Yes, my friend, Tweakers are Thieves... Is What It Is...

Is it just me, or are half the homeless out here on Meth?

My bike got knocked over last night violently enough to have a spoke broken. I repaired that this morning. Thankfully, I've learned to keep spares in the seat tube.

But yes, I had it out with a tweaker who I'd got along with since I'd known him. And yes, I knew he was prone to spurts of destructive “acting out.” It's interesting to me that the average tweaker seems to revert to the mentality of a toddler much of the time.

But I was also ticked off at my friend who the tweaker had victimized. He'd loaned him his EBT card and his bicycle, expecting them to be back in his hands in short order. To be fair, my friend has a bad set of legs. I know something about that with a knee that does go out now and then. So I guess it's understandable that he'd send his EBT card off with the tweaker in order to get some food... not smart, but understandable.

Well... I'm certainly not the only one who noticed things “loaned” to this particular tweaker had a habit of going missing. There was, as I recall, a laptop computer and a metal detector. These were “loaned” by someone who isn't all that reliable (not my friend) and has trouble keeping track of his own stuff anyway... it makes him an easy target.

But not long ago my friend's campsite was trashed, and it seems the tweaker himself swore it was the police. Was he, in fact, rifling through my friends things looking for something to sell?

My friend called me...

Oh... you'll notice I'm not using names. Normally, I would, but there are potentially real crimes going on here...

Anyway, my friend called me and told me what had happened. Asked me to keep an eye out for the tweaker...

And speaking of Tweakers... Adam Parris is around again... saw him yesterday morning as the Library opened.

...anyway, the tweaker (not Adam Parris) was at the Library in the evening as I arrived there from work, and I confronted him about this whole issue between him and my friend.

I could not believe what he told me, though I should have known he had that kind of guile, to tell me he was a meth dealer and not only that, he was my friend's meth dealer...

Now, you may think: How do you know your friend is NOT using meth?

Well... I don't. I do not know. What I do know is this: Meth users tend to have a distinct set of behaviours which include high energy and rapid fire speech. My friend has neither, nor have I ever known him to have either except when he's single-mindedly performing a task he's good at... but Meth users are almost never single-minded. So, if my friend is, himself, a tweaker, he sure isn't like any tweaker I've ever had the misfortune to meet.

So, I called my friend back, and told him the tweaker was here, I asked him if he was going to call the police... well, my friend doesn't trust the police the way I do, and I was not a little upset with him over that, but that is what it is... I brought the phone to the tweaker and went to hand it to him so my friend and he could have words... The tweaker was sitting with two other dubious looking characters outside in the library courtyard... not sure what was going on there, but I had never seen the other two before.

The tweaker turned at me in a flash and batted the phone out of my hand. We had an argument, I went back inside the library, and later came out to find my bike had been vandalized...

Oh well...

But what's interesting to me is that the tweaker actually told me to my face he dealt meth. Now, does he really? I don't know. If he does, why is he stealing bicycles and laptops and metal detectors...

Even so... it bears watching... and I'm sure there are at least a couple of Livermore's finest who will be interested...