The Best Laid Plans

An interesting byproduct of all this blogging has been all the old friends coming forward to tell me how much of my writing they can relate to. Friends who have had their own battles with addiction, especially opiates. These are, for the most part, friends I grew up with and have lost contact with over the past twenty years. A few have been strangers, or near strangers.This has been the best part of all this for me. If someone gets something out of my writing, other than a nauseous feeling, then I have done what I set out to do.

Mission Statement:

My goals for this blog are as follows.

#1 Use it as a training ground, a sort of farm league for my other writing. I can bounce ideas off my adoring fans and see what works and what doesn't. Of course, none of you ever leave comments, but we will work on that later. Some of these ramblings may eventually turn into stories. Some are just me blowing steam.

#2 Educate people. Fortunately, most of you have never gone to the lengths I have to keep the party rolling. Many of you never even entered the party. So, there is a side to life you are not familiar with. It is my job, as someone who writes, to take your hand and guide you through the wasteland. It is a nasty place. Be careful to not step in anything, and make sure you shower with an antibacterial soap afterwards.

#3 Entertain people. This is what many "serious" writers like to deny they are after. The Real Literary Types. I am not one of them. I am egotistical and narcissistic. If no one ever read this, I would go back to my spiral bound journal and old fashioned, writing pen. I would have given up by now. But, a testament to boredom, I think, people are reading this. A lot of people, considering. Much more than my fifty-four Facebook (Ooops. Make that fifty-five. Shout out to Stephanie Iuvino. Her request just lit up my phone.) friends. I could never be like the Existentialist, Camus, and turn down the Pulitzer. Though, The Stranger is one of my favorite books.

These are in no particular order. They are all equally important aspects of the process for me. And writing has become the most important non-sentient thing in my life since I quit heroin. I would probably give up cigarettes before I gave up writing.

I am having success with the blogging format because it suits my style, I think. I am choppy and scattered. I have complete disregard for the rules of grammar. I couldn't spell my way out of the preliminary round of a third grade spelling bee, so I love Spell Check. It comes in handy when your vocabulary exceeds your ability to spell.

On with the usual bullshit.

Today is going fairly satisfactorily. I am sitting at one of the two coffee shops I frequent. The funky, Air Mac, tattoos, and hipster crowd spot, not the slightly more upscale sorority girls and yuppies spot on the East Side. I enjoy them both for different reasons, but I think I fit in better here. I am in the corner, on a comfortable chair, with my laptop on an octagonal table and plugged into the outlet on the wall. There is a beautiful woman--black boots, almost knee high, black stockings (Or pantyhose. Whatever the fuck they are called.), cute green dress, and long, dark hair--sitting at the table next to mine. I have a large glass of Gun Powder tea. I am listening to The Smiths, Rank, on Spotify. (Hmmm..... The Smiths and tea? Somebody must be getting in touch with his feminine side.) The only thing that could make this day better would be a call from my sister telling me that the authorities have come to the conclusion that I have suffered enough and can return home. So far, that call hasn't come, but I check my phone every thirty seconds, just in case.

Story time.

I was in the Multnomah County Jail. I get around. It is a long story of why I was in Portland, Oregon, and how I ended up there, but it basically amounts to the idea that a friend and I had to get ourselves off heroin. We went to the Fucking Heroin Capital of the West Coast to quit using heroin, because, you know, it is much easier to quit using a drug if you go to a place where that drug is available, cheap, and potent. There was heroin on Every Fucking Corner. In retrospect, this was an incredibly unsmart idea. At the time, it was the only one we had.

Did I mention that I was a wanted man at the time? I left the work release facility, went to get high instead of going to work. Then I went to get high again instead of returning to the facility. Three weeks later I had to figure a way out of Indiana, which led to the generating of the Portland idea. Kids, see where good ideas get you?

(For all those doubting my masculinity, I have switched from The Smiths to Mastodon. Still drinking tea.)

Our original plan was to go to Eugene, but we arrived there in the middle of the night and couldn't find a hotel willing to rent to two strung-out, backpack wearing strangers in the middle of the night, without a credit card. Plus, we were out of dope. We decided to go back to the bus station and take the bus back to Portland, where we were sure we could find a room, and, more importantly, some dope, so we could begin quitting dope.

Are you learning anything about the junky thought process here? Good.

We got back to Portland at 9:00am. By 9:15am we had found dope and were high. By 9:45am I was in handcuffs. Life moves so fast!

Burnside Park in Portland is an open air drug market. It is a strip of grass and a bike path along the Columbia River. You can get any form of intoxicant you desire. Not that I am suggesting you go there with the intent to purchase drugs. This is the first and only place I visited in Portland without a police escort. As you know from the previous timeline, I went from tourist to inmate in forty-five minutes.

All the junkies hang out and do their business right out in the open of Burnside Park. Needles and spoons, plastic baggies, pieces of balloons, vomit all litter the ground. People huddle in groups, passing around smoldering escape. Some lay on blankets or pass out behind bushes. It is about as liberal of a place as you can find. Police ride their bikes along the path, but only stop if they see something too blatant to pass by. Junky paradise.

This would be the first place me and my friend found. Dope is an attractant to the junkies inner magnet. William Burroughs used to say that he could find dope in any city, even if he had never been there. He said that the smell of dope infected everything in the neighborhood, and that you could still smell it years after the dope had left. I am not that metaphoric, but I have never had too much trouble finding dope anywhere. If it is there, I will find it. If I am looking.

We found our dope, did our business, and sat around with our new friends. Some guy came and sat by us. He took out his gear and shot up, not paying any attention to the two bicycle cops standing about fifty feet behind us.

The cops can't ignore this brand of complete disregard, so they slowly made their way over to us, and asked us all for identification. I hate situations like this. Especially when I have authorities 1800 miles away waiting for something exactly like this to happen.

The cops started looking through pockets and backpacks. Running names. I stood to the side, waited for the opportunity to ditch my wallet. I saw an opening and seized it. I covertly reached into my back pocket. I tossed my wallet towards the bushes.

When it came time for my name, I told them I was Patrick O'Connor from Buffalo, New York, rearranged my Social Security number before giving it to them. I have this rearrangement memorized for emergencies. Nothing came back from the NCIC search. The cop asked me how there was nothing under that name or Social Security number. Hadn't I ever had a Driver's License? The cops were getting pissed, but there wasn't much they could do, other than take me down and fingerprint me, which they would usually only do in the event of a real crime. I was beginning to think I might get away. I have before.

One of the officers (A woman. Why are women always my downfall?) found my wallet. She asked who the wallet belonged to and no one answered. She took the identification card out and started looking at faces. It didn't take them long to figure out the identification belonged to me. My story fell apart faster than a Yugo.

Another guy had missed a court date, so the two of us were handcuffed. The douchebag who had done his shot without looking around first was given verbal warning and told to leave the park for the rest of the day.

I am booked into the Multnomah County Jail. Sickness is coming. I try to get some sleep, because I know this will be my last opportunity for peace for the next several days. I wake up in the middle of the night with the full-blown sickness upon me. Sweating, restless, shitting, puking. I manage to walk to the door of my cell when the breakfast trays are served, then turn around, drop the tray, and fall on my bunk. I can't move. Fortunately, my bunky knew firsthand what I was going through, and told me he would clean up the mess.

Four days later, when I could get up to do something beside shit or puke, I started walking the floors. I spent most of my time talking with a meth head named Tim. He told me all kinds of stories, which he believed actually happened, but I have my doubts. Someday I will write about him.

I spent three weeks in Portland, waiting to be extradited. I spent another sixteen days on the extradition bus, but that is another story for another day, and I have rambled long enough.