Crack Up

Albie Gonzalez was half Puerto Rican and half Dominican. In other words, as he used to say, he was fucked. He lived down on Cherry Street by the projects, and used to come up to the East Village to hang out on Avenue A. I first met him in Blanche's Tavern one night when I had just cashed my financial aid grant and was buying drinks.

Albie, who was wiry with short nappy hair and bright eyes, looked around my age but actually was four years younger. He was a handsome kid with big brown eyes and impossibly long eyelashes, but his body was already starting to slump over from drinking, drugs and smoking. He wore a sly grin on his face, and I was trying to figure out how he had insinuated himself into our circle at the bar, but he seemed to know everyone. His obliging face invited trouble, and I would soon come to know that he made his living off knowing every cop spot and after hours club on the Lower East Side.

By the time a general hilarity had set in, and many rounds of cheap Polish vodka were flowing from behind the bar, a little well known voice in my head started lobbying for some coke to put an edge on things. I briefly considered going to Pony Pack around the corner on 10th Street, but lately the blow there was mostly cut, and since I had money in my pocket I figured I could do better. I looked around the bar to see who would know what was open, and then my gaze fell on Albie, who happened to be staring right at me with a knowing smile. He may have even winked.

'My man, what's your name again?' I asked him. He gave a wide, toothy smile and flashed his eyelashes at me.

'I'm Albie bro. They call you Jimmy, right?' So he knew my name anyway. I noticed he was considerably shorter when I got next to him, and he had the habit of shifting back and forth from one foot to the other as he spoke.

'Yeah, nice to meet you', I said, and shook his hand with some hybrid combination of a soul shake. In those days everyone had a different shake, and it was hard to remember who did what. I figured he was Puerto Rican so I gave him a straight fist bump and then a side shake. 

'Yo, what's up?' I asked.  'Who's got the package?'

At the mention of cocaine Albie's face grew animated and purposeful. He shifted from right to left, and asked me what I wanted. I told him maybe an eightball, and the twinkle in his eyes became a gleam. Smiling broadly he told me there was a spot across the park where he could get an eightball for a hundred and twenty five bucks. He said he could go get it and be back in fifteen minutes. But I wasn't going for it, and told him I would go with him. He never flinched, and cracked the big smile again, saying, 'Of course yo, you wanna come with me, it's all good...but I gotta go in the bodega alone'. I looked him in the eye. He shifted again, and said, 'Until they know you...it's some Dominicans and they ain't no joke, but they cool people.'

So we left the bar and headed across Tompkins Square Park, stepping through bums and around junkies, and always keeping both eyes open. Halfway through the park we came to a convergence of lanes and out of nowhere two big Puerto Rican kids rolled up on us.

'Yo, can my man and me get a dollar?' Said the smaller of the two, who had a lazy eye that was looking right at me. He had a mad smile like he was on dust, and Reflexively I said, 'Nah, sorry no money' and kept walking, but then the bigger kid stepped in front of me and said, 'Why you gotta disrespect my man like that? He only axed you for a dollar yo.'

I looked up at him. His head was gigantic and angular, like the jaw wasn't part of the cranium. He had a Yankees hat on his head that looked like a bobble head doll. It would have been funny if his eyes weren't so dusted and evil. He moved a step closer to me and I realized it was too late to run, so I stepped back and thought about the five hundred dollars of financial aid money in my pocket. And then Albie spoke up.

'Yo Flintstone, what up yo?' Said Albie, smiling at the big headed kid. 'This is my man Jimmy P, he's cool people from down the Hill'. Flintstone broke into a grin and looked at me skeptically. 'Oh snap...Al B. Sure! My bad son, I didn't see you was with your man here.' Then he exchanged a pound with Albie and offered me his giant hand - it looked like a bunch of small, overripe bananas. Then the kid with the bad eye spoke.

'Yo Albie man, I seen your brother over by Impalas...he was with Hector and them'. Albie nodded, and then I shook hands with that kid too. They both looked me up and down, but it was cool now. Then the bad eye kid asked me where I lived on the Hill. I hadn't heard this term before, but I told him I lived on Ludlow Street, near Canal. He smiled and trained his crazy eye on me. 'Oh shit, you a Hill nigga!' He said, and then they all cracked up. Albie looked at me and quickly flashed his lashes.

The cop spot was a fake bodega on 6th Street between Avenues B and C. It actually was a bodega, with Goya beans, cigarettes and detergent in the windows, but inside you couldn't buy anything but twenty dollar pieces, grams, eight balls and loose cigarettes. They had to sell 'loosies' because the clientele demanded them. I stood next door and waited while Albie went in. The action on the block was frenetic. It was a cool Spring night and people were moving quickly. As I waited I wondered if Albie was working with the bodega and could get out the back. It wouldn't have been hard to beat me. But something about his eyes and the way he spoke - he was calmer and friendlier than most hustlers - relieved me, and I knew he was coming back out.

Suddenly I heard pop pop pop from around Avenue D, and everyone scrambled and ducked and I knew someone was shooting. Fuck! What to do? I thought of running up the street toward the park but I didn't want to get separated from Albie with him holding my money. I moved over to a doorway where two girls were huddled, and I squeezed in. The first girl was fat, and wore her hair in big bronze ringlets, with thick gold bamboo earrings. She was spilling out of a bright green mini dress that barely contained her voluptuous dimpled ass. The other girl was dark and slim, with very pink lips and bloodshot eyes. She was wearing tight jeans and a dirty, loose windbreaker. I knew right away she was a Strawberry -  a girl who sold pussy for coke. She was looking me up and down with her red rimmed eyes and then she smiled and said, 'Hey baby...you holding rocks?' I tried to look hard and nonchalant, but I wasn't exactly sure what she meant. Crack was a relatively new drug on the street and I didn't know all the lingo.

'Nah, I'm just waiting for my man'. I said. They both started giggling and the fat one said, 'When he comes out you wanna party?' She gave me a filthy smile and I thought, where the fuck is this guy?

Just then Albie came out of the bodega and saw me talking to the two girls. He came over and looked at the girls and said 'Yo what up Theresa?' to the fat one. She shook her curls and earrings and gave a thin smile that was more like a frown. Albie gave me a serious look, and said, 'I heard people shooting out here yo, let's be out'. And with that we left the girls loitering in the doorway.

Walking up the block Albie handed me the eightball. It was in a pink plastic bag, and it looked legit. The weight felt right, and I didn't mind if he'd pinched some or even stepped on it a little, but I didn't think he'd had time to do that. Any scrambler would have, and I wouldn't hold it against him. When we got to the park we sat down on a bench where the streetlight was shaded by trees. I opened the package and stuck my door key into it, taking a big scoop of the white powder. It stung my nose and I knew it was cut with speed, but it was mostly coke. I did the same in my other nostril and then my brain switched gears with a jerky clutching move, like going from first to third. I felt a jolt of pleasure and a surge  of self confidence, and I scooped up another key and steadied it under Albie's waiting nose. He did two and winked his long lashes at me - I knew we were going to be fast friends.

The coke was good and we had a lot of it, so we stayed right where we were, talking shit and drinking quarts of Colt 45 and smoking Albie's Newports. Electric with energy, I took out a paint pen and started tagging on what was left of the bench we were sitting on - bums had hacked away much of the wood to make fires with. We were soaring from the booze and blow and started talking mad shit. I asked him what his tag was and Albie laughed and said he wasn't a writer, but he used to be lookout for some of his boys who bombed. 'Yo, that's for kids dude', said Albie. I knew that, but I didn't care. I liked writing my name everywhere. I liked the vandalism of it. I was talking about my band, and anything else that had to do with me. Albie was patient, compliant in his ability to wait for the next hit. He listened to my stories, occasionally interjecting things like, 'You da man' and 'That's why you got it like that!' as I mentioned minor exploits.

At some point - we had long since abandoned the idea of going back to Blanche's - Albie asked me if I wanted to smoke any of the coke. We had put some into one of his Newports and we smoked that, but now he was talking about smoking base. I didn't really know about it, but Albie said he could cook it up easily, all we needed was some baking soda. I gave him ten dollars and he walked off towards Avenue B. I sat on the bench drinking my quart with my brain expanding in an effervescent carnival of ego and fantasy. A pretty black girl in curlers, with tight Lee jeans and an Adidas sweat top walked by. She was holding a small boom box playing LL Cool J's 'Radio'. I jumped up and started bouncing to the beat as I mouthed the lyrics. I was wearing Doc Marten boots, sta-press pants and a black bomber jacket. My hair was cut in a tight flat top. I said, 'What up baby?'

'Oh hell no' she said with a little laugh, and kept walking. I didn't care. I was invincible, indestructible and incurable.

When Albie came back with the works he wasn't alone. He had another kid with him who he introduced as Cano. Cano was fair skinned (thus his nickname) and light freckles dotted the cheeks under his piercing hazel eyes. His hair, like his eyebrows, was light brown and he kept it combed back neatly, with a little rat tail in the back. Small wrinkles clawed at the corners of his eyes and the creases by the sides of his mouth told me he was older than us, but he looked like the B Boys I had seen at the Fun House dancing The Jerry Lewis: Tight Lee jeans, blue Puma Clydes with fat white laces, a rayon button down shirt with a small chain and cross in front. Cano was a cooker, and Albie explained that he was nice with it.

I looked at Cano and told Albie there wasn't much left, which was true. I was down less than half the package. What time was it? I looked at my watch and it was four thirty. Damn...we left the bar at midnight. Albie flashed his lashes at me and said, 'Yo don't worry Cano is just gonna cook the rocks and take a few hits, he got some place to be later'. He was assuring me with those big brown eyes and I trusted him. I dumped half the bag into the small glass beaker and handed it to Cano, who grinned and added water from somewhere while he kept his Bic lighter going back and forth under it. The mixture started steaming and he slowly swirled it around as he gently added the baking soda and kept it moving around and around the flame below. Some yellowish blobs appeared in the water and they started to coagulate and form larger islands in the whirlpool created by his circular spinning. Then he pulled the lighter away and kept spinning the beaker around faster until it began to cool and the blobs became white chunks of pure coke and fell to the bottom.

Cano never looked up once while he was cooking, but now he raised his eyes to me and smiled. He was good at what he did; he wanted recognition. I was mesmerized. I had never seen it before so I winked nervously at him and gave him his props. I wanted the coke in my own hands, but he was running the show. He produced a napkin from his pocket and dumped the water into it, letting it run through the paper and collecting the four large rocks and a few lesser ones. He told me to open a dollar bill and I did. Then he scooped away the small rocks (his tariff apparently) and slid the four big ones into my folded twenty dollar bill.

Albie was excited, and he pulled out a glass stem and handed it to Cano. Cano put one of the small rocks into the carbon blackened end and put the lighter to it. Soon the short stem filled with thick coils of white smoke and he kept drawing it until it became less dense, and then all at once he pulled it down into his lungs. Holding it as long as he could, he finally dispelled the smoke, smiling as he exhaled. I couldn't take my eyes off the stem. I was watching Cano and Albie was watching the folded twenty in my hand. I quickly broke off a piece of the biggest rock and put it into the hot stem, filling the whole tube and packing it in. I was being greedy, and Albie smiled at me expectantly, knowing I wouldn't be able to smoke it all.

The first blast of freebase was like learning how to ride a bike, get high and jerk off all at the same time; pure pleasure, unimpinged by any fear or doubt. As I held the lighter to the bubbling white rock, it became yellow and melted into a pure oil while it filled the clear glass chamber with dense white smoke. As I watched it moving into my mouth and lungs, Albie told me to hit it slower, slower...let it cook. Before I pulled the pipe away from my lips I had filled my lungs past bursting and already the coke was smashing its way through my bloodstream to my brain. I handed Albie the stem as I tried to contain the sorcerous substance inside me, but it kept expanding and filling me with power and ecstasy - I was suddenly alone in the park, untouched by human trivialities, pain or worry. I was free. I exhaled finally and after a brief coughing fit I looked around at my surroundings. I saw Albie working the pipe, eyes bulging, flame and smoke coming through his nose, a glow around all. But I wasn't really there. I was still vibrating on a mountain top somewhere, and my ears were ringing with harmonic tones. My brain and body were in perfect synchronization. I noticed Cano saying something, but I didn't hear or care. That first feeling of euphoria and perfection was still buzzing through me like it would never stop.

And then I wanted another hit. And that's all I wanted for the next few hours until the coke ran out. We got rid of Cano quickly, and made our way down to my place on Ludlow Street. Inside the loft we put Boogie Down Productions on, and had 'The Bridge is Over' on auto-repeat.  We sat around the kitchen table smoking, drinking and were very animated,  but really there was only one thing we cared about - that glass stem. Finally when we had massaged the last resinous oil from the blackened pipe, I looked up and the sun was rising. I had a moment of hideous clarity: we were out of coke, out of beer, it was morning and I had spent almost all of my semester's financial aid money.

I quickly banished these unpleasant realities into another part of my soul and looked Albie square in the eyes. 'I have some more cash, but I really can't spend it...I need it for school'. Albie just looked at me with his loyal dog eyes and shrugged. He knew I was in for a pound.  I thought about the Modern Library edition of Les Miserables in my bedroom with three crisp hundred dollar notes between the pages. It was my mad money, and surely I had gone mad now even thinking about it, but I was undaunted. I looked at him and said, 'If I spend it you gotta pay me back yo'. He gave me the full combo; wide smile, full batted eyelashes and finally the wink.

'Yo money, you know I'll hit you back. As soon as I get my check I can hit you off with at least one fifty'. How did he know I had three hundred bucks stashed away? My mind dodged around the question and I found myself heading back to my bedroom.

Outside on the early morning streets I didn't feel so purposeful. It was chilly, and all I had on was a Fred Perry tennis shirt. People were going to work in overcoats and hats. The sun was blaring between buildings, casting long shadows on the pock marked roads and trash strewn sidewalks. The wind was blowing off the East River. We made our way across East Broadway, and down Rutgers Street to the projects. Albie knew where to go and I was along for the backup. Also it was my money and I still didn't trust him. As we crossed over into the Smith Houses, he started talking to the scrambler kids who were up and working just like the suits heading to the office. He kept introducing me to everyone he talked to: 'Yo this is my man Jimmy, he lives up on the Hill'. Everyone gave  me a pound and treated me respectfully. They knew I had the money.

The word was there was a lot of dope on the street but nobody selling coke. Then Albie saw someone he knew well and whistled across the street. We crossed over and started talking to a skinny kid with sunglasses on and fucked up teeth. His mouth looked like a bear trap, all jagged edges and angles. They were brown and yellow, and I wanted to look away but I couldn't. Hector was frail and skittish, and he was the first person who didn't shake my hand. He kept looking around - for the cops I assumed - and then would alternately scan the sidewalk like he had dropped something. Albie asked him if there was any coke around the way, and Hector said, 'Nah, you gotta go up to Delancey Street. But them niggas over by Clinton Street got rocks. Nice chubbies. Yo Albie let me hold five dollars.'

We walked away as Hector continued his paranoid scanning of the sidewalk, and Albie said, 'Yo these kids are selling crack down here, we can get twenty dollar pieces'. I had seen news stories about how crack was a plague tearing through the ghetto. How it was cheap and effective, but left you jonesing for more. How it was making the crime rate soar. I said, 'Let's check it out yo!'

As we approached the houses on Clinton and Cherry Streets, I noticed a lot more kids standing around. The block was hot: there were crews on corners and benches smoking and drinking, younger kids rolling by on low bicycles, their exhalations visible in the chilly post dawn air, and people waiting in doorways. Everyone looked bright eyed and the air of anticipation was heavy. A young kid on a bike rolled by slowly, looking at me sideways and I didn't like it. Albie told me to be cool, he knew people down this way. Then some kids across the street started walking towards us and I tensed up. I was cold, and I wanted to get back to the cocoon of my loft. I wanted a beer.  As the young crew came at us Albie asked the leader, a black kid with a sheepskin  coat and Cazal frame glasses, for a cigarette. The kid looked at him and laughed and I sunk down into my boots a little. Then Albie said, 'Yo what's funny? I'm just lookin' for my people out here...you seen Tony Tee?'

Now the kid changed his stance and adjusted his cigarette to the other side of his mouth. He looked down at his Adidas shell toes and tried to play it off like he wasn't surprised. Behind him, the other three were all looking at me and I just stood, shivering and believing in Albie. The black kid now looked up and said, 'Tee was by here last night, but I ain't seen him out today'. It was squashed now, they knew Albie was down , or even if he was bluffing it wasn't worth risking. Now Albie took charge.

'Who got rocks? My man needs something.' But the kid frowned and said they were all waiting. Then he said there was an old dude selling chubbies over on Cherry Street, and Albie asked, 'What you mean an old dude?' And the black kid said there was an old Jewish dude in an overcoat selling cracks in front of the Cherry Street houses. We both looked at each other, and then back at the kid with the Cazals. He shrugged, and said, 'Yo I guess he just tryin' to make money.'

So we walked over to Cherry Street and sure enough, there was an older Hasidic looking man with a fedora and heavy grey overcoat just standing on the sidewalk in front of a bench. He was by himself and there were only a few people around on the street. We walked up and I thought this must be a joke, but then he eyed us down with a stern look and said in a deep gravelly voice, 'Vhat you vant?' just like the hawkers on Orchard Street, and I thought This is crazy! But my desire to get high and get off the street and back inside were much stronger than any incredulity. Albie asked him if he had rocks, and he answered, 'Tens and twenties...now vhat you vhant'.

We bought five chubbies off the old guy, and I had a sinking feeling we'd be back again before it was over. I kept looking at him and he kept looking at the money and the small plastic vials, strictly business. Albie handed me the vials and I stuffed them into my pants as we walked quickly up Madison Street towards my place. I started shaking my head.

'Yo, oldhead Jewish cuz is outside slinging rocks?' I asked. 'What the fuck!'

Albie smiled and said, 'Yo, like my man said, he just tryin' to get paid too.'

We moved along in the slipstream of crackheads, junkies, hoes, scramblers and decent people with jobs heading the subway for work. The sun was above the ugly, brutal brick projects now and it warmed my back as we darted into a bodega for a six pack and some Newports. I still had a few bucks in my pocket and the day was young.