HE HAD A NAME

Why was the "young heroin user known on the street as Curtis" known as
"Curtis" ["Good Dope, Bad Dope," Aug. 9, 2000]? Probably because that was
his fucking name. In fact his name was Curtis James Freitag; he died July
28, 2000, the day after his 26th birthday. He was the bassist for the
PDX-based band My Regrets, who played Aug. 10, with the Dandy Warhols, at
the Roseland. More importantly, he was my friend. Using expressions such as
"known on the street as..." might sound great if you're a scriptwriter for
NYPD Blue, but in reporting a heroin death in a town this small, it just
serves to (once again) dehumanize and belittle a much loved and missed
person because they died as a result of drug use. People are known on the
street as "Spooky" or "Lefty" or "Sullen-Choirboy," not "Curtis"; Curtis is
a person's name.

So at this point you may be wondering how this unreasonable bitch (me)
expects you to know all the details of some dead junkie's story? With an
embarrassingly minor amount of research! A look in The Oregonian, a call to
the county medical examiner's office, even a "Hey, anybody know anything
about this dead Curtis guy?" email around the office would have given you a
lot more information than you either possessed or just felt like using. So
feel free to throw a little...oh, I don't know ...investigative reporting
into your mix!

I'm not naive enough to believe one more dead junkie in Portland should make
front-page news, but wait 'til it's your own dead junkie, and then maybe
you'll appreciate what it feels like to have the death of someone you loved
reported as some sort of "non-person" statistic.

Laura Reynen, North Greeley Street

Ben Jacklet responds: My apologies for the use of what I agree is a clichéd
phrase. When I spoke to officials from the program where Curtis Freitag had
received counseling, they chose not to offer personal details about him for
reasons of privacy; because his full identity wasn't essential to the story,
I chose not to hunt it down. I'm sorry for any impression of callousness
that my choice caused.