Black Hole (21 page)

Oso, homeboy, open up. It's Chuck.

No response.

I try the knob. Unlocked. I turn it and pull the door open.

There's a smell a man can make when shitting and pissing himself for days on end. It's a smell that nature uses to keep us away from the other sick animals. Only the most disgusting of predators will come near: the flies and the junkies.

Oso's lying on a futon mattress on the floor. The TV is on, blaring away true-crime shows that aren't nearly as bad as what I'm seeing. His hand twitches, and the channel changes to a hoarding show.

He's not dead. The resilience of drug addicts is phenomenal. They may want to die, but they won't until the drugs are ready to not be done any longer. The drugs will keep them alive so they can be done.

Part of me wants to call someone to get help for this insufferable condition, but there are two realities working against me. One: nothing is going to help this guy. Two: the drugs I need are inside him, and I must get them out.

I sit on Oso's chest and put my hands around his neck and squeeze. There's recognition in his eyes but no panic or anger. He'd lift his arms to get me off, but they're too heavy right now.

His neck is too big to get my hands around. It's slick with saliva and sweat and fuck knows what else. His skin swells with the strain of the marbles filling his pores.

I give up. I pick up a belt and put it around his neck. Slide one end through the buckle and pull tight. His face turns red. He struggles but fails. He's weighted down.

Unless I find a way out of this, this is what waits for me.

His torso ripples. His eyeball swells and pops like Bubble Wrap. Even with all this smell of shit and piss and death, the smell of the inside of an infected eyeball is still noticeable.

A giant black ball pops out and rolls across the floor. I was
expecting more. But that one will do. It's the largest one I've seen, and it made a loud thump when it landed.

Oso is still. I killed him. Behind me, the TV flashes promos for one of those rednecks-with-money reality shows. It's the new version of
The Beverly Hillbillies
, and it's about as accurate. The worst thing you can do to poor people is dump a bunch of money on them. They'll kill themselves spending it like a fish that eats itself to death.

I pick up the marble. It's maybe too heavy to carry in a pocket.

My hands are disgusting. They're covered in Oso's death-goo.

I find the bathroom but notice right away something's different.

The bathtub is full of meth. Like one giant hunk of meth that's he's made. Holy fuck. It's a lot of meth. A lot. I wash my hands.

Think. I've been here before. There was a cookie tin of cocaine and a bunch of cash. It should be there.

I go in the kitchen, find a grocery bag. Cookie tin of coke. Check. Money, well, not as much as last time, but there's still a stack. Check. I find an ice pick and go back to the bathtub.

I'm hunking out what looks like a lifetime supply of meth and dropping it into the grocery bag when I hear the door. Fuck.

Someone is in the apartment. He screams when he sees Oso.

What the fuck? What happened to you?
he yells.

There are some more noises, followed by a disturbingly loud thump and agonizing screams.

If there's a chance, it's now, before anyone else shows up. I slip out the bathroom door and see Vietnam John, who has slipped on some goo-wet marbles and fallen on his knife. He's making a tourniquet out of the belt I left around Oso's neck.

I should run, but I freeze for a moment, and he sees me.

Chuck, you bastard,
he says,
you did this. I'm going to cut you into one-inch cubes.

I don't stick around to argue his point.

OLD NAVY

PAYLESS FOR SHOES
.
Done. Now for better clothes.

At the Old Navy on Market Street, I ask to get in the dressing room. The plan is get new clothes and wear them out of the store. Pay for them, of course, but I look like a real freak in these old costume clothes. And I can smell myself, and if you can smell yourself, everyone else smells you twice as much.

Chuck?

Fuck. Who is this? She's speaking to me like she's unsure. Like she's checking to make sure it's me.

It's Nancy. Nancy McKenna.

Nothing.

Nancy Suicide?

Oh shit. Nancy Suicide. God, I was so hot for her back in the day. Another hotshit punk girl who wouldn't give me the time of day. I talked to her at a few parties but never got any alone time with her. She always dated some foreign punk dude who showed up like some kind of fucking genie with an accent. As soon as one bailed out, another one took his place.

You look different. No dreadlocks.

Yeah, all corporate. Gotta pay the bills. What the fuck are you wearing?

Crazy night.

Smells like it. Hey, I don't mean to offend after all these years, but I can't have you funking up the clothes.

I'm going to buy them, I swear.

Are you sure? No offense, but you smell like you rolled in something dead.

Not too far from the truth.

Here. Go into booth three. Can I ask you something, and you promise you will take it in the spirit that it's intended?

For sure.

Um, I've been clean and sober for five years now, and it's been really great. I went back to school, got my teeth fixed . . .

I zone out. Not doing that bullshit. Don't need to hear it. Right now I need to do more drugs, not less. That shit is not going to help me. I nod and agree to something. I'm not sure if it's a Buddhist meditation or a Bible study or if she was trying to make amends; I really don't know and I don't care. I give her a number that used to be mine and head into the dressing room to change.

BACK TO WINCHELL'S

THERE'S ONLY SO
many places you can go with cash and no ID and no credit cards. I can't get a hotel room. I can't rent that fucking party bus. There's nowhere to go but back to the Winchell apartment. I have to get one of them to get me that fucking party bus. It's my only link to when things were right.

When I walk in to Winchell's place, the old man is there. He looks two hundred years old but as mean as a snake. Some of those old theater queens are like old ladies at a retirement home, but some of them are the kind of fierce you earn from years of bitterness.

Who the fuck are you?
he says with a sneer.

That's Chuck, the boy I was telling you about,
Dallas says to calm him down.

I say nothing, but I walk to the table with my shopping bag. I take out the tin of cocaine and open it up. Nothing makes you more welcome than a cookie tin full of cocaine.

The old man snorts it up like a Shop-Vac. He's in good spirits.

Why, I haven't had any cocaine this good since the Reagan administration. Day that bastard took office, the street price of cocaine dropped three hundred percent. And it was good stuff, too, the kind of quality product that regular folks like you and I can't get a hold of.

He was a homophobic son of a bitch, that's for sure; didn't want to even say AIDS on TV. With a faggot son at that. That was one hot piece of ass, let me tell you. That boy whored it up in every queer neighborhood in America. Everyone wanted to fuck the president's kid. Who wouldn't? He had his pick of the litter. Liked those big-muscle fags, and I wasn't anywhere near that. Not even back then.

We all had great coke for about eight years, and then he went out of office and the quality dropped and everyone started doing meth instead. I was never into that stuff. Cocaine made me think everyone wanted to fuck me; meth made me think that everyone was hiding outside my window.

And when the drugs changed, the music changed. Disco had long died for the rest of the country, but it was still the official music of gay America. But meth killed disco and gave way to that bullshit house music. Ugh. Remember when gay people liked gay music? Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, and ABBA?

Don't get me started on the death of the musical. You know that's my thing. The strange part is that hip-hop kept me alive. Those talentless angels started sampling my work. I have points on dozens of rap records I've never listened to. Made more money from Jay-Z and Beyoncé than I ever did back in my heyday.

This is really good shit. I haven't had anything this good since my friend Bruce who used to be a limo driver for Bill Graham was still around. God I miss him. AIDS, of course, like everyone else who was beautiful. My only saving grace was being a plain Jane. Just didn't fuck enough to catch it. Bruce was a beautiful man who had an ass that looked like two cantaloupes in a pair of cutoff jeans.

Where did you find this? It makes me miss drugs. My generation's drugs. Quaaludes. Poppers. Real acid. That barrel-shaped-pill kind. Not that bullshit on paper. Orange sunshine. Now those were drugs.

You know what we should do?
I say with my best Jack Nicholson coke grin.
We should get a party bus.

Of course they agree with me. We're high out of our minds, and we have time, money, and yet more drugs. Winchell has a credit card and a clean DMV record, and I have cash and the drugs. It's perfect.

THE BUS

SAD MILES HOLDS
a license to drive this thing. Turns out the man is a former muni driver. Makes sense, I suppose. Sad Miles. Sad-for-miles Miles, the bus driver. He doesn't look happy when he drives, but he looks a little more alive, like he has a purpose again.

Our little party grows at each stop. Harris orders stops at all his favorite bars, many of which no longer exist. Everyone who gets on is over sixty-five or under twenty-five.

The old ones are classic old queens from back in the day. Well dressed, biting senses of humor. Expensive but ordinary haircuts. No tattoos. They look like they stepped off a game show from 1972.

The young ones are like you'd expect. Perfect bodies. Eyes that light up with drugs the quality of which they've never had. Lots of cell phone pictures, themselves in every one, every picture a selfie. Their shirts come off quickly, and I don't blame them. I guess if they didn't look this good, Harris wouldn't have invited them on in the first place.

The bus is full. The music thumps. If there are twenty people on this bus, there are thirty conversations, coked-up plans and monologues and ideas, no one listening and everyone talking.

There are more drugs on here now than when we started. At some point, there will be less. At some point, there will be peak drugs, when we have the most drugs we're ever going to have here, bus or no bus. The smart party move is to bail out at that
time and find a different scene. But I'm not here to party. I'm here to get high as fuck.

I get the marble out of my stash and look at it. The little black ball that started all my problems. It is my problem. Maybe it's the solution to my problems.

I smoke it. I fire it up and hit it again and again. I don't even give a fuck about being high anymore. I have to get back. I'm smoking with a sense of direction. Smoke it like it's the only way home.

The withdrawals hit as soon as I see him coming for me. The adrenaline rush doesn't help; I'm too sick for it to matter. The sidewalk is like ankle-deep wet mud. A crowd of Vietnamese ladies runs for the bus down the hill, opposite of me. I'm a drugsick rock in the middle of a stream. I'm losing ground, being pushed backward. These women with their pink plastic bags mean business.

I see him closing in. A giant skinhead in the standard flight jacket. It's not a small jacket, but he's too big for anything. His head is a swirl of bloodless white and tempered red. His eyes are black buttons sewn into his face. A vein like a cable runs up the side of his neck and talons across his temple. I know he's coming for me.

I have a .25-caliber Raven in my pocket. This may be it. I'll have to wait till he gets right on me and empty the clip in his gut and run. I won't make it far. Even in the Tenderloin, you can't get away with this shit. I'm too sick to get away. I need money. I need my fix. Hell, I only really need my fix. That's the only reason I need money.

I've been here before. I've been here several times. Identical
realties laid over one another like clear acetate sheets. This is where it always starts, isn't it? What came before this? What was I doing right before I got here?

Fearsweat soaks me. The sickness makes it worse. Everything's slowing to a stop. The world isn't going by at the same rate. Jones Street smells like dried and re-urinated-upon urine puddles, twice-peed stains in the cracks.

He gets closer, like frames are cut out of the movie. He's a slideshow of impending whatever it is he's going to do. I'm getting stomped, most likely. Kicked with steel-toed boots into submission and then ground down between heel and concrete. I'm mostly worried about my teeth being crushed. Everything else heals. Teeth are fucked forever.