1976 : cocaína

Cindy  and Geronimo walked me the three blocks from the Chalice to the corner of Waverly & MacDougal. That particular corner of Washington Square Park where you could find One Armed Jesse selling product strapped to the petrified bicep of his withered arm.  Cops never looked up the sleeve of his dashiki, that shriveled stump where an arm should be freaked them out. Jesse brought me to the Hotel Earle, the two Joeys, Black & Brother, and the two Papos, Big & Little who everybody just called Shortrun, on account of he was short even for a Puerto Rican.

I was Short’s girl. I towered over him by four or five inches, except when I wore sneakers and he picked his Afro out, then, well, we were okay.  Being with him meant I was welcome at the Hotel Earle where fresh dime bags were bagged in Big Papo’s room.  They could keep an eye on their corner of the park from his window as they worked. Papo was massive, dark and handsome, full of scars shaped like knife fights and bullet holes. When he looked at me I imagined the braille of them writing stories on my skin.

I was Short’s girl, I wasn’t selling coke, I wasn’t buying coke, I’d never even tried coke. I had no business in Big Papo’s room. Not to look out the window, not to bag up, not to try to get a taste. I waited for Shortrun somewhere else, in someone else’s room, with Jesse or one of the Joeys. I waited in safe rooms where men watched out for me, which is different than watching every move I make.

“Hey J,” I was sleeping, curled up like a cat, or a fetus, in a chair in someone’s room. “Inhale, little sis.” Short’s brother Joey. His voice warm, comforting and moist in my ear. Brother Joey held the corner of a matchbook piled with fluffy white cocaine under my nose.

I did as I was told. There were heavenly trumpets. Electricity tingled from the back of my nose, encompassing my entire skull, traveling down each individual hair on my head,  finding its way across my breasts, around my nipples, down my belly, into my puss where it lit up each individual lip, inner and outer, tightened the curl on each pubic hair and then, then, with the second bump, someone turned up the voltage. I couldn’t sit still, couldn’t just stay in the room. I was awake. I was one hundred and ten percent awake and my brain, my heart, my skin, my skin, my skin, the voices were going one hundred and ten miles an hour.

Shortrun had a wife. Maybe a daughter. No one would say for sure. He stayed at the Earle or at the York and there was an apartment. Someplace. It was all very vague. He was younger than me, only 17. And he was, well, he was short and he wasn’t around very often. He wasn’t around enough. He wasn’t here now. I needed to be someone to be here. Now.

Big Papo, on the other hand, was here, right there across the hall. He was there with his scars, his dark eyes and his little cocaine factory. Location, location, location.

We sat on his bed talking and testing product. We lay at right angles. We lay parallel. We lay on top of each other. And after we’d finished fucking he swore it would be our secret, swore he’d never tell Short. He did. Of course.

I didn’t care. In the time that lapsed between that first corner of a matchbook and putting my pants back on I’d totally forgotten why I’d been waiting for Shortrun at all. I’d forgotten everything except the feel of the coke going up my nose, the taste of the drip at the back of my throat, the excitement of his scars brushing my skin. I’d forget about Big Papo soon enough too. All that mattered was I’d found the way to be more alive, more beautiful, more awake than anyone had ever imagined possible.

Posted November 2, 2009 at 9:36 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1976, dirty boys, drugs, Greenwich Village, The Chalice. Bookmark this post. Follow any comments @ RSS feed for this post.