Busted... and Broken Free (V2:1)

Busted...and Broken Free 

By the time it all went down, I was firmly ensconced in a lifestyle I had consciously chosen to embrace. I was fully aware of the depth of my addiction.  Five solid years of heavy meth use came directly on the heels of a years-long cocaine binge. I gave up the coke almost overnight when speed was brought into the picture. It made far better economic sense, which was suddenly of significant importance as I had very recently walked away from my job in favor of getting high.  Feeding a coke habit is devastating to the wallet. More is wanted right away. The craving sets in within fifteen minutes while speed lasts for hours. Cocaine made me antisocial and intensely paranoid. Speed made me very industrious and hyper-social. Not only did I like what my new drug did to me, I liked what it didn't do even more. There were no more dark and silent nights alone in my house peering out windows and cracks under doors.  This stuff made me feel right on top of the world. 

The transition from coke to speed was fostered by a perfect storm. I had very recently taken up with Fred.  I had left my job, and soon afterward lost my house.  My son had graduated from high school and moved to his own apartment.  Everything was changing.   

Fred found us an apartment in a high rise building where it seemed everyone was on meth.  In the hallways, the lobby, the business center, the stairwells; everywhere we went in that building someone was getting high, being high, asking if we wanted to get high, or asking if we knew where to score dope.  The parking garage was always littered with syringes; so were the trash chute rooms, the mail room, and the laundry.  It was a far cry different from the secluded little loft I had kept for the last couple of years a few blocks away.  A few blocks, and yet a universe away. 

We lasted a total of 27 days at that place.  I hated it there. So did Fred.  I likened the entire scene to a bad college dorm where the chaperone had been gone for the entire semester.  That place was strange.  In that scant four weeks, I put almost no effort into finding a new job.  I was too high, all the time.  I would get stopped and invited or find myself with unexpected company. This went on all day, every night, non-stop.  I never even had time to think about the cocaine I suddenly was not doing.  The partying made that entire time like a bad dream.  I was not happy there, but I had no means of finding a better place.  I did not even have the means to pay the rent for the second month. I did have the means to support a steady high for that whole time. I honestly do not remember sleeping in that apartment. 

Fred had been in line for a subsidized apartment through Colorado AIDS Project, and somehow that materialized shortly after we moved in to that drug infested high rise. A second relocation in as many months brought us to the place, we kept on Capitol Hill for the next four years.  Neither of us were employed, yet somehow managed to get ourselves settled into the new digs.  At first, it seemed like a haven away from the whirlwind of that crazy high rise, but that illusion only lasted a few hours.   

On the first day we lived there, Fred was out at the store, and I was alone in the apartment unpacking boxes. I had the curtains open, so I could enjoy the light that came in from our floor to ceiling windows onto the second-floor balcony. I was behind the kitchen counter when I heard the sliding glass door to the balcony open.  Standing up, I was surprised to see a guy around my age letting himself into our place.  I started to shout, and realized this guy was just as shocked to see me as I was to see him.  He was full of apologies and explanations, but so obviously high that he was almost unintelligible in his stammered rambling.   What I did finally understand was that he had been climbing the fence and jumping the balcony, accessing this (formerly) empty apartment for several weeks as a safe place to get high.  In an instant he was pulling out a crack pipe and a meth pipe.  I had made my first new friend at the new house.   

A community of addicts without real jobs does not seem like it would be sustainable.   We learned very quickly that there exists a subculture of these people who have formed their own sort of economy, in which dope, sex, and stolen merchandise are the currency when cash cannot be found. We had made contacts with several sources for our own dope, and while we did not have money, we had something else that worked just as well.  We had a place.  Our habits were fed by an enterprise in which we allowed space for deals to happen.  We also knew and networked with several fellow addicts who would ask for our help when they wanted to connect.  It did not take long before I had devised a system that kept both Fred and I high, and sometimes even brought in a few dollars.  If someone I knew wanted me to score their dope, I would ask for a kickback, enough to get me high too.  When I took cash to the dealer, I would get a little kick from him as a kudos for bringing the business.  If I had more than one friend looking to score, I could combine dollars at hand and buy a larger amount, naturally with the intent to pocket the extra weight. This little system worked well enough to keep us high for a couple of years. 

Over the course of time, I had gathered a handful of regulars for whom I played intermediary, while at the same time making many more contacts among the wheelers and dealers in the scene.  Before we lived in the high rise, I did not know anyone who did speed.  By our second year on Cap Hill, I did not know anyone who did NOT do speed.   The drug infestation of the new place was just as bad as it was at the high rise.  We soon discovered that there were dope dealers peddling everything from pills to smack on every floor of our building.  There was a significant difference for me this time around. I was not bothered by the drug infestation. I was part of the problem. 

After some time, I ended up taking a "job" at the all-night porn shop I used to do my little dope deals.  It did not last long, but it furthered my foray into the darker depths of that drug world.  Go-between operation had become such a regular thing that I took up a sort of partnership with one of my favorite dealers, slinging his wares for a profit in product and cash.  It was not my business, or my money laid out for the product, but I was effectively doing all the work.  Again, I was not bothered.  It kept both Fred and me high, and it even generated some cash; enough to keep our dog fed and our ashtrays constantly in need of emptying.  I did not last long as an employee at the bookstore. After leaving the legal job I had there, I continued to do business in the same store, only this time, it was illegal. 

One night, one of our regular dealer/ friends came over in a quandary. He was willing to let go of a particular amount of dope at an unheard-of low price.  It was at once tempting, but prior to that I only did hand to hand deals, never handling more than I was intending to sell or use immediately. This guy was offering more than I was accustomed to buying at once, but I could hardly resist the deal. I did not have the cash on hand so I went into scramble mode to assemble a couple of quick buyers who would front me enough to make the deal.  I asked why this guy had to sell at that specific price so fast.  He broke down and told me how he had taken a significant front of product from his dealer, with intent to sell what he needed to, and profit from the rest.  Instead, he did too much himself, and shared it at no cost with too many friends.  He was expected to pay up later that night, but he did not have enough money.  He would let go of everything he had if someone paid what he still owed. 

As a middleman type slinger, I only ever had the cash I was fronted to pick up for someone else.  I had a few bucks I was willing to lay down, but not enough to make the deal.  I went into scramble mode, and assembled a couple of willing buyers who fronted me with cash.  I paid my desperate friend a deposit of all the cash I had, and we packaged up a couple of smaller bindles for the guys I had lined up to grab some.  While we worked on the weights and the packaging, I talked to my friend about how easy it would be to take a front half the size of what he owed for and turn it into a profitable venture in two turns.  He doubted my advice and said it could not be done. 

That was about all the challenge I needed.  We had been over two years at the Cap Hill place by the time I made the fated leap from part time go-between just scraping by to feed a habit to a street dealer on my own.  I began to make quantity purchases of speed from several different sources.  I was making contacts with some of the most dubious people, living out their grey and dreary doped-out routines in all sorts of unsavory circumstances.  I was going less and less to the porn shop. I did not need to.  Business came to me, sometimes so fast and so frequently that I hardly had time to weigh and package my product before it was all sold.  My phone rang constantly. I was having to run in and out and all about so much that it became a hassle.  I was on fire, and I was loving it. 

Fred was not. Fred was against the object from the get-go.  He really did not even like the frequency of the whole go-between thing, but it kept him high. As an addict himself, that was half the game.  It is crazy what an addict will do, or not do to feed that need.  It is incredible what an addict will put up with as long as they can continue to get high.  Resolve, responsibility, and reality itself are all up for sale when an addict has a line on getting what they crave.  Despite protests and arguments from Fred, who was dead set against my taking up this enterprise, he caved easily when I handed him generous amounts of dope for him to use, share, and enjoy.  I had a rather unkind reference to it as his "shut up dope," given to keep him from nagging at me or trying to stop me from continuing to conduct my business.   

When I first got going, I was conscientious about not doing my commerce at home. Things took off so rapidly that I soon had to lay that rule aside.  There were times when there was so much traffic in and out of our place that it began to really bother Fred.  He still took as much dope as I would give him, but he started taking himself as far out of the picture as he could.  He would barricade himself in the bedroom while I continued to do business, party, and play in the rest of the apartment.  We kept insane hours, and sometimes continued a run of it for days on end, before even I had to close shop and sleep for a while.  Fred hated everything about the way things became when I started acting like I thought I was some kind of dope dealer.  He was unhappy, and I knew it, but I took advantage of his addiction and kept feeding him enough drugs to placate him. 

Even though Fred hated the situation I put him in, he too kept up with this share of the misadventures. He had a thing for hooking up with some guys in a party scene and hanging out for days. He often came home with new dope or cash in his pockets that he had lifted from someone at the party.  He seemed to get a kick out of it. Despite how much he hated the insanity I was inflicting on his world with my craziness, he managed to find himself having an active party life of his own.   

The traffic became dangerous at our house. I was in cahoots with the dealers in the building and supplying an addict or two on every floor.  I had people shouting up to the balcony, wandering the halls, and camping out in the laundry rooms.  It was a nuisance to say the least, but this apartment building was unmanaged which allowed this activity to go on unchecked for an unbelievably long time. 

One night, a year or more into the escalated stage of all this insanity, I found myself hanging out making a sale at an apartment down the street from ours. Fred was out that night, partying somewhere and stealing wallets, so I was doing my thing with total freedom.  I was at this apartment, and the host had another guest with him, some loud and boisterous scruffy looking guy who I instantly did not like.  I cut our business short because I wanted to be away from that jerk, even though I had the idea that if I partied with the host, I might be able to take him to bed.  I abandoned that thought in favor of getting away from the idiot who would not shut up at his house.   

I had gone to this place with a friend. He and I left, heading back down the block to my place.  I had just made a good sale and had not partied that night, so we set up a couple of humdingers and got super high.  I do not remember what happened, but my friend took off and I was at the house all by myself, spun out of my mind.  I was thinking I should change clothes and hit the streets.  I was high as a kite, and I loved just walking around at night being wasted.  That was my plan, when suddenly my door was being beaten and pounded.  I was completely bewildered when the door burst open, and there stood the kid whose house I had just left an hour before.  I had been putting out sexual hints at him earlier that evening, and I initially thought he had gotten rid of the jerk at his house and wanted to play.  I could see that he was even higher than me.   

Play was the last thing on his mind. He slammed and locked the door and flew across the room to close the drapes.  He stammered out some crazy talk about that guy at his house getting up in his face and starting trouble. He collapsed onto my couch when his rant was ending and said, "so I cut him."  I could not believe what he was saying, and he went into the disjointed account of how after we left him alone with the guy, everything went berserk.  He told me this guy tried to forcibly steal the packet of dope he had just bought from me, and it became a big fight.  I heard something about a television being thrown and then the part about the stabbing.  There was no blood on his hands or his clothes, which he tried to explain but I was in a panic and could hardly hear him. I asked if the guy was alive.  This fool did not know. He said he had stabbed him in the eye.   

I went into fight or flight mode. I had to find out what the hell was happening.  I ordered this kid to sit still and not move while I ran out the front door to look in the direction of his apartment.  The end of the block was like Times Square in flashing lights and pandemonium.  I dashed down the block and acted like I wanted to go into the building.  An officer stopped me and told me I could not enter until they pulled the victim out.  I learned that he was still alive.  Running back to my house, I started flipping out on the kid. I wanted to know why he thought it was okay to stab someone and then run to my house.  I was furious, but also worried about what was going to happen if the cops showed up at my house.  I let the kid use my phone. He called his mother, then I told him he had to leave.  I heard him arrange to meet his mother a few blocks away.  As he was leaving, I saw him trembling uncontrollably, and realized he did not have a coat. It was February.   I gave him a coat out of my closet, and he was gone.   

It took the rest of the night for me to calm down. I tried not to think about it and did not want to talk about it for the next several days, but the streets were alive with the news.  The details they did not have included my presence moments before the crime, as well as the fact that the cutter ran to my house after he did the deed.  I kept my ear to the ground for a few days and was comfortably satisfied that my name had not come up in any of the chatter I was hearing.  I was thinking this was past history a week or so after, when we got a knock at the door on a Sunday morning.   Fred was doing dishes and answered the door in his rubber gloves.  A pair of detectives asked for me by name and took me into the hallway to ask questions about what happened that crazy night.  I tried to deny any awareness or involvement, but before I could spin a yarn, the detectives told me that they already knew the perp had been to my house immediately after the incident.  They cautioned me against lying and warned me that they already had details including a jacket that I gave the guy.   

I was honest but not forthcoming. I told them I had seen the guy, and I thought he was too high and told him to leave.  I said I gave him a coat because it was the only way I could get him out of my house.  That satisfied them, and they gave me a card as they left, with instructions to call if I remembered any further details. I went into the house and got super high to quell my shaking.  I obviously had no intention of ever speaking to the cops about this or any other situation.  I was at risk myself, and I was not about to invite trouble. 

Through this time of having launched into a street dealers world, I was always conscious of my risks. I always knew this was a dangerous life.  Overdoses happened all the time, and all around us.  In the time we lived on Cap Hill, there were NINE drug overdose deaths in our building.  I actually stepped over someone who was being worked on by medics one day on the floor of the laundry room.  I was stunned by running into the situation in progress and stung by the affirmation of the victim's death by the ambulance driver.  One of our neighbors, a good friend of ours from the time we moved in, overdosed in the apartment across the hall.  The occupants there panicked and escorted him upstairs to his own house instead of calling 911.  He died in his bed, only to be discovered when his partner came home later that evening.   I saw people I knew try to inject themselves with dull, used needles.  One guy came to our house to get high on something he picked up from a stranger.  He mixed up his shot and the dope turned into mud because it was cut with something nasty.  Fred was scarred by watching this fool persist with trying to shoot it up, and to this day refers to seeing someone try to inject kitty litter. 

All of this swirled around in my head, and I produced an idea to embrace my new lifestyle with some kind of responsibility.  I got involved with the local harm reduction project and started getting hundreds of free clean syringes and other injection supplies.  I went and took a class in safe and proper injection.  I took a class on overdoses and mitigation.  Even though my scene was not about opioids, I knew plenty of addicts with that proclivity, so I got Narcan to keep on hand.  I started giving out free clean works to all my customers.  I kept a medical “sharps” container to collect used syringes which I replaced with fresh clean ones.  I made several trips to the harm reduction needle exchange, carrying hundreds of used ones to trade for clean.  I thought this was a way to do right in the midst of doing what I knew was wrong.  Perhaps I was trying to bargain with karma, thinking I was really doing a decent service in a place where it was needed more than anyone really knew. 

About a week after the detectives showed up at my door, I had done my best to put the entire stabbing thing out of my mind.  Life was going on just as usual.  I remember the day so well because I was really in my element that whole afternoon.  I had a customer who never had cash, but always had valuable stolen merchandise on hand.  He had recently shoplifted some expensive Diesel jeans, quite conveniently in my size.  I traded some dope and donned the pants. I thought I looked like a million bucks.  I had some business to do that evening, so I decided to dress it up a little and put on a spiffy shirt and my favorite motorcycle boots and leather jacket. A pair of hot sunglasses, and I was dressed to kill.  I hit the streets, collecting a few debts, slinging a couple of bags, and decided before I got high that night, I should grab a bite to eat.  I ran into a kid I liked to party with at Wendy's, and we decided to head back to my house and get high.  The sun was just starting to go down.  As we approached my building, there were three police cars outside.  I wondered who had od’d this time on and walked up to the door.  One of my neighbors came out and said the cops were there waiting for me.  I swallowed hard and put my key in the door. 

The door was jerked open, and a hand grabbed my wrist. In seconds I was handcuffed and led into the apartment.  An officer was standing over Fred, who was in cuffs and in tears on the couch.  I was busted.  It was over, just like that.  I knew the jig was up and opted to be as cooperative as I could to lessen the likelihood of this becoming more than I could handle.  I was whisked off to jail, along with Fred.  We were not allowed to see each other, so I was completely lost as to what chain of events had brought the police up to our house in the first place.  It was not long before I began to get some clues.  I learned the whole story weeks later when I was released from jail and could finally speak with Fred. 

I learned that while I was out, a "customer" came to the door. This was not someone I was particularly fond of, and had I been home, he would have been turned away without getting what he wanted. I did not like the guy. Fred did not have the same issues, and let him in. I understood he was just planning to wait for me to get home to make a buy. There was a little more behind his visit that evening. He was acting as a controlled informant, sent by police, to ferret out the dealer in the building. When he did not return promptly, they sent an officer to the door. Fred opened the door, let them in, and told them everything. 

I could not be angry. I knew how he felt about my insane doings for a long time. He warned me that one day it would all end. When hell came to the door, Fred played the strong and brave role of giving it all up. I had no choice but to admit my doing and take whatever consequences I was due. I was terrified. When I was questioned, I immediately did everything I could to take the whole blame and get Fred out of trouble. I told the police that he was against this whole thing from the beginning. I do not know how much that helped, but he got out of jail on personal recognizance the next morning. I was stuck for weeks.  

During my stay, I was called out for an interview. The same two detectives who had questioned me after that stabbing were in a little room.  They made offers to have my charges reduced if I gave them information.  They were not as curious about my dealer contacts as they were about that stabbing.  I learned from them that they became suspicious of drug activity at my house the day they questioned me because Fred answered the door wearing rubber gloves.  They equated that with suspicion of a possible meth lab.  I always thought that was strange. My flagrant and obvious drug trafficking activity had been going on there for over a year, and the first red flag they saw was rubber gloves and an off-base suspicion of drug manufacturing. 

This story was written in observation of the ten-year anniversary of that bust.  My life changed drastically after that night. It took several months and some more wild misadventures before I was finally convicted of the felony I pleaded to. It was still a few weeks after my conviction before I stopped using the stuff and leading that life. The ball dropped on my world that night a decade ago. By the time it stopped rolling, I was a different person. I went through many changes and understood the value of some important lessons because of what happened that night. Those lessons and changes are a story all their own. I place a lot of emphasis on remembering this date. I have no doubt that if I had continued much longer on the path I had been on leading to that fateful night, I would not be alive this ten years later to tell the story at all. 

I thank my Freddie for his bravery that night. I do not know how things might have turned out if he had not taken control and done what had to be done to affect the changes that have gifted us with the last ten years and set us on the right road for the next.  On February 28, 2013, I was busted, and in that same act, broken free.  

Murphy Love 

February 28, 2023