Crack Tales Transcript – Episode 0 – Preseason Mini-Episode.  Email: cracktalespodcast@gmail.com

www.cracktales.com

William Borden  0:09  

Thank you all for tuning into this mini episode of Crack Tales. I'm so glad you're here. And as promised, the first full episode of Crack Tales will air sometime this summer. We're hoping sooner than later. But we're in the midst of production right now, conducting interviews and working on the stories for each of the episodes. So we're hard at it and as soon as we can get those up, we're gonna announce it. And after that, there'll be weekly or bi- weekly episodes on a regular basis. We'll give all that information as it is decided. In the meantime, thank you for hanging in there. And I hope you're looking forward to the story that begins with me as a sissy kid in suburban Seattle, all the way through the present day. Along the way, I spent 10 years addicted to crack cocaine and went through a lot as did the people who loved me and were a part of my life at that time. With this mini episode I want I want to give you a just a little bit about who I am, who I was, and a little bit about crack cocaine as well. My addiction caused me to do lots of things. Things that today I would not do. You know, we've all heard the horror stories of the addict pillaging their family and pillaging the community to feed their habit. Truth is I was no exception. And we'll hear more about that in future episodes. You know, I've been clean now for over 18 years. And though I hate to admit this, my growth has been slow. In the last couple years, something began to happen. I'll just be carrying on with my normal day and all of a sudden I'll get a glimpse of my behaviour. It's like someone you know, standing right in   of me holding a mirror making very clear my behaviour. And I cringe. Often I cringe. And then what usually happens, and especially since I've been exploring lately, my addiction and what it meant in my life and what it meant to other people, is that I think back to the times when I was using, and, you know, it's true cravings for drugs are merciless. But during my 10 years of addiction, I wasn't always using. I had lots of clean time during that 10 years and when I look back on that time, I had little regard for other people and it's not that I wasn't a nice person or a generous person because I am, I really am. And I was then too, but the truth of the matter is, is I didn't really take in other people. I was just locked into my own experience and my own perspective and did not have the ability to see out of that or you know, even when I was altruistic in my life it was it was to gain favour of other people and kind of just secure my place I think. I don't like thinking about this.

This mini episode is airing, while white people around the world in greater numbers than has happened in the past, are recognising white people's culpability for sustaining racism. I was raised by civil rights activist parents and I studied social work and social justice and I've I've spoken forthrightly about racism and gay rights for, you know, long time for much of my life. But the truth is in the sort of hubbub and fanfare of the very sort of public stand I've taken for civil rights over the years, the real work, the work that can shine a light on the ways in which I look out just for me or the ways that I deny the rights of others, you know, that exploration, that sort of analysis is really just beginning I think I'll be cringing for a long time.

Reading you know, Robin Diangelo's book white fragility is one of the ways I've been digging into who I really am at this point in my life and this line from the book, it just seems so important to me. She says, "Stopping our racist patterns must be more important than working to convince others that we don't have them. We do have them." Unquote. I guess what this means to me is that in order to change my racism, and my self centeredness, I need to give up focusing on showing how much I've changed or what a good person I am. You know, and just accept me for who I am now, shortcomings at all and look honestly at the ways that I can become better. And the other thing is, I can't trust myself to see what I need to see. I have to ask and then listen to other people and really listen and then make real changes to my behaviour.

Crack is an illegal stimulant. People use it recreationally. Yeah, I don't know recreationally sounds really nice. You know, parts of it. were nice, but a lot of it was very ugly. Crack is a form of cocaine. It is cocaine. People take cocaine powder and process it by cooking it so that the hydrochloride salt, one part of cocaine, is removed from the cocaine alkaloid and that's the technical terms and basically what that does is it leaves a solid piece of rock, which is much purer than most powder on the street, and much more intense. The process removes a lot of the impurities and the cut, you know, that people put into it when they sell it on the street. And it transforms the powder into something that can be smoked because powder effectively cannot be smoked. The process for making crack is really simple: water, baking soda, cocaine and heat basically is all you need. And it's hard to figure out for me, which is more expensive, but what I do know is that I frequently put $20 worth of crack on a pipe and took all of that in one hit. Inhaled $20 in one lighting of the pipe. And then after that $20 was gone, I, you know, had a great rush for a few minutes but then I was left with a craving - the most intense feeling I've ever had the most driven I've ever been about anything which is incredibly sad to say. But that craving, overpowering - and basically it didn't matter what I had to do to satisfy it. I had to have more. Crack is sold on the street. It's also sold by dealers people people buy crack cocaine from dealers not on the street, but a lot of it was sold on the street when I was around. It's ready to smoke. It's already been cooked by the dealer. And so people just buy pieces of it that they can smoke. I could buy $10 at a time if I wanted and you know, I mentioned putting $20 on a pipe and smoking it in a few seconds. So $10 is nothing in terms of quantity. Imagine a crackhead rounding up $10 at a time, panhandling, committing crimes, doing whatever it took. And then taking that $10 to the dealer, getting their little rock, smoking it, within minutes left in a state where they're just gonna do anything to get the next hit. That that basically is what the epidemic and chaos of crack was that we saw on the streets. It's also really important to note that, you know, human beings are different and everybody has their own experience and so this experience of crack cocaine that I'm sharing with you is my experience. I imagine it's, many people have had the same but there are also, I'm certain,  many people who have very different experiences from mine so that's important to note. The things that I share with you are my experiences alone. So there you go. A little information about crack. A little bit about me. Before we end this preseason mini episode. I'm going to leave you with a story that I wrote. And it's a fiction story. It's a work of fiction. It's called Party of One.

Jason-Narrator  10:43  

Laughter crashed through my open window, and I turned toward it before thinking to raise my shield. A gargantuan arrow capable of piercing my seven year old body with only its tip, hit the mark. I had just been alone with my guests, but now found me under siege. Timmy, the neighbour boy was standing on a folding chair he had dragged from his backyard and positioned next to the Rhododendron bush that grew flush against the side of our house. He had constructed a single seat theatre, and the curtains opened onto my bedroom, a set with props and characters for a very special tea party. Timmy turned his head toward the ground and with incredulity screamed, "He's wearing his mom's apron," loud enough for the entire neighbourhood to hear. A second higher pitched giggle followed Timmy's knee slapping, and soon the top half of a head with a crew cut appeared in the window - Timmy's little brother, Mark. Timmy was the prosecuting attorney cocksure as he bore witness to my crime while foreseeing what he knew without doubt would be a unanimous guilty verdict. Mark looked at me and then back at Timmy, searching his big brother's face for instruction. I looked on jaw slack, mouth open and hands trembling as Timmy threw back his head and laughed to the sky, only to see Mark follow a split second later, having carefully studied his brother's movements. I had been hosting a tea party and had just gathered my guests from the ragtag community piled high on my sister's bed. Barbie shared a seat with Pooh, Red Baby squeezed onto another with a porcelain doll my sister called Minnie, and biggest of them all lifesize toddler. Chatty Cathy, who could also be found in every home of every girl in the neighbourhood, had a seat to herself, our family pet, however, Chatty Catty, kneaded the pillow I had set at the feet of her namesake. We lived on a suburban street 20 miles south of Seattle where the houses and the families looked like mine. Our next door neighbours and close friends were the Shields and while spending many a day in their house, their mom Kay had served me lunch and snacks time and again.

I had quickly noticed that everything Kay did was different than what I saw at home. Sandwiches were diamonds and a crown, Kay having sliced them twice diagonally and placed them on a small plate adorning a clump of glistening green grapes. There were napkins, not paper towels to wipe your mouth and the dishes were always whisked away just after you finished, immediately washed, dried, and put back in the cupboard. Every December Kay took bars of Ivory soap, and through some kind of pre-Martha Stewart magic, mashed them into a radiant paste that was then spread by spatula onto the branches of her Christmas tree, making tiny snowdrifts. Kay's trees were themed, the Christmas lights never a hodgepodge rainbow like in our house but rather a sophisticated and subtle single hue. Every year a different colour was chosen in coordination with the decorations in the rest of their house and with her set of Christmas cards. A tree with colour coordinated lights and mini snowdrifts! Can you imagine? Already by seven years old, I wanted to be Kay and my tea parties were the events during which I could practice. My sandwiches usually made only with jelly and of course, cut into sharp edged crustless triangles, surrounded a spoonful of fruit cocktail, a can of which I could always find on our pantry shelf. Wonder Bread, grape jelly and the canned syrup pooling on the small plates, made for soup, not sandwiches, but the creation inspired me, gave me confidence. Design and symmetry and delicious sweetness laid out for my esteemed guests, by me. In the privacy of that tiny tea room, I was a carefree suburban homemaker, kicking up my left heel like I was making my runway exit from Rupaul's mainstage. Twirling about the table, I served grape Kool Aid which I poured, raising the teapot as high as I could away from the cup. I had learned this technique during brunch at the Snoqualmie Falls Lodge, where the waitresses chipper voices explained that the cascading syrup she poured on my pancakes represented the waterfall outside the lodge window. I poured tea, not syrup, from a plastic teapot that my father had brought home from Japan. It was unusually large and its colour could only exist in real life if someone melted together equal parts plastic kiwi fruit and Dijon mustard. This pot featured purple snow- capped mountains underneath which stood for little girls, each with perfect circles for heads and perfect circles for bodies, black eyes, red dots for mouths, and their black hair framing their faces, bangs having been chopped, clumsily and too high on their foreheads. It was as if their hairdos were floating around their faces rather than growing from their scalps. The teapot set included four cups, and each cup had the face of one of the girls from the pot painted on its side. At the tea party table, Barbie and Pooh shared one cup, Red Baby and Mini another and Chatty Cathy and I each had our own. Chatty Catty, however, sat at the feet of her namesake, not at all interested in the brilliant purple liquid in her bowl. Like visitors to Kay's house next door, my party guests could be sure that fine food would be nattily presented, the tea would be cold and sweet and they'd find a proper saucer under every cup. They would never find the likes of onions or canned spinach. Guests would not be forced to finish their plates and everybody loved me.' Timmys accusatory declaration, "He's wearing his mom's apron!"  was completely off the mark. My mother had nothing to do with my attire and didn't know anything about it. I was wearing my apron, which I had stuffed into my coat pocket after finding it hanging on the door of our church kitchen. Essentially, I had stolen it. But I had to, I had to and I hoped God would understand. The apron was bright red with white polka dots and it hung almost to my ankles. Ruffley straps suspended the bib of the apron so low that it only covered my stomach, leaving my shirt pockets exposed.

Long red ties allowed me to cinch the apron. However, when all was said and done because it wrapped around my whole frame from front to back, it resembled a dress more than an apron. I was not unhappy with that outcome. Although I'd had many tea parties prior to this one, no one uninvited had ever shown up before. Timmy and Mark's appearance in my window stood as a fork in the road. Their mockery and head shaking disdain, coupled with their elation at having discovered a mark at which the world would enthusiastically support them taking aim, tainted that day. That joyous tea party that place where I really was at my best. The fork did not offer a this way or that way choice. There was only one way and that way was survival. The tea party lady, the single suburban housewife event planner, the one who served diamonds in a crown to her guests, she went right back to 1960s suburban Seattle, where boys are boys and the likes of baseball, soccer and basketball waited steadfastly to torture those like me. I didn't throw another tea party, but instead desperately tried to kick catch throw and bat things and, and not cry. And the apron. I buried it in the backyard.

William Borden  19:41  

I leave you with my heartfelt thanks once again for tuning into Crack Tales, to this pre-season mini-episode. Please subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts or at our website, www.cracktales.com, CRACKTALES.com. I am in debt to and have huge gratitude for a group of people, the first of which is Cornell White, a lifelong friend of mine. All music on this podcast today was produced by Cornell White for Cornell White Music and Attack Productions Music Group APMG, copyright 2020. Cornell White's music can be found on Soundcloud by searching CornellWhiteMusic, one word. Also narrator for Party of One is my good friend Jason Toews. More by Jason Toews, photographs, stories, other fun things can be found at thefifiorganisation.net that's www.THEFIFIORGANIZATION.net. And finally, I'm incredibly grateful for the hard work of my volunteers who have taken on the project of transcribing the interviews. Without them, I would not have been able to get this far this fast. If you have questions between now and the time the first episode drops, you can certainly email us at cracktalespodcast@gmail.com. Thank you so much for your time and attention. I'll see you soon when Crack Tales returns.

Outro music.