<B>Buddy Kold </B>
<br>
Buddy Kold (sskin@bway.net) is editor of Sensitive Skin, a slick
little magazine that strikes to the heart of the NYC-below-14th lit
scene.
THE FINAL SOLUTION
Enough time has passed for me to make my confession. It all began as I
handed the bum a cigarette. There are a lot of bums in New York, too many,
especially downtown where I live, and they're always asking for money. I
never give them any, unless they're really in a bad way and the only way you
can help is to give them a quarter so they can get the shakes off. But like I
said, I usually don't give them money, certainly not the younger ones who
look fit and could obviously earn a living if they wanted to. The way I
look at it, if I were ever down-and-out I would steal before I would beg,
take what I
needed rather than depending on handouts. If you're not going to be a part of
society you might as well be an outlaw. So I never give them money. I do
give them cigarettes - I'll give an extra cigarette to anyone who needs one -
and it's pretty obvious that these guys need one, the way you see them all the
time picking burnt, flattened butts out of the gutter.
As I handed this bum a cigarette and watched him stick it up under his
wool hat (saving it for later), it struck me that it made no difference to him
what brand it was. People always hit on me for cigarettes, in bars, on the
street, and they always take a look to see what kind it is. But not the bums.
They couldn't care less whether you give them a Marlboro, menthol or
Virginia Slim, as long as it's a fresh, whole, unsmoked cigarette, that's
all that
matters. This particular bum didn't see the pack as I fished the cig out of my
shirt pocket, and he didn't ask any questions, he just took it and was
grateful,
although of course he didn't say thank you, they never do. Beggars can't be
choosers I suppose. That's when the idea crept into my mind.
I don't like bums, or the homeless, as they call them nowadays. When
I first moved to New York, they didn't bother me too much, I guess I felt kind
of sorry for them. After a while though, I became numbed by their ubiquity. I
suppose that's the way it is for most New Yorkers. They look at street people
and see right through them, like they weren't there or were invisible,
untouchables. New York is becoming more and more like Calcutta every day,
if you ask me. The sight of a bejeweled woman in a mink coat nonchalantly
stepping over an unconscious wino on Park Avenue is not an uncommon
one. I remember one time, I walked right past this guy who was lying face
down in the gutter at 23rd and 3rd. It had been raining and his hands were
swelled up like ski gloves. Without even thinking about it, I sidestepped him
to go into the smoke shop, bought a pack of Camels and left the store without
a second look, forgetting I had even seen him.
Then they began to bug me. I mean, they're so filthy. Riding the
subway is bad enough without having to sit next to some bum in grimy rags
passed out in his seat, festering sores on his bared legs, giving off a
sweet stale
stench of sweat, grease, shit and piss. It's got to be the rankest smell
in the
world, and the whole subway system reeks of it, sometimes the whole city.
You sit next to one of these poor suffering bastards and you can't help but
wonder if his lice can jump from his body to yours.
Even worse than the dirt and the smell is that most of them are crazy.
Not that I blame anybody who lives in New York for being crazy, the city's
driven me nuts a few times, that's for sure. I remember one time, for
example, when everything, the flowers in the park, chicken cutlet
sandwiches, my girlfriend's sex, everything, everything smelled like Raid.
But at least when I was mad I kept quiet about it, I didn't force anybody to
listen about what was happening in my head. Not those damned homeless.
They're always assaulting you with their righteous raps, concise ideologies
and paranoid political philosophies. For some reason I seem to make a good
target, they always single me out of a crowd. Sometimes, I have to admit, I
like to listen to them, see what they have to say. Some of them have an
extremely acute sense of reality, they know what's really going on, which is
what probably drove them crazy in the first place. That's why they scare me
so much. I see some junky digging through the trash, exultant as he
discovers a half-eaten piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and I wonder who he
was twenty or ten or maybe only five years ago, what his former life was like,
maybe he was just some semi-alienated guy like me who finally just couldn't
take it anymore. Usually, however, I just don't want to hear their endless
rants, I've got enough of my own problems. And that's when they won't quit,
grabbing my arm turning me around saying "Hey I'm talkin' to you,"
disgusting touch. And as if all this wasn't bad enough, on top of everything
else they're always asking for money.
I was pretty broke at the time all this happened. I occasionally
went for
days on end without a meal, sometimes even without beer or drugs. I was
working part-time at my old lab job, spending the rest of my time trying to
write my 'great novel' and getting drunk, making ends meet with a little drug
dealing on the side. I really hated that lab job, my colleagues were a
bunch of
Neanderthals who thought Ronald Reagan was the greatest thing since sliced
bread, and too many mice had gazed in my merciless eyes as I cut their heads
off with a pair of scissors. I was almost through there, had given my notice,
but as fate would have it, the lab provided me with my last chance of
redemption. I'd seen something there the day before, something that popped
into my mind as I handed the bum the cigarette.
I had to make up a 5% solution of pargyline for an experiment. I asked
my boss where the pargyline was and he answered, "In the desiccator." The
desiccator is a big glass jar lined with moisture-absorbing crystals at its
bottom,
kept in place by a metal screen. Drugs that are unstable at room temperature,
expensive or rarely used, are kept in the refrigerator, and to be properly
preserved in the refrigerator they must be stored in the desiccator or else the
humidity will spoil them. Anyway, as I impatiently pawed through the
dozens of tiny bottles of drugs all jumbled up inside the desiccator, I came
across a little vial of cyanide. I was amused and a little bewildered. Why
would we keep cyanide in the lab? On the other hand, I'd found all sorts of
weird stuff in the desiccator before - radioactive LSD, morphine pellets,
tritiated water - so why not cyanide? I shrugged and resumed my search for
the pargyline, which I subsequently found tucked away beneath a bottle of
polylysine. I didn't think about the cyanide again until I handed the bum the
cigarette.
The bum said, "Thanks, man," after I gave it to him. I smiled and said,
"Sure, anytime." It would be so easy.
I got to work the next day around noon, as usual suffering from a
terrific hangover, and began my daily routine. I performed yet another in a
seemingly endless series of experiments concerning the disassociation rate of
cocaine from serotonergic receptors in the mouse cortex. I finished up
around five. By then everybody else in the lab had already mopped up the
day's work and was killing time before they went home. I told my boss I'd be
staying late to carry out some calculations. He said, "Very good, Bernard,"
and smiled, happy that I was volunteering to stay late for the cause of
science,
to about the same degree that he'd been disgusted with me at the beginning of
the day for my late arrival. I had my own keys to the lab (this was long
before
I failed my urinalysis test). I bid everyone good-bye as I pretended to
tidy up
my careful notes. I sat at my desk and fabricated better results for my most
recent experiments until about seven o'clock, when I was sure I was the only
one left in the building.
I got the desiccator out of the fridge, placed it on the counter and
twisted its well-lubricated top until the channels in its lid and sidewalls
were
aligned. Air whooshed into the heavy glass chamber as the vacuum was
broken. The top now came off easily. I fumbled through the plethora of little
drug bottles until I found the cyanide. The deadly vial was sealed with Para-
Film, which is sort of an industrial-strength Saran Wrap. This meant that the
factory seal had been cracked. My boss would never notice a little missing.
The bottle's label had a skull and crossbones logo on it, just like in the
movies, and below that, embossed in bright red ink it said: "POISON."
Directly beneath it read: "WARNING: extremely toxic substance. Handle
with care. Avoid contact with eyes and skin." I put on rubber gloves and
snapped a surgical mask over my face, so I wouldn't accidentally inhale any
dust.
I placed a small glass test tube on the analytical balance, an
electronic
scale accurate to one-tenth of a milligram, and weighed it. Using a micro-
spatula, I added five milligrams of cyanide. I pipetted approximately three
milliliters of distilled water into the tube, sealed it with Para-Film and
shook
it up in the Vortex, a powerful electric mixer, vigorously agitating the tube's
contents until the cyanide crystals had completely dissolved. I poured the
final solution into a petri dish and watched it spread out into a thin pool. I
went to my coat and retrieved an opened pack of Marlboros, the popular
brand I had purchased on my way to work expressly for this purpose (I hate
Marlboros, I find them far too sugary). Opening the pack, I carefully dipped
each cigarette's filter into the pool of liquefied cyanide, holding it in place
until what I deemed to be a sufficient amount of poison had been drawn up
into the fiberglass by capillary action. One by one I laid the loaded
cigarettes
on sheet of tinfoil to dry. There was just enough cyanide for twenty butts,
perfect, a full pack. I gingerly put the killer weeds back in the
crush-proof box,
upside down, with the tainted filters at the bottom, so that I would handle
only the tobacco end of the cigarettes. I cleaned up the mess, returning all
equipment to its proper place, locked up the lab and left.
I'd missed the last bus off the island so I had to use the extremely
scary
lavender and yellow footbridge to make my way into East Harlem. When I
was about a block and a half away from the subway station, at 103rd Street and
3rd Avenue, I turned the corner and saw a disheveled old man propping
himself up against a garbage can. It was a cold night and the streets were
deserted. To no surprise, he asked me for a quarter so I said, "Sorry, no
change, howsabout a smoke?" and he said, "God bless you," as I handed him a
Marlboro, making sure not to touch its filter. He snatched it up and I offered
him a light. He lit up, took two long, deep drags, collapsed and went into
convulsions. He twitched and vomited for about a minute or so and then he
was dead. Eureka! I happily sauntered to the subway. I spent the rest of the
night at home drinking and watching TV, I don't remember exactly what, I
think it was some mini-series about the Roman Empire that was not too bad.
I called in sick to work the next day, went back to bed and woke up
around two, showered, ate some Captain Crunch and went out with nineteen
deadly Marlboros in my jacket pocket. I had a pack of Camel Filters (my
regular brand) in my other pocket that I smoked as I strolled along, so the
bums would know to hit on me. I wandered south down Avenue A, turned
west on Houston, then continued downtown on the Bowery. When I got to
Canal I turned around and went back north, following Lafayette to 3rd
Avenue. I was careful not to give the poisoned butts to just anybody, none to
the bums who were still active, like the windshield wipers at the intersection
of Bowery and Houston. They might have lit up right away, which would
have made me look suspicious. I only offered my wares to the ones who laid
slackly on the curbside, the ones who were better off dead, who I knew from
experience would place the butts behind their ears, saving them for later. I
was a little worried that the contact of the filters with their scalps
might make
them nauseous, tip them off, but then I realized that the thick layer of scum
coating their skin would grant them momentary protection. By the time my
tour was over I had dispensed of every one of the deadly smokes. I went to
the Holiday with 12 dollars in my pocket and spent the rest of the night
drinking Dewar's White Label.
The next afternoon, I awoke feeling better than I had in years. I
rushed
out of the house, went to a newsstand and scanned the headlines of the Post
and the Daily News. I expected to see something like "Cyanide Killer On
Loose in Bowery" or maybe "20 Homeless Slaughtered by Psycho," but instead
the featured story of the day was about the Mayor passing out in some fancy
uptown restaurant after a big meal. I was disappointed not to have made the
front page, but, that's show-biz, I figured. I brought both papers to the
Odessa
and read them cover to cover over my breakfast of fried eggs, French Fries
and Coca-Cola, and was shocked and dismayed not to find a single word about
the killings. After I thought about it, though, it occurred to me that
dozens of
homeless folk probably fall down in the city's streets every day and die in
horrible, grotesque paroxysms. Why would anyone bother to do an autopsy
on any of my bums? Who would notice an extra 20 or so on one particular
day? And even if someone had noticed they probably wouldn't have cared
anyway.
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