As we walked down the street, we passed in front of a tall-brown slim apartment building.
“Say, we need some money,” Chelsea said. “I’m going upstairs to visit Craig. He is good for a date. It will only take me a few minutes and I will be back with some cash.“
She darted up the steps. A few minutes later she came down.
“I got some Cash,” she said.
I don’t know exactly how much she got, but I know it was more than $20 but less than $40. Whoever Craig was, he was fast in bed and from the woman’s viewpoint that is not good. Next it was on to Johnny’s house. When we got to their apartment, we walked up a flight of steps to a large brown porch with a railing and rows of doors. We got to Johnny’s, the white- wooden door with a small windows on it—knocked and then we were let in. Johnny was an older man in his late 40s. He had long-gray hair and a white beard. He was wearing an old worn blue collared shirt and old slacks. The house was a little dirty, but we all sat on the green rug around the glass pipes that sat on the brown coffee table in the middle of the room. Johnny had another friend over, Randy. He was shorter, brown hair and about 10 years younger. When we first came in the room, Johnny was looking for small pieces of crack that may have fallen on the floor. He kept finding little pieces of filth on the green carpet that looked like they might be crack. Johnny kept lighting the tiny pieces, with his lighter to see if they would melt. If they did, which rarely happened, he stuck the melted junk on the pipe just long enough to get that tiny little hit.
Mostly looking for scraps was just a sign of desperation. These guys had a look of desperation that I was beginning to recognize in pretty much all of the crack addicts I met. They all had that beady sweaty look to them. They were always searching for spare pieces of crack that fell on the floor.
“I got some rocks,” Chelsea said. “She got some of her rocks out and put them on the coffee table near the pipes. Next we were all sitting around their table and firing up one of the pipes. Each took a turn on the pipe. For a few minutes the whole group was content as the pipe and its white smoke filled all of our lungs. This reminded me a lot of my early dope smoking experiences. We would all get out our special pot pipes out and we passed around a bowl of whatever weed we all had at the time. Crack was a little different from weed. But weed smokers never had that look of desperation that the crack smokers have.
After about an hour I started to get nervous about Green Eyes and my car.
“We need to go back to that house,” I said.
“Don’t worry she’ll wait for you,” Chelsea said.
“Just the same—I’d like to go by the house and see if my car is back.” I answered.
We went by the crack house and my car wasn’t there yet. So next we went to Chelsea’s house. I had never been to her house before. It was a small rundown little working class house with blue-wooden walls on the outside and off-white walls inside. There were a lot of boxes of clothes and belongings as if Chelsea had never really fully moved in. She changed her shirt in front of me. I could see her really big boobs. The shirt she put on looked like some guys white work shirt. It was not particularly colorful, sexy or interesting. Next a young tall-thin man walked in—a white guy with blond hair.
“This is my room-mate, Tom,” Chelsea said. “We both live here, but we’re not a couple.”
“Hi,” Tom said.
Chelsea went to the kitchen and got all of us beers. She came back to the living room and we all sat around on her green chairs and talked. Chelsea began to explain to us that as a prostitute she shaves her hair off her groin because most men like it shaved. She even let both of us put our hands in her pants and feel it. She was not shy about her sexuality.
“Tom and I had sex one time after he moved in,” Chelsea said.
“That’s what you say,” Tom replied. “I don’t remember it. I was real drunk that night.”
“Well, we did,” Chelsea insisted.
After a while Chelsea and I decided to go back to the crack house and see if my car was back. We headed out the door and just as we got to the house, my car pulled up. I had been getting anxious about leaving it with someone I didn’t really know. After the car pulled up Green Eyes got out.
I still need to go to the liquor store for some tequila,” Green Eyes said. “You want to just ride along with me.”
“Sure,” I answered.
I got in the car and we drove off.
“I like being a drug dealer,” Green Eyes said. “I make pretty good money. You see all this jewelry I’m wearing. I got it all from selling crack.”
She was wearing a lot of jade jewelry and gold. She had on some rings, necklaces and earrings. She was a very pretty girl as well as petite. I didn’t ask her how she felt about all of the dangers involved in dealing, such as getting shot by competing dealers. She said nothing of the downsides of dealing. I would guess she doesn’t make $hundreds of thousands or even $thousands dealing. I kind of felt sorry for her and I doubted that the excitement in her life was really worth all the risks she was taking.
When we finally got back she gave me some rocks wrapped up in some wax paper. I put them in my pocket and decided to use them later. Then I parked the car and met up with Chelsea. We went to the crack house. Dave had just bought a rusty gun that was missing some pieces. It was a 357 magnum pistol with a long barrel. A white neighbor, a man about his late 30s, commented on the gun.
“You don’t need that gun to prove your anything,” he said. “Guns won’t make you a man.”
I was thinking to myself he may just want it for self defense. He was involved in a very dangerous business where he could get robbed any day and not having a gun wouldn’t help him any if some wise punk came in to steal his costumers and tried to run him off with a gun. Dave just looked over the gun and ignored him.
A little while later Chelsea asked me to get them all some beer. I only had about $11 left. I told her I couldn’t afford it.
“I can’t believe you won’t buy some beer,” she yelled.
“I’m running out of money, I can’t afford to spend anymore.”
After a few minutes I went back to my car and headed to my home in my house in my middle-class neighborhood, far away from these ghetto homes. I would drive up the driveway to my home. My day at the crack house would be over. What a strange day it was for me. Of course I never got any kind of sex, but I sat around smoking crack all day and I spent very little money on it. It was also an interesting day to see how other people in my town live.
