Summertime in NYC always has a stretch that is so hot you can imagine what Hell must feel like. The glass particles embedded in the concrete reflect the sun back up to your face. The asphalt melts and depresses around your sneakers as you walk over it. The fire hydrants are open every few blocks, like steaming springs inside Yosemite, because there aren’t enough sprinklers in the parks to keep the city cool. Amid the din of children yelling and cars horns blaring and subways rumbling there is the local noise and madness of a corner of Northern Boulevard in Corona, Queens.
My best buddy and I had made our way up to Northern Blvd to assume our respective positions in the daily routine that was our summer vocation. We were part of the illicit drug trade that took place in a scattering of locations right off Northern. My responsibility was to be a lookout for the dealers when the corner was full and to direct customers to the person that had the amounts they were looking to purchase. Just like Wall Street or any stock market on the planet, the day trading was brisk and steady. Unlike Wall Street, the night trading was even more energized and hectic. A kid named BARRY (R.I.P.) recruited me to stand on the block. He changed his government name to BAR-KIM when everybody was smitten by five-percenter theology. BARRY and I became friends when he saw that I was a graffiti writer and he wanted to tag up in my black book.
Northern Blvd was light years away from my graff writing days. I had never been paid to paint on a wall. BARRY paid me fifty to one hundred dollars depending on how busy the corner was. I gave my best friend a part of my money. Everything was so simple in the beginning; the police had never arrested us and we were disconnected from all of the drug addicts that came through the corner. This wasn’t our neighborhood. It wasn’t the part that we were raised in. We knew some of the kids that stood on the corners from playing in the parks and local leagues, but we weren’t personally connected to the neighborhood people that we sold drugs to. Some of these addicts would come through the block more than a half dozen times in one day. Each time they came through, they looked more harried and desperate than the previous time. They were sweaty and scared and they shook uncontrollably. I was told to turn away anyone that wanted to pay with anything other than money. No loose change and no merchandise accepted. I mimicked BARRY and the older boys with my tremendous contempt for the customers that didn’t have enough money; they were spit on and literally kicked in the ass upon occasion.
Like I said earlier, trade on the corner moved very fast. People appeared and disappeared so rapidly you needed a hand clicker if you wanted to count the customers served. One night I was surprised to see my former little league coach appear on the corner, looking to copp. He was in a shameful condition. I was so disgusted with him for being a customer. Apparently he came to the corner often enough that BARRY was accustomed to him not having enough money. BARRY spoke to him like a piece of shit dog.
I remembered when I was younger how regal this brother had been. My former coach was a star athlete and one of the neighborhood legends. And here he was, reduced to a sniveling animal. He looked me in my eyes once, saw my disgust, and he never raised his head again. This was the man that gave me all of my pre-adolescent confidence when he let me play third base instead of making me the back catcher or worse still, a reserve player on the bench. I was a husky fat kid and he had enough belief in me to put me in the top part of the hitting lineup. I played well that spring and by the summer I was part of the leagues’ All-Star team. I began to lose some weight and I even grew a little taller. My coach was like the coolest big brother to me. I idolized him as the catalyst for my transformation. Now he was reduced to rubble. He twitched nervously as he paid for his drugs and then disappeared into the night as quickly as he appeared.
I was reduced to rubble myself. Since it was a weekend night, BARRY probably gave me close to a yard for standing out there with him. I looked hard at my money and tried to understand what was so important about this paper. It was thin and fragile, but still so powerful. It was strong enough that I would trade my humanity for it. It wasn’t until I sold drugs to my little league coach, my childhood hero, that I realized what I was really selling and trading on that corner. It wasn’t drugs that were for sale, but the human soul and spirit. The customers were mothers, fathers, leaders and teachers. Crack didn’t care what you did or who depended on you for nurturing and care giving. Its nature was greed and as long as the victims were anonymous, I remained numb and disconnected to the pain. Once I saw the affect of crack on someone that I cared for, I began to look upon myself with contempt. As a matter of fact I began to look upon humankind with contempt and hate after that evening. Cheap ass crack had now rendered my humanity as worth only a few measly, wrinkled dollars.
I was souled out.
