Pure as the Driven Snow

The sweat of my own futility drizzles down my back, cold. I'm lost in a weakness with no strength to shake it. Compelled back to familiar places as they continue to haunt my dreams, I unceasingly gnaw at this material like a nervous tic.

1990. I am heading down Providence in Delaware County, to where it intersects with Edgemont and I-95. The nexus of my pleasure, the gates of hell. Here, the Widener University campus on the western edge of the interstate represents safety and severe need. (Somewhat ironically, the rehab joint I ended up visiting to dry out from my wetter, more socially/legally acceptable proclivities some 15 years later also makes its home here, just up the street.) On this side of the highway I blend in as a milquetoast suburbanite, albeit one quaking with an endorphin thirst the likes of which only Bolivian withdrawal can induce. To the East, over the narrow bridges providing passage across the freeway's River Styx, lies Dante's Inferno.

For years those bridges represented a barrier I'd not dare cross, relying instead on an emissary in the form of my "pharmacist broker"/Sherpa to conduct these oh-so necessary transactions (for a hefty fee, naturally). Need and circumstance, though, eventually demanded that I show my face in person. It was a risky proposition, one that provided no guarantee of reward even if I didn't get robbed or arrested for my troubles (I narrowly averted both concerns on more than one occasion). These few blocks of misery and medicine did not compare to the North Philly badlands, but they were at least as scary to me because I was making the climb on my own. (I never visited the badlands without my Tenzing Norgay along for the ride to handle the currency/goods exchange.)

My dip into the underworld became routine, so much that I could navigate it round trip blind (on many occasions I effectively proved this out). Sometimes I had to make back-to-back runs in rapid succession, if I happened to get cheated the first time round. After all, there was little chance for taste tests on-scene to validate my purchase and the merchants weren't exactly registered with the better business bureau.

The premise was simple: hop into the Samurai and point it south down route 252 from my Media apartment, continuing on Providence as it became route 320 south and then the rest of the way to the Days Inn parking lot at the aforementioned nexus of pleasure. Six miles, ten minutes. Sometimes it seemed like a journey of days going down.

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The Days Inn lot is where I'd wait for my Sherpa during the early years as he scaled the mountain top on my behalf and (sometimes) returned with the reward. Occasionally, he'd return with nothing and sometimes he wouldn't return at all. Later it became the spot where I'd park briefly to muster my inner guile for the push to the summit alone. Sort of a base camp, as it were. I remember this clearly, though I was rarely clearheaded, even on the first run of the evening (several hours of consumed liquid courage coursing through my blood stream was the norm). There were a couple of roads running over the interstate and into the snake pit, the most obvious being Edgemont/352. I preferred the road less traveled, Upland (plus I enjoyed its double entendre-laced moniker).

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The boys would come running by the time my jeep crossed over Rose just east of the interstate. I'd ignore them and swing left onto 10th Street where I was assured of two or three entrepreneurs knocking on my windows on either side of the vehicle. This was where the risk of robbery was at its height: they could just as easily be shoving a gun into my face as a fistful of powdered pleasure. I never did see a weapon but often got a lot of pounding on the hood and shouts of "gimme your money, motherfucker." I never gave in until I had the goods. And then my window'd go up and I was off again, less than ten-seconds ticking by to complete the transaction. It certainly wasn't uncommon for the merchandise to be worthless (100% talcum powder or some other cutting agent). When that happened, I'd immediately make another run down. Sometimes I'd drive back to base camp and check it out to avoid having to traverse the whole way round from the apartment again but was usually too paranoid to risk prolonged exposure in public carrying what was presumably - hopefully - a controlled substance.

There were a few times when the boys would suddenly stop and move as one away from my car. Cops in the belfry. My mind would race, quickly running through a rehearsal of the "lost looking for the I-95 on-ramp" routine I'd planned to blurt out should I get pulled over. But it never happened. A patrol car even drove right by me on one occasion. I can't believe they didn't hit the lights and put me through the ringer. A white boy in a blue Suzuki Samurai on the east side of the freeway: I would have pulled me over. Perhaps they didn't want to deal with the paperwork (they knew I hadn't yet scored since they had to have seen the dealers scatter prior to reaching my window). The scariest moments for me were when I had my prize and was driving the four or five blocks to the I-95 north on-ramp, my passage to freedom. Not that I wasn't still filled with terror all the way back to Media, or that I wasn't nervous about the quality of my purchase and the thought of having to do it all over again. But the sickening feeling was concentrated with the spotlight shining on felonious Freddy here in the soft-top mini-Jeep cruising the wrong side of I-95. All these things reverberated through my mind seemingly at once. But never did I pause to ponder that the whole fucking trip (not to mention the addiction driving it) was plain madness. Which itself was crazy, especially for someone as prone to excessive introspection as I was and am.

This journey I made on a dozen or so occasions between 1990 and 1992 had its foundation in adrenaline and delusion, addiction and anticipation. Thoughtlessness in its most crystalized form. Instinct as pure as the driven snow I was driving toward but never found. Purity is an elusive state for most things in life and in particular when what you're hunting is pharmaceutical-based happiness. I stumbled closest to purity by happenstance, but it was inert: talcum, aspirin, or other like manner of subterfuge. Not the kind I had in mind.

I often think of the large circle I made driving from Media to Chester, surrounding the smaller, inner circle summiting the mountain from Days Inn to Upland. Vicious circles. Dante needs to up the ante a few notches. In some sense I'm still spinning 'round and 'round trying to break free.