Finding a crack pipe in Hollywood at one a.m. is not as easy as you might think.  Johann, Gestapo, and I drove past bands of hip-hop kids on street corners who appeared, to me, capable of providing assistance, but Gestapo dismissed each group with two words:  “Not Crips.”  He was willing to do business only with Crips.  Apparently, every young man on the boulevards of Hollywood on this particular evening belonged to the Bloods, the mortal enemies of Crips.  Gestapo declared that a Crip, such as himself, approaching a Blood to buy a crack pipe, would suffer a grave penalty.  “They will cut my heart out with a shiv.”

     What about the Crips who sold us the crack?  No, we couldn't go back to them.  “What will they think of me?  I buy crack, but I don't have a pipe to smoke it?  They will think I am stupid.  They will cut my heart out with a shiv.”

     Obviously, Gestapo had acquired a favorite English expression.  For as long as I knew Johann, we made each other laugh by summoning this phrase.  In a Key West restaurant, brandishing a steak knife, Johann declared, “Ronnie, I will cut your heart out with a shiv.”  Once during sex in a New York hotel, I muttered the phrase as best I could while lowering my mouth onto him:  “I ...ill ...ut y...r ...art ou... wi... uh ...iv.”

     Johann took charge, swiveling in his seat and getting right into Gestapo's face.  “Get me a pipe, Fred.  Or I shove this shit” -- the crack -- “up your ass.”

     “Throw it out the window!”  The suggestion came from me, prompted by exhaustion and something else:  a fantasy that Johann could elicit my love without chemical lubrication.  My use of drugs and paid-for sex had developed in recent months; one fueled the other and both seemed to be growing beyond my control.  It was a time when I ought to have been happy and satisfied and yet I was lonely, restless, and anxious.  I imagined a therapist might help me understand this contradiction, but I had been raised by stoic parents who abhorred self-examination.  I looked for a solution in romance and chance meetings.  A new life might begin in this car, with a hustler throwing precious drugs out a window on Hollywood Boulevard, acting on my impromptu command.  Johann might rescue me.  

     My companions fell quiet.  People who abuse drugs do not throw them out a window.

     But Johann surprised me.  He rolled down the window.  Earlier he had declared his indifference to drugs; perhaps he was about to prove it.  I felt a cold sweat cover the top of my head as I waited for him to act.  But Johann, who struck me as someone who never hesitated, hesitated.  I glimpsed Gestapo in the rearview mirror, his eyes fixed on Johann's clutched hand, his mouth slightly open.  We drifted down the street in silence, as if we had passed the scene of an accident and spotted bodies lying on the road.  Everything seemed grim and hopeless.  Finally, Gestapo spoke, chastened and eager to please.  “I will show you how to make a pipe!” 

     Johann closed the window.  I turned on the radio and breathed again.  I wasn't ready to be rescued.