I walked to the local market to buy some green tea bags this afternoon, desperate to stay awake for just a few more hours. As I crossed the lot in 65 degrees of balmy weather, two women passed me going to one of those Japanese cars that looks like a Bentley. One was in her early thirties, shaped like two stacked balloons, and dressed in black furs. She was grandma, and she was driving. The 16-17-year-old female was dressed in a fake snow leopard coat and tiger-striped tights. She was mom. The child was perhaps two, in a white fur coat and white leather shoes, walking along, holding hands, when mom opens the door and yells at her, “Get in!”

The tiny child looked up at the inside of the back seat, with her car seat stacked on top of it, and then looked at her mother confusedly—and, in my wildest fantasy, would have said, “But, Ma, I’m a higher primate, and only two feet tall.” But alas, she merely cried, bringing down the ire of the savage parent, who then seized her under the arm pits tossed her up in the air, and then let her legs fall and swing around, the child hanging by her arm pits as the mother then began to shake her and scream, “Don’t be fuckin’ with me, bitch! Don’ even be fuckin’ with me! You fuckin’ with me, girl?”

I was inside in seconds. Soon I was at the register with my tea when the cashier in the next lane pointed at some ten year old African kid with his hands down his pants, by the Coin machine grinning as he masturbated. His grandfather saw this at the same time and shouted, “Stop that—you stop that now!”

The boy did not stop, even as the grandfather tried to grab him, waddling away practicing self love in the face of severe discipline, a mischievous grin playing across his face. My cashier began to crack up, and said, “Now I know why that kid always comes in here wearing a grin, because he’s about to beat off in the store!”

Then the lady behind me tapped me on the shoulder. It was Sanwa, a former cake decorator that had worked with me in another market. She said, “Hey Mister Jimmy, nice to see you! Are you still collecting stories for your books?”

Yes, in fact I am, Sanwa.”

“Well then, Mister Jimmy, have I got the story for you! This was yesterday, on the Twenty-Two [bus line] at Greenmount and Thirty-Third [at the link below]. This silver Lincoln Town Car cuts off the bus and stops, won’t let the bus by. The bus driver is beeping the horn. This ho gets out of the passenger side in tight denim with narrow pockets and a big bubble butt—was packin’ some booty. I’d say she was five-seven one-seventy, rough lookin’ but puttin’ it out there pretty good, lots of matching plastic silver bling, neck from the collarbone to chin, matching earrings. And she yells to the bus driver to let her on.

“He’s like, ‘No, this is not a stop,’ and she is cussing him out. The person in the Lincoln is talking to her. The bus driver tells her she has to wait for the next bus, at the stop, and she gets back in the Lincoln. But when the Lincoln pulls off he’s doing like five miles an hour and the bus driver is right up on his ass honking the horn. Then comes an arm out of the driver’s side window, a well-appointed shirt sleeve with gold cufflinks, and the hand is white, giving the bus driver the finger while the ho cusses up a storm.

“What a day—I’m tellin’ you!”