The User That Didn’t
In Good Will Hunting there is a scene, where the boys are messing around and being boys from Southie. And I remembered, just for a second, Johnny from H Street. In Southie (South Boston, not to be confused with the South End of Boston) the letter streets were rough. When my Grams was coming up, the letter streets were hard core Irish. Then the neighborhood had an influx of black families. There were times when you didn’t go into Southie. For any reason. Well, except for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. On all other days those streets were war torn.
These days, the Irish and blacks have learned to live peaceably and the L Street Tavern is a great place to watch the Red Sox win the World Series. The edging letter streets are bleeding with yuppies and recent college graduates as the lure of space and cheap rent help them overcome their fear of the bad part of town. Coffee shops and conveniences are popping up along Broadway. Some of the projects were torn down and high price condos were put up. Waterfront property is always worth the risk.
There still remains a segment of the old school Irish. Johnny was one of them. He was black Irish with an accent and attitude. He was my bit of rough. But he was all the things wrong that are still wrong about the wrong side of the track. He had a habit. He had his war stories which entailed the usual: gangs, drugs, sex. He swore he was clean, not that it mattered to me as I certainly was not, but he was adamant, and insisted on telling me, that he was clean. About a week into the relationship Johnny was asking about when I went out and partied. The questions were couched in the words and terms of a user.
Several weeks into the relationship he was asking more specifics, you know the names and numbers, cost. Little things like that, but he was most certainly not a user. Obviously he wanted to stay relevant and needed to know market price for an 8 ball. We were only together for a few more weeks during which he bought from my brother, even though Johnny totally didn’t use.
I can’t really remember what we did when we were together. I can remember how it ended. The weekend I had my wisdom teeth out he called. I could barely speak and he wanted to have a long conversation. When I pointed out that I had a mouth full of cotton and was messed up he got mad at me for being too busy. I told him that I was too tired to deal with his issues. Johnny took that as a break-up speech, which I suppose it was. I never heard from him again, but the way I see it, he was just an addict waiting for a relapse.