Black Hole (13 page)

I stop in what used to be a grand foyer. Now it's a trashed entryway in a Tenderloin apartment building. This whole neighborhood used to be a grand place. It was theaters and upscale apartments. This was the place to be. Now it's a sinkhole for the least-welcome San Franciscans. It's the hair-and-cum-clogged drain hole of the city. Maybe of the state—hell, the western US. The whole city is squeegee-mopped into this tiny shit triangle.

No one cares what happens down here. There's a swarm of cops on the street, but they're just there for the fallen bodies. You can be loud and crazy and none of your neighbors will give a shit, you can walk down the street in only your pajama bottoms and no one will say a thing, you can be smelly and messy and dirty and you're not the worst one you'll run into that day. And you can do coke in the foyer of a Tenderloin building and no one, if they notice, gives a shit.

Two eyes of remote and a healthy snort of coke and I'm feeling all right. Cold rush of Tenderloin air hits me in the face like a damp towel that's been reused too many times—it smells a little, but it's a vast improvement over where I've been. Sun's on its way down, and Turk Street is waking up.

Two junkies are fighting over a glove. Each one has a glove and claims the other stole the other glove. This is the kind of thing that matters down here. This is what you get stabbed over, what you get a brick in the back of the head over, what gets you pushed in front of the 27 Bryant.

It's
Fuck you no fuck you motherfucker
back and forth in a rhythm that's native to this neighborhood but doesn't exist in music or poetry. It's the percussion of wingnut aggression.

I walk downhill toward Market Street. This day isn't so bad. Tonight there may be something to get into. What day is it? Sunday? Yes, it should be Sunday. I need to find Liza, sell her some of this shit, get some cash, and get started over. Hell, I need a place to stay. I don't have any money, but I have drugs. And like the saying goes, drugs will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no drugs.

Liza's not picking up. I don't know where she is. I'm not getting the money or a place to stay. Fuck it. Who needs sleep? I have fucking drugs. I'll just stay up all night.

The problem with this is that one still needs a place to go when staying up all night with no money. I can't wait in a bar or go to the Lucky Penny with no money. If I get high enough to stay up all night, I'm not going to want to sit somewhere, staring at the sidewalk.

That's when I spot the old Rialto. It's a movie theater on Market Street that shut down in the early '90s. It was a real shithole. The last theater you could smoke in. Smoking was allowed on the balcony. It got weird up there, though. A lot of crack-smoking went on up there. Crackheads think everyone who's not smoking with them is a cop. No matter what you look like, they will make you for an undercover, which is not cool.

The Rialto had all-day tickets, so a lot of guys would get a ticket just to sit and drink, sleep maybe. If you got in early, you could stay for about twelve hours. Twelve hours out of the elements with a place to shit is valuable when you're living on the street.

This one time I was in there, a hooker came by. I have no idea what she looked like; she was just a silhouette to me. I
thought she was trying to get by in the aisle.
You looking for a date?
she asked. I had no idea what that meant. I was still green enough to think that a date was when you picked up a girl at her house. I was like,
What?
and she repeated it, like,
Are you LOOKING for A DATE?
Then I got it. I told her no, and she growled at me.
What kind of FAGGOT are you?
Then one of the bums sleeping there yelled back,
HEY SOME PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO FUCKING SLEEP HERE.
That's the San Francisco I remember.

It's a far fucking cry from that to Foreign Cinema. To fucking mommy-and-me noon movies. To stadium seating and prepicked seating and full bars at the Kabuki. People complain about gentrification. Do you want the smoke-filled movie theaters that smell like chlorine and crack smoke, with broken seats and sticky floors, the theaters you're afraid to fall asleep in, that someone may rob you? Frankly, I'm not sure which I liked more.

But back to the point. This used to be a shithole theater. Now it's a squat, run by my old punk pal, Claw.

Claw is a punk with a natural-gray Mohawk. Looks way older than the forty-nine that he is. In punk years, that's four years past dead. So hell, that he's still kicking is an achievement.

Down the alley. No lights. Bang on the door.

Dumpster lid opens with a bang. Punk pops his head up like a jack-in-the-box with matted dreadlocks.

What you want, yuppie?

I'm no yuppie, you summer runaway. I fucked your mom in that Dumpster before you were born.

Fuck you, asshole, I'm going to cut you into rat-sized bites.

I have drugs and I'm here to see Claw.

Why didn't you say so, fuckwad?

The kid turns on a walkie-talkie. Talks squatter code into it. The squatters have their own lingo and symbols. What looks like graffiti to you and me looks like instructions and information to them. It's a holdover from hobo culture.

If you see an abandoned building in the city, there's likely tags on it squatters can read. Stuff about how to get in, what kind of place it is, who lives there, that kind of thing. One symbol means infested with rats, another means working electricity, and another means vegans only. Some will tell you that door isn't really locked or which window you can crawl into.

Same with Dumpsters. There are markings about when to dive it and what's in it. There are marks that tell you when the employees dump everything and what kind of food it is. Donuts every four hours, 12:00, 4:00, 8:00. One day expired meat, dairy, and cheese 3:00
AM
.

If you're hungry or don't have a place to sleep in San Francisco, you're doing something wrong. If you're smart enough, you have plenty of both. Maybe you're too fucked up to keep track of it, maybe you're too proud or picky to eat out of the trash, maybe you've softened yourself with housie life too long to sleep on cardboard, but if you're willing to do what it takes, you'll be fine.

A fire escape falls to the ground. It's badly rusted, well past twenty years of needing repair. Small chunks are missing; there are bent places that have been vainly restraightened. It's not fixed so much as it's been unbroken. It's to a point of working, but nowhere near safe. But I grab on nonetheless and make my way up.

The first room inside is an old office. It's barely lit, but it smells like it's full of punks. That old-sock-and-cigarettes smell.
A bunch of kids huddle over something with a pair of pliers. Stuffing flies out over their shoulders. As I walk by, I see they're tearing apart a Teddy Ruxpin doll. Not sure why, and I don't want to know. Probably trying to make a tattoo gun.

I walk through to the main hallway, getting mad-dog stares from the newer ones and ignored by the veterans. The fresh ones give you a look that says you don't belong here, but the old hands at this make you feel like you don't even exist. You're not worthy of being noticed. You're invisible unless you're one of us, that kind of thing.

I leave through a hallway, home to a gaggle of aging crusties. It's impossible to determine their age. Street kids age in harsh curves of degradation. They look fine until they don't. Their teeth are fine until they all go bad at once. Their skin is fine until one day it looks like a CPR dummy's covering. It's more about mileage than years.

Where's Claw?
I ask, and they point to a theater door without saying a word or looking up. I think I recognize one of them, but I mean, what the fuck do I have to say to any of them at this point? I'm on a mission, a mission from drugs.

Point Break
is on. They only have a handful of films that were out at the time the theater went down. It's ragged, been spliced together many times, the audio is shit, but it's working.

At the front of the theater, a small crew acts out the movie,
Rocky Horror
style. It's more than entertainment for them. It's a way of life.

Once you reject everything in your life, when you've thrown out your family's religion then rid yourself of all other traditional religions, seen through the empty promises of vague spiritualities, become bored by all the God-talk of atheists, despise the
lack of commitment of agnostics, there's still a hole that needs to be filled.

Some people fill it with work or ambition or raising kids or building Harleys. But if you have none of these things, have severed connections with owning things or being close with another person, there's all this time to fill.

Sure, there's drugs and sex and loud music, but they only frame the hole; they don't fill it. Getting high and fucking and listening to your favorite band are more fun when it's with something or someone who means something to you.

Most people don't have time to think about this—literally, they don't have the time, because we spend so much time at work or getting somewhere or getting ready to go somewhere. But when you really have that grand amount of time that squatters have, you end up with a spiritual problem. You have a lot of time to focus on that nothing really matters since the human race goes extinct at some point and the earth doesn't stop spinning unless the universe contracts on itself.

It may be pointless to dedicate yourself to live reenactments of
Point Break
,
House Party
, and
Blind Fury
, but is it really any less meaningful than going to a bank job every day so you can pay for stuff you don't need that you also don't have time to enjoy?

In the back, where the chairs used to be, are a herd of discarded couches. Couches are horrifyingly expensive to buy but almost impossible to get rid of. No one wants used couches, but people are more than willing to spend thousands on a new one. Where do they go? Landfills, mostly, but also squats like these.

Claw reclines on a silver-duct-taped couch that I think used
to be covered in black leather. He's wearing the same damn shit he wore in the early '90s, only he's a little fatter and has gone completely gray in the Mohawk. It's a sign of respect around here, a sign that he's never sold out, that he's stayed true to his intentions of living outside the system but inside the city.

Chuck? What brings you out of the land of the homebound?

The law. I stole some shit.

Nice. Did you bring any to share?

Not that kind of thing. I do have some things to share, however.

Money or drugs?

Drugs.

No meth. We had a bad run of tweakers here. I can't really keep squatters from tweaking, but I don't want any more of that shit here than I have to have.

I have something you'll like.

I show him a marble.

The fuck is this?
he says, rolling it in his fingers.

I take out a pipe and a lighter.

Let's find out.

We pass it back and forth, watching Keanu and Patrick banter back and forth. Whatever happened to Lori Petty? There were so many tank girls out there after her movie. The look took over for a summer.

How many hits do you get out of this thing?

No one knows; it doesn't really seem to run out.

Bullshit. It has to run out eventually. Or go bad or something. How much?

A thousand.

Fuuuuuuuuuck, Chuck.

Over time, it's not a bad deal.

You have a point.

Claw calls in his walkie-talkie. We wait, still smoking.

A rope drops from the ceiling. A kid dressed like a ninja slides down it, drops a backpack in front of us, then runs up the aisle.

What the fuck was that?
I say with a laugh.

Your pay.

I pick up the backpack, unzip it, and look inside. A thousand dollars in ones—dirty, wrinkled ones bound with rubber bands that smell like wilted lettuce. I guess I'm lucky that it's not in pennies.

When I wake up,
Kindergarten Cop
is playing.

There's a strange smell of burnt plastic, almost crack smoke, but a little different. Maybe it's burning plastic. Fuck, I need to get out of here.

The backpack is gone.

Fuck fuck fuck panic fuck freak out.

Different clothes. Wearing different clothes. Calm the fuck down. Something's wrong. But you're okay.

Tattoos gone. That's not right. There should be tattoos on your forearm.

Dream. Dreaming. Yes. Let it ride. Like the Mission Street dream.

Wait. I was here. Before. Here. These clothes. This theater.

I went to see
Total Recall
with Jessica. We had a fight. I went to the other theater and drank. I passed out. Next thing I knew, I was at home. Jessica wouldn't return my calls. She dumped me. Never knew why.

I'd see her around now and then—from across the street, and she'd look the other way. She left a party when she saw me walk
in. Then she moved to Portland. Then bounced around. Ukiah. Eugene. I didn't hear from or about her for a long time until I heard she cracked up riding a Harley with her girlfriend on the 101.