yeah, we were totally like sisters and stuff. she took me back to her family's place in Alabama after we both got out, and we all laughed after I ate chitlins for the first time. laughed and laughed. that was why it was so sad when she got shot by that damn crackhead ex-boyfriend and died in my arms, right on the dirty street, with all the lights smearing reflections across the wet asphalt. and then I cried. and. cried. cried. cried.
SCMT: well, not better than a sustained relationship in which you consistently have great sex, but yes, better than any individual time you had the best sex ever. a lot a lot. but, maybe this amazing experience is taking place in some pissy bathroom stall in the BART, but then, on the gripping hand, you don't give a shit. on the whole I don't recommend it to anyone. while it takes some sustained effort to actually get hooked on drugs, if you just never have them the first time you are 100% guaranteed not to get addictied to drugs. gotta like them odds.
7: oh hell yeah. Tanisha and I were raking in those sweet juvie perps like pez from a fucking dispenser of hot chicks. with a really hot chick for the head.
hmm, sounds kind of like bullshit, but IIRC Burroughs was a fan of some similar program. pricey at $15,000, but being sedated until the worst is over sounds appealing. actually the truth is that while detoxing from heroin is exremely unpleasant, it won't kill you--unlike serious alcoholics who go cold turkey and can just keel over if not monitored medically. DT's, seizures, death. alcohol is a very dangerous drug.
I've never had chitlins, but I've had menudo and tripe in Vietnamese soup. Maybe I should make it my goal to eat every sort of ethnic gut food in the world, in order to definitively report that the large intestine doesn't really taste very good (literally, "tastes like shit"), no matter how vigorously you rinse it and no matter how you cook it.
My boyfriend is an ex-crack addict. He says his thing with heroine was just a chippy. He was in the process of quitting being a therapist as he was getting addicted to drugs, and he was seeing patients at the time; I find that kind of ruefully amusing, although I guess it's not that different from any other therapist with severe emotional problems seeing patients. At least one member of his supervision knew about the drug use, so I guess he was being monitored.
That last sentence was ambiguous. I mean that he told one member of his supervision during their sessions, not that the supervision of psychiatric social workers follow you around and snoop in your garbage.
My sister is a drug alcohol counselor, and we will occasionally go out for a couple of beers. We have to choose our places carefully so she doesn't meet clients. Very occasionally she has a little "too much fun", and I have to drag her home.
According to the Pareto principle, almost anything you can do with underage prostitutes is OK. I bet they cringe a little when they see Kristoff coming to save them, though.
And Tim, I know what you're thinking, but if you want to know if H is better than sex with an underage prostitute, you'll have to buy the memoir. ($26.00, Scholastic Books, Novemeber 2006)
On a more serious note, it seems fairly easy to tell from Alam's post that H is better than sex, because having sex in a seedy bathroom and puking would totally ruin the sex, but it doesn't ruin the high.
what, taking public transit in the bay area for 6 years isn't enough for you guys? I don't have a driver's liscence, and I'll call it whatever the fuck I want.
Alameida, I don't have a driver's license, and I ain't never had no driver's license. I took a 45-minute one-way trip to school every day on BART, man. I was constantly late to my zero period Spanish class, and my teacher, she was all up in my shit. I used to bamboozle my father out of money to buy something for myself by asking for a dollar when the ticket only cost ninety cent. I can tell when someone's frontin'.
Dude! I was walking to the deli to get some Luna Bars and some soymilk and thinking of this very comment thread when I hear a white guy in a baseball cap say into his cell phone, "I grew up in this city! I grew up on the subways!"
Oh man, I'm having flashbacks to college and trying to explain to people that while I was as urban New Yorker as anyone, and did grow up on the subways, that this did not make me tough, even a little. I was always horrified by all the stuff rural kids had done: "Yeah, remember the time we all drove four hours in to Detroit to score heroin? I must have been fourteen, because Bobby's older brother was the only one who knew how to drive, and he didn't have a licence yet."
That's about what I was thinking. That's when I was allowed to ride my bike across town in the suburbs to go to friends' houses that were far away or the local tween hangouts. I would think the risks and maturity required would be about equivalent.
That seems really young to me, but I don't know from parenting. Then again, subways are pretty crowded, and youngish kids are likely to have a lot of defenders if people try to mess with them.
My brothers came out to visit me when they were about 8 and 11 and we got separated on the subway. The doors opened, my mother and I stepped off, and the doors closed right behind us before they could get off. My mother and I, of course, freaked since my brothers were suburban kids who didn't know their way around a subway at all. We shouted through the glass for them to get off at the next stop. I took the next train that came by to the stop and they were there waiting for me with two adults who had seen what had happened and wanted to make sure they would be reunited with their family OK. So, long story short and all, I do trust that kids would have adult defenders.
Recently I was tasked with helping a tourist who spoke only Italian on the subway, because I spoke Spanish and that was the closest thing. After she slowly and loudly repeated her problem over and over again I eventually realized, through recognizing the ferm- and port- word roots, that the same thing had happened to her and her boyfriend. She eventually spotted him outside the doors without my substantive intervention, which kind of disappointed me, because if I had managed to help her despite the fact that we had no languages in common, I would have felt truly 'core.
Also 11 here, which is when I started going to a school that I had to commute to by subway. At first I was expected to commute with my big sister and a couple of other local kids, but while we kept it up in the mornings, it broke down in the afternoons pretty fast. An unaccompanied subway trip that wasn't a return from school required permission for maybe another year or so.
What went through my head as I read Tia's comment:
Recently I was tasked with helping a tourist...
Ugh. Why would you do that?
...who spoke only Italian
Alright, that makes it OK.
I always help people out who aren't American because I figure I'll want the same when I'm visiting their country and they have a good excuse for being lost. Also, I want them to come away with a good opinion of Americans. American tourists? Screw 'em. They're never grateful and half the time they think you're lying to them so they ask for your advice and then completely disregard it. I made the mistake of helping a couple from Alabama a few weeks back and ended up in a 20 minute argument about whether or not there was a Target store in Manhattan, which they had been led to believe.
Becks -- I reckon a jerk can come from other countries as easily as from this one. I've had gererally good interactions with people who ask me for directions, regardless of where they apparently come from. If some sociopath asks you for directions and then tries to draw you into an argument over whether the ones you provided are correct, best thing is probably just walk away -- arguments with sociopaths are pretty unproductive. Unless you have a video camera handy and want to create a fun documentary. Even just a tape recorder would probably pick up interesting footage for inclusion in some future project.
Ugh, I just had flashbacks to this pair of women who I met on a train from Astoria to the RNC protest. One of them was reasonable, and wanted to follow me when I said it would be faster, if they wanted to get to 28th and 7th, if they switched to the 1 at Times Square. The other one carped at both of us, and said the 1 and the W went to the same place, I was wasting their time, on like this. I was like, lady, one of us lives here. The other of us doesn't. I would not come out to Spandexville, CA and tell you how to get around town.
I was 14 (freshman in high school) when my parents let mne ride the D.C. Metro by myself. Product of suburbia that I am, I didn't get the early start that everyone else here seems to have gotten.
Also, I enjoy giving directions to lost tourists. My inner Boy Scout making itself known, I guess. I have a tendency to go into tour guide mode whenever I'm talking to someone from out of town.
How about a nonlame memoir, will you write one of those?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 3:01 AM
mebbe.
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 3:09 AM
Well, this post is sort of a snark-inhibitor. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
I was wanting to ask about the time when you befriended the enormous black criminal-ess in the joint, but that would be wrong.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 7:39 AM
It's a lot better than great sex, obviously.
Is it a lot lot better?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 7:49 AM
yeah, we were totally like sisters and stuff. she took me back to her family's place in Alabama after we both got out, and we all laughed after I ate chitlins for the first time. laughed and laughed. that was why it was so sad when she got shot by that damn crackhead ex-boyfriend and died in my arms, right on the dirty street, with all the lights smearing reflections across the wet asphalt. and then I cried. and. cried. cried. cried.
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 7:50 AM
SCMT: well, not better than a sustained relationship in which you consistently have great sex, but yes, better than any individual time you had the best sex ever. a lot a lot. but, maybe this amazing experience is taking place in some pissy bathroom stall in the BART, but then, on the gripping hand, you don't give a shit. on the whole I don't recommend it to anyone. while it takes some sustained effort to actually get hooked on drugs, if you just never have them the first time you are 100% guaranteed not to get addictied to drugs. gotta like them odds.
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 7:54 AM
Are black lesbians really studly like black guys?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 7:54 AM
7: oh hell yeah. Tanisha and I were raking in those sweet juvie perps like pez from a fucking dispenser of hot chicks. with a really hot chick for the head.
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 7:56 AM
I don't know why you insist on anonymity. Your story is heartwarming.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 7:59 AM
6: like abstinence!
I'm curious if you have any thoughts on this.
Posted by tom | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 8:03 AM
hmm, sounds kind of like bullshit, but IIRC Burroughs was a fan of some similar program. pricey at $15,000, but being sedated until the worst is over sounds appealing. actually the truth is that while detoxing from heroin is exremely unpleasant, it won't kill you--unlike serious alcoholics who go cold turkey and can just keel over if not monitored medically. DT's, seizures, death. alcohol is a very dangerous drug.
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 8:13 AM
I've never had chitlins, but I've had menudo and tripe in Vietnamese soup. Maybe I should make it my goal to eat every sort of ethnic gut food in the world, in order to definitively report that the large intestine doesn't really taste very good (literally, "tastes like shit"), no matter how vigorously you rinse it and no matter how you cook it.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 8:19 AM
A guy once told me that kicking is like having a very bad flu for three days. Nothing outside most people's life-experience.
Burroughs was very big on methadone at one time.
The phrase "outdated 20th-century concept" sets off my alarm bells in a big way. I'd have trouble trusting anyone said who ever used that phrase.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 8:24 AM
6: like religion!
Your memoir can't be bad if you take care to write a heartwarming tale of staggering genius.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 8:37 AM
My boyfriend is an ex-crack addict. He says his thing with heroine was just a chippy. He was in the process of quitting being a therapist as he was getting addicted to drugs, and he was seeing patients at the time; I find that kind of ruefully amusing, although I guess it's not that different from any other therapist with severe emotional problems seeing patients. At least one member of his supervision knew about the drug use, so I guess he was being monitored.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 9:12 AM
That last sentence was ambiguous. I mean that he told one member of his supervision during their sessions, not that the supervision of psychiatric social workers follow you around and snoop in your garbage.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 9:16 AM
I guess it's not that different from any other therapist with severe emotional problems seeing patients.
"Yeah, that's tough about your wife... Say, you know what would really make you feel a lot better?"
Posted by tom | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 10:10 AM
My sister is a drug alcohol counselor, and we will occasionally go out for a couple of beers. We have to choose our places carefully so she doesn't meet clients. Very occasionally she has a little "too much fun", and I have to drag her home.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 10:17 AM
6: Hey, wait just a minute. No one who actually lives in the Bay Area says "the BART."
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 10:21 AM
A crack-addicted therapist. Now thrre's a memoir.
Posted by Kyle | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 10:34 AM
What do you mean, you'll never write a lame memoir? Dude! Write a lame memoir, and cash in, are you nuts?!?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 12:14 PM
Aren't you writing a novel, too?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 12:18 PM
Me, I only do H for research purposes. Same goes for sex with underage prostitutes.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 12:22 PM
According to the Pareto principle, almost anything you can do with underage prostitutes is OK. I bet they cringe a little when they see Kristoff coming to save them, though.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 12:25 PM
And Tim, I know what you're thinking, but if you want to know if H is better than sex with an underage prostitute, you'll have to buy the memoir. ($26.00, Scholastic Books, Novemeber 2006)
On a more serious note, it seems fairly easy to tell from Alam's post that H is better than sex, because having sex in a seedy bathroom and puking would totally ruin the sex, but it doesn't ruin the high.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 12:33 PM
Alameida, congrats on living to tell the tale.
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 8:43 PM
Geez, when I was taking hits of "x" in "sf," it was always referred to as "e." Other than that, I was just like you, though.
Posted by speedballio | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 9:07 PM
19 gets it exactly right.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-29-06 10:23 PM
what, taking public transit in the bay area for 6 years isn't enough for you guys? I don't have a driver's liscence, and I'll call it whatever the fuck I want.
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 3:30 AM
Alameida, I don't have a driver's license, and I ain't never had no driver's license. I took a 45-minute one-way trip to school every day on BART, man. I was constantly late to my zero period Spanish class, and my teacher, she was all up in my shit. I used to bamboozle my father out of money to buy something for myself by asking for a dollar when the ticket only cost ninety cent. I can tell when someone's frontin'.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 6:08 AM
catfight! catfight!
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 8:13 AM
Dude! I was walking to the deli to get some Luna Bars and some soymilk and thinking of this very comment thread when I hear a white guy in a baseball cap say into his cell phone, "I grew up in this city! I grew up on the subways!"
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 8:20 AM
Oh man, I'm having flashbacks to college and trying to explain to people that while I was as urban New Yorker as anyone, and did grow up on the subways, that this did not make me tough, even a little. I was always horrified by all the stuff rural kids had done: "Yeah, remember the time we all drove four hours in to Detroit to score heroin? I must have been fourteen, because Bobby's older brother was the only one who knew how to drive, and he didn't have a licence yet."
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 8:55 AM
I've always wondered – at what age do parents in New York let their kids go places on the subway by themselves?
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 9:51 AM
In my case, when I was 11.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 10:04 AM
Before ac commented I was thinking, "If I were a mom, I'd say 11."
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 10:05 AM
That's about what I was thinking. That's when I was allowed to ride my bike across town in the suburbs to go to friends' houses that were far away or the local tween hangouts. I would think the risks and maturity required would be about equivalent.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 10:11 AM
That seems really young to me, but I don't know from parenting. Then again, subways are pretty crowded, and youngish kids are likely to have a lot of defenders if people try to mess with them.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 10:14 AM
My brothers came out to visit me when they were about 8 and 11 and we got separated on the subway. The doors opened, my mother and I stepped off, and the doors closed right behind us before they could get off. My mother and I, of course, freaked since my brothers were suburban kids who didn't know their way around a subway at all. We shouted through the glass for them to get off at the next stop. I took the next train that came by to the stop and they were there waiting for me with two adults who had seen what had happened and wanted to make sure they would be reunited with their family OK. So, long story short and all, I do trust that kids would have adult defenders.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 10:20 AM
Recently I was tasked with helping a tourist who spoke only Italian on the subway, because I spoke Spanish and that was the closest thing. After she slowly and loudly repeated her problem over and over again I eventually realized, through recognizing the ferm- and port- word roots, that the same thing had happened to her and her boyfriend. She eventually spotted him outside the doors without my substantive intervention, which kind of disappointed me, because if I had managed to help her despite the fact that we had no languages in common, I would have felt truly 'core.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 10:31 AM
Also 11 here, which is when I started going to a school that I had to commute to by subway. At first I was expected to commute with my big sister and a couple of other local kids, but while we kept it up in the mornings, it broke down in the afternoons pretty fast. An unaccompanied subway trip that wasn't a return from school required permission for maybe another year or so.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 10:40 AM
What went through my head as I read Tia's comment:
I always help people out who aren't American because I figure I'll want the same when I'm visiting their country and they have a good excuse for being lost. Also, I want them to come away with a good opinion of Americans. American tourists? Screw 'em. They're never grateful and half the time they think you're lying to them so they ask for your advice and then completely disregard it. I made the mistake of helping a couple from Alabama a few weeks back and ended up in a 20 minute argument about whether or not there was a Target store in Manhattan, which they had been led to believe.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 10:47 AM
bamboozle my father out of money
Money out of your father, unless something very strange was going on.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 10:54 AM
Silly response: Wolfson, you just don't know how it's spoken on the street.
Serious response: are you sure my usage isn't just fine too? Compare. Further.
What makes "bamboozle" different from "trick" and "cheat"?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 11:00 AM
Becks -- I reckon a jerk can come from other countries as easily as from this one. I've had gererally good interactions with people who ask me for directions, regardless of where they apparently come from. If some sociopath asks you for directions and then tries to draw you into an argument over whether the ones you provided are correct, best thing is probably just walk away -- arguments with sociopaths are pretty unproductive. Unless you have a video camera handy and want to create a fun documentary. Even just a tape recorder would probably pick up interesting footage for inclusion in some future project.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 11:02 AM
I grew up in that region! I grew up on
theBART!I think I was 12 when I rode out to the end of every BART line in one day, but I was with some friends.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 11:08 AM
Ugh, I just had flashbacks to this pair of women who I met on a train from Astoria to the RNC protest. One of them was reasonable, and wanted to follow me when I said it would be faster, if they wanted to get to 28th and 7th, if they switched to the 1 at Times Square. The other one carped at both of us, and said the 1 and the W went to the same place, I was wasting their time, on like this. I was like, lady, one of us lives here. The other of us doesn't. I would not come out to Spandexville, CA and tell you how to get around town.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 11:12 AM
I would not come out to Spandexville, CA and tell you how to get around town.
Surely not. For that, they would consult this guy.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 11:20 AM
I was 14 (freshman in high school) when my parents let mne ride the D.C. Metro by myself. Product of suburbia that I am, I didn't get the early start that everyone else here seems to have gotten.
Also, I enjoy giving directions to lost tourists. My inner Boy Scout making itself known, I guess. I have a tendency to go into tour guide mode whenever I'm talking to someone from out of town.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 01-30-06 12:00 PM