Needle Too (12 page)

14

Lehigh Acres, Florida.

At around 27 feet above sea level it’s the highest point in Lee County and was named as such. There’s no cement, no sidewalks and no buildings and the snakes, lizards and alligators swimming around the canals—not to mention the wild rumble of panthers growling in the thicket—are things you’d only expect to find in a jungle on the other side of the…
road
. Now, add to that a porch, a rocking chair, a shotgun by the door and the Hatfields and McCoys by the river. Indeed, not everything is Miami, Orlando or Palm Beach.

When I first arrived in late November I have to admit I was really quite taken in by it all. The weather was impeccable, and Southwest Florida didn’t seem real. As a matter of fact,
it isn’t
—because six months out of the year it would be uninhabitable if it wasn’t for air conditioning and mosquito repellent. But thanks to technological and scientific advancements you could sense the excitement in the air. In thick-wooded, unsettled areas of Lehigh with no signs of civilization beyond five-foot-wide dirt roads and small, informal street signs attached to trees—plans were being made to make lots and lots of money in lots. Here, in addition to nothing but nature, you would see official and unofficial
demarcations noting where one property line began and the other ended, and within ten years some of these small parcels of dirt and trees would fetch 30 to 40 times their present value.

As 1996 became 1997 the weather was splendid, though Perry and I spent most of our time indoors watching television, being depressed, popping Nyquil, eating like pigs but wanting nothing other than to be high...on
anything
. It was a longing and a void that would remain empty and open and incapable of being shut so the best you could hope for was to fill it with something that wouldn’t kill you…or at least not right away. Of course, there was no dope or any
real
drugs in the area to be tempted by—but there was some weed. The driest, brownest, most awful low-grade shit you could ever imagine—homegrown,
Florida
shit—which Perry said was always subpar because it’s too hot in the summer and too dry in the winter for anything decent to grow. I suppose there was better stuff available that was grown indoors or smuggled in from other places, but we didn’t know of any specifically and would have been unable to afford it even if we did while living off of Randy’s generosity—which was being doled out by Granny in frustratingly small and measured amounts. So I suppose I should have been thankful for the continuous crop of crap that was being cultivated about a half-mile down the road from Granny’s house in the backyard of Lehigh’s redneck bar, and marketed and sold by Lehigh’s redneck bartender.

“You know, I can also get you boys some pussy if you like,” said Nate the redneck barkeep as I finished my beer and he handed Perry a bag of schwag, but was apparently hoping to become our one-stop-shop for liquor, weed
and
women.

“Nah, that’s all right, I reckon,” I said as Perry pored over the pot he’d just purchased. “But just for the hell of it, Nate—how much
would
a piece a pussy go for in these here parts?”

“Twenty bucks.”

“Same as the weed!”

“And just as dried-up…I reckon,” said Perry in his own faux-billy accent.

“None of that kinda talk now—ya’ here!” barked Nate, though I’m not sure if he was defending the weed or the women.

“Just funnin’ around some,” Perry said. We then paid the $2 tab for two drafts and quietly removed ourselves from the wooden stools at a wooden bar in a wooden dive with sawdust on the floor that at one point might have played a greater role in creating the motif.

As shitty as the weed was, along with a lot of Nyquil it satiated me for the time being, though we were careful not to get caught smoking by Granny. And though we were constantly grappling with a longing to be high on heroin there could be none of that—so we never discussed it much like we never discussed the music which wasn’t too difficult because my heart just wasn’t in it anymore and quite frankly, I don’t think Perry’s was either. Besides, we’d always believed the music and the dope were two sides of the same coin and history had proven us right, so any musical aspirations would now have to seriously be put to bed. However, toward the end of January—probably because I’d been completely dope-free for eight weeks—my libido was seriously about to rise and shine and one afternoon while Gwen Stefani was lighting up MTV just being a girl, I thought about taking advantage of the other $20 product Nate was peddling.

“Fuck
that
shit,” Perry said. “Trust me—you don’t realize what’s lurking around out there in the bushes and besides, Grandma’s got a shitload of liver in the fridge.”

“So?”

“So forget about Nate’s hookers. Just grab two pieces from the refrigerator, put’em in the microwave and then stick’em between
the mattress and the box spring. When you get on your knees it’s the perfect height.”

“The perfect height for what?!”

“Whaddaya think? After you heat it up it gets nice and warm and greasy—and it’s much safer than banging white trash.”

“No way,” I said—at this point still obviously in disbelief.

“Well, you know, you have to apply a little pressure to the mattress but—”

“You
can’t
really be serious, Perry. With
liver?
”

“Well not normally but the vacuum’s all fucked up.”

“Do you eat it afterwards?”

“
Eat
the liver? After having sex with it??? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Just then Granny returned from Publix with more groceries for us to eat and fornicate with before bitching about having to do all the shopping.

“Chill out Granny and take a toke.”

“And you boys are eating me out of house and home—you know,” she added. “Somebody better get a job around here and QUICK. Your friend’s money is just about spent.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it—Grandma,” Perry told her. “The snowbirds are coming. Soon we’ll both be working and making lots of money. I promise.”

Between the middle of January and the end of April, the population
in certain areas of Florida more than doubles and in coastal cities likes Fort Myers—it practically
triples
. As a result there’s always a seasonal hiring boom, and though it can be profitable to work in
some
establishments each season, it hardly makes up for the rest of the year when much of the state is a relative ghost town.

At the very end of January Granny gave us a ride to Bistro 41 which was located in Fort Myers in the Bell Tower Mall, and there along with several other hopeful job candidates we were very quickly able to secure positions—not as waiters and waitresses—but
servers
. Apparently, management was incapable of retaining two, gender-specific job titles and as a result was forced to boil it down to one. Obviously, I wasn’t thrilled with the latest slight and though it had apparently and suddenly become the industry norm, as far as I was concerned it was offensive.

“What the fuck kind of bullshit is that?” I said to Perry as we waited outside the restaurant for Chauffeur Granny to arrive.

“What’s your problem?”

“
Servers
,” I said. “That doesn’t bother you?”

“No.”

“Well then maybe they should cut right to the chase and just go with ser
vants
or better yet—
slaves
.”

“You’re overreacting for a change.”

“I’m finally, totally, sick of this,” I decided. “After this one I’m done. I can’t take it anymore.”

“What’re you gonna do instead?”

“I don’t know,” I said and I really hadn’t a clue. “Maybe I can get a job at an ad agency.”

“That worked out real well the first time.”

“Or maybe at a newspaper or something. I don’t know—
anything
.”

To be honest, though, Bistro 41 wasn’t that bad. Besides Kirk, who was one of the managers and a complete dipshit, it was a decent place to work and the food was good—especially the calamari. The place had just opened, and at the time it was one of the trendier establishments in the area. But most importantly—as far as I was concerned—it was the wait staff or rather, the
server
staff that was so remarkable and not in terms of their job performance because of course,
that
would’ve flown completely over my head and under my radar. But in terms of being a “recovering” addict attempting to reprogram his brain, my coworkers were critically important because I needed to be surrounded and distracted by intelligent, interesting people living healthy lifestyles…or at least
healthier
lifestyles. Unfortunately, however, living 25 miles away from the restaurant without a car in an area with little to no public transportation would require us to seek out more convenient accommodations in Fort Myers.

For several days we scoured the area for duplexes or complexes within walking distance of Bistro 41, but they were too pricy or there weren’t any vacancies. Then, after about two weeks of busting Granny’s balls with round trips to the restaurant, Pete McKay—one of the
waiters
—suggested we try Pine Manor which was a community located about a half-mile away from the restaurant and not too far from Downtown Fort Myers. Of course, “
Crime
Manor,” as it was more commonly and notoriously known throughout Southwest Florida, was a neighborhood comprised of almost identical duplexes, and populated with a nice cross-section of The Underbelly of America. Indeed, white trash drunks and drug addicts, black gangbangers and Latino kids selling crack on bikes were suddenly my new neighbors. And besides all that, not only was the rent affordable—but at Crime Manor there was always a wide array of available apartments to choose from thanks
to a never ending stream of evicted or arrested tenants. Indeed, gunshots were certainly not an anomaly and police were ever-present along with ever-ringing car alarms. And, for the first time in my life, I lived in an area immersed in the drive-by drug purchasing culture that exists in many places throughout the country, though I was usually unaware of this unless I happened to be looking out the window.

Certainly, relocating to a drug-riddled neighborhood wasn’t the wisest decision, but we didn’t have a stunning array of options to choose from, especially since we were without a car and required a place that was within walking-distance to work. But thankfully, even though Crime Manor was nothing short of an expansive, illegal drug-mart—like everywhere else in the area there was no dope being dealt, which we discovered only because at one point during a drunk and sloppy moment we actually went looking for it. We did learn, however, that virtually every
other
drug— prescription variety included—was being sold somewhere on some specific street in some part of the community.

Clearly, Crime Manor was hardly an ideal living situation, especially with an ever-present desire to be high or at least chemically altered in some way; but with the exception of one or two drunken decisions to buy a $10 rock being peddled by a Puerto Rican on a bike 15 feet from our front door and then regretting it later, Perry and I managed to satisfy that irrepressible craving exclusively with weed and beer. Fortunately, we were never big drinkers
or
smokers and both indulgences were usually refrained from until returning home from work each night, though we would occasionally blaze before heading in as well. Actually, we
always
blazed before heading into work—else I doubt I would have been able to make an appearance. Of course, pot no longer affected me like it did when I was in college. Gone were the drug’s mild hallucinogenic qualities and even the munchies were a thing of the past. By this point, if anything, marijuana seemed more like a Xanax or even a valium that prevented me from going on indiscriminate killing sprees throughout the restaurant. Sometimes,
though, I wasn’t sure it would be enough.

15

By the end of February the weather was magnificent, and I was making good friends and good money at Bistro 41. In fact, the money was
great
. The restaurant was located in Southwest Florida’s most pretentious mall north of Naples and predictably the clientele was usually very wealthy. Of course, being that it was still in Florida, much of the clientele was not only very wealthy but also very old, so much so that at times I found them considerably more difficult to deal with than the average customer—especially when they tipped like it was 1920.

As far as my coworkers were concerned, even the
kitchen staff
—typically the most ornery of any employees anywhere unless you happen to be working in
HELL
—was usually in a good mood (relatively speaking) and approachable (also relatively speaking). Unfortunately, however, Kirk and I had problems almost from the very beginning which, I believe, due to my intimate understanding of such things, was because he was a little out of his fucking head. Actually, besides the fact that he had orange hair, bright red freckles and the thickest, ugliest pair of glasses I’d ever seen in my life,
most
of the time Kirk was fine. Well, I mean he wasn’t
fine
, but he was either running errands, working in the office or fine-tuning a fouler mood in the kitchen; however, he usually wasn’t bothering me which was all I really cared about. Still, there were moments when I’d be cutting paper tablecloth at slightly the wrong length, or incorrectly garnishing a drink or some other stupid shit and he’d take me aside and LOSE HIS FUCKING MIND. It was like being berated by a cursing, sweating, wired and bespectacled version of Alfred E. Neuman. And to be honest, I NEVER saw him
behave that way around anyone else. He obviously had it in for me from the beginning, and I knew that in some way he would ultimately be the cause of my demise at Bistro 41.

After each extraordinarily busy evening at least half the wait staff would assemble at our furniture-free apartment in Crime Manor for two to four hours of mostly smoking weed—but there were always a few six-packs being passed around as well. Interestingly enough, other staff members began intermittently referring to our apartment as the Hippy Commune or the Kennedy Compound due to its exaggerated reputation as a destination for debauchery.