Chapter 27. The Boots

The apartment in Hollywood gave the Crew a sense of distance from the scene in Coconut Grove, where most of our dealings were centered, though we were careful not to conduct business there. I made sure that there were very few people who were allowed into our inner circle. Once in a while some girls, and a few characters that had dealings with the Crew, came all the way out to Hollywood. One was a Canadian who had recently been released from jail in the Bahamas for possession and dealing pot. Roland was one of those good looking guys who always managed to bring some women over whenever he dropped by. Stan was convinced he was a narc until the time he showed up touting a new drug, MDA.

Roland had me cornered at the kitchen table and he pitched, “It comes from Orlando manufactured by some group, The Family. You guys know that biker, Throttle, who hangs at the park?”

I really wasn’t interested, “Yeh, the bad-assed dude with the crank-head whore?”

“There was some of this MDA goin’ around at the park and people were saying it was a better rush to hit than speed.”

I still wasn’t very curious, but I decided to hear Roland out, “Shit, what is it?”

“No one seems to know exactly. It acts something like acid, but the trip isn’t so radical… no bummers, but you do trip.”

The gears were turning as my mind took me through the whole catalogue of drugs I’d tried, “Then it has to be some kind of speed.”

“No, and it isn’t addictive like crank.” Roland was trying to get back to his story and to the point, “Anyway, We said he should sit down to hit up… that it would knock you out. Throttle was all macho and called everyone pussies for saying that. So, he ties himself off and slams standing up right there in front of where the old ladies at the Rec-Center pass by. It took about a half minute… maybe fifteen seconds and WHAM! He hit the dirt flat on his back!”

“Pretty potent shit,” now I was interested.

“The funny part of it was that, after he lay there a few minutes, he just started tossing his head back and forth saying all kind of shit that would have never, not in a million years, come out of his bad-assed mouth. Eh?”

“Like what?”

“Like, I love you guys, I love life. I love the sky. I love the earth, grass on the ground, I love you and on and on.” Roland was pulling a film-case tin from his pocket, “and I have some here, Max. You wanna try it?”

“Sure, I’m game.”

Stan came in the room at that time, “Yeh, Max, you gotta try it. I want to slam some acid along with it. It is fucking great!”

So, we fixed up and Stan slammed MDA in one arm and acid in the other. I was sure that using needles with acid had to be one of the greatest violations of a sacrament imaginable, but I decided to do it anyway. It was everything that Roland promised and more so. But I was no longer arriving at palaces of bliss and enlightenment on these trips. I wasn’t really going anywhere. Sure, I’d be high and all that, but the thrill was gone.

Another character that showed up at our place was a tall lanky New Yorker who called himself Tex. He crashed on our couch one night and then disappeared with a pair of western boots that belonged to Ted. About a week later Ted and I saw Tex in Coconut Grove on the other side of Grand Avenue.

“Hey, ain’t that Tex?” Grand Avenue was a broad street but Tex was a very recognizable character. I turned to Teddy.

“Yeah,” Ted was already headed across the street… “Hey!” he shouted.

Tex kept walking but realized Ted was barreling across the street and that he’d best stop and say something… anything! He came to meet Ted midway to the traffic island. “Hey, Teddy, I was planning on coming out to see…” He was grinning a nervous grin and reaching out his hand as though greeting a welcome friend.

“You’re wearing my boots!”

“Oh, yeah… I just borrowed ‘em. I was gonna bring ‘em back this afternoon.”

Ted let fly with a left hook to the side of the cowboy’s head, as Tex spoke. He went straight on his back to the grass. Ted stood over him and glowered, “Take ‘em off.”

“Sure, I wasn’t planning on keeping them.”

“You had ‘em a week.”

 He explained meekly as he took them off and handed them to Ted, “Yeh, well, I had to go out of town before I could get ‘em back to you.”

I caught up to them by this time and, as Ted slapped the boots from Tex’s hand, I found the words coming out of my mouth, “Kill the mother fucker, Ted. Kill him!” It was like I was possessed.

Ted was kicking and punching the poor bastard, and I was goading him on. When it was over, Tex was laying there on the grass of the divider weeping in convulsions with a bloody face puffed up and contorted blubbering, “I didn’t mean to steal them. I didn’t mean to…”

“Then why did you! Why did you!” I screamed and kicked him a few times more. I looked over at Ted as we walked away with the boots and thought I read disgust on his face. The adrenaline wore off and my rage was smothered by a sense of shame. It wasn’t shame for what violence Ted had done to Tex but rather it was shame for my cheerleading. I had been juiced on the brutality of the beating. I knew that, had Teddy killed Tex, I would have been okay with it. Furthermore, my hatred for Tex was almost completely unwarranted. Sure, Tex had stolen property from the Crew and we couldn’t have word get out that we had been ripped-off by a punk… but where had this blood-lust come from? The onslaught of it was so sudden, and alien to me, that I could hardly believe that I was that ape-man calling out for mayhem and bloodshed.