He bounced in and out of my life and his life
in a bizarre cycle
from rehab to the streets to drugs to his parents house
to random drug addicts apartments
filled with community needles
he talked about rehab, smoking crack, shooting heroin
oxycontin, all the girls in rehab he fucked, the cons
and the marks
all shit ive either heard, read, or done before
he was complacent
and in complete denial
of the fact that he had hepatitis C
and was dying
he came back to ohio
from las vegas
with a bad hangover and immediately met
a girl
and shared a needle with her
shooting up more and more heroin
now he could control his uncontrollable addiction
it was like cigarettes to him
and he looked on giving the woman
hepatitis C as some bizarre and morbid
affectionate ritual
i woke up one night
and found a message on my computer from him
telling me to give him my fucking number
which i did eventually
he called the next morning
and we drank and talked
and when he became tipsy, he tells me
"I gave her hepatitis C"
he denied to me that he was the one that stood on
that high school campus with a needle
drawing his own blood onto it and poking random students
with it closing the deal with the phrase
"now you have hepatitis C!"
i had my own ideas
and when i asked him how many other people he gave hepatitis to
besides his girlfriend
his only words were
"how could you..."
and a click
i havent heard from him since
Rick was an emblem.
What began with a pain in the small of his stomach
became full blown liver and pancreatic cancer
and too late to the doctor
he found out he had four months to live
and elected to work
shaving produce for most of it
I was around him most of the time
and he raged against the cancer
with complete abandon
he mocked the petty
as the hillbillies milled about in the dawn
making inane comments about shit that
didnt matter in the first place
rick would let a barrage of false and ugly sounding
laughter echo throughout the store
causing the hillbillies to dance around and complain
because they had kids
rick had kids too
his produce displays were beautiful
rich purples mixed with pale greens and bright oranges
leaves of romaine lettuce stacked shining in rows surrounded
by dark and deep purple leaves
and so on
today the displays are barely noticeable
rick and I would run up to the smoking room
(this is before smoking was banned)
and smoke and talk
about music
he was a musician
punk rocker who drank like a fish most of his life
and when it got heady with the smoking
he would smoke in the produce cooler
I just switched to cherry skoal
and copenhagen pouches
when I saw the short lived drug dealing floor finishing
duo sell rick a dime back
he winced
and was never the same
paranoid of me
and everyone else
he cheered me on drinking
and when I bought a lime he shouted
"CORONAS! SUCK 'EM DOWN, YEAH!"
and his friend rob said as I left
"he left with two bottles of mikes hard lime
and thats the truth."
ricks pain grew worse
and I could tell it had
because when bouts would overtake him
he would writhe around on his feet
play air guitar
or smile beatifically
"I dont care"
"but I do"
was our conversation about the dime bag
as cancer ate ricks guts from the inside out
eventually the pain got the best of him
and I caught him standing in front of his cart
shooting heroin into his arm
slowly drawing the poison in and out of his needle-marked arm
I was close enough to see the syringe
just not the strings of blood swimming in the pre-prepared shot
he left shortly after that
and died broke at age 50
leaving behind one wife
four ex-wives
and four kids
if I so much as make it to age 50
in one or two pieces
Ill be satisfied
His wife helped him to his car
with his stainless steel walker
almost more than two minutes a step
it took him to walk
and he teetered when his right arm
rose from the walker
to open the car door
his wife drove him to the greasy spoon
on west market
a place not serving alcohol
hanging on the prosthesis
(Is a walker a prosthesis?)
and his timid wife
made his way slowly into the joint
where they ordered
their food
and sat down to eat
after eating he arose
and found he could barely move
slowly and on his wifes arm
he sees me darting out the door
and looks down
I look at him for a quick moment
struggling to walk out of a cheap
greasy spoon
with all the strength he had left
which wasnt much
taking one step every two or three minutes
and thought
thats one tough motherfucker
kurtice6@hotmail.com
he'd love some feedback
he's a very lonely man