The following incidents involve two of the more entertaining subjects of my research.
The Mac Daddy makes frequent appearances in The Logic of Force, the unpublished companion book to The Logic of Steel. Manny shows up in both books. (I'll have the soft-copy transcribed and cleaned up by September Donna.)
I met the Mac Daddy in 1998, on the night crew of a Baltimore City supermarket. He stood 5' 11" and weighed about 340 lbs. He grew up in a tough area of Washington DC, and liked to intimidate "Baldamore bruthas" with his ominous street-cred. He was the undisputed king of our domain—and I, his diabolical counselor—until Big Shiv came to work as our security guard. Big Shiv was from Turner Station, a Black suburb of East Baltimore that dates to the pre-Civil War era. He stood 6' 5", weighed in around 450 lbs, and was a self-declared predatory homosexual. At 5' 8" 153, I found it quite troubling, to be standing at the urinal in the men's room when Big Shiv entered, as he was in the habit of whispering seductive threats into the ear of any man caught in this compromising position.
It was not long before The Mac Daddy and Big Shiv decided to fight for territorial dominance. As the resident expert on all things violent, I was approached to sanction their fight. Neither man wanted to be arrested or fired for slugging it out, so I was dragooned into service as the underground fight facilitator. Since we were working in a heavily policed up-scale White enclave, I strongly suggested they not fight outside. They also could not fight under the Orwellian gaze of the ubiquitous cameras manned by the Loss Prevention Department.
Fortunately for the recently un-punched man-cards of both of these notorious but aging thugs, I found a solution. Our milk cooler was 20' by 24' and had no camera within. I constructed a 16' square cage of parked pallets of crated gallon milk, which permitted each fighter his own private entrance from either side of the walk-in, which had two separate entrances.
The men met for battle in the middle of the ring and began fighting, according to no set of rules, on my call. I was only there to say "Go" and to witness the inevitable bad ending. As I hid behind a support beam like some early mammal observing T-Rex battling Triceratops, Big Shiv landed a jab-straight combination to the formidable brow ridge of The Mac Daddy. Big Shiv winced in pain as his hands and wrists buckled on contact with the thick bony shield that was the forehead of The Mac Daddy.
The Mac Daddy was no technician, but he had good instincts. He left his head open and proceeded to punch the soft hands of Big Shiv with his own mutated paws, or as he referred to them "chump-hammas". Within two minutes Big Shiv tapped to fist punches, and retired with a bruised knuckle, sprained thumb, and sprained wrist.
Later that morning Big Shiv asked me to walk up to the park with him so I could train him for the re-match. As we entered the park a yipping, five pound, white poodle broke from a bun-haired old woman and came prancing toward us. This thing was so small it could have lived inside of one of Big Shiv's size-17 boots. I was soon astonished to find Big Shiv literally climbing up my body; standing on my feet and getting as much as his body above my shoulders as he could. I thought I would snap in half at any moment. The old lady looked up in bewilderment, over my head, on top of which Big Shiv's arms were folded, as he pleaded down to her, "Is it a good dog!?! Is it a good dog!?!"
Needless to say I decided not to train Big Shiv, but I did make a habit out of interviewing The Mac Daddy at every opportunity.
That Thang
Ya mean da scar ova da right eye? Oh yeah, dat a chump-scar...
Ova a ho ma brutha, ova a ho. Some ho—fine enough fo The Mac Daddy, but too fine fo da chump she was wit. Ya know, bein' a lady a taste, she want The Mac Daddy, wantin' ta give up That Thang—en the chump don' comprehend dat he out-classed. So The Mac Daddy gotta smack'im down—where is chump-ass belong!
...In the street ma brutha, in the street —whoopin' dat chump-ass. The Mac Daddy weren't 'is full two-eighty at dat young age. But he whoopin' ass ma brutha, whoopin' that nigga's ass!
...No grabin' o' holdin', no wrastlin' o' any a dat; jus beatin' the reality into 'is chump-ass!
The Mac Daddy too much fo da nigga, an da ho fine wit'it. She already lookin' ta lay it up on da table—The Mac Daddy en That Thang was a destination, a realization of The Mac Daddy popalaridy—and da chump couldn't hang wit dat. So he crack The Mac Daddy upside da head from behine wit a bottle. That when the ass-whoopin' begin in earnest—nigga payin' en prayin'!
Then the police sirens. Now, The Mac Daddy nor da chump there to get arrested. So it come time to haul ass! A course, da ho eventually lay That Thang up on da table for The Mac Daddy, en da chump jus got ta deal wit'it. The Mac Daddy happy wit That Thang and that...was that."
I apologize to you students of the English language, but I was feeling misty over a recent separation and just had to include a story with a fairy tale ending.
Technical Note: The next incident, I suppose, should be classified as chemical weapon usage, but I classified it as a common article encounter. This category includes such things as dirt, hair brushes, but is dominated by cans, bottles and other containers of liquid. Things like marble ash-trays and trophies were classified with rocks and bricks, while pencils and pens were classified as shanks.
Manny's Jug
"This was the fall of Ninety-eight, in Curtis Bay. I lived in the end unit of a row. The side of the house, where the kitchen was, faced an alley. People would be making drug deals in the alley. You're trying to make a sandwich—and you hear some guy say he's gotta take a piss, and this guy is pissing up against the side of your house. The side of the house smells like piss. Its not an easy activity to monitor. Its not like they all come and piss on your house at nine-fifteen PM.
I got a cat litter jug. I was going to use a milk jug, but you can see into it. Besides, the milk jug makes that glug-glug sound—you want a nice smooth delivery system. The cat litter jug has a wide mouth, and holds two-and-a-half gallons!
I kept this jug in the upstairs bathroom and pissed in it. Its really good to have a jug of piss, in case somebody takes your parking spot. Piss is good. You can do a lot of things with piss.
It took anywhere from two weeks to a month to fill it. Its not a regular thing. You have to open it to fill it, and that can get pretty nasty. You open a jug of this stuff and its fermented; it doesn't even smell like piss anymore—really nasty.
I get home late from work and I can hear these guys in the alley. This one freak is going to piss on my house. I went to the [kitchen] window and he was assuming the 'about-to-piss-position'. Have you ever noticed that people who are pissing are helpless?
So I went upstairs to the bathroom, got the jug—which was filled to the rim—opened the lid, swung open the window, and dumped it on this guy from two stories! Not a glug, just a nice even hiss as two-and-a-half gallons of steaming-hot, month old, festering piss washed down his back.
The guy yells, 'Ah fuck!'
I soaked this guy! He runs down the alley yelling that he's going to kill me—but I never saw him. I had something waiting for him.
The wall-pissings stopped—like the passing of an era. That was the end of it—except I spent forty dollars in long distance calls telling people about The Great Dumping of The Jug.
I no-longer keep a jug.
Sometimes, though, you want to memorialize; like the Black kid with the knife that tried to rob me when I was carrying a gun. After I took his shoes I kept them in the back of my car for years to show to non-believers.
The only thing that separates tragedy and humor is time and space."
Manny has worked as a street artist and standup comedian. At the time of this interview, he was operating a tattoo parlor, where this interview was conducted, as he awaited, "an oppressed Nubian Prince, who is on his way over here to 'hurt' my 'body'.
If semantics could kill I'm sure this guy would be a terror."
