"The White Knuckler"

I was working Downtown from like Sept. to Dec. last year. It was at one of the popular bar restaurants near Light st & Baltimore st.. With the hotel tourist business and as you can imagine if your a fan of my work, the customers I bartend for found me very interesting! I would make so much money daily, it was really easy to fall into a slave cycle of just working to get and smoke Crack Cocaine! This repetitive cycle is very similar  to the farmers of Columbia who actually farm the coca leaves in South America! The Cocaine farmers claim the properties of the leaf alone are not addictive but ultimately find themselves working to be paid in Coca leaves only! There's no documented connection between the leaves and  the addictive properties of the finish product Cocaine, but if you'll work for pay in this leaf only, this sounds addictive to me! I don't know but maybe they're saving them up as a co-opp or something, where at the end of the week they can all put in there coca leaves together, then  having enough to make some real Cocaine!

Well anyway I had fallen into one of those cycles and many times I've wonder why it's so many  waiter/waitresses or how so many washed up punch drunk waiters/waitresses wound up becoming career service employee's working in the services industry of downtown Baltimore! You can make enough money working at anyone of these Inner Harbor area restaurants to support your habit as well as pay your bills at the same time! Even if you fuck up all of your money smoking crack or doing lines with hot Russian girls here on a work visa or some college coed's home for the summer break! Your only one five guests seat table away from a $100 to a $250 tip and your back in the game! This is dangerous for a addict, the constant up and down roller coaster of chasing money thrills and Drugs! Then with the up and down joy and disappointment of striking it big or possibly being given nothing in tips! This kind of lifestyle parallels to closely to the brains pleasure reward system pushing a unsuspecting addict back into a relapse!

 You can go from someone who's feeling good about the progress and success they're making to the very next morning having barely enough to get a McDonald's breakfast sandwich or a donut and a juice! It's a hurting feeling you can at times almost wish you were dead! Before last nights binge began you were having fleeting thoughts about getting high as you secretly counted up the tips you were making through the course of your shift, even speculating what you'd make with the guest who were still enjoying your company! With every $10 to $20 dollar tip your suppressing the growing desire to go out and have a party tonight as soon as your relief comes through the door! You slightly remember that last night you blew a days work $265 and the night before that you had a good time but you blew $80! Now your running off of 12 hours sleep in over the past three days and in this moment your on the verge of doing the same thing all over again! Its like your seducing yourself or watching a movie about a character you care about who's about to do something that you know can only end up in their public humiliation! But as they hope and desire for the best possible outcome and so do you, though you know the inevitable ensuing car wreck will be just as satisfying!

It's funny how you can go from the best person in the world during a shift entertaining everyone! Receiving self gratification from everyone and everywhere, to being all alone and wanting at the end of a shift! Looking down one street towards a bus stop home and in the opposite direction into a abyss of another night compounding to your 4 day Crack binge! Going from every human need being met and then finding yourself with your back to your place of employment now facing the whole world and the realization of your true life not being as  rewarding or fulfilling as the facade of an entertainment environment you have just finished facilitating for the last 6 hours! An now your have left yourself with not enough life energy for yourself, only the money! Reflecting back on how at one time your were in a good place going to school! With a good support system of teachers and class friends to talk to and a community to be a part of  but all the same in the need of a girlfriend or a little more money!

 Now your somewhere in the near future with both or one or the other but now your off track! None of the core support and people who meant the most or had the values and structure that made you stop thinking about drug use! Yeah, you didn't have a steady girlfriend or disposable income but you had a routine, a future aspiration and some long term friends in your corner! I couldn't see it though or couldn't see the true value in the position God had put me in! Instead I allowed myself to be seduced by the appeal of the things that I didn't have! Now I'm caught up in the Downtown tourist industry and living on the edge fighting between my addiction & sobriety, with sobriety being in short supply!

Now I find myself sitting at a the famous Peters Pub! I'm conversing with some cool guys and girls in town for business! Who want to party further than what Long Island Ice Tea's and Captain & Cokes can take them! Your black and from Baltimore so with all due respect they ask you! Do you know where they can get some blow? The Latrobe projects are right up the street! This deal can net you what you want on the side and still get the drugs for your new friends! Its been three days of chasing this shit now! You started this morning broke and discussed with yourself! Barely enough money for a Egg McMuffin Coffee and a Hash brown! You need to go home and get some sleep it's 1:30 in the morning and you have to be back in to Work at 10:00 am!!! Man please!!! Just tell them you don't know anything about buying drugs, just finish your drink and go home.....