The Wilderness Years - Hazardous Chemicals

"Pills and powders baby powders and pills..." ah yes kids where were we? back to the grind? a full year in the books and Hippie Jack and i were rolling right along... how good were we rolling? like low-level kingpins which in the larger scheme of things amounted to jack shit, we were making the rent and staying wasted and i for one was overpaying on the student loans and stashing money in a little safe... somehow Jack was doing well enough to branch out into the blow business, of course Hippie Jack was always branching out into something, his steady was grass but he was on old Deadhead so i never asked a lot of questions, it was always a swell surprise when i showed up and he was doling out mushrooms or acid or Xanax bars or Valium, the latter two at one point sending me into a phase were i'd often piss myself from being so fucked up, fucking lovely innit? i just didn't give a fuck, of course i probably should have, the mixing of large quantities of booze and mother's little helpers may not have been the wisest choice, but fuck it, we were young! so we raised our glasses high!

And thus began in earnest what will go down as the first powder phase... the brown had been around since my last summer at the beach, all the junkie kids in North Oakland couldn't understand why i wasn't hooked but i would explain to them that it was all down to discipline and respect for the Mother Superior, her sister Charlie i had no fucking respect for, and that dirty little slag would come back and bite me right on the ass, oh but isn't that the way, it's what we fear and respect the least that locks it's jaws and begins swallowing before we even realize it... before you knew it i was picking up little packages for myself when i would re-up, that was the only time i would get it unless one of my roomies needed a favor, of course if i got for them i'd usually grab something for me, and then one day it happened, my trips to Hippie Jacks were now sometimes bi- or tri-weekly that 's how swell things were going and it was on one of those trips that i stopped by and noticed a plate with a bunch of little white rocks on it, what's that? i said... Freebase! he smiled...

Technically there's no difference between freebase and crack other than the name, some cultural bias, and how good the shit is, Hippie Jack made sure to stress that from the get go... Crack, he opined, is shit man, it's all baking soda and bullshit, it's a ghetto thing, (as we sat in his shitty apartment sitting on the edge of the ghetto), but freebase! well hell that's the good shit, the brothers don't know what they're missing, (i'm pretty sure the brothers gear was just fine), i make this shit myself so i know how good it is, it's simple he cackled... and like the fucking spaceman i was i grinned and asked, can i try it?

Fucking years back (2010?) i wrote a piece about this era, it involved smoking rock and jerking off, imagine that? damn if life ain't funny, of course there wasn't much wanking cuz i was so fucked the chances of me producing a hard-on at the time were akin to me hitting this weekend's Powerball, but let me take you back to that first hit, oh i'm sure it's been described many times before all over the interwebs but fuck all that cuz this is my gig, that first hit may have been better than the first time i ever got laid, if felt that fucking good, dangerously good, on exhale it felt like my whole body just shot the best load ever! holy fucking shit, i just wanted to light a cigarette and smile, of course then it dawned on me that i could do another hit and so i did and boy if that one didn't feel like i just blew another magnificent load out every nerve ending, it was like the door to the  pleasure center of my brain being kicked in, i immediately asked if could buy some and Hippie Jack said sure man and pulled out a scale and tossed some on and scratched his head and came up with a price... i loaded my grass into my backpack and stuffed my "freebase" into my pants pocket and off i went...

The beauty of my life at this time was i didn't think this was anything out of the ordinary, practically everyone in my realm of existence was fucked up on something, sometimes it was booze and drugs, sometimes it was money or sex, sometimes a combination of all the above... the only thing that reminded me there were "normal" people out there was my gig delivering party goods to the unwashed masses, the army of part time housewives/customer service co-workers i'd encounter Monday thru Friday, they'd remind me that the world was not an endless parade of drunks, hookers, junkies, speed freaks, and wannabe rock stars, there was in fact a straight world that still existed though to me it was as far away as the moons of Jupiter, i had no clue where it was or how to get there and that was fine by me...

Of course being the lazy fucker i am i was continually hitting up Hippie Jack for his pre-made rock every time i stopped by and between business and pleasure that seemed to be quite a bit, i probably should have noticed that Jack was much more irritable than he used to be and was sometimes still sleeping when i called to make my run, he still answered when he heard my voice, when the meal ticket calls you get the fuck out of bed and handle shit, still he was getting tired of selling me his rock mainly because he wanted it all to himself, i figured i was doing him enough favors that selling me some of his ready made shit was nothing more than a little bonus but old Jack wasn't having it and so he insisted on selling me his coke instead and then teaching me how to make the shit myself, of course i'd still bum a hit or two when i stopped by, the main worry was fucking up the recipe and blowing my wrap of blow...

And so one fine fall afternoon Jack sat me down and explained the process step by step with the wrap i had just bought, he grabbed his spoon, a small plate, an ice cube, some baking soda, and a pack of matches, he explained how you dropped some water on the spoon and added the baking soda which was the bonding agent for the coke and prevented it from dissolving in the water, it was a cracked-out Mr. Wizard showing the boy dumb-ass how to be as fucked up as he was, he showed me how to cook it up and stir it around to make the little white sticky balls, how you used the whole pack of matches to burn off the water and leave the residue on the spoon which was then placed on the ice cube to help expedite the process, how let it dry for an hour if you could manage to keep your hands off it that long, and i'll admit i never got my method down as good as his, i guess i shouldn't to upset though, it may have been a really good thing to be below average at... to be continued...