He came to me through my print ad. I had a deal in the weekly newspaper of LA that never to failed to double its investment every time I ran it despite this business being supposedly all internet based, there still are people who don’t have smart phones or know how to use a computer. These numbers are dwindling but I seemed to have found a worth while niche for myself regardless. Because I had already been through hell and back with too many drug addict late night clients, I had for the last four years working started to screen all of my clients and charging more per hour. My screening before was really based upon whether they sounded fucked up on the phone and if they asked me “Do I party?” was an automatic disconnection. Even if I did love to do coke with my clients, any person who asked me if I partied was guaranteed trouble for me based on experience. I started to see only professional working men. Men who weren’t afraid to tell me the truth about who they were and what they really wanted from their hearts, who weren’t afraid to confess that their hearts were broken and needed healing. I now had a screening process which required an internet name and phone number search and verification of government ID. I have one memory of an addict from my pre-screening times who blew his rehab money on me and more heroin but came to me in a way that was anything but dangerous, so I do have some good words to share about those times. When I laid close to his heart, I could feel the drugs pulse through his body so strongly that I got a contact high without any needle penetrating me. I can’t do IV drugs, it takes a skilled phlebotomist and a butterfly needle to get a blood test from me and I have more than once been the recipient of having an unskilled nurse miss a bunch of time and create purple blotch bruises all over my arm and hand where they finally used a vein. On the night that I held the rehab ditcher, his heart was injecting into me, and it felt like love.
I held my rehab ditcher for hours in his doze off until the sun rose and I left. But this wasn’t my current client. I had screened him on the phone based on the story that he told as he was one of the founders of one of the hugest LA festivals that everyone and their mother knew the name of. He had brought in Jane’s Addiction and the Chili Peppers and probably started his journey somewhere around there with the rest of them. His name was confirmed listed in the Wikipedia history of the festival and matched the name on his ID and the depth of knowledge that he had about music festival history which I also ask casually when I screen people for truth or lies. He had just move home to live in the home that he grew up in, where his mother lived in the back. In my current need to be safe and sane in my work I eliminated anyone who told me they used crystal meth. I had put this in practice for at least 4 years since my last interaction with a user was chasing one such down the street with a stun gun because he was trying to stalk and harass me. The client in front of me, we’ll call him Henry seemed calm and sweet. He was in his fifties and face showed the aged wrinkles of years of rock and roll living. He soon confessed to me that he was a lifelong addict and always had trace amounts of meth in his body, even as he stood before me. I appreciated and felt his truth. I went with him to the local bank to withdraw my fee which would cover my time for the next twelve hours as well as paid for me to eat well in a nice restaurant because, a 12 hr session requires a meal and rest break. It was a large chunk to say the least, but none of these sessions that I did for these guys do I retain any sense of guilt for. I never manipulated what I was offering, they came to me willing and wanting something else beside the equally as unsober hostess for their addictions which they probably had grown tired of spending money on by this time in their lives. I hoped I was a catalyst to some kind of change. I can never be sure what I effect I have had on the lives on any of my clients. I can not even base it on their words of affirmation or adoration even as those could also be lies.
