November 17, 1998

This friend of mine called me the other night to tell me that she'd just found her boyfriend dead in his apartment. He'd overdosed on heroin.

She was all freaked out. She told me how his face was ice cold and that his legs had already turned a sickening purple.

When the cops went through his stuff, they found some fake passports, wads of cash, and several blue packets, plump with heroin.

Like I said, she was all freaked out; as I would be too had I found a dead body. On top of that, if it were someone I was going out with...well...forget about it. (I have gone out with a few girls who had as much personality and warmth as a dead body, but that's another story.)

Anyway while this kind of thing generally only happens in movies and in books, today's story is completely true. My gut reaction when she told me about this guy was "What an asshole!"

"We...(sniff)...did...(sniff)...everything together!" she wailed. She went on to say that they'd slept together, they'd taken road trips together, they'd even gotten tattoos together.

"That's horrible!" I said to her. "That's so horrible. Why on earth did you get a tattoo?"

My joke made her laugh for a second.

I'm not good in situations like this. Truth is, I didn't feel any sympathy for this guy. For his family and friends, yes, but for him, no. This guy was in his early thirties. He was a lawyer. Who's smoking pot at that age, let alone doing heroin? Who traffics drugs out of their apartment and has fake passports in case the heat comes calling? That's insane!

There is real scum in the world. Scum and sleaze and just bad people. The world's full of them. And New York has more that its fair share.

I've seen a lot of scary, scummy, sleazy people this year. The guys getting their genitals bound with twine at the S&M Club, the girl jabbing herself with needles during a poetry reading, the wife cheating on her husband while he worked stupid-long hours, the young, drunk Wall-Street boobs on the PATH train shouting about how they'd like to fuck so-and-so at work.

I've done sleazy things myself, like fucking that Russian girl in the bathroom of the bar. (Actually, the act wasn't sleazy, but writing about it was.)

There are just so many bad, morally broken people out there. And it's not cool. It's not cool to be a freak. I used to think it was. I used to read descriptions of the New York Freaks and think they were out there, like cowboys living on their own terms. But that's before I saw the world for myself. These guys, are, for the most part, burned-out, boring, jerk-offs.

I told my friend that she needs to stop hanging out with scum like her dead boyfriend. I was also talking to myself.

This was epiphany number two. (The first one was when I confessed to the Higher Power that I needed some help making it through the world. You may recall at the end of that story that God suggested I try heroin. When I asked if it was really God talking to me, the Devil replied, "No, it's me, Satan, but I really had you going, didn't I?")

Anyway, two things can happen to you when you come to a crucible like New York. You can dissolve your beliefs or you can steel them. The latter has happened to me.

I have learned in the year that I've been here that the things good people taught me growing up are true. Be kind to everyone. Don't do drugs. Treat women with respect. Look both ways crossing the street. Say please and thank you.

A couple weeks ago, while at the Halloween Parade in the West Village, some jackass was wandering around with a pig mask on, a police hat on his head, and a plunger in his hand. He was making a political statement about the alleged sodomization of a Haitian immigrant by cops in Brooklyn. Holding on to the guy's left hand was his little daughter.

A police officer walked up to this guy, glanced down at the guy's daughter, and asked him with quiet sadness in his voice, "Why? Why would you send her a message like this?"

The jerk in the mask didn't know what to say. He was taken aback by the policeman's humanity. In that one second, the jerk in the mask looked like the biggest out-there jerk in the world, while the cop came across a the steadfast, dependable professional that he and the overwhelming majority of his colleagues are.

I've grown weary of this--as I believe Voltaire called it--cynical "cafe society." As I told you months ago in my column, New York is conversation over drinks at an old wooden table. Well, talk is cheap. As my friend Brian Parker said, "I came here for the conversation...and I've been sorely disappointed." Me too.

I'm not saying I'm ready to leave New York, but I am saying that I'm giving up on trying to find a pearl of wisdom among the cynical, self-destructive, self-mutilating, self-hating, self-described new Bohemians. There's just nothing there.

 

Broadway Jim Jenkins