![]() Gypsy gave him two dollars, one extra for inflation, he said, and walked to work. Stevie laughed, showing his toothless gums flecked with bits of weed. His body still trembled but not so badly he couldn’t make it to the liquor store his own self and buy another mickey. Then he belched and let out a long sigh, staining the air with the venom of his breath. He gave it to Stevie who held it in both hands like an infant with a bottle of formula, and downed it in four hard swallows, his Adam’s apple doing a rain dance up and down his throat. Gypsy left him there to buy a mickey of T-bird at a liquor store a block away. After another hit, Stevie collapsed higher than God in the doorway of a used clothing store. He inhaled so long and deep Gypsy thought he might burst. Gypsy held the joint until Stevie’s body stopped trembling long enough for him to clamp down on it with his mouth. Face dirt-streaked, scraggy goatee scrapping with the wind, mop of brown hair, long tobacco-stained fingers dancing with the jitters, Stevie, shaking uncontrollably, looks to his friend Gypsy for help. Gypsy over six feet and Little Stevie peaking at five-foot four on a good day. He and Gypsy hung out together when Gypsy was drinking. ![]() ![]() Stevie had been on the street fifteen years easy. Just rattled in place like an idling car with too much mileage. Gave Little Stevie a joint one morning when Stevie had the shakes so bad he couldn’t walk. Not like some of the other recovering staff who smoke dope but say they’re clean. I’ll tell you who the assholes are around here, he said. He looked at me and then turned away to change stations on a radio playing muzak. A man with thinning black hair, a handlebar mustache, plaid shirt, jeans and boots, sat behind a desk. I followed Billy V up a flight of stairs to the detox. I had not fully understood the purpose of the half-hour-early business. Tonight, my first night, I’d arrived fifteen minutes late. You’re late.Īs a detox staffer, I was expected to arrive a half hour before my shift started, at 11 p.m., so that the previous shift would not have to stay past their punch-out time updating their relief. There you are, said Billy V, a detox counselor and the night shift supervisor. I entered an alley and knocked on a heavy metal door on the side of the building. He founded the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, of which the center was a part. The center was named after Frédéric Ozanam, a French scholar. The stores were gated shut and loose paper blew in swirls on the sidewalk, slapping against my legs and clinging to my jeans before being swept away by the wind.įollowing Seventh to Howard, I passed a thrift store and then saw Ozanam, a large square warehouse-style brick building. My first night on the job I left my Haight-Ashbury apartment and took Page Street toward downtown San Francisco, crossed Van Ness Avenue and walked along Market Street toward Seventh. I was hired by the Ozanam Detox Center in May, 1983. Never forget who your friends are, he likes to remind me. Then he’ll walk to a Sixth Street bar and cut loose his two years of sobriety. He knows I have an interview for the shelter director position at 8 a.m. He’ll hang out at the detox center for a moment at shift change, as he always does. But he folds his hands behind his head and plans. Now that he has decided to drink, he feels calm and almost falls asleep again. He had done everything he should, and still he was denied what he deserved. He tried to read some of his old text books on alcoholism and its treatment, tried to take pleasure in his term papers and the comments scrawled in red, Nice insight! and Excellent observation! but those evening extension classes at Berkeley had been nothing but a betrayal, an illusion of accomplishment, and he tossed the books and his notepads across the room with a rage that kept him awake at night. His body ached from the weight of his bitterness. Thank God, it’s been decided.įor days he had found it hard to sit still, hard to sleep. He doesn’t remember having a booze dream, just woke up and decided: Today is the day I’m going to get fucked up. Hears his muscles and bones crack, sees how his curtains absorb the light of a late San Francisco afternoon, and at that moment decides to start drinking again. Gypsy awakens from a restless sleep, stretches.
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