“I want to be a cocaine dealer,” Greg said. It’s not that I asked Greg what he wanted to be when he grew up, but we were both in our twenties, and we were both working as kitchen help at Shoney’s. I had my doubts about Greg’s ideas towards career change, but I didn’t say anything to him.
The next day he didn’t show up for work. I did not attribute his disappearance to his new life as a wealthy drug dealer who was living on the beach with supermodels.
Greg did buy some cocaine, and he sold cocaine, so yeah, somehow he got his toe in the door, but he started doing more cocaine than he sold, and then he started doing crack.
He was behind on rent, bills, and he started stealing from his roommates so they kicked him out. Greg set his bed up in the yard and slept there for a few days. It was surreal to see a man in a bed in a yard but that was how it happened. Then it rained hard one day, and Greg started living under the overpass at Exit 16.
Greg would haunt the people he once knew, but he would steal anything he could. And ex-girlfriend named Susan let him stay in her parents garage, and it wasn’t a bad set up. He had a cot and access to hot and cold water, and a bathroom. Someone called Susan’s mother the next day and asked her if she was having a yard sale, and Greg had taken Susan’s mom’s belongings and was selling them in the front yard. They got there before any of the good jewelry was sold but they lost a toaster over and some smaller stuff.
So Greg was officially not living anywhere after that. None of us had anything to do with him, and he drifted away. He would come back to Valdosta, and I would see him at one of the Exits, but until I saw Susan at the Y one day, and told her I had seen him, I didn’t think twice about it. Susan sent me with her husband, Jim, who hated me and Greg both to look for Greg. We didn’t find him, but a man who will go out looking for his wife’s ex boyfriend to help him get off drugs is a damn hero in my book. That was ten years ago.
So yesterday I thought I saw Greg. No. I am sure it was him. He was at Exit 16, just like he always was.
But a few years ago his bones were found in a wooded area near I-75 and returned to his parents. Id-ed via dental.
I’m not sure what to do with this one.
Take Care,
Mike
A couple of times like twenty years ago I interviewed Jeannette Angell, whose boyfriend broke up with her by suddenly emptying their bank account and fleeing from Boston to Seattle. Jeannette wrote, among other books, Callgirl, and Madame, from her mostly positive experiences as a high class prostitute to pay for grad school. She tells a story of another girl, a lovely Asian doll, who worked with her, for their mother-like savvy boss Peach, but who became addicted to speed drugs and stole from Jeannette and from everyone, and could not stop, and no amount of caring or offered help or professional intervention could grip her up out of addiction, and of course it killed her and no-one was surprised. And the movie /Requiem for a Dream/ comes to mind. I think stories and books and movies like those, and like yours about your friend, should be in school libraries and shown in rainy day gym assemblies in high schools all over, because what else has a chance of working so a few more kids don’t try addictive drugs even once? Here’s J.A.’s website. Here work isn’t only on the subject I mention.
https://jeannetteangell.com