Rehab 2 (cont 4) detox

As I was finishing up detox things started to get a little better. Atleast in detox. I was still a little intimidated by the general public and had to act tough and road tested at meal time. Half way through detox a new guy came in named Chris Basko. He looked as if he was coming off a 6 month bender to me. Sure enough he had been living on the streets of LA for about 6 weeks. He slammed heroin and he some brutal stories to tell. He grew up very priveleged. He actually grew up on a boat all around the world but they always had a home in So Cal. It sounded like they had money but he had nothing good to say about his father. All the clothes he had were either stolen or taken from a dumpster. He said his shoes had been stolen off his feet two nights earlier and he hadn't been able to replace them yet. His girlfriend was supposed to be bringing him some clothes and shoes in the next few days. We were excited to see her. Chris actually looked okay, he had long, dark hair, he was real tan and looked like he was in good shape. He didn't eat a lot obviously, but he didn't look to unhealthy unless you looked into his eyes. He told us that he had gotten Hepatitis from a dirty needly about a year earlier. This was a common theme at Narco and I was nervous as hell, I didn't know a thing about Hep and everyone had it and there is no cure for it. Chris looked like a surf bum and acted like a surf bum. He was so excited to be close to the water so he could surf again. One problem, he didn't have a wet suit or a board or even a swimming suit. We quickly learned that Chris wasn't afraid to ask people to borrow stuff.
Up to that point my primary friends were Brian and Danny, although they didn't like each other much. They tolerated each other occasionally but not much. Brian was young, 18 and he could really surf. Every break he was in the water. I use to think that I was a crazy teenager until I met Brian, he was nuts. He had been drinking and smoking pot since 11 and slammed heroin at 14. Brian was from San Clemente and his dad loved to surf as well. His dad did a stint in State prison for murder and got out, got educated and started an engineering firm and made good for his family. His Dad had to surf every morning and most evenings or he was ornery Brian said, Brian was the same way. They looked like the typical surfers, pretty cool looking. You would never guess Brian was like that or even his Dad until Brian opened his mouth and you heard his language and he held back for nobody. Sad thing was Brian had a sweet, cute little girlfriend who would always visit. He of course had her slamming. She was 17, long blonde hair and looked innocent as you could ever imagine.
Danny was from Vegas and came from a very religious family. I think his dad was a preacher or something. Danny was kind of short and stocky with red hard buzzed tight to his head. Danny was not fat, he was really cut and really into his body. He was also very high strung. Danny was a hard core tweaker. He shot up every vain in his body. I think he just got a bad girlfriend and went downhill from there. He learned all about counterfieting twenty and one hunded dollar bills and that was his downfall. He worker construction until he got fired, then when he needed drugs for him and his girl he started stealing all kinds of stuff from all kinds of people, real crazy stuff. Then he decided to start to make money. He didn't dare buy drugs from a dealer with fake money so he went to a Vegas casino and bought a drink at the bar with a hundred. He got the change, left the tender a nice tip and split. It worked. He was going to mostly fastfood places to spend the money. He said he actually go turned down a couple of times, but just like" do you have anything smaller? There are some counterfeits going around". He would say nope and split. Then he said for some reason he doesn't know why he tried going to the same casino bar that he had gone to before. He ordered the drink, no prob, the tender took a little while. It started taking too long and he started getting nervous. After about two minutes he got up and started heading for the exit, then he started to run. Right after that he saw them chasing him, four of them. He made it out the door and his girl was parked right there. He just yelled as soon as he got outside "Go, go, go. Call my dad and get me out. Go. right now." She took off. They tackled him and he fought hard to get away and they kicked the shit out of him. I wondered why everyone who comes into Narco comes in looking like they had their ass kicked. He was in jail for 120 days. The judge offered him a chance to go to rehab in order to get out of the rest of his sentence. If he finished a program successfully he would just be on probation. Danny was on his best behavior. Danny was not a good athlete but he was a fast runner. he of course thought he was a great athlete. I would send him out for a pass and he could run under it forever and then he would drop it. Danny's dream was to get out of Narco and move to Page AZ. Start a boat rental, repair, detail shop. He thought he could get so rich there. Problem was he wanted to take his loser girlfriend with him. All he wanted was a simple life. A nice double wide trailer with AC, a business to pay the bills and someone to love him. That actually sounds nice. I guess if you set your site low, it's easy to attain. Danny wasn't stupid, he was a really smart kid. I liked him. he was just really preachy, always quoting scriptures to everyone and people didn't like that at all. I would tell him to be careful but he wouldn't listen to anyone, cocky guy.
One day brian, Chris B. and I went for a bike ride to Balboa. As we were riding down the boardwalk Chris noticed that the city had a cone out and had dug a huge hole in the midle of it. We got back to Narco and chris had a big plan. He said "you know Newport beach city has to have a shit load of cash. What if I was riding my bike and I fell in that hole in the middle of the boardwalk?" His plan was for us to go back at lunch time when the workers were gone, Brian or I would kick the single cone out of the way and he was going to freaking ride his bike right into the hole and hope he got hurt really badly. He was serious, he was going to get going realy fast. He looked like shit anyway, he could have just said he was in an accident an gotten away with it.
At lunch time we took off for the crash site. As we were leaving Roman started yelling "Hey, where are you guys going?" that wasn't good. Chris hadn't been at Narco long and he already couldn't stand Big Roman. Chris just yelled "We'll be right back, don't follow us you Fat F___". I knew that was going to be a problem when we got back. We had been lectured on including everyone, meaning Roman. Chris was dead serious about this bicycle wreck. He brought binoculars from the house so we could stop and scout it out. We stopped and checked out the site about 200 yards away. The workers were still working and it didn't look like they were going to stop. Brian was like, " Just ride your f-ing bike right into the middle of the hole, who gives a shit. You'll still be able to sue them". My vote was to abort mission. We didn't have a lot of time, we had to be back at the house and this could take a while. Chris came up with what I think could be the worst plan ever. For some reason, that is what we went with.
Brian and I were going to go ahead quite a ways. Chris was going to act like he was trying to hurry and catch up to us, therefore, he had to get going really fast. There were 4 guys on the work detail, one of them was just standing off to the side on the sand. The other three were kind of rotating actually performing the work. Chris was going to be speeding down the crowded as hell boardwalk, act like he couldn't see the workers, swerve at the last second to the left to avoid the hole and then swerve again because the one guy on the sand would be in his way. Just past him a property had a fence up and Chris was going to slam into that at full speed and make sure he hit his head on something hard and take his chances. We were to hear him yelling to wait, so we were supposed to stop to wait for him, thus we would be perfect witnesses. Great Plan, huh? I tried to talk them out of it. chris and Brian were all stoked about it. So I guess we were doing it.
Brian and I pedaled up ahead and sure enough we could hear Chris yelling out to us. Problem was so could the workers. Chris had a real hard time getting up the speed he needed because he was on the left side of the boardwalk, that means he was going against traffic on that side. On the boardwald it's always stay to your right. So there were strollers, joggers, roller bladers all kinds of traffic. He was still doing it. So we stop and wait for him. He got to about 50 feet from the hole and had a clear path from people moving over so he just started pedaling as hard as he could, standing up and everything, heading right for the hole. It looked so damn obvious. All the workers had stopped and were just looking at him. He acted like everything was natural and kept looking at us and telling us to wait even though we had actually stopped. He get's to the hole, swerves left, the guy in the sand moves out of the way. Once Chris hit the sand his tires sunk and he slowed way down, but the crazy son-of-a-bitch kept pedaling and slammed his freaking face into the top bar of the fence. Could be the funniest thing I have ever seen. The workers were just like, "what in the hell are you doing" They couldn't figure it out. He acted the whole thing out, slammed his face and then just rolled over like he totally piled it up into the fence. I don't think he realized that everyone had just watched him purposely run into the fence at about 5 MPH. He didn't care. We would go back and report it. then go the the doctor and then get an attorney or however that stuff works. On the way back to the house we tried to talk him out of it. But he was sueing. Brian and I were laughing so hard all the way back. When we got back Chris started making a big deal out of the accident. No one bought it. Jack finally came down to his room and told him to drop it.
All Chris got out of it was a nasty shiner and a sore shoulder, but Brian and I had a great laugh.
Peace.