This is a part of a series I started earlier this year about the
life of an underclass of a people known as the lumpen-Proletariat.[1] Not all of the
lumpen-Proletariat take part in criminal activities but many in this story do.
This story has an admitted prostitute and at least two drug dealers. This is
not meant to encourage drug dealing, use or prostitution. It is only written to
show how these underclass-persons live.
This was a story told to me by Red Rob Blogger. Rob is a tall skinny
white guy who likes to wear red striped shirts. Rob is a teacher, who lives in
a working class neighborhood and he owns his home. Rob was going into the
Club Soda House on the south end of Broadway Street one day during the middle
of the 1990s, a period of time when crack was still with us. It was early in
the day and Rob was looking for something different to do. The Club Soda was a
working class bar on a street known for prostitution. A lot of lumpen
proletariat people were known to go to this bar including prostitutes, low
level drug dealers and lots of addicts.
…..Continued à
By Red Rob Blogger
As we walked down the street, we passed in front of a tall-brown
slim apartment building.
“Say, we need some money,” Chelsea said. “I’m going upstairs to
visit Craig. He is good for a date. It will only take me a few minutes and I
will be back with some cash.“
She darted up the steps. A few minutes later she came
down.
“I got some Cash,” she said.
I don’t know exactly how much she got, but I know it was more
than $20 but less than $40. Whoever Craig was, he was fast in bed and from the
woman’s viewpoint that is not good. Next it was on to Johnny’s house. When we
got to their apartment, we walked up a flight of steps to a large brown porch
with a railing and rows of doors. We got to Johnny’s, the white- wooden door with
a small windows on it—knocked and then we were let in. Johnny was an older man
in his late 40s. He had long-gray hair and a white beard. He was wearing an old
worn blue collared shirt and old slacks. The house was a little dirty, but we
all sat on the green rug around the glass pipes that sat on the brown coffee
table in the middle of the room. Johnny had another friend over, Randy. He was
shorter, brown hair and about 10 years younger. When we first came in the room,
Johnny was looking for small pieces of crack that may have fallen on the floor.
He kept finding little pieces of filth on the green carpet that looked like
they might be crack. Johnny kept lighting the tiny pieces, with his lighter to
see if they would melt. If they did, which rarely happened, he stuck the melted
junk on the pipe just long enough to get that tiny little hit.
Mostly looking for scraps was just a sign of desperation. These
guys had a look of desperation that I was beginning to recognize in pretty much
all of the crack addicts I met. They all had that beady sweaty look to them.
They were always searching for spare pieces of crack that fell on the floor.
“I got some rocks,” Chelsea said. “She got some of her rocks out
and put them on the coffee table near the pipes. Next we were all sitting
around their table and firing up one of the pipes. Each took a turn on the
pipe. For a few minutes the whole group was content as the pipe and its white
smoke filled all of our lungs. This reminded me a lot of my early dope smoking
experiences. We would all get out our special pot pipes out and we passed
around a bowl of whatever weed we all had at the time. Crack was a little
different from weed. But weed smokers never had that look of desperation that
the crack smokers have.
After about an hour I started to get nervous about Green Eyes
and my car.
“We need to go back to that house,” I said.
“Don’t worry she’ll wait for you,” Chelsea said.
“Just the same—I’d like to go by the house and see if my car is
back.” I answered.
We went by the crack house and my car wasn’t there yet. So next
we went to Chelsea’s house. I had never been to her house before. It was a
small rundown little working class house with blue-wooden walls on the outside
and off-white walls inside. There were a lot of boxes of clothes and belongings
as if Chelsea had never really fully moved in. She changed her shirt in front
of me. I could see her really big boobs. The shirt she put on looked like some
guys white work shirt. It was not particularly colorful, sexy or interesting.
Next a young tall-thin man walked in—a white guy with blond hair.
“This is my room-mate, Tom,” Chelsea said. “We both live here,
but we’re not a couple.”
“Hi,” Tom said.
Chelsea went to the kitchen and got all of us beers. She came
back to the living room and we all sat around on her green leather chairs and
talked. Chelsea began to explain to us that as a prostitute she shaves off her pubic
hair because most men like it shaved. She even let both of us put our hands in
her pants and feel it. She was not shy about her sexuality.
“Tom and I had sex one time after he moved in,” Chelsea said.
“That’s what you say,” Tom replied. “I don’t remember it. I was
real drunk that night.”
“Well, we did,” Chelsea insisted.
After a while Chelsea and I decided to go back to the crack house
and see if my car was back. We headed out the door and just as we got to the
house, my car pulled up. I had been getting anxious about leaving it with
someone I didn’t really know. After the car pulled up Green Eyes got out.
I still need to go to the liquor store for some tequila,” Green
Eyes said. “You want to just ride along with me.”
“Sure,” I answered.
I got in the car and we drove off.
“I like being a drug dealer,” Green Eyes said. “I make pretty
good money. You see all this jewelry I’m wearing. I got it all from selling
crack.”
She was wearing a lot of jade jewelry and gold. She had on some
rings, necklaces and earrings. She was a very pretty girl as well as petite. I
didn’t ask her how she felt about all of the dangers involved in dealing, such as
getting shot by competing dealers. She said nothing of the downsides of
dealing. I would guess she doesn’t make $hundreds of thousands or even
$thousands dealing. I kind of felt sorry for her and I doubted that the
excitement in her life was really worth all the risks she was taking.
When we finally got back she gave me some rocks wrapped up in
some wax paper. I put them in my pocket and decided to use them later. Then I
parked the car and met up with Chelsea. We went to the crack house. Dave had
just bought a rusty gun that was missing some pieces. It was a 357 magnum
pistol with a long barrel. A white neighbor, a man about his late 30s,
commented on the gun.
“You don’t need that gun to prove your anything,” he said. “Guns
won’t make you a man.”
I was thinking to myself he may just want it for self defense.
He was involved in a very dangerous business where he could get robbed any day
and not having a gun wouldn’t help him any if some wise punk came in to steal
his costumers and tried to run him off with a gun. Dave just looked over
the gun and ignored him.
A little while later Chelsea asked me to get them all some beer.
I only had about $11 left. I told her I couldn’t afford it.
“I can’t believe you won’t buy some beer,” she yelled.
“I’m running out of money, I can’t afford to spend anymore.”
After a few minutes I went back to my car and headed to my home
in my house in my middle-class neighborhood, far away from these ghetto homes.
I would drive up the driveway to my home. My day at the crack house would be
over. What a strange day it was for me. Of course I never got any kind of sex,
but I sat around smoking crack all day and I spent very little money on it. It
was also an interesting day to see how other people in my town live.
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[1]
This term has been used by both Karl Marx and Mao Zedong (毛泽东). It represents a sub-class of poor people who may work, full
or part-time or may not work at all. They are below the actual proletariat and
they often use criminal activities to survive. Mao took a much different
approach to them. While Marx wrote
them off as being useless, Mao had a different view:
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