My friend, Jamie, called me that evening. I knew what she wanted, even before I picked up the phone. “Hey Kurt, you want to be my wingman tonight?” Jamie had a problem with Vicodin. The doctors stopped filling her prescriptions months ago, but she was resourceful. Every other weekend I’d go with her to score pills in the Tenderloin. But, I had plans to see an art opening for John Waters that night hoping she could work both plans in. I always liked going on pill runs with her.
“That’s perfect!” she told me. “I’ll just tell Ron I’m hanging out with you at the gallery. Jamie’s husband takes her wallet and checkbook with him when he leaves town on business. When I got to her apartment, I found her in the kitchen going through a jar of coins on the table. There were two small piles in front of her. One was made of quarters, and the other paperclips. "Ron mixes paperclips in with the change, making it a chore for me to get money for drugs. Can you to help me sort them out?” Jamie asked me.
I grabbed a handful of coins out of the jar, carefully letting the quarters slide through my fingers and drop into the pile she started. It reminded me of the times my grandmother and I used to sift through pinto beans. She’d buy bags of dried beans and I’d help her sift out the little rocks that sometimes would get mixed in. Gathering the quarters with Jamie wasn’t as sweet and engaging; she grabbed them as fast as I found them. After about 20 minutes of sorting, we were done. “Okay that’s 60 bucks. Let’s get this over with.” She assured me we’d make it to the Waters show and we were off.
The streets that evening were hopping with dealers, transvestite hookers, thin, white junkies and kids from the suburbs — all looking to score. Jamie knows the area pretty well. Each section of the neighborhood specializes in a particular vice. We where looking for the “Doll District.” We came to an area near an abandoned storefront with a few people standing in the shadows. I stood behind as she walked up to one of them smoking a cigarette. The one closest to her threw their cigarette to the sidewalk as Jamie walked up to him. “You got vics?” The two figures standing to his right started to chuckle. They were smoking as well and, as they laughed and shook their heads, the lit ends of their smokes bounced and waved from side to side in the dark.
“Naw, just chivay (crack),” he told her flat. “But, even if I did have it, I don’t do business with “clears” (amateur white folks).” They all laughed and slapped each other on their backs. As they laughed, a familiar, deep, velvety, Southern drawl called to me from within a small, gloomy park across the street. I couldn’t see her, but I knew who it was.
“Portland? Is that you?”
It was Creamie, my transvestite friend from the Mission. (The other queens call her “Cream Rinse” because she doesn’t like to swallow so it sometimes ends up on her head). She slipped out from the darkness and into the streetlights near us, dressed up in her signature cream colored, form-fitting dress. It hugged her tall, athletic, black body perfectly. Her hair was the same, pulled back tight from her face and back into a long black ponytail that ran down her back.
“I see those green eyes all the way over here, Portland.” (I remind her of an old lover she once had in Portland, Oregon.) She walked up, we hugged each other and I introduced her to Jamie. “What on earth are you two doing in Sugar Town?” “We’re looking for some vics,” Jamie stated. “Can you help us out?” Creamie recoiled slightly, then looked at me for a moment. I could tell she didn’t approve. She obviously expected more from me than trolling the Loin for pills. “Let me see what I can do.” She turned around and walked back into the dark. We heard some mumbling for a few seconds. Creamie strutted back towards us with a few of her girls and a young, short, blond man in tow. He couldn’t have been more than 16. He sported all the trappings of your usual street thug, including a sideways baseball cap. It pushed his curly blonde hair down just over the tops of his eyelids. He stepped up to me and looked me in the face.
“You want some pills?”
He was slightly shorter than me and started poking my chin with his nose. “Can’t this dude talk?” “Tell him what you want honey,” Creamie told Jamie. “You got any vics?” Jamie asked. He looked over to her, then back to me. “Your girl wants some Vicodins, huh? Yeah I got some. Come here.” He took me to a public toilet nearby on the sidewalk. “Don’t you have to take a piss, asshole?”
“Get in there a take piss. If the cops come, I’m gone and you’re taking a piss, got it?”
I agreed and turned to unzip my pants and tried to pee. He came in too and stood behind me with his foot in the door crack so that it wouldn’t shut all the way. “How many you want?” he asked. I turned around to ask him the cost per pill. As I turned to answer him, my zipper was still down. “Oh, damn! he yelled. “Put that shit back in your pants, asshole!” He looked back at Creamie through the opening in the door. “Well at least the dip shit’s got class. He shaves his balls.” Creamie’s girls all started to laugh and cat call outside.
He was now right behind me and whispered into my ear. “Your girl makes you shave your balls?” I tried to laugh it off and get us back to the deal. “I asked you a question, Fonzi! Does your pain pill bitch make you shave your balls?”
“Yes. She does.”
“Of course she fucking does! That’ll be $60 bucks for 20 pills... you smooth motherfucker!” The girls started laughing again. I could hear Creamie and Jamie trying to quiet them down. “God, I’m sorry.” Jamie told me. “Here just give him the money and let’s get out of here.” She handed me the plastic bag of jingling coins and I handed them to the dealer. “What the fuck is this? Are you paying me in fucking change?” “No, they’re quarters,” I told him. “No they’re quarters,” he mocked me. “Quarters are fucking change, retard! What the fuck is this? Are you assholes serious?!” He was screaming pretty loud. I was starting to get afraid. As he raged, Creamie stepped in to save my ass. “Honey, what ya doin? Give me that.” I stepped out of the toilet and gave her the bag. She walked over to one of her girls, a young blonde, and said something to her. “Hell, yeah I’ll do it for a bag of quarters!” she said. Creamie brought her over to the bathroom, leaned through the open entrance and spoke softly to the angry kid inside. “Oh fucking, Christ,” he said. “Which one, the blonde? Bring her here.”
Creamie stepped back and helped the girl inside as the bathroom door slid shut. She turned to us and took Jamie’s hand. “I want you to remember this: If I hadn’t been here, things could’ve ended up differently.” She placed a small pile of white pills in Jamie’s hand, smiled, and scooted us off. I told her, “Thanks.” “You owe me, Portland.” She winked and pushed us off.
Jamie and I hurried down the street towards the lights of the Civic Center. “I’m so sorry,” Jamie told me again. “Do you still want to go see John Waters? “Naw,” I said. “I think we missed the show.”
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