After the money ran out I lived with Pauly and Brown. It was Pauly's place, a second floor tenement studio in a decrepit old building on west Monroe street, near the decaying downtown area. The door opened onto a tiny kitchen, incorporating a combination sink, two-burner stove and 8" x 14" refrigerator. The down-the-hall bathroom was shared with Bernard, a strange, pasty faced character who seldom left the building, and seemed to spend all of his time lounging around his apartment in a dingy bathrobe, listening to scratchy recordings of Bessie Smith.

Pauly managed to hold down a job, working for the State out at the Department of Conservation. Brown was always at work, being a full-time criminal, specializing in burglarizing anyone who was unlucky enough to come in contact with him. They would score for anything that would get you high, and shoot whatever would melt down into their viens. Sometimes I would help out if they were too blazed to hit each other or if one or the other was gone, since they were getting the syringes from a diabetic and weren't using eyedroppers, making solo use difficult. "If I'm too fucked-up to hit myself, I'll hit you, man," Brown would say, but Iwould laugh. "just give it to me man, before it gets dull., I'll do it for you" "No, man," He would start to explain," I can hit other people easier than I can do it to myself." I never took him up on his offer. At night I would sleep on the floor, with my money (if I had any) and anything else of value in my shoes, which I wrapped in a towel and used for a pillow. Brown got the cushions from the couch that folded out to make Pauly's bed. Pauly left for work at about eight, then Brown took over the bed and I got the cushions. We would buy macaroni and cheese or pot pies, and steal whatever else we could. If we could get someone to front us dope, we would sell it at the high school behind the apartment. Brown would bring all sorts of loot around and we would play with it before he sold it. One week we had a lot of speed and I would lay down to rest my eyes and body, exhausted but unable to sleep, listening to Pauly and Brown and their amphetimene fueled polemics, opening my eyes from time to time to watch them cooking up under the 60 watt light, as the snow fell outside. Once Brown got hold of a bunch of Primateen tablets and was convinced that they would get you high. "Well good luck", I said " But I don't think so." He and Pauly started getting everything ready, and I went out. Several hours later I returned to find Pauly, Brown and my friend Luke all laying about the apartment groaning. " You were right, man" said Brown, "These fucking things suck! we been laying around here moaning and groaning and sweating and every half hour you got to throw up -you want some?"

"Sounds real fun, but I'll pass. What do you guys call this stuff -pukers?" This statement cracked them all up. "Pukers!"They howled, going into cunvulsions of laughter, then actual convulsions, and they raced each other to the bathroom down the hall.

Another time Luke was over and we were all drinking quarts of beer. There was a lot of snow on the ground and returning from a beer run in the late afternoon Luke, Pauly and I decided to throw some snowballs at the passing cars on the street in front of the building. After pelting a few cars we all scored direct hits against a buick electra belonging to a big balding man in a suit who slammed on his brakes and skidded into the driveway two doors down. He jumped out of his car and had just started walking toward us, red faced, with his fists clenched when we started throwing snowballs at him. I don't think he really got a good look at us before he got out of his car but in the few seconds of stunned immobility between the first volley and the head shot that knocked him off his feet, the realization that he may have acted rashly must have entered his mind. He took a few more in the back as he scrambled to his car, and we kept throwing as he backed out into the street and drove away, his horn blaring. We climbed the nearly vertical stairway to The apartment laughing maniacally. We had just sat down when we heard the guy coming back around the block with his horn still howling. Luke smelled blood and leaped up, heading out for the showdown but misjudged the distance to the second step and hurtled himself down to the first floor, a human snowball. The fading sounds of the electra's horn were replaced by Luke's groans from the bottom of the stairs. We dragged him back up to the apartment but we could tell by his rapidly swelling ankle that he had to go to the hospital. Nothing to do but call a cab. "Hey Brown," I said "maybe they'll have some pukers at the hospital" he didn't hear me, but I could tell he was thinking along the same lines. Stan Russell, SKR International, Stan Russell, SKR International

Jeff Huch