The Wilderness Years - Raskolnikov's Blues Pt. 5

It's been said that bad luck is better than no luck at all, and had i still been in class i'm sure i could have attempted to get my fellow professional students to debate the merits of such a statement except i had given up on even bothering to attend class anymore, it was a strange feeling, i had failed, at times i'd sit and wonder what the fuck i was thinking about when i hatched this plan but there was also a part of me that felt that shit was just about to get interesting, of course at the time those were fleeting hallucinations and harder to grasp hold of than water but sometimes as i slumped stoned and drunk and out of my mind on controlled substances it was like Robert Nesta Marley was across the room laughing and singing "eveyting's gonna be allll-right", then i'd walk over and run head first into the fucking wall but for a few seconds anyway, well maybe it was gonna be all right, the rest of the time i wanted to fight the moon and sky...

And again there was the kindness of women... now that i was an official drop-out i kept a low profile, i stopped going to the university library for fear of human contact with the future of academia i had attended class with, worse yet contact with the virus that was the Piled Higher and Deeper, it was time to hide in plain sight... or at least attempt to, i spent hours wandering and studying the patterns of the little worker ants known as students and figured out the least used and therefore best entrance for me to sneak relatively unseen into the cafeteria, it was a back door and the middle-aged woman who worked the register by the door took a shine to me, after i had paid in crumpled ones and change a few times she began to say good morning, i would mumble back but try not to say to much, at this point i needed the student price whether i was officially one or not, i wondered if she hadn't seen my type before, sheepishly creeping in at the off times and then using the back line and hiding away in the corner, slumped but facing out in case i needed to make a quick getaway, soon she would ask how i was doing, she would smile, and then one day she told me to just go ahead, she began letting me in for free, i began to talk a little more, i thanked her and she told me to wait around for when no one is at the entrance and then come in, stop and say hello, pretend as if i paid or hand her a small bit of change and then go on in, i never asked why, our conversations never lasted more than a minute, two minutes tops, did i remind her of a son or an old ex-boyfriend? i'll never know... i do know if not for her kindness i would have been a lot hungrier...

So a few times a week i would wander up and look for my Guardian Angel, she was usually always there and even told me when she would be taking off, on the days i did go i'd go around 10 am and get breakfast, i'd bring a backpack with books and my notebook, i'd sit and read and write, i'd stare out the window, i watched the days turn from snowy to breezy to wet to warm, i'd sit through the end of breakfast at 10:45 and then daydream my way into lunch, a typical day was a few hours all told, a couple of free meals, then a good walk through the backstreets of town, then it'd be either a few hours washing dishes or sitting at home and hustling, though i was with one of the girls at the house i still had my own room on the ground floor, it was right off the kitchen which meant people could come in the back door and right into my room, like most businesses it's about location but in this business and it helped to be in a non-descript high traffic area, i was in a row with a couple houses all occupied by students and always bustling, i was not about to get nabbed by small town cops, a bust of a few ounces would have these mall guards on the front page of the local weekly looking all serious with their shiny boots and boners, to these clowns it would be like nabbing El Chapo or some shit, still that was no excuse to get sloppy or stupid or lazy and so i kept a close watch and tried to keep traffic spaced and to a minimum... but of course nothing can ever be fucking easy...

It shouda coulda woulda been a iron tight grip on the fucking market, a quarter pound shoulda grown to a half woulda been an elbow if the gear had been decent, it should have been the snowball effect, an effect that would have caused more than a bit of paranoia in a town this size but it would have been a short run, a 3 month stint, a stop gap for the stoners and their hero but alas it was a disaster... In the beginning the Guido Frat Finance boy swore up and down that he always had good shit, usually a few different grades, in theory, there's that fucking word again, it should have been gravy, instead it was shit, if it was his connection really going south or him pawning off the shit no else wanted on me cuz i had no other choice i'm not sure, i'd take what i could get but i knew if one other sidewhow showed up anywhere in Podunk i was fucked, i'd sit on this garbage and be out $400 or so, and to me at that point $400 was more like 40K, even better Guido Frat boy began moaning about his costs rising which would have to be passed on down the line, the price went up 25 bucks eating into the margin even more, how the price of dogshit could rise i'm not sure but it did, it got so bad that even the biggest potheads were bitching, i remember one girl, a sexy brunette and textbook stoner telling me that the shit did nothing more than give you a 10 minute buzz and a headache, to call it crap would've been a compliment, still it was the only game in town, but the three bills was now more like a buck twenty-five, that's what the net was when it was said and done, crime fucking pays huh?

There were a few good weeks, time to put enough money away for a deposit at the beach, a deposit on a place that would be condemned a month or so after i arrived but i've been over that, meanwhile i slid deeper in the muck, i began chasing around a wealthy Indian princess, the kind of untouchable, unattainable, and doomed endeavour that only the Don Quixotes of the world will even fathom... and yet there was that glimmer, she had an interest, we'd sit at the bar and talk , she'd ask if i wanted to stop by her place and have a drink, it was slow but i could feel it, she'd sit on the couch next to me with her silky black hair falling around her shoulders and brushing up against me, her leg wrapped in expensive jeans rubbing up against mine, i'd sit trying to hide raging hard-ons, trying to calm down enough to make some definitive move and yet every time i thought the time had arrived it was like a Bollywood movie, we didn't get up and do a dance number but we might as well have, a roommate would show up or a phone call from home, she'd sit in a chair across from me speaking a foreign tongue and i'd be mesmerized by those beautiful white teeth, the hypnotic sound of her voice... but there was no luck or not enough lust and the protocols of a culture i knew nothing about and one fine day someone sat there and asked if i was the guy who sold gear and lived with 3 girls, i nodded as i watched the smile fade from her face, within 15 minutes i was politely yet icily told that something had come up, it was the last i'd ever sit on the couch or admire the smile... and yet i had a girl who claimed to love me waiting just blocks away, a girl who fed me and tried to look after me knowing full well it was a hopeless cause, when one makes up their mind to slide into cesspool you must go all the way in, i was staring up through the muddy water, deep and getting deeper, toss the gas around then flick the match on all of it, hear the crackle but feel no warmth, then slide out the back door and into the darkness...