That close
I met O at work. We did not hit it off, right off. He worked at the desk in the front, where we sent the hard calls. He worked when I worked, for the most part, so I would see him and say hi and such, but we did not hit it off for a few months, about six months. Then one night a bunch of us went out for drinks, a whole large group of us, and he and I did the smoke-and-drink-and-chat thing, and then he said I could crash at his place for the night (since I was much too drunk to drive home). We watched old Star Trek tapes and smoked pot and had a few more drinks, and I crashed on the fold-out couch on his third floor. The next day I woke up and he was gone, back to work.
I was off the next day, but O had to be in by 9. He did that all the time. Stay up late, get drunk, get stoned, get up first thing and get back to work. I can not do that; I need a day off to get my head back on straight. So when I came down from the third floor, I met his spouse, B. I knew O was gay, so of course I knew B would be a man. But I did not know that B was white. Damn was he white, as white as they come. O was not white; O was quite black. It threw me off guard. I grabbed some juice and left in a rush.
The next time I saw them, I told B that. He thought it was great, and I made fun of O (and B made fun of me) for it for a long time.
That broke the ice, I guess. We had our thing then, each week, or two, or three, or not, but our thing. We were friends, and we had this thing. Meet at the bar (his bar, not my bar, a gay bar near where he lived), meet up with B when he got off work, have a drink (or two (or three)), smoke some cloves, get harsh looks from B (B did not like the fact that I smoked; B had smoked for years and now had bad lungs, quite bad, lungs he would die from, but not then, not for years, but he would get sick soon, I did not know that then, but I watched it when it came and I knew, we knew, we all knew that he would die from those lungs), make it back to O’s, then more drinks, some pot if there was pot, some Star Trek if there was Trek, or some crap off the dish, then off to the third floor to crash. He had a dish; back then it was a big thing, not a lot of guys had a dish, he was one of the first.
It was a real crotch of a house, a row house, and not a nice row house, on a block that was not a nice block, not one of those nice blocks on a bad street, just a crotch of a house on a crotch of a block on a crotch of a street. There was a large room that led to the bath, full of junk. I mean just stacked, six feet high. A huge room, just packed with dust and junk, stuff O said he would get to in due course, but of course he did not, could not, he was too drunk and high all the time. Once he sat down in front of the tube with his tapes and his dish, that was it. At the end of the night he would make his way through this room to the bath, then straight to bed. Each night, the same. So the dust just sat, and built up. It would make me sneeze, to go through this room each time to get to the john. And the bath—oh, the bath, it was like a time warp to old times. Not good old times, just old times. A pull-down chain on the john, an old sink that leaked, and small blades—like you could buy ten at a time in old stores—the kind that looked like you did coke all the time, but O used them to shave, I swear to God he did, he used them to shave in this old crotch of a bath.
And to do coke, of course. He used them to do coke all the time. I did not learn this then; I did not learn this for years. But he used them to shave as well. I swear to God he did.
Then B got sick. It was bad. I knew, he knew, we all knew he would die from it. But not then, not for years. It was slow. There was a stroke, and then two. His speech got slurred; the right side of his mouth would not move. He lost his hair. He slept more, went out less, smoked pot just to keep food down. It was bad. By the end he took up all of O’s time, just to take care of him. And then he died, just like that. He died in bed. I guess he found peace.
But O did not find peace. He was stuck in this crotch of a house with his tube and his tapes and his blades and his coke and his dust. Oh, and his trust. He had a trust that B left. It was a lot, in fact. He did not need to keep his job, but he kept it just to fill the time. So much time. I came by a lot, but we would not go out. We would just sit in his two old chairs, and watch the tube, and smoke pot, and cough on the dust, and cry a lot.
O threw out the bed where B had died. He did not buy a new one. He just threw out the old one. I don’t know where he slept. Most nights I think he just passed out in that old chair.
The next year, O made some new friends. Not nice friends. Coke friends. A guy named L, who did coke. My age, tall, dark, thin like a blade. Did coke. And G, who sold coke. And a few more. I don’t know all their names. O knew L was a fling, I knew, he knew, we all knew. But O liked it that way, and L liked O’s trust, and they both liked G’s coke. It went on like that. Guys like L came and went. I came by less and less. Coke was not my thing.
One day I did come by, and O and I went to G’s house. More like a room than a house, down a small set of stairs, with a small stove and a bed and three chairs. G stood at his stove all day and made crack. I don’t know what this takes (well it takes coke, of course, but I don’t know how it works), but he did and he stood there all day and did what he did, and then I guess he went out at night and sold it. We went down the stairs, O and me, we went to see G to get some pot that he had. O went to get some crack, too, but I did not. I don’t know why, or how, but I drew the line there. I’m not sure what sort of line it is to draw, to hang out with friends in crack dens and not smoke crack, but it’s a line and I drew it.
In G’s crack den, then, if that’s what it was, I met M. M sat in the first chair, next to the bed. He lived there, with G. There was just one bed. That bed, and that chair, and G’s crack, that was all he had. M was a crack whore; he was G’s slave. I was told this, flat out. It was not said in a harsh way, just as a fact of life. Some stand at the stove and make crack, some sit in the chair and smoke crack, some come by and pick up their crack. There are not a lot of roles to fill. And me? I sat in the third chair and smoked pot. I was the odd man out.
That was the last time I got high with O. It was too much, to sit in that crack den and watch M be a slave, to know that that would be O some day. He had no will to rise out of that life, and no strength to try. That could have been me, too, if I had drawn the line some place else. G? No, I would not have been G. I would have been M. Draw the line an inch to the left, or right, or I don’t know, but close. It could have been me. I was that close.
I did not see O for six months, and by the time I did I had gone straight. No more drinks, no more cloves, no more pot. I had lost weight, a lot of weight. I was in good shape, but it was still a fight to stay straight. I should not have gone to see him. O had lost weight too, but not in a good way. He was not in good shape, not at all. He still lived in that crotch of a house, but he had lost his job, and G had lost his lease. G now lived with O, on the third floor where I used to crash. M was gone (or dead? no one said). G was now O, O was now M, and I was still the odd man out.
I tried to get O out of the house for a bit, at least back to our old bar, but he was too far gone. I did not know what to do. There was not a lot I could do. I was just one month straight; I should not have been there at all. I had no strength. I wished him well and left. I’m not sure if he knew I was there, or if he knew when I left. I called him twice the next week, but I did not hear from him. Then I had to let him go. I had no strength to save him. I had to let him go.