Doc, the crackhead in the basement

The house I live in is a peach, painted-brick Victorian house built in 1900, turned into apartments in the last century.  I live on half of the second floor with my girlfriend and her cats.  The building is cold and old, yet the rent is cheap and the location (minus the crackheads and occasional ghettoness) is amazing; next to two bus stops that take me downtown to work, and all the stores of necessity are in walking distance.

I tolerate the crackheads, as I am poor and have nothing to be stolen.  And I am a man, so don’t have worries of sexual assault.  But then a crackhead moved into the basement apartment.  I didn’t think he was a crack addict at first (and still don’t know for sure), and suspected his drug of choice was heroin because of his frail and slow movement.

I came across him for the first time, a little over two months ago, as I did laundry in the basement.  He had the little studio apartment down there.  It was small and depressing with small windows to the drug-vortex alley between my house and the next, as I had seen the inside of the studio when a previous neighbor had lived there.  He came out of his room, into the narrow, white painted-brick hall and peaked his head into the open laundry room.  He was a black man of maybe fifty with grey facial hair, wearing a tan overcoat.  He seemed to stoop over and shuffle his feet when he walked.  At first I suspected him to be developmentally challenged or suffering from a stroke, as he spoke slowly and labored.  He seemed to not understand why I was down there as he looked at me.  I introduced myself and shook his hand.  He said his name was Doc.  I tried to make small talk, asking if he’s been watching the Olympics.  He said he hadn’t before repeating that he lived down there.  I felt bad, as I suspected he had no TV.

When I came back to put my clothes in the dryer, he came out of his room holding a prescription bottle, asking if he could borrow 10 dollars to fill his prescription with the incentive that he’d pay my back 15 dollars.  I said, “Sorry, I don’t have it.”

The next time he introduced himself again, and I told him that I had met him before and again tried small talk to no avail.  He asked for a quarter to use the phone.  I said no again.

The next time, he came out and asked, “Can I get a cup of sugar? I want to make some Kool-Aid, and I don’t have any sugar.”

He wanted to follow me upstairs to my place, but I had him give me his cup and brought it down to him.

He seemed mostly harmless, as he would stand about outside the door to the basement.  He seemed slow, but he had quick eyes.  His mind couldn’t remember meeting me.  Despite this, his addict brain could get his dope.

My girlfriend wasn’t so sure he was harmless, as drug addicts are hardly ever.  She was asked numerous times for money also, and she always said no.  I’d be nervous when she went down to do laundry, as she had told me he had stood outside his apartment door for a few minutes while she loaded her laundry (thinking of a story to panhandle money) before he came over with his story and asked for money.  She said no.  Always no.

Another time she went down to do her laundry, she crossed paths with his dealer leaving the basement.  She said he had held the door like a gentleman, as I imagined him like a 70′s style pimp from a black exploitation movie.  I would later cross the dealers path.  He was a black man of twenty-five, in expensive designer-ghetto fashion of chic jeans and letterman-like sports jacket.  A modern drug dealer.  Doc was silent in his studio while I did my laundry.

My early-twenties upstairs neighbors weren’t so smart with Doc.  Sitting at my computer one day, I saw Doc and my neighbor’s girlfriend coming up the outside stairs; Doc was helping her carry her bike up the stairs.  And then he said something and she took out her wallet and gave him some change.  I would see Doc come up the stairs to their apartment many times.  Sometimes four time in an hour.  I felt bad for them.

My girlfriend and I had talked about him; compared notes and came to a tentative resolution that it sucked having a panhandling drug addict in the basement, but he needed a place to live.  We all do.

Then it was the first of the month.  My girlfriend went to get her laundry from the dryer.  When she came upstairs she was agitated a moment, telling me about how smoky it was in the basement before she began to cough.  Her coughing became worse before she went into the bathroom where she began to have an asthma attack before she puked.  I was worried.  She told me that the basement was filled with smoke and that it smelled like bleach.  She couldn’t get the taste out of her mouth.  After she came out of the bathroom, she couldn’t sit down and stood agitated.  She said she felt weird, complained of the taste stuck in her nostrils, shook her head and got the chills.  I got her a glass of water.  She couldn’t sit down.  She said that he had come out his room and looked at her before mumbling “hi” and going back into his studio.  There was someone else in the studio with him.  She heard laughter.  He didn’t ask for money because he had what he needed.  I looked at her pupils and they were larger than normal.  We came to the realization he was smoking a shit load of crack, and because the vent coming from the studio to the rest of the basement wasn’t sealed, and near a foot in a diameter, the smoke filled the basement.

I felt angry, like I should go down there.  But I don’t trust crack.  Or know karate.  I bought a bottle of Gin and we got drunk.

Now I felt bad to do this, but I had to tell my landlady.  My girlfriend hadn’t puked since she was nine years old.  And still felt weird the next day and could still taste the smoke.  You know, if you’re going to be a drug addict that’s one thing.  But if you’re going to smoke so much crack you get someone else sick, that’s another.

The next day when I dropped off my rent, I told my landlady about his panhandling, which we didn’t mind so much, and how he may have been smoking crack and my girlfriend had ingested second hand crack smoke and became sick.  I told her I wasn’t sure, but that she said it smelt like bleach.  I told her I felt bad because everyone needs a place to live.

My landlady wished I would have told her about the panhandling before.  She said, “I once got a contact high from pot, and came home and ate the whole ‘frigerator.  You know what that would smell like, right?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“But if he’s gonna be smoking bad shit.” She said before telling me she would call his social worker on Monday.  That he was on disability and that she had thought he would be good down there because it was out of the way.

This Monday, a little over a week since the incident, I went down to do my laundry with some trepidation.  I didn’t stress over it, as I didn’t want it to be stressful.  I brought my phone in case.  I had a paranoid fantasy of a confrontation where he had me pinned in the basement, blocking my way out, mad and possibly armed.  I dismissed this and went down without a word of worry to my girlfriend.  The towel he normally had under his door was gone.  The vent from his studio into the rest of the basement had been sealed so that no light or air from within his studio would go into the basement’s laundry room area.  It seemed like he had been evicted.  We hadn’t seen him outside the basement doorway or in the alley or by the payphone.  He’d always be standing around as if waiting for a dealer or a handout or an opportunity to get the means to get high.  We figured his social worker would get him into another place.

Update: He actually wasn’t evicted, which I’m glad. He now panhandles by the 7-11 on 11th and Ogden. He hangs in the shade right by the natural gas tanks that are enclosed in metal. And he wears a yellow-flannel shirt and a white ball cap. He must smoke crack somewhere else, or just not hotbox it as he had. My girlfriend and I had both seen him outside the basement door, and said ‘hi.’ He said ‘hi.’ He seemed more alert. Possibly clean, but I see him panhandling so probably not. He leaves us alone while we do laundry now. His presence cannot be detected in the basement.