How to do nothing.

A true Chicago story.

To my fellow outlaws, outcasts and misfits,

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So without further ado, away we go…

“See if the Irish kid is selling drugs outta the bar,” my friend asked.

My friend owned said bar and was worried the fresh off the boat young Irish guy was indeed moving drugs from behind the bar.

The kid was in his early 20s, skinny, always wrinkled and always presenting a slippery smile that made you feel like he had one hand in your pocket and the other down your wife’s pants.

One slow Monday afternoon, when it was just me and Irish in the bar, I let the tip of a tiny twisted baggie of cocaine peek out of my Marlboro Reds. I hated to set Irish up but my friend who owned the bar was a good guy on his way to building a mini empire of bars around the north and westside.

“You party?” Irish asked, nodding at the baggie.

“Yeah. You?”

“A wee bit,” he said.

“Who doesn’t?” I said playfully.

“The Pope?”

“You kidding? The pope parties the most. Doing bumps off little kid’s buttholes for days straight.”

“You’re going to hell,” he said.

I nudged the pack of reds toward him and said, “Dig in, hell’s nice this time of year.”

His eyes nervously scanned the empty bar.

“Just leave a little for me,” I said.

He grabbed the pack and headed to the bathroom. He came out three minutes later and slid the pack down the bar then poured me a pint glass of Bombay Sapphire and Tonic with two limes, easy on the tonic, with a shot of tequila, which was my round back then.

I guzzled half the pint, knocked back the shot, downed the second half of the pint, then opened the pack for my post round red.

The cocaine was gone. He did it all.

As I smoked the cigarette in the empty bar, Irish wandered over and said, “Sorry mate, working a double so I double dipped.”

“No worries, man,” my guy might be around later. If not I’m sure I can track him down tomorrow.”

“I may be able to help,” he said with that slippery smile.

“Yeah? You got a guy?”

“I am the guy,” he said.

“No shit? You holding?”

“Nah. Come by my apartment later and we’ll do proper business.”

He jotted his address down on a napkin then poured me another fresh round of gin and tequila on the house.

I showed up to his apartment around 11pm. He lived in a three story walk up on the edge off Logan Square by Kostner and Fullerton, which at that time was gang members, terrified grandmothers with a dash of early ignorant gentrifiers like Irish.

I rang the buzzer and could hear it from the street. It wasn’t a doorbell, but one of those soul shaking buzzers factories use to alert you when industrial elevators start moving so you don’t get crushed.

He came down to let me in and I followed him up the three flights into his apartment. It was a pigsty. Take out containers everywhere. Empty beer cans and odd cups and glasses stained purple from cheap wine with cigarette butts sticking out of the crusty bottoms.

Dirty clothes hung over two mismatched chairs staring at a tattered love seat and chipped coffee table.

On the table was a small digital scale that looked like a calculator with two golfball sized mounds of powder and small white squares of paper called “bindles.” There was also a small stack of plastic baggies.

“Beer?” Irish asked.

“Of course,” I said then nodded to the drugs and asked, “What’s for dinner?”

“Some China and coke,” he said then headed into the kitchen to grab some beers out of the empty fridge.

I spotted a lighter and small patch of aluminum foil with a burn mark in the middle resting on the arm of the chair, also with burn marks.

“You just smoke?” I asked.

“Yeah. With my girl. She just left for work.” he said as he handed me a cold can of beer and plopped down in front of the drugs, diligently digging out small scoops, shaking them into the bindles, deftly folding them up into small squares to then stacking them next to the other bindles stacked next to the scale.

“You indulge?” he asked.

“No heroin for me my friend.”

I was going to say, “no heroin for me, I got enough problems,” but junkies are a paranoid people and depending on whether they’re going up or coming down, can turn on a dime.

“Shame,” Irish said, “This is the best shit I got since I got here.”

“Caught some H in an ecstasy pill once a few years ago. So good it scared the shit out of me. So I’m staying away.”

“Suit yourself. Your loss.”

I sipped the beer and watched him try and fail to toss a scoop into a bindle. The heroin he smoked before was kicking in. I watched him try and fail for another minute.

Then the buzzer rang - LOUD - scaring the shit out of both of us, causing his arm to jerk, spilling heroin on his arm, the table and the floor.

He stood, looked at me and said, “Who is it?”

“How the fuck should I know, you live here.”

“I’ll go see who it is,” he said, his glassy eyes scanning the tabletop proudly showcasing mandatory sentencing.

“The fuck you will. You got drugs out everywhere. What if it’s the cops?”

“You think they’d ring the buzzer?” he said as he opened the door and started down the stairs.

I had to get out of there. I ran through the living room into the kitchen and tried the backdoor but it was locked with a burglar bar. The windows had bars over them too.

There was no way out.

Not only was he getting high on his own supply, he was selling out of his apartment like a rookie.

If he was willing to bring me up here, who knows who else he brought up, who now knows some guy right off the boat is posted up in a gang run neighborhood selling drugs without permission or a kick back. He wasn’t with anybody and if I knew it, so did anybody else he brought up.

I looked around for a weapon. There were no large knives but I found two steak knives with loose wooden handles.

I stuck them up my sleeves on the inside of my forearm, with the handles easily accessible if I had to yank them out, but not visible if you were sitting in front of me.

I heard Irish coming up the stairs talking to another male, so I hustled back into the living room and stood facing the door, arms crossed over my chest to hide the knives.

Irish walked in first, followed by a portly Mexican guy who was thirty. Actually, he was half Mexican, half Italian.

I knew him.

When I was thirteen my grandfather died and afterward I lived alone in his apartment. My mother lived downstairs but was never around. The drink and drugs had her.

So I was forced to fend for myself. I worked odd jobs, stole, then sold the shit I stole.

During my first summer alone, between 7th and 8th grade, I went from playing with toys to playing with zippers. I hooked up with a girl from the pool and talked a little shit after. It got back to her and she told her older brother who was in a gang.

I was walking down Clarence Avenue when a Delta 88 pulled up and three guys, one being her brother, hopped out and jumped me. They were notorious. One was Italian, one was Greek and the other, the guy, was half Mexican, half Italian, which meant he had to go the extra mile to impress the Greek and the Italian.

They punched and kicked me to the ground then the guy dragged me over to the curb to blow my teeth out. I crawled under a parked car and grabbed the axle so they could only beat my legs and back.

The rest of that summer I was terrified to leave my apartment. Any time I heard any bass coming from down the street, I ran the other way.

I started wrestling the next year, which before the UFC, was like having a super power in street fights.

A few years later, when I was sixteen, I was in a pool hall during the middle of the day when the same guy walked in with the same other two guys. I charged into all three like a mad man. They fought back but I bit the guy’s face and saw fear in his eyes.

They ran out and I never saw him again but heard after that fight, he never left his house without a gun.

Irish came in and plopped down in a chair. The guy, the same one who jumped me, the same one I bit, sat in the other chair and when he saw me, his face fell and he asked, “Who is this guy?”

“He’s cool,” Irish said.

I nodded at him and said, “What’s up, man.”

“I know you from somewhere,” the guy said as he studied my face.

“Nah.”

“How the fuck do you know whether I know you or not?” He said.

It had been ten years since I got him back in the pool hall. Thirteen years since he got me first. This could be the tie breaker.

“I got a pretty good memory. I know you from somewhere,” he said.

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Where’d you grow up?”

If I told him the truth, it was on. I had to lie. But did I? What if I owned it?

What if I killed him?