Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 10:08:18 -0700
From: Clone Buggs <cqsqfq@hotmail.com>
Subject: Across the Alley part 29

Across the Alley XXIX


	As the night wore on, Michael made connections with three more men.  I
turned down several, before I took up a booth in the cafe and waited for the
night to be over.  Steve and Sally paraded up and down the street looking
hopefully at the slowly cruising drivers, but none stopped.  They spent the
night like the young lovers they were strolling and talking about the
future.  I realized after my forth or fifth cup of coffee, that Michael and
I would be in their way.  I began to lay some plans of my own.
	The first realization was that I wanted to be with Michael.  He was seven
years my senior, but I liked him like I'd liked nobody else I'd ever known
before.  I even fantasized I might be in love.  I knew instinctively I had
to keep it to myself, but none-the-less, the feeling was there.  About
midnight, Sally and Steve came into the diner and sat down with me.  They
ordered Cokes and fries, and sat mooning at each other.  I was shredding a
napkin into tiny pieces, and then rolling each piece into a tiny pellet.  I
had a goodly pile in front of me when Sally noticed it.
	"Something bothering you Davy?"
	"Nah."  I saw she was looking at the pile of paper.  I swept it off the
table into my palm and dumped it on the floor under the table.
	"What's up Squirt?"  Steve leaned over the table and I reached up and
grabbed his nose between my thumb and forefinger.
"OUCH!  Whddafukdeuedoin?"  He sounded like he had a severe head cold.  I
grinned at him, feeling in control for once since we had run away from home.
	"I told you not to call me Squirt again; didn't I?"  I pulled on his nose,
and made him nod in agreement.  "Didn't I?"  I let go of him, and his hands
immediately went to his red and swelling nose.
	"Shit man.  That hurts.
	"Better that than a punch which might have broken it.  My name is David,
Steve.  Call me that, or suffer the consequences."  I pulled another napkin
out of the dispenser and began shredding it into long thin strips.
	"Come on Davy," Sally put her hand on my arm.  "What's bothering you?"  I
looked at her, and then at Steve, still poking tenderly at his reddened nose
with his fingers.
	"I think I need to move on."
	"What?  Why?"  Sally looked shocked.  "We ain't been here but a day now,
and you want us to move on already?"
	"I didn't say we Sally.  I said I need to move on."
	"Just what the fuck does that mean Squ...I mean Davy?"  Steve's eyes got
larger when he realized he'd almost called me Squirt again.  His hand went
to cover his nose just in case.  I let it pass.
	"I've been sitting here since nine thirty thinking about things.  Michael
has been out there hustling all night, and I'm almost positive he's spent
most of what he's earned to buy dope.  He's really stoned now.  I saw him
get into a car a few minutes ago, and he couldn't stand without weaving on
his feet."
	"Yeah?  So he's a hop head."  Steve sounded disgusted.
	"Yeah he is, but he doesn't have anyone to care for him."
	"What are you getting at," Sally asked.
	"I think I need to get him out of Los Angeles.  He knows too many pushers
here.  When he's stoned, he goes a little crazy for the dope.  If I can get
him to go somewhere with me where he doesn't know any pushers, maybe I can
get him off the horse."
	"Why?"  Sally looked at me like I was crazy.  "How many hop heads have you
known before Davy?"
	"None.  I guess."
	"Then how do you know he's going to want to go with you?  And, where will
you go?"  I shrugged, unable to think of anything to say.
	We sat in silence for a few minutes, until the waitress stopped by and told
us we had to order something more if we wanted to stay any longer.  I
ordered another coffee, and a slice of chocolate pie.  Sally and Steve asked
to see the menu again, not having eaten much of their fries which were now
cold and had pockets of hardened grease pooled on their surfaces.  Sally
handed the plastic baskets to the waitress to take away when she went for
the menus.
	I looked out the window and saw Michael staggering up the street.  He had
blood on his white tshirt, and looked disoriented.  I slipped out of the
booth and without speaking, and pushed through the door just as he was
trying to decide what to do next.  He'd been hit with something that had
left a cut on his cheek, and obviously had had a bloody nose from the blow.
His eyes were seriously disoriented, and he looked vulnerable and lost.  I
put my arm around him, and he jerked away, not really recognizing me at
first.
	"It's me Michael.  Davy.  Remember?"  He leaned back, gripping my shoulder
to steady himself, as he swayed on his unsteady legs.  His eyes seemed to
focus on my face for a moment, and he grinned slightly, then winced in pain.
	"Davy.  Man am I glad to see you."
	"What happened?"
	"I don't know really.  Some trick probably beat me up."
	"Did he rob you?"  I pulled his arm over my shoulder, and helped him limp
into the diner.  The waitress saw us, and yelled at us to get out, but I
ignored her.  She screamed something through the kitchen pass through, and
the beefy looking cook, burst through the swinging door brandishing a very
large baseball bat.
	"Get him the fuck outta here asshole."  The cook moved to bar our advance
into the room.  He let the bat come to point threateningly at my chest.
"You don't go; I'll give you some `a what he got faggot."  I stared at him,
anger tearing my eyes.
	"Come on Davy.  Let's get out of here."  Michael tried to turn, but his
knees buckled, and he collapsed, pulling me down with him.  The cook kicked
me in the small of the back, and hit the floor beside my head with the bat.
	"Leave them alone," Sally screamed, and was standing suddenly between the
cook and the two of us on the floor.  The cook blustered and waved the bat
around.  Steve was there struggling to get us up of the floor.
	Outside, with Michael supported between us, we looked first for a cab, but
none would stop.  There was nothing left to do but shamble home as best we
could.  The five block struggle left all of us exhausted.  Steve helped me
get him stripped and seated on the toilet.  I wet a wash cloth under the hot
tap, and started cleaning him up.  The cut on his cheek, wasn't as bad as it
looked once the crusted blood was washed away.  When hit was cleaned, I
kissed it lightly, and painted it with Mercurochrome, and put a bandaid over
it.  He looked up at me briefly, and then let his eyes close.
	I rinsed the cloth, and then began to clean him up all over his body.  He
had the beginning of a large bruise developing over his left kidney, and an
abrasion that had the shape of a shoe heel.  He was trembling slightly, and
I helped him to bed.  He crawled into the clean sheets, and snuggled into
the warmth of the light blanket.  I stripped off, and climbed into bed with
him, and spooned into his backside giving him my body warmth to help with
his trembling.  Even though he was seven years my senior, we were the same
height, but his thin frame was skeletal compared to mine.  His body was
crying out for help.  I wanted to give it to him if I could.
	He was drifting off to sleep, and I talked to him in whispers, trying out
my ideas for us.  He never answered, and I wasn't positive that he heard me
at all, but I talked through the whole plan that had developed in my brain
while I sat alone in the diner.  The night grew darker as the moon set, and
then in what seemed like seconds, the mocking birds were singing outside the
window.  The heady fragrance of the night blooming Jasmine outside the
window, flooded my senses, and I finally drifted off to sleep.
	It was broad daylight when I awoke in an empty bed, and a Mexican gardener
was raking leaves from under my window, singing softly to himself in Spanish
as he worked.  I opened my eyes, and sat up, putting my hand on my morning
hard-on.  I slipped off the bed, and went to the toilet.  The door to Steve
and Sally's room was open, and I could see their sleeping forms lumpy under
the covers where they were intertwined.  I peed, and splashed some water in
my face to help me wake up.  Back in the bedroom, I pulled on my Levis and
padded into the living room looking for Michael.  I found him in the
kitchen, eating dry cereal out of a bowl with a fork.
	"Want some milk with that?"  He looked up when I spoke, and I winced.  His
face was swollen and purplish blue with a massive bruise.  "Shit Michael."
	"Yeah.  Shit," he said between clinched teeth.  "I can't work lookin' like
this."
	"Well, don't worry about it.  You can coast on me until you get back in
shape."  I started making coffee, and while it was perking, I stepped out
the side door, and collected a dozen oranges off the tree.  I sliced them
and using the glass juicer, squeezed the halves for the juice.  I poured him
a glass, and got the milk out.  I poured some on his cereal, and set the
container on the table.  I got two mugs out of the cabinet, and put them on
the table, as the coffee began to perk.  I poured myself a bowl of cereal,
and then spooned several helpings of sugar onto it before I drenched it in
milk.  I retrieved the coffee off the stove, and poured us both mugs full,
and set the pot down on the hot pad on the table for that purpose.
	We ate in silence for a while, and after Michael had finished his cereal,
he sat back and lifted the mug to his lips.  He winced at first, but blew
across the hot liquid, and sipped.  He looked at me across the rim of the
mug, and tried to smile.  His lips twisted in a grimace of pain.  "Fuck," he
whispered.  "It even hurts to smile."
	"Don't smile then."  I swallowed the last of my juice, and set the glass
down.
	"Did you mean what you said last night?"  He sipped again and set his mug
down.
	"Which part?"
	"When we were going to sleep."
	"you heard that?"
	"Sort of."
	"Which part of it are you asking about?"
	"That you...um..."
	"Love you?"  His eyes locked onto mine, and I could see a mixtures of
emotions play in them before he looked down at his coffee mug again.
	"Yeah," he whispered again.
	"I think I do."
	"We just met."  He glanced at me again.
	"Does it make a difference?"  I reached across and put my hand over his.
	"I don't know."  He turned his hand over under mine, and we squeezed our
fingers together.
	"I don't either.  But I do know this...I don't have anything but my body to
sell, and you don't either.  But the difference is, you have a parasite
eating you up from inside out.  If you can't get a handle on it, you'll be
dead before too long.  When I thought it all through last night, I realized
that if you died, I'd be heartbroken.  I guess you could call that a kind of
love."  He nodded at me, and squeezed my hand again.
	"You know I'm gonna be sick if I don't get my fix."  His eyes were suddenly
afraid.
	"Yeah, I know that, but I think if we work together, we can get you through
it."  He looked at me for a long moment.
	"You know Davy, I'm a user.  I'll most likely use you for what I can get,
and then dump you like a hot potato when you don't have anything else to
give me."
	"I'll take that chance Michael.  I see something more in you than you do in
yourself."
	"What do you see?"
	"I see a decent guy that got off on the wrong foot, and maybe ran with the
wrong crowd.  I think that underneath the drugs, that guy still exists, and
just needs someone to believe in him to make a comeback."
	"You might be right.  I don't much care for the me I've become.  I dream
about when I was a kid, and how happy I was then."
	"What happened?"
	"My dad abandoned us, and my mother started hookin' to support us.  We wus
just white trash, but we loved each other.  She got herself hooked on skag,
and things got bad between us.  I hated what it did to her.  When she was
sick, she couldn't hook, and there were long periods when we starved."
	"Is that how you got started?"
	"What hustlin'?"
	"I guess."
	"Yeah.  I was hungry, and we didn't have any money to buy food with, and
she was sick and couldn't make any.  Some guy knocked on the door one
evening during that time, and I told him she was sick, he suggested that I
would do as far as he was concerned.
	"I thought about it for a minute, and asked him what he'd pay and what did
he want to do.  He give me five dollars, and took me out into the tool shed
in the back yard, and fucked the shit outa me for half the night.  I thought
I wouldn't be able to sit down for a week, it hurt so much.
	"I figured I could work out the problems for myself, and between the two of
us my mom and me could make enough to get by.  We were living in this small
town in Georgia then, and I don't have any idea where she got her hands on
her fixes, but she did.  The more money we made, the more money went into
her arm.
	"One morning after I'd been out hustlin' all night, I got home, with a few
dollars in my pocket, and found her laying on the floor of the kitchen.  She
wus dead from an overdose.  I hiked into the police station, and told the
cops about it, and never went back to the tumble down old house.
	"I hitched a ride to Dallas, Texas, and got myself arrested for hustlin' in
the Greyhound bus station.  I think another hustler turned me in because I
was farming his territory.  I didn't have enough money to go one, but after
a week in jail, and having to put out for free, they let me go and took me
out of town and put me out on the highway.
	"The first ride was with a trucker haulin' a load of frozen beef to LA.  I
rode the whole way with him, in exchange for blowing him about four times a
day.  Once we got to town, I slipped away while he was turnin' over his
beef, and found my way to Hollywood.  I asked a few fags I ran across down
town around Pershing Square, but that scene wasn't for me, because they were
all hooking for skag.  I just wanted to avoid it if possible.
	"I worked for a year, before I hooked up with a pimp.  He was good for me
at first, and it took me off the street.  I'd stay in his place, and he'd
get a call and send me out to do the business, and he kept me in good
clothes, and fed, but I wasn't makin' much for myself.  I turned twenty-one,
and  he threw a party for me at the Formosa Cafe, and I got really really
drunk.  I passed out, and when I woke up, I was sick.  I must have thrown up
for hours.
	Delmore, my pimp told me he could make me feel better, and I felt so bad, I
told him to give it to me.  He shot me up for the first time, and I felt
like I was suddenly floating on clouds.  He was right, I wasn't sick
anymore, just like that."  He snapped his fingers.
	"Well, I was hooked.  He kept me for months high all the time, humping my
butt all over Hollywood.  As long as he kept me high, I didn't give a fuck
that I wasn't gettin' a cent outa all my whorin' for Delmore.
	"I got cut loose one night, when Delmore got wasted by his pusher over some
piece of shit business.  I was back on the streets hooked on skag, and
gettin' sicker by the minute.  That was a few months before I met you
yesterday.  I been gettin' by from fix to fix since then.  So last night,
made it clear to me that somethin's gotta change or I won't be around much
longer.
	"So what you told me last night, sounds good.  Where do you want to go?"
	"I don't know.  Do you have any ideas?"
	"I've always wanted to see New York City."
	"How do we get there?"
	"Bus I guess."
	"Then I'll check into tickets today."
	"I had sixty dollars on me before that last trick beat me up last night.  I
have to hit the street to get myself together before I can leave."
	"So we'll hustle for a few days before we go, but you need to cut back on
the horse while we do what we've got to do.  You promise?"
	"It'll be hard, but I promise I'll do my damnedest."
	"Deal?"  I held out my hand to shake his, and he grabbed mine, and pumped
it hard.
	"Deal."  He tried to smile again, but his face twisted in pain.
	"You're going to stay in the apartment until you heal some.  I'll hit the
streets tonight."  The door to Sally and Steve's bedroom opened, and Steve
came out, rubbing his eyes with the back of his fists.
	I poured him a mug of coffee, and handed it to him.  He sat down with us,
and looked at Michael's bruises.  "Shit man, who ever you run across really
beat the crap outa you."  Michael just nodded.
	I told him briefly what our plans were, and he sipped his coffee, and
nodded his head from time to time.  Sally came out tying her robe, and I got
her a mug of coffee.  She sat down, and put her hand under Michael's chin
turning his face from side to side.
	"Tsk, tsk, tsk." she clucked.

End