The terminal "Out There": the street-addict's day and the hotshot death

texture · 24-25 Dec YDPAH

• When: Christmas Eve-Day, 24-25 December YDPAH (the year before YDAU)
• What: The disease at its terminal, unrecovered floor — the "Out There" the White Flag Crocodiles invoke in ‘Nam-like tones (event 10). yrstruly, C, and Poor Tony spend a Christmas crewing (robbing) citizens to cop, C torturing a legless drunk, the trio finally burned by Dr. Wo, whose three bundles are all laced Hotshots: C boots up, screams, hemorrhages, and dies for keeps on a Copley Square blowergrate, dumped in a library dumpster. The refrain "a never ending strugle" is the addict-day's whole ethic; the scene supplies the raw underworld the recovery arc answers to (the same Poor Tony withdraws in event 6; Roy Tony, the Brighton dealer here, shares a name with the hug-enforcer later met clean in NA — the identity crux is held open at event 13).