9-Frank's Influence

Lisa was raising two kids on her own. Actually, she always managed to have a man who was making money to stay with her, pay rent, utilities, and buy groceries. Her son, Guerro, had been molested at age seven, and was confused about his sexuality. He liked to dress like a girl. He did poorly in school, even as a special ed student. I worked with Guerro using library books. He could barely read the simplest of books. I realized how truly sad his situation was.

I never got the whole story about Lisa being arrested. She went to jail for 18 months. Guerro had been dressed in a wig and dress. He made a believable girl. Lisa was waiting in the car when she said her boyfriend had gone into a liquor store and demanded the money in the cash register. The next time I saw her the story had changed. Guerro, dressed as a woman, had gone into the store with a gun, and demanded the register money. I never got the same story twice. But Lisa went away for some time. Her mother took care of the kids. I lost track of her while she was doing time.

When she got out of jail, she came by my house. We were still friends, but I held her prison time against her. Lisa hadn't seen her sister, Rosemary, since she went to jail, but she saw her when she was in jail. What a sad family this was.

Guerro quit going to school. When I next saw him, Lisa said he had lots of jobs-as in he didn't keep one job for very long, then went on to another job. He contracted HIV someplace in his relationships, which also didn't last for very long. When I last saw him, his future didn't look very bright. I didn't want to know what happened to him next.

Lisa took my little Chiweenie to be her dog. The Chiweenie, who I named "India," was due to have more housing problems when Lisa went to jail. She left the dog with her cousin, Dean, who became homeless with two dogs. He stayed with me and Frank for a couple of days, then I asked him to move on. "India" wasn't my responsibility anymore, and I didn't need another unemployed man under my roof. Frank was more than enough.

I always fed the pets at 9:15 at night. When the pets were about to finish eating, I heard what I thought was a gunshot from the neighboring apartment complex. Shortly after, a neighbor rang my doorbell and said my truck, which was parked in the street outside my home, had been hit by a passing drunk who hit my bumper, my wheel well, and bent the frame of my truck. It was totaled by the insurance company. I wasn't even driving.

Frank said he was sticking around to give me a ride in case I needed to go somewhere. What actually happened was that he was staying with me for free food, and a hot shower. He took up residency in my garage, working on projects that only he understood.

His little red truck died, and although he was a mechanic, he couldn't fix it. His father's old Cadillac was parked in his backyard and didn't need much work before he got it running. I was being chauffeured around in a Cadillac, even if I was an old one.

Frank was around my house to give me a ride if I needed one. My mother had gotten a deathbed promise out of both of us. She asked Frank to take care of me if I needed help, and she got him to promise that he would take care of me if I needed help. Frank stayed on, one night, two nights, and more to give me a ride if I needed one. The Cadillac was stolen on a drive back from the crack house on the other side of town. After that he was given a 1974 Ford pickup truck. It had a hole in the floorboard letting the smell of gas in, the seats belt didn't work, and the doors wouldn't stay closed. Riding with Frank was an experiment in danger.

Uber and Lyft filled most of my transportation needs since I was working as a writer from home. I only needed a ride to the grocery store, the pharmacy, and doctor's appointments. The trust issued me a True Link card to pay for my transportation. It was a waste to spend almost $20. to go to the convenience store to buy a $10. pack of cigarettes. So, I knew my routine was a terrible waste of transportation money, but that was the way things worked out. I always got at least two packs of cigarettes when I went.

Frank never met Jennifer, but hef took her space of irresponsibility in my house. She was given hard prison time for her baby's death. She developed mental problems because she would conduct herself as if the baby were still alive, and they were just separated by her incarceration.

When I moved from the house to an apartment, it was a good time to leave all my problem friends behind. Jennifer was in jail. Lisa was staying with a male friend since she had been released from jail. Frank had taken advantage of my good nature and was being as irresponsible as was imaginable. He didn't pay his bills. He had three or four renters that stayed in his extra bedrooms and the cottage that was attached to his garage. In the beginning, he would go home at the first of the month to collect rent from his illegal aliens. At first he did collect rent money. As time went on, the guys at his house started smoking crack, and Frank started smoking crack too. They paid him in crack instead of money. Frank had no monetary income.

I was getting my crack deliveries from a guy named D. I went through several dealers before the system worked down to a science. I would call D, and he would make a delivery in 15 minutes. He also helped me out by taking me to the store if I needed groceries. I hadn't planned to continue to do business with D after I moved, but I still craved crack. Sometimes when he came by his cousin would be in the car with him. They looked like brothers and were as close as brothers.

I'm sure it must have been some kind of drug deal gone bad. One day I had arranged for him to make a delivery. He called me from the emergency room that his cousin had been shot. An hour later he called back to tell me his cousin had died. He never got over it. His personal grooming went from impeccable to very unkempt.

One day I opened up an Internet search and found an article about D. It had his real first name, which I had only seen and never heard, was in the headlines. He shot the guy who killed his cousin. Afterwards, he dropped the gun and waited for the police to arrive.

D had a 3-year-old son. He won't be around to see his son grow up. It was murder with a reason, but it was murder plain and simple. That was the end of my crack deliveries. I hadn't been in the car with D for s while. He wouldn't have had me in the car if he knew he was going to have problems. I felt fortunate to not be involved in some way. I just knew the story.

Frank had been staying with me most of the time. He was smoking crack with his roommates, and he would all too often bring some to my house. When he offered me a loaded pipe, I couldn't refuse. I kept telling him to not bring any over, and he kept bringing it over. I needed to get Frank out of my life.

One night when we were on the phone and he was abusively drunk, he said he was going to hide in the bushes outside my house and stab me in the neck with a screwdriver. His plan was too detailed for me to think he'd just come up with it from the top of his head. He had put some time into thinking about it. He wasn't my enemy until he was too drunk and high to realize what he was doing. I told the trust a whitewashed version of what happened, and they began arrangements for me to move out of my house and into the apartment on Beachview Street, where I had lived twenty years before. The complex had been bulldozed, and new luxury apartments were constructed in their place. I visited the complex and made arrangements to move from the house to the apartment at the end of June.

I felt guilty about sending Frank back to his home, but it wasn't my fault. He made his own decisions, and his decisions were not any good when he'd been drinking beer and smoking a variety of illegal drugs. He had been drinking. He was always drinking.

As time went on, the Mexican construction laborers started doing heroin. Frank considered the Mexicans at his house his friends, and when his friends started doing heroin, he couldn't come up with the backbone to tell the guys they needed to quit or move. Frank said Hugo was either high or sick. I didn't go to Frank's house very often before there was heroin in the house, and not at all afterwards. I didn't have a reason to go. The housed was old, dirty, and depressing. The washing machine, the hot water heater, and the electricity were on the fritz. Frank was spending most of the time at my house. He didn't have to take cold showers in the winter because he was at my house, using my nice shower with plenty of hot water.

When I planned to move, I let Frank know we were finished, I didn't want to have anything to do with him anymore. We had split many times before, but I hadn't moved to get him out of my life. This time was different. I moved from the house to an apartment, and we had not been in touch.
Two weeks after I moved, I received a call from a friend Frank had known from his school days. I knew Richard because we visited at my house, and we had all been to lunch before. I didn't answer the call because I was in a Lyft on the way back from a doctor's appointment. Richard sent a short text. "Frank is dead." I received the call during midafternoon. I got the story of what happened piecemeal, from several people.

The guys had all been smoking and drinking and they were all seriously messed up. Hugo called his connection for the guy to come over and bring some heroin. The guys had been doing heroin for quite a while. They had a built-up tolerance to it. They had to get a bigger shot each time to better their high. Frank was a first-time user. He got the same sized shot as his roommates. They were content with their highs. They thought Frank had passed out and fallen asleep on his bed. The guys went back to their rooms and went to sleep. Frank didn't wake up. He had been dead from the night before. His first heroin shot killed him. He didn't even get to see death coming. He was just dead. Hed had lived out private joke ab out him waking up d3ead one morning. The truth was not at all funny. He didn't wake up.

I didn't even consider going to his house after that. I didn't go to the memorial service. His former wife had him cremated. I didn't want to see him dead. I did my own grieving at my apartment. I felt guilty about what had happened. If I hadn't sent him away, he would still be alive. This wasn't the case. Frank made his own bad decisions. He trusted people he shouldn't have trusted. He suffered a tragic end. He didn't even see death coming.

The roommates were illegal aliens, and they split as soon as they called 911. They took what possessions they could carry. There was heroin left on top of the dresser. Since Frank was dead, the guys weren't interested in getting another shot.

I told many people thus story, and none of them thought I should feel guilty about what had happened. In time I got past the guilt. Frank died because of it. Actually, he didn't suffer. He didn't a really bad decision and ended his life.

One evening a few weeks after my move, Lisa, Guerro, and Lisa's brother Walter came to visit me at my new apartment. This move was the perfect opportunity to get all the bad influences out of my life. I met them in the front of my apartment complex, and I brough them in a confusing way so that they couldn't find my apartment if I weren't with them. Lisa spilled beer on one of my rock and roll posters. I had ordered a lot of original portraits of rock and rollers from eBay and was proud of the collection I had. And Lisa spilled beer on one. You can't expect to keep anything nice with an alcoholic in your life.

Lisa told me that she always saved one beer for breakfast, because she would get the shakes along with a tremendous headache the next morning. She basically stayed drunk to get through her days. She had met Frank a time or two, and she was shocked that he died. When Lisa and the gang left my apartment that night, I commiserated my situation. I had slipped from my intention to leave the drugs, the druggies, and the drunks behind. But it wasn't too late for me to distance myself from my bad influences.

There was no more Frank. There was no Lisa in my life anymore. D was gone. I felt as if I had dodged a bullet.

Continued "6--Dementia Care" 

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