Pages 128–135
Boston at street level, Christmas Eve into Christmas morning — no year header; the book doesn't say which year. The narrator calls himself only "yrstruly," and he, C, and Poor Tony Krause (all first appearances) spend the day robbing, copping, and shooting up. The entire scene is written in yrstruly's own voice: unpunctuated, phonetically spelled, casually racist and homophobic, running on stock phrases — this is deliberate craft, like the Wardine pages (pp. 37–38), and it reads best by ear. Plain heads-up: two beatings, a near-rape mentioned in passing, and a graphic death by poisoned heroin.
Terms, in order of appearance
- yrstruly (p. 128) — "yours truly": the only name the narrator gives himself.
- crewed (p. 128) — worked together as a crew; "crewed on him" = robbed and beat him.
- wake ups (p. 128) — the morning fix; scored here by "boosting" (shoplifting).
- citizen (p. 128) — a straight civilian, a mark; "Patty" reads as Paddy.
- got over on (p. 128) — conned, put one over on.
- eat cheese (p. 129) — to inform, rat.
- map / elemonade (p. 129) — face / eliminate: "elemonade the Patty's map" = destroy his face.
- works (p. 129) — needle and injection kit.
- p-dope; skeet (p. 131) — heroin in two grades: p-dope the cheap cut stuff (sometimes "bunk," worthless), skeet the real thing.
- hot shot (p. 134) — real street term: a deliberately poisoned dose.
- Kicking The Bird (p. 135) — going through withdrawal cold.
After you read: three things
1. The euphemism system is load-bearing — decode it and the scene opens. Violence arrives pre-softened: jaws broken "for insentive not to eat no cheese," a man's flight-and-betrayal compressed to "departed for green pastures and ate cheese," every horror padded with "and everything like that." The voice's one economic thesis is dead sincere: "its' a never ending strugle its' a full time job to stay straight and there is no vacation for XMas at anytime." The voice treats addiction as logistics; the scene is its ledger.
2. The catastrophe is narrated entirely through breaches of etiquette. Poor Tony turns "white as a shit" at the first mention of Chinatown (p. 129). Dr. Wo sits down at the booth with the skeet — "it isnt' done in his comerce" — and sends Poor Tony "a thousand blisses" (p. 133). At the blower-grate, Poor Tony conspicuously fails to whine about shooting order; yrstruly gets his "cold feeling of super station" and cooks his own shot slow, letting C tie off first (p. 134). The why only surfaces mid-horror, in one buried sentence on p. 134.
3. This is the ground floor of the book's drug world — and one name rings a bell. Erdedy, Kate Gompert, and Hal use in carpeted rooms; here the same disease runs on dumpsters, pimp economics, and a dealer's smile. The crew cops from Roy Tony in the Brighton Projects playground — and pp. 37–38, the book's other dialect plunge, had a Roy Tony too, feared in those same Brighton Projects. The scene never connects them; the noticing is yours. Note also what yrstruly's mother contributes: a locked door, for two days of Kicking The Bird in her hallway.
Written only from this scene and earlier pages. Safe to read before you start.