Sage

I believe the reason I know Sage is because Chris brought her to my house. Apparently she had been there a couple of times previously, but I had gotten no sense of her personally, and hardly noticed yet another attractive high-strung drug-seeking chick hanging around the house to see someone or another.

One day I had engaged plumbers to work on the bathrooms, a woman arrived with them. She was the plumber’s helper GF of the actual licensed plumber, and she had the spookiest, craziest, most expressive eyes I had ever seen. Arresting is how I think of her gaze, as if she was laughing and wired and crazy all at once! I couldn’t look away when she looked at me, and she didn’t look away. She stared at me and followed my gaze, exactly like a cat.

I don’t remember the exact sequence of events, but a couple of days later I was climbing naked all over the bed with this plumbers helper stoned junkie crack ho, puffing with her and flirting and finagling for her to get high, take care of me, and make the world a better place. Sage came through, though I don’t remember most of the details. Because she wasn’t from Backpage, I never made an actual engagement ahead of time with her, settling instead for the simultaneous accidents of her presence and mood along with the secondary issues of who else was in the house and how much cocaine was there to smoke? Anyone have any cash? What’s in the fridge to drink? Is anyone hungry? Do I have an Android charger?

When the time was right a deal was inevitably struck. I remember not especially enjoying the flavor and scent of her intimate areas, but kept in mind she’s a homeless plumber’s helper junkie crack ho, and that we were mostly working on staging a topless blowjob while puffing, and Sage was as good as any other girl right then, talkative, happy, high, tweaking. She wrote in sharpie on my mirror, “Sage was here, {heart}.” This was the first kitty who had pissed on the bushes in such a way, left a message, laid a claim. I remember the inscription because two nights later Dení inscribed the opposite upper corner of the mirror, “Dení, who will always be here! {Heart, heart…}” Two chicks, physically and demographically close, laying claims.

Eighteen hours later, those same two chicks were physically fighting, fists up; fast, poorly aimed punches were thrown and dodged, and I shit you not, these two cartoon character chickies, dressed in their Day-Glo thongs, one pink and one green, with one roughly torn tank top between them (that’s three artfully and hotly exposed nipples, if you’re counting) the early Spring 10:00 am morning sunshine fist fighting on my deck, while loud words were screeched about a syringe on the deck, asking whether Janessa had OD’d [she was unconscious on the floor in the laundry room with her pocketbook open with a some small currency bills clearly visible when Sage arrived], and who was trying to steal money from whom (which was the immediate cause for this scuffle) while my paranoid upstairs neighbor chicky used her phone to shoot live video through her bedroom window overlooking the deck, and broadcast the entire hubbub WWF-style live on Snapchat for my landlord to see. I don’t believe there were direct repercussions from that event, but I’ll admit I might not remember. I’d be gone from that apartment within a few months.

the poor girl was held together by an alarming metal zipper of staples, mechanically chattered along an angry looking foot-long-plus incision that snaked diagonally up her belly

Sage was a wild woman, especially under the influence of drugs. I believe she was always impaired when I was in her presence. She did heroin as well as up. She was another junkie crack ho who seemed to smoke cocaine to give her the energy to seek out and acquire her down. The head from heroin allowed her to be a whore and suck dick and fuck random-ass guys to make ends meet.

It’s worthwhile to note here, that the head from heroin also makes people unable to handle their affairs, their lives. Whenever drugs, cash, and prostitution intersect, you’ll find people, especially hos, who can’t make their money work. Fellatio is an expensive habit, and servicing that habit brings cash, but it’s nothing compared to the price of heroin. A true junkie crack ho can’t support herself on one dick (certainly risks killing the host!). And her heroin habit is a malevolent visitor who robs her whenever she’s ahead by a nickel. It’s robbed me. Maybe I’ll say her habit taught me something, allowed me to learn. A gift can become a robbery, and vice versa. This will mean something completely different in the morning. Heroin addiction repeatedly cuts the beating heart out of any loved ones, out of any bystanders, out of its own bleeding host.

The last time I saw Sage, my roommate wanted nothing to do with her and did not want her in the house. I had brought her into my bedroom through the glass door to smoke some puffs, and then we stepped back out onto the deck, so I could tell her not to come over any more. At the time she had just gotten out of the hospital after a serious car wreck, which among other comorbidities required her spleen be removed. I got an immediate ice-cold chill when she lifted her hoodie and tank top to show me; it looked like something out of Frankenstein, or Frida Kahlo. The poor girl was held together in front by an angry metal zipper of staples, mechanically chattered along an alarming foot-long-plus incision, that snaked diagonally up her belly and across under her ribcage, barely held together by those angry metal teeth. I found myself looking into her body, where the skin wasn’t sealed under the staples, and the viscid pink tissue underneath shown through. To see this girl so wounded and violently traumatized tore my heart and soul apart—she’d embodied my metaphor for her. I realized with a heavy shuddering chill this over-the-top physical violence had just happened in the last day or two.

But look here, at the same time she was so piteously torn apart and injured, she was also hustling and scheming; making a play. Maybe she would call me later, when my roommate was asleep, if her phone was still on, she had to pay the bill, and she needed a ride up north to get her boyfriend’s truck where everything she owned was stored, including my 3 iPods. She had become an altogether unpleasant person to be around. I’ve not seen her since, though I heard she had been sent back to jail. I hope she gets help. It won’t be from me. She stole those three iPods and an iPhone (which she gave back, but just the phone), earbuds and various headphones from me over the short time I knew her, as well as crack pipes, chore, pot grinders, doo dads, a vape pipe, a pair of Nike slippers, change from the store.

Sage cuts the skin on her arms, which scars over and heals; she hustles, abuses drugs, she’s a sex worker, and seems to be living out a death wish. Her characteristic presentation is staring and quaking, with Beelzebub’s twisted grin, like a deer in headlights, giving no indication of her actual thoughts, feelings, or plans, just wild ass eyes saying yes to anything that will get her through the next four hours or four days of her life. That was her signature geek. [I’ve learned she spent some time in county jail since this action I’m describing took place. I believe she might be out by now, I don’t think the charges were serious.]

Sage was also another of the stoned junkie crack hos who resorted to benzos when they couldn’t get their preferred medication. Every one of those hos would go loopy insane after a couple Zanibars, or those vicious light green Klonapin 3’s, especially if they also drank some Frank’s Extra Hard Cider, or a couple of Natty Daddy’s. Good God, the mayhem they would unleash. And add Neurontin by the handful, good gawwwwd!

My last memory of Sage is her picking up her bags, getting up from my deck and walking away from the house. Her ride had parked in the lot at Shaw’s down the street; she had to get over there. Just before that, I told her she couldn’t come to my house anymore. We both knew I was lying. If she asked, I would let her back in. She knew that. She wouldn’t be back, because I was moving away, and with that I would conveniently never be forced to say no to my dear and damaged Sage. Pray for Sage.