Crack is a Many Splendored Thing Story
My eyes were magnetized shut….Literally…. Those fridge doors were on top of each eye - how they stayed aloft the whole morning and the better part of the afternoon was way beyond my weekend pay grade.
After such a particularly virulent bender, trying to open them up is akin to being revived after a centuries long cryogenic deep freeze in crushed aluminum foil. The kind you'd expect to find in a really cheap Italian sci-fi 70s movie…. invariably involving a Sears Diehard car battery for special F/X, with lots of gratuitous sparks, burning flesh and the bloodcurdling scream signaling re-animation (End of Act 1). It takes me a goodly amount of time to thaw out- it could have been a few hours or days as I can only approximate, not being sure where I am and what appendages are still in functional working order…
Living in the moment or around that time, I, true to form, have no food in the apartment and my mouth has that distinct taste of being used as an anal tampon receptacle throughout the night before. My cabinets are cleaned out, nothing rotting, growing, fermenting or forgotten. So it's a 50-50 chance that I woke up when the grocery stores are open- as 24hr Drugstore food, lately my main staple, has numbed my palate.
I get into my local Barrio C-Town supermarket- I naturally assume with steadfacist conviction that the 'C' must stand for Crap. Following that slanderous train of thought, my creative juices come up with an ad campaign to support the new name change. The tag line in the C-Town bus stop ads should read: " 'Best used by' the dregs of society " or 'C-Town, c'mon and shop here, it could mean disability…"
I needed some artificial energy and I found myself craving a near burnt baked potato slathered in gravy, cheese and whatever was on the floor in the back of my fridge- Was I fricken preggers or was there brain seepage out of my nose during my recent comatoma? Man that's cuisine fit for Renfield, Dracua's PA…just don't think about it… put your fingers in both ears and hum 'Pop goes the weasel" really loud… Wait am I a gay? Shit…oh now I remember… I get these searing bouts of paranoia when I'm blotto- SO I haven't fully come down just yet… good to know… I have to smile to myself thinking back to times before I can to this discovery about myself, I'd go dating and drinking and inevitably at some point during the evening, usually later on, I'd just get these feelings of betrayal and instead of messing things up by being needlessly accusatory I would just vanish- usually to see the young Lady nevermore….Ha that was a fun flashback.
As I'm pleasantly reminiscing, I'm brusquely jostled out of my stupor and fly face first and open-mouthed into to the side of the frozen food aisle. Unfortunatley I ad the glass door opened and now my tongue gets stuck to the sub-zero metal vege shelf, pristine in it's iced blockiness as it hasn't seen any action in millennia-this is after all CTown, eat at your own risk…..
As I slowly gain my focus I scream in lisp for help! Staying motionless and having only one clear view down the aisle, it's the most unlikely sight… of this completely bloated weirdass Family in long black coats – Is it Feb or June? Just like me to stumble tongue first onto a NYU Film grad student 'no budget' movie set. It's as if my head was a broken rabbit-eared TV set with a snowy picture and harsh hissing sound…The old lady and the teen are really into their roles, both fluidlessly emaciated, except their coats look like the Balloony guy in the Michelin tire ads. They are all inflated- puffy and pointy-what gives? They seem to be moving imaginary shopping carts like pantomimes putting in stuff and from time to time staring down the security cams… as if to say 'I GOT THE SCRATCHES AND I'M SEEING GIANT MUTANT BUGS- WITHDRAWAL SUCKS MAN!'
As I plod to the check out line, there is the First Family of Crack with 2 cans of soda – grape- generic and dusty. As the Older Lady reaches into her pocket to pay, I pray it's to pay or to be beamed up without paying… I hear a massve 'CLUNK" on the checkout counter. And lo and behold there's a huge slab of meat just lying there- what it was I can't say, remember it's 'C' Town…and maybe it was home-slaughtered and they breed rats that big around here…but it obviously slipped out from under her coat and she is noticeably slimmer- talk about the biggest loser
All the while the syncopated relaxing tones of 'Do YOU KNOW THE WAY TO SAN JOSE" FLOW FROM THE FILTHY SPEAKERS….The Hispanic checkout chick freaks out with the 'MIA MADRI! OOH PAPI! DOS EQUIS!!' stuff and she is crossing herself over and over again, fast, like shooing a wasp's nest in front of her- and She keeps looking at the ceiling for a hole as she's trying to figure out what happened….But before she can call over the obese smelling Manager, the older 'Crackee' Lady ( heretofore known as the Crackwhore of the first part) proacts by yelling 'SOMEONE THREW THIS MEAT AT ME! WHO THE FUCK THREW THIS MEAT AT ME! ? WHERE ARE YOU? !!' And she starts heading for the door, a human shopping cart dragging the kid- both looking like the previous experiment before Dr. Frankenstein got it right- sort of….
The little kid is visibly nervous and antsy -
HE'S POINTING TO THE DOOR AND ALL I'M THINKING IS: DID I TELEKINETICALLY THROW THAT MEAT AT HER? AND IF I DID HOW COME I MISSED?
Sitting this one out and watching from the sidelines seemed the prudent thing to do but for some strange reason this whole thing smacked of a combination of the Gift of the Magi' Christmas' goodwill to man' Meets Robin in the hood's 'stick it to the man' (boy that's got to be some strange reason!)
SO I run to the hardware section and grab some charcoal spray paint and tackle the manager and anoint him in the eyes – he's pretty annoyed and totally blind – I do the same with hysterically beserk Checkout Chiquita who starts speaking in tongues and goes into convulsive seizures ( swallowing all those tongues?) as if she's in religious ecstasy and the then cameras lenses or did I do the cameras first? Can't remember it, this took all of 15 seconds to accomplish- the old lady and kid are halfway up the street and I run after them for my share- kidding-
I figure I can probably revisit that store in about the same time as the half life of Carbon-14
I start walking home the other way, hankering for some Grape Kool-Aid and wondering just how good must crack really be in order to inspire such devotion- it's must be like a voluntary wet dream in delicious plaid rubber boots- I respect those crack trash, they put it all on the line and used up their allotted smarts for the month just for a few pounds of USRDA Rat. I've always secretly yearned for a love with that kind of ballsy dedication- the desperation of never giving in with faceless odds in every direction.
