Jehova’s Pimpness

Terry was an ex-crack dealer and a pimp, Capricorn, aged 42 when I met
him. He had ratty and short dread-locks, was deemed "socially unfit" by
the state of California and had become my best friend after I fixed his
computer. It turned out that he lived about 100 yards from me on
O'Farrell street in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco.

His apartment was strewn with cheap and found stereo equipment,
books, bibles and, most notably, a blown up photo of him with a joyous
smile holding some 3 foot long thrashing fish that he had just pulled out
of the water. Hung over it was the actual fishing net that he had used in
the photo.

His answer to every "How are you" was "I'm blessed." "What's up?" "Heaven." After being in prison, he had started using crack and other
things, but had later been saved by some Jehova's witnesses who
would still visit him weekly.

He decided early on that he was going to watch out for me and my
girlfriend. We were young, naive, unexposed in his mind. He was right,
but he was a little bit crazy too. Good crazy.

One time, the three of us were walking to my apartment and a young
man on something was hassling us. Terry went rigid and told him to get
tha fuck on. The young man became angry and performed some flying
ninja leap in Terry's direction but...and I know this sounds physically
impossible, he turned around in midair and started running the other
way as Terry dropped into the fighting Irish stance, upturned knuckles
and everything. "I was just playin, just playin," and the kid sheepishly
wandered off.

Terry would rap over beats he would make on his computer and record
to VHS tapes on an old VCR. The sound quality was exceptional,
though the lyricism was sometimes a little off. It all came back to Jesus,
nothing wrong with that if you're into that sort of thing. The
meanderings to get there were often odd, though, like a stream of
consciousness personal revival. Maybe we all needed that at the time.

Living with Marjon, my girlfriend was somewhat trying. Between her
bringing back to the apartment guys she would meet at bars and talk
with until 2 in the morning while I was smoldering jealously in my bed or
her deciding wholeheartedly that I was a male prostitute on the down
low because I was stoned once and smiled at a guy on a bus who was
smiling at me and that I looked at people's shoes obsessively due to
skateboarding, the only conclusion was, obviously, male prostitute. Long drawn out fights about nothing, depression from apathy, bla bla bla.

Terry would say "She needs to move back in with her parents." I started
to agree with him, to some degree, but when you're young and in love
and stoned and stupid, it's hard to make clear decisions.

My father went into a diabetic coma a year and a half into that
relationship and I flew home to be with him. A week later Marjon called
me and told me she didn't want me to come back, at least not for a few
months. She had done meth and during the come down had slept with
some ratty skater kid who I had met around town.

I couldn't eat for almost a week, naturally, and my gaunt frame was
probably horrifying to Marjon when I saw her again in the city. It was in
the lobby of Terry's low-income apartment building. She was wearing a
ruddy vinyl coat and her extensions were matted. She looked skinny
too and was in the company of another girl who I had never met who
was wearing way too much make-up.

Terry made me eat. The second day I was back, we did mushrooms and
played raquetball in golden gate park. I remember when we were getting
on the bus to go there, this girl in some sort of demonic goth outfit kept
starting conversations with me. Terry looked at us and said "What, do
you want to fuck her?" She was shocked but not offended, but I
avoided her after that.

A week passed before Marjon and I started talking again. She had
started dating a crack dealer. A few days later, she was involved in a car
accident. A few days after that, the crack dealer got busted and she was
trying to raise bail for him. A few days after that, she and I were sleeping
together again. When the dealer posted bail, she informed me that he
had been doing crack and that she had been doing heroinn.

That was it for me. I quit her and the strange dream that we had shared.
I had moved to Hunter's Point, living with Tom, an older jewish man with
a hauling business called Schlepper Brothers. "Yogic, Holistic moving
services." Not only did he get the jews, he got the hippies too. We rode
around in an old pie truck that he would always say "used to have a
sweeter life." He gave me a free one bedroom apartment in the basement of his house in exchange for helping with his sustainability project.

I would travel to the Tenderloin to hang out with Terry. Somewhere
around this time, he took it upon himself to introduce me to the pimp
who worked in front of his building. This 75 year old man wore full fur,
gator shoes and a feathered hat. He was a Capricorn, like Terry
and I, so the three of us would refer to each other as "Cap."

"Capricorns are the best people in the world," he would say through his
odd arrangement of teeth. He was missing the top row from his middle
incisor going right and the bottom row from the middle incisor left. His
mouth fit perfectly closed. "I've known a lot of women in my life and they
all still talk about me. 90% good 10% bad. I slapped every one of them
bitches."

Terry just nodded and said "I know that's right."

Marjon ended up fixing her life, finishing school, etc. I never kept a
friendship with her, though she did call me a few years later asking me to
help her track down the baby's mama of a guy she was dating. I guess she figured I was internet savvy. I was living in Detroit by then and that was the solvent for whatever gelatinous pool of nostalgia that had coagulated in my lonely heart. We havn't bothered each other since.

I don't really know what happened to Terry. I think he started seeing a
woman that he had known and I think had had a child with prior to going
to prison. I heard he starting using crack again with her, the real
heartbreaker in the story. Imagine someone with so much faith that they
would ride no handed down the longest hill in San Francisco, through
red lights, yelling "God is on my side!" His smile was the purest in my
memory with all subtleties of emotion on its fringes. I think about the
fish picture, the reminder in his room of how life is supposed to be and I
think I understand why people pray. They pray for beautiful people like
you Terry.