Going to New York

by Oliver Markus Malloy

  And Albert Einstein once wrote: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."

  I would love it if Hawking and Einstein were wrong. I love the idea of becoming some sort of immortal ghost that can fly around the universe and explore other planets and stuff. How cool would that be? But do I believe that's what's actually going to happen? No. I'm pretty sure Hawking and Einstein are right.

  Do I think that believing in an invisible man in the clouds will make any kind of difference in what happens to me after death? No, not for a second.

  If God actually existed, that'd be kinda cool. Kinda like as if Superman or Spiderman were real. But they're not. To me, God is really just Santa Claus for grown-ups. A cute fairy tale that makes a lot of people feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but beyond that God doesn't do anything for anyone. So waiting for his help is pretty pointless. You have to help yourself. Or hope that another human being, who cares about you, will help you.

  A lot of people simply believe in God, because everyone else around them believes it, too. They never actually took the time to really think about it on their own.

  It's no coincidence that the bible keeps telling you to obey and believe, not to think for yourself and ask questions.

  The bible is a tool. Throughout history, dictators have used religion, and the bible, to manipulate the masses. That's how and why the bible was created in the first place. The Roman Emperor Constantine, a pagan himself, decided he needed a tool to unify his fracturing empire. So he told a bunch of Christians to put together a book. He offered them money, and they produced the bible. And it has been a political tool to manipulate the masses ever since the days of the Roman Empire, right up until today.

  How does one little guy with a funny mustache take control over an entire country and gets to tell millions of people what to do? By invoking God's will. Just like every dictator before him.

  Nowadays the Nazis are portrayed as pure evil. But the reality is that most Nazis believed they were the good guys during World War 2. They believed they were good Christians. German soldiers wore belt buckles with the words "Gott mit uns" (God is with us) engraved on them.

  And Hitler's violent anti-semitism really was nothing new among Christians. He was a big fan of Martin Luther, the German who, a few hundred years earlier, had more or less single-handedly started the Protestant movement. Martin Luther, one of the founding fathers of the branch of Christianty that dominates America today, was viciously anti-semitic. He hated Jews and felt they were the root of all evil and they needed to be driven out of Europe or killed. He promoted the idea of a Holocaust hundreds of years before Hitler was even born. You never heard about that in your church, have you? I'm not surprised. But, well, it's true. Google it.

  Anyway, even the ancient Egyptian pharaohs convinced ordinary people that God had put the pharaoh in charge, and that it was God's will that everyone else was starving and working themselves to death building pyramids for the pharaoh, while the pharaoh bathed in milk and honey.

  For centuries, religion has been used by the rich people in power, to tell the poor, that it was God's will that they were poor: "God made me your king. Don't question my authority. It comes directly from God. If you don't obey me, God is gonna be really pissed at you."

  And then the rich added insult to injury, by convincing the poor that God wanted them to have miserable lives, because everything happens for a reason, and God was testing their faith. And if they got through a lifetime of poverty and misery, they would be richly rewarded for never losing their faith by going to paradise, or heaven, after they die. Meanwhile the rich lived their lives of luxury and excess in the here and now, at the expense of the poor they exploited and fooled with promises of rich rewards in the afterlife.

  Ever since the Age of Enlightenment, Europeans slowly learned to see through that scam, and today it is really really bad political form for a politician to ever mention God in a speech. In Europe, you can believe in whatever you want, but don't ever try to pretend that you are acting on God's behalf or that you are speaking for God, and that if someone disagrees with what you do, they are going against God's will. That's simply manipulative bullshit. If a German politician said that God told him to invade Iraq, his career would be over in a heartbeat. People would look at him like he has lost his mind.

  But in America, that ancient religious scam still works. American politicians, especially right-wing extremist Republicans and Tea Party fanatics, still pretend they know God better than anyone else does. And they claim they know exactly what God wants, and if you disagree with them, you are a bad person, and God is really mad at you, and you're going to hell.

  To Gina it was pretty baffling to hear me say these things. A lot of the points I raised had never occurred to her before, because she never questioned her beliefs. She just assumed that what she was being told about God and the bible was true.

  At the end of the conversation, she said that she could tell that I really cared about Alice, and that I was a good person, even if I don't believe in God.

  Then Gina called Alice and told her that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity for her and of course she should go to Hawaii with me.

  DOPE BOYS

  "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."

  Sun Tzu

  Alice told me she wanted to come with me, but that she would need $100 worth of dope for every day we were away from her drug dealer. Each bag of heroin cost $10. She needed to shoot up at least 3 bags at a time, 3 times a day. That's 9 bags a day. The 10th bag was kind of a bonus.

  She said without $100 of heroin a day, she'd get terribly dope sick and the whole trip would be ruined. We were going to be in Hawaii for 10 days, so she needed to pack $1000 worth of her medicine. Yeah, she seriously called it her medicine.

  It didn't even occur to me that if I got caught at the airport with her, while she's smuggling $1000 worth of heroin on board, I would be going to prison for a long long time. I just wanted her to have a good time, and show her how nice life could be sober. Don't ask me why showing her how nice sober life could be involved $1000 worth of heroin. It seemed to make sense at the time. Shut up.

  When we arrived at the airport, she stuffed the heroin between her legs. It was a LOT of heroin, so she had a hard time walking. But we made it. The TSA officer at the metal detector even tried to flirt with her, while we were sweating bullets.

  We had so much fun in Honolulu. We stayed at the Outrigger hotel, right on the beach. Every day was filled with fancy filet mignon dinners at nice restaurants, Broadway-like shows, a helicopter tour of the island, a submarine tour of the ocean floor, massages at the spa, shopping trips, etc. We even visited Dog The Bounty Hunter.

  There was a little gift shop next to his office. Alice talked to his employee for a few minutes. We ended up buying Dog's book, hand-signed by him. The employee in the gift shop told Alice that there was a really bad ice (crystal meth) problem on Hawaii. And then he told her that she should never start doing drugs. She gave me a look and smirked. She thought it was funny that a guy who should have a keen eye for who's on drugs and who isn't, couldn't tell that she was a heroin addict. And she really didn't look like an addict at all.

  Anyway, we had a great time in Hawaii. One day she skipped across the street like a little girl and said that being here with me was the happiest she had ever been in her life. That made me feel really good. I figured, if this doesn't give her a good reason to get clean, then nothing will.

  When we got back to New York, she called her roommates in Middletown to let them know she was back. I still didn't know that she was living with this dope boy Curly and his little crew of drug selling thugs.

  She had told me she was living in a two bedroom apartment with a young lesbian couple. But I started to get that feeling again that she was lying to me about something. Especially whe
n we drove from the airport to her house in Middletown, and she didn't want me to drop her off right in front of her house and help her carry all her bags in.

  Instead, she asked me to drop her off one block down the street from her house, and she said she would carry everything herself. She was tiny, and her bags full of goodies from Hawaii probably weighed more than she did. That's when I knew something was up. I asked her who she was living with. She insisted it was only her in one bedroom, and those two girls who were dating each other were supposedly living in the other bedroom.

  When I got back to my house in the woods near Milford, I just needed to know the truth, so I hacked her laptop in her house and turned on the camera on it, so I could see who was in the house with her. There were two girls, but also a couple of black guys. Now I knew she had been lying to me again. Then I saw that she and Curly were living in one of the bedrooms together. What the fuck?!?

  I was sooo pissed at her. I texted her that I knew about her living with Curly and fucking him, and that I wanted nothing to do with her anymore. Lying whore! I didn't talk to her for a few days after that.

  But I couldn't stop thinking about her, and I did keep track of what was going on in that trap house. A few days later, one of the two lesbian girls in the house was chatting with her sister who lived out-of-state but was going to come for a visit. Her sister was asking about who else was living in that house. So the lesbian girl mentioned Alice. Her sister asked who Alice was, and the lesbian girl, who was supposedly Alice's good friend, told her sister: "She's nobody. Just one of Curly's hoes."

  The fact that one of Alice's so-called friends would talk about her like she's worthless garbage hurt my feelings, even though I was still so pissed at her. I felt protective of her, because I really cared about her.

  I fucking hated all these people in that house. In my mind, they were the reason why Alice was on drugs and why she couldn't tear herself away from that shit, no matter how much nicer sober life could be. As long as she lived in that place, she was never going to get clean.

  After we hadn't talked to each other in a few days, Alice suddenly started texting me and told me she needed my help. She said she had a huge fight with Curly and the rest of his crew, and she told them all to move out. She said they had tried to kick her out, but her name was the one that was on the lease, so they couldn't get rid of her, but she could get rid of them.

  I thought that was great news. I figured, once all these assholes are out of that house, maybe there's a chance I could convince her to get clean.

  She told me she had asked them to leave tonight, but Curly had paid this month's rent as well as the initial security deposit, and he wasn't going to leave, unless she gave him $2000. So I met up with her and gave her the money. Yes, I know now how stupid that was. But it seemed like the only right thing to do at the time.

  After I gave Alice the $2000, I didn't hear from her anymore for a few days. I was getting so pissed again. I felt like she totally played me. Finally she did return my texts. Turns out, that same night she had reconciled with Curly, and he didn't move out, and she just spent the $2000 on a whole bunch of heroin.

  I didn't talk to her for a few days. I was getting so disgusted.

  Suddenly she started texting me again, because there was new drama. Curly's crew had come home after selling drugs all day, when suddenly some other crew held them up at gunpoint in the parking lot right outside their house and took all their money.

  Now Curly and his crew were scared, because they didn't know how the other crew found out where they lived, and they didn't feel safe in that house anymore.

  Did I have anything to do with that? Did I tell the other crew where Curly lived? Maybe. Possibly. Alright, yes, I did. I wanted that motherfucker out of that house and away from Alice.

  And the fight that had happened a few days earlier was because when Alice and I went to Hawaii, she had told Curly that she was going to Hawaii with her grandma Gina.

  But I texted the lesbian girl who had talked shit about Alice to her sister, and I told her that Alice had been in Hawaii with me. The lesbian girl told Curly, and he flipped out. That's why he had told Alice to leave. That plan backfired royally, because it ended up costing me $2000. Fail!

  But the fact that another crew now knew where Curly lived scared the shit out of him and he really did move out. Mission accomplished! And the beautiful part was that Curly had no idea that I had anything to do with it. Like ninjas, hackers like to attack from the shadows.

  Alice didn't want to put the next house in her name again, because the other people in the house had totally run it into the ground, and she didn't want to be responsible for the damage. I asked her if she wanted to come live with me and go to rehab. No, of course not.

  She had met another latin dope boy. He called himself Tattoo. He gave her drugs, so she went to live with him. I was so sick and tired of this shit at this point, that I decided to just be done with it and move to Florida.

  I told a realtor to list my house in the Poconos for sale, and then I told Alice that I was leaving for good. I was hoping that would mean something to her, and she'd try to stop me or come with me or something. But, nope, she was too busy getting high.

  I figured she'll never have any reason to get clean as long as Tattoo keeps feeding her drugs. Maybe if I got rid of Tattoo as well, and being an addict became more and more difficult for Alice because all the dope boys she knew were getting arrested, she might finally want to get clean.

  Have you ever played out one of those fantasy fights in your head? You know, who would win a fight between Superman and The Hulk? Well, in a fight between a hacker and a dope boy, the hacker wins every time, because he can hit the dope boy without even being in the same state.

  After the house in the Poconos sold, I moved into one of my houses in Lehigh Acres, Florida. While I was down there, I hacked into Tattoo's phone. When I heard him talking about driving from Middletown to the Bronx to re-up, I called the Sheriff's Department and told them what car he was driving, and when he was going to be back in Middletown, and that he would have a brick of heroin in his car.

  They had cruisers on standby waiting for him. I could track the location of his phone, so when he was coming back from his trip to the Bronx to stock up on his drug inventory, I called the cops back and gave the Sheriff's drug task force a heads up. They were able to intercept him at the highway off-ramp. Tattoo went to prison. Another one bites the dust!

  After Tattoo was out of the picture, Alice called me. She told me that Tattoo had gotten arrested, and I acted surprised. She said now she was staying with her friend Mary, another heroin addicted hooker. Mary's drug habit was even worse than Alice's. Alice shot up 3 bags of heroin at a time. Mary shot up 8 bags at a time.

  In order to support her very expensive habit, Mary worked double shifts in a grimey little strip club just outside of Middletown. And while she worked there, she would try to find guys who would come home with her after work, to have sex with her for money.

  Mary had a 12-year-old little boy, Mikey. I got to know him a little better a few months later, when Alice and I babysat him, while his mother was stripping. He was just a little kid, but he already knew all about heroin, and that he had to lie about it, if anyone at school or from Child Protective Services asked him about it. Mikey knew that his mom took her clothes off for money. She even tried on her stripper outfits in front of him. And he knew that his mom had a lot of male friends who gave her money. How sad is that? Mikey was so messed up in the head.

  One time, when Alice and I babysat him, he was playing some video game on my cell phone. He couldn't get past a level, so he was getting really frustrated and became totally unhinged. He started screaming, threw my phone on the ground and kept punching the couch. He is not going to have an easy life when he gets older, if he can't get his anger under control. He'll probably end up on drugs like his mom, or in prison like his dad.

  Anyway, after Tattoo got arrested, Alice was now staying with
Mary, but she hated it there, because Mary spent all her money on drugs, so her dirty little basement apartment had no electricity, no heat and no running water. They were basically living in a cave, like animals.

  Alice called me and told me she was miserable and asked me if she could still come live with me. I said, yes, of course. But now I no longer had a place up north.

  She asked if she could find a nice apartment in Middletown for us, and I could pay for it with a credit card over the phone, and she could start living there, until I come back from Florida. So that's what we did. She picked a 2-bedroom apartment in a condo development called The Regency. It was the nicest neighborhood in Middletown.

  When I came back from Florida, we went furniture shopping at Ashley. It was a very nice condo, and once we decorated it, it really felt like home.

  Things were finally going good between us. We were happy together.

  Alice asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I told her all I wanted was for her to go to rehab, get clean and get a passport, so that we could travel to Europe together.