I thank my buddy Herbie, who braved the icy wind to visit the floating bookshop and purchase Carrie Fisher's memoir, Wishful Drinking.
Some time around 1991 I received a letter from a woman I was nuts about for a decade - at least. In it, she included a piece she had written for a college class assignment. I haven't seen her since then, but I think about her, and other women who left their mark on me, just about every day. I edited the piece, which was untitled, called it Chaos in Alphabet City, and posted it online after 9/11, adding an intro. I've never submitted it to a print magazine. I wouldn't without her permission. Here's what she sent me:
A few years ago I was living over a fruit and vegetable store in Alphabet City. My roommate was a cop who eventually traded his career for a free-basing pipe. As devastating as that was, it wasn't his bottom. He bottomed out in a filthy, garbage-strewn, rat-infested shooting gallery on Avenue D. He didn't die there because the hooker who had become his free-basing partner panicked after he passed out and she couldn't revive him. After several calls, she tracked down his mother, who was reluctant to respond. ALANON was helping her restore some order to her life. She was learning tough love and was afraid to do the wrong thing. She called someone from her group, who joined her at the hospital. Her son was lucky. His bottom was a breakthrough to recovery. Some people never reached that point. They became part of the "living in limbo" tribe, managing to keep a job but spending half a paycheck on partying, always busy but always sort of running in place.
When my former lover finally surrendered to a higher power, he owed $70,000 to dealers. The only reason he kept his life was because his suppliers were goombahs, the same crew who sipped espresso with his uncles in side street cafes.
Free-basing cocaine is very expensive. One way to afford it is to sell it. Our 1st Avenue apartment was a busy place. Evidence of "the life" was everywhere: scales, tin foil, mounds of coke, powders for cutting it, beer bottles, junk food, expensive brandy, bags and bags of quaaludes, and a pit bull. That was home sweet home. My man had no fear of leaving me alone with the drug because, for whatever reason, cocaine did not appeal to me. I had my own vices, but that's another story.
Life lost all semblance of normalcy. It was not unusual to be awakened at four or five in the morning by relentless pounding or kicking on the door. I never knew if it would be cops or some paranoid, trigger-happy drug addict. I have one vivid memory of a guy with a machete, Louie "Chink," an Italian-American with squinty eyes that were always smiling. He was never really into it for the coke. He loved the excitement and loved my man. They grew up together and later supported each other through the early stages of sobriety. But Louis never really gave up the life. He was shot to death in a phone booth across the street. I miss him.
But way before anybody became sober or dead, we were all still at the apartment. Obsessed with my man, I rationalized everything that was going on. Sometimes I took it personally and got physical. Being a free-baser was like belonging to a club. If I didn't want to become an active member, that was fine. The network provided him with plenty of company. There were times I came home from work and found him sucking on his pipe alone, but, for the most part, he got plenty of attention from others. Being a dealer guaranteed that - if you weren't choosy about your fans or their motives. Even through the alcoholic haze I was usually in, I could see how people played up to him. He was incidental to the coke. So, mostly there were strangers in the house. He introduced them as business acquaintances. There were all kinds: respectable looking guys, sleazeballs, attractive young women in business suits and pumps, and hookers dressed for the part. Free-basing had long since taken precedence over sex in our life. Coke made people think they were wonderful lovers, but it didn't tell their bodies the truth. I didn't envy anything sexual that may have been happening, but whoever was there had the attention I wanted. Since I never overcame my obsession with him, it took very little to reassure me. Sometimes, when he couldn't manage it, I got irrational, more irrational than choosing to remain in that environment might indicate. On one such occasion, more because I was feeling rejected rather than to come to his rescue, I destroyed all the free-basing apparatus. Even that didn't earn the attention I craved, negative though it would have been. Securing new "works" became his immediate concern. And so this former cop crashed in the window of a head shop that had the gall to be closed at five AM. The next day he was his own charming self and went back and overpaid the amazed Indian storekeeper for the damages and stolen items. He won another fan. It was really important to him that people like him, especially people he didn't know. He knew he had my unconditional love. I was helping to kill him.
It was during this time that I witnessed an incident that motivated me to get free. One evening hysterical cries from the street penetrated my depression. When they became too much to ignore, I turned off the bedroom light and raised the shade. A familiar, sickening episode was in progress. The cast included a sleazy but brutishly handsome man and the woman he was beating. He had backed her against a crumbling storefront. Despite features that hinted at a former appeal, the blonde victim, now fat and unkempt, groveled. She was screaming obscenities at him while he struck her with a broomstick.
The salsa beat on the avenue quieted for a moment as the street people, distracted from their card and dice games, gathered. Beers in hand, they watched, some shaking their heads sadly, others laughing, jostling each other. Also watching, silently, with huge, frightened eyes, was a little girl. The cowering woman kept trying to clutch at the child, which further enraged her assailant. It interfered with the rhythm of the punishment he was delivering.
Finally, perhaps moved by the child's horror, a couple of bystanders set aside their beers and restrained the man, taking the weapon from his hands. Even after the man was led away, the pathetic creature, like a living bundle of rags in the doorway, continued the performance, albeit for a much less interested audience. The little girl tugged at her mother desperately, helping her up. Clasping the dazed child to her as she skulked down the street, her screeches shrank to whimpers.
A brisk breeze cooled my face. The stench it carried, however, reminded me of the overflowing garbage cans one flight below. Suddenly the man became enraged again and ran after the miserable pair. The terrified child was pulled back and forth in a tug of war, until, once again, the man's friends dragged him away, pouring liquor down his throat. Scurrying away, the woman made the growling sounds of an animal. She fled toward Avenue A, using herself as a buffer to protect her child from the taunts and vulgar gestures flying after them.
I wondered what the woman had done to deserve such abuse and I remember feeling contempt for her because she took it.
Within seconds, certain there would be no encore, the street was again pulsating with a steamy tempo. I heard the apartment door slam and voices in the kitchen. Business was going on as usual here too. Shaken and desperate, I lit a joint to erase all thought.
Not long after that I moved out. A friend warned me that the place was "way too hot." The police were aware of it and other dealers were getting jealous of the business. I hurried home with the information, not knowing if I hoped to rescue my man or if I was the one who wanted to be rescued.
"I'm afraid to live here."
"So leave."
When I finally left it wasn't because of my fear of guns, cops, addiction or even death. It had to do with love - my family, my father. And if you're wondering where that came from, well that's another story too. If I didn't believe in anything else, at least I believed in that kind of love. I couldn't shake the image of my father laying down his change and seeing my bloody corpse splattered across the front page of The Post: "Teacher's Aide Statistic of Drug War in Alphabet City." I knew he deserved more than that, even if I didn't. Today I know we both did.
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