I wake in my Northeast Baltimore room, get dressed, drink a bottle of water, grab my backpack and head to work out in the County, arriving at 11:28, reading two chapters of War Before Civilization on the way. Nothing notable happens on the way to work, and my first 4 hours on the job fly by.

May, a regular overnight customer, comes into buy cleaning supplies and air fresheners, guess the height and weight of our crew members, and rub the bald head of the Brazilian floor tech to warm up her hands. I read two more chapters on my break.

I discuss my holiday schedule with my boss, who was recovering from a Vietnamese dining experience featuring noodles that he described as linguine made out of boiled condoms.

As I walk through the small park between the river and the 7-11 I see two East Baltimore Boyz who walked up from the transfer point where I’m headed, meeting up with four Middle River Boyz. They give the secret handshake and sit down to parley. The keynote speaker is in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down—a golfing accident I suppose. These guys are all from 14 to 18 years of age, and I am very impressed with their character, getting up this early out of bed to do their Stringer Bell and Omar Little imitations.

I walk by them and they get nervous and crowd together. A bunch of geese are pecking one another to my left. Up ahead three cops are parked next to the 7-11 getting their free morning chow. I decide to sit down and read two benches down. My new friends don’t like this. Two of the Hawthorn Boyz shake hands with the East Baltimore boys and walk back toward the city. These two locals then turn and shake hands with the wheelchair dude, who then places his hands underneath the seat of his powered wheelchair and scoots off across the bridge to his enclave with his three escorts.

There were two tags, small and printed in white, on the two benches they used. One I could not decipher, the other read, “R-PAKT”.

I get off the #55 in Parkville and walk up to Tom’s barber shop. Across the street is the scrawniest hooker I have ever seen, no more than 80 pounds. She crosses the street, mistaking my morbid interest for a prurient one, and tries to speak with me. She is also the ugliest hooker I have ever seen, with a face like a prune dipped in gorilla glue.

Home at the estate, I finish reading The Origin of Species—yawn, and then view a two hour instructional video and write a rough of the review.

I head out to shop for my Wednesday afternoon party for finishing Forty Hands of Night tomorrow. I stop in the gas station for some pretzels and pork rinds and notice an entire standup knife display case behind the plexiglass. There are 10 varieties of blades priced from $1 to $10, and increasing in size and lethality with every dollar. The two Pakistani men behind the counter eye me suspiciously as I take notes. Then, before I can purchase my snacks a black man barges in and says, “Did dat shit charge me nine cent a gallon tax on my gas—is dat what dat nine cent is, a tax?”

The Pakistani men, safe behind the counter, nod in the affirmative, saying, “Tax nine cents a gallon.”

The customer then raises his voice, “Oh, dis shit is fucked up. You all a rip-off—come ta

dis country ta tax my ass. Fuck dis joint!”

I duck into ‘The Hub’ sports bar, which was The Hub Cap for 25 years until it was recently sold by the cop who bought it from Rick, who had to sell the place after his son bit a dude’s nose off in a street fight. In any case, the bar now has no more empty tables, these being replaced by a row of carryout coolers by the very practical Pakistani men who operate the place. As I walk down the carryout aisle behind the bar I look to me left and notice that the barmaid is a shapely white girl in her mid-twenties who is being cheered by the dozen black men seated at the bar as she dances to the music they selected on the juke box. I do not know the name of the song or the artist, but it is something I heard in the 70s and only seems to have one lyric, “Jungle Boogie”. A horn section then plays and the chorus repeats ‘Jungle Boogie” and the patrons howl with approval as Amber rolls her hips.

Really, ‘The Hub’ seems to be genius level marketing.

I have spent two hours giving sword fighting lessons to James [a hyper active boy who really wants to be a pirate] while his aunt Josey looks on from the porch. I am walking back across Overlea to Hamilton when I pass a Pakistani owned convenience store to my right and the mouth of an alley to my left. Two mixed race youths hold their skateboards and listen to a middle-aged black man rant about the fall of Western Civilization, which he elucidates as ‘the crumblin’ of our shit since all dese United Nations muthafucas be commin’ up in here!’

I am almost to Hamilton when I glance across the secondary street at Aldo’s house, and see that he has his American flag, seats, and grill set up in his front yard. I don’t see him so continue on by. Aldo calls from his front door and waves. I stop and we begin speaking on the sidewalk.

“Hey man Sol said he saw you the other week, that you guys shook hands.”

“Yeah, I guess we’re even, I fired him and get him evicted but I did hire him twice.”

“Yeah man, he’s a good dude, been helping me with the house. You know he has a job lined up out in Utah, that's where he went after he did that prison time. Well, the funny thing is, him and his old lady took the jeep out to Utah, and it broke down before they got out of Maryland. They managed to get it back to his house, and then he finds out that the neighbors—druggies—have stripped all of the copper out of the house; no electricity, no water!”

We hear the rattling of baby carriage wheels coming down the hill and look up to see a tall slender young lady with a chestnut complexion, flip flops, jeans riding low enough so that I cabin read her tramp stamp, and a tube top.

We step out into the street and she says, “Excuse me do you all have a dollar I could have, or at least a cigarette.”

“Sorry miss, I’m broke,” said Aldo, as I shook my head 'no'.

She was pleasant enough and thanked us, then paused and spoke with a contemplative tone, “You know, I quit smokin’. But when people be stressin’ you, commin’ into your house and pissin’ you off, you can’t just be offin’ them. You need ta chill even if they do need a ass whoopin’. So I’m out lookin’ to relieve some stress so I don’t kill no dumb triflin’ bitch.”

I said, “Well Miss exercise is a proven stress reliever.”

Apparently she did not equate her pushing of this baby carriage over these pitted sidewalks as exercise. I don’t know what she thought I was referring to, but she snapped the roof of the baby carriage back and pointed at the little guy’s head, “You see that? You see him? How in hell am I ever going to do anything when I got to drag his ass every where? I can’t do shit in this world. Well thank you sirs.”

I made it home by 9:30, and here I sit at the keyboard at 10:54. It’s time for bed.