Squat Politics

The following document is a field report submitted in March of 1995 concerning an incident involving several members of an illegal organization known as “crusties” and an undercover officer whose name has been withheld.

Portions of this report reference illegal activity, controlled substances, and violence. These references are included solely for the purpose of documentation.

All dialogue was reconstructed from notes and presented as accurately as possible. Statements attributed to individuals reflect their words as spoken and do not imply endorsement.

Observations regarding intent, motivation, or emotional state are limited to what could be reasonably inferred during the incident in question based on body language, behavior, timbre of speech, and context.

This is an official confidential document. Do not copy or distribute. Do not upload or disseminate. Do not shred, burn, otherwise destroy or make unreadable by alteration.

October 1994. 

A man in his mid twenties with shoulder length matted, unwashed blonde hair sat under a bus stop shelter on the Lower East Side clutching something tightly in his left hand. He muttered strange words to himself. He appeared to be homeless and quite possibly high on meth or crack. Local residents called him Johnny.

Johnny spoke to no one in particular. “You can have my money,” he said. “You can have my body, my time, but my brain is my own. I will do with it what I want.”

DON’T SMOKE POT 

A public service ad on the side of a city bus warned of the dangers of smoking marijuana using fried eggs as a stand-in for the human brain. When Johnny saw the ad, it angered him.

“Fuck you,” he told the side panel. “I’ll smoke what I want.”

Several passersby ignored the young musician as he cursed to himself. “Fuck your laws and fuck your grandfather’s laws,” he yelled at the bus signage.

Johnny put his thumb and forefinger to his lips and inhaled, pretending to pull on an imaginary cannabis cigarette. He offered it to the side of the bus before it pulled away.

“Wanna hit?” he said. “No?! Tight ass,” he said, mocking the M14 as it continued soberly on its route. “Just say no to drugs.”

Two stories above the bus stop, in a small, sparsely furnished apartment in an abandoned building, two women were overheard arguing about drug use. Ironically, it was the same argument Johnny was having with the bus.

The building was called a “squat.” The people who lived there were called “crusties.” And the couple fighting on the third floor were named Rachel and Bambi. It was Wednesday.

“You’re full of shit.” Bambi yelled. “You don’t care if I’m using. You just want to know who I’m with.”

“I’m full of shit?” Rachel responded to her girlfriend by shoving her onto their bed. “Answer the question, baby. Do you like pussy or do you like dick?”

“There’s a bunch of dudes I could be fucking, but I’m here with you.”

“You’re just so fucking popular,” Rachel said sarcastically. “You know what you are?”

“No, tell me.”

“You’re a schizophrenic.”

“Having a bisexual girlfriend isn’t like living with someone with multiple personality disorder, babe,” Rachel said. “You’re being dramatic.”

“You call this living? I call it whoring.”

“I call it kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment.” Bambi tried to stand up but Rachel shoved her back down to the bed. “You can’t keep me from doing what I want.” 

Bambi caught the sound of her own voice and wished she sounded cooler.

Rachel began to pace in front of the bed like a prison guard. “I’m not letting you self destruct.”

“Aren’t you a fucking saint.”

“This isn’t a joke, Bambi. Stop being a little selfish cunt.”

“Don’t call me a cunt. I’m a whore remember. Get it right.”

“If that’s what you want to be, cunt.”

“Fuck you. You knew what I was when we started dating. At least I’m not pretending. When are you going to tell your folks about us?”

“Never. And don’t change the subject. You’d say anything to get high right now.”

“Is it working?” Bambi asked with a smile.

“If you could see yourself. You’ve become exactly the thing you said you hated.” Rachel told her.

“I know what I am. I’m a white girl with a coke problem. Young and pretty enough to make easy money on the avenue any time I want.”

“Capitalism rewards a sociopath.”

“…and puts a psychopath in charge.” Bambi replied. “Yes. I know.”

Rachel shoved Bambi back onto the bed again and pulled an unloaded 38 caliber pistol from a dresser drawer. 

Rachel held the pistol in her left hand, but Bambi ignored it like it was a stage prop. The gun was real but she never kept it loaded.

“Are you going to kill me?” Bambi asked her. “Because if not,” she said sweetly. “Just let me go out and earn enough for an eight ball and I’ll share it with you.”

Rachel pointed the gun at her heart and pulled the trigger. The symbolic act made Bambi flinch. “Fuck you,” Rachel said to her as she pulled the trigger again and again firing metaphorical bullet into her overdramatic heart. “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.”

Bambi winced with every trigger pull. She knew the gun was harmless but the sentiment behind the pantomime was as disturbing as always. Every fake bullet took a lot out of her. 

“I’m not stupid.” Rachel said dropping her guard in a moment of depressing realization.

Bambi used the moment to fling herself off the bed and dashed to the door. “Stop being jealous, babe. You know you wish you were me.”

“Where are you going?” Rachel called after her.

“I need coffee. You want anything?”

Bambi was out the door and down the stairs before Rachel could answer.

“Coffee,” Rachel said. “Bring me back some coffee.”

Downstairs from the fighting couple, across the street from the raving lunatic, a man in an army jacket begged for change beside an open guitar case. The guitar leaned against the wall behind him.

“A wise man once said,”he began, “that you’re only as healthy as you feel and only as wise as you seem.” Then he held out his hand and said, “Spare some change.”

Manny (not his real name) had been undercover in the East Village for a few weeks. He slept in his vehicle and thought he smelled like a wet rat who had rolled around in cigarette butts. 

He couldn’t wait until the assignment was over. He felt like crap, smelled like crap and thought he looked like an idiot. 

Manny had waited almost a month before establishing himself on the corner of Avenue A and 11th. He didn’t just move right in. He stumbled around the area first. He was the right age and build. He was fairly attractive and white. His next step was to make contact with the group. It happened on a Wednesday.

“Spare some change for a slice of pizza,” he said to anyone who passed by. He wasn’t very good at panhandling. No one gave him anything. Perhaps, he didn’t sound desperate enough. 

“Spare some change,” he whined.

Bambi exited the coffee mart with two fresh cups of coffee, one less condom than she had before she walked in, and a plastic baggy full of uncut booger sugar courtesy of local drug spot.

She was itching to get back to her girl but thought young Manny looked pathetic and had to help him out. “You’re doing it wrong,” she said.

“How should I be doing it?”

“You’re too serious,” she instructed him. “Nobody wants to give money to a deranged poor person. Only billionaires and armed muggers can get away with that.” 

She glanced back at the guitar case. “Let me show you,” she said, shifting into character.

She addressed the pedestrians as they passed. “Spare some change so I can get my mom out of jail.” She joked. “Spare ten thousand pesos for a Mexican boob job.”

She laughed at herself. “And if comedy doesn’t work, try honesty. Excuse me, sir, can you spare a dollar for drugs?”

An older man in a bomber jacket tossed a dollar into the guitar case before entering the pizza parlor.

“See what I mean?” Bambi said. “You need to offer them more than just guilt.”

Manny shrugged as a man in a trench coat stepped forward and said. “Get a job.”

“Suck my dick,” Bambi told the man, without missing a beat.

“Crusties,” the man said their name like a curse. “You sit around drinking and expect us to pay for it.”

“We make this neighborhood cool. Go back to your rent controlled apartment,” Bambi shot back. “Let me guess, you inherited it from your grandparents.”

A woman with a thick Indian accent and a small dog joined the conversation. “What about the children who see you on the avenue?”

“This is a free country,” Bambi said.

A crowd turned as quickly as it formed.

“It ain’t that free.”

“Go back to where you came from.”

“My kid thinks tattoos and piercings are cool.”

“You crusties are disgusting.”

“You can all kiss my ass!” Bambi yelled, and the crowd dissipated just as quickly as it turned. “I never said I was a role model.”

Bambi introduced herself to the undercover officer. She asked where he slept and Manny told her he had a tent in the park.

“I don’t think so,” she corrected him. “You smell like you live in your car.”

He didn’t argue.

There was an instant attraction. She handed him a flyer to a party at her squat. It promised two punk bands, cheap beer, and a good time. She promised him a possible new living situation if her squat mates liked him. 

She pointed across the avenue as Rachel stepped outside their building with a bag of trash and dropped it illegally into a city can.

Manny noted the violations. There was never a cop around when you needed one. They were stealing sanitation services and the city’s electricity. Two of the many offenses he would witness but not report before the night was over. He had to maintain cover.

The details of his assignment have not been cleared for this document. 

“Bam Bam! Get your ass over here!” Rachel shouted.

Bambi frowned, then smiled back at Manny. “My girlfriend is always jealous but we have an understanding,” She sighed. “Come early, stay late. Meet everybody. Help us set up. There’s a ten dollar cover charge.”

Bambi crossed the street, spun around then walked backward a few steps, waving back at Manny just enough to make her girlfriend jealous.

Rachel grabbed her by the arm and dragged her inside. She had coffees. She had cocaine. It should be noted that hours before the incident, both Bambi and Rachel seemed happy. 

The following is a partial list of illegal activities witnessed by the officer (name withheld) within five minutes of first contact:

Possession of a controlled substance 

Theft of city services 

Prostitution 

Solicitation

Trespassing

Panhandling 

Reckless Endangerment 

Lacking permits and/or licenses for 

Liquor, Live Music, Public Gathering, Construction and Public Safety

DON’T SNORT COKE

On the bus stop shelter there was a poster warning riders of the dangers of snorting cocaine. Two hands held a vial of powder and a tiny spoon that could be bought at any smoke shop.

All it needed was an arrow pointing to the bodega across the street that sold grams of coke and bad coffee for it to be a literal advertisement for the stuff.

If the message was don’t do drugs, Johnny didn’t believe it had the effect they intended.

“Don’t do drugs?” Johnny said to the sign, addressing the imaginary ad execs who had green-lit the campaign. “I’m in charge on this one. I’ll snort all the coke.” He mimed snorting a line off the picture, then smiled, pleased with himself. “That’s good shit.” Then he laughed and fell back into the bus stop bench.

Johnny B. Goode played guitar at that bus stop all Summer long. Everybody loved him but no one in the neighborhood seemed to care that he was losing his mind because someone had stolen his guitar.

FIELD REPORT

The following is a FIELD REPORT from the night of the incident. The agent secretly recorded conversations, drug use and sexual activity. Normally he would have been removed from active duty pending investigation but the situation and details of his assignment were far from normal.

October 1994

Officer (name redacted)

The assignment was going relatively well. I’d made contact with the group. Several of which were friends with the subject 

REDACTED. 

I arrived to the party early. I helped to set up chairs and the bar. Once the music started it was far too loud for information gathering. I realized that i would have to stick around for the after party.

In a large common room, the crusties sat drinking cheap beer, while a punk band played to a packed house in the basement. All the money they made went directly to buying drugs.

I drank beer and smoked pot when offered and only started the audio recording once the band had finished and the only music came from a cassette player with detachable speakers.

What follows is a transcript of the afterparty reconstructed from the recording with additional notes and observations taken from interviews and accounts:

The primary contact was a twenty three year old caucasian girl called Bambi by her peers. She introduced me to the other crusties with their street name and their drug of choice.

“This is Spider. Heroin. She’s a whore.”

“Not me, bitch—you,” Spider argued. “You think maybe we’ll get some work done before everyone disappears into their rooms.”

“This is Cockroach. Meth. We call him Roach.”

“What do you do, Roach?” I asked him.

“I smoke meth,” he replied. Cockroach was a tall skinny, curly haired jewish boy with a new nasty scar across his forehead and an anarchist tattoo on his neck.

“So, check this out,” he said, already talking too fast. “I was passed out on the avenue, right? And some fool smashes a beer bottle over my head. You see this big fucking scar? Who raises these kids? I wasn’t doing nothing.”

Cockroach barely breathed between words. “So Wolf takes me up to Beth Israel on his motor scooter. Just as long as I don’t get blood on him right. But I did.”

“Which one?” Bambi stopped him.

“The hospital on 23rd.”

“Which Wolf?” she corrected him. “Red Wolf? Brown Wolf? The Big Bad wolf? There are a lot wolves down here.”

“You know Black Wolf who sells the good meth down where that bike shop used to be?” He barely waited for an answer. “Him,” he said before continuing his story. “So my head’s bleeding all over the place, right? Because heads bleed like shit, and the bitch at the hospital-“

“Nurse.” Bambi corrected him. 

“Bitch gives me a Band-Aid and two Tylenol, and says i gotta go.”

“Because you had no insurance?” I asked.

“Because you were homeless,” Bambi stated.

“No,” Roach said. “Because I kept calling her a bitch. She’s telling me to calm down and shit. I’m like sure bitch, but I smoked meth on the way over here so good luck with that.”

“You smoked meth with a bleeding head wound?” I asked.

 Cockroach looked at me like I had said something in a made up language and didn’t respond.

“So what happened?” Bambi prompted him.

“Bitch called the cops.”

“Because you kept calling her a bitch.”

“I didn’t know the bitch’s name.”

“So what did the cops do?”

“They drove me downtown and threw me out the squad car around block from here. They said they weren’t allowed on this block. They didn’t want to do no paperwork or some shit.” 

Cockroach smiled and repeated what he must have thought was the most important part of his story. “They gave me Tylenol with codeine, Man.”

“That’s harsh.”

“I sold it for meth.”

“Dude.” Bambi moved on.

“This is Sloth. Cannabis. He was an assistant to a professor of comparative religion at Columbia.”

“Seriously?”

Sloth was a pot smoker who lived on religious conspiracy and political paranoia.

“Are you a cop?” he asked me. “You have to tell me if you’re a cop.”

I don’t.

“That’s the law.”

It’s not.

“I’m just kidding,” he said then whispered, “We save our pee. Don’t throw out your piss jars. Cops freak out when you throw pee on them. It’s our secret weapon.”

“Come on, Sloth, man. Urine based warfare against the Geneva conventions, Cops are people too.” Spider said.

Sloth continued unbothered. “They can’t shoot you for throwing pee.”

Yes, they can.

“This is our home,” he said. “Sixty gallons of piss say I ain’t leaving.”

Bambi continued down the line.

“This is Rachel. Her drug of choice is drama. I’m just kidding. This is my girlfriend.”

Around the room, people smoked, snorted, and injected drugs under their skin but Rachel continued to tell me there was no drugs allowed with a straight face.

“I’ll be careful,” I told her as Bambi led me upstairs for the house tour. 

Bambi’s drug of choice was cocaine and she took it any way she could.

She opened the door to what was supposed to be my new apartment. It was bigger than my place back in Wichita but there was a hole in the ceiling and floor that went straight through from the apartment above to the room underneath. “It’s not official, but this ones yours. You can stay tonight but we’ll have to vote tomorrow.”

Back downstairs, Sloth sniffed the air where I had sat. “That dude smells like an undercover cop,” he said again.

He was paranoid but he wasn’t wrong. Everyone laughed.

“What’s a crusty?” I asked them.

Rachel explained. “Crusties don’t shower. They don’t change clothes. They just get crustier and crustier. It’s an insult like the n-word but we’re taking it back like NWA.”

Being filthy and smelly was a point of pride with some of them that I did not understand. They couldn’t trust me because of my smell. I quoted some bullshit to throw them off the scent.

“I think it was Confucius who said, If you want to know the past, look at the state of your body. If you want to know the future, look at the state of your mind.” I told them.

“Isn’t that Shakespeare?”

“Nah, man, it from Buddha. It’s from the crusty sutras.”

“And if you want to know the present,” Bambi said loudly ending the argument. “Just look at the state this place is in. Help me clean up a little before everybody does their own thing.”

For Bambi, each drug high produced a different kind of uselessness. What she really needed was a few more coked up friends to help her collect bottles.

“The Commies are destroying Buddhist culture,” Sloth said suddenly, rushing to the window. “They killed thousands of monks. Burned dozens of books. Destroyed countless temples.”

No one seemed to follow his train of thought. 

“You can’t even keep pictures of the his holiness anymore.”

“Dude. Shanqui Jian wasn’t real. That’s just some shit the Beastie Boys made up.” Spider said.

The smell was getting to me. Their collective ignorance was getting to me. The beer and the drugs were getting to me. “Here is a man who would not take it anymore,” I whispered into the microphone under my collar.

“Here, here,” Roach said.

“Here’s to freedom.” Bambi said raising an empty bottle.

“Here’s to bullshit,” Rachel countered, rolling up a joint and passing it to Bambi who had given up on cleaning. “Just say no, baby.”

“Say no, thank you,” Bambi corrected her. “Where are your manners, Nancy?”

“Nancy Reagan killed the American dream, dude. For real.” Sloth said.

“Nah man. That was Nixon,” someone argued.

Either way the dream is dead.

Bambi passed the joint to me. I drank. I smoked. I coughed so hard I nearly fell off my chair. Everyone laughed at me.

“That’s good shit,” I said. 

I had no idea. 

The drugs, the weapons, the unprotected sex, the unsafe living quarters. All they had to look forward to was death. These crusties were going from nothing to nowhere. So why did I feel like the Grim Reaper? It was like watching a child reach for a pan boiling oil and doing nothing, because it wasn’t my job. 

How many fires was too many fires to put out. The place was a tinderbox. It took all the discipline I could muster to not shut it down immediately, but, again, that wasn’t my job.

“You ever hear of a guy named Mel Rook?” I asked them directly.

What I got was myth and legend and nothing I could use.

Spider nodded. “People were asking about him at the park too.”

“He’s a prophet and a poet. Partly truth, partly fiction. He’s a walking contradiction. He’ll change your fucking life.” Cockroach recited words they all seemed to know.

“He’s a drug dealer, a musician and a spiritual healer. A bodhisattva and shaman. He don’t just eat the rich,” Sloth said.

“He eats them raw, man” they said together.

“Don’t leave him alone with your wife.” Rachel added before everyone joined her.

“Because he’ll give her the best fuck of her life!” They shouted together before breaking out in laughter.

Bambi was still annoyed that no one helped clean. “He’s just some Black dude who helps the homeless,” she said. “Don’t quote me wrong. He’s good people.”

“Do you know where he stays?” I asked. I was pushing my luck.

“Subway tunnels. Parks. Caves. Bridges. I don’t know.” Spider laughed. “I’m just kidding. He stays in hotels. Chelsea. St. Marks. The White House. He’s not like us. He moves around a lot. I think he’s bicoastal.”

“You mean bisexual?” Roach offered.

“That’s too.” Bambi said.

I wasn’t getting the information that I wanted. There was a thin paperback in a stack of books under a table. I picked out the one with the subjects name on it, called, Still Life in Gutter with Guitar. I’d seen it before. It was part of my briefing. It was written by the man himself.

“He prints those in a garage in Brooklyn. He used to give those away but people started selling them, so he started charging. He doesn’t do it for the money but he didn’t want to be exploited.”

The more I heard about Mel Rook, the more I admired him. All we ever had was his school transcripts, his published writings and the reports of his power. He was dangerous, they said. But he didn’t sound dangerous to me. Or maybe that was the drugs talking. Or maybe I was a traitor.

Bambi climbed onto my lap and straddled my legs without asking. Face to face, she kissed my lips without permission.

“Why do you still have Johnny’s guitar?” she asked me changing the subject quickly. “I’ve been dropping hints all night.”

“He gave it to me for five dollars.”

“He does that sometimes when he isn’t making money fast enough to keep up with his habit. We can’t all be whores. Right, Spider? You need to give it back to him. He loses his mind if doesn’t get to play it every day.”

“Mel Rook gave that to him when they first met. That guitar is his whole life.” Spider added. 

“He shouldn’t have sold it.”

“Or,” Bambi said dramatically. “Maybe you need to leave.”

“I’ll give it back him.”

“You’re damn right you will.”

Bambi started kissing me again and unbuttoning my jeans. She was a horrible judge of character but she was a good kisser.

“What about Spider?” I asked her. 

Spider was slouching on the seat next to us, not asleep, not awake, high on horse and getting closer and closer to the floor without touching it. As her shirt slip up her back, I noticed her tattoos for the first time. Her back was covered in spiders.

“I’m good,” the woman mumbled from her horse haze. “You guys go right ahead and fuck.” It was like talking to someone as they slowly morphed i to the floor.

“What about Rachel?” I wondered and by this point I knew about the gun she carried.  A snub-nosed 38 she kept in her belt. I clocked it early on. 

“As long as it’s not other girls, it’s not cheating.” Bambi reassured me.

“That’s some bisexual bullshit,” Spider mumbled into her feet.

“Hand me a dollar and we can make it official,” Bambi said.

I’d seen lawyers do this on TV, so I handed her a dollar bill and hoped for the best.

“Now I’m your whore,” she whispered. “Can we fuck now?”

“Yes, please.”

The rest of the recording was muffled.

Rachel watched from across the room as her lover bounced on my standard issue. It could have been worse, I thought. We could have been smoking crack.

END OF FIELD REPORT

At the bus stop on the corner, a young woman in a jean jacket handed Johnny a brochure and slid another inside the frame that held the bus map. It listed the dangers of smoking crack. It was racist and condescending.

DON’T DO CRACK, IT’S A GHETTO DRUG

Johnny read it and felt the sudden urge to freebase a metric ton of crack cocaine. 

“Wait a minute,” he mumbled to himself. “This is reverse psychology,” He was appalled by his realization. “You want me on drugs.

“You get paid either way. You get paid if I’m arrested or if i’m hospitalized or if I’m dead. You even make money off of my death. I’m just another head of cattle, another budget allocation for the departments of sanitation, transportation and homeless relocation. I’m a source of amusement for your idiot offspring and a cautionary tale for your underachieving grandchildren. Somebody to beat up after walking the beat.”

Johnny pulled a crack pipe from his inside pocket. He flicked the lighter in his left hand. “I can quit anytime I want,” he said. “I just didn’t want to before now. But right after this hit I’m done.”

He took a pull in celebration of deciding to quit and then I guess he decided he deserved another. His last hit would be his next one. He promised.

From the apartment above Johnny, just a few hours after the party, once the drugs had worn off, the girls were fighting again. 

“You don’t love me at all.” Bambi said looking for an angle that would get her past her lover and out the door.

“Don’t say that? You’re all I got, baby.” Rachel had her gun in hand and her melodrama fully loaded.

Bambi tried to make her way to the door of their apartment but was blocked by the bigger girl. “You don’t mean it,” she whined and twisted.

Rachel blocked her exit. “I can’t do this.” It was late at night, they were both coming down hard, and everything seemed heavier, the words, the gun, the drama, and the consequences.

Bambi looked around the room as if she weren’t trying to leave. “What happened to the cat?” she asked.

There was a grey tabby that stayed in their room. “Cockroach must have been in here again and let it out. He was probably roaming the building,” she said. 

Cockroach liked touching other people’s stuff. It made her angry thinking about it, she changed her mind about leaving and marched over to the dresser to see what he had disturbed. 

In the top drawer there was usually some socks, underwear, sex toys, and the gun that Rachel was already holding, also the loose bullets that Cockroach must have taken.

Rachel swung her prop like an extension of her trauma. It was unfortunately too late to teach the girl how to respect a fire arm. She pointed it at her chest and said her line. “I’m serious. I’ll do it.” 

The threat was as hollow as her chest cavity. It was as pathetic a cry for help as gasping for air.

“You’re such a drama queen.” Bambi had seen this scene dozens of times. Her overly sensitive girlfriend and an unloaded gun.

Bambi reached into the top dresser drawer where they kept their socks, underwear, sex toys, the gun and some loose bullets, and pulled out a silver vibrator that ran on D batteries. 

“Remember when you asked me if I liked pussy or dick?” She said coyly.

Her strange behavior made Rachel forget about the gun for a moment.

“I got your dick right here!” Bambi yelled at her as she tossed the silver sex toy out the third story window, and it shatter on the pavement beneath. 

She reached back into the drawer for another. This time it was a rubber toy and she yelled it again. “I’ve got your fucking dick right here!” 

She tossed that out as well. 

Rachel was shocked. The incident woke the squat. Johnny must have thought it was raining dicks. 

“It’s the sexpocalypse,” he said as another rubber dildo bounced in the shattered plastic and careened into the avenue of oncoming cars.

“That was a gift.” Rachel reminded her solemnly.

“I don’t know what to tell you, babe. Maybe you should’ve been born with one.” She reached in and grabbed her own personal favorite toy from the drawer.

Rachel grabbed her girlfriend’s arm and shoved her down toward the bed again but this time was different. She bounced off the side and hit her head on the night table.

This wasn’t the first time Rachel had hurt her by accident but it would definitely be the last.

Bambi crawled over to the wall and propped herself up against it. There was so much blood from such a small cut. 

Bambi spoke soberly. “What happened to us, babe? We used to be Bambi and Rachel. Remember the bike shop? What happened to those two girls?“

“I’m sorry about the violence, baby.”

Bambi mocked her literally. “She said, still holding the gun.”

“I don’t keep bullets in it.”

“I know.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“I know.”

“I miss us, too, baby.”

“I know. But If you really loved me, I wouldn’t be bleeding.”

“It’s just a stupid fight over drugs.”

“When we’re not high we’re this, Rachel. This is all we are.”

“We have friends.”

“And when they’re not high, they’re this,” Bambi explained. “We’re not anarchists. We’re not alcoholics or even drug addicts. We’re fighting fish in an abandoned tank. The only freedom we care about is the freedom to destroy ourselves in this global fishbowl.”

“You’re right.” Rachel sat on the edge of the bed, gun in hand, staring into space. Bambi looked at her for a while, got up and crossed the floor and sat down beside her. She held t-shirt to her head and wondered if the hospital was open this late.

The fight was over but the blood on her hands was nothing compared to what was to come.

“We’re done. You can have the friends.”

“You sure you don’t wanna get high one last time?”

“It’s over.” Bambi said again. “it’s over.”

Rachel smiled at her girlfriend of six months and pretended to take her own life by pointing the weapon at her heart and pulling the trigger of a gun that had never been loaded. 

How it had come to be loaded remains a mystery.

From the rooms down the hall, the others could hear the gunshot blast from Bambi and Rachel’s room. 

Manny flew down the hall and kicked in the door without thinking. He ran in without hesitation.

There was nothing to see. It was a crime scene. It was an accident or it wasn’t. She either knew the gun was loaded or she didn’t. 

The crusties were in shock but that would wear off eventually and in the meantime they would have to find a new place to do their drugs. Some of the residents moved into a public shelter for the winter.

In April of 1995 the abandoned building that was once used as the headquarters of the group called the crusties was demolished. The M14 bus was rerouted for several weeks. Johnny could be found strumming his guitar a few blocks over still trying to get that “last” hit. The deli across the street was shuttered and it was rumored that the owners had fled to the islands. 

There were no arrests. ||