I went looking in East Baltimore for a young man I trained once today, and found a miniature version of him standing on his [his mother’s actually] front porch with no shirt on, a towel draped over his shoulder, a hand down his pants, and a plastic 9mm handgun in his back pocket.
The little blonde, 35-pound fellow scowled at me, so I scowled back and said, “I haven’t seen you out here before.”
He snarked, “‘Casue dey oways niցցers on my porch!”
I said, “Is your daddy home?”
The little nose scrunched and the scowl deepened, “No, they kept him in school. He’s in detention, in a red suit.”
“So who are you?”
The boy looks up at me seriously, “I’m a thug.”
“Is your grandma around?”
He sneered, “That crackhead junkie?”
Then Ashley, his obese, twenty-two year old mother, comes out on the porch and slaps him in the mouth and scolds him for saying these things about her mother-in-law. The boy’s name is Gary, and he recoils indignantly, “Dat didn’t hurt, you pussy bitch!”
Ashley hissed, “You best shut-the-fuck-up with that language, boy!”
As she reached out to grab him, one pale breast slipping from its undersized housing, he backed up, drew his piece, pretended to draw back the bolt, made the metallic sound with his mouth, and then pointed it at his mother’s head and declared, “I’ll shoot you, bitch!”
His mother crouched and glowered, “Oooo, boy, what am I gonna do with you?”
My little man calmly said, in his spritely voice, “Fuck off, bitch!”
As soon as Ashley informed me that Darrin had not made bail, I was on my way, waving to my new friend, as he scowled at the black men loitering on the street, and studiously avoided paying any attention to his old man’s out of work bitch.
White kid? True story? Was the gun loaded?
The kid was a blonde white boy with a tan. His gun was a solid plastic one, not even a dart gun. His aunt told me that he has two other guns—both toys. His father is doing time for drug dealing. His mother is disgusting, and his paternal grandparents are both stoned on prescription medication all the time. The only decent adult in his life is the young aunt, who works at a pizza shop.