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.