“I am not a good person. A good person is someone who doesn’t cause harm to other people.”
.:.
A good person would have grasped that there are certain boundary lines that just should not be crossed, but I never said I have a decent moral compass, or that I was cut from a nice family fabric. The moment that Jane walked through the door that overcast, dreary Sunday afternoon, she would regret her stop at the trailer park, until her end of days. She thought she was dressed in her Sunday business best, well at least for the business she was in, the oldest profession around. Her push-up bra was practically magic-like, the way it would elevate and shape her sagging breasts into something more palatable. Jane’s worn, and tattered thigh-high leather boots clung to her calves, rode the curves of her knees, right up to her cellulite riddled thighs, almost touching her eight-inch skirt. There really wasn’t a lot left to the imagination, but the butterfly tat on her left hip bone brought the whole look together.
This was not a good day to stop shooting heroin; the brain-recoil of going cold turkey had pushed me right over the edge. The cold shakes and sweaty brow could not be controlled, simply lounging with my feet in the little blue kiddie pool out behind trailer #9. I finally got up from the plastic webbing patio chair, which had molded into the back of my legs in the desert sun, and walked straight over to Monique’s at trailer #13. “Moni, I am begging ya, can you hook up a bro in dire need of a fix? I can’t take it, give me an escape”. Monique replied, “Hey, go fuck yourself, you old dirty desert rat. About time you got your shit together.” – Clearly, Monique was in an extra pissed off mood since child protective services had come and taken her kids away on Thursday.
After the disappointment and verbal lashing at #13, I was a little fired up and totally jonesing for any escape I could have; I would do anything for a trip. I appreciated that the only other low caliber, loose morals connection that offered a chance that afternoon of getting fucked up, might require getting my dick wet with Jungle Jane. She always made the rounds through the trailer park, hoping to drum up new clientele here, sadly “the park” slightly more highbrow than her skid row regulars. That was the moment I had reached rock bottom, the lowest of lows. The thoughts that cycled through the ether of the dark-cloud clogging my brain were almost too much to bear.
So you see, I really wasn’t in a good place, especially to be interacting with others, but as life weaves the threads of good and bad into a piece of fabric, you never know what you’re going to get, just a fact of life. As Jane made one more strut down the dusty gravel lane, I decided it was time to give her what she came around these parts for. She came looking and damn I was going to deliver. I grabbed her by the left arm and dragged her down behind the trees to the old trusty horseshoe pit, figuring the soft sand in the pitch area would be just the place to get down to business.
Jane suddenly was no longer interested in where these reindeer games were heading. She slapped me across the face and yelled a few obscenities, none of them nice. In her rush to get away from what she perceived as a bad situation, she lost her footing in the loose, wet sand. In that moment, which I can playback frame by frame even today, she went head over heels in the air and came down with the weight of an elephant directly atop the horseshoe stake.
“Oh fuck!” she screamed as she lay their impaled and gushing blood all over the white sand. “Fuck-face, call 911, NOW”. I froze for a moment in the insanity of it all. Did that just happen? The next 90 minutes is a completely blank memory; I recall nothing as my brain simply refuses to recall the horrid scene.
Once I came to, I was face down with my hands shackled behind my back as I realized yet again, I was locked up in the county jail. The extended list of charges was something I was used to by now, always padding the thug life rap-sheet resume. The criminal charges didn’t bother me, but learning that Jane’s leg could not be saved in surgery after being impaled by the rusty stake, that she would forever be known as one-legged Jane, well that hurt. I had never been so harmful; I am not a good person.