From: pez@manhattan.com (Gizmo) Newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard Subject: The Adventures Of Smacks Past, ASP47 - A 1967 OD STORY Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 21:36:18 GMT Organization: manhattan.com THE ADVENTURES OF SMACKS PAST, ASP47-A 1967 OD STORY I may have mentioned that I did two bids in "the gray hell." Well that's what I called it. It was the US Postal Service. And other than the fact that you did get paid, you went home after 8 hours and had paid vacations, sick leave and all that stuff (actually not that bad of a gig for anyone without a higher education) the first time I worked for the Post Office felt a lot like the inside of a prison. This was the huge GPO (General Post Office) located at on 33rd Street & 8th Avenue in downtown Manhattan. Actually this place was so fucking huge that it took up a total of 2 square city blocks. I seem to recall that you could enter it from any of four different sides. It ran from 33rd Street & 8th Avenue to 31st Street & 8th Avenue, then you went down the long street and it cornered again on 31st & 9th Avenue back up to 33rd Street & 9th Avenue. It was here that all the mail coming into New York City, The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Long Island, Westchester County and further north would go to first. It was here that mail handlers and clerks would sort through hundreds of thousands, probably millions of letters, zines, and parcels to be offloaded onto trucks that would take them out through the distribution network. It was here that I was employed as a mail handler, a level 4 position paying $2.93 per hour plus 10% for night differential which was mostly the hours I worked. Second Shift, 4 P.M. till Midnight or Third Shift, Midnight till 8 A.M. It was here with our gray pants and gray shirts and gray walls and gray faces and gray looking trucks and their Forman that I felt like I was doing time. It was here that I was stoned a lot. If by some chance I had not managed to score from my usual suppliers during the day, I could almost always count on hitting a small bar on West 31st Street just before or shortly after I started my Midnight to 8 A.M. shift and do business with someone selling $3 bags of H. They were really just $2 bags but since this was not Harlem, Brooklyn, The Lower East Side, or The South Bronx, you paid the going rate. And of course the dope was usually cut more two. But what the fuck. Somehow I managed to hold onto this job for a little less than a year before I quit. One of the few that I did quit and a place that I had a few "adventures." Well after working there for a number of months I met up with a fine slender honey named Glenda something or other. My first thought at meeting her was "what the fuck is someone this good looking doing working at the post office?" Glenda was a black chick from Queens, a couple of years older than me and working as a mail handler like me and I quickly found out, shooting dope like me. I later found out that at least 15 to 20% of the night shift was shooting something. Well me and Glenda hit it off famously and tried to have a good time with the dull and boring job of unloading these huge 30, 40 and 50 pound mail sacks that came off the trucks docked their. For some hormonal reasons known only to biology it wasn't long before we began fucking. I always had an eye for dark skinned woman, be they black or Hispanic. So maybe it was the contrast in our genealogy that created the attraction. Maybe it was the blending of my dark Italian skin and her dark brown skin. Whatever it was, in between quick savage sexual encounters on the mail sacks in a parked mail truck, we had to look at the labels on these mailbags and throw them into one of several mailbag shoots that were cut into the deck floor. "Queens, F3" went down a shoot that would load that bag onto another truck bound for a post office in Queens. Pelham South went down another shoot. You see the GPO had a number of levels below street level. At least 2 or 3 levels. If needed to be in pretty good physical condition to do this job. Or you needed to be stoned. We decided that stoned was better. Within the first two or three weeks Glenda and I got to know each other better. Having messed with H had cut short a better education and as good jobs were hard to come by, she found herself still living home with her single mom and two younger brothers. The Post Office gig was actually a better paying job than most if you had no special talents or skills. I thought Glenda could certainly have gone into modeling, but I guess she was just a tad too irresponsible. To my young ears this all had a similar ring to it and I felt I had a met a kindred spirit of sorts. Well it wasn't long before me and Glenda started planning to score in the morning after we got off from work. But where? One day we went to a connection somewhere in Queens on her way home and copped. Another time, I called on my Harlem connect and we rode the subway up to 144th Street and 7th Avenue and copped. On that day I suggested that Glenda should come up to my house as my mom was working during the day until about 3 P.M and it would be just fine. No one would bother us and we could enjoy the each other and the smack we just got, which was always really good from this particular connection of mine. Well since it was payday we took a cab the rest of the way and reached my moms house around 11:15 A.M. It wasn't long before we each took a couple or three of deuce bags and poured them into the cooker. I had a decent amount of resistance to the stuff by now, but this early morning shot hit me right between the eyes. As junkies used to say back then, "I was suckin my dick," the shit was that good. I was about to warn Glenda just in case she did not have as much tolerance as I did, but too late. She already took off. And started passing out. And turning colors. A black person, turning colors? Ahhhh, well, ahhhh, yeah. At least that's what it looked like to this stoned out dope fiend. Her face got gray and her breathing started getting short and at times it seemed like it stopped for a bit. What to do? Mom's house! There I am stoned again and this time with a black girl who's overdosing for sure. Panic time. Now mind you, I did not have hardly a prejudicial bone in my body, but it did not take me long to realize that as Ricky Ricardo would say, "I had sum splaining to do Lucy." I mean open minded as my folks were, this was going to be a real bummer if Glenda died at my house. I did what I could. I ran to the bathroom, and started running the tub with ice cold water. I ran downstairs and starting bringing all the ice cube trays upstairs with me. I started yelling in Glenda's face and started smacking her in the face as hard as I could. This really sickened me. I may have been a dope fiend, but I never got off on hitting woman. Every once in a while she would groan a bit and mumble something, but then her eyes would roll back in her head again. Finally some green ooze started coming out her mouth and nose and I really bugged the fuck out. Again and again I hit her in the face. Again and again, to no avail. By this time the tub was half filled with water. Thank god she was a small boned petit woman. Thank god I liked slender woman, cause if she was any bigger or heavier I don't know what I would have done. I'm guessing she was 5' 6" tall and weighed no more than about 115, tops 120 lbs. Moving someone who's passed out is just like moving a dead body. They're heavy. But somehow I did move her. I got her shirt and pants off. (those fuckin gray postal pants with the black stripe) And somehow I hauled her into the shower. She still was not moving and just barely breathing. I checked her pulse. There was a beat but it was fluttering and faint. Finally I get her into the water and pour the ice on her. When the cold really hit her she made more noise than she had in the last 10 minutes or so. Thank god, she's still alive. "C'mon Glenda I yelled. C'mon girl. Snap out of it. I don't want to have to call for an ambulance. But it still looked like I was not making any real progress. Again her eyes closed and she nodded off again. I knew that some junkies gave OD victim's a salt shot in the vein sometimes. This was supposed to work. But all I could think of was how that might feel, assuming I got to tie her off and hit her pit. It creaped me out so much that I got way to scared of it killing her. Nope, I ditched the salt shot routine and kept pouring cold water on her and trying to lift her up and yelling and smacking her in the kisser. Again the green ooze came out and again she went limp. I knew enough to know that the green ooze was probably some bile type shit that was backing up in her stomach. I was that close to calling for an ambulance. But finally after about a hour of this hell, she started to come around. Finally she became lucid and I began to feel like I was out of the woods on this one. But she was so fucking stoned. So stoned. Even as she started talking and making sense she went in and out again and again and started mumbling incoherent dopers babble. By this time it was close to 1 P.M. I started worrying about my mom coming home. She was not due in until about three but she was famous for showing up early. To check up on me, no doubt. And sure enough a little after 1 P.M. I heard her car and the door unlocking down in the kitchen and the inevitable, "I'm home, are you here? Are you awake?" "Ahhhhh, yeah mom.....ahhhhh....I'm in the bathroom....be right out...er down...errrr." Well I had to get Glenda dried off and back into her clothes and back in my bedroom as fast as I can. Which as you can imagine, did not exactly happen like I wanted it to. It was impossible to do this in one minute. Oh I helped her get dressed in the middle of her passing out and stuff but it was a bitch. I tried to tell her that my mom was home, but she just faded out as I was telling her this most important information. And of course my mother finally comes up the stairs and starts putting two and two together. I told her that I just got home with a friend of mine from work and that he, ahhh she wasn't feeling good and that I would be right out etc. She started asking who it was and all manner of other questions and finally I told her to shut up, go downstairs and that I would be right out. "Are you doing dope in my house again?" she asked! (No ma, no dope, not me. I am a dope, remember) Well I got Glenda out and back into the bedroom, just in time for mom to be making it back up the stairs again. I told Glenda to be cool and please stay awake. Of course she promptly nodded out again. My mother makes it up the stairs, pushes my bedroom door open and scopes the scene. "What's going on here, " she says accusingly? "Whatever do you mean, Mom," I asked in the most innocent voice I can find. "She's a friend from work Ma, and ahhhhh you know, we've been up all night working and she's a bit tired." "Hello, yoohoo, hello," my mom says to Glenda hoping to get some kind of one to one response from her. "She must be really tired huh," my mom says sarcastically. "You're both stoned, aren't you? I can see it in your eyes. And what's all this mess in the bathroom? What are my ice cube trays doing up here? What's all this water on the floor," etc., etc., etc.? After I make some very weak attempts to cool things out, my mom finally starts to realize what's going on and she starts accusing me of unspeakable acts. Unspeakable acts? Shit I wasn't speechless. Glenda maybe, but not me. She asked me over and over again, "what's wrong with your friend? She better not get sick in my house. I want her out of here, NOW." "Hrrrummpphhhh, a black one huh" she says with even more sarcasm. This begins a huge fight about racism and such. I guess it was a good thing Glenda was out of it. Stay tuned for my second overdose encounter. Coming soon to a Gizmo Adventure near you. Copyright Gizmo 2001