The High Life / Teddy Does Dallas

This is one of the best pieces on the Brothel. Did I say that about "Acceleration?" "Flip a Towel?" Yeah, I say that about all the stuff on the site. Sue me; I'm a fan. (And you wouldn't sue a fan, right? Seriously, please don't sue me.) -KV

THE HIGH LIFE
by Teddy Nutmeg

I'm pseudo-irate, which is about as irate as an exceedingly sheltered middle class white boy can get, and I'll tell you why. I'm spending another lonesome night in another nondescript hotel room, another bottle of "the champagne of beers." I usually drink bourbon, but the damn liquor store next to the damn Holiday Inn Express closed promptly at nine p.m. and I had to settle for the damn gas station mini mart in a state whose damn gas station mini marts can't sell anything with an alcohol content higher than that of damn pedialyte, for chrissakes. They even teased me, with a sign on the window for "Olde English Fine Malt Liquor - 40 oz $1.99" but then I get inside and the cooler doesn't have any OE, or any other fine malted beverage, for that matter. So here I am drinking frikkin (I may be pseudo-irate, but I'm still a pansy) Miller High Life--"the champagne of beers" for those of you who don' know your cheap beer monikers. But I was going to tell you why I'm pseudo-irate.

I'm so phony with myself that I can't even realize or admit that I'm angry, or pissed, or REALLY (not pseudo) irate. Yesterday I flew to Dallas with no driver's license. Arriving at the airport late because I dawdled around the house. Packed and ready to go, staring at the disorganization of my bedroom slack-jawed and dull-eyed, half-thinking that the best metaphor for my life, or rather for what my life has become, is that of a radio station you tune into because it's playing a song you think you like, but then you space out and minutes later slowly realize you're listening (or worse, actually singing along) to a song you hate.

I finally arrive at the airport, sans driver's license, about 45 minutes before my flight is scheduled to leave, and am overjoyed when the baggage checker happily (damn Southwest employees, they're given super-strength anti depressants) accepts my ratty, 23 year old social security card and 5 year old student ID and lets me on the plane. I made it, I think, thankful and about to pass out in seat 11D, when a thought strikes me like a timpanist performing "Also Sprach Zarathustra"; how in Texas am I going to rent a car once I get to Dallas?

Not panicking, delving deep into my inner CEO, I utilize the 2 ½ hour layover in Albequerque and my cell phone to my advantage. After negotiating tirelessly with Budget, Avis, Dollar, Hertz, and any other company I can get a number for, I accept the fact that I can't rent a car without a driver's license and decide to call home: "uhh, roommate, could you grab my driver's license off my dresser, haul ass down to the Fed-Ex office, and shell out the gross national product of Ghana to get it to the Radisson next to Love Field in Dallas by 8:30 tomorrow morning so I won't get fired?" Roommate would, and roommate did. Why my license was on my dresser instead of in my wallet is another story, but it involves meeting Ron Jeremy in person at a showing of his new documentary. Really.

Anyway, it's dinnertime at the Radisson next to Love Field in Dallas. Desiring some little local flavor, I walk across the street, neglecting the hotel restaurant for the neighborhood chicken shack. And calling this place a shack is a stretch. In case you don't know, Love Field in Dallas is in a slightly less affluent neighborhood than Compton, and this place was a chicken shack run for and by the people, which means that a white boy on a business trip doesn't exactly blend in. Three deliciously fried pieces of fowl and a side of greens later I'm walking out of the shack and a man whose eyes are yellow where they're supposed to be white nods at me, says "hey man, you smoke weed?" I say yes. He smiles and asks the next question and then we're in the parking lot. Yellow Eyes tells me he's supposed to be at work at the chicken shack in 30 minutes, which is enough time to hook me up a 20 bag. He flags down a homie, introduces us, and then I have a choice: get into the backseat of a crappy car in a crappy neighborhood with two guys I've never met, or say "no thanks fellas," and cross the road back to the Radisson and the other well-dressed white people.

I don't know why I got into that car, in that ghetto with nobody knowing where I was or expecting me back anywhere at any time. Maybe I didn't really care if I got mugged or beat up. Maybe I didn't value my own life very much just then, two days ago, maybe I was looking for the kind of attention paid by those in black. Maybe I was just jonesing for some weed, who knows?

So we're driving through the ghetto on the strangest drug run I've ever taken. I've given this guy 20 bucks and now he's asking me if I'm staying with anybody at the hotel, i.e. if anybody expects me back. Suddenly, I'm starting to worry, and being a causeless martyr doesn't sound so coolly poetic anymore. We park next to an old warehouse, Yellow Eyes gets out, and we wait. The fidgety driver asks me repeatedly for five minutes if I'm the po-lice, stopping only when Yellow Eyes comes back and says to the driver: "here ya go, patna." He promptly places a few small white rocks on the dashboard, busts out a glass pipe, and lights up some crack rock. This done, he passes the pipe to the driver and then asks me through the double clouds of crack smoke if I hit the rock. I just say no.*

Then he instructs the driver to try another house, and another when that one turns up nothing, insisting the whole time that "damn, my homie was just here, man, just here."

Figuring my 20 bucks just bought this dude his nightly rock, I say "hey man, its cool, if you can't hook it, no problem." So we drive back to an alley behind the chicken shack and get out. The driver takes off, and we're alone, me and Yellow Eyes whose real name is Wayne. Wayne then turns to me, reaches in his jacket, and gives me my 20 bucks back, without my asking for it. I feel stupid for being scared, and racist for doubting my dark skinned compatriot. This guy is probably more honest than I am.

So we start talking, Wayne and I, and it turns out Wayne just got out of jail, his woman left him two months before he got out, and he's homeless and could use a couple of bucks. All I have is the 20, so I ask Wayne to go in to the liquor store (one on every corner) and buy me a bottle of bourbon and he can have some of the change. He buys it, we share a drink or two in the alley, and he hits up some more crack.

I ask him some questions, what's crack like, is he still going to work at the chicken shack, and what not. He says crack is a quick rush and that he didn't like that job anyway. So there we are, a homeless crackhead and a lonely white boy on a business trip, sharing a bourbon in the alley.

We finish the bottle, share a cigarette, and part ways, and on the walk across the road to the Radisson, my usual feeling of wretchedness is kicked up a notch; I feel like I've been a bad influence on Wayne. Maybe if I hadn't gone with him, tried to buy weed from him, and generally been such a willing party pal, he'd have gone to work at the chicken shack. Maybe he'd have turned it around, worked an honest job and made the small steps on a long hard road. But I didn't give Wayne that chance. I was his excuse to go out and get high. I was a bad influence on a crackhead.

Sitting here, drinking in the hotel room, I guess I'm not really pseudo-irate, just wretched, a little more wretched than normal, and this fact is heightened by the champagne of beers which is giving me a headache. Or maybe it's the second hand crack smoke.

-Teddy Nutmeg
January 2002


*Thanks to Nancy Reagan and her Just Say No campaign of the 80's, I couldn't have refused that crack rock without you!