When I train hopped, the easiest way to score- Look for a punk flyer, go to the show, meet new people, get connects, and hopefully find some young chick wanting to piss off her parents so we could crash for a while and use her sweet, sweet cash while we talked about what we'd steal when we left.





Funny enough, as a squatter who frankly stank like ass and looked like a leather peacock with studs, I only one time caught shit while walking in projects and ghettos. And even that one time was some punk kid with his boys telling me I had a hole in my pants (the knee was completely gone by that point). Other than that, always got treated like I belonged there.



I think the reason you don't see many is because alot of them are gone...I know I only have one friend from that time that is still alive and still living the life that I know of. One went back to nyc and got clean.

I watched them drop around me like flies. Tim, the 17 year old who didn't take methadone seriously...that was a sad funeral to be at. Barely knew the kid and played paul bearer. Made a post a few weeks back about losing another one. I can list a dozen names, as I am sure many here can. But the punk scene is all about live fast, die young. A lot of them treat it like a game. I did until I fucking died for three and a half minutes. And then I kicked, for the very first time. Was sober for a while after that. But my friends...they just kept on dying, like it was their fucking job (not that they would work a job, fuck the man!).



I think that is why I went all goth. Lots of sadness in my sober years. Plus t.s.o.l., the damned, and the misfits were some of my favorites bands so the switch was easy. Throw in some Christian Death, some joy division, then hit bauhaus and never look back. Plus I always loved that industrial shit. Damn I am rambling. Feeling much better huh?



I remember skanking on new years to Operation Ivy's "unity", after a fucking brawl that almost ended one guy's life. I remember watching a friend being beat to shit by police, while all I could do was scream for help, and nobody did a thing but watch and then to see the paramedics spend more time clearing the blood from the pavement than treating my friend. I remember riding in the back with my buddy that od'd and hearing the medics laugh at the tattoo on his stomach that said "warrior" and them saying, "he ain't much of a warrior any more", and the tears just flow as he is laying there dead. I remember spanky stepping off the corner drunk as fuck and watching as he got hit full speed by a car. Didn't even stop. So much blood. He died in my arms. Paulie's gf getting hit by a semi while we walked the interstate. He took the locked bracelet from her wrist. I still have it...

The junkie life is hard enough. For those of us who lived it on the streets, or in a squat in the frame of an old water bed with a girl you barely know, both naked and huddled under a blanket just to stay alive after drinking the bottle of thera-flu you stole, cause your bronchitis just may be pneumonia and this time the fever might kill you if the fluid don't. And you kiss that girl, just to feel something other than high or drunk or sick. Then you have to get up early to spange, and some of the girls sleep all day, cause they work all night, even when a fucking blizzard is going down. Guys always wanna party.

My point is, that life is hard. Hell, I only lived it for a few years. My boy germ who died a month or so ago, he was still moving, still squatting or getting a room for the night, still living fast. But he didn't die as young as he thought he would. And he left behind an ex wife, and a current wife, and a baby boy. The needle and the damage done, no?

You ask why we don't see more, I ask how we see any at all. Me and you, we're the sell outs, we gave in and gave up. But I say fuck all that. To paraphrase SLC Punk, I ain't selling out, I am buying in. Me and you are the lucky ones. I have earned all the grey in my beard. I am sure you have earned every grey hair you got. Junkie life is hard enough, junkie street punk life is a whole different thing.





And as a warning to any young people, punk or otherwise that read some of this shit and think, "train hopping sounds cool! See the country, get laid, get drugs!", just remember that there are gangs on the rails. And if you're on their box or they find you on their train, and you're not with someone who should be there, they cut your dick and balls off and throw you off the car. If you're a woman, you don't even wanna think about what happens. And don't even think about faking it. You need a tatt, or a handshake, or a code word. They are brutal as hell.











