Jason, of the Balmoral Jason's

I have no picture of him, so I thought a picture of Jason Vorhees (Friday the 13th) would suffice.

There was this dope addict Jason. He wasn't one that was around constantly. In fact, my very first run in with him was as I crossed the street at Hastings and Main. He ran up beside me and asked me if I wanted to do a date. Of course I did..and he told me he had a room at the Balmoral. That was fine...the Balmoral was scary but in comparison to the other sleazy and roach infested hotels, the Balmoral was tolerable. It was late evening..it was dark..that is about all I can remember about the specifics in regards to the outdoor setting.

We went to his room and I asked him what he wanted me to do. He was sort of sketchy..well, "sort of sketchy" is an understatement. He was "wired for sound" (whatever that means..my Mum used to say that when I was a kid when I was all overly hyper)...he was very much overly hyper. Uber sketchy.

He told me all he wanted was for me to bang some cocaine with him (at the time I wasn't much of a coke slammer...but of course I still did it) and to just hang out and help him not freak out...THEN if he decided I wasn't Satan incarnate he wanted me to give him a ******* while he did another whack. He had tons of cash and said he would give me a hundred bucks.

We go to the room...we both do our hits...and his was obviously like 4 times the size of mine.....then he sits on the bed and unzips his pants and leans back for the obvious..I finished my whack and before I even had a chance to get more than 1 minute into what he was paying me for he was almost on the f*cking ceiling. He was on his feet...and even just looking at him I could tell that he was totally hallucinating. He kept asking me if I saw "this" or saw "that" and I would say "no..." I would remain calm though for his sake. I have done huge whacks before and if you have a crappy person with you they can scare you pretty badly. I saw that he was wigging out huge so I just sort of humored him, tried to be calm and didn't want to make him feel like he was a nut case, which he obviously was.

Eventually he was in the corner of the room with a chair in front of him staring at the ceiling telling me that he is seeing demons and they are gonna get him and that I CANNOT leave him. At this point all I want to DO is leave him. I was afraid he was going to turn on me..and don't forget that I was totally wasted too at this point. I went through phases of whacking coke during my addiction..and this was one of my off season's, so my tolerance was low. He was freaking out..okay fine, I could see that...but he was also totally scaring me. Not to mention this is all happening inside one of the most evil places on earth..a low income hotel on the downtown east side.

He had paid me the hundred bucks when we had arrived in the room but since I didn't even have to give him the bl*w*** I felt bad about taking that much money. This is when my humane side/moral virtue reared it's head. Yes, I was a crack/heroin abusing, homeless, sex selling, street urchin..but I had a conscience AND a heart. (Even now I remember times when I was down there..times when I had the opportunity to steal a bunch of dope or totally screw someone over..and I never did it. I mean if given the opportunity I would take advantage of certain situations for sure but...for example, I had this "date" that became a dope delivery driver..he was totally into me..he told me he loved me and stuff. He worked pretty much 24 hours a day and whenever we were together and we were parked hanging out..I was getting high or whatever, he would pass out from exhaustion. He always hid his dope in his steering wheel. The center horn part could be popped out and inside was a hollow space for his wares. The only time I ever stole from him while he was sleeping was ONE TIME and I didn't even take all of it. I took a quarter gram of down and a big rock of crack. At the time I didn't want him to realize afterward that I had pinched from him...and if he DID it was a small enough amount where I could pay him back - plus I didn't want him getting in trouble with his bosses. But he never even mentioned it! He didn't even KNOW that I had ripped him off. Sigh...I coulda taken a bunch more. Why do I still think about these things? I have no idea. It is scammer's remorse maybe.)

Back to Jason: He was freaking and I told him that I needed to go get my jacket, that I had left it outside. As I was trying to retreat and get the hell out of there..I put half of the money that he had given me ($50) on the bed..I said that I was leaving it there so he would know I was coming back after I got my jacket. I had no plans of coming back...but I needed to give him some of that cash back..he was wasted and I could have taken ALL of his money had I wanted to. I didn't want to though. I gave him the money back because he had already given me dope, I hadn't even had to do anything to him (sexually) and I was bailing on him in his time of need. That sounds stupid probably, but it is true.

When I was backing out of the door assuring him I WAS coming back..he was almost in tears in the corner of the room...chair still in front of him...almost screaming at me telling me he will give me more money and to please not leave. I left. I had no jacket that I had to retrieve and I did not return.

The second time I saw this individual it the same time of night on some random side street off of the stroll..he recognized me and I him..and he wanted to give me $35 for a hummer in a close by parking lot. Again he seems super amped..but he tells me he remembers how I didn't f*ck with him the last time he saw me when he was wasted beyond comprehension. Again he wants me to wait until he does his whack of up...and recalling what happened last time..I accepted his proposition knowing I most likely wouldn't have to do anything to him (hum-wise) at all. This time I refused his offer of giving me a fix though. He did his hit...unzipped...freaked out..and then stood up and told me to forget about it. I offered him his money back and he said no. This whole interaction took about 4 minutes.

The third time I saw Jason it was daytime...he wanted to get a room and get high and blah blah blah. Same story...same things happened. I did get high this time...nothing too exciting about this incident. We just did dope...he kept wanting me to service him..but wouldn't sit still. I walked out of there with twenty bucks (from him) that time. He had no money when the hour was up...I already HAD money before even meeting up with him...and since all I did was his dope and didn't even even have to touch him..I gave him some of his money back again.

The last time I saw him it was in an alley right by Oppenheimer Park. It was rainy and the alley was muddy and it was just all around a miserable night for all junkies/street urchins/prostitutes etc. This time he had $20 and some coke and wanted to give me ten bucks and a bunch of coke to go down on him. I said "no". He was very sketchy and as I walked away he was bending down sucking puddle water into his rig cause he had no sterile water to mix his coke with.

He was a dope addict but not one that I saw very often on a street level..he obviously had another life - or he did when I initially met him...but then over time his using got progressively worse.

The first time he ran up beside me and asked me for a date he was about the same age as me or maybe a few years older..his clothes were clean..his hands were clean...and he was hot. I mean it, he was a total babe. He was one of those slightly framed males that were obviously very much a man but had a distinctly feminine look to him. He was pretty. When I last saw him he was none of those things. He looked about twenty years older, he was dirty, pathetic and using muddy water from an alley to slam his coke.

Do you even care?

Robert Pickton will suck c*cks in hell

Okay, this is only something I heard during my time f**ked up and working the streets of Vancouver. I heard it from a dope peddler that I had some "dealings" with (you know, the barter system is in full effect down there). He told me this, we both knew the girl, and she was a super tough, don't f**k w/ me type gal. I am not saying this story is true, but it is what he told me.

When I was out there, it was post Pickton. I was still working at the coffee shop, was being maintained on methadone and basically functioning normally. I remember when the newspaper came out with Mona Wilson's picture in the upper right hand side and it said missing since Nov. 30th. That is what I remember anyways. I knew Mona Wilson, but just through circumstance. Her and her bf/husband used to come into my store and steal/try to steal commuter mugs and other stuff. We had banned them, but they always came back. I really had a dislike for the both of them. I had no idea what their story was, so in my ignorance, I decided to NOT be on their side. Ironically, I ended up doing a bunch of dope and provided services w/ her bf way after the fact. He told me about when she went missing. He said he knew right away something was wrong. They had been together forever, and he always knew how to find her.

Then her picture was on the paper, and the horrible reality was uncovered and shared with all. I remember the morning that particular paper came out and my idiot, loser boss, who was so NOT empathetic to anything she has no understanding of or for anything she has never been exposed to [which is basically seventy (that is being generous) percent of society]. Here I am struggling with my own addiction, being sort of stable by my methadone - and she sees that this woman we were familiar with was missing. She said "you know, I think they should take all the drug addicts/HIV + individuals, etc and drop them on an island have them kill themselves off". What an arsehole. It even sounds cliche when I type it, but it is what she said. Not verbatim, but basically.

But this isn't the story I meant to tell.

Let me give a shout out to my friend *R*, who actually WAS a friend of mine, regardless of our dealings. He battled his own demons, and I wouldn't hurry to call him a scumbag, as I do with most males I have mentioned in my writings. I swear to you I never met another person that could go through withdrawal with as much dignity as this guy. No bitching, no whining, just deal with it, and over. We lost touch when I left my life down there, and he ended up calling my parents (he knew my last name) about a year ago, to find out if I was alive or what. He is doing very well, he is clean and is working for the city or something. He had contracted hep c too, maybe from me, if I am to be honest, and has completed his treatment and is now waiting to see if it it stays gone. It was he that told me this story.

As I said, it was after "Pickton" when I was out there working, but it was not something that forgotten down there by anyone. Didn't phase things though, life stops for no one.

My friend told me about this girl we both knew that had gotten picked up my the man himself. *R* claimed she told him this, as she was one of his customers.

Pickton had picked her up, and told her he would give her $100 bucks (or so) to buy dope, to come back to his place in Poco for ... whatever. Sex, who knows. She agreed. She gets there and sits down at a table and commences to do her dope. While she is at it, I guess he came up behind her and ended up quickly cuffing her to the table, to the table leg or something. Maybe to himself, I can't remember, but I don't think it was that. This woman was no small woman. She was not fat, but she wasn't small, she was a tough woman. He slapped the cuff on her, and she freaks. I guess he had a knife or there was one near by and she grabbed it and ended up stabbing him in the stomach and ends up getting away somehow. I seem to remember there was talk of how Pickton was actually charged previously with some crime, maybe false imprisonment or something, but he was acquitted because she had stabbed him first. I am assuming this woman was the one that inspired this tale, truth or no.

As I have said in my "disclaimer", I am not saying that any of this is true. I realize that it sounds like an urban myth or something, and it may just be that. All I know, is that if it was her, she is one lucky lady. I know I read that they found Mona Wilson's DNA, one of the first found, and that her head was found in a bucket, head split down the middle, and that a dildo had been fashioned over a gun also had her DNA on it. That is just too gruesome and a horrible, awful way for anyone to die. I don't even have words for it. No one deserves that, well, maybe he does. I also read that one of the witnesses had described seeing a girl strung up upside down, being "bled". She remembered her painted toenails. You know, it is even more horrible that so many women were missing and all the mistakes were made for this to be missed as long as it did.

The message is: it really could have been me. When I would discuss it with others or with some family member that would track me down, and ask me "you know, aren't you afraid of someone like HIM getting you and murdering you?". And I would reply that no, I wasn't. I seemed to think that I would never go all the way to Poco with just a hundred bucks worth of dope, with a guy that smelled awful and was dirty (I read that, plus he must have been). But when I think now, what nonsense. I would have gone anywhere with him if the price was right. I have done truly humiliating things for much less, as I mentioned in my previous posts. I also used to tell myself that I looked too good to be one of the girls he would pick up. HE looked for girls that wouldn't be missed. And surely I wasn't that.

But I was. I mean, I wasn't, as they weren't. But I was just like them, and it COULD have been me.

Bless those women, and I hope that wherever they are now, it is much more pleasant than the misery they experienced in this life.

Ode to Norm : Black Evidence

This next post is an homage to one of my old regulars, Norm. This isn't his real name, but it is not far off. I just didn't want to obviously out him,.. just maybe out him a little bit...The chance of anyone putting two and two together, and actually figuring out who he is, is less than likely. Of course, the more details I share, the higher chance of him being "recognized". Any girl that worked the area would probably be familiar with the individual I am writing about. On the off chance that he himself stumbles across this, he would know it was him, and for that, I feel sort of bad. But not bad enough.

One Friday night I was picked up an English guy, his name was Norm (you can't have any idea how badly I want to use his real name....first and last). He looked totally normal, attractive, quasi-stylish, etc. He wanted me to score some dope (crack) and then we would go get one of those $20/hr rooms they offer at various 5 star establishments in the downtown eastside. These type of dates are good. Taking your clothes off is usually part of it, but generally the guy thinks that he will be this massive stud/stallion with regards to his sexual prowess, but more often than not, it is the exact opposite.

As I said these dates were good. It would be indoors, he paid for the dope, he was attractive, nice, and seemed clean . So, we did our hour, smoked the dope, and then he gave me some money to go get more, which I promptly took and left with no intention of coming back. I had a prior "engagement" and business is business after all. I had my own best interests at heart. Served him right for trusting me, right? Well, no actually. I usually always came back when given money to go get dope, but not this time.

So, I was very surprised (well not overly surprised I was fabulous, even for a sex trade worker- get rid of the track marks and I could have passed for a really, really tired college student - ha ha) when he picked me up again the next weekend. He said he didn't care that I didn't come back the previous Friday, it wasn't much money that I had taken. This time though, we went to his house after I scored. He became one of those dates that I have mentioned in prior posts, one that thinks that maybe he is in love or something, they forget that the girl is being paid to be there, that why she is so nice and agreeable, etc. As long as I had my dope paid for I was fine, but after a time (weeks) he was getting into dope crazy, crazy like. He would drive me downtown in the morning so I could score cause I would dope sick, and I would always buy down AND up, and soon enough he was wanting to get high before he went to work. He was an ESL teacher. And as soon as he would get home from work he wanted to smoke crack right after he walked in the door (I can relate to this, but he had not been like this in the beginning of our acquaintance). Then of course he would want to get all sexual, and not be able to perform (which was fine by me). He was attractive, had the saucy accent, blah blah, but something about him just grossed me out, I didn't like doing dates with him at all. There was a couple of reasons for this. One being that I actually found it offensive that all he wanted to do when he got high was pretend to have sex (I say pretend, because we both knew it wouldn't happen) , but also because I smoked crack daily, I could remain relatively mentally "sound" and didn't get all wigged out and weird like him, and I would just want to talk. I would get pissed off that he wouldn't listen to what I was saying to him, all I he could think of was sex. Apparently crack can have this effect on the males of our species. I was a drug addicted prostitute but I wasn't blind, and he looked way better with his clothes on. It was easier to do dates with men I didn't know, than men I had gotten to know. The more you know someone, the more you are aware of them as a person, and my job wasn't to have sex with a "person". Oh and by the way, the whole "Pretty Woman" no kissing clause, is bunch of bullsh*t. I would prefer not to have to kiss, but if the price is right everything is negotiable.

The reason I am telling this story is because it still amusing some facet of my soul. Don't get me wrong I feel like a jerk because I am sort of making fun of him, and I did deplete his savings and took part in his descent into crack usage, but he had used before, so I am not totally evil. I didn't even WANT him to use, I just wanted him to get dope for me, but if I had to put up with his weird and pathetic self to get well, then I had to do what I had to do.

Some people are allright when they get high, others are so obviously under the influence that one can actually feel embarrassed for them. He used to get so paranoid. I remember one time he took me to score in the middle of the night, and there was a roadblock due to a car accident, and he actually thought that the cops had set up the entire thing to just to bust his ass. This paranoia is not out of the ordinary though, psychosis is a real side effect especially from coke. I too fell victim once in a while, but usually only if I had been awake for days. One time I was in my friend's room at a slimy hotel, and he went to score, and while he was gone I swore I could hear him through the vent in the floor taking to some guys and planning my murder. Even when he came back, I didn't believe him when he said I was nuts, and I took off. If I was outside I could at least run from these would be murderers. Norm was always paranoid, and the dope actually made him stupid-er than he already was in everyday life. He was a nice man, but a total easy mark for a girl like I me.

For example, we had scored a bunch of coke one night, and ended up going to sleep with some left un-smoked, and so the next day he gave me some for me to have and then hid the rest in his room for when he got home from work. He actually left me $20 too, so I could get my methadone (which I wasn't on, but he didn't know that- I had him believing this because I was having to make false promises that I would get off of heroin). When he hid his portion of dope I had every intention of respecting his wishes and just smoking my dope, and then taking off for downtown to get well. But of course, that isn't what happened. I did what dope I had, then about ten seconds after that, I had found his hiding spot and proceeded to blow through his as well. I just wanted a bit, but I smoked it all. I actually felt bad, and wanted to cover my tracks in case he found out. My plan was to put bunk dope in his hiding place (I actually used pieces of white hand soap) and was just going to go downtown, make money and buy more crack and be back before he got home from work. But, he had gotten off work early that day (probably because he knew he could get high once he got home). I wasn't overly worried about what would happened if he did discover my attempt at covering my tracks, he was sort of a wimp, and he needed me to score dope for him. It wasn't like he couldn't get too mad. I worry though, that I am making myself seem like a total b***h here, by taking his money, dissing him, etc. Realistically though, he would have been getting high with another female, if I wasn't there. Better me than her.

By the time I got myself back his place in Kits, he was already there. I was waiting for him to give me a hard time about doing his dope, but he said nothing. I had purposely took all the smoking utensils (pipes, etc.) with me when I left, in case he did return before me. But there he was, not letting on that he knew I was guilty, and he just says to me, "oh, we have that dope, do you want to smoke it", and I said sure....then I notice that there was a tiny piece of a broken pipe on the kitchen table. He must have fished it out of somewhere. In this glassware was a horrible, black, burnt toke sized nugget of the soap. He had tried to smoke it when he got home, but when it burned black the way it did, I guess he assumed that he was doing it incorrectly and just waited for me to get there. I used to give him shit all the time about burning the dope anyways, so I guess in his mind it made sense that he must have lit his pipe incorrectly. I mean, smoking crack IS a skill after all (laugh). I couldn't believe it though, he really had no idea that I had done the swapped his crack for hand soap. Wow. Come ON.

His dad actually died after some time (months), and I guess it snapped him out of the mind space he was in, and he moved in with his mom to take care of her, and so he could clear his head. I was fine with that, it was getting harder to get cash out of him anyways, plus eventually even I started to feel bad taking his money. I knew how broke he was, plus, it wasn't even like I was earning it, cause I never did dates with him when I saw him. I was just bleeding him financially.

I would see him once in a while though, he eventually moved back to Van from White Rock, and still wanted to get high once in a while, but I wasn't the only girl he would pick up.

One of the last times we did see each other, I had asked him about the other girls he spent time with and if they were weird or freaky, who were they, etc. He proceeded to tell me that the girl from his last bender had taken him to her place in a hotel and as soon as he was high he had taken his clothes off and asked her to do the same. He always did that. It's like they "assume" that we too, want to have sex as soon as we get high, when in reality, we would rather do anything but. So there he was, naked, high, waiting for this girl to tend to his "needs" when there was a loud banging on the door. He guessed that when the girl had gone to score she had set up a scam with the dope dealer. The dealer banged on the door, making threats thug style. She opens the door and then the dealer says that she is his woman and accuses Norm of molesting her. Norm, being the champ that he is when under the influence, was relieved of his clothing, dope and his wallet, and was made to fend for himself once he was evicted from the room...(naked).

This makes me feel kind of sorry for him, so much so that I had to use a fake name. It wasn't his fault that he was so ridiculous.

Maybe I was the villain in this story. Or maybe some people just weren't born to do drugs, it isn't in their DNA. (laugh)