In Nine Kinds of Pain
Leonard Fritz
A NEW PULP PRESS BOOK
First Printing, October 2011
Copyright © 2011 by Leonard Fritz
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9828436-5-9
ISBN-10: 0-9828436-5-8
Printed in the United States of America
Visit us on the web at www.newpulppress.com
To Southwest Detroit, both then and now
Prologue
This is Detroit, so welcome to the jungle. No, scratch that. I take that back. It’s not really a jungle. It’s more like a zoo. In a zoo, you have all kinds of different animals, all living separately in what appears to be their natural environments, quarantined for life, with all those creatures who are less savage, less primitive, less beastly, keeping at a reasonable distance (as not to get hurt) and just observing, observing, observing from the other side of the barricades. No, actually, I take that back—Detroit really isn’t so much a zoo as it is like one of those drive-through safari parks that you’d find in Florida or somewhere. You know what I mean, where some idiot piles his wife and two-point-fives into the SUV and drives through what appears to be the Serengeti so that his family can see “wild animals” in their “natural environment.” Sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, you’ll see on the evening news a story about a pack of baboons at one of those parks getting way too frisky, and the baboons all attack the one family’s car because—it was stated when they entered the park, DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS!—they fed the animals.
Yeah, I guess that’s what Detroit would be like. One of those safari parks. The great thing about those types of safari parks is that the animals don’t really turn on each other unless they have to. They mostly turn on the visitors. The Chain of Aggression goes like this: 1.) Visitors, 2.) Helpless saps (either foreign or native), 3.) Enemies, and 4.) Nameless victims. Those terms are rather broad, I know, but that’s the one thing you can count on in a place like Detroit: there are no hard and steadfast rules. Like anarchy. Like a jungle. If the feeling hits you, you go ahead and do it, and if there’s a price to be paid for doing what you did, then you run from it with the swiftness of wings and hope it doesn’t catch up with you. And if it does catch up with you, someday, as it usually does, then you lie your ass off and swear it wasn’t you.
I used to know some people from the suburbs, what one would term in this day and age as being adventure seekers, who would make it a point to drive through Detroit’s roughest, most crime-ridden areas every single weekend. They got a rush from it. They knew I was from Detroit and almost felt a bond with me because I lived in Detroit, and they drove through Detroit every weekend. See how that works? The symbiosis. We were practically twins. I guess it never dawned on them that I was insulted by their condescension, but, hey, what the hell did I know? I was just one of the beasts who lived in Detroit
And like the animals in the safari park, the people who live in Detroit can’t leave. You may be saying, “Of course you can leave. Why can’t you? You aren’t forced to live there.” And if you’re saying that, then you’ve never lived in a place like Detroit, where you’re held there like a fly on a glue strip because your family has never faced the trying immanency of being able to rub two nickels together.
Or finding a job to support the family even before you get out of high school as opposed to the expectations of college and graduate school.
Or living paycheck to paycheck and it’s still not enough, and the word savings is defined as the residue money in your wallet (along with the change in your pocket) after the bills are mostly paid, and retirement will only realistically come by hitting the Powerball or winning a major lawsuit, not through a 401k or company stocks.
Or the city schools that teach absolutely nothing (schools only in the broadest sense of the word) except hand-to-hand combat in the bathroom stalls, or running for your life from the kid who brought his daddy’s gun to school to “teach everyone a lesson.”
Or just trying to get through your day without getting robbed. Tell me, again, how do you plan to leave?
Anyway, what do I know, said the wild baboon.
What do I know?
SundayintoMonday
Here is Wisdom
Here is Wisdom, so that what I know, you might know.
You know that there’s no way out once you take your first hit of that glass pipe. Once you do, you know that your life is officially over. Save yourself, if you decide you want to suck that glass crack pipe—put a bullet in your fucking head the second you burn your lips on that scorching glass dick, and save yourself from the misery, the agony, the embarrassment, the heartache, just the pure torture of becoming just another junkie (we’ve got too many in the fucking city of Detroit already, anyway). Remember, please, save yourself.
Because the best thing you can do for yourself is to never go near a crack pipe.
You know that one hit is all it takes. That’s all, just one hit. That shit will get a grip on you so fast . . . so fast, that let’s say there’s no such thing as “experimentation” with crack. You don’t just experiment with a crack pipe–you suck it once, and then it sucks you into its world forever, like Jeannie into her bottle. There is absolutely, positively, no escape once you’ve taken that first hit. All you will ever think about after that hit is the next hit. And after that hit all you will think about is your next hit. And after that hit all you will think about is your next hit. You will immediately rearrange everything that exists in your world to make sure that you get that next hit. Nothing else will matter. Nothing else will be more important to you than getting your next hit, and where?, and how?, and from who? It’ll be the first thing you think about when you wake up, and the last thing you think about when you pass out at night (because you no longer actually sleep at night when you’re on crack, you just turn catatonic until morning). Just one hit of that pipe and
But you know that sucking on that glass pipe isn’t the only way (A.) to destroy yourself (B.) to get high (C.) all of the above.
Oxy. OxyContin. That shit will ruin your life just like crack does. And you can get that shit legally, although 98.999999% of the junkies that are hooked on it don’t, or eventually don’t, get it legally. Dear God in Heaven, thank you for creating life, so that some dumbass can take their life and flush it down the toilet by crushing up and snorting, shooting, and/or popping the little round yellow pills with the “O.C.” on them. Thank you for allowing junkies to try to function from Oxy fix to Oxy fix, even though the devil steps in sometimes and makes them rob, steal, and murder to afford their fix. Thank you for cola cans—the perfect Oxy cooker. Thank you for the Methadone clinics, which can’t do anything to rid someone of an Oxy itch. Thank you for Percodan and Percocet, which will give you enough to get you to your next Oxy high. And thank you for cancer, Dear Lord, because if I could only get cancer, if I could only be diagnosed with something really powerful like breast canc
er or lung cancer, then I, too, will be able to get Oxy prescribed to me, and then I will be able to pop six or seven a day legally! God, give me cancer, a junkie would say, when their world is only about the little round yellow O.C. (and God really isn’t in their lives). Give me cancer.
Wet. Wet can get you by the balls, too. Most definitely. And once it has you, and once that high isn’t taking you any higher (although the low is taking you lower, only you can’t see the darkness of that elevator shaft), you got to smoke a bolo, a big fat finger of a blunt, take you almost to that virgin high (but not as high, although you’re still sinking lower), until even a bolo can’t do you any good. But the thing that you know yet ignore, the thing that isn’t that important to you but should be, is what you’re rolling and smoking—you know that Wet is weed that was soaked in formaldehyde. Formaldehyde. That’s what makes Wet so big on the streets. It’s for the pot connoisseur, the dopehead who thinks they’re not dopeheads because they only smoke weed and they don’t do the deadlier drugs, like crack or Oxy. They like to fool themselves that way. But they know that their weed is laced with something, otherwise, how would they be getting such a great high after years of weed “not doing anything for them”? They ask no questions. They just smoke. And the high lasts for about two or three days, so it’s the best shit ever, right, Goober? And it eats away at you faster, makes you crazy, -er, and makes you more irrational, and more paranoid, and more violent, but it’s still the best shit ever, right, Goober? And it’s easy to produce. And it’s easy to deal.
And Goober can’t get enough of it. Right, Goober?
Baby
In the wee hours such as these, when respectable people are watching late night infomercials or sleepwalking through once-every-two-hour feedings or spinning deep in their REM cycles, Baby is looking down at her feet. She looks down at her feet and sees how filthy they’ve become standing on West Avenue for the past three hours. That’s why she decided not to paint her toenails before coming out here—she knew it would be a futile attempt to pretty her toes because she knew the grit of the street would wash over them. She feels lucky right now that she’s not a white chick—white chick, after three hours standing in the Corridor, would look like she’s wearing black footies.
“Black chick knows,” she says to herself.
Baby sees that the Corridor is crowded tonight—other hookers, dopers, guys talking smack, Brothers from Another Planet sucking on a crack pipe (“Crack is back, jack!”), pimps and thieves, probably a few rapists to give the whole/hole place more atmosphere. Like it needs it. Usually the hot weather brings out the Men In Heat—horndog tricks rubbing up against you, feeling your thighs and stroking your tits as you lean in through the car window. Where’s the Men In Heat tonight? Three hours—nothing. Three long hot hours nothing. Three long hot gritty hours nothing. Nothing. Don’t nobody want to get their groove on tonight?
Movement on West Avenue quiets when the headlights scope. The headlights mean someone’s getting paid, because paying folks drive. If you’re from the Corridor you don’t drive; customers drive. If you’re from the Corridor you sit and wait for the nighttime, when you can crawl out of your cage and let the likes of the customer’s headlights subvert your need for greed.
Baby sees that one black chick, the regular in the white tank top who wears the blond wig, vaguely recalling her name as Temptest (at least that’s what she called herself when she headlined at the Blue Orchid), known on the street as the Camel Toe Queen, and notices that she has very small breasts. Baby noticed that before, but she makes note of it each and every time Temptest (I think that was her name) struts her stuff in the Corridor. Temptest has no breasts. Baby has breasts, though. Baby has nice big breasts; she loves her breasts. And she knows that the world loves her breasts, too. And she loves the fact that God gave her breasts and didn’t give all women, like Temptest, breasts, that her breasts are special breasts. Hypnotic breasts. Lethal breasts. Deadly breasts, if you will. Perfectly proportioned to her size, her license to Do Whatever. No uniformed cop or irritated super or gas station attendant or office manager or toll-taker or sitting judge, man or woman (mind you), can say no to her breasts. Her breasts rule the world.
She has no competition on West Avenue, in the entire Corridor, because she knows she’s the best-looking black woman in all of Southwest Detroit. She’s the total package, baby. Baby.
The scoping headlights. She can see they belong to a luxury car. If it’s a Chevy Impala with the high rear brake lights and the spotlight on the driver’s side door then it’s a cop, she knows. But the headlights don’t belong to a Chevy Impala; they belong to a Ford Taurus, cruising slowly and window-shopping. Could be a cop, maybe, but the collective (indifferent) sigh of the Corridor tells her that it’s definitely not a cop. It’s a customer. A fast cruise usually means a customer looking for junk, and not for her. A slow cruise usually means it’s a horndog, and not a customer looking for junk. Guys looking for junk around here usually drive rusted-out hoopties or Chevettes or slow-rolling Pintos, but not Ford Tauruses, that much she knows.
The just-got-washed dark (green?) Taurus slows down by her. Why wouldn’t it? She’s the best-looking black woman in all of Southwest Detroit! And she doesn’t even have to advertise her stuff like Temptest has to—she just lets her body do the talking. See this—Bam!—and back—Bam!—and tits—Bam! The whole package.
Taurus turns tail and runs. It was shy. Or was it scared? It’s the ritual game they play each and every night—am I the cop or are you? Am I a skanky ho-looking cop walking the beat, flashing my stuff (“The boys down at the precinct drive by after their shifts are over just to see me shake my ass dressed like a whore!”), or am I a cop who’s been in vice long enough to have grown my hair a little longer and a beard and wear my old fatigues from when I was in the Corps and try to pass myself off as one of those Johns when I’m really One of Them. And since I only been in the Corridor a week, Baby thinks, they probably think I’m the cop.
Baby looks back to Parsons Street and sees Mysteek coming toward her. Baby knows that’s not her real name (just like when she calls herself “Baby”) but the least she could have done was to spell it right. She remembers seeing Mysteek’s name plastered all over the outside of the Blue Orchid and overhearing one of the customers say, “The least the bitch could’a done was spell it right.” So Baby asked around and, sure enough, it wasn’t spelled right. It’s supposed to be spelled with a Q in it, they said.
M-Y-S-T-E-E-Q. Or something like that.
“What’s up, girlfriend?” Mysteek says, all smiles, slight slur in her speech, tilt in her walk. And the dead give-away—the teeth grind. The constant teeth grind. Baby sees she’s been doing H again, or maybe coke.“I seen you let that one get away”—she flicks her finger at the street—“The Taurus.”
Yeah, right. “Where you been at?” Baby asks.
“Around the corner. Can’t rightly tell you why I waste my time, though. Been a slow night. So I just go get me somethin’ to make the time go by’s all.” Baby watches as Mysteek fumbles with her shiny gold (change) purse, watches as she studies the latch that’s the tumbler to the vault of Whatever’s Inside. Baby begins to reach for the purse to help her, but knows better—you don’t touch another person’s stuff in the Corridor. Rule #1: Keep Thy Hands Off Thy Neighbor’s Shit. So she stops herself from being a friendly neighbor and instead continues to watch. Mysteek’s eyes are bugging, almost touching the clasp themselves; even they wish she’d get the damn thing open. Finally successful (hooray), she pushes past the two wads of money (How’s she rolling at $20 a pop?), past the small piece of Brillo (which means she’s smoking a glass crackpipe for sure), past the mini bottle of hot sauce (you never know when you’ll need it), and digs for something. Luckily it’s a slow night, because Mysteek’s oblivious to the street and to Baby and to everything else around her. She’d be an easy target now, a target for the thieves (gank), but even they must have given up on the night and got drunk or high ins
tead. And she’d also be giving up her tricks, too, because she can’t make the look of the street in her condition—tricks would get away.
After another minute (year) of digging, Mysteek asks, “You gotta square?”
“Naw,” Baby replies, “I done gave up smokin’ a month ago.” She hates to see a whore like Mysteek go sour. Mysteek was pretty once—tits and back, lips and tongue. Her hair is a messy weave now, grown out too long to legitimately claim it as her own, the kinky fro clinging to the extensions. Her nails are chipped and broken, probably been a few weeks since she had them done—they once read P-U-S-S-Y on the right hand and 4-S-A-L-E on the left. Now they look like they say D-TT-C-C-V on the right and something something on the left. Her clothes are old; she must have better things to spend her money on than new clothes. Smack and crack, Blingity-Bling. She’s a skank now. She even looks like she’s carrying something between her legs, something that could kill or at the very least send you to the clinic for a shot. Her ass and tits—Bam and Bam—are flat and soggy, stretch marks what’s left of what was once good. She’s a hard leg now.
In Nine Kinds of Pain Page 1
