It was 2003. I was 25. I took a greyhound bus from Baltimore to San Francisco which took over a month. I stopped intentionally in places like New Orleans, Austin and El Paso Texas, Tucson and on to San Francisco. I was happy to be there, had a lot of fun for a week. All kinds of chicks and booze and it was nice to be somewhere where you could eat a vegetable after being on buses for so long. That bus trip cost, since I was paying incrementally, maybe $250.

My old girl, Sansa, who I was under the impression was clean, we were still in touch, she had done me good turns, I thought I’d let her know I was coming through Texas and she was like, “You should stay with me.”

I had no reason to believe we would get together, was beyond that, and was hoping that I’d be able to partake of one of the cute girls she always seemed to hang out with.

I show up with my bag and she answers the door and the whole one side of her face is abscessed and I know it’s not good. There are addicts sprawled all over her apartment. So I sleep in her room. I don’t sleep well around drug addicts so I never break down my bag or wash my clothes and I take my shower with my cash—I had over $5000 in cash on me, in a plastic bag in the shower.

This place was sketched out, a bad idea. Then one night I hear this screaming about this guy in the living room turning purple.

The place is a drug den.

I’m from out of state and look sketchy myself.

If the cops show up and I get searched they will at least steal my money and possibly charge me with trafficking. So I say, “I didn’t sign up for this,” and rolled out, went to the bus station and took the first bus west to El Paso.

An Omnibus Volume of James' First Two Books

Nice Day for a Funeral