Charlie

We’ve run out of drugs. When I was living in New York I had three different drug dealer’s numbers in my phone, all of whom delivered. A few taps on a screen and no matter if I was uptown or in Bushwick I could be cutting up high quality non-poisoned cocaine, ketamine or mephedrone within half an hour, not that I needed to buy drugs, the transbian polycule that had taken me in after things with Dylan fell apart kept a communal stash box on the coffee table, it almost made the gay4pay arrangement that allowed me to stay worth it. The city arc has long been over now though, and in Providence acquiring amphetamines takes significantly greater patience and dedication. Since the college kids with their designer drugs and adderall scripts are gone for the winter and Dax, our former supplier, threw himself off a newbuild highrise last summer, we are left with only one option: we have to go to Charlie’s house. 

Tommy has known Charlie since highschool. Before he sold speed Charlie was a minor figure in the Providence punk scene and had 15 minutes of minor notoriety when he went on the local judge show for a moving violation. Now he’s wasted, addicted to his shitty coke that he gets through his uncle’s connections from back when Providence was a mob town. As his addiction has gotten worse Charlie has become increasingly useless as a drug dealer. His license is suspended so he can’t deliver and he makes you go to a bar to meet him, preferable to going to his cracked out flat and getting caught in his web. But when you are friends with your plug, sooner or later you have to make a visit. 

Charlie’s house has cherry coloured walls that he painted himself on a crystal binge and more sound recording equipment than I think he knows how to use. He has one of those resin coffee tables with bullets and cigars encased inside it. It always reeks of weed and urine and is lit with buzzing neon tubes. I’ve had anxiety nightmares about what it must be like to be hungover in that place. There’s always someone hanging out; aging punks, for a while a slew of art school girls before Charlie got canceled for Homer Simpson-ing his girlfriend during a fight. For a few months there was an enormous homeless man with no teeth that Charlie had taken in as a sort of pet before he went apeshit and tried to brain him with a socket wrench before stealing his iPad. Tonight it’s just us. 

It’s always the same story. A few free lines and then hours of nonsense compulsory chatting, then feigned deep conversation, sometimes he cries. Once I cried too. Charlie told me he hated his life, he hated being a drug dealer, that the haters and females just didn't understand how hard it was being number one. Through choked back tears I told him that I thought of him as a musician first and my coke guy second. Tonight I can barely sit still, I have the shakes and Charlie is holding out. 

“Naw cos what i was saying was that i went to Boston for this gig alright? Audio engineer, mad technical shit.”

Charlie is talking about being a gaffer’s assistant for a dentistry convention.

“So im like, interfacing with the performers, like, i wanna know what kind of sound they want, cause i can't give it to them if i don't know. Anyway i was so high that like i asked this lady the same question 4 times and when she got pressed at me i just played it off like, i just wanted to make sure that you were sure about what you wanted, and like you can't be giving me attitutide cause i'm just how i am thats V baby thats Charlie V!”

I’m thinking back to when my dad would take me with him to trade shows in Miami where he would hand out business cards for his dot-com fraud site and I would steal glances at the women in bikinis and sashes that said TEXTRON or PYREX. I wonder if there were any Charlies behind the scenes at those conventions.They probably have them everywhere. Im imagining a total fuck up drug addict PA hot boxing the breakroom at a mall santa photo shoot or psychoanalysis conference. It was an image I found almost comforting. I must have been smiling because Charlie's eyes lit up.

“That's funny right?! Yeah yeah you get it, cause like you’re not a hater but mad people are these days. I don't even care though, like I’m just out here, working on my music”.

Charlie does another line.

“Boston is mad funny tho like I was on the train and like five people recognized me, like damn, that’s just what it’s like being V. When I got off at the station I was mad aggravated, I threw my ice coffee at a skyscraper and this fool was like what are you doing, like he was almost impressed, and I told him like I’m from Providence”.

I’m imagining what it must have been like for the people of Boston encountering this man, this bacchulian alien from far away shores, sharing his crack wisdom in riddles that might as well be another language. The way he tells it Charlie’s life is full of little globe trotting adventures, short, disconnected vignettes in Boston, New York, New Haven or Stockholm. He paints himself like a coke-demon Tintin, getting wrapped up in vast conspiracies and unravelling monster-of-the-week mysteries that always seem to resolve themselves with his getting too high or dodging a punch that starts the bar fight of the century, which he observes from the sidelines with a rye smile and a cigarette. Charlie, the rock star junkie detective boy wonder, who never says die.

Every now and then I have found myself entangled in one of his side quests. Once he thought it would be funny to send me as his envoy to deliver an order for him. 

“That Volvo over there, you’re gonna love this chick. You know the price, you got it”.

He palmed me the bag, patted me on the back and pushed me out of his mom’s car. A few paces up the block this Connecticut yuppie lady rolls down her window. I stoop down, folding my arms on the roof and sticking my head in.

“NO NO NO, J, get IN the car!”

I feel stupid and vulnerable, heart pounding, sweat running down my brow and stinging my eyes. This is it, she’s gonna flash a badge and I’m gonna feel cold steel on the back of my neck. Charlie will scream away and I will be left behind to a life of protective isolation, eeking out a living from blowjobs and selling cigarettes and instant ramen to pedophiles and gangsters. But she’s not a cop. She’s just as scared as I am. This is a first for both of us, it’s intimate. I take the cash and awkwardly shake her hand. Getting out of the car I feel a cascading wave of releif, and suddenly sense a rush of pride explode inside me. I throw my arms around Charlie, cackling with delight as, for the first time in my life I feel as though I have accomplished something, and for a brief moment Charlie is my comrade, my friend.

After the fifth retelling of his Boston adventure, Charlie hands us the goods and we say out goodbyes. Tommy and I spend the ride home hatefully lambasting Charlie’s bullshitting, his shitty coke, his lock-jawed junkie affect, his stupid apartment, assuring ourselves that his life is more pathetic than our own. 

Tommy is asleep on the couch, his joint slowly burning a hole in the sofa. I plug in my vibrator and press my face into the floor, thinking about how at one point in my life I had a father who took me on areoplanes and friends who weren’t part of The Operation.