My street has a halfway house for drug addicts every 10 doors. These houses are occupied by 5 to 15 stoners, many put into these dwellings by court order. I know one delightful young lady who operates such a house the next street over.

“When I took over they had just fumigated for bed bugs and had moved in all new mattresses with plastic covers. But those things burrow into wood and the floor boards had an inch of filth all the way around. I don’t mind cleaning, but how do you do heavy cleaning with that much traffic. We have two attractive girls and nine guys. They have dated them all.

“So, my second day in I piss test them all, and they all fail—every one of them. Out they go. I had the entire week to clean that place, and I needed it. I got all the crude and gunk cleaned up. Typically I’m putting one out a week.”

With some background behind us, let us look over the gables of my plantation five doors down to the left, to that recovery house, not the one three doors up to my right. This house is occupied by 1 young lady and almost 10 men, mostly in their 20s. One of them failed his piss test, and was put out yesterday at 4:30 p.m. with his three plastic shopping bags worth of possessions.

My cutest roommate, who I shall refer to as Mary Poppins, knocked on my door and informed me that, since she was leery of having this dude nodding out on the curb and getting splattered [wishful thinking that was on my part] by a speeding SUV thumbing along under rap-power, she had asked him to sit in the driveway of the vacant next door. She just wanted me to have my Neanderthal radar out incase Harm City punished her for doing a good deed.

I looked out the window and saw this tall able-bodied youth sullenly sitting against the side of the vacant behind some cast off ghetto furniture with ashtray upholstery, as if some Godforsaken nation had failed to motivate him and that terminal ennui had set in; as if, well, as if he were stuck in postmodern America.

Mary Poppins went outside and gave him a cup of water as he seemed hot and thirsty. The manchild did have the dignity not to beg, and assured her that his mother was on his way up from the Washington D.C. vicinity to rescue him.

Twenty minutes later Marry Poppins looked outside and saw, to her horror, that he was passed out on the asphalt and something wet was staining the surface next to him. She was afraid that maybe he had cut himself. She went outside and saw that he had used the water she had provided him to cook up some heroin and shoot up!

The needle was still in his arm when he hit the pavement and fell out beside him.

My man!

Make room, brother, make room!

Despite my notable lack of empathy, Mary did her civic duty and called 911 for an ambulance. The ambulance was in no hurry and the 911 operator was interrogating Mary as if she had something to do with the overdose. The operator demanded that she stay on the phone, communicate with the ‘victim’ and be on hand to administer aid and file a police report. This made Mary feel very uncomfortable. So she ‘removed herself from the situation’ despite her ‘nagging guilt for having supplied the water’ and retreated into our house. There she consulted with the first guest to arrive for the evening, the lawyer who verifies the immigration paperwork for my visiting female groupies from Bangkok, Ulan Bator, and Barcelona.

He advised her to ‘stay inside, to ‘not get involved’, to ‘not have any more communication with the 911 operator’, and to ‘absolutely not permit her personal information to appear on the police report’.

The paramedics did arrive in time to revive the ‘victim’. His mother was not far behind. I suppose she’ll find him in her basement one day, with a needle hanging out of his arm like Mary Poppins did yesterday.

In the Narcostate—particularly in its Number one heroin user zone—doing the right thing is very often not the bright thing. Drug addicts and urban people in particular, are generally looking for a free score and are constantly bombarded with advertisements for ambulance chasing lawyers. There are two different versions of the proverbial ‘pot of gold’ at the end of the Narcostate rainbow: the lottery, and the lawsuit.

Be careful out there.