It was a New England winter.  We were hunkered down in the Copley train station in Boston.  It was me, Russel, and Lacey.  When the night ended, I would have a new girlfriend.  Russel was the youngest; I thought he was at least 18, but looking back on it I realize he was probly more like 17.  He really liked Lacey--a lot.  He lived on the North Shore, which is a long way from the city.  Lacey was from LA.  She went to college near Fenway.  I was the oldest.  I was 21.  When the whiskey bottle ran dry, as it usually does, I braced myself for the cold and trekked out of the semi-warm train station and crossed the street and bought another bottle.  I’d known Russel for a while.  He and I went way back.  I met Lacey, however, the same night Samantha and I had broken up.  In the morning I had Lacey’s cellphone and she had mine.  No one remembered how or when the swap took place.  In fact, the night before I exchanged only one or two words with her, before Andrew led her off in the night with his arm wrapped around her shoulder.  We were so cold.  The brick-walled station didn’t offer too much protection.  But we didn’t want to pay to get in the station proper because then if we left we’d have to pay to get back in. So we huddled together on the steps leading up to the street and down to the station.  It was not as cold down here, but still it was brittle.  We could feel the excruciatingly cold wind breeze past us whenever the doors opened  : : :  we all shuddered.  Our teeth tremored.  We were shaking.  The whiskey made everything better.  We laughed a lot.  We taunted the people that walked past us.  We had our fun, albeit fueled by the whiskey.  When the bottle ran dry, I’d leave and go buy another bottle, until I was too drunk and the clerk refused to sell me anymore.  It was almost like the liquor store was the bar and the station was our stool.  They had to cut me off.  I really wished they hadn’t.  It was so cold and we had nowhere else to go.  Nothing else to do.  Of course, we could have just gone home.  Sleep it off, so to speak.  Fuck that, we were granted a gift.  A gift of self-destruction.  The point of life is to defy physics and see how far we can push it.  Test our limits.  Presently I’m sitting in an AA meeting and I recognize why the clerk had cut me off, but in the moment I looked at it like he was ruining our good time.  Maybe he saved our lives, now that I think about it.  I hated everyone who had ever saved my life.  Those who didn’t want me to die—fuck them!  They were not doing me any favors.  Life is a state of mind.  If you’re not living, then you must be dying.  I was on my way there.  I was living only to die.  Once I was in Connecticut and these two young boys asked me to buy them liquor but when I showed the clerk my ID he didn’t believe it was me.  He and his wife were Indian and they spoke poor English.  They said they didn’t believe I was the guy in the photo.  In the photo I had black spikey hair but the guy trying to buy liquor at their store had half-green, half-red spikey hair.  They didn’t understand that I had dyed my hair.  Eventually we did get going.  Russel hopped on the train to North Station where he would in turn catch a commuter rail back to his hometown.  Lacey and I were going the same way so we hopped on the train together.  We were both going outbound.  Her stop was Fenway and mine was Newton Highlands.  On the train we met an older guy with a black mohawk and a leather jacket covered in spikes studs patches paint & chains and he invited us back to his place.

I was sitting downtown, by myself, outside the Radio Bean, listening to a band called the Didjits on my portable speaker.  I’d been listening to the Spaceshits, but some strange older woman had told me to turn it up and she said the band reminded her of the New Bomb Turks and then told me I should check out the Didjits.  Always on the lookout for new bands to listen to, I said I would; I found them on Spotify moments later.  Then she told me her food was ready; she went inside the Greek restaurant beside the Bean, and I moseyed back to the Bean and continued sitting here all alone.  As I sat here, the woman walked past me holding her food and asked if I like the Boys.  From England? I said.  She said: Yeah.  And I said: Yeah, the Boys are awesome.
So I was sitting here waiting for the Bean to open and the open-mike to begin.  They open at 6:00 and the last two times I had driven down here for an open-mike I had to drive around for a good hour looking for a place to park.  Tonight that was not the case; I had found a spot right away.  So I got here half an hour early.  But that wasn’t the worst: it was a beautiful night and it gave me time to sit here and reflect.  And I really enjoy watching people and stuff like that and this is what my life is about—sitting in the midst of the commotion but not too close to become totally absorbed by it.  On the outside, that’s where I wish to remain, but close enough so that I can join in whenever it feels right.
At the open-mike I planned to read a new poem called “Devil” and a new story called “In the Absence of Zack.”  I wasn’t sure how they would take those pieces, though.  “In the Absence of Zack” is about a good friend of mine who had died from a heroin overdose a few years back.  A few weeks ago the Bean had cancelled the open-mike because some young girl who I suppose had used to work there had died a few days earlier and they were doing a memorial for her, which is really sweet.  I hope people care that much after I die.
Every other week it’s poetry-only and every other week it’s everything else.  This week it’s everything else, but I still read, anyway, and normally the Radio Bean brings pretty astute listeners to their venue.
At other joints and venues people are loud and they don’t care what’s going on onstage.  We become just ambient noise, for all they care.  But here, at the Bean, they watch and they listen and they even applaud when you’re done, and that kind of validation feels good.
Last time I was here, this guy named Bobby was here to perform too, and I used to go to his open-mike at Manhattan Pizza and I’d have him play guitar while I read and it was so much fun.  So I had asked him if he’d do the same last time I was here, and he did.  Bobby was here tonight, too, and I asked him if he’d do that for me again, and he said maybe, but since I didn’t want to make him feel pressured and plus, that one story I was gonna read is really sad and I didn’t think it would do well with music in the background—it’s one of those pieces that needs to stand alone—I told him not to worry about it; it was probably better that I went on alone.
Outside the Bean this guy with a long ponytail walked past me and I stopped and stared thinking he was my friend Wyatt because he looked just like him and then I realized it wasn’t Wyatt and I texted Wyatt to tell him I just saw his doppelgänger outside of the Bean and he told me I should stop by Lincoln’s tonight—that’s where he works but nobody was there right now and he said I should stop in. I asked him to remind me where that is.  He said it’s the speakeasy in the alleyway next to Red Square.  I knew where that was, but I could never actually find the entrance to the speakeasy myself; it was apparently a hidden entrance and after many attempts to get in had failed, I figured this place doesn’t even exist.
I was the third to go on.  For some reason my anxiety was feeling pretty intense.  I got up there and told everyone I was pretty anxious tonight.  Hope I don’t piss myself, I added, then immediately regretted saying that and mumbled: But I probly won’t don’t worry.  Everyone laughed.  I gulped.  I read the first poem.  People smiled and clapped.  I felt a little more comfortable up there now.  Then I read the story about Zack.  I smiled because people were reacting with sadness and compassion.  That was the reaction I was going for when I wrote the story a few weeks earlier.
After I read, I went to collect my stuff and head out, when the two women seated to my left asked me about my books.  I didn’t want to stick around any longer, so I gave them each my card with my website on it and they read the blurb on the card and they both smiled.
Then I set out to find Lincoln’s again.  I was in the alleyway beside Red Square and I saw a bar and I went inside but I didn’t see Wyatt anywhere.  I asked the bartender: Is this Lincoln’s?  He said: Next door.  I went outside the bar and all there was next door was an ATM.  So I continued walking.  Up the street I asked a bouncer outside some random bar where Lincoln’s was and he told me to go in that room with the ATM and find the secret button that opens the secret door.  So that’s what I did: I went into that room but I couldn’t find the button so I texted Wyatt thinking he was fucking with me or something but then a hatch in the wall opened up and there was Wyatt, and the place actually did exist.
I went in the bar and he served me a coke and told me it was on him and then we caught up for a while and he told me about his birthday party coming up and I didn’t think I’d make it and then eventually I left.  After leaving I texted Michelle that I had finally found the speakeasy and that I was walking to the car and I’d be home shortly.  But then, feeling bad that I wouldn’t be able to make it to Wyatt’s birthday party, I double-backed to the bar and decided to give him a copy of my newest book as an early birthday present.
So I was in the ATM again and I could not find the button.  Earlier Wyatt had opened the door for me.  This time he texted me to tell me where the button was.  He said it’s that wooden box, so I was searching for it.  I thought maybe you had to lift it up and the button was behind it, but of course the box did not move.  He said I was getting close.  The button is the box.  So I pressed the box and nothing happened and he came out and closed the secret door and then whacked the box, hard, and the door opened back up.  I said: Oh, I’m good at punching things.  And then I punched the box, and he said: Not that hard.  And then I gave him his birthday present and walked to the car and went home.

​NO MORE BUSSES TO HUNTINGTON AVE., said the guy at the station.  WE’RE CLOSING UP FOR THE NIGHT.
 
WHAT’S THE NEXT BUS? I asked him.
 
Some whispers.  He was chatting with someone just out of view.  He turned to me and said: BLUE HILLS.  Then grabbed the metal cage and pulled it over the window with a loud clank.
 
FUCK! I spat.  I turned to Samantha and smiled.
 
She shrugged.
 
She stood there, all innocent and beautiful.  I paced up and down the ramp.
 
Guess we should have spent less time branding each other with smileys from our lighters and more time preparing for the future.
 
I looked at her again, still smiling.
 
She was still shrugging.
 
I nodded up the ramp toward the bus that was just pulling in.
 
IT’D BE A LONG WALK, I told her.  AT LEAST THIS WAY WE’RE A LITTLE BIT CLOSER.
 
She stopped shrugging and nodded.
 
We ran through the station, all the while fumbling for loose quarters in our pockets.
 
The bus doors slid shut just as we got there.
 
I banged my fist on the glass.
 
The doors slid open.
 
The bus driver, an elderly black man with short gray hair and a patchy gray beard, looked at us very sharply.  He was considering this.  We stood there framed by the doorway as he held his wrinkly black hand over the coin reader.
 
I started up the steps.
 
He coughed.
 
Samantha followed me on the bus.
 
He removed his hand from the coin reader and looked rather nervous as we walked right past him and dropped our quarters in the machine.
 
There were two people on the bus, sound asleep.  They sat in opposite aisles from one another and both their heads were buried in a large backpack.
 
We made our way to the back.
 
The bus jerked up and rumbled out of the station.  I watched as Boston flew past me in a blur of lights.  Samantha rested her head on my shoulder.
 
I heard a ding and in a few beats the bus pulled up and one of the passengers got off.  Before the bus started up again, the driver glared at me through the rearview mirror.  His eyes looked hardened and dead.
 
A few more streets later the bus pulled up and we gained a new passenger.  A black man a few years older than us walked right up to us and sat down in the row in front of us.
 
Samantha lifted her head and snapped to attention.
 
The black man said: LISTEN.  He was not looking at us.  He was looking straight ahead, at the window across from him.
 
LISTEN, he repeated.  DO YOU KNOW WHERE THIS BUS GOES?
 
UM, BLUE HILLS? I offered.
 
He chuckled but I didn’t get the joke.
 
He explained that Blue Hills crosses through Dorchester and Mattapan and was perhaps one of the toughest spots in the city.
 
I looked at Samantha.
 
Her eyes said that she was a little bit scared.
 
I didn’t care.  I was ready for an adventure.
 
The bus driver said: LAST STOP.  BLUE HILLS.
 
As we followed behind the black man, he said without turning around: JUST STICK WITH ME, YOU’LL BE FINE.
 
I checked the time and it was almost 2AM.
 
He said he had to go get some smokes.  FOLLOW ME.
 
We crossed the street close behind him.
 
He entered a 7/11 and I’d never seen a 7/11 that looked quite like that.  It was just an empty room and the clerk and all the store’s products were secured behind bulletproof glass.
 
That was when the fear started to sink in.
 
We were way out of our league.
 
Two middle-class white kids.
 
We didn’t belong here.
 
He ordered a pack of cigarettes and the clerk turned and retrieved one and slid it through the rectangular window at the bottom of the glass.
 
We followed him out of the store.
 
He said: THERE SHOULD BE ANOTHER BUS COMING THROUGH HERE SOON.  IT DOESN’T MATTER WHERE IT’S GOING.  YOU TWO ARE GETTING ON IT.
 
We followed him across the bleak inner-city street.  There was no noise except for the rattling of cans somewhere in the distance.  It really set the ambiance of the night.  The streets were empty.  Imagine an old Western movie and there’s about to be a showdown and everyone is hiding and all that you can see are tumbleweeds rolling past the screen.
 
We reached the bus stop and Samantha sat on the ground with her back to the wall as we waited.
 
Time passed ever so slowly.  We could have been there for 30 minutes or a few hours, there was no way of knowing.
 
A black man and a black woman crossed us and the black man looked us up and down and said: YO, YOU WAITING FOR THE BUS?
 
I nodded.
 
He said: THIS AIN’T THE RIGHT BUS STOP.  THE ONE YOU LOOKIN FOR IS OVER THERE.  He pointed down the street to a dark dark alleyway.
 
The man we were following turned to him and said: THEY’RE WITH ME!
 
The strange woman laughed real loud and the man she was with just snarled and said: YOU’RE LOSS.
 
A cop car drove past and the man we were with flagged him down.  They stopped in the middle of the street, but it didn’t matter because there was no traffic whatsoever—they were the only car for miles.
 
The man said: HEY, YO.  CAN YOU GIVE THESE TWO KIDS A RIDE OUTTA HERE?
 
The two cops exchanged a glance, then turned to the man and said: NOT OUR PROBLEM.
 
They laughed.
 
The black man said: DO YOU REALLY WANT TO TURN ON THE NEWS THIS MORNING AND FIND OUT TWO WHITE KIDS HAD BEEN MURDERED ON YOUR WATCH.
 
Again, they exchanged a glance.
 
The one in the driver seat said: I GUESS WE CAN GIVE THEM A RIDE TO THE EDGE OF TOWN.  WE CAN’T GO ANY FARTHER, THOUGH.
 
The man looked at us and said: WHAT ARE YOU TWO WAITING FOR?
 
We hurried into the back of the cruiser.  This was my first time in a cop car without my hands cuffed behind my back.  They drove us to the edge of town and we walked the rest of the way back to Samantha’s dorm.

​It was a Monday.  All day I expected Zack to call me.  I wasn’t too concerned since I was only letting him crash at my place and it didn’t really affect me if he found somewhere else preferable to crash.  Although he did beg me to let him crash with me before he got back.  Up and begged for one last chance because he knew he screwed up big the last time I let him stay with me.  So I told him this time there would be no drug use whatsoever, and he had to attend NA meetings with me, too.  He was okay with that; he just wanted to get his life back on track when he returned to Rutland.
He stayed with me before he had left and he smoked weed and drank and then there was the time he took acid and I had to watch him to make sure he did nothing stupid.  I’m not an asshole, I wasn’t gonna deprive him of those experiences even though I wasn’t partaking in them myself.
 
One day I was planning to print out a bunch of my artwork and see if any stores around there would carry them.  Zack said he’d come along.  On the way to the UPS Store we stopped at Burger King and there was a guy and a girl he recognized from Rainbow Gathering.  The guy introduced himself as X.  He had a long beard and glassy eyes.  The girl wore a winter hat over her short head of hair, even though it was summertime.  I forgot her name.
Zack told me he wanted to travel cross-country with the two of them but I did not advise it.  He said why not? like it was up to me to give him permission.  Like I was his father.  I said because you’re getting clean from heroin.  It’s not a good idea, I told him.  He assured me that lots of people get clean on the road.  I told him I know, but lots of people get high on the road too, and I’m guessing that’s where your head is at.  I know he really wanted to go.  His older brother Pete was doing it and I know Zack wanted to fall in his brother’s footsteps.
While I went to the UPS Store, Zack hung back at Burger King with his two squatter buddies.  When I got back, there was another, different group of squatters there, also in town for Rainbow Gathering.  But Zack and his squatter buddies were gone.  The new crew told me they overheard the three of them talking; they were talking about going to score some H.
I was so disappointed in him.
I thought that would be the last time I saw him.
 
But he came back that night and asked if his friends could crash here.  I said no.  I told him they’re junkies and they’re not staying here.  Please, he said.  They’ve got nowhere else to go.  No, I told him.  No fuckin way!
 
The next day, after Zack went to work, I ran into my neighbor and he told me our porch was a pigsty this morning.  Empty coffee cups and cigarette butts were everywhere.  He was so pissed and he wanted to tell the landlord but he liked me and he didn’t want me to get evicted.
I texted Zack and said he could not come back here.  He really screwed me.  The only rule was no bringing people over here without my permission.  Otherwise I didn’t give a rat’s ass what he did.
I thought that would be the last time I saw him.
 
A few days later his mom called me and asked if I’d heard from him.  I said no.
His mom was so worried and I gave her my own mom’s number for support.  My own mom had been through what she was going through now.
She was very grateful.
 
I thought I would never hear from him again.  He was one of my best friends and I was so sad to let that go.
 
A few weeks later I got a message from him that told me he was in Kentucky.  He was having so much fun.  I was happy for him.  Truly happy.
I showed him the story I wrote about when he was crashing with me.  He thought it was great.  So we kept in contact this way.
 
A month went by and he told me he was ready to come home now and could I give him one last chance?  I said I would.  On two conditions: No using drugs, and he had to attend NA meetings with me.
The weekend he got back, though, I had to attend my cousin’s wedding in Montreal so for that weekend he had to find another place to stay.
 
I went to the bus station.  I knew Zack was taking the bus home that day too.  I wondered if I’d run into him at the bus station.
When my bus pulled up into the station, I saw a familiar face bobbing down the aisle.  Apparently he was on the same bus I would be on in a few minutes.
He got off and I gave him a big hug and told him I’d see him when I got back.  I reasserted the rules of no using drugs when I got back, so I suggested he get it all out of his system before then.  I guess I was just a nice guy and I understand the mentality of being a drug addict.
 
I got back to Rutland Sunday night.  I was looking forward to seeing him again.
 
On Monday I went to therapy and my life skill’s coach who worked with my therapist told me the two of them wanted to speak with me together.  I wasn’t sure why; it was rare that this ever happened.
I followed her into his office and she sat in one of the empty chairs and my therapist sat at his desk and he looked genuinely sad.  Did something happen?
I sat on the couch across from him.  What is going on?  Am I in trouble or something?  Did I do something wrong?
My therapist looked me in the eye.  Fuck, this is bad.
He took a deep breath.  Why is he dragging this out?
He paused and then he told me my mom called him.  It was about Zack.  I gulped.  What about Zack?
Over the weekend, he said, stopped and mulled over what to say next.  This isn’t good.  Over the weekend, he continued, Zack died of a heroin overdose.
No. he didn’t, I just saw him Friday.
His mom called my mom and she didn’t want to tell me herself so she asked my therapist to break the news to me.
That’s impossible, I said.  I just talked to him.  We’re gonna meet up today.  I’m just waiting for him to call me.  And then he’s gonna come stay with me again.
Both of them were really sad.  They both had met the kid before too.  They knew him.  Like me.  And then it clicked.
He was really gone\\\

​She remembers the first time we met  : : :  there was a group of us and I suggested we make ether.
I remember the first time we met  : : :  there was a group of us and a homeless man bought us all bananas instead of the booze we had asked him to buy for us, so then I must have suggested we make ether instead—although I don’t remember that, exactly.
 
 
One night we met up with her and her new college roommate in Harvard Square.  It was a typical wasted night.  I was 18 and I was going through my all-nighter faze that summer, when I would spend all night outside with a group of friends and in the morning we’d sit down by the tracks and watch the sun rise over the empty early-morning ghost town.
I invited her to come along the following night.
I didn’t know she’d say yes.
She said sure, sounds fun.
She was always up for having a good time.
She met me at Park Street and she wore these tight white stretch jeans and her hair was colorful and spiky.  All the Bostonians in this underground train station stopped and stared at her and so did I.  Although I wasn’t staring because I thought she looked kinda freakish like I assume the rest were.  I was staring because I thought she looked beautiful in her denim vest covered in band patches and studs.
We rode the train back to Newton, MA.
This night we did not do ether, in fact.
But she taught me about Triple Cs.
Cough & Cold Coricidin.
You ever hear of Robotrippin?
It’s the same concept, only Triple Cs are even more dense with DXM than that of their sister medication, Robitussin.
I tripped like a bastard and she vomited her college cafeteria dinner out by the Newton Center train station.  I knew I was stricken with something powerful right then.  We were a match—surely a match made for destruction.
After she vomited, we spent the night together roaming and watching the stars and mingling with the other late-nighters heading home from the bars, or the other kids that squandered these lame city streets, until we were the last humans left alive and the sun was so beautiful as it rose like fire and we smoked our cigarettes and talked and laughed and some amazing energy was happening between us.
It took a while for us to ever make out.
She said she could only hook up when she was drunk, and by hooking up she meant make out and she loved to make out with people when she was drunk, but just not fuck them because she was weird about that.
I asked her to be my girlfriend one night but she said she doesn’t do relationships.
We made out in a park in Harvard Square the night before she went home for Thanksgiving vacation.  She laughed the whole time and it made me insecure and when I pulled back from her and asked why, she said because she was so happy.
A few weeks later, the day before she went home for the Holidays, we went into Harvard Square together and got drunk.
 
I remember we sat down by the Charles River in Harvard Square and drank whiskey and we left our mark on the side of the bridge with spraypaint.  Then we walked to Central Square and we spraypainted fuck religion on every church and I scrawled fuck Hollywood in Sharpie on the wall outside of a Blockbuster movie store.
She had to use the bathroom and we went into some fancy-ass hotel and found the bathroom and inside the lady’s room there was a nice couch which the men’s room did not have and I hung out on that couch while she peed and some woman walked in and took one look at me and she looked like she was about to jump out of her skin.
I said: It’s okay, I’m just making sure my friend doesn’t get raped.
The woman darted out of the room and I laughed and when she came back, I told her all about it.
We were rowdy.  The night was alive.  We were mischievous and I wouldn’t see her again for another few weeks and suddenly it hit me.
 
We got back to her dorm and I was pouting.  I was always a sensitive boy.  She told me once I was too emotional.  She was going home soon and she’ll probly meet someone else because I was just not good enough for her.  She told me to quit my wining.  I told her to be a human being for once.  She mocked and insulted me and I felt degraded.  This was the girl I was yearning for, and she was a cold-hearted bitch.  I was so upset.
We got back to her room and I crawled into her roommate’s bed.  She had two roommates and one of them was never around so I crawled into that roommate’s bed and curled up and sulked.
Her roommate’s bed was elevated and she was screaming at me to come down.
No, I said.
Come down, she said.
Fuck you! I said.
What’s your problem? she said.
I didn’t know why I was so upset, really.  I just was.
She threw her keys at me and they split my lip.
I climbed down the small ladder and left.  She followed me out.
What the fuck! she said.
I kept going till I was outside.  Once out there I lit a cigarette.  She found me there and I was puffing so fast and shaking even faster. She came over and hugged me so tight.
She said: Come to bed.
Why? I said.  So you can harangue me some more?
She said: You can sleep in my bed tonight.
My eyes lit up and I flicked the cigarette into the cold winter sky and she took my hand and led me back inside the building.
I climbed into bed with her and we cuddled and made out and her other roommate was there and she was under us, on the bottom bunk, and she kept yelling at us to shut up, but we kept giggling and kissing and rolling around on each other and we were just so drunk.
She asked me to be her boyfriend.
I told her to ask me again in the morning.  I didn’t want her decision to be solely because she was drunk.
 
In the morning she asked me to be her boyfriend again and I said yes and then she told me I better leave now.  Her dad was coming to pick her up soon and I wouldn’t want to meet him.  He was like Robert De Niro mixed with Al Pacino and trust her on this, I didn’t want to meet him.
I left immediately and my smile didn’t fade for the whole next month.

​I was so in love———only the next few years brought me through such levels of grandiose torture that I became a devil and so did she and this love became our hell.

​I was lying on the curb crying, covered in blood, and all of her tires were slashed and I held the knife in my hand.  This would be my way of saying I wanted nothing to do with her anymore.  I was 22 and I was done and it was her fault that those two assholes had jumped me earlier in the night.
Earlier I was stumbling and staggering down the street in Central Square when I got a phone call.  It was a number I didn’t recognize.  I answered.
Hey, said the strange voice.
Who’s this? I said.
The voice said: I’m gonna rape your girlfriend.
What?  Who is this?
The voice said: The police!—and the whole time I heard her laughing in the background, like this was some kind of sick fuckin joke.
I eventually found her after looking all over the place.  She was hanging out with two white boys who wore baggy pants and slanted Red Sox baseball caps.  They three were all alone in a large, vacant lot and I wanted to fight but was too drunk and she stepped in the way and told us to break it up and I pushed past her and left.
The ground was moving in spasmodic waves.  I stared downward and tried to remain balanced as my feet refused to cooperate.  I was zigzagging now, swaying and staggering up the street.  Past cars that shined their lights outward and plowed past me with a flurry of force.  Past drunks and shoppers and bums.  Past street corners and alleyways.  As I walked alone, I saw a quick flash zip toward me and a fist knocked me in the head.  I stumbled back and took another to the gut.  I fell and there were two boys stomping and punching me and stomping and punching me and when the cops showed up they took off running.  The cop loomed over me and I wanted to plead for him to help me up off the street but he just guffawed real nastily and left me there lying in my own blood.
A friend lifted me up and I could feel a trail of blood dripping out of my left ear, and he helped me onto the train and my upper lip was soaked with blood oozing from my nose.  I could taste the warm copper.  One of my eyes was swollen shut.  The whole train ride home I didn’t once look up because I was afraid of what I’d find out if I saw my own reflection in the window.
When I got home, I pulled out my knife and slashed all four tires of her car and then fell on the curb and bloody tears burst from my eyes.
 
It had been five years.  Five frikken years.  I wasn’t about to do this anymore.
And I thought this would be the end of it.  And it was … for a short time\\\

​I was sitting in the alleyway behind the Lowell movie theater.  This was my second day working there and I was having a cigarette break by myself.  I liked all my coworkers; they were very laidback and easy to talk to.  I could smoke whenever I wanted to as long as I didn’t have any other tasks to complete or if there was no movie rush going on and I had to work box office or concessions.
This was my first real job.
 
I worked at a DJ studio for a little while when I was a few years younger but that job led me to a dead end.  I tried working at a smalltime coffee shop but I took too many cigarette breaks and too many free drinks and they let me go after my first day.  Nobody trained me or told me what to do so I got bored and smoked cigarettes and drank soda for the whole day until the manager told me I clearly didn’t understand what they were doing there and he had to let me go.  I worked a day at a grocery store just to get fired.  I contacted the Better Business Bureau about this.  They hired me to fill in a shift and then fired me at the end of the day.  But at least I made 30 dollars.
 
Now I was 18 and I was working at the Lowell movie theater in Harvard Square.
 
My black, flamboyant manager exited through the backdoor and stood there and retrieved a rolled cigarette from the inside pocket of his Lowell vest and turned to me and said: “Do you mind if I smoke?”
 
I raised my cigarette so he could see and smiled at him.  “I’m already smoking.”
 
He chuckled and lit his rolly and instantly the smell of pot smoke wafted through the air.  I understood now.  He held the joint out to me.  This was my manager and this was my second day working here.  I felt like I had no other choice.  I took a hit and passed it back to him and he took a hit and passed it back to me and I took a hit and passed it back to him and when the joint was cashed, I lit another cigarette and my black, flamboyant manager went back inside.  I finished my cigarette and stood and the murky alleyway floor shuddered and swirled and I grabbed the wall and held on so as not to fall.  The pot was so frikken strong and I realized I didn’t know how to walk anymore.  I couldn’t move my feet.  My knees didn’t bend properly.  I had no feeling in my toes.  My heels were crooked.  My thighs were oscillating and the ground was liquid.  I held onto the wall and felt my way to the door and grabbed the handle and cranked the latch and the door released so suddenly I fell through and almost collapsed but I caught a pole and hugged it.  I looked around the store.  My coworkers were busy at work.  The next rush of movies was just getting started.
 
A girl I worked with, who had purple hair that moved and flowed like Medusa’s head of snakes, hurried over to me and said: “Get a move on, you’re ticket taker.”
 
I stood there silently.  I had to cross the large mass of moviegoers pouring out of the theater doors and pooling in the atrium and talking and laughing in droves.  I held onto the wall and stared at the distance I had to cross to get to the front doors.
 
She said: “Are you okay?”
 
I leaned close to her and said: “I don’t know how to walk.”
 
This was my second day working here and I was so fired.  Why did I have to smoke that pot?
 
“You’re stoned?” she said.
 
Shit, did I say that out loud?  Or can she read my mind?
 
“Shit, what the hell is going through your mind?”
 
“But the black man.  I can’t remember his name.”
 
“Come on,” she said, and grabbed my hand and led me to the front doors.
 
I was so getting fired.
 
“Don’t worry,” she said.  “No one’s firing you.  This happens to the best of us.”
 
She can read my mind.  She is so hot.
 
Wait, think of something else.
 
Next thing I knew I was standing at the front of the line taking people’s tickets.
 
I did not get fired for that.
 
These people got me.
 
One day I brought a half gallon of whiskey to work with me and as soon as they caught wind of it, the break room was packed with us all sharing the whiskey.
 
 
Four months later, AMC bought out the store and they were so strict they took the fun right out of working at this smalltime movie theater.  I was one of the first of my coworkers to quit.

​The last time I ever set foot in that movie theater was because I was in Harvard Square with Samantha and she had recently acquired some crack cocaine and neither of us had ever tried it before and we needed a quiet, closed-in location so I went into the movie theater and asked the boy working there if we could smoke crack in the alleyway in back.  He remembered me from when I used to work there.
 
He said: “No problem, go right ahead….”

​Andrew and I were walking through the Fens when we came across a tall black kid a couple years older than us.  He was sitting on a park bench by himself reading a book.
 
We got talking to him.  How the conversation started, I can’t remember.  When we were drunk, we spoke to everyone.  Our conversation abilities were all inclusive in that state.
 
I told him we were going to get some coke.  Does he want to throw down?
 
He said he would, although I remember him paying for the whole lot of it, now that I think back on it.
 
His name was Karl and he lived in Dorchester, MA.  We took the train to my own town, Newton, then bought the product and hopped back on the train and headed to Dorchester.  Not only did Karl pay for the drugs, he offered up his apartment for us to do it in.  Sure, we had other options of where to go; it’s not like we were taking advantage of him or anything.
 
Off the train we walked through a dark empty parking lot.  There was only one car in the lot and there were three black teenage girls in it.  I don’t know what they were doing in that car; it could have been anything.
 
They yelled something at us.  I yelled back and told them to suck it.  One of them yelled again; they wouldn’t stop yelling at us as we passed them.
 
We sat in Karl’s apartment and I doled out the lines and gave Karl the first hit considering he was the one who paid for it--for all of it, not to mention.
 
After spinning our brains on a mental compact disc that rotated so quickly it set our minds aflame and the whole CD played exploded, we sat in Karl’s backyard.  Andrew told Karl that except for spiders, I had no fears.

​I played in a Punk band called Lethal Erection and we needed a new drummer.  A year after meeting Karl in the Fens, Andrew and I were riding the Red Line to Quincy Center.  A tall black kid came up to us and said: Hey.
 
Andrew was like: Oh shit, hey.
 
I said: Hey, but I was wary.  Who is this guy?
 
Andrew reminded me he was Karl, the guy who brought us to his apartment in Dorchester a year earlier to blow lines.
 
Oh shit, I said.  Hey, what’s up?
 
We’re going to a party in Quincy, Andrew said.  You want to come?
 
He nodded.  Sure, he said.
 
We got off at Quincy Center and started walking to Bell’s.  It was maybe 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 in the afternoon.  It was summertime and the sun was kicking our asses.  Bell would have these barbecues in his backyard during the summer.
 
Karl told us he played drums.  Andrew and I both smiled in unisons.
 
Andrew turned to me, grinning.
 
He said: Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
 
Yeah, I said.  I’m pretty hungry too.
 
No, he said.
 
I also really wish I had some beer.
 
He said: Yep, that.
 
He turned to Karl and said: Our band is looking for a new drummer.
 
At that, Karl smiled.
 
Andrew said: You interested?
 
He nodded.
 
I said: The night’s just beginning.  First, let’s see if he can keep up.
 
We went to Bell’s and we ate and we drank and then we went back into the city and the night furiously unraveled around us like tilt-a-whirl and when it drew to an end, Karl was still there and we set a time to practice with him.

​I’m walking alone through the Everett suburbs.  Honestly I don’t know where I’m walking.  My band just played a show at the Warehouse, and now I’m shitfaced.  I’m walking and I see a bunch of college-age kids standing outside their house drinking beers and I ask for one.  This guy hands me a beer.  Then Samantha pulls up to me in her car.
 
“What are you doing back here?” I ask.
 
“I couldn’t remember how to get home,” she says.
 
“But you left half an hour ago.”
 
“I’ve been driving in circles.  I haven’t drunk like this in two months, I don’t know what I’m doing.  Can you drive me at least to your house and I’ll probly be better by then and I’ll drive the rest of the way home?”
 
“But you’re a way better drunk-driver than me.”
 
“Please,” she says.
 
She must really be drunk; she never lets me drive her car.
 
She gets out of her car and goes around and hops in the passenger-side.  I sidle behind the wheel with the beer in my hand.
 
I can’t remember which side the gas is on.  Here goes nothing….

“Mind if I have a beer?” I asked the big skinhead with the bulbus beer gut.
 
“Only if you do one thing for me,” he said.
 
I nodded.  “What’s that?”
 
“Talk to people,” he said.  “Socialize.  Don’t just sit in the fuckin corner like a fuckin leper.”
 
This was it; it was called A Touch of Class.  An abandoned house where the Punks and Skins went to get trashed.
 
Jeff Turner had brought me here.

​I first met Randy at the free Toxic Narcotic show at the Axis.  I’d seen him at other shows but this was the first time I met him in person.  Jeff, Harry, and I went to the show together.  It was being filmed and I licked the lens of the camera as they filmed the crowd standing in line waiting to go in.  In the final production they did not use that footage after all, but they did catch me standing there like a boring buffoon.  Just standing there.  I was at the front of the line and I was the first one to notice the guy with the camera emerge from inside the big black doors.
 
Usually this venue had many buff, angry bouncers standing around, making sure no one stage-dived—although that never stopped us—making sure no one was high on drugs, making sure no one danced in the pit with studded jackets, spiked collars, lock-&-chains around their necks.  Tonight Toxic Narcotic had rented out the place for their 15-year anniversary and they removed the barriers between the band and the crowd, making it so much easier to stage-dive, and got rid of the bouncers, too———it was just us kids.  Jeff Turner was caught on camera numerous times leaping from the stage and surfing the upraised hands that brought him to the back of the venue in a fluid, sequential motion.
 
Personally I did not enjoy this show as much as others, because I felt that the crowd was rather divided.  There were cliques formed and it was quite boring.
 
As I left the show, down the street from the venue, Harry, Punk Rock Pete, and I were walking and then we were stopped immediately by this large, muscular skinhead who I later learned was named Lester.
 
He said to me: “What the fuck is up with the upside-down flag on your back?”
 
He grabbed the shoulder of my soft, navy-blue blazer, with an upside-down American flag sewn to the back.  Pulled me toward him with a single heft.  My jacket hung to my shoulders awkwardly after he got a hold of it.
I could smell the whiskey on his breath.
 
Next to him was this fat skinhead who I later learned was named Randy.  Both were dressed sharp.  They had scaly caps, braces, plaid, denim, and steel-toed Docs.  Their jeans were cuffed evenly.  Their braces were straight, their laces were straight.  Even their scaly caps were straight.  These two guys had flair, albeit they were piss-drunk and pissed-off.
 
Lester held me in his large, hairy hand.  His knuckles were tattooed: SKIN.  His hand was tattooed too.  I tried to avoid looking him in the eye and I noticed that he even had tattoos climbing his neck.
 
“I oughtta kick your fuckin head in,” he spat, with one hand clung to my blazer, the other hand clenched.
 
I was scared.
 
Harry was scared.
 
Punk Rock Pete was holding something in his pocket.
 
The fat skinhead said: “Lester, let it go.”
 
Lester’s grip on my jacket tightened as he pulled me closer.  My boots were raised off the ground.
 
The fat skinhead said: “C’mon, Lester.  They’re just kids.  Let it go.”
 
He patted the skinhead named Lester on the chest.  Lester released me with a shove, and I buckled into Harry.  We both stumbled backwards as Punk Rock Pete stood there with his feet planted firmly on the ground.
 
The skinheads walked away.  Punk Rock Pete pulled brass knuckles from his pocket and told me that that was fuckin scary, man.
 
Later Jay Drunk said to me: “If our Founding Fathers hated their country, why can’t we hate our own?”
 
I was pretty sure these skinheads were not interested in an intellectual debate.

​That’s why I was nervous as I sat in the corner of A Touch of Class.  Lester and Randy were there.
 
Randy handed me a beer.  Beckoned me into the kitchen.
 
“C’mon, what’re you waiting for?” he said.
 
Lester was stumbling around with a beer in his hand.  He gestured for me to come over to him.
 
He put his hand around my shoulder and led me to a private corner.
 
He said: “Sorry, bud.”
 
I was dead silent.
 
“Listen, bud,” he said.  “I think we got off on the wrong foot.”
 
He said his name was Lester; I told him my own.
 
We shook hands.
 
Still holding my hand firmly, he said: “Here’s the thing.  I hate the government but I love this country.  The flag means freedom.  I served two tours overseas just to keep it that way.”
 
Then he walked away.  I sipped my beer and started to feel much more at ease.  These guys were welcoming me in.