Eric Kyle: My name’s Eric Kyle, I mean, what I’m doing I really don’t particularly care to be doing, but I do it anyway, and I’m not ashamed of it cos if I was ashamed of it, I wouldn’t do it. I mean, so, I don’t want to do it, I mean I know it ain’t…it leads to like, wrong types of situations, I mean, either dying or going to prison or, you know, losing everything you have, but we gotta live with the choices we make. I mean, some of them are not logical or reasonable choices. I mean, so, until I decide to change it’s what I’m gonna do. Hopefully like, with the will of god…will make me strong enough and give me the determination to stop, and get some help. It’s already been too long; I’m hurting a lot of people in the process. Financially, I mean, emotionally, mentally, I mean,and it impacts a lot of what…your family relationships, you know.
I really hope that somewhere down the line something change, I mean, it could be the will of…the power of god, change, then I can look back and think about these moments, and say, “Wow, you know what? That was me, one time, man, and look at me now.” I mean, you can change, I mean, you definitely can change, without any persuasion or anything, with help, I mean, and willingness, and blessings. You can make a difference, cos you understand what you’re going through, you understand cos you’ve been there, and you observe other people doin’ it. You’re gonna see where they become fallible to their mistakes and some of them don’t get a chance to come around and repeat…make some of the same mistakes. So when you feel as though your life…you know, came to the bitter end of life it’s time to change yourself. That’s it.
Scott sits in his room at the Last Stop Recovery House on Kensington Avenue, 2013.
Audio Recording took place during dinner at Cast Your Cares down the block.
Audio Transcript
Scott: I’m staying at the last stop, um, I came out from California. I just came out here, I was born and raised here, but uh, I came out here about seven months ago, and got wrapped up on the streets out here. I came out here on a freight train. But yeah, I got wrapped up down here and didn’t wanna jump the train in the wintertime.
Volunteer: Would anyone…excuse me; would anybody like one?
Scott: Yes, thank you, appreciate it.
JS: Thank you.
Scott: Thank you very much.
Volunteer: You’re very welcome.
Scott: And uh, I’m the cook there at the Last Stop actually, I’m the guy who’s got the Irish flag hanging out the window, have you seen that?
JS: Yeah.
Scott: Yeah, that’s me, that’s my window.
JS: Awesome.
Scott: It was the legal system I was leaving behind, and um…
JS: What do you mean?
Scott: Like, uh, I was getting in trouble for drugs, to support the drug habit, here in Philadelphia. And I’m thirty-eight years old; this was when I was in my early twenties. So I left and went down to Florida and um, the crimes I had would’ve gotten me in trouble here, but they weren’t extraditable offenses, so they wouldn’t extradite me back here, so it was basically ‘stay out of Philadelphia’. And then, um, 911 hit…in Florida, everything’s flown in in Florida, so I left Florida and started just drifting. I had a really good time doing it.
Volunteer: Would you like another sticky bun?
Scott: Uh, no thanks.
Volunteer: You sure?
Scott: Yeah, I’ll take one, okay.
Volunteer: I got one with nuts…
Scott: Yeah, that one’s good.
Volunteer: Here, have one with raisins…
Scott: Alright.
Volunteer: …And this one has raisins and nuts.
Scott: Okay, we’ll take em to the kids.
[To JS]: But yeah, you would love taking pictures of the, of the freight trains. You see some beautiful things.
JS: Yeah?
Scott: Through the cascades, from Roseville to uh, to Klamath Falls, from Klamath all the way up to Seattle, Arizona… beautiful places in America. People don’t get to see them; the only thing that runs down these lines are freight trains, you know, so only the guys driving the train. Usually there’s a road that follows the train, but not everywhere, especially in the national forests, when it cuts through there. The only up there on them mountains is freight trains and animals.
JS: So how did you find the Last Stop?
Scott: Actually, I heard about it in California.
JS: Really?
Scott: Uh huh. A friend of mine was out here, and uh, he got in a jam out here, same thing, got wrapped up with drugs, and went to the Last Stop, and then, um, he only stayed there for a small time, and then he went back to California, but he told me about it. Cause I was born and raised over here, uh, Frankford and Tioga, so, so it worked out. I got…went to the Last…The Last Stop saved me. Y’know? I’ve been there, like, fifty-nine days, and there’s only like four people from when I walked in through the door. Most of them couldn’t make it, y’know? A lot of them left on good terms, don’t get me wrong, but um, y’know, look at the neighborhood: you got drugs right out front there, you know what I mean? I mean, it’s not for the people who uh, need it, it’s for the people who want it. But Eddie always tries with almost everybody. He’ll give anybody a chance. In fact I think the harder the case is the more he likes to try to help them. Y’know, the people that nobody else wants? He wants those people.
Nobody wanted me! I went to Cooper hospital, OD’d, they said I was, because I’d stopped breathing, I was thirty seconds away from brain damage and minutes away from death. And as soon as I started breathing, they gave me a meal and told me to have a good day, get out. And I was like ‘man, I almost died! You were just telling me I almost died!’. Eddie took me with nothing, no ID, no nothing. Then I got my own room, y’know what I mean, and I’m good. I haven’t used drugs or alcohol in uh, fifty-nine days. Yknow, and alls he asks you to do is help out, just don’t sit around and take it for a free ride. He doesn’t ask you for any money, if you can give, you give; if you can’t, at least get up off your behind and try to pitch in and help out. A lot of guys come in and help out that have a lot of time, clean and sober, like, guys that have been in my position and are now, y’know, living, uh, life. And um, they come and give back. The guys who live there, with less days, I mean there’s only about four or five of those guys who really help out, like regularly, there every day. And then we got guys that are there that are kicking dope, you know, they’re withdrawing from Heroin, and uh, they’re…some of them don’t know, you know, some of those people never had a job, or if they do, they’ve always been told what to do; to move on their own initiative is uh, is very hard for them. And um, some of them are depressed because of what’s happened, uh, their situation or their family or whatever, y’know what I mean? And some of them are suffering from different types of mental problems, y’know? He doesn’t just take drug addicts and alcoholics; he’ll take anybody if they, if they have a desire to do something with themselves, y’know. He used to go up and down the Ave at night and look for addicts, to bring em in here, to comb the avenue…
MARILYN: Um, life in the streets is like pretty tough. I survive by um selling myself and getting in cars with strangers that I don’t even know and it’s pretty scary. Um. I don’t know, anything I can do to get money, I do. And that’s about it, it’s like really hard out here.
I’ve been out here for two and a half months. I’m homeless, I live in the streets, in the train tracks.
JS: In the train, In the Lehigh Viaduct?
MARILYN: No, on um, the one on uh Allegheny, 2nd and Allegheny.
JS: You have like uh, did you build something over there?
MARILYN: Yeah, like it’s like a little room in there. Yeah, and that’s where I sleep, and I get little buckets of water and that’s how I wash up.
JS: You use heroin, is that it?
MARILYN: Yeah I use heroine and crack.
JS: How long have you been using those?
MARILYN: Well, in and out, for 12 years.
JS: What got you started, do you remember, do you have any idea?
MARILYN: Uh, The men. Men.
JS: Men? Anyone specific?
MARILYN: My daughter’s father. He got me hooked into it.
JS: Can you tell me a little bit about that?
MARILYN: Well he was hooked into the drugs, and because I didn’t want to give him any money he just kept feeding it to me, like, little by little. And one day I got up and I was sick. So, and ever since I’ve been using.
JS: Do you still talk to your daughter?
MARILYN: To my, to my daughter’s father? Uh, Yeah, he works around the corner from where I’m at. Yeah.
JS: Does he still use?
Marilyn: No.
JS: So he got clean but you never did?
Marilyn: I did for 22 months, this time. But I, uh, got into a relationship and it was bad and um this is like, I just know how to run, you know.
JS: What do you mean?
MARILYN: I don’t know how to face, um, the realities of, I don’t know how to deal with the feelings that I’m feeling and I just run. I use drugs to numb what I’m feeling.
JS: If you’re self-conscious of that, why is it that you still let it happen?
MARILYN: I don’t know I just like, I guess I’m not brave enough just to face it, I just don’t want to face it.
JS: How’s your daughter?
MARILYN: She alright, she been with my Mom ever since she was born.
I’m dealing with um, custody matters now. I got two small kids.
JS: And how long have you been homeless?
MARILYN: For two and a half months.
JS: What happened?
MARILYN: My, my Aunt kicked me out. I was living with her, and she found out I was using again and she told me I had to leave.
JS: That simple.
MARILYN: That simple. Pack your stuff and go.
JS: So you were saying, um, you were talking about how it can get kinda embarrassing you had said, can you explain that to me?
MARILYN: Yeah, like when you walking by, just, out of the, out of the blue somebody just walk by and tell you something nasty or call you names and stuff, you know. Making fun out of you like, like it’s, it’s a game, it’s funny to them. I say, I say, people just tell you to wait here, I’m coming right back, and they never come back, and they get like a kick out of it like. For them it’s a game, for me, I’m surviving I mean, it’s not, I do things I don’t even wanna do just to get a few dollars, so, sometimes it’s not even all for drugs, it’s to eat too, you know. Like it’s real risky every time you get in the car, you don’t know who you’re getting in the car with. I could get raped, killed, dumped somewhere, nobody ever find me. So, I’m taking that risk every time I get into the car.
JS: Why do you think you’re taking that risk?
MARILYN: Cause I wanna get drugs, I wanna use. I’m sick, I need to get well, so I do whatever it takes to get the drugs.
JS: Even if it means you get into a car and never get back out?
MARILYN: Yeah. Yeah. It’s just like, I, I wanna get out of it but it’s like, uh, I dunno how. It’s like everytime I wanna get out, it’s like, something stronger than me just pulls me back in, and it’s hard. It’s like, I’m debating, like, it’s just like a battle.
JS: What is it about the avenue specifically?
MARILYN: What is it about the avenue specifically? It’s very addictive, like, it’s easy money. Anybody wanna get money fast, just come to the avenue, you’ll make money quick.
JS: Do you think that’s always been the case?
MARILYN: What, on the avenue? Yeah. Yeah, because like everybody knows where to come and get the people they wanna get.
JS: How long have you known about it?
MARILYN: Known about this? Years. For fourteen years already. Ever since I got here I heard about Kensington. And one day, I said just let me try it, and just started walking, somebody pick me up, I make quick money. And it get addictive. It’s like the people that sell drugs, they get addicted to it. It’s the same thing.
Yeah, I have to pretend I’m tough because like deep down inside I’m just like a little kid crying, crying out for help. But I have to pretend that I’m this tough woman, and can nobody touch me, just so nobody could hurt me, you know. And it gets hard at times, you know, sometimes, I just cry alone when nobody can see me, and I cry and ask God to help me, you know. Cause I’m tired, you know. If I give up, like like, I could die, or something else could happen to me. So I just gotta keep on going, Yeah, this is like survival.
I’m always, I’m always by myself pretty much, like I’m a loner. You know, I come out here make my money, go and get high all by myself, every other thing is by myself, you know. Because I don’t trust people around me, all they wanna do is like, like see what they can get from you, hurt you. So, I’m pretty much by myself. And it gets tough you know. It gets lonely and tired. Like, I go in places, like, like, I live in the train tracks, like I go in there, and it’s, and it’s dark. Like, I don’t know who’s there, you know. I just walk right in because that’s where I live, you know.
I dunno, the drugs just numb your feelings, it’s you don’t feel nothing anymore. Just like a zombie. Just walking, I have no, no type of feelings, everything is numb, that’s what drugs do. So, it’s not that we don’t care, it’s that in this particular moment it doesn’t even matter, like that’s what drugs do. That’s why we use drugs to numb any feelings we have. We don’t feel nothing. Yeah, any type of feelings. We just, nothing phase us, you know.
JS: Beautiful day today, huh?
MARILYN: I had like a like little room in the woods, right. I prayed to God last night before I went to sleep that I don’t fly away. I was like “God, please don’t let this little room fly away.” You know, cause it’s like half cement and half woods. So when I opened the door this morning the trees were down and all kinds of type of stuff in there. I was still there.
CITY HALL: Alright, my name’s City Hall, and I first came up in Kensington, 1990, that’s when I was going to Kensington High School, started hanging up in the neighborhood and stuff but I didn’t really get caught up in the drugs and all that, just being a bad kid and everything. But as the years went on, about 97, I started dealing and got caught up, y’know what I mean, on Tioga, with the wrong people and stuff all at a young age into the prostitution stuff, a lot of gangbanging. You get used to that type of stuff being around you so I was like hey what’s another way to get some quick money than being up here, but it was the wrong choice I made so I fell back a couple years later but, you know, now I’m back up here and um it seems though, it seems though it just got worser. As me living here, they just see me nothing as selling drugs or doing something wrong. But other than that, like you know, it’s hard, it’s really really hard out here like some of us that’s all we got, you know, that’s all we know. But everybody up here is not a bad person or struggling to do drugs but that’s what they look at us as, as selling drugs or just gangbanging but no, that’s where we at this is where we live in Kensington, and I’ve been here and I’m not going nowhere. And I go back to court in October for a case for locked up for my own prescription because I’m on the block and I live down the street it doesn’t make any sense. You know it’s, it’s really hard for us, like I cry every morning when I wake up knowing I gotta come out here and be around this, but this is all we know. And so if you, if you gonna get locked up when you ain’t going on something and so, what is you going to do now? Now I need a lawyer like I really was doing it, it was my prescription! I can’t have my prescription drug on me? Cause somebody else threw some pills out here? You mark me up with them and grab the wrong dude because the person who sold you the pill, I know who did it! And I’m caught up for it you know what I mean and nobody’s helping me with bail money and now they taking me straight to trial, so how should I feel? I feel hurt finding out yesterday I went to court last week I didn’t even get in nobody’s explaining my case and why am I hiring a lawyer to pay him $1500 to go to preliminary knowing I’m not even going to get in? Now they tellin’ me I’m going straight to trial some people say because your case is weak it’s your prescription I just don’t know, no I don’t know anybody could tell on you these people they buy drugs and then when they get sick they tell on you, what can you do? And it’s not a black and white thing up here none of that plays. It’s about money and who’s doing wrong like I jump in the car the other day and kept riding and kept telling him to stop you’re drawing heat up here, but he kept going.
They calling the cops down there, I’m about to get out of here, but I’m here with you. POPO! Walk that way, bro.
JS: What I’m doin is, what I’m doin is trying to make photographs uh that kinda communicate that we’re all human beings and that the people out here are still people. They just need help. Um you know, that they just have circumstances that no one else really knows about. You started to tell me a little bit about those circumstances.
Azlyn: I was raped by my stepdad. What is there to say? That like, I guess that’s why like a lot of people say that like I do drugs, is to cover up like the pain and the feeling of being abandoned. Not being abandoned but basically it was because like my mom let it happen, my dad knew about it; it started when I was 7 years old with him raping me, beating me, and it continued until well the raping stopped because I was old enough- I was strong enough to fight it off, but the beating didn’t stop until I moved out. So, I just feel, felt alone, like nobody was there, so I guess that’s one of the reasons why I use is to cover up that one of feeling dirty and disgusting and unwanted.
JS: Um did you find it helped escape the other things that were bothering you?
Azlyn: For a little bit but not you know. I don’t know.
JS: I mean now that, I mean that pain never really went away, did it?
Azlyn: No, that pain will never go away.
JS: And doing drugs is a, is like a temporary thing, right, just to keep your mind off it?
Azlyn: Temporary numbness, yeah.
JS: What do you think that you would actually have to do to, to um feel better about your past, to try to get over it?
Azlyn: Well, I go to counseling, but I don’t really like to talk about it as much; I like to keep it bottled up inside. That’s what one of my problems is; I keep my emotions in because I don’t really trust a lot of people cause the people who were supposed to be protect me were hurting me, so it’s hard for me to be able to trust anyone.
JS: Who do you trust?
Azlyn: I trust my boyfriend, Vinny, but that’s basically about it.
JS: And how do you and your boyfriend survive out here?
Azlyn: Make money. I do what I do, and he does what he does.
JS: And, how much, um you use Heroin? Um what is, what is your habit? How, how much do you use it?
Azlyn: Well between me and him, only in a couple hours cause I told you how I got out of jail last night. I spent like $200 in, like, 3, 4 hours, but we also were doing coke, too. But we also ate like I don’t, I try not to spend all my money on drugs, like I try to do like normal things too. Like we went out to eat and stuff like that also. But I try not to have drugs as my main focus in life. I mean it is a focus in life because I don’t want to be sick.
JS: Have you tried to get off? Have you tried the methadone clinic?
Azlyn: I did go into, I walked off the methadone, off 160 mg. I’m going upstate New York either tomorrow night or Monday morning for a couple weeks, gettin’ Suboxone going a change of scenery.
JS: What does your boyfriend think of that?
Azlyn: He’s coming with me.
JS: Oh, wow. You guys are doing it together.
Azlyn: Yea.
JS: And he’s, he’s been using Heroin too?
Azlyn: Mmm hmm.
JS: Do you have any other friends out here on the Ave?
Azlyn: I do, but I don’t really talk to people, you know people get shady. It’s all about themselves. I help out people, help out so much, like buy people stuff and everything, and when I need it, they’re not there so I just. But I don’t like seeing anyone sick, so I try like I can’t help but help them, but I guess it’s me being too kind.
It’s a disease you know like it’s not something that we want; we don’t want to be drug addicts; we don’t want to have to find a way how to get money; we want to be like normal people, and it’s just a disease like anything else.
Eric Kyle no.2, 2012
