Righteous Dopefiend

Tina, a woman who is addicted to alcohol and crack, splits her time between the streets and her cousin’s place in the nearby projects. When both Reggie and Carter vie for her romantic attention, she chooses to pursue a relationship with Carter, getting into a physical altercation with Reggie to take control of the situation and express her disinterest. Reggie is arrested for brandishing a broken firearm in a crack exchange, and he is sentenced to eight years in prison, removing him from the community.

Tina derives much of her income from sex work—a setup that causes trouble once she has entered a relationship with Carter. She discloses early childhood trauma and sexual/physical abuse, which led to her viewing intimate relationships as inextricable from material or monetary gifts. Her early experiences of sexual abuse and violence led Tina to leverage her body as a means of taking control of her life.

Tina and Carter form a more serious relationship, leading Tina to end her sex work and take on the role of caretaker to the encampment she and Carter share. At first, Carter doesn’t allow her to go burglarizing—“hitting licks”—with him and others, preferring to continue the semblance of a traditional domestic gender dynamic where the male partner leaves home to earn a living. Ultimately Tina ends up becoming a more equal partner, but they maintain some aspects of these traditional gender roles, particularly after Carter receives about $6,000 from the sale of his childhood home and purchases a camper for them to live in. The mobility of this new home allows them to hit more licks and thus generate a more robust income, particularly by stealing wood during the San Francisco housing boom of the 1990s. The chapter closes with Tina’s disclosure that she has started to use heroin in addition to crack and alcohol, which could cause a rift—Carter and others in their moral economy are used to sharing crack and alcohol with her, but not heroin.