Gutter Folklore is a collection of stories I wrote waaaay back when, some of my first attempts to write short stories and a somewhat cohesive narrative. It’s also the stories where I initially developed the extra-urban punk-crust extraordinaire Skye, a persistent character in my fiction.
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Never call it speed. Not unless you want everyone around you to know what you’re doing. You’ll either get busted for it or people will keep bugging you for it. Either way, it would be a bad scene.
The residents of Hell Nose House and their closer speed freak friends called it Jake. They got the idea from a movie called Jake Speed. It coincided with a bunch of stoners they knew who referred to marijuana as ‘Bob’. This way they could talk about their preferred form of excess out in the open, even in a room full of cops.
“D’ya’ know where Bob is?”
“Yeah. Ya’ want to talk to Bob?”
“Yeah. I need to talk to Bob.”
So they emulated their pot smoking pals, only they were talking about speed and they called it Jake.
“D’ya know here Jake is?”
“Yeah. Jake’s over at my place.”
It seemed that each group of tweakers had their own euphemism for it. The people over at Fingerhut called it biscuits. “Man, I need a biscuit.” “Ya’ wanna biscuit?” Then there was the Xan gang over in El Sobaco. They called it dog. “Ya’ got any dog?” Some of the high school students who hung out on Haight street called it ‘crystal’, like they were talking about someone named Crystal, but that was too obvious since they were blatantly referring to crystal meth.
Skye was really in the mood to get wired. This fancy didn’t strike her as often as it did others. She reasoned she would be more into it if she were more of a musician. Most of her dedicated musician friends were into it almost full time. They would just get wired to the gills and practice all night.
“Ya’ know where to score?” asked Sue.
“I know a couple of dealers.”
“The good shit though, right?”
“Fuck yeah. They always give girls the good stuff.”
Sue was much more fond of wire than the average musician, and Sue would get wired more often than she did, but speed had the side effect of making her hideously horny. She preferred to get wired when there was a willing sexual target with her, for the times she got cranked up without any available sexual partners usually put through a leg twisting, teeth grinding state of sexual frustration that tested the outer limits of her willpower. The last time she had used speed she couldn’t handle the hormonal onslaught and ended up making Preston the unwilling recipient of her meth driven libido.
“Maybe we should ask Preston where to get some,” said Skye.
“Naw. I don’t think we should.”
The practice of acquiring speed was a learned and frustrating one, an endeavor that required a good deal of patience, something most speed freaks didn’t usually have unless they were completely burned out. It involved hard to reach connections, jittery partners, and phone calls. Phone calls, phone calls, phone calls, false alarms, quirky dealers, and a lot of completely hopeless and utterly unnecessary steps.
When Preston was getting speed for people through his dealers they sometimes complained that the buying process was taking too long. “Hey, they don’t sell this stuff at Safeway,” Preston would say, as he had to remind people that what they were doing was quite illegal.
If you were lucky and a long practicing tweak you most likely had one or two dealers that you were well known by. They usually gave you the good stuff at a fair price. Most dealers would cut some of their stuff, That is, dilute some of their stash by mixing in an inert substance like vitamin B12 or baby laxative, thus increasing the amount of their supply and jack up the price for the geeks and dumb tweaks that made up the rest of their customers.
If your regular dealer wasn’t working out then you might know a dealer or two who probably considered you a geek or a dumb tweak who would probably sell you some overpriced stuff that, while not the best of quality, would probably do the trick.
Failing a direct deal with a dealer you could go through friends. Fellow snorters, smokers, and jammers of the illicit white powder. They would usually be willing to contact their dealers on your behalf, sometimes just to be nice and possibly score a snort or two. This was a more aggravating route because it usually meant you had to sit around and wait while your friend ran off to get the stuff. Not being part of the actual deal could make time creep by at an immensely slow pace. It was a drag, but you could score some really good stuff that way.
Then, of course, there was hustling it off the street. This was a route that more than a few tweakers refused to take. You could go to the sniggly teenage dealers on the drag to score, as they were safe enough, but you stood a fair chance of getting ripped off or getting some really lame crank. Then there were other places, inner city places where you could try to hustle, but hardcore dealers reduced to street dealing were usually too unbalanced and occasionally violent. Only the more ignorant or desperate speed seekers took up hustling strangers.
People ignorant of such things usually imagine all kinds of warped stereotypes concerning the world of illegal recreational drugs. People like Skye and Preston could only roll their eyes at movie and TV versions of drug dealers and addicts. Neither Skye nor Preston ever had a gun pointed at their faces and most people had never even seen a gun anywhere near a drug deal. After all, these people were trying to sell you something. If a dealer pointed a gun or even simply held onto a gun during his or her deals they would quickly lose every customer they had.
One thing that always got to Skye and Preston was the portrayal of drug addicts as thieves and unemployed people. Hardly any speed freaks ripped off people to score drugs, and most drug addicts had jobs. You’d only go so far if you were constantly ripping people off. Sooner or later you’d get your ass kicked, thrown in jail, or shunned by everyone that recognized you. As for the job thing, drug addicts want drugs. Drugs cost money. Ergo, most drug addicts have jobs. Your career as an addict would come to a screeching halt without the capital to support it.
“What about Twurk?” asked the slightly apace Skye.
“Eeyuh! What about him?” grimaced the rebecouched Sue.
“Didn’t he say you could always come by his place?”
“Yeah, but he said it while he was practically drooling down my shirt. He’s Preston’s dealer.”
“I better call Deep.”
“Who’s that?”
“He’s my main dealer guy.”
Skye got on the phone as Sue tried to sit still on the couch.
Skye put down the phone.
“Busy,” said Skye. “I’ll try again in a few minutes.”
“Can’t you just go by his place?”
“No, not without calling first. He really gets frantic if you just show up without calling first.”
“Fuck.”
“Don’t worry.” Skye flopped down on the couch. “His line’s busy. That means he must be there.”
“What about Chuck?”
“Fuck him. The last shit he sold me wouldn’t have amped a hamster.”
“I thought you said these guys gave good crank to gals.”
“Well, most of them do. Some of them, anyways.”
