Monday, November 29, 2010
Empty Thoughts and Random Memories: Sunshine and Orchid
Empty Thoughts and Random Memories: Sunshine and Orchid: "As so often happened during my early years, I needed a place to stay for a few days. Apparently my roommate had not been taking my half of t..."
Sunshine and Orchid
As so often happened during my early years, I needed a place to stay for a few days. Apparently my roommate had not been taking my half of the rent to the owner. He had just been taking it. I'll say for him I don't think he ever meant to, like all of us he had some expensive habits and a low paying job, and it's easy to make a poor decision or two in those situations and get behind. The landlord gave us an option, we could just leave, and he wouldn't report it credit wise or give us bad rental references, or he could evict us. At that point in life I didn't care about either of those things, but clearly my roommate couldn't keep up with rent and I had no intention of paying his past due amount to stay in the place (although my bedroom window looked out into the back of a dunkin donuts and a popeyes chicken, which ended up presenting some opportunities). So, being that I didn't have any furniture, leaving seemed like the way to go, and away I went.
The place I found to crash was interesting. I knew this girl Sunshine (party kid alter ego, I never knew nor cared who she really was), and Sunshine was staying with this guy Andy I had met once. Andy had a true loft, maybe the only one I have ever seen. Most people who say they have a loft in Chicago are in a building of condos for half a mil a piece and a couple walls that don't touch the 16 foot ceiling. Andy, on the other hand, had either bought or leased square footage on a vacant floor of what was basically a five floor factory building. It was on the west edge of Chinatown in an industrial area. There were train tracks (unused at that time) leading to the front door of the building. There weren't any actual factories there at that time. The first floor was the offices for 1000 Words Magazine, which I think has long since shut down, and now there is an online unrelated magazine of the same name. Other offices on floors two and three. Andy was I think on four, don't remember the other. What was cool was that the offices on the first three floors had no doors, you walked in the front door or got off the elevator (no lockout) and you could walk through these relatively large offices, and go through peoples desk drawers. Which is what I did on the one occasion I had a good experience on Special K. Two friends of mine with a Blazer helped me drive some of my stuff over, and when we got there we just parked right in front of the building, since it was night and at night there was NO ONE in that area. Before getting out of the car we each did a bump (not much) of Special K, and then got buzzed in the front door of the building. And found ourselves in the middle of the 1000 Words Magazine office. At the time it was a trendy magazine that we were all familiar with, so it was neat finding ourselves unexpectedly there. And almost instantly, in mild k-holes. We hadn't done much so we weren't incapacitated, we just wandered through the office looking through peoples desks and things. Didn't take anything, we were just curious. Then we went up to the second floor and did the same. Then the third. Judging by the reaction we got when we got to Andy's we roamed around a very long time. It was engrossing, this little peek into peoples work lives (sober we would have realized how dull these people were, I don't remember finding anything unusual. Course I probably wouldn't remember.)
When you got off the elevator at Andy's floor, you stepped out onto a vast open area, old beat up floors, exposed ductwork and beams, factory type windows that were opaque. Immediately to your left was a new looking wall and door, and inside here was a bathroom (with small hottub) and a washer and dryer. At the other end of the floor, far, far, away, you could see where someone had basically built a couple walls to make an enclosed space out of the corner of the floor, and it looked tiny. It wasn't, it was just that far away. I have no concept for square footage, but you could just about smoke a cigarette going from the elevator to Andy's enclosure.
When you got close you could see that though he had built the walls himself he knew what he was doing, and the same inside. The ceiling of the floor of this building was tall enough that Andy's place had two bedrooms upstairs. To get to these bedrooms you went up a spiral staircase in the middle of the apartment. That had no hand rails. Just the little steps going up and around the pole. Going up that thing sober was nerve wracking. Going down when you weren't was....actually it was much easier, or at least not scary. Go figure. Now.....remember where the bathroom is? By the elevator. Far. And it was late fall, and obviously only Andys place and the bathroom itself were heated, the walk to and fro was not. Wake up at two in the morning having to pee and that staircase, the walk, and the cold really made you search for other options.
It was Sunshine that I was staying with, in her room, of course she was just mooching off Andy temporarily, so whatever. Sunshine was....well....fierce, in a way. She was cute, but she was kinda of broderline mean/aggressive. Or at least always had that kind of look on her face even if she never said or did anything mean. And she wasn't nearly attractive enough to have looks related attitude, so it was all very mysterious. Hey, place to stay for a bit. And as it happened, I would discover the root of her 'tude.
Like myself, and really most other Chicago party kids, Sunshine loved meth. When I started going to parties Ecstasy and LSD were the main drugs, and I had watched as tweak took over. And I watched the scene take a decidedly harder edge. The music switched more to harder breakbeats than the disco like (and Chicago original) house sound, the clothing got more serious and less candy (less bright and colorful) and the drug dealers were a lot more like drug dealers, not a guy on Ecstasy who sells you a pill and hugs and thanks you twelve times. Some of these new type lived in Hammond,Indiana (and seemed like Indiana tweekers instead of Chicago Ecstasy vendors, not a change for the better) and one night Sunshine and I scraped up a bunch of cash and headed to Hammond to make a moderately large purchase (for us, anyway). Sunshine drove us in her Honda Accord, which she had named Orchid.
I quickly learned that Sunshine was originally from Kenosha, Wisconsin. She explained this when I asked her how she couldn't find the highway that was one turn and about three minutes from our door. It was late fall, cold, raining, and between nine and ten at night. When we got on 94 traffic was still pretty heavy (it was a weeknight as well) though not stop and go. And Sunshine was driving way too fast, especially considering that it was raining. I tried to explain to her that city traffic would move then totally stop very abruptly, but my warning had no effect. I think she thought I was implying that she couldn't drive because she was from Wisconsin, which to a degree I probably was. And she was, probably still is, female. Two strikes. And she was driving too fast.
This was not a situation that I wanted to be able to say I told you so in. But not five minutes down the road brake lights flash on all in front of us, and I knew instantly that traffic was dead stopped. I doubt it would have mattered if she had slammed the brakes instantly, but she didn't. She started to slow, and we actually had enough time for me to gesture to the car ahead of us (rapidly getting larger) and say, "Well, you're gonna hit him." A car ahead of us had used the left shoulder and was stopped there, and the middle lane was solid with cars, so there was no where to go, but into this dude's trunk.
Now we are in a crash in the left lane of bumper to bumper traffic on the Dan Ryan expressway. Her car won't run (she hit this dude for real) and neither of us are really dressed for the cold, much less the rain. But that was a small immediate issue. We both were thinking of what we were going to get, and the fact that that clearly was not going to happen, at least not anytime even close to soon. Again, before widespread cell phone use. Eventually an IDOT truck came and towed her off to the right shoulder and called a tow company. Getting to the right shoulder was actually a huge relief. Traffic was bad before we caused a shut down of a lane, and we had been getting murderous looks from drivers for the previous hour or however long we sat there. And not looks as they cruised by. Traffic was so slowed that one driver could swear at us for a good 6 or 7 minutes before he was passed.
The tow truck came and hauled us, and Orchid, to their yard, which was in Calumet Park. Great. Now we are even further from home, and in Calumet Park. Sunshine called her parents from there, the legal owners of the car, and they had triple A so at least there was no bill problem. Getting home was a problem. Again, no cell phones, we tried a few peoples home phones, but not a lot of our friends had them, or the stability they would imply. We had a fair amount of cash, but that money had a purpose, and not all was ours. It would have been an expensive cab. So there we sit, talking a bit with the one guy there, the dispatcher, who somehow was a hick. I never understood how this happens, Calumet Park is south suburban Chicago, but it's hickish, at least some of it. Weird. Anyway, somehow we got talking about parties with this guy, I don't remember if he asked about our fat pants or what (would've been a far question, wearing pants that were over 32" around each cuff at the bottom). He tells us, oh yeah, one of the driver's is into those, always talking about them. He would be in pretty soon, depending on where his next call was, maybe he could give us a ride. A party kid tow truck driver? What luck! We never even considered how bizarre that sounded, especially in Calumet Park. There were not a lot of people in our scene over 22 or 23 (and that was pushing it) other than the DJ's and people who produced some of the big ones.
Finally this guy gets back, the dispatch points out his truck as it pulls in. We jump up and go to the window, and see a 45 year old Joe Dirt with a bald spot on top hop out. He was indeed into parties, followed info on them online (we didn't really know what that meant, this was 96 or 97). His next call was North, and he would be driving right past Cermak, our street more or less, so he could drop us. We pile in the cab of the truck and head out, back up the Dan Ryan. At least the traffic was light at this point. I idly noticed the sign for the Cermak exit coming up. Then the dude was pulling onto the shoulder of the highway. When he said drop you on the way, he meant right on the side of the highway, which as I remember was above Cermak, a bridge (but I may be embellishing that). Either way, we got out and started our walk down Cermak. We probably had a mile and a couple blocks to get to our building.
We had been slightly damp earlier but had dried out waiting for the ride. It had rained steadily all night, but now was just a light drizzle. There were, however, significant puddles and no real nice place to walk down the road, and at this time we got a little science review. Do you remember what capillary action is? When a solid-ish object comes into contact with the surface tension of water, the water will absorb and rise up the object (my definition, blow me if that's not exactly right).
Our pants were enormous around the cuffs, and came into contact with huge amounts of water. Fat pants produce a capillary action like nothing else. About five minutes of walking and we were soaked, soaked, to the knees, and it was rising fast. And dear God was it cold! We were basically wearing long almost knee length sweaters and fat pants. Maybe shirts underneath, but that's it. Chicago, late fall, nearing midnight, windy, soaked. And I swear those pants held so much water the weight slowed us down.
It seemed like forever, but finally the doors of the elevator were opening to our floor, and we both walked immediately to the bathroom/laundry room, took off our pants, and threw them in the machines. We then made the pilgrammage to the apartment. We walked in wearing long sweaters, no pants, no shoes, but socks (wet or not we werent walking barefoot across that floor). Andy and one or two other people were watching tv as we walked in and they looked at us incredulously. Sunshine mumbled car accident and we went up those freaky stairs into her room, got dry clothes and they only drugs we had, a little bit of special K and marched back to the bathroom. We started the hot tub, took off the rest of our wet stuff, did some K, and hopped in. I know me and Sunshine did it a few times but I don't think we had at that point, so that would have been the first time we had seen each other naked. I don't think we even noticed, we were that dead (and empty handed, an accident on the way back would have been much easier to take).
I mentioned earlier that I found out why Sunshine had that mean look to her so much of the time. I found a picture of her that was only a year or two old buried in some of her stuff. And she was fat. I don't mean chubby, I mean fat. Probably 16 or 17 in the picture, but shit, we were only like 19, so it was pretty easy to figure out what happened. She somehow found the party scene from Kenosha, not hard to believe, not that far, and she found meth. When she did, she figured out how to be rid of her weight problem in a hurry, and moved away from Kenosha to be with her new crowd, who never knew her before. I didn't stay there too long, and we didn't make a huge effort to hang out after, just bumped into each other out and about, like before I lived there. I never told her I found that picture, and she never looked mean to me again.
The place I found to crash was interesting. I knew this girl Sunshine (party kid alter ego, I never knew nor cared who she really was), and Sunshine was staying with this guy Andy I had met once. Andy had a true loft, maybe the only one I have ever seen. Most people who say they have a loft in Chicago are in a building of condos for half a mil a piece and a couple walls that don't touch the 16 foot ceiling. Andy, on the other hand, had either bought or leased square footage on a vacant floor of what was basically a five floor factory building. It was on the west edge of Chinatown in an industrial area. There were train tracks (unused at that time) leading to the front door of the building. There weren't any actual factories there at that time. The first floor was the offices for 1000 Words Magazine, which I think has long since shut down, and now there is an online unrelated magazine of the same name. Other offices on floors two and three. Andy was I think on four, don't remember the other. What was cool was that the offices on the first three floors had no doors, you walked in the front door or got off the elevator (no lockout) and you could walk through these relatively large offices, and go through peoples desk drawers. Which is what I did on the one occasion I had a good experience on Special K. Two friends of mine with a Blazer helped me drive some of my stuff over, and when we got there we just parked right in front of the building, since it was night and at night there was NO ONE in that area. Before getting out of the car we each did a bump (not much) of Special K, and then got buzzed in the front door of the building. And found ourselves in the middle of the 1000 Words Magazine office. At the time it was a trendy magazine that we were all familiar with, so it was neat finding ourselves unexpectedly there. And almost instantly, in mild k-holes. We hadn't done much so we weren't incapacitated, we just wandered through the office looking through peoples desks and things. Didn't take anything, we were just curious. Then we went up to the second floor and did the same. Then the third. Judging by the reaction we got when we got to Andy's we roamed around a very long time. It was engrossing, this little peek into peoples work lives (sober we would have realized how dull these people were, I don't remember finding anything unusual. Course I probably wouldn't remember.)
When you got off the elevator at Andy's floor, you stepped out onto a vast open area, old beat up floors, exposed ductwork and beams, factory type windows that were opaque. Immediately to your left was a new looking wall and door, and inside here was a bathroom (with small hottub) and a washer and dryer. At the other end of the floor, far, far, away, you could see where someone had basically built a couple walls to make an enclosed space out of the corner of the floor, and it looked tiny. It wasn't, it was just that far away. I have no concept for square footage, but you could just about smoke a cigarette going from the elevator to Andy's enclosure.
When you got close you could see that though he had built the walls himself he knew what he was doing, and the same inside. The ceiling of the floor of this building was tall enough that Andy's place had two bedrooms upstairs. To get to these bedrooms you went up a spiral staircase in the middle of the apartment. That had no hand rails. Just the little steps going up and around the pole. Going up that thing sober was nerve wracking. Going down when you weren't was....actually it was much easier, or at least not scary. Go figure. Now.....remember where the bathroom is? By the elevator. Far. And it was late fall, and obviously only Andys place and the bathroom itself were heated, the walk to and fro was not. Wake up at two in the morning having to pee and that staircase, the walk, and the cold really made you search for other options.
It was Sunshine that I was staying with, in her room, of course she was just mooching off Andy temporarily, so whatever. Sunshine was....well....fierce, in a way. She was cute, but she was kinda of broderline mean/aggressive. Or at least always had that kind of look on her face even if she never said or did anything mean. And she wasn't nearly attractive enough to have looks related attitude, so it was all very mysterious. Hey, place to stay for a bit. And as it happened, I would discover the root of her 'tude.
Like myself, and really most other Chicago party kids, Sunshine loved meth. When I started going to parties Ecstasy and LSD were the main drugs, and I had watched as tweak took over. And I watched the scene take a decidedly harder edge. The music switched more to harder breakbeats than the disco like (and Chicago original) house sound, the clothing got more serious and less candy (less bright and colorful) and the drug dealers were a lot more like drug dealers, not a guy on Ecstasy who sells you a pill and hugs and thanks you twelve times. Some of these new type lived in Hammond,Indiana (and seemed like Indiana tweekers instead of Chicago Ecstasy vendors, not a change for the better) and one night Sunshine and I scraped up a bunch of cash and headed to Hammond to make a moderately large purchase (for us, anyway). Sunshine drove us in her Honda Accord, which she had named Orchid.
I quickly learned that Sunshine was originally from Kenosha, Wisconsin. She explained this when I asked her how she couldn't find the highway that was one turn and about three minutes from our door. It was late fall, cold, raining, and between nine and ten at night. When we got on 94 traffic was still pretty heavy (it was a weeknight as well) though not stop and go. And Sunshine was driving way too fast, especially considering that it was raining. I tried to explain to her that city traffic would move then totally stop very abruptly, but my warning had no effect. I think she thought I was implying that she couldn't drive because she was from Wisconsin, which to a degree I probably was. And she was, probably still is, female. Two strikes. And she was driving too fast.
This was not a situation that I wanted to be able to say I told you so in. But not five minutes down the road brake lights flash on all in front of us, and I knew instantly that traffic was dead stopped. I doubt it would have mattered if she had slammed the brakes instantly, but she didn't. She started to slow, and we actually had enough time for me to gesture to the car ahead of us (rapidly getting larger) and say, "Well, you're gonna hit him." A car ahead of us had used the left shoulder and was stopped there, and the middle lane was solid with cars, so there was no where to go, but into this dude's trunk.
Now we are in a crash in the left lane of bumper to bumper traffic on the Dan Ryan expressway. Her car won't run (she hit this dude for real) and neither of us are really dressed for the cold, much less the rain. But that was a small immediate issue. We both were thinking of what we were going to get, and the fact that that clearly was not going to happen, at least not anytime even close to soon. Again, before widespread cell phone use. Eventually an IDOT truck came and towed her off to the right shoulder and called a tow company. Getting to the right shoulder was actually a huge relief. Traffic was bad before we caused a shut down of a lane, and we had been getting murderous looks from drivers for the previous hour or however long we sat there. And not looks as they cruised by. Traffic was so slowed that one driver could swear at us for a good 6 or 7 minutes before he was passed.
The tow truck came and hauled us, and Orchid, to their yard, which was in Calumet Park. Great. Now we are even further from home, and in Calumet Park. Sunshine called her parents from there, the legal owners of the car, and they had triple A so at least there was no bill problem. Getting home was a problem. Again, no cell phones, we tried a few peoples home phones, but not a lot of our friends had them, or the stability they would imply. We had a fair amount of cash, but that money had a purpose, and not all was ours. It would have been an expensive cab. So there we sit, talking a bit with the one guy there, the dispatcher, who somehow was a hick. I never understood how this happens, Calumet Park is south suburban Chicago, but it's hickish, at least some of it. Weird. Anyway, somehow we got talking about parties with this guy, I don't remember if he asked about our fat pants or what (would've been a far question, wearing pants that were over 32" around each cuff at the bottom). He tells us, oh yeah, one of the driver's is into those, always talking about them. He would be in pretty soon, depending on where his next call was, maybe he could give us a ride. A party kid tow truck driver? What luck! We never even considered how bizarre that sounded, especially in Calumet Park. There were not a lot of people in our scene over 22 or 23 (and that was pushing it) other than the DJ's and people who produced some of the big ones.
Finally this guy gets back, the dispatch points out his truck as it pulls in. We jump up and go to the window, and see a 45 year old Joe Dirt with a bald spot on top hop out. He was indeed into parties, followed info on them online (we didn't really know what that meant, this was 96 or 97). His next call was North, and he would be driving right past Cermak, our street more or less, so he could drop us. We pile in the cab of the truck and head out, back up the Dan Ryan. At least the traffic was light at this point. I idly noticed the sign for the Cermak exit coming up. Then the dude was pulling onto the shoulder of the highway. When he said drop you on the way, he meant right on the side of the highway, which as I remember was above Cermak, a bridge (but I may be embellishing that). Either way, we got out and started our walk down Cermak. We probably had a mile and a couple blocks to get to our building.
We had been slightly damp earlier but had dried out waiting for the ride. It had rained steadily all night, but now was just a light drizzle. There were, however, significant puddles and no real nice place to walk down the road, and at this time we got a little science review. Do you remember what capillary action is? When a solid-ish object comes into contact with the surface tension of water, the water will absorb and rise up the object (my definition, blow me if that's not exactly right).
Our pants were enormous around the cuffs, and came into contact with huge amounts of water. Fat pants produce a capillary action like nothing else. About five minutes of walking and we were soaked, soaked, to the knees, and it was rising fast. And dear God was it cold! We were basically wearing long almost knee length sweaters and fat pants. Maybe shirts underneath, but that's it. Chicago, late fall, nearing midnight, windy, soaked. And I swear those pants held so much water the weight slowed us down.
It seemed like forever, but finally the doors of the elevator were opening to our floor, and we both walked immediately to the bathroom/laundry room, took off our pants, and threw them in the machines. We then made the pilgrammage to the apartment. We walked in wearing long sweaters, no pants, no shoes, but socks (wet or not we werent walking barefoot across that floor). Andy and one or two other people were watching tv as we walked in and they looked at us incredulously. Sunshine mumbled car accident and we went up those freaky stairs into her room, got dry clothes and they only drugs we had, a little bit of special K and marched back to the bathroom. We started the hot tub, took off the rest of our wet stuff, did some K, and hopped in. I know me and Sunshine did it a few times but I don't think we had at that point, so that would have been the first time we had seen each other naked. I don't think we even noticed, we were that dead (and empty handed, an accident on the way back would have been much easier to take).
I mentioned earlier that I found out why Sunshine had that mean look to her so much of the time. I found a picture of her that was only a year or two old buried in some of her stuff. And she was fat. I don't mean chubby, I mean fat. Probably 16 or 17 in the picture, but shit, we were only like 19, so it was pretty easy to figure out what happened. She somehow found the party scene from Kenosha, not hard to believe, not that far, and she found meth. When she did, she figured out how to be rid of her weight problem in a hurry, and moved away from Kenosha to be with her new crowd, who never knew her before. I didn't stay there too long, and we didn't make a huge effort to hang out after, just bumped into each other out and about, like before I lived there. I never told her I found that picture, and she never looked mean to me again.
Empty Thoughts and Random Memories: Amazingly, the morning ended peacefully
Empty Thoughts and Random Memories: Amazingly, the morning ended peacefully: "Sometimes the things you didn't get caught doing are far more amazing than the things you did get caught doing. Case in point. It was a Sat..."
Amazingly, the morning ended peacefully
Sometimes the things you didn't get caught doing are far more amazing than the things you did get caught doing. Case in point.
It was a Saturday night, and I was hanging with a friend of my at his parent's house in the north burbs. His parents were gone, the house was nice, and we didn't plan to go to a party that night. We did, however, still want to get high. We were party kids who had reached the stage where drugs are far more important to us than going to parties. In retrospect that was a sad stage to reach. We had both worked so hard, and spent so much on drugs, becoming great dancers. The rave scene was ostensibly about the music and dancing, but the reality was that drugs were a major draw and a fundamental part of the success of the scene. As time went on, many people forgot about the music and dancing entirely. We were falling into this group. But on this night, we were striking out with our contacts and it looked like our one option to get some speed was to go to the party that night. Financially this was no small undertaking. Aside from the distance, maybe a bit over an hour from where we were, this was a big, massively promoted and produced party, which meant a $20 cover easy. Plus party prices for whatever we bought inside. Going to a party to buy a couple small bags of speed is like going to a Cubs game to buy a couple beers. Totally inefficient, way expensive, not at all worth it. So that's what we did.
It was late when we left, probably 2am or later, and probably past three when we reached the venue which I think was Sibley blvd, and that's around 147th street (I think). We bartered with the doorman over cover since the party would be ending in an hour or so, but I don't have any clue what success we had. Once inside we split up and began looking for someone selling crystal. These big parties hired "security" for insurance reasons, and this made finding stuff a little tougher. The security at these big parties was a complete joke, just a group of the most ghetto south side flotsam and jetsam that could be given windbreakers. What they were supposed to do was control drug sale/use. What they actually did was watch for people selling, they were ghetto rats they could spot that, they would then confiscate the drugs, throw the person out, and then promptly try to resell what they had just taken off the dude. But being ghetto rats, they had no clue what party drugs were, or what they were worth. I watched a guard bust a kid I knew was selling ecstasy once. The second he had confiscated the stuff I went up to him and asked him what he had taken. He showed me a bag of pills, at least thirty, maybe fifty. I offered the guy fifty bucks for the bag and his eyes lit up, he looked over his shoulders, and jumped on it. Those pills would sell for $25 to $30 a piece at a party, slightly less in regular life. There ended up being close to fifty. So that was security.
After about an hour we had found what we wanted and were ready to go. The party was about to end, it was near four, so we had no rationalization issues with taking off. Get back in the car, start heading north up the highway back to my buddy's house.
About 30 minutes north we see a car pulled over on the left shoulder, hood up, and two girls standing in front of it. They had clearly been at the same party, the clothes were a dead giveaway, but as I remember we both recognized at least one of them. We decided to do the gentlemanly thing and go back to try and help. After all, we both worked at a gas station and had no tools. Clearly we were qualified. My buddy pulls into the left shoulder, puts it in reverse, and backs up to them. As they watched us approach, backward, they looked puzzled, but when they saw us (and our clothes) they were glad for the help. Now we are standing on the left shoulder of a Chicago (nearly, anyway) highway, and it was summer so it was getting light. And all four of us are wearing full party kid dress, so a space shuttle couldn't have missed us. But we have drugs on us, so my buddy comes up with a great idea. At parties people pass out huge amounts of laminated color flyers for other parties, so he pulls one out of his pocket, folds our drugs in it, and when we get out, he sticks it in a crack in the median. The left side median is made of preformed cement blocks, so there are cracks where they meet every twenty or forty feet or whatever.
I don't remember what was wrong with there car, but we got it started pretty easy but there was doubt whether it would get them back home, Indiana I think. This is like 96 or 97, so no one our age had a cell phone. The plan was that my buddy would drive their car to the nearest gas station with a pay phone. I would follow driving his car with the girls. Off we go.
My buddy drives to the next exit and gets off and starts driving. And driving. There is nothing. And now these girls are thinking we are pulling something, and they're are getting hostile. I explain to them we aren't from around here, that he just took the first exit expecting to find something. And on we go. Still nothing. These girls are getting insufferable, what the fuck is he doing? Where are you guys taking us? I don't remember what they were driving, but it was a $200 car, and broken to boot. I point out to them that from a carjack standpoint their car wasn't worth the gas we had spent driving so far. Surprisingly, this did not help. Finally we see a gas station and he immediately pulls in, parks near the phone, and starts walking to us, still friendly and happy having no idea what these idiots had been accusing him of. They got out slightly mollified, but didn't really apologize. I quickly filled in my friend and shared a few thoughts with the girls and off we went. We make it back to the highway, get back on going north, and are back on the way home.
After ten or fifteen minutes for some reason I ask my amigo where our drugs are, glovebox, hatch area,...so on. The look on his face tells me immediately where they are. Still stuck in the median! He forgot to grab them before we left. There are no words in any human language to convey the feelings I had at that moment. We immediately turn around and start heading back south as we try to figure out what to do. Going back to grab them was obviously the intention, even though it was daylight now, on a Sunday morning with no traffic other than us. As we got back to the area we realized that we had no idea where we stopped to help them. We remembered the exit we took them off, so before that. But where do we start? We drove back to a point we remembered passing for sure, and it was pretty far. And then we turned around, headed back north, pulled into the very narrow left hand shoulder, slowed to about twenty, flipped on the hazard lights, and started looking for a brightly colored flyer sticking out of the median. Hopefully. Hopefully he didn't shove it too far in. We turned down the bass music (wouldn't want to call attention to ourselves) and made our way slowly up the left shoulder. While we are doing this we are trying to come up with an explanation for why we are doing this to give to the state trooper who should be showing up, well, anytime now. Fifteen minutes easy, and then I hear my buddy yell Eureka! There it is. But now we are really looking over both shoulders, a cop driving way back seeing him hop out and back in and us drive away would find that peculiar. All the stickers on his civic hatchback and the way we looked would warrant further investigation. Coast looked clear, he jumped out, grabbed it, jumped back in and tore ass up to sixty five, watching the rear view fearfully. But we were fine. No cops, no one at all really. We are just outside Chicago city limits, not out in the sticks. At 6am on a Sunday in this area cops on the road are the only cars you see half the time. That not one drove by when we were helping the ingrates or doing our search was so unlikely. But good, because we never came up with any reason for why we would be driving down the left shoulder for several miles. We made it back to his house, and I have no clue what we did from there. Didn't sleep, that's for sure. But how we didn't get busted throughout this massive sequence or terrible decisions is beyond me.
It was a Saturday night, and I was hanging with a friend of my at his parent's house in the north burbs. His parents were gone, the house was nice, and we didn't plan to go to a party that night. We did, however, still want to get high. We were party kids who had reached the stage where drugs are far more important to us than going to parties. In retrospect that was a sad stage to reach. We had both worked so hard, and spent so much on drugs, becoming great dancers. The rave scene was ostensibly about the music and dancing, but the reality was that drugs were a major draw and a fundamental part of the success of the scene. As time went on, many people forgot about the music and dancing entirely. We were falling into this group. But on this night, we were striking out with our contacts and it looked like our one option to get some speed was to go to the party that night. Financially this was no small undertaking. Aside from the distance, maybe a bit over an hour from where we were, this was a big, massively promoted and produced party, which meant a $20 cover easy. Plus party prices for whatever we bought inside. Going to a party to buy a couple small bags of speed is like going to a Cubs game to buy a couple beers. Totally inefficient, way expensive, not at all worth it. So that's what we did.
It was late when we left, probably 2am or later, and probably past three when we reached the venue which I think was Sibley blvd, and that's around 147th street (I think). We bartered with the doorman over cover since the party would be ending in an hour or so, but I don't have any clue what success we had. Once inside we split up and began looking for someone selling crystal. These big parties hired "security" for insurance reasons, and this made finding stuff a little tougher. The security at these big parties was a complete joke, just a group of the most ghetto south side flotsam and jetsam that could be given windbreakers. What they were supposed to do was control drug sale/use. What they actually did was watch for people selling, they were ghetto rats they could spot that, they would then confiscate the drugs, throw the person out, and then promptly try to resell what they had just taken off the dude. But being ghetto rats, they had no clue what party drugs were, or what they were worth. I watched a guard bust a kid I knew was selling ecstasy once. The second he had confiscated the stuff I went up to him and asked him what he had taken. He showed me a bag of pills, at least thirty, maybe fifty. I offered the guy fifty bucks for the bag and his eyes lit up, he looked over his shoulders, and jumped on it. Those pills would sell for $25 to $30 a piece at a party, slightly less in regular life. There ended up being close to fifty. So that was security.
After about an hour we had found what we wanted and were ready to go. The party was about to end, it was near four, so we had no rationalization issues with taking off. Get back in the car, start heading north up the highway back to my buddy's house.
About 30 minutes north we see a car pulled over on the left shoulder, hood up, and two girls standing in front of it. They had clearly been at the same party, the clothes were a dead giveaway, but as I remember we both recognized at least one of them. We decided to do the gentlemanly thing and go back to try and help. After all, we both worked at a gas station and had no tools. Clearly we were qualified. My buddy pulls into the left shoulder, puts it in reverse, and backs up to them. As they watched us approach, backward, they looked puzzled, but when they saw us (and our clothes) they were glad for the help. Now we are standing on the left shoulder of a Chicago (nearly, anyway) highway, and it was summer so it was getting light. And all four of us are wearing full party kid dress, so a space shuttle couldn't have missed us. But we have drugs on us, so my buddy comes up with a great idea. At parties people pass out huge amounts of laminated color flyers for other parties, so he pulls one out of his pocket, folds our drugs in it, and when we get out, he sticks it in a crack in the median. The left side median is made of preformed cement blocks, so there are cracks where they meet every twenty or forty feet or whatever.
I don't remember what was wrong with there car, but we got it started pretty easy but there was doubt whether it would get them back home, Indiana I think. This is like 96 or 97, so no one our age had a cell phone. The plan was that my buddy would drive their car to the nearest gas station with a pay phone. I would follow driving his car with the girls. Off we go.
My buddy drives to the next exit and gets off and starts driving. And driving. There is nothing. And now these girls are thinking we are pulling something, and they're are getting hostile. I explain to them we aren't from around here, that he just took the first exit expecting to find something. And on we go. Still nothing. These girls are getting insufferable, what the fuck is he doing? Where are you guys taking us? I don't remember what they were driving, but it was a $200 car, and broken to boot. I point out to them that from a carjack standpoint their car wasn't worth the gas we had spent driving so far. Surprisingly, this did not help. Finally we see a gas station and he immediately pulls in, parks near the phone, and starts walking to us, still friendly and happy having no idea what these idiots had been accusing him of. They got out slightly mollified, but didn't really apologize. I quickly filled in my friend and shared a few thoughts with the girls and off we went. We make it back to the highway, get back on going north, and are back on the way home.
After ten or fifteen minutes for some reason I ask my amigo where our drugs are, glovebox, hatch area,...so on. The look on his face tells me immediately where they are. Still stuck in the median! He forgot to grab them before we left. There are no words in any human language to convey the feelings I had at that moment. We immediately turn around and start heading back south as we try to figure out what to do. Going back to grab them was obviously the intention, even though it was daylight now, on a Sunday morning with no traffic other than us. As we got back to the area we realized that we had no idea where we stopped to help them. We remembered the exit we took them off, so before that. But where do we start? We drove back to a point we remembered passing for sure, and it was pretty far. And then we turned around, headed back north, pulled into the very narrow left hand shoulder, slowed to about twenty, flipped on the hazard lights, and started looking for a brightly colored flyer sticking out of the median. Hopefully. Hopefully he didn't shove it too far in. We turned down the bass music (wouldn't want to call attention to ourselves) and made our way slowly up the left shoulder. While we are doing this we are trying to come up with an explanation for why we are doing this to give to the state trooper who should be showing up, well, anytime now. Fifteen minutes easy, and then I hear my buddy yell Eureka! There it is. But now we are really looking over both shoulders, a cop driving way back seeing him hop out and back in and us drive away would find that peculiar. All the stickers on his civic hatchback and the way we looked would warrant further investigation. Coast looked clear, he jumped out, grabbed it, jumped back in and tore ass up to sixty five, watching the rear view fearfully. But we were fine. No cops, no one at all really. We are just outside Chicago city limits, not out in the sticks. At 6am on a Sunday in this area cops on the road are the only cars you see half the time. That not one drove by when we were helping the ingrates or doing our search was so unlikely. But good, because we never came up with any reason for why we would be driving down the left shoulder for several miles. We made it back to his house, and I have no clue what we did from there. Didn't sleep, that's for sure. But how we didn't get busted throughout this massive sequence or terrible decisions is beyond me.
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