The Throw Down

Bruce Balfour was a man of ill repute, and it was mainly for this reason that I liked him. He was floating around Manhattan after being kicked out of NYU, and when I reconnected with him randomly on St. Mark's Place he told me he was living with a High School girl on the Upper East Side. They were living in a condo that her parents were trying to sell, and by that time they had sold almost all the furniture.

His girl friend Marnia was oddly walking behind him, and when she caught up I noticed she was mixed, and had inherited all of her mother's African features - wide nose, full lips and an unruly bonnet of frizzy bronze hair that she fought with a comb - while retaining her white father's pale ochre skin tone. She also had freckles, which combined with her other features created a riot of earth tones. She made an instant impression, not necessarily good. Her saving grace was a pair of wide green eyes, not unlike an Egyptian lion. Marnia was surprisingly sassy for a High School dropout, even if it was Hunter High School she had dropped out of. For the most part she held her own with Bruce, and he was no dummy. She was tall, clever, and knew she had a few trump cards in her hand, most importantly the apartment they were squatting in.

  I bumped into Bruce on a sunny, false Spring day in March. It was still chilly, and the sky made you sad as the grey and white clouds skitted around in the wind. I was walking across Third Avenue towards Astor Place in the direction of a few record shops I wanted to check out when I noticed him coming towards me. I hadn't seen him for a while, and he looked paler and thinner (which had the effect of making him look taller) and he moved with a stiff-legged, purposeful gait. His oddly rag-tag clothes struck me as strange since he had always been something of a clothes horse at NYU - he was a dancer, in the Drama department, and was never shy to wear flamboyant colors or even Capezios on a night out drinking. But now, as he approached me I saw that he was wearing a black turtle neck under a jean jacket, with a blue suit jacket on top. His jeans were pre-washed horrors, and too tight for him. On his feet were a pair of scuffed up tan brogues, and his socks were green. No amount of New Wave sensibility could explain away such a hodgepodge ensemble.

  I eyed him down as he came toward me, thinking I might just keep going, but then he saw me and his thin feral face cracked into a smile as he squinted through the smoke from the cigarette clamped between his lips. Veering my way, we met in the middle of the Avenue and we exchanged hand slaps.

  'Dude...what are you doing right now'? He asked. It was eleven in the morning and I had woken up at some girl's place on Eldridge Street and was still in last night's clothes. Still I looked better than him.

  'I'm heading over to Rubin to see if I can still eat' I lied. Bruce had once lived in Rubin Hall, and a small cloud passed over him as he narrowed his gleaming little eyes at me. I asked him where he was going - heading East so early in the day.

  'Throw down', he said, grinning. 'You down'?

  Now, I hadn't seen this guy since at least August, when we were all hanging out at the Park Inn on Avenue A and skin popping dope. At that time Bruce was still a cocky, handsome guy who pulled a lot of girls. The guy I was looking at now was almost unrecognizable.

  It was a seamy August night, and the city's garbage stunk at every corner. The gutters fumed, and rats were teeming through the chunky black garbage bags with impunity. The city was sweating. Bruce was wearing a pair of old school chinos, white Converse All-Stars and a ribbed cotton wife beater. He looked like a character out of South Pacific, and I'm sure he was aware of that. He sauntered into the Park Inn with Amos Cohen and immediately told me they were gonna throw down. I was in. I had been drinking on my tab, but I borrowed twenty bucks from Ade the bartender and was good to go.

  At that time we still were getting beat sometimes when we copped. The last time I had gotten 10 bags and was walking back along 7th Street between B and C when a crew of Puerto Rican kids rolled up on me with two by fours and knives. They didn't have a gun, and were just teenagers, but there were six of them. I had put half the bags in my shirt pocket and half in my pants, but as I handed them the five from my pants one of them, a red haired kid with Cazelle frames patted down my shirt and they got it all. 'I should fuck you up just for trying to be slick', He said. But they had what they wanted, and I walked away. Half the time they were working with the dealers anyway.

  I didn't want to get beat again, so we started walking through Tompkins Square Park looking for a junkie to go cop for us. This was never hard to do, but then again you had to worry if the junkie would come back with your shit. Of course you had to buy him or her a bag for their trouble. We had circled the park once already and hadn't seen any likely candidates. I was about to go myself (I always went...some fucked up part of me enjoyed it) when Bruce suddenly said, 'Yo, that's Charles 'Ray Ray' Jones'!

  Who, we asked?

  'Man, that dude was the drummer in DeFunkt! He also played with James White and the Blacks'. Oh yeah...I remembered now. I saw him once at the Peppermint Lounge with Defunkt, and he had a crazy drum set, more like a percussionist really, and he was killing it.

  Bruce walked over to him and said, 'You're Charles 'Ray Ray' Jones'. It was very Bruce to call him 'Charles 'Ray Ray' Jones' like it was the back of an album. I felt embarrassed, but Ray Ray didn't seem to mind. He was sleight in stature, maybe five foot six or seven, and had ratty little dreads, but what you noticed right away was his arms - they were muscular, sinewy and perfectly toned. His small face was shiny and his sleepy eyes were kind looking; he had a small moustache. He smiled widely at the recognition, and I could tell he was a nice guy. Bruce bigged him up a bit more, and we made small talk, but everyone knew why we were talking and I could see that Ray Ray was high. Finally I said, 'So what's open tonight'?

  A lotta shit was open, said Ray Ray, but the best shit going down was a spot on Avenue B and 9th street called 'Third World'. I had copped inside Third World before, and it was known to be legit. The problem was outside. So Ray Ray agreed to go score for us and we waited by the chess tables at the south east corner of the park. I went to the bodega for a quart of beer, and it was so hot that by the time I returned to the park the paper bag was soaked through. The cold Budweiser felt good in the back of my throat as I guzzled it down and passed it to Amos, who wasn't a big drinker but was boiling. Bruce kept up a chattering narrative about meeting 'Charles 'Ray Ray' Jones' and chain smoked cigarettes; we were all in a pre-scoring nervous thrall. After a few minutes which seemed like an hour Ray Ray came back and, smiling asked us if we had works. We didn't. He did. I asked where should we go to get high and he said, right here.

  Damn, shooting up in the park...that was some junkie shit. But Ray Ray was in charge, and he started cooking up the first bag straight away. He was nimble with the works, and I remember thinking 'This dude is a junkie'. His fingers were slim and had wide, elongated tips with pink perfect nails. I couldn't stop looking at them as he dumped the powder into a black broken spoon he had on him, and then added water he got from the drinking fountain. All around us people were moving around - running, walking quickly, shouting, whistling - all part of the universe of getting high. A lookout was yelling 'Bajando'! Someone answered 'Tanto bien'! It's all good! A shirtless guy walked past us wearing cutoff jeans shorts with the pockets hanging out, he had long black hair in a ponytail, sunglasses and was pushing along a small pink girl's bicycle. 'Yo, five bucks gets the bike fellas', he said. 'Who needs wheels'?

  Ray Ray had sucked the dope back up into the syringe with his long brown fingers, and I wanted to see him shoot up. He looked up with his gentlemanly air and said, 'who's first'? The three of us looked at each other and before anyone could speak I said 'That would be me'!

  'Alright my man', he said. He was so cool. I loved how he did it. I loved the park, and the junkies and the scrambler kids and the punks, the skinheads, rockers, rude boys and homeboys. I loved it all. I moved closer to him as he sat there at the chess table holding the loaded syringe before me smiling. I started to unbuckle my pants and take them down, ready for the hit. 

  'Man, put your damn pants on'! Said Ray Ray. I had them halfway down my ass and he was no longer smiling. I looked at the others and they were silent. My face was burning. I did as he said, and pulled them back up.

  'Come here, gimme your arm', he commanded. I sat down at the table and started to roll my sleeve up automatically. I placed my arm out on the broken concrete table and flexed it a few times (where did that come from?). Ray Ray held my forearm in his ET fingers, and finding the vein pushed the needle in effortlessly, pulling the stopper back out slightly until I saw my own blood come back up and mix with the clear liquid, a mini lava lamp in the semi-light of the park. Then he pushed the mixture back into my vein and before I could reflect on my first real shot it was already expanding through my body and I coughed. He pulled the needle out and smiled at me with his small, handsome face. The other two were wide-eyed, I was gone.

  I only shot dope a few more times that summer. I was more of a blow and speed guy. I liked the stimulants. I got tired of shooting up and just sitting around nodding, as if that was something to do. I always wanted to go out to the Holiday or Park Inn after getting high, but the others just wanted to sit around and listen to music and nod. So I fell off, and that's why I hadn't seen Bruce Balfour in months.

  'Throw down' he said to me, standing there in the middle of Second Avenue on that breezy March day with his seventeen year old girlfriend. I looked at his beady demon eyes and hard edged grin. I thought about it. I wondered where we might go after we got high, but couldn't come up with any options I liked. I looked at his clown outfit and realized he was wearing his girlfriend's jeans. I told him I had to get over to Fifth Avenue and he said no problem. A junkie doesn't give a shit about you.  

Disco Dan

It was Dan Fine who first got us into skin popping. Dan was a year or two older, a pre-Law student at NYU, tall, boyishly handsome, and had his own apartment in an expensive co-op on Bleecker Street. A couple of my boys that lived in Rubin Hall on Fifth Avenue Knew him. I would often hang out there, and I was known to the guards and dining hall staff, so I could usually eat free there, telling them I'd left my ID upstairs.

Dan used to sometimes eat at Rubin Hall, and that's where I met him. He was from Riverdale, an only child and had a sense of humor; cool with everyone in a political way. But there was no depth to it. I liked him because he always had cash on him, and he was quick to spring for Space Invaders or pool games in the lounge. But whenever we went out to St. Mark's Place to drink and hang out he disappeared.

Dan was into photography, and had a studio in midtown that he shared with a couple of artists. He used to take college girls there to do  'modeling' shoots. This impressed me greatly. He did well with chicks, and once when we lived in the same apartment building he appeared at my door with an urgent grin on his face, asking if I had any olive oil in the house. Slouching timidly behind him was a disheveled, smokey-eyed brunette I recognized from the dorm. 

One day I was about to go find something to eat when he knocked at my door and told me to come over to his place. But first he asked me if I had any money. I had just been paid from my job at a small record label and actually had cash on me, so I followed him down the hall. He was with Amos Cohen and another guy named Bruce, who had dropped out or been kicked out of NYU and who I knew to be trouble. I was happy to see him, and the three of them had an imminent air about them.

As I entered his dimly lit apartment, Bruce who was always impatient and not one to mince words chortled, 'Yo, we're gonna throw down...you down?' He had beady little animal eyes with pale bushy eyebrows, and as he squinted at me he looked like a demon. I looked at the other two for some kind of explanation, and they both smiled like Cheshire cats. Refusing to not know what it meant, I said, 'You know me...always down!'

This brought nervous chuckling from all three, as Dan pulled three small white packets from his tight leather jacket and put them on the kitchen table. At first I thought it was blow, but the bags were too small, and didn't look right. 
Heroin? 
My mind caromed in a few directions at once: The evils of junk, repeatedly impressed upon me since Middle School; The addicts on the Lower East Side defying gravity with their stuporous 'junkie lean'; Needles, which had always made me squeamish. I picked one up, it was thin and light; it felt exciting. A smudged red stamp on the bag read 'Menudo'.

'You guys are shooting dope?' I asked. I looked at Dan. He smiled sheepishly. There was something reassuring in his deep set brown eyes, he was such a nice looking boy.

'Just skin popping', he said. 'It's not as bad as mainlining...mainlining is for junkies'.

I was thrown, not so much that they were doing this, but that they had been doing it and I didn't know. Dan took a small pen knife and slit the tape that sealed the packet of dope, then opened it carefully, letting the white powder land into a spoon I hadn't noticed before. It just materialized out of his sleeve it seemed. 

'So you down or what?' He asked rhetorically.

'I'm down yo. Down, down down!' I said, rocking heel to toe in my chunky Doc Marten boots and giving Bruce a slap on the back. He scowled his squirrel eyes at me, a world of mischief lurking behind them.

I watched as Dan produced a thin white syringe with a blue cap. He removed the cap and dipped the needle into a glass of water, sucking the liquid up and then squirting it back out. The ritual was time honored, like a tea ceremony, and he knew the tools, customs and etiquette...but how? Then he squirted the amount of half the syringe onto the dope and started to cook the clear liquid by running a BIC lighter back and forth slowly under the spoon, producing a dense black carbon smoke that came roiling up as the mixture started to bubble. He took a small piece of filter from one of his Marlboros and dropped it into the cooling liquid. Placing the needle into the filter, he sucked the dope back into the syringe and held it, needle up, while tapping it with his right finger to get any bubbles out. I made mental notes the whole time.

With syringe in hand, Dan looked at me and said, 'Twenty bucks'. I quickly took a twenty out of my pocket (a quarter of my weekly wages) and tossed it on the table. Smiling, he then told me to take my pants down.

Say what?

The others started laughing, and Dan explained that my back side was the best place to skin pop, as it had the most flesh. It felt weird, but I did what I was told - hooked before I even took a shot. With my Sta-Press pants bunched around my knees, I lifted up the tails of my oxford shirt and looked on, completely absorbed as Dan slid the needle into my flesh with a small jab, and then pushed the heroin into my ass.

I felt nothing. My instinct was to just act like a junkie. I closed my eyes and slowly started to buckle my pants up. Then I opened my eyes and looked at them. Dan was already preparing the next shot, but the other two were watching me. I had a moment of intense sadness and I thought maybe I got beat (exactly what they were wondering) when suddenly the warmest sensation I ever felt came over my body, rushed through my head and settled in the back of my throat. I coughed, and then they started laughing. The dope was good.

Rock Box

I met Amos Cohen through another Jewish kid named Dan Fine, who went to NYU with a couple of my boys and later became a junkie. Amos needed someone to help pay the rent on his Aunt’s rent control apartment in Chelsea and I needed a place, so I moved in. I basically slept in the kitchen; on a mattress in a small hallway where a dining room table would have gone. It was a studio apartment, and Amos had the other room to himself. There was a cramped, rust colored bathroom between us. The place was dingy, peeling and hadn’t been painted in twenty years, but the rent was only two hundred dollars a month and was in striking distance of NYU and the East Village, so it had its upside.
Another reason we connected was we were both going to Hunter College. The idea was that we would go to school, take the train together and share the place like a young collegiate Odd Couple. But I soon realized that school was more or less a ploy for Amos to get financial aid and grants. He had a natural aversion to work, and spent most of his waking hours idly trying to figure out how to do as little of it as possible and still live. There was a cat named Skeezer in the apartment and I often wondered how he stayed alive. I would buy him small packets of cat food when I was down at the deli buying beer, or coming home with cold sesame noodles from the Chinese on the corner, but there didn’t seem to be any real method. I was awoken by the sound of grating metal one morning with a deep hangover to see Amos cooking scrambled eggs a few feet away from me in the kitchen. He dumped the eggs on a plate and then scooped out some more into the cat’s bowl and tossed the pan into the stagnant pile in the sink. Cocking my head I asked, ‘He eats eggs?’
‘The cat eats when I eat’ was Amos’ reply.
Across 22nd Street there was a small loft building, and on the top floor was a family of artists with two teenage daughters; a blonde and a brunette. The blonde girl was near perfection to my beery, twenty year old eyes – a lithe and mythical creature that I only caught glimpses of through the dirty twisted blinds in Amos’ room. At random moments while watching the battered black and white TV I would notice a movement, a sensation really - like the sonar of a deer. I would spring up by the side of the window, quickly hitting the lights if it was night, hoping to see her prancing around the loft in a leotard, or if I was lucky, her underwear.
One afternoon I was taking a shower when I looked out of the tiny bathroom window to see her laying out a cot on the roof. It was a shimmering hot summer’s day and she was setting up to sunbathe. Cat-like, I crouched down in the splashing water, patiently awaiting her next move. She squirmed out of a pair of denim hip huggers, and almost in the same motion pulled off her slinky punk rock T-shirt, and revealed a small, perfect white bikini. Sitting down on the cot, she spread her long legs to either side while she rubbed oil on her shins and inner thighs. Then she looked around surreptitiously, and with a flippant wave of her shoulder length straw blonde locks, unsnapped the back of her bikini and lay back to sunbathe topless. Gulping, and moving closer to the window without surrendering my discreet angle, I noticed with feral excitement the adolescent perfection of her pert, tawny little breasts - topped obscenely with large puckered brown nipples that resembled chocolate covered strawberries.
Before long she was wiping away small rivulets of sweat that were spilling over from her belly button and down into the hem of her bikini bottom. All that sweat and cocoa butter - that bitches brew - must have made her swoon, and soon she turned her head slightly to one side (my side) and began to trace her tan line with a slender, multi-ringed finger. The shower had run cool now, but I kept it on in case anyone came home. I leered as she sent an exploratory fingertip to the white nylon tuft between her long bronzy legs; letting one slip off the side of the day bed while the other lay straight. Moving the elastic material to one side she began to massage herself, and bent one leg up as the other tensed and braced, her foot arched against the black tar roof. Heat waves rose visibly from under her cot, and she must have been baking. Slowly the gyrating motions of her fingers gained momentum and pace, finally moving in and out of her silken snatch in deft little motions until the lower leg shot out straight and she arched her back luxuriously…letting everything come down at the same time, tugging her drenched bikini bottom back into place.
I had long since ejaculated and was essentially sharing in the afterglow with her - my mystery muse - when I heard the click of Amos' key in the front door. There was another voice too. A female voice. As I listened, trying to make out who was with him, suddenly the bathroom door opened and there was Amos with his asymmetrical curly brown hair and a crooked grin, holding out his palm to me with six plasticine envelopes, each stamped 'Rock Box'. I thought, what time is it? is there some acceptable time, like five o'clock for a drink, when it's acceptable to snort heroin? Reaching for the dingy, mildew laden towel we shared, I shooed him out of the bathroom with a look of surprise, disgust and glee...this day was just getting started.