TheLastManInAmerica

In my alley, round the corner

There’s a wino with feathered shoulders

And a spirit giving head for crack

He’ll never want it back

 ”Stranger Than Fiction”- Bad Religion (1994) 

I believe it’s a fair statement to say, “I work in the seediest neighborhood in
Seattle.”  I’m sure people would disagree, claiming to know numerous spots that are worse off because they stumbled through at the wrong time of day en route to their squash game. But, this much is certain, any of these places would definitely need to be staked up against my neighborhood before it could be declared “victor”.

I’ve worked at the corner of Western and
Bell for nearly two years and in this time I’ve witnessed more vulgar, violent and voracious acts of debasement than most will ever see. A 50 year-old woman, strung out to the point of looking eighty, beaten senseless by a man half her age, while she grasps at his leg as it were the last lifesaver on a sinking ship wile screaming “Give me my money!”; men and women alike, scouring one of the scummiest alleys on hands and knees, searching for an elusive treasure, which in their minds, is hidden in plain sight; a recycle container whose bottom has been filled with by a tub of discarded hypodermics, swiped from a local clinic; sordid liaisons behind dumpsters where young women fellate men sucking on burnt tubes of glass; all this and the most cases of human excrement exposed to the wind since Neanderthal Man hunted ancient Germany. What would cause a “normal” person to vomit at first blush is such common place to us that it is cast off with a shrug for those of us who’ve been around it this long.

The common link here is The Fix. All of these vile acts are the result of those who cast it all asunder in their quest to catch the Pink Dragon. And ever since an article was published, criticizing police who may have roughed up a drug dealer, things have gotten worse. The “Paddy Wagon” patrols that used to reel in so many dealers and junkies alike are all but a memory. And I know there are some who think that’s good; that these people have a problem and that you shouldn’t lock them up because of it. They believe that habits are brought on by their station in life; that poverty has forced them to a drug addled existence. Have they ever considered that perhaps their station in life has been brought on by their habits; that their drug addled existence has force them to poverty? It’s time to stop alleviating people of their responsibilities to themselves.

You can’t help someone that doesn’t want to be helped, that much we know. But with the throngs of people I see everyday, the pulsating congregation at the corner of Western Ave and Bell St, it’s clear these people don’t want to get better; these people have made their bed and are content to lay in it, though it may be a concrete slab, as long as they can continue the Chase, that’s all they need. So where does that leave us, the employed who get up everyday and go to work in order to support our habits and while pushing our way through this sea of living dead?

If you can’t help those who don’t want it, you’re left with few solutions…well, one really. And that’s throwing their dried-out, scaly hides behind bars. But then we’re back to that familiar impasse of seeming injustice that comes with locking up addicts. As I said above we need to quit alleviating people of the responsibilities of self-preservation.  So I say put the burden on them! Let them finally choose between a “life of hopping from alley to alley and jail to jail or a Life of living clean and sober. Any junkie given the choice between rehab or jail will undoubtedly choose the former, even in jest. Perhaps with the stipulation of harder punishment for relapse or even by accident, such as the person in the midst of a charade to skirt responsibility, useful knowledge could be obtained with which these people could better themselves and society. Hell, rehab or jail, the working junkie’s going to pay for it anyways. Would it work? I don’t know. But I do know whatever’s being done now doesn’t.    

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