Everyone else froze as he ranted and made vague threats of violence. One night I mocked Michael and his asinine accusations. “Night of the Living Baseheads,” by Public Enemy, captures the mood well.
All sorts of narratives become real to you. You see, as the rocks dwindle and you know you’re going to run out, dread and fear, blended with paranoia and psychosis, kick in. When he lit up, Michael would accuse the people who always seemed to be at his place of using an invisible fishing line to “fish” the rocks out of his glass pipe. I always found “the comedown” a seriously lacking description for that gut-wrenching depression. It might be funny to a person who’s never suffered the depths of addiction, but it’s incredibly painful and torturous for the person trapped in the brutal grind of addiction. That’s most likely what you’re seeing whenever you’re in a rough neighborhood and you spot a “homeless crackhead” searching the ground.
#Funny things crackheads say crack#
Crack will eventually have you on the floor searching in vain for anything that looks remotely white and crack-like. Michael Rages would turn psychotic after a few hours of smoking crack. There weren’t going to be any more details. “Oh, they forced me against my will when I was a kid they held me down and they …” He trailed off, but I got the drift. Always curious about people, I once asked Michael Rages, “What happened to you?” He came straight over to us.īut at least it wasn’t butt crack and bending over. He had large, piercing light-brown eyes that scanned the room. He was hard to miss: 6-foot-3 with dark black skin. Michael Rages walked in and Travis pointed him out. This was 1994, before everyone was online. There were fringe types, pool hustlers, Stanford students and the occasional parolee. You know, the types who had a certain bar stool that was theirs.īack then, people still did lines in the bathroom on dirty toilet tops, and meth heads had found the sweet spot where the alcohol had them relaxed, the speed had them sharp and the combo was good for a game of pool. Back then, there were still working-class and Supplementary Security Income drunks sitting at the main bar. One night Travis and I were in the Nuthouse bar, one of the few dirty bars left in Palo Alto. I would learn that on my own, like most things in life. Travis didn’t mention what Michael wanted in return. He made a whispered allusion to Michael having the best rocks, by which I mean crack, and of being generous with it. I first heard about Michael Rages from my best friend, Travis.