back to the motel. Which was about 45 minutes to an hour. I get back to the motel and almost everyone was awake or moving in acknowledgment that they were alive. We were all telling stories and tried putting together pieces of the past few days. As I examined the room more. There were condoms scattered around, drugs and paraphernalia laying out, and on top of the TV a bag of construction hard hats with a political seal and read City ofPhiladelphia. It seems that the girls that came in the room with us, had sex with almost all the guys more than once. The only ones they didn’t fuck were the ones that were asleep. People were telling me that I was awake for the majority of the time and I was an animal. Yet I have no idea, since it was the biggest blackout of my life.
A Lincoln for My Thinkin 