Stimp, the Prophet Man

Vices: At Three's Place

Three

This is episode 2 in a storytelling experiment. I’ve broken a short story I wrote a couple of years ago into “episodes.” They work as standalone chapters, and as a whole. If you’d like to start at the beginning, click back to 1. Or don’t :)

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

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-Recap-

Stimp wakes up the way he does most days: tired and sore on a park bench. The best part of his day was Juniper, not because he needed company, but because she brought him cigarettes. The nicotine gives him a nice buzz, but he’s looking for something more.

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Vices

Stimp had done all kinds of drugs in all kinds of places. He had smoked weed with his middle school Parks and Rec basketball team behind the old brick YMCA downtown. The dealer was their coach. He did blow off some stripper’s back in a 7-11 bathroom on his way to drop her off at home. The dealer was her john. His first time shooting heroin was with an x-ray tech who had a hookup at the hospital. Stimp felt safe when he did drugs with bonafide hospital workers, but he did drugs even when he didn’t feel safe. Mostly, when he didn’t.

Started when he was maybe ten or so. His mom was always gone working until seven or eight o’clock, so when the school bus dropped him off at home, he would wander into his house for a snack, and then wander outside to find some buddies. His neighborhood was filled with friends. They were all different ages, but the kids ran together. Not like the fucking suburbs of modern America where kids are masturbated by the eerie blue glow of tablets and video games. Back then it was life on the street. Real life.

He learned that marijuana made him slow and sleepy from Bonnie and Boopsie. They were twin sisters, neighbor girls he would smoke joints with. The shit that Boopsie got for her name was unbelievable, but her mother was a fan of Betty Boop. It was her dedication to the cartoon darling she loved. Boopsie didn’t see it that way. She wanted her arrested, locked up for child abuse, but her mother had a stash of weed, and that made real life go down easier. They would sneak a few buds and crumple them into pipes made of sculpted aluminum foil. He remembered boy band posters in the room that they shared, and plumes of smoke on hot summer days, laying in the bottom bunk and listening to Purple Haze as some kind of homage to the late and great Jimmie Hendrix. He would finger his air guitar and laugh.

These days marijuana was okay. More than okay, it was pretty good. It helped him get through some hard cold nights with a good attitude. But most days, Stimp needed something more. He hadn’t known what more was until he tried crystal. That was some wild shit. The rush pulsed through his blood stream like fire, sent his heart pumping out pure love and energy. He could run into the world open handed, heart ready to really do something. The promise of that feeling was something worth living for.

He made sure not to chase it, even when the temptation pulled at his ligaments and strings, tried to lead him through the alleys and bus stops to some dealer who could make him strong again. But he’d seen tweekers, people who chased and ran after that rush until their body was pulsed out of adrenaline, and the only thing left was the anger and the twitching yearning for that sweet Crys-Tal. The drug life could be hard, but for Stimp, it was worth it. Not everyone had it in them to take the road less traveled, but he had embarked on this vision quest, the journey to get high and see the world from different angles, when he was just sixteen. Now at forty-five he was still making it, still alive after so many other seekers had fallen. He had never looked back.

Stimp went out that morning after a satisfying smoke in the park with Juniper, and made his way to his favorite dealer’s place. The guy lived in a little apartment five blocks from the park Stimp stayed at. He had four little dogs, yippie little fucks that kept people from staying, and a large pit bull that made people stay if they owed him money. He never gave his name. Just went by the apartment number, 352, Three for short. Stimp liked it that way. He liked people who moved anonymous through the world. You could always trust them. They didn’t need a legacy or notoriety or abbreviated accolades next to their birth name. Just a number or a nickname, like Stimp or Juniper or Three.

He got to the stoop and buzzed the worn button with a Santa Clause sticker next to it. Three hadn’t changed that one for four or five months now. Seeing it always made Stimp smile. He was fucking Santa Clause alright. Better actually. 

“Yeah?” came a low voice through the dotted metal speaker.

“It’s Stimp.”

A click sounded. Three hung up and the lock clicked open on the door. Click, click, boom. He opened the door to the apartment building. The first floor always smelled like pissy mildew. The building was old, and moisture accumulated in the corners of the hallway and made it smell like that. Of course, there were probably a few drunks who pissed in there and made it smell like that too. 

Stimp climbed the stairs, his bad knee clicking and aching as he went. The pain was nothing though. He was like those climbers who went to Everest. They suffered, but for a greater glory at the top of the mountain, and his suffering was only three floors today. The second floor was warmer. The air smelled like curry. He imagined some old Indian woman lived there with her family and made homemade meals and washed the family’s clothes while they were at school and work, existing in a made up world boxed in by society and government and laws. Nothing like the real life that Stimp lived.

He reached the third floor and stopped to catch his breath. He didn’t want Three seeing him breathless. Their’s was strictly a business relationship. He had to distinguish himself from other addicts, the tweaking assholes who ended up in jail every other week. They were liabilities to their dealers, and Stimp didn’t want to be a liability.

When his breathing was finally normal, he smoothed his coat, adjusted his backpack, and made his way to the door. The black, bolded number five had come loose at the top and swung down, making a strange S on the line below. Stimp stared at that and felt the skin on the back of his neck gather together, bunching and prickling. S is for Stimp. He looked around. And, 3, 2… When would the 1 be? Click, click —

He startled when the deadbolt clicked out of place, and the door swung open a crack, revealing Three’s brown eyes. The door chain crossed just below his cheekbone. He saw Stimp, closed the door, and rattled the chained lock open. Light flooded the hallway, and Stimp walked in. Three’s place was tidy. You wouldn’t expect that from a drug dealer’s house if all you had to go on was TV shows, but they got it wrong sometimes.

It was a simple place, nothing to write home about. A small kitchenette, a round dining table with four white matching chairs, a sectional that took up the majority of the living room and a giant 80 inch TV against the wall. Three pointed to the grey couch and Stimp took a seat, smiling.

“How’s everything been? How’s business?” he asked as Three went into the back bedroom. Stimp had never seen it. He went where he was invited here, and Three never asked him in further than the couch. 

“Good, good. You hear Jackie ended up in prison?”

“No! Really? She was always so careful.” 

Three was shuffling something. Stimp pictured him in the closet, and that assumption was confirmed when his reply came back muffled. Probably jackets. Then a strange thought entered Stimp’s mind. Maybe its crystal, bags of it, suitcases even. That thought made his mouth water. He felt hungry now, a hunter in the jungle, and he swallowed the anxious lump that had appeared in his throat. He was watching a tiger in his mind’s eye, sleek and hidden in the lines of tree shadow, when Three appeared with a brown paper bag. He closed the door to the bedroom behind him. So that I can’t see behind the curtain. 

“She was, but her boyfriend wasn’t.”

“Huh?”

“Careful. Jackie was but she had that boyfriend. What was the stupid fuck’s name again? Jerry or Gary, or some douche name like that. He ratted her out.”

“Jesus,” Stimp said, shaking his head, doing everything in his power not to look at the brown bag. “Who can you trust these days, right?”

“Lucky for me she never brought anyone here. I guess she never told him about me neither, because the cops never showed up looking for me.”

Stimp made eye contact with Three and nodded his head up and down, saying that he understood, and more importantly, that he wouldn’t tell. Three seemed to understand too, though no hint of emotion crossed his face. It was set like pottery, un-alive like a rock in the forest. He could sit in a stream for a thousand years and not move an inch with a face like that. He held out the bag mechanically. Stimp pulled a crumple of money from his pocket and put it into Three’s free, waiting hand. Three looked at it and pumped the brown bag forward as he counted the bills with his eyes. The bag swung like an empty park swing in the wind.

“Go on man, I ain’t got all day.”

Stimp grabbed it and stood. He never took the bag until Three said, never wanted to assume. Assuming got you into trouble with guys like Three. Real trouble. 

“Okay. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks Stimp.”

Stimp nodded and stuffed the brown bag into his coat pocket. 

“Thanks Three. I appreciate it.”

Three nodded in agreement. He was staring intently at his hands smoothing the bills. Stimp felt embarrassed looking at that crumpled money. Next time he would smooth it all himself. This was business after all, and he was nothing less than businesslike. With that thought tucked away in his mind, Stimp took his leave. He walked out into the sunshine and smiled at the weight in his pocket. Today, he was going to feel the rush.