No Jaywalking! (unless you smoke crack.)
I am a retired, or recovering, drug addict. For the living nightmare that was my six-year span addicted to crack, meth, pills, and most of all, heroin, I had been in and out of five different rehabilitation centers. I burnt many bridges with family and friends and even lost two very close loved ones from overdoses. After finally getting clean and sober — now clean for almost three years — I’ve learned many things. One of them, I’ll never forget: the only people who can get away with jaywalking, not getting ticketed for it, are crackheads.
My roommate — an ex-homeless kid the same age as me, and name, that I had opened my home to — and I were downtown on the search for that rock. It’s a combination of cocaine, water, and baking soda that leaves you with ‘Crack’ when cooked. It’s incredibly easy to find; however, on this particular day, it had taken us an unusual amount of time to find a decent dealer. All there were were homeless crackheads and tweakers. We wanted someone different. A dealer, who doesn’t smoke it, only sells it. You don’t want to deal with the other two, and for good reason.
You can spot the difference between a crackhead and a tweaker if you leave a little bit of dope out. The crackhead will steal and bounce, while the tweaker will steal it and then help you look for it. At the time, I was unfortunately, of the tweaker-kind.
We finally spot someone whom I had bought from before, walking toward us across the block. She was a crackhead, but she did me right and since we couldn’t find a dealer, she was our only hope in copping.
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She noticed me pointing at her and must’ve recognized me because she raised her head then smiled. I could see her missing teeth from a block away. I decided to stop walking and make her come to us, therefore we stopped at the end of the block. I looked up at the building we leaned up against. A church. It’s always gotta be a church.
We had to wait a minute for her to cross the four-lane road, but there wasn’t much traffic. The notorious five ‘o clock rush wasn’t for a couple of hours. She ran across the street once it was clear. I don’t jaywalk anymore. It wasn’t due to the fine I had to pay when an officer had caught me, but when a car had actually hit my drunk ass. Thanks to the snail speed limit, and alcohol, I managed to get up and walk it off. I couldn’t legally do anything about it though, being underage at the time, so I had to laugh it off. The next day was spent on the couch with a constant flow of ice packs held to my back, as well as my head from the brutal hangover. Despite my experience, when it came to the homeless, they did whatever they wanted and always got away with walking across the street at any time.
She ended up selling us some bunk shit.
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