This is just one afternoon as a writer among the illiterate; a two hour slice of my writing life. Erique has postulated that I have an ‘inappropriate aura’ that I ‘bring out the weirdness in people’. After yesterday I am inclined to at least consider his suggestion. But then again, maybe it is Baltimore. It seems when NFL players move to Baltimore they begin getting in trouble with the law, especially when they vacation out of town, as if that Harm City mojo clings to them like avarice to politicians.

Ray Rice, uber-geeky-good-guy in glasses with an ‘I love Mom’ smile, is a standout Public Relations man for the NFL, devoting much energy to an anti-bullying campaign. Yesterday, just before heading out for this little pre-training excursion, I viewed a video of Ray dragging the body of his unconscious wife-to-be—who he had just knocked out in the elevator—into a hallway and dropping her on her face! Since Ray is my mother’s favorite football player I will come to his defense on reflex and postulate that perhaps he was just applying an anti-bullying technique. You know that black women do initiate more violence in Baltimore than men. Perhaps he was just defending himself against those lethal designer fingernails he paid $500 to have installed on his personal nagging and bitching machine?

I don’t know if it will fly Mom, but I tried for your boy Rayray, here.

I am sitting in the back corner of a transit bus loaded with 40 or so junior high school and high school kids. I try to field a phone call but could not hear the caller. Fully half of the vocabulary in use begins with the letters n, f, b and y. Spitting on the bus is rampant. One nerd is caught in an alpha male’s seat and is made to sit next to the creepy old white guy in the trench coat. When my stop comes up on Loch Raven and Taylor I accidentally elbow a beta male in the head and step on the alpha’s foot, squeeze past a fat girl and a skinny kid, and manage to get off in time to sprint and catch the #3 bus going out to Cromwell Bridge Road.

Having survived that heart attack scare I board the #3 and offload at the Whiz Carwash and walk up to the karate school where I coach this doll of a Russian chick on how to slash and stab men. If Putin met her he’d fire some American news anchor and get her a spot on RT.com, broadcasting online to frustrated Libertarian news junkies…

Anna and I are waiting to cross Joppa to the diner to discuss a writing project. Behind us a tall boy in his late teens is listening to our conversation. He chimes in, “Excuse me Miss are you foreign? I heard your accent. You sound foreign!”

Anna smiles somewhat uncomfortably as we begin to cross.

"Excuse me, Ma'am, are you foreign?"

"Yes, I am. Aren't we all, in a way?"

"Yeah, well, I just heard an accent. Where are you from?"

"Take a guess!"

"Oh I'm terrible at guessing... um. Norway?"

"(impressed) Pretty close, actually!"

"Really? Is it Scandinavian? Finland?"

"A little further to the east."

"Sweden? No? I give up, I don't know."

"Russian."

"Oh Russian! It' a cool accent. You're my first foreigner. There's mostly white guys around."

"Really? Foreigners are all over the place."

"I met an Iranian but didn't talk to him."

The boy now passes us and is walking backwards with his hands in his pockets talking, a childish light in his eyes. “I met an Iranian—they’re all over the place! But I did not talk to him. I talked to you. I want to meet new foreigners and talk to them. Thank you Miss.”

By now Anna was genuinely smiling as we walked up to an unpromising Bel Loc Diner, made famous in a Berry Levinson movie titled Diner. The Bel Loc was once opened 24 hours. A few years back it was opened until 11:00 pm. Now, the sign says, it closes at 3 pm.

We have jaywalked, slush-slogged and ice-walked to this sandwich shop where only two other patrons are seated eating. Just as the two small polite people behind the counter hand us our cups and food and we begin to step away, one of the patrons, a towering black man in his twenties, rises and pats his belly. As we step away he seems to have an epiphany and blurts to the 4’ 10” brunette behind the counter, “Now I know why you people are so tiny! You don’t stuff yourselves and over fill your belly’s like we do.”

Anna gave me this ‘Oh My God’ look and the guy behind the counter shakes his head in apparent embarrassment. The little lady behind the counter is not put off though. She says, “Yes, you people are big! Very big, much eating!”

The man, seemingly justified in his theory says, “We’re big because we overfill ourselves. We should eat sensibly like you little Asians.”

The little brunette then grins and points to her head, “Yes, but we have big mind!”

By now we are at the table and Anna is saying, “Oh My. I have learned more about Baltimore today than I have in the past decade.”

I reminded her that such were the benefits of slumming in my company.