The joy of having crackheads knock on your door on a Sunday afternoon

BLOT: (23 Oct 2011 - 05:13:34 PM)

The joy of having crackheads knock on your door on a Sunday afternoon

A crackhead knocked on my door a few minutes ago. Technically, he interrupted me watching the movie Jumper, but in that regard he might have been doing me a favor. Spun a tale about some car belt or another broke and how he just needed five or six dollars so he could get to work. I may be wrong. He might have been totally honest, but...nah, he was a crackhead.

I lived near them for awhile, crackheads, a year or so in Evergreen. Back when I was working on Subway and ostensibly, but poorly, was saving up for college. I'd say it was Factory Street, but I think I actually lived on a sidestreet past Factory Street, which is kind of like saying you live in the backwoods section past the boonies. Except insert the sort of poverty that includes crack rather than, you know, John Deere hats. Still have broken down cars in the lawn, though.

While there, there were some fights. Some gunshots. Screams in the middle of the night. There was an ambulance and police combo one afternoon that I'm pretty sure was in response to a person being killed. They left me alone, though, for the most part. Not sure why. Guess I was too broke to bother and too big to fight. Plus, like now, I tend to be friendly but not exactly neighborly: a smiling, sometimes talking to himself, introvert.*

Crack is a shitty drug. Makes you do stupid shit just to get more of said shitty drug. It is easy to give up on people because their addiction is making them shitty things, but here's hoping that one day, somehow, you know. Etc.

The absolute craziest thing that happened involving a crackhead was one tried to sell me the front part of a car. Not the whole thing. Just the chassis. For about $20 but she was willing to take $5 after I said no. I said no, twice, and she left. Never saw her again. Besides that it was mostly stares. And them being more nervous around me than I was around them.

Probably the same for this guy. I did give him a couple of dollars, which was a mistake. Even if he never comes back, and I doubt he will, then he is just going to use to destroy himself. How do you put that in words, though, when a guy is sitting there, shriveled up like a husk of a human, his lips pale and cracked and his whole body twitching in these little microseizures of something much like, but not quite, paranoia and nervousness? Without opening up to someone more than you are comfortable considering his condition and the out-of-the-blue nature of it? I guess if he comes back I'll tell him, "Get help," and maybe, in precursory, I will look up some help for him to get and have that ready to give.

After my apartment, he went over to another neighbor's door almost immediately and then knocked, and then got the hell out of town. Looked like he was heading up into Candlewood, which could either be a) a place of residence, b) a place of "commerce", or c) just another place to go and beg some more. Give the same story about broken down cars and work...

I am a little nervous that he will come back, that he will try to see what Sarah and I have and take advantage and partially because of this I didn't let him come in or get a good luck around. I know that it's fake magazine salesmen that run that scam, but one time in Resident Advisor training it was grilled in that only allow people in your house and turn your back if you are absolutely sure you are ready for the consequences.

I also know that Sarah and I mostly just have books, boardgames, low budget horror DVDs, and some old CDs. He could carry so much of our stuff that it would break his back and still make less than $30 at a pawn shop for an exhausting day's haul. Then again, though, if the front chunk of a car chassis is worth $5, who knows what $30 might obtain? It's just, once someone loses trust in something like the innate humanness of others, there is no coming back. What about another neighbor, an utter dick of a neighbor, who merely breaks in for jollies: why would that be any less likely that a screwed up man in the grip of a shitty drug? No, here's hoping for the best for him...we are all damned, we might as well be kind.

* ...who one time got so pissed at a videogame (those days are past me) that I ran outside at 4am—into said crack neighborhood—and tore a sheet off a clothes line, quite literally ripped it to shreds, and then used a brick to beat a cinderblock into pieces. I...well, they probably assumed I was one of them. For those curious, the reason I did this is because I deleted a save file about 70 hours into a game, and about a few minutes from the end, because I was stupid. And, like, nineteen.

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: October 2011