Kasher In The Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16 by Moshe Kasher
Authors: Moshe Kasher
Ads: Link
thirty-five-year-old friend. Lucky. Mikey was awesome. He bought us cigarettes and booze and pornography and we hiked back to his place and smoked and drank and jerked off and made Top Ramen and punched the walls in. “Punch the fuckin’ walls in!” we’d scream.
Okay, relax. I know how it sounds, but it wasn’t like that. Mikey was one of us. It wasn’t an Old Man Don situation.
Now, Old Man Don owned an antique shop in town with an open-door policy: if you were young and broke, Don showed you
his
antique and you made some money the old-fashioned way. And no, I’m not into antiques.
No, Mikey was one of us, nothing creepy. Yeah, he was thirty-five, but he was cool.
More important, though, he offered us a better option than participating in the thirteen-year-old/bum-barter economy. Usually, if you’re thirteen and need to get drunk, you have only a few options: find a crooked store; ask a crooked man; or take your crooked ass into the booze aisle and steal some shit. The crooked stores were the hardest to find. Fines and piety kept most of the local liquor stores out of reach.
The next thing to do was find a bum. Bums like smoking crack.Yes, all of them. Crack, however, costs money that they don’t have, because the bum industry is one of the worst-paying on the market. That’s where we came in. For a five-dollar tip, we were able to get drunk, and the bums were able to smoke rocks. It was a good system; everybody got paid, so to speak. That is, until we met Little Mikey Rip-It-Up and threw the entire bum/kid economy to the wolves.
We were not the first to find Mikey. His place was constantly inundated with people eager to partake of the warmth of the church’s secret shelter. A steady cast of characters came in and out of Mikey’s place. Mikey and his flophouse attracted every strange hobo and street urchin in town. In his small way, Little Mikey Rip-It-Up was the ambassador of College Avenue, an ambassador representing only the cream of the crap.
At Mikey’s, we met guys like Leotis, an older black guy who lived mysteriously, like a Jack London character, in a tent in Tilden Park. I suppose technically that made him just a homeless person, but to us, he was an urban buccaneer. He even looked a bit like a buccaneer, with his trademark thin red ascot wrapped around his neck, cutting through his black skin like a wound. Surprisingly, he always wore a crisp white dress shirt that sparkled whiteness in defiance of the woodsy home from which it emerged.
Leotis had an aura that made him seem like the wisest man who had ever lived. In retrospect, the wisest man who ever lived can probably afford walls.
“The thing y’all don’t know about… is life itself,” Leotis explained as we listened with rapt enthusiasm. “I been hustling for forty years.”
“Please,” I thought, “teach me how to hustle.” I could, at thattime, only dream of a life spent living in municipal parks in a ten-dollar tent.
A street philosopher, Leotis loved to pontificate. I imagine in the Middle Ages, he would have rambled into town in a great silken wagon, addled with trinkets and baubles, and the town would gather around, to hear him dazzle with charisma.
“The thing thou dost not knoweth about, is life itself!”
“Huzzah!” the people would scream back. “Huzzah for Lord Leotis!”
But flash-forward two thousand years to 1992, and Leotis was simply a creep who lived in a park.
Leotis always hustled but he never hustled alone. His main partner in crime was Shane.
Shane was about twenty-five when we met him, his cheeks already puffy and swollen from years of alcohol abuse. He always had the perfect amount of stubble, too. Not perfect as in: Hollywood-chic, but perfect as in: Yes, in fact I do drink beer with cigarette butts in it—what of it?
Shane was funny and liked us and would tell us about how to get by and make some quick cash if you needed it.
He taught us about Carlo Rossi. “Carlo Rossi is the best wine
Okay, relax. I know how it sounds, but it wasn’t like that. Mikey was one of us. It wasn’t an Old Man Don situation.
Now, Old Man Don owned an antique shop in town with an open-door policy: if you were young and broke, Don showed you
his
antique and you made some money the old-fashioned way. And no, I’m not into antiques.
No, Mikey was one of us, nothing creepy. Yeah, he was thirty-five, but he was cool.
More important, though, he offered us a better option than participating in the thirteen-year-old/bum-barter economy. Usually, if you’re thirteen and need to get drunk, you have only a few options: find a crooked store; ask a crooked man; or take your crooked ass into the booze aisle and steal some shit. The crooked stores were the hardest to find. Fines and piety kept most of the local liquor stores out of reach.
The next thing to do was find a bum. Bums like smoking crack.Yes, all of them. Crack, however, costs money that they don’t have, because the bum industry is one of the worst-paying on the market. That’s where we came in. For a five-dollar tip, we were able to get drunk, and the bums were able to smoke rocks. It was a good system; everybody got paid, so to speak. That is, until we met Little Mikey Rip-It-Up and threw the entire bum/kid economy to the wolves.
We were not the first to find Mikey. His place was constantly inundated with people eager to partake of the warmth of the church’s secret shelter. A steady cast of characters came in and out of Mikey’s place. Mikey and his flophouse attracted every strange hobo and street urchin in town. In his small way, Little Mikey Rip-It-Up was the ambassador of College Avenue, an ambassador representing only the cream of the crap.
At Mikey’s, we met guys like Leotis, an older black guy who lived mysteriously, like a Jack London character, in a tent in Tilden Park. I suppose technically that made him just a homeless person, but to us, he was an urban buccaneer. He even looked a bit like a buccaneer, with his trademark thin red ascot wrapped around his neck, cutting through his black skin like a wound. Surprisingly, he always wore a crisp white dress shirt that sparkled whiteness in defiance of the woodsy home from which it emerged.
Leotis had an aura that made him seem like the wisest man who had ever lived. In retrospect, the wisest man who ever lived can probably afford walls.
“The thing y’all don’t know about… is life itself,” Leotis explained as we listened with rapt enthusiasm. “I been hustling for forty years.”
“Please,” I thought, “teach me how to hustle.” I could, at thattime, only dream of a life spent living in municipal parks in a ten-dollar tent.
A street philosopher, Leotis loved to pontificate. I imagine in the Middle Ages, he would have rambled into town in a great silken wagon, addled with trinkets and baubles, and the town would gather around, to hear him dazzle with charisma.
“The thing thou dost not knoweth about, is life itself!”
“Huzzah!” the people would scream back. “Huzzah for Lord Leotis!”
But flash-forward two thousand years to 1992, and Leotis was simply a creep who lived in a park.
Leotis always hustled but he never hustled alone. His main partner in crime was Shane.
Shane was about twenty-five when we met him, his cheeks already puffy and swollen from years of alcohol abuse. He always had the perfect amount of stubble, too. Not perfect as in: Hollywood-chic, but perfect as in: Yes, in fact I do drink beer with cigarette butts in it—what of it?
Shane was funny and liked us and would tell us about how to get by and make some quick cash if you needed it.
He taught us about Carlo Rossi. “Carlo Rossi is the best wine
Similar Books
