Frankfurt, do you know?

Jesus Christ. They said it was sketch, but how could a neighborhood change so much in 400 meters? My heart is still pounding in my throat and my lungs feel like they’re full of helium. KaiserstraBe is the main street that leads out of the Frankfurt train station. It is the home of Frankfurt Hostel. MoselstraBe is the first street branching off from it. I left the hip comfort of Frankfurt Hostel, which was perfect, but full, and turned the corner in search of Easy Bed24, on Mosel, a name that is in no way explicitly or otherwise referring to beds for sex or shady business. The internet reviews said it’s in the middle of the red light district, populated by drug addicts, hookers, and people with hollow eyes. But Frankfurt hostel too, which is both safe and clean and a block away, is flanked by Wos, World of Sex, and a porno shop, so I was certain these reviewers were exaggerating or not aware of the alternatives. But I was wrong. I just saw my first bloody heroin arm, raised blue vein, faced cringed in pain, long raggedy hair under a blue baseball cap and missing teeth. He was kneeling on the sidewalk next to a car and the tainted blood trickled down to his wrist as the fire shot into the mainline. Oh my god. Next to him was a youngish woman in black bending down at a ledge near street level, looking through her purse, "for her phone," I thought. Then I saw the silver crack pipe resting on the concrete ledge. She was so young and so fair. She could have been anyone. She was someone. This is a world of pain and misery, horror, goosepimpled skin and handshake transactions. That’s how the money and the drugs are traded, I've seen it, through the handshake. But who trades in the lives and the bent faces? Who keeps that business running strong? I moved from the sidewalk and into the street. I wanted to cry. I can see them from out my bedroom window now. They stand in a diffused group and are very heterogenous. People from all walks, ages, skin colors, levels of attractiveness, life stories. I want to talk to them, to hear there stories, but I don’t think I will. I will just stand here and watch the bulging, bloodshot eyes, the smiles turn to grimaces, and the fast-action transactions in money, drugs and hungry faces that is life in the little community on Mosel Street. It is 1:56 p.m.