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May 8, 2005

Up A Notch: Now We're Cookin' With Acetylene Torch

+ 4 (all 30 all gone)
(what’s that, a $170/day habit? and these dubs I just got from Richie Rich are kind of small and at this point—no sleep or food since 8am Friday [now a quata ta three pm Sunday], not even my antibiotics as that prescription was temporarily surplanted by another self-administered, and on the heels of a cold which, combined with non-stop 24 hr fume and hot toxic particulate inhalation, now rears its ugly head only in the occasional hauling forth of a very dense gray-green hunk of highly spittable flembe—the effects are nil to minimal. Little more than a staving off of the body trembling [though not the headache, which I am normally not susceptible to]. Max my delivery driver called just as I was getting home to see if somebody had come through. I said yeah but call me back, or I’ll call him, as I might need more…If only to get through the laundry—the one thing that can’t be put off for the weekend: my feet stink like the devil I’ve been dancing with and I’ve already helped myself surreptitiously to a pair of S.’s socks…Oh, lord.)

Now, where did I leave off? Like the night before I’m to meet friends for cultural and sophisticarty entertainment—this time the museum for Basquiat and Fab Freddy spinning old school—but I putter and while away the hours contentedly, always thinking I have only another 20 or 30 minutes worth of work (work I have a lot of fun doing) or porn viewing (since I’m now on a, surely short term, kick) left to do, but there’s rollover even to the point that I’m walking to the door already late and decide I have to write Prairie, Paste in the poem I wrote of her and I yesterday. Because it’s good and that’s not just the Cr talking because I do write some schlibble-schlopp when I’m cracked up. Here, I’ll paste it in here, now:

In the meantime, s & m (no, really, a couple I’m tight with; I figure better go initials to protect the innocent) call & say it’s too packed. They swing by. We meet k & chicky in e. Village’s Lava Gina (fucking [no pun] beautiful name). I keep the Bulgarian contingent laughing out on smoke breaks. K asks me for charlie. I ask him how hardcore he is, if he can handle it cooked. He says yes but doesn’t know what I mean. Probably thought I meant with additives or maybe stepped on. We duck in lavatory like gaybirds, and even as he watches to see what I pull out he has to ask (obviously unsure of what to ask) “now, with this, you…”, so I spare him the heartache and cut him off with “it’s crack.” Brows raise. “Oohh.” “You want it?” “Sure.” but then he asked a couple times in a couple different ways if it would leave him in control, aware, cognizant. This is the blowhard who missed his own going away to business school party due to a blowout binge, and this is what I have little patience for: crack is cocaine; I won’t argue for it’s upstanding citizen status but US politicians and media have fostered a skewed view of the scene. To the point that even after those disclaimers, prepping, and coaching, he gets done with a prolong staged exhale like he saw me do, chills for a minute, and then asks when it will hit him. I say, “That’s the thing. It’s immediate. You don’t feel anything?” (introspective eyes) “Oh, yeah, I do.” “That’s what I was saying.”

Odd, group disbands early. 11 or 30ish. I’m not ready to go home, just having let myself out of that hardwood cage with computer. C called earlier so I dialed him as M speeds us in designer girlie fashion down the FDR towards the Bklyn bridge, her Maltese falcon in the Jetta’s pass chair, me in a boisterous and, I’ll say, witty vein on the celly telling C to get out of his pajamas, but his boxers on, and meet me at Boat. If fucking Carroll Gardens neighborhood. S&M’s, too. But he’s not having it. Still not ready I opt for a Boat drop-off anyway, counting on good odds that one of that regulars that are also at least acquaintances of mine will be lurking about. Nope. But I ducked into the bathroom for a tokey toke, much needed after the convo on the way:

M was observatin’ that K seemed on something, E she guessed, or coke, but I said no, he was hitting me up for the c train so he didn’t have that and he wouldn’t want that if he had e. Oh, I thought you boys were lining up in the bathroom. Oh, no. Then what were you doing? Smoking crack. A hah haha! I’m serious. Chuckle, chuckle. Weed? I told you guys on the way in I don’t like that stuff. It fucks me up worse than any drug. Seriously. I can handle it but it’s not usually enjoyable unless it’s solo and accompanied by a big plate of nachos, a pint of Chubby Hubby, and overstuffed couch, and cable TV with TiVo. It’s not social for me. Anyway, oh, yeah, that’s right, you did say that. So what were you two doing in there? I already told you. You said you were smoking crack. Yes, I did. You weren’t smoking crack! I don’t know why you don’t take me seriously. You were smoking crack. Yeah. I don’t believe you. Okay. Okay, show me a pipe then. You want two? I had two but produced one. M reacts, and Sil’s like ‘baby, that’s the same kind of pipe you have [to smoke the trees in]” but the conversation morphs into her passing harsh judgment on the stuff. I always admit the damages, but I hate the hypocrisy. Her and I were up all night and gallivanting around Manhattan, refilling the nostrils in Grand Central bathrooms and cabs in the bright morning light for fuck’s sake. She cites the crackheads defecating and vomiting outside her apartment in SF. I have yet to see that kind of results or behavior and I have kicked it with the depraved of the down & out, but I can accept it, but, I say, you do coke all day every day and you’ll be in the same place. She keeps the “no, it’s different party line” and I move into expounding and defending my theory that while crack is bad stuff, the bad stuff you see in the crack hoods has more to do with structural issues than with any particular drug itself. If coke were as cheap and easy as crack it would be the same motherfuken scene, yo. Mas o menos. S piped in with a study to back me. M got a little defensive and went back to speculating about the state of K, but S and I disagreed on that, too.

So. I end up at Brooklyn Social. Nobody I know there either. At first. I get my smoov aloof on. I get my quirky flirt on. I get my funny on. I meet people. Then one of my other peoples—the one I expected to run into, actually—shows with a new lady friend, for whom I do the flattering soft shoe. She eats it up, laughs it out. Asks how we met. Funny, I say, ‘cause he hated me that day. The day I bought this Coney Island hat I’m wearing, actually. The Mermaid Parade. Years ago. (It all fees good to say.) He and I, having just met, are standing in the Nathan’s hot dog line. My boy cuts me off. No, no, let’s not talk about that. See? I tell her. It still makes him uncomfortable. What it was was that there in the noon day sun surrounded by hordes and mobs at every shoulder, I do a quick, discreet, casual, no-one-notices key bump off my bag. Freaked him out and pissed him off. But I’m master at the do it anywhere techniques. It was fine.

Around the pool table a damn fine hottie hot and her friend ask me about my hat (a theme!). Hers is Bud Light. Then at one point, something I don’t recall happens to evoke from her something like “You haven’t helped me yet. We’ll see what you can do for me.” Pretty suggestive, the tone and movement, eyes. Damn, I was a monk and now I’m saved. Frankly, I was a little surprised, but despite the lack of beauty rest, I was feeling debonair and chill last night. I kept it cool, as I’m not one to bring on my game real hard, especially if it’s competitive. Then her friend, cute-ish but way farther down the line in comparison then suddenly, as if she’d just broken from a huddle, starting coming on to me thick and blatant, the tomboyish dream right there with us. I don’t want to hurt any feelings or burn any bridges so I play along minimally, and somehow the exchange inspired tomboygirl to give me a titty twister, to which I complained about the pain. She gave me a hard time for whining so I gave her a titty twister, and she hung with it. That’s a cool chick. Then she’s off, and I’m alone with second string who wants to sit. Which I would have done but I was needing a bathroom toke and by then I’d started passing the fixin’s off to my new fella & pool partner so I had to go get the business to do the business. And I think that was it for her, which didn’t phase me until the end of the night when all the girls left at once. I told my new boy, I do it all the time. Hold out for what I really want, and lose out on what I’d be more than happy to get. A flaw not quite fatal.

I say to him while he’s chatting, “so can I swing by your place tonight to get that book, then?” what book? I pause with a steady look. The book. You know. Oh yeah. He caught on. And then maybe in a so not gay way it was as good or better hanging with him at his place ‘til all hours finishing up the goodie bag (save the fallback dime I always walk away with). His sculptures and circuit tinkering were astounding. And the music I haven’t heard for two years. And the book of death faces. And the conversation. And the similarities. I told him I was tired of wa

[we interrupt this program…]
+4 (II)
for the accountant in me, in you, in all of us, that’s 38 bags/$380 in less than 48 hours (and the help I’ve had has been minimal)
[no back to our regularly scheduled…]

tching him let such inspired creations go unnoticed, uncaught in the public eye. and that I was going to secure him a gallery show and take the standard 10% (rate on sales). He laughed. I said whether you like it or not. I’m serious. Hours and stuff later, walking out the door for final home, I paused, looked heaven-then-floor-ward, and said “I don’t think it’s the crack talking. I think you should really be in galleries. I’m going to do it. We’ll be hip and rich.” he said something to effect that it’d be really damn cool if I did. So I told him he had to reply to my email with the links to Leon’s dewanatron.com (that has so much in common with some of his dabblings) and my couple web showcase stories, of course—otherwise, I’d have no contact info. He said he would and I think he will. And I think I will, but even God wonders with what time, in what segment of what day behind what other ambition or responsibility or mild ought?

So, two things. The new kid—Damon—has all these tools and comes off as a pretty handy sort of fellow, but he manages to break both my lighters in the space of an hour. Or maybe he just drains the one, but the other he kept lit ‘til its innards melted and the top sprung apart—classic beginner mistake if you can generalize my own experience—isolated, loner smoker that I am. Tonight was the first time he’d smoked out of a genuine crack pipe. So, what did you smoke out of? I laughed when he listed a bong. Good lord, the vapor must have blended and bonded en route. What other choice did he have, he asked. Oh, a blunt or a Coke can, maybe. You know, the classics. The poorer-than-poor crackhead maneuver. Or, okay, also an in-a-pinch maneuver for the more classy and respectable among us. So, yeah, a real greenhorn. He saw me push the screen and asked what was going on.

But in other ways he’s totally pro. I’d pulled a couple thick clouds off a caked up stem and told him when I first handed it over that I thought he could too if he knew what he was doing and had technique because the screen was way in and up to it was pretty burned clean from my two. He assured me he was and could and would and then came back with assurances that he in fact did. Later I pick up a nuance from him that I’m surprised I didn’t figure out myself, the way I think about this scientific shit. I hold the lighter kind of askance and adjacent, or move it around, or on and off, or just touch the rock lightly and quickly, and/or all of the above to keep from heating too much too fast. But he actually sometimes holds the flame off. And it works nicely. Weird, too, because I do that when the screen gets stuck way in and crap like that. And, the capstone of his bringing his expertise to the table…get this…he cooks! I think he pretty much went to Google for a rough outline and then trial and errored it. My first crack buddies, the old AfAm couple Toya and Black, the one time I traveled out to their house in Flatbush, they explained to me the process, how to cook. But they, as many of their demographic, don’t communicate in ways that I am accustomed and adapted to, so my knowledge was spotty, then forgotten.

Anyway, he pulls out a mostly used bag of coke and plopped it in front of me as a thanks. I was kind of frightened of it. So little…so capable of downer…so disruptive—one reason I’m digging the Cr over the C is because the down is so much more mellow and sleeping, while not necessarily easy or sound, much more attainable. So I declined. And he didn’t want it either. So, hey, cook it! He rigged a square of tin foil as a little platform off the desk, spread the C out over it with equal part baking soda (which he later theorized was a touch much), sprayed it with water from a sprayer bottle until he could stir it with an unbent paperclip while he rotated a flame some distance below it. I don’t think any stirring was involved in the version I heard, And being thin only some was pulled off and into the glass chamber. For the rest, he rolled a piece of paper and pulled on it over the foil as, again, he held flame below. We swapped off. It was good! Amatuerly arrived at, perhaps…sure. But any sort of cooking is another level. Again, not being in the scene or smoking with friends, I don’t know the norms, how it works, the tricks of the trade. All that shit is hard won shit. So. The cooking.

The other thing was the fucking torch. After blowing through both lighters the only option left was his blow torch—and than the Lord above us watching down over that he had that or we’d a been all dressed up with nowhere to go. It was beautiful. He turned it on low and we kept it lit like that, on the table, handing it back and forth through the small hours and into Mother’s Day. It was hotter, of course, and I didn’t like that. But it was a little bad ass, at least a smidgen hardcore.

Finally made it out alive, livery carred home, and sucked on crumbs and beatin’ off here on this till it was time to hit Rich. Rinse. Repeat. Time to hit Max. A little “compare and contrast” (stupidest phrase ever since compare is not limited to similarities, and worse that it’s propagated by educators). Rich has a multi-braided beard. Is always in a hoodie. So forth. Max has a nice car, dresses in sharp hip hop streetwear, is nicely spoken (relatively), and pulls up today with what is presumably his baby moms in the pass and a carseat set up in back. A family man!

In among and between it all, I put off a call to my Mom (persistently, almost insistently, naive to think I’d be well capable in, say, the evening. I did send the trad thimble, though, and she called to thank me for that but I saw 480 and let it vibrate its way across the hardwood floor. Feel a little guilty, made worse by my driver over to Crown Heights to cop, going off about how you gotta love your mother while she’s around ‘cuz after they’re gone…you know…[and he’s 63 years old, by the way] yo moms is all you got, the only one that love you no matter what, the rest is bullshit. Somehow we also talk a lot about drugs. He’s been on a methadone program for three years now. Down to 30ml now, though. Fucking hardest thing you’ll ever do, he says.

Posted by peligrito at May 8, 2005 6:25 PM

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