To my credit I was both awed and numbed to what she was saying…in a way it was the best thing I could think to hear out of the mouth of a woman interested in me…for it was clear that I was nothing but a cun-loving streaker, someone on the rotgut journey…someone who had some major bush-league insecurity, some mother infatuation and prick-envy…I was shallow and mute, un-fornicated, and loose, a dim prospect for a bun like Johanna…words were Buddhas and I was no word, just concepts and ideas, wispy and proud, nothing of which this deeply lived person could want…so I laughed a little nervoulsy. And I said “wow, it’s a story you’ve got Jo. You’re a strong woman to leave and take care of yourself that way…Does he still try to keep in touch with you?" “I don’t know…my sister said he came by the house once asking for me, but she didn’t tell him where I had gone…didn’t let him see the baby…but, I think he don’t really care…I’m his ‘little girl gone’…
“Damn the crack,” I said, “Cause I knew a heroin addict once, and that was not a pretty monkey to have on your back…but at least it’s not a killer monkey like a crack monkey…Jason must’ve been scary to be around…and you weren’t scared of him?” “Naw, he was gentle…the crack made him talk a lot but he was never violent around home…He did have some big guns tho’, and I know him and his friends got in a lot of fights and maybe killed people…’born in the night to perish in the night’”…
Imagine Crack. Imagine speedy kills. Imagine being borrowed in trembling anger and put on the wooden spoon...what terror, what 14th street halfway house terror it must be…I ran into a guy on crack once sitting in a stoop next door to my SF apartment…he gave me the evils, evil chills, stink eye…I checked my fear into my shorts and smiled. He softened minutely, just enough to tell me that he had just slipped off the wagon and smoked crack and NEEDED to have some beer to take the edge off…he didn’t want to KILL anyone, naw, he needed beer money so he wouldn’t KILL anyone…he said, “So can you please give me money for beer so I don’t hurt anyone?” And I fished out a five from my pockets and said “I understand” and went inside my front gate and said three small prayers of Om Ah Hung for the SF street…and all who lived on it…and for my protection from harm…and my good fortune to meet a reasonable crack dude…
- Michael Price
