Yesterday, proud of my output, and hoping to take credit for Jim Fry’s output as well, before retiring to the nether reaches of my lopsided futon mattress on the slanted wooden floor above SJ’s office, I sought refreshment at the mixed race sports bar, where I made Billy’s acquaintance.
I have nodded to Billy, said hello, and even patted him on the back, but today I learned his name. He is a struggling white blues guitarist and music buff of 37 years, who looks much younger. As soon as he speaks through that John Lennon mouth you just know he has smoked pot on most of the days of his half done life.
Billy is a well read, intelligent, super nice guy, who, for some reason, has trouble with short term recall.
When the news came on at 5:00 it went right to a press conference, in which the police commissioner was being taken to task by reporters on behalf of neighborhood associations and church leaders of West Baltimore, who claim that the predominantly black third of the city is now an un-policed crime zone—a veritable Wild West!
The chief responded, “Our officers are routinely surrounded by twenty, thirty people…video cameras and hostility…We have to send in multiple units just to do basic police work.”
Billy pointed at the monitor and said, “Bullshit, he’s lying, making that up.”
Seeing as how he had my attention, Billy continued as I put pen to register receipt.
“I’ve been mugged, worked over, almost killed by a group of young guys [We are in a mixed race setting, so he uses his eyes to indicate that they were black.], just like most of the people that live in this area. My case was pretty bad. I was drunk to begin with, and didn’t even remember the encounter until the next day. The people at Shock Trauma asked me what happened and I said, ‘I fell,’ and they were like, ‘Oh, it was a lot more than that!’ I had no skin on the right side of my face and had swelling of the brain. They said I would have died if my friend’s father hadn’t seen me lying on the sidewalk. It was down by Belvedere and Traymore, behind the Royal Farms store.”
“I learned a lesson then, to never talk back to a group of young guys that mouth off at you. Just keep quiet and keep on going.
“The other lesson I learned was at the hands of this fine gentleman’s organization, the stat-massaging goon squad that reports an attempted murder as a mugging, and doesn’t go back and update a shooting to a murder after the poor guy dies in the hospital a week later.
“My girl and I were driving home from a gig one night. I had just moved into a new rental. When I pull up I see that the door had been knocked off its hinges and cops were hauling out my computer. Dude, I don’t break any law more serious than smoking a joint. I figured this was a mistake, and it was. I asked the cops what’s up and they say, ‘Are you, Reggie Johnson?’
[Billy, does not look like Reggie Johnson—any Reggie Johnson. In fact, I challenge the people of America to find a Reggie Johnson who looks like a 25 year old John Lennon.]
"They’re like, ‘Reggie Johnson lives at this address, Can you prove you are not Reggie Johnson?”
“So, I show them my I.D. and neglect to keep my mouth shut. The only thing you should ever say until you see your lawyer is, ‘Am I under arrest?’ Everything else is asking for trouble.
“First of all, they acted like complete assholes; ruffed up my girl, coped a feel, pressed my face against something hard that I supposedly owned!
“Unfortunately, I had been caught speeding, ten miles over the limit, in a school zone at one a.m. at some point in the past. When I was pulled over they searched my car, and found my little brother’s nun-chucks. So, on my record is a charge—not a conviction, because it was thrown out of court—for a ‘concealed deadly weapon.’ That was all she wrote. My girl and I spent the weekend in jail, just because I was renting an apartment where some criminal used to live.
“Could you imagine if I was black? Fuck that, I’ll take white getting stomped by black youth to black getting worked over by Baltimore’s finest any day of the inequitable week.”
There you have it Boned Zone readers, from a man who knows, the two venues for Boned Zone encounters: minding your own business and getting jacked up by cops, or minding your own business and getting jacked up by black youth. There really is not another selection on the menu. For smelly bikers and middle aged black panthers you need to check on the special of the day page.
“With individual cops who do not come off as complete assholes right off the bat—which isn’t many—humor does work. Tom and I were stumbling home one time, and we were so drunk we just fell over on the sidewalk. A cop pulled up and said, ‘What’s going on here?’
“I said, ‘I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up,’ reaching for the First Alert button.
“The cop was cool. He said, ‘Look, you guys are of age. How about I give you a lift home?’ and he did. I suppose cops like that get eaten alive in West Baltimore.”
