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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (July 24, 2009)
c a ra B iT w e a i r c c j u > d 4 ^ 12 street ro o tsllB Education * Dialogue Independence Hungry for Desire BY KARLEIGH FRISBIE C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R drove into the city on Monday mornings to get my Methadone. ! used to go every day, but a four-month record of clean urine earned me the privilege of “take homes.” | I would wait in line among the scabby and the jaundiced, the dismembered and^the disgraced. Outside they would try to bum cigarettes from me or sell me Klonopin. Their putty complexions and faded eyes begging me for anything, a nickel, a bus pass, a pager number. The nurses would light up when they’d see me. They’d say “girl, your hair looks good.” They would scribble phone numbers of support groups and women’s shelters on memo pads with sunflowers or puppies This is the second on them, tattoos in o f two-part, the crotches of their autobiographical hands, nails acrylic series by Karleigh and jewel-toned. Frisbie My dose was measured in small- paper cups, topped off with fruit punch; The rest of my medication was dispensed into plastic bottles with yellow labels that stated: Poison. May be fatal to adult or child. The bitter sip Karleigh Frisbie has been living in Portland o ff and was my favorite part on for six years. She recently of the day. It meant I finished her first collection was secure until the o f short stories, Ventral Tegmental, based on the ' ' next morning. All the experiences she had living stray static energy outside o f society as a heroin addict. Currently, that haloed me was she is working on her contained. The bachelor’s degree in writing volatile, nervy anxiety an d is living with fam ily in California. that I suffered (and unsure of whether it was just an unfortunate characteristic of me, or a side- effect of long-term opiate dependency) would evaporate. I could take a deep breath. I would usually nod off approximately two hours after drinking my dose. A third dimension, the nod was, completely incognizant of my surroundings yet absolutely tuned in to the purr of narcotic- induced pleasure. One time I slumped into this state of sedation behind my steering wheel as I was trapped in gridlock on the Golden Gate Bridge. Fortunately for the screaming ambulance that startled me conscious, I didn’t cause another northbound, mid-morning accident. Indeed, there had been the solitary event in which I didn’t make it to the rundown treatment center on the corner of Polk and Geary Streets by 10 o’clock. Jack swore the alarm went off, and that I got up and put my shirt on, only to crawl back in bed with him. When I woke I had only 20 minutes to . spare, and resigned to the fact that, unless I could drive somewhere over 150 mules per hour, I wasn’t going to make it. I broke down into a terrific fit of cursing and crying. After several hours of tying up the lines at the shoe store, Ifinally got a hold of an pld friend, Simmie, who agreed tom eet me in front of the Four-Comers Feed Store put on Todd Road. “I just need a crumb,” I told him, sitting in my parked car watching bulky men in; tan Carharts and kiltie bpots haul sacks of grain feed into pickup beds. “I thought you was gittin’ yourself straight, missy.” “Till morning, just to get me through, Simmie.” He chuckled deeply. “It’s the devil. It sure is.” I told him I could give him $10. He clucked. I “$10 ain’t worth nothin’ to me,” he said. “This here’s at least $20, Brandi. Don’t be playin’ like that with me.” He rubbed my leg. “Knock it off, Simmie. You’re gonna make me spill this all over the place.” “I was just thinkin’... since you’re so » pretty...” g . “Dude, I’m not gonna fuck you. I can bring you 10 more bucks tomorrow.” We negotiated for a bit and I agreed to buy him a twelve-pack of Natural Ice from Marty’s Mart up the road, where he had been 86’d on account of his liver, which I could tell was in its final stages by hisyellow eyes and swollen ankles. “Get me a flask of that cheap vodka while you’re at it,” he called from my car. . I never missed a single Monday after ' that. I laid in bed with Jack one night. We were talking about the future. “Babe?.” I asked. “What’s that, Love?” “You ever wanna be normal?” Pause. “Like a normal person?” Pause. < “Maybe not all the way normal, but just sort of?” “I don’t know how to do it, Brand. I don’t know how to do it without changing who I am.” “Me neither.” I faked a laugh. “I wonder if you can put hooker .and thief on your job application?” “Don’t say shit like that, Brandi.” He looked at me seriously. “I was kidding.” .“It’s not cute. Don’t talk-about that shit. We’llget through this.” He put my head on made in a lab.” Pop referred to his marijuana as “his medicine” and carried a card around in his wallet to prove i t He suffered a back injury after falling from an elm tree* he was pruning, and hadn’t worked a day since. “If it weren’t for Gray Davis I’d be all hopped up on Vicodin,” he’d always say. Sometimes I wished he was.Lopped up on Vikes, just so he could kick some down to me. Jack and I ate a sleeve of saltines and drank cranberry juice cocktail while Pop told Ron for the millionth time the story about how he had almost got eaten by a shark when he was scuba diving off Key Biscayne in 1973. This was before he married my mother, he’d say, before her | worrying ways made him hang up his wetsuit for good. Before the unexpectedand premature birth of me required him to take a straight job in the city working for KGO television, where he wore corduroy suit jackets and Ben Franklin glasses. Before his back-talk and his backlog backfired and he was next in line at thè unemployment office. “I just thought of something,” Pop said. I “Good. He still thinks he’s gonna win the lottery someday.” “That Jimmy.” She shook her head pitifully. “Your Pop tells me you guys are in a bit of a bind. Do you know how to pour drinks, Brandi?” “I could learn.” She suddenly brought her voice down a register, explaining that she wanted to geta younger crowd in there, make it more fun. She said Ricky was leaving for Portland, where it was cheaper to live, and that she wanted to fire the ditz she had working at night “I thought we were gonna play rock-n- roll,” Jack said. “I want that to happen. If I can start bringing in more business I really want to look into doing live music.” “I don’t know,” Jack said. “I’m not really good with normal jobs.” “Babe, you don’t know that! You’ve never had a normal job. I think you’d be fuckin’ boss,” I said. “I don’t know, man.” "My God, you're so grown up. You look just like Cathy!" Then she exhibited me to the mid-afternoon patrons, saying "Do yon know who this is? This is Jimmy Strange's daughter." Her bar,'Pete's Trophy Room, was a 50-year-old watering hole that had the tang of water-damaged carpeting and stagnated cigarette smoke. his cfitist. “Now get som e sleep. We gotta go take showers tomorrow.” > i “Babe, remember that time I asked you if thought he was going to say he had to go e went to Pop’s to take showers, which you had ever’ smoked crack and yoti said you down to Seven-Eleven and check his lottery was only possible when Hanson was ticket. “Remember Donna? Crazy Donna?” liked to try everything once?” holding down the fort. He sauntered in early ' “Yeah, that hàs nothing to...” He made a pantomime that indicated she that morning, all gratuitous laughter and - had large breasts. “She was before your “Yes it does. Try this once. If you don’t Smug affectation, with two pudgy representatives from some innovative | like it you can quit.” mothef...anyway, she runs a bar across town. A nice little joint, I forget the name of walking-shoe company. it, I ran into her at Grocery Outlet last week T )eople used tonali Jack the “fallen star.” “Get lost, Chicken-Boy. I don’t need you JL He was the “shoe-guy’s brother.” He was and she told me she wanted to start having to ruin this deal I’m working out with these musicians perform there. Now I’m not sure; “Chicken-Boy.” Now Jack was the best guys.” booze-slinger this side of the bridge. He My Pop leaped in his skin for a moment . how much she’d pay you, but it’s worth lookin’ into. Cuz Jesus, Jack, You’re a real started ratting his hair again, borrowing my when we walked in. “You should knock first, ace with the hammer, and you’re getting clothes, my makeup. To this sleepy, milk- Pumpkin.” He was hunched over a Danish pretty good tod, Pumpkin.” and-eggs burg, Jack brought some of the cookie tin filled with shake, going at it with “I fucked Donna once,” Ron said. trash and the glitter of the Sunset Strip’s a pair of tweezers. His buddy Ron, a nervous glory days. sort, sat across the card table from him, drumming on his abdomen. I was equipped We moved into a small apartment that onna was a hen of a woman, little and with an arsenal of body lotions and three- Donna’s friend managed. This was harder round with a ruffle of eggplant colored minute hair conditioner. Jack had our towels , than Lhad anticipated. 1 knew I’d miss thè hair. She wore piles of noisy silver jewelry late night walks to 7-Elevèn for sweaty, slung over his arm. “You know the trick? You gotta let the hot and had a tattoo of a lotus on her copper cylindrically-shaped food from the roller speckled arm. When I introduced myself to water run awhile before you can turn on,the grill. I’d miss the sidewalk guitar lessons, her she gave me a cushiony gin-scented cold,” Pop said, putting a meager-looking and watching weekenders with their embrace and cried, “My God, you’re so V bud off to the side. “So how’s shoe-biz, boutique shopping bags and their expensive grown up. You look just like Cathy!” Then Jack?” sunglasses. I’d miss the muffled jukebox hits “Hanson thinks he can make a fortune off she exhibited me to the mid-afternoon oozing through the wall from the bar next patrons, saying “Do you know who this is? these ridiculous shoes with springs on the door as I slept under a canopy of shoe racks This is Jimmy Strange’s daughter.” bottom,” Jack said. and display tables. Fuck, I’d even miss Her bar, Pete’s Trophy Room, was a “Hmmm. Well, you’re brother’s a smart Hanson and his condescending sass, his 50-year-old watering hole that had the tang guy. A savvy businessman.” -cheapskate economics, his sticks-and stones “Dis brother’s a total douchebag,” I said. I of water-damaged carpeting and stagnated despotism. But I also knew that new watched as my dad packed his pipe. Ron was cigarette smoke: Jack and Itook seats at the memories would be made, and maybe I drumming more aggressively now, doing fills counter and waited for her to finish pouring would like thése ones better. drinks. on his thighs and left shoulder. ‘ “So,” she said to Jack, “I was a fan. 1989 “Pop, I need money.” ur first night at the new apartment we at the Great American Music Hall, with LA . “That makes two of us,” he coughed. sat on our pile of blankets in the middle Guns.” “Three.” Ron laughed, exposing negligent of the living room. Jack took a crumpled ; “You were there?” Jack perked up. post-it from his pocket. - ' ' • dental hygiene. “Hey kid, J never missed a one. I saw you “We gotta go to your Pop’s tomorrow for eyen during your Sound of Music days.” op’s eyes were watering and he gasped showers.” for air. Then he cried “Whooo-eeee!” He “What a shit hole that place was!” j “Babe,” I laughed, “we don’t have to do, “Tell me about if.” tried to offer Jack and I some, to which we that anymore.” She looked over at me. “How’s your Pop put our hands up and shook our heads. “I know. I just want to.” doin’?” ' “That’s right You kids only like shit that’s ■ ■ B H Catch up on stories you missed at www.streetroots.wordpress.com
