Repeat, Repeat, Repeat

I’m sifting through a pile of audio I’ve collected over the past couple of years for the film I’m working on.

Right now I’m listening to a bunch of drug stories.

They are nearly impossible to form into any sort of narrative. They ramble.

Every drug story is basically the same. It begins when the person runs out of drugs and absolutely positively has to get some more. The person then engages in some hapless activity or activities that inevitably meet four criteria:

1). illegal.
2). humiliating or debasing.
3). absolutely moronic.
4). dangerous.

Once this is done, they have enough money to cop and get them through until at least the afternoon, maybe even the next day.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Daily cycle.

The stories are always delightfully absurd…at least to someone whose been there and doesn’t find it even necessary to suspend disbelief…but they don’t make for good narrative because they never really end. They just repeat over and over and over again.

And while that existence is really very fundamentally linear, the narration rambles. You would think that after endless repetition an addict would get it down to a system, but addicts are sort pathologically incapable of linear, logical behavior. If they were, there’s a good chance they wouldn’t be addicts.

They also ramble because they really have no beginning and they really have no end. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Here’s a typical story. This girl is living in her rundown apartment with her sort of boyfriend. Her ex fiance (it wasn’t so long ago she had it going on; it wasn’t so long ago the ex fiance had it going on) shows up in a truck he stole from his brother-in-law, kicks in the door, breaks all the windows and beats everybody up. Then he leaves. The cops are on their way. The girl has managed to misplace an eightball and the sort of boyfriend is absconding from parole so they flee to the first place they can think of: their dealer, who lives in a motel near Dodger Stadium. The dealer is sympathetic to their story and replaces her eightball, free of charge.

The fiance knows he’ll find them at the dealers and shows up at the motel soon after. He’s not sure which room the girl, her parolee boyfriend who now has several broken ribs and is covered in blood, the dealer, and their Armenian hooker friend Kiki are all staying in so he starts pounding on all the doors. When he started heading to the motel he intended only to do more beating. Then he realized that they were with the dealer. He changed his mind about beating people up. He just wants some crack.

The dealer decides he is going to kill him and a tense scene occurs in the parking lot with the dealer holding a gun to the ex fiance’s head. Even though he has a gun to his head and is driving a stolen car the ex-fiance won’t leave until someone gives him some crack. Once he gets the crack he drives off.

Half an hour later he returns and pounds on the girl’s door. He wants to smoke some crack with her and with her sort of boyfriend who he beat half to death a couple of hours earlier. She thinks this is a bad idea. A fight ensues.

The manager of the motel never sleeps and is watching all of this unfold on the many security camera monitors. He never calls the cops. Having cops around is bad for business. The ex fiance gets more crack and he heads back to Orange County in the truck he stole from his brother-in-law.

Repeat Repeat Repeat.

This is actually kind of an explosive story. It begins loudly enough in what was only months ago a nice apartment in what still is a nice apartment complex in Los Feliz. The neighbors probably aren’t used to this sort of stuff and don’t really know what to do. They are yuppies who have mid-level jobs in show biz. They also don’t know what to do when the girl, her absconding-from-parole sort-of boyfriend, the dealer, who has somehow managed to break his leg, and Kiki the Armenian hooker all move back in a few weeks later, even though the place has no windows and no door. Surely they suspect something is amiss and maybe even are bothered by it ’cause it’s probably fucking with their yuppie tranquility.

Maybe they decide it might be good material for a screenplay.

Then there’s the business in the parking lot of the stadium way: a cracked out maniac pulling up in a stolen truck (what other kind of truck could it be besides stolen?) and starts pounding on everyone’s doors. It’s 4 in the morning but no cops are called. Then there’s the business with the guy having a gun to his head. That’s followed by the business of the guy returning in the stolen truck and banging on more doors. Still, no cops are called.

Bad for business.

Cops were called to the first scene, and presumably arrived to find an empty apartment in shambles with the windows smashed and the door kicked in…obviously a drug scene (I’d been in that apartment. Trust me. It was a drug scene). Maybe they even found the misplaced eightball. But no cop did a “note to self: Keep an eye on this place”…

Repeat Repeat Repeat.

There’s a secondary cast of characters who all do their best to try and ignore the obvious. Example: the brother-in-law in Orange County. The ex fiance had been doing really well and was a successful guy and then in the course of a year tops, everything goes down the toilet. And he looses about 60 lbs. And he is agitated all the time. And he doesn’t sleep for days on end. And stuff is always being stolen. “Gee, what do you think is wrong with Jerry?” “I think he’s upset over the breakup.” “Maybe there’s a job for him on your construction site” Brother-in-law gives the guy a construction job. Week goes by. One day the guy doesn’t show up for work. That same day a bunch of tools are discovered missing from the job site. Guy shows up 4 days later looking like he’s been on a crack binge. Repeat Repeat Repeat. “Gee it must be those crackheads” Read: “Those OTHER crackheads. The imaginary ones. Not my wife’s little brother who denies he’s a crackhead”.

The ex fiance sells the truck for crack. The brother-in-law reluctantly fires him. Eventually he hires him back.

Repeat Repeat Repeat.

The lady behind me in line at the corner market had two black eyes. There was a really cute white rasta girl at the lavanderia. I think she’s new to the neighborhood. I just did my almost daily run around the reservoir. I will be clean 11 years on April Fools Day. I am now going to listen to more crackhead stories and see how I might edit this audio into something with narrative. I’m glad I only need to listen.