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From The Junk Merchants, presented here for the first time.
The Routine of a Skinny Junkie
By Anthony Servante
I do not start the day,
It starts me.
I count my change and the laugh-lines under my eyes.
Then I strut into the ordinary routine of dying.
Los Angeles is a Metropolis of rusty syringes,
Skyscrapers that puncture the arteries
Across the 101 Freeway and the 110,
Connecting the San Pedro Peninsula
To the Hollywood Bowl,
Paths which are varicose and tracked
Like a used up arm.
Right there at the juncture
I enter the perfect little Diner
At Figueroa and Ninth Street.
A chalkboard menu greets me
With meat and potatoes
For breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
The neon burns bright 24/7.
I float over sawdust floors
and start with a nickel coffee.
Lady in a Cage plays the cash register
Like a piano and makes mourning music
That only the Skinny Junkies can hear.
Santa Anita Racetrack opens the day after Christmas.
A Mugger seated next to me
Reads the racing form
And circles his picks with a yellow hi-liter.
Who’s favored in the fifth? I ask.
We’ll find out together, he answers,
And blesses the cum-soaked wads of bills
In his alligator skin wallet.
But first a trip to the rest room
For the next round of brunch in a spoon,
With candlelight, a homemade tourniquet,
A friendly face that I trust to find the virgin spot
Between my toes on the first try.
I kick off my accessorized cowboy boots
Like a man who is all hat and no cattle.
Then we switch places,
I find a scab-free vessel;
It hungrily swallows the needle.
It blushes and a dot of blood appears.
We nod in unison and pay our bill in unison
And walk out in unison.
Then we can catch the Metro 78
Across Huntington Drive
And tighten up like proper gentlemen,
Alternating nods with bobble-head sobriety.
The bus is filled with hobos, schizoids,
Hollywood starlets, diabetic dreamers.
The Park welcomes us all.
Turkey sandwich, please, and dip it.
Thunder Glue is favored in the fifth.
I box my bet and Mugger passes out.
Photo finish tells me I won nothing.
I slip into a wonderful waking sleep.
The Security Guard wakes us.
A quick trip to the restroom.
This little piggy went to market,
This little piggy went home.
Pop goes the weasel, same spot, same dot.
We walk in unison to our bus ride back
Till we arrive at our destination of detours
To the backstreets of Skid Row;
Three strikes and it’s life in prison, so tighten up,
Roll down your sleeves and button up.
They make movies on Fifth and Main,
Two blocks from the LA Mission,
Where the imps and sailors fuck and eat
And if they’re lucky they find a bed
With ripe bedbugs too plump
To suck another drop of blood.
You can recognize the regulars;
They look like mirrors with strangers in them.
The Chaplain says a prayer from the good book
Of government grants and tax write-offs.
And we say amen to the darkness and hit the hay.
If the ponies pay off the long-shot odds,
It’s a room at the Frontier Hotel on Main Street:
Marble stairs and brass rails
Remind one of the Golden Age of Cinema
When Charlie Chaplin movies premiered
On Broadway and stars like Clark Gable
Stayed at the regal hotels on Main Street;
Today they are Section 8 habitats
Where Strawberries are on the lookout
For Johns lost in the fog of a Noir novel.
Want a date? No? You fag.
Take your STD beaver for a walk.
The Frontier rooms have a hierarchy:
The first five floors are bloated with rats and roaches
For the vagrants without vices,
Working class stiffs on the 9 to 5 treadmill;
Six thru ten are for the lucky scroungers—
They get rooms with a view of Little Tokyo to the left,
Sears Tower to the right,
A bed and bath and TV set with BET and static;
Strangers knock on the door at all hours,
Is Jim home? I owe him some money,
Open the door, I’ll give it to you;
Fuck off! You parasites of parasites,
Jim is dead; I’m his fucken corpse.
The top two floors are for the Fat Junkies;
Room service at their disposal
And angry security protects them:
This is where the baggies are filled,
The rock candy shat out of the mules,
The balloons huff and puff
With race horse precision;
Dime drops and quarter cramps await.
This is the unreachable party
Save for Gumshoes and Beat Boys
Slumming for Beat Girls who haven’t
Tasted the strawberry yet.
From the lower floors we hear
The party in full swing;
We silence the joy with a drag
Of home-rolled drop and stems and seeds,
The Skinny Junkie’s green tobacco,
The fortified wine and malt lager by the jar.
The liquor store across the street
Claustrophobic glass enclosed clerk,
A smiling Indian has one hand on the cash register,
The other hand on a Saturday Night Special.
Hello, my friend, no credit,
Get the fuck out. Next.
Tonight we are not lucky.
The cots await at the Mission;
Tie your shoes to your belt,
Place a nylon stocking over your head
So the bugs don’t eat your face.
Mugger’s getting raped.
What you looking at? Wanna be next?
Didn’t think so, bitch.
So I sleep the dreamless sleep of hurt pride.
What was Mugger’s name again?
Where am I? Where is my faceless friend?
Where did the sun come from?
I vomit up sunshine and good mornings
With mud coffee in my belly and cream of wheat.
I make a deal with the bag lady for use of her baby
To take to Broadway during rush hour
Where the robot executives with bulges
In their back pockets that carry payment
For that sour dream I need to buy.
The suits cough up plenty for the stroller kid
And say things like “good luck” and “get a job”.
The baby cries and that is worth gold fillings;
The barren secretaries (call me Administrative Assistant)
Double-down that the money they give me
Will reach the belly of the babe.
The cynics shake their heads
And cell phone the cops who never show,
They never do, and why should they?
It’s not just the paperwork,
It’s the principle of the thing,
Leave the survivors to the task of surviving.
In the heart of the Civic Center.
Even the Mayor and the Council Members
Walk by the beggars holding babies,
Hurried to push that bill or memorandum
To allot the Business Man a tax break
So jobs will trickle down like blood
From the hole of a withdrawn needle.
Instead, it trickles up the nose
Of these well-to-do Elected Officials
With real dope in folded white paper,
Not the ballooned crap from the top floor.
In this moment the rich and the poor snort
From the same powder of the Fat Man.
The baby stops crying on cue
As I split my take with the bag woman
Who fashions a shanty to match her shopping cart;
It is the fashion of disease of street wealth,
The welfare and the EBT
That pays for the fire under the spoon
Or the rock candy in the foil pipe.
She yells, Hello, and waves
To the ventriloquist who drags his dummy
In his rusty red wagon;
His sign reads: GOD TALKS THRU HIM.
And the dummy smiles, for it is true.
He used to be a famous TV star
And hit the talk show circuit:
Johnny Carson and Joey Bishop and Merv Griffin.
His dummy didn’t talk back then;
He did the talking and cashed the checks
And almost became Fat till his first hit
With the movie stars in the green room.
Then another, and another, and his old friends
Shunned him for the new friends;
Eventually they, too, shunned the burden
The ventriloquist became.
He took to the streets to find another and another
And there he found himself at the Frontier Hotel,
A pay-by-the-week guest,
Till all he had left was his dummy and residuals.
And then that dummy sat up one night
All on its own
In the middle of a nod.
So he made his sign to tell the world
Of the miracle of The Dummy.
I take my half of my beggar loot
To watch the street scam quartet:
One man has the cards, two play winners,
And one is the lookout for the Man.
Better not tease these Three-Card Monte tattoo boys
Or they’ll cut off your hands
And put them in your pockets.
Two black cards, one red, he explains;
Pick the red card, double your money.
Everyone can play.
The two “winners” play their role and say,
Can anyone play? Even us poor boys?
Everyone can play and the winners win big
Till the dealer looks like a loser.
Then a brave soul sees how easy it is to win,
And they take him for his whole paycheck.
The lookout shouts, The Man.
They scatter and meet in the alleyway
Behind the Frontier Hotel,
And they split the money
And the brave soul finds them there,
Give me back my money.
They kick his ass and strip him naked
And piss on his tears and drool.
This is the city where we find what we need.
Find the Fat Junkie and break bread with him,
Ones, fives, tens—don’t take no change
From any fucken Skinny Junkie, motherfucker,
Next time iron those bills before you hand them to me.
Yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir. May I have some, please?
Pick it up, bitch, and come again.
I pick up the yellow balloons and scurry off
Before the magic elixir in the rubber balls
Is stolen like Easter candy by the calloused hands
Of thieves and vultures and hyenas.
What are you looking at?
Eyes follow me as I turn the corner.
I find a shanty box with a friendly face.
The lightning strikes twice.
Time to take a walk and time the nod
To sync with the robot suits.
There’s Mugger with a racing rag;
We catch the 78 bus to the Pony Park.
Order a turkey sandwich, no dip, please.
I pick six and tighten up.
If I win I eat at the 24/7 Diner.
The needle brings me luck today;
After nine races and I collect my wad of winnings;
We take the Metro train to the never-closed diner
And skip the line of tourists
And take a seat at the counter,
Where Rudy Whatshisname who used to make movies
Now waits the counter and pours me hot coffee.
Ponies pay off again, eh, he says, a big tip on his mind.
He waddles over a plate of waffles with karo syrup,
The kind they use for fake blood in B-movies,
He once told me, and the pig in a blanket,
Well, it’s a vegetarian cannibal who eats his own;
He laughs at his own joke in his own world.
I order two and more coffee,
One for me, one for Mugger.
I don’t meet his eye ‘cause he’ll know
I remember the Penis Boys last night
Raping him as he cried for his mommy.
Some things we remember to forget.
The Police Chief and The Sheriff join us.
The Sheriff fornicates a cup of coffee and winces
As his cauliflower ear aches what with rain on the way.
The Chief promises the moon for practice
And laughs into his runny eggs.
A truck driver joins us and nods to the Law Men;
He orders the breakfast special
And eats it with his hands.
Half the food specks his black and grey beard.
The last of the day dies in shadow, he says to us,
Same shadow that followed me here from ‘Frisco.
It’s the sign for the city to change shifts:
The Working Class leaves, the Skinny Class arrives.
Just this morning, Rudy says,
The heat of the sun entered the diner for a drink of water.
Too late for the A/C growled the Lady in the Cage,
Sensing Rudy’s hint that he was warm.
Bacchus the short-order cook flips the flapjacks
And tells Rudy to shut the fuck up.
The trucker asks Bacchus for the time
But the hunger in his belly
Drowns out the answer to his question:
Armageddon o’clock, you prick.
The hold-up man in a leather zipper mask changes his mind
And seats himself beside the law men.
You got my vote, he tells them.
Love the mask, they respond, going my way?
Mugger ejaculates at that scene.
We are asked to leave.
Perverts, they called us, even the Lady in the Cage
Who tosses my change on the floor.
I leave it there and the Masked Man dives for it.
All eyes are on us as we depart.
When we return they won’t remember a thing;
This is the city with Dementia:
Some things they remember to forget.
We exit to Ninth Street, heading back to the Mission.
Or maybe The Frontier tonight.
I count what’s left of my winnings;
Mugger and I will be okay, better than okay.
Today I am a winner.
Tonight I will be the friendly face.
Tonight I will party with The Fat Junkie
On the very top floor of the Hotel.
I will roll up my sleeves and follow the tracks home.
No tippy toes tonight.
Rudy and Bacchus got their tip.
Mugger mumbles something about no tomorrow,
And just for a moment, just a moment,
I feel sated and wonder if that’s what Fat feels like.
