I JUST REALLY LOVE THIS PICTURE
There were certain loss preventative measures I took to try to minimize the damage I would suffer when this type of thing would occur. I was not a fighter though - so my methods were to only get out of the situation as quickly as possible, without getting beat up or without allowing myself to remain on someone's list as a constant and fruitful target.
There was this couple, Star and Kenny. Both total dope addicts - heroin and cocaine - they were a nightmare for me. Not so much him but her for sure. I tried to avoid Star at all costs but downtown Vancouver's red zone is a small area and paths do cross.
It was late at night and I am sure the street was Alexander...which is a street that I generally would not go down unless it could not be avoided. Daytime wasn't so bad, it was still threatening - but everything is less scary during the daylight hours. I usually never went on the other side of Oppenheimer Park..but, if that was where the dope was and since it was closer to the area where I worked, I sometimes resorted to making my purchases there. This indecent I am sharing wasn't in the safety of daylight, it was in the foreboding and witching time of darkness.
There was one of the rooming houses that had a dope selling room set up. Let me try to explain this to you, even the people that were supposed to be running the rooming house seemed to be in on it. I am talking a line up like in a grocery store, a room door open, a table and chair set up in the door, a metal box for the money and the dope inside the room. Scale, razor blade for cutting the crack rocks, etc. Like a friggen' lemonade stand. These sort of set ups were generally short lived because they would obviously get busted or they would get robbed or something like that. The benefit was that by buying your dope there you could usually get someone to let you do your dope (shoot up chill out whatever) in their room for a very small price, sometimes for nothing if they had their own dope or they didn't care, etc., so it was relatively comfortable (you could also sneak into one of the bathrooms or the stairwell and do your fix in there too). I already mentioned that another benefit was proximity to the stroll. Another reason for my patronage of such places was that it was semi private. When you buy dope out in the open there is a thousand junkies that have no money and that are hurting as hell that see you buying dope and then accost you for even a tiny bit of what you have purchased or they beg you for anything to help them out. It is easy enough to deal with but when you are someone like me that makes money continuously throughout the day it gets tiring and irritating and it is something to be avoided. Such was the reason why I was going to buy from this particular rooming house.
It was dark. It was late. I turned the corner onto Alexander St and walked right into Star and Kenny. Star was exactly what you would think about a bully from grade school. I was the geek and she was the tough girl profiled in all those teen after-school specials. Kenny was a prick too but he was like her whipping boy and never bugged me unless she was around. She was a total tomboy, she must have been about 18 years old. Looked kind of like a grubby skater chick. Definitely good looking in her own right.
So I round the corner and there they are sitting on the steps of the building right next to the building where I am going to buy my dope. At first they didn't see me and I made the mistake of assuming that they were perhaps in a docile mood and I asked if anyone (there were a couple other acquaintances on the steps as well) had any rigs for sale. Up jump Star and Kenny.
She walks right up to me and demands that I give her my money and before I had a chance to even protest or give in, Kenny had my head slammed back by pulling my ponytail and forcing me into a very unnatural and helpless angle. I said all I had was ten bucks and it was in my pocket. At this time the other people are telling them to let me go and all that good citizen crap but of course no one actually steps in. Even the guy that had been trying to hump me for months that was manning the door at the dope selling rooming house was watching what was going on and he did nothing. Not that I expected rescue but still it just goes to show what cowards people are (not that I would have jumped in).
She pulls the ten bucks out of my pocket and screams that she knows I have more money and where is it???!!! At this point I am almost out of breath because of how Kenny has me by my ponytail and I manage to get out that there is another ten bucks in my underwear. Of course, she is not deterred by this and sticks her dirty hand down the front of my underwear and finds the ten dollar bill. Kenny then lets me go and I run into the dope selling rooming house. The idiot that was watching the door says "oh - I didn't even know it was you". As if. The thing is-on rare occasion I did have a select few people stick up for me during my time down there. They stuck up for me because I was nice and I did help people out and I wasn't a total selfish bitch and generally there was no need to manhandle me - I had good victim mentality. I will do what you say - just don't hurt me kind of thing. If Kenny and Star had just demanded my money I probably would have handed it over without too much struggle. Plus, there was always more money to be made for me, unless I was super dope sick, then it sucked to get jacked up (well, getting jacked up always sucked, don't get me wrong) but generally I could go make more $$ anyways. This time though, like other times I was way ahead of these wanna be thugs that thought they were getting me good. They didn't get all my money because I NEVER kept all off my money in the same place.
Sure, Star got her hands on twenty bucks - which isn't even that much when is had to be split between her and her boyfriend. I still had another sixty bucks on me. I had twenty in each of my socks..but underneath my heels and I had another twenty somewhere else clever..in some ripped open secret pocket of my bag I think.
This is what I am saying..you have to plan ahead. I had certain things I did to survive...even as a dope addict you have to be prepared for things like that. If they had gotten all my money then I basically had just ******** some loser guy for free, and that so wasn't cool. So I won, Star and Kenny. I won. Sure I lost twenty but it wasn't twenty that I couldn't afford to lose at that moment.
Star still f*cked me over a couple times after that though. She caught me doing a toke in a doorway one time and I had a huge rock at my feet. She took it but didn't take the whole thing - she just broke it in half (that BITCH!) and gave me back the other half. That happened to me every so often, and not just by her. Sometimes it is unavoidable and you get busted by an jerk off w/ your dope in your hands and are forced to share because they muscle you, no matter how small the amount and that totally sucks.
The last time I saw Star she came up to me and asked me politely for a toke (I hate that word - but it is what it is called). I was in a fine mood and I agreed. I never made like I was totally frightened by her even though I was. I acted like I was just doing doing her a favor. During our mutual cocaine consumption she told me that she was leaving town in a few hours, that her family was coming for her and that she was going to get clean. She was totally freaking out about it, it was obvious by her demeanor. Getting clean is scary, I will give her that - and she had reason to be nervous. Then she actually apologized for being such a c*** to me over the past few years and that was that.
I have no idea what happened to her but I know what happened to me. I won. And continue to win.
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BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!
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