A Mirror of Before and After - CHAPTER III
By Frank Moore circa 1970s
I wanted to scream. Moe, why are you doing this to yourself? How did you get yourself into this mess? Get out of this … Get out of here! Beat it! Run like the clothes you sell are filled with heroin and all of your “friends” are undercover narcs, run like the cops are coming to arrest you! Run! Ride out of here on your bike. That is why I came here … to take you back. But you have gotten yourself into this mess, into this store with clothes and hollow giant candles filled with millions of dollars of smack. But you wouldn’t come, you stubborn motherfucker! Why wouldn’t you? But now it’s too late. You’ve got to leave right now, leaving me here in the store to face the pigs, the male nurses in white who like to hit people, and the rest of their monster crew. I am no backstage cowboy. I will maintain. I will give you time to get out of the city. But go now!
I always have wondered what the cops would do if they caught me. Well, this will blow their minds: a cripple on a ton of dope. I will piss when they lift me into the squad car. I will outsmart them. Better yet, safer too, I’ll play crazy, the idiot. They will never know that I’m on acid. Okay, give me the water. It’ll be a long time before they will give me any. But then go. Why won’t you go?
That was the one trip when I was glad that I couldn’t move about because I wanted to kick the balls of every pimple-faced, greasy-haired “informer” and “bully cop” who turned out to be just buyers of hash pipes.
But the love between Moe and me was real. The store, even without the imagined heroin, which now seems absurd, was really a prison for Moe. Moreover, I was powerless to release Moe because he was unwilling to release himself.