I haven't updated in a LONG time. I'm participating in a writer's workshop near by right now. I had to write another story so I wrote this one. I don't know if it's any good but here it is...
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One more john tonight and he has enough for his fix. He looks all around him, looking for the perfect target. He charges one price for a hand job, but while they’re busy enjoying themselves, he takes whatever they have in their wallet. Some nights he gets lucky and gets some sort of executive type person with a couple hundred in the wallet. Some nights, he’s not so lucky, five bucks here, a dollar there. His luckiest night though, he didn’t have to go purchase any junk, it was there in the john’s wallet. He hasn’t had that kind of luck lately though. Its all been disappointing shit, a fiver here and there, more plastic than anything else. But that’s okay, he can use the plastic to crash in a hotel for the night, get something to eat, if his appetite isn’t dead. Some nights, when he’s able to pull some plastic, he’ll splurge and buy clothes or something stupid like that.
He’s got one in sight. Tall, blonde, handsome, clean cut. This one looks like the kind to ask for more, but he won’t give more than a hand. He whistles at the target, they exchange looks, check if the coast is clear, he dives into the alley to wait for the target. He only has to wait for a minute, here comes Blondie, slowly walking into the darkness. “How much?” He likes this guy, but necessity trumps over emotion, and rather than give him a discount, it’s easier to take his wallet. Quick mental math tells him he only needs $20 more and he’s good to go. He’ll be able to get his fix and have a little extra for tomorrow. “Twenty for hand. Nothing else.” The guy agrees, guess that’s all he really wants.
Behind the dumpster, the man pants quietly to avoid drawing too much attention. It doesn’t matter though, everyone who lives in the city knows this is Vaseline Road. Everywhere you go on this strip of road, there’s used condoms, empty canisters of petroleum jelly, junkies strewn all over looking for a quick buck in any fashion. There’s neon lights everywhere advertising nudie clubs, peep shows, debauchery and illness everywhere. The tourists are told to avoid this area. Only the bold, the curious and the adventurers come down here. Everyone who works here once had a dream and a goal to become someone amazing. But those dreams had to be set aside in exchange for survival. The dreams were traded for drugs, sex, booze, sickness, pain, and sorrows.
He knew this all too well, and rolled his thoughts around in his head. He had planned to be someone or something big and important. He didn’t care what he became, all he wanted to be was famous. Movie star, rock star, artist, writer, he didn’t care, he wanted his name on the tip of everyone’s tongue. He went to an audition for some small movie. He can’t remember anymore what the movie was about or what he picked as his monologue for his audition. It didn’t matter anyways, those days were gone. What he does remember is going to his job after the audition. All day he was distracted with thoughts of whether he did good or not. Maybe I should have…or if I had…but…It didn’t matter now, it was done. His slender frame was weighed down with the food for a party of seven grotesquely corpulent boors. He was passing a table full of trust fund kids, “Maybe he needs a little help?” He heard a malicious snicker coming from trust fund table and as he passed by, a foot slipped out too quickly for him to see. The food flew from the tray to the fatty table, showering everyone in steaks, vegetables, sauces of all colours, and so much more. He was planted face down, too humiliated to look up. Shrieks came from all the tables, everyone thought their swanky threads had been ruined. He didn’t want to look up, he could hear it all and he could feel his face getting red in shame. Slowly, his face came up from the humiliation. The manager’s feet were right before him, “Get up. Just get up you walking disaster.” He knew what was coming next, this wasn’t the first time this happened to him, it was the third time, and that was three times too many in this man’s book. He slowly got up, but he couldn’t meet his manager’s eyes, his voice was dangerously low, “Go to the back. I don’t care if you clean yourself up or not, but I do care if I go back there and you’re still here. Expect your last check in the mail.” He wanted to argue, but he knew when his manager said that, it was final, there was no fighting it.
He looked at his unfortunate reflection in the mirror in the service restroom. There was a little bit of pasta with marinara sauce in his dark curls. His hazel eyes stained with disappointment. Not even 20 years old and already, he was a failure. Any other person would try to be optimistic, but he saw it as being realistic, “I’m a failure and I’m not even twenty. What the hell happened to you kid?” He knew the answer wasn’t in the mirror, but he hoped it would give him something, anything, even a glimmer of hope. No such luck this time. He quickly cleaned himself up, changed out of his uniform, the standard waiter look, and into a black tee and some jeans that hugged every part of him. He slipped on his old sneakers, grabbed his backpack filled with miscellaneous items and walked out of the restroom.
He was walking out of the restaurant through the back door, as usual. He went through the alley and turned. This was the worst part of the day for him, because in order to get to the bus stop, he had to pass the patio, and, like any other weekend lunchtime, it was packed. He tried to pass quietly, without drawing any attention to himself but he couldn’t, “Hey there cutie, where ya headed?” He stopped to see where the voice was coming from. It was a woman’s voice, young but seductive, like she knew what she was saying, why and how. She had on a short skirt, all legs and a glimpse of more, big red lips, standard blond bombshell hair with a hint of roots. Her nails were long and sharp, her eyes full of mischief, and a cigarette slowly burning between her fingers. “I’m going home.” She laughed, “Do you party?” He’d been asked this before, and typically he said no, but something told him to say yes, “Yeah. You?” Her lips curled into a sly smile, “I didn’t I wouldn’t be asking, now would I?”
Back in the alley, he knew it was almost time for the grand finale. He gingerly slipped his hand into the back pocket of the pants, now lying crumpled at the john’s feet. He found the wallet, slipped it into his own pocket, and just waited for all of this to finish. He could feel the contraction of the muscles, as the body prepares itself for the giant pop. The man’s eyes were closed, he was almost there and just as he felt the release coming, he ran. He didn’t finish the job, he never did, not when it was like this. He’d start it, get the wallet, and run. He was notorious for that, but no one ever reported him to the police, that would just be entirely embarrassing, admitting they were on Vaseline Road. He ran as far as he could, but his lungs just didn’t have the capacity for any more running. He stopped when he thought he was far away enough. His hand instinctively went for his back pocket as he watched his back. Inside there was $200 in cash, three credit cards and the ID, which he always threw away. Tonight was a lucky night for him, he could get his fix, and then some.
Looking back on that night, with the beauty for the restaurant, he didn’t remember much. He remembers going to a party. There were hands everywhere reaching out and voices that accompanied those hands, “Try this. Drink this. Smoke this. Snort this. Just put this in your mouth, it’s wild!” Next thing he knew, everything was a blur of colours, sensations, euphoria and pain all mixed into one large haze. Suddenly, there came a voice near his ear, his hearing warped by everything he had just ingested, the words whispered were “The Casanova, pass him over.”
The next morning, everything hurt from everything. He didn’t know what happened, and he didn’t want to know. What little he did remember, he thought was fun, but that was because he had nothing else to compare it to. He looked around him. He was in a strange, large room. Everything in the room was a cream colour with gold everywhere. The walls were cream, the curtains were a gold colour, the bed was a considerable size, large enough for the five people in the bed. It was of a dark wood, but he wasn’t good at guessing what kind. There were clothes all over from the people in the bed, bottles of all sizes everywhere, all kinds of pills on a glass table in the middle of the room, decadence everywhere. The curtains were drawn, so he couldn’t get a proper scope of the size of the room, and it seemed like everyone else was asleep. He gently got off the bed, which was easy for him to do because he was on the far left edge. Next to him was the blonde from the restaurant. On the right side of the blonde were three other people, two men and a woman. She was a red head, that was all he could tell, she was sleeping face down. The men were huge, body builder huge. One was blonde, the other brunette. He wouldn’t be surprised if something happened between him and one of those brutes, he was a small man in comparison to them. He walked to the windows to pull back one of the curtains, but he decided it not to, it might wake up the other sleepers. Instead, he slipped on his jeans, or at least he figured they were his jeans. His other choices guido slacks that were far too big for him in length and width, a very micro mini leopard skirt or a very micro mini leather skirt. That narrowed it down to the jeans crumpled on the floor. He tiptoed across the room, which was twice the size of his tiny 300 square foot apartment. The bed was on raised platform on the far end of the room, but he didn’t realize this until he fell off. He lay there hoping he hadn’t woken anyone up. When he felt it was safe to get up, he lifted himself and scurried out of the room. Once in the hall way, he felt overwhelmed at the size of the entire place. “Oh my god, where the hell is a restroom?” his voice echoed throughout the whole place and with the echo came an echoed response, “Down the hall to the left.”
After that first party, it was party after party. The blonde introduced him to all sorts of people, “She’s a producer. He’s a director. She’s a photographer. He’s a painter.” The list went on and on like that. All sorts or people who just passed him around, used him for what they wanted, and passed him to the next person. Everyone swore they would make him famous, but no one really did. Everyone just filled him with lies and drugs. Heroin was his poison of choice, it made him numb and euphoric all at once. He didn’t care who he was going wherever with, all that mattered was that he got his fix. Sometimes, he got lucky, they’d give him some money or some sort of a gift. Pretty soon, this became his job.
Soon, the smack wasn’t working like it used to. Every time he shot up, he needed more, more, more. But it was never enough. He didn’t get anything out of the heroin, the people, anything. Everyday blurred into the next. It simply became sun up, shoot up, meet up, screw up, sun down, come down, crash, sun up, start all over again. He was naturally thin, but the heroin emaciated him further. His bones jutted out from everywhere, his eyes bulged out of his sunken face, his arms were covered with holes from the needles. There was one day in particular, he was looking at himself in the mirror of a restroom, who’s restroom it was didn’t matter, “What have you become kid. You can’t be called a monster, because you give in too easily, monsters don’t give in. You’re just shit. Nothing else. You’re so pathetic.” He started to cry, a choke caught in the back of his throat, he clenched his teeth to stop himself from crying. A tooth broke, he spat it out, “What the…I’m…I’m falling apart.” The fear started to grip him. “Just shoot up and you’ll be okay.”
That was three months ago. Now, he was homeless, alone, his teeth were falling out, his body was slowly dying, there was almost nothing left of the person he once was. He was in some back alley, stealing strangers’ wallets for a fix, holes in his arms, regrets in his heart, lost in this city on the sketchiest stretch of road. “No more tears kid. Crying never fixed anything, regretting never changed anything, and feeling sorry for yourself won’t get you your fix. Let’s go.” He knew where his dealer lived, all he had to do was place a call, “Yeah. No dude, I have the money, I can pay. Are you busy? Cool, I can be there in like five minutes bro. All right, see you then. Same place? All right.”
He walked down two blocks, over one, the Seedy Hotel. Everyone on Vaseline Road called it that because that is what it was, the seediest hotel in all the city. People came here for the worst things imaginable. This is where his dealer lived, sixth floor. The elevator never worked in this dump, so he would have to take the stairs. “Hey kid! How’s business tonight? I hear there’s a convention in town, they coming down here?” Everyone knew this girl as “Candy,” no one knew her real name. She was always eating some sort of candy, that’s how she got the name. She was a young cute thing, many would pay top dollar for her, unfortunately, not everyone would be willing to pay that much. “Yeah, things a going good out there Candy. Is he up there?” Candy claimed to be the dealer’s sister, but she only did that for protection, this way, if anything happened to her, she had someone to run to in order to fix the problem. She’s lucky she has someone like that, he didn’t have anyone but himself. Candy adjusted her thigh-high, re-clipped it to the garter belt, adjusted her micro mini, took a lollypop from her purse, “Yeah, he said he was going to stick around until you came. You know you’re his favorite customer, right? I don’t get it kid, honestly, but he really digs ya. He’s up there waitin’ for ya, don’t make him wait, you know he hates it.” She let out the girlish giggle she always got when she saw him, she had a crush on him, but he didn’t think much of it. Plus, she was like the dealer’s kid sister, he’d kill for her, so it was best not to get into it with her, especially if things got nasty. “Thanks Candy. I’ll bring you something sweet next time I see ya, all right? Stay cute kid,” he rustled her hair gently, he knew she hated that, but let him do it anyways.
He finally reached the sixth floor. He saw all the usual faces, the old lady everyone called Granny, she looked out for everyone. There was all the usual prostitutes, going in and out of rooms, the junkies, there were kids here and there, they were the kids of the hookers. Some of the dealers used these kids for “errands.” None of the kids knew what they were delivering though. 613, lucky number? He knocked on the door, “Hey, are you there dude?” There was a television on extremely loud, the volume was quickly lowered, “Is that you bro?” He wanted to give a sarcastic answer, but he knew better than to do that. This dealer was one of the most paranoid dealers he’d ever met. “Yeah dude. No one’s with me.” He heard someone rush to the door and whip it open quickly, “Get in here dude.” The dealer pulled him into his room, gave the hallway a quick glance in both directions. “Did you see Candy? She said she was going out, but she didn’t say where she was going. Did she tell you anything?” This felt like a stupid question, everyone knew where Candy was going, the same place everyone goes for a quick buck. “No man, she didn’t say where she was going. But I’d assume she’s going to V Road, it’s where everyone else goes.” That seemed like a good enough answer for the dealer, “Yeah, you’re like…right or whatever dude, she’s probably there. You want the usual?” He couldn’t keep his mind in one place at once. But that was typical of users, he should know, he was one and he couldn’t focus on much.
He turned to look at the television, what had the dealer been watching. He couldn’t figure out what he had been watching. It was strange, but interesting. He couldn’t look away from the television, but he wasn’t really into it. His mind blanked out entirely. He wasn’t absorbing anything at all, not the activity around him, not what was happening on the television, not the movements in the hallway, nothing. His eyes glazed over entirely. Suddenly, he felt a tap on his shoulder, “Bro, here’s your stuff. I hooked you up with some really nice stuff!” He snapped out of his daze, “Oh, thanks man! Um…hey, do you have a harpoon I could use? I don’t know what happened to mine.” He knew his dealer always had the tools necessary and wouldn’t say no to him, “Yeah, here, use this kit, it’s new. Except the spoon, I used it for breakfast this morning. But I cleaned it, so it’s good to go. You can use the restroom.” He handed him the cash, “Thanks bro.”
He averted looking into the mirror. It simply reminded him of how much he’s lost, how big a failure he felt like, and how far below rock bottom he really was. He cooked up a little bit, just enough for a sample, and shot up. He didn’t want to use it all there, so he came out, “This is good, its, whoa. Hey, listen, I have to be off, I’ve got stuff to do or whatever. Um, I’ll call you later?” He hated hanging around the dealer, it was weird for him, “Yeah, I understand, I have to find Candy anyways. I’ll see you around kid.”
He left the hotel and started walking. He didn’t know where he was going, but it didn’t matter to him, he just wanted to get away from the hotel. He knew he was starting to shake, but he chalked it up to excitement. He walked until he found a narrow alley to go into. There was no one there, its better that way. He found a hidden nook in a door way, got everything ready and shot up. It wasn’t enough, so he immediately followed up with another dose. He felt everything in him slow down. He blinked but it felt like an eternity for his eyes to close and open. He knew what was happening, but he didn’t want to admit it. “No kid…not tonight…not…toni…” his tongue was too heavy. He wanted to get up to prove to himself that tonight wasn’t his night but he couldn’t. His heart was slowing down, he could hear it drumming loudly in his ears, slowly, beat by beat by beat. He wanted to cry, he had given up, and this was it. He knew what he came here to be, anything famous, he knew what he became, just another piece of trash on the street with nothing to offer anyone. “This is it…Just give up…”
