Kim's getting married

Break these chains of love.

For someone with a reputation as ferocious as Mad Dog, she sure cried a lot.

Her voice often cracked when she talked about her kids. Was it two or three? Child and Family Services took them away years ago. There were tears for her boyfriend Josh, who would be getting out of jail soon and they would be getting married. They were in love. She even invited me to read the stack of jailhouse letters stacked high on her chaotic coffee table.

“I’m so happy for you,” I said. And she cried some more.

So sappy.

On the streets, Mad Dog was a different beast. She was a surly, barrel-bodied force of nature, keeping everyone in line and accepting absolutely no fucking-around from anyone. I heard she punched the way a mule kicks. I was happy to know her because she protected and even lent me an air of respectability among crack-smoking society.

She had an endearing tendency to protect the weak: young women on the street like Lacey, the old men from the Salvation Army when they got harassed, and me. Once she even rammed through the door of a crack den, demanding the occupants give me back my phone. I had foolishly lent it to someone who then pretended they didn’t have it. When faced with Mad Dog’s full-bore ferocity, the culprit confessed readily.

No donkey punches necessary.

Of course, she wasn’t always Mad Dog. One day, while driving her home, she started pointing at houses on a tree-lined downtown street.

“That one…” she said, pointing at a tidy two story home.

We drove past just a couple more before she pointed at another. “And that one.”

“That one. And that one. And that one..”

They were the crack dens she operated from over the years, mostly in the 80s and 90s. Most of them are gone now. But the scene still conjures happy memories. That’s when she wasn’t yet Mad Dog, but a radiant blonde girl everyone wanted to be with — but no one dared make a move. She was protected. Kim’s job was to take a big bag of dope from house to house, where everyone was excited to see her.

“I was selling so much,” she said, wistfully. “Making so much money.”

It’s hard to imagine Mad Dog like that. But people told stories. A real stunner, who showed up at trap houses looking like a prom queen.

“I never smoked back then,” she says.

Eventually, Kim would fall in love with a high-level dealer — a real gangster named Mad Dog — and have kids. When he was murdered, Kim took on the business, as well as his name.

She fully lived up to the name too. She’s a heavyweight. She knows how to hurt people. But I don’t think she likes it.

“There was a trap house in every neighborhood,” she crowed on our tour. “Sometimes, right beside each other. It made my job easy. Show up. Sell the dope. Leave with a stack of cash.”

When we finished the trip down memory lane, Mad Dog lit her pipe, because it didn’t matter how many times I told her ‘please no crack-smoking in the car’ she did what she needed to do. And she really needed to smoke crack. Night and day, she would be at the pipe. I don’t think it fully worked, though, as pain relief, because of all the tears she kept letting slip.

I showed her a video about a dog I rescued in India once.

“Here, let me show you another one,” I said.

“No… please,” she replied, tears streaming down her cheeks. “No more.”

Best to just smoke crack and stare blankly at our phones.

Still Mad Dog was one of the few original gangsters remaining in the city. Most, like her husband, were dead. Or, at least, locked up long-term.

I’ve even dropped her name a few times to street dealers, hoping they’d be a little less inclined to rip me off.

“I love Mad Dog! Tell her Mojo said what’s up!”

They’d still rip me off. But maybe, at least, they were less inclined to fight me for no reason at all.

Our relationship changed a lot over the summer. In the early days, I’d visit her dismal apartment and we’d sit in silence smoking my dope. She had swollen ankles, she kept in a pail of water at home. Then I’d catch her walking home from work and offer a ride.

At least, for a while, she had a job slinging dope in Crack Alley. Some people thrive in retail positions. Mad Dog, not so much. She didn’t have the temperament for a public-facing gig. Besides, she had the sketchiest, most unpredictable customers you could imagine. Crack Alley was the only place you could buy a $5 rock. Which made it a favorite among panhandlers.

It wasn’t just the clientele though. By this time, Hamilton police had declared war on Crack Alley. The chief was even talking about it on TV. There were undercover cops and drones hanging overhead. The early warning system of addicts shouting “5-Oh” when a cruiser showed up didn’t cut it any more.

Mad Dog’s colleagues were getting picked up every day. When they were eventually set free with yet another court date, they were expected to reimburse the man who ran the alley for the dope that was seized. That would be Justin — the rarely glimpsed businessman who paid addicts with dope to sell dope to other addicts.

It was only a matter of time before Mad Dog got nabbed. Luckily, she got fired before the Alley was fully raided — cops poured out of two unmarked vans and rounded everybody up. Not Mad Dog. Terminated with cause. She had been trying to supplement her income by selling someone else’s dope on the side. When you get paid in dope, it’s hard to cover the rent for the shambling, overstuffed apartment you call home. That could have got her killed. Maybe the Lord of Crack Alley had other things to worry about. Or maybe she survived it because she was OG. But only by a hair, no doubt. People have been badly hurt for less.

“You don’t come and hang out with me any more,” she’d grumble. The thing is she was one of the few people I didn’t mind getting high with. But I knew that Mad Dog, like everybody else, equated ‘hanging out’ with me treating her to mountains of crack. While I appreciated the company — even if I knew what they were really after — sometimes, I just got a little tired of giving all the time. Sometimes, I just wanted to get high in a filthy tub by myself. Besides, Mad Dog wasn’t entirely honest with anyone. If you send her out to pick up dope — she’ll tell you it’s the best in the city — she’ll come back hours late, with a woefully underweight rock.

That was okay. She was still the best of the worst.

When I ran out of money and started sleeping in stairwells, I chose Mad Dog’s building. The spit-stained stairwell was rancid, but I liked the idea of being close to Mad Dog’s unit. Just in case. No one else I used to smoke crack with bothered with me. Some of them got downright hostile — as if it was my fault I couldn’t buy them drugs and booze and McDonalds any more. But I knew, if I asked, Mad Dog would do what she could for me.

I was right. One day, I ran into her and she brought me to her apartment. She knew I had nothing. She didn’t have much either. An eviction notice was looming. She couldn’t pay the electricity bill so the apartment was brutally cold. She did manage to sneak an extension cord into the building hallway to power up a TV and a space heater. The landlord was always yanking it though. It was the middle of winter!

I camped out on Mad Dog’s ruined recliner, eating pretzel sticks for days, in and out of sleep. She had lots of visitors who brought dope, but I knew better than to ask for a toke. And still, while I was half-asleep in that chair, Mad Dog would creep up beside me and place a rock on the armrest. Or else, she’d leave half a take-out container of rice or falafels or whatever — I was so fucking hungry.

After sitting in her chair for about a week, in and out of sleep, too weak sometimes to even rise to my feet, I sent a text message to my mother. Not long after that, there was money in my account for a bus ride home. Instead, I treated Mad Dog to a sizable ball of crack.

Then I sent another message home. This time, someone would be coming to pick me up.

I told Mad Dog I was going outside for a cigarette.

“You can smoke in here,” she said, puzzled.

“It’s okay. I need to move my legs.”

I never returned. The only messages I ever got while I was in recovery were from Mad Dog.

“Are you okay?”

“Please don’t make me worry about you. You know I’m your friend.”

“I just need to know you’re okay.”

I changed my number.

I don’t know when exactly Kim became Mad Dog. But I’m sure it involved some great big hurt in her life. That’s when she donned her dead husband’s ill-fitting, hand-me-down armour. It still left her soft bits exposed. And life would keep driving a lance through that oversized heart anyway. It’s no wonder she reaches so often for the most powerful pain relief she can find.

Sometimes, I wonder if I should pay her a visit. Too risky? This is my second year of living clean. Is she still living in that terrible place? What forsaken hole has she found to live in? Maybe Josh is out of jail. Kim’s fairytale ending.

It would be nice, though, to show her I’m okay. Just in case, she’s wasting any of those precious tears on me.