How this came into my hands I cannot say. That is, I hold information that is not mine to share. The paper itself, however, came with a mandate to share it as far and wide as possible.
If you’re easily offended, please know that there are one or two distasteful words here, but I could not, in good conscience, censor them. The piece stands, whole and unashamed, as do I.
In the old days, there were coffeehouses, where the hip crowd, called Beatnics, came to hang out with their friends, smoke, drink coffee, and listen to jazz. If you were really hip, if you knew what you were doing, you could score some weed or something stronger.
Eventually the beatnics became hippies, the jazz became folk/rock, and the coffeehouses became street corners or public parks. Instead of coffee, the hippies came together for sex, drugs, rock & roll; weed became heroin, cocaine, and LSD, etc.
Time passes. The coffee has moved uptown, and yuppies, the really hip ones, pay more for a cup than their predecessors had paid for the weed. Even at that they have to doctor their coffee up until you can’t taste the coffee. Nobody likes coffee now; we’re all addicted to frothy milk and a mermaid logo on the side of a paper sippy-cup.
The coffeehouses are now crackhouses, abandoned apartments in abandoned buildings, stinking of vomit and disease, and rats. Music is no longer available, and those who hang out there trade their bodies for drugs and alcohol. The really hip ones can, when necessity demands, score an audience with a friend of a friend who knows his way around a wire hanger. For about the price of a coffee. Uptown.
You make your way up the stairs, pausing a few times to locate the next step in the gathering darkness; dark within, dark without. A figure brushes past on the stairs, you couldn’t see her to recognize her, but something in her general appearance seems vaguely familiar; hell, she could be you.
And then the top floor, the open door, dim yellow light from a battery-powered lamp, and the friend of a friend with a half-smirk on his face. “Next,” he says.
“Whadja bring?”
“These. It’s all I got.” You hand him a half-dozen condoms, folded together and held in a rubber band. He peels one from the bundle and hands the rest back. “Here. You need these more than I do.” Unwraps it, puts it on and fucks you before he unwinds the hanger.
The condom was meant for irony. Neither of you have anything left to protect; you’re already pregnant, you’re both already HIV.
It’s full dark now. How you got down the stairs again is anybody’s guess. You wake up in the alley behind the apartment house, lying across a lumpy garbage bag. You feel something, blood probably, sliding down your inner thigh, and you suspect you might not see daylight. All you can remember of who or what you were consists of your mother’s accusing voice. In an alley in the dark, even “I told you so” would sound like “I love you” after you’ve flushed your baby, and likely your life, down the toilet.
It finishes here; there wasn’t any more.
Dear Friends,
This was not an easy piece to post. No doubt, like me, you did not find it easy to read. I make no apologies; it is what it is. I encourage you to share this page with your friends, and come back here and leave a comment.
God Bless,
dlh