At 11:45 this morning I headed out to the school to put in some training and do some janitorial work. As the bus banked in and I boarded, the driver held up her hand and told me the meter was not accepting fares today. I thanked her and headed to the back.

I made my connection in plenty of time, had ten minutes to kill. It was now 12:14. A motorist with a handicapped tag was pulled over in the bus stop lane by a county cop. The motorist was not some oppressed youth about to fight for being profiled, but a middle-aged man with his wife, or informal equivalent.

I could have hoofed it to the next stop. But really how long could this take? The cop is already writing the citation, and the bus will soon be able to pull over, so I sit and observe.

Another cop pulls up and talks to the cop, and the driver.

The first cop talks to the driver and then comes around to have a separate conversation with the passenger, who apparently owns the vehicle and is the handicapped one.

A third cop pulls up—it is a traffic jam now. That cop talks to the two occupants, and then has a separate consultation with the driver. He then talks to the other two cops, each at their own vehicle.

The first cop produces a second citation and talks to all four parties again. I stop reading and start listening.

This vehicle has been flagged for long-term uninsured status by the state MVA, and the cops have been sent to pull the tags! Each cop, in his and her turn, have had the same subdued and congenial conversation with each occupant of the vehicle, and it is now 12:34. Hopefully the bus is five minutes off so I can get to the next stop, because it will not pull over here.

Now a tow truck shows up. The driver, a very unsympathetic looking fellow who I could imagine playing the heavy in a B-movie, now has a conversation with a cop, then the driver, than another cop…

There is no bus in sight so I start hoofing it. Then I hear the bus and begin to sprint. It is 200 yards to the stop. I can do it! The bus pulls over with 50 yards to go, and the elderly passengers take some time getting off, and I’m there. Unfortunately the bus driver does not look my way before pulling off. I wave, and then think about yelling, but am reminded how much yelling hurts that old groin injury and just let it go and walk.

I made it to the school a little late, put in my training, and left at 3:00 PM. I still had my $3:50 and will not need a ticket. So I decide to walk the few miles to the next line and just spend $2 to cover the $1.60 fare, and spend the $1.50 on a draft at a bar on the way home.

I wait at the stop with a stuffed-animal street vender, with a sack full of stuffed beasts strapped to his back, and hanging from his apparel. The bus pulls up, I board, and the meter is jammed, so I ride for free. This reminded me of how my fighter Curtis used to have trouble making weight when he took the bus. You see, so many Baltimore area busses have non-functioning meters that he regularly ended up getting home from the gym with at least $2 dollars that he had not planned on having. He lived right next door to a McDonalds, “and that’s two sandwiches on the dollar menu, Mister Jimmy!”

In honor of Curtis I decided to pay my uncollected bus fare forward. I was thirsty, and was feeling old, so wanted to do something defiantly unhealthy that would maintain the three inches of armor that is currently shielding my pristine six-pack from damage. A draft it would be.

That counted out the biker bar, since they had no draft beer as a means of keeping microbrew nerds and black dudes from patronizing their heavy metal den of thieves.

The bar across the street was closed, the single patron’s liver having apparently failed.

I entered the bar up the street. The ball game was on, which was perfect because I’m writing Hurt Stoker tomorrow. Whiff Gleason, the main character, is a former baseball player. There was also no one at the bar, which was nice, since the guys that are usually there are pretty loud and drugged up, this being the stoner bar. Unfortunately, Terry, the big-headed Frankenstein monster of barkeeps, is asleep, on the bar, snoring away.

The black bar next door was open, but the lights were out and I saw no one at or behind the bar. Either someone was having sex with the barmaid or the place was being robbed, so I headed home, and got my butt in this chair at 4:11 pm.

Now it just occurred to me that I have not been able to pay my bus fare forward. It has also occurred to me that if I go down the street to the mixed-race alcoholic classic rock/NFL bar, and am unable to get a cheap draft there, than I have a vastly improbable story on my hands. I am fantasizing right now about a journey across town—maybe on buses without functional meters—to bar after bar whose bar-back called out and the barmaid does not know how to change a keg. This could be my break, an article in Rolling Stone!

In reality it is most likely that my adventure will merely consist of a cheap beer in an improperly washed mug as I sit between the old white hippy who looks like Roger Daltry and plays Who songs on the juke box constantly, and the black dudes discussing their game bets while the rednecks up front [they sit there so they only have to waddle ten feet to get outside and smoke] commit brain cell genocide.

Well, I’m up for an adventure, and will hopefully get home at 3:00 am with my conclusion.

James 4:48 pm, heading out to pay it forward.

As best I can remember I‘m a hundred years old and lost!

Okay, back up.

I just got in and it is 11:30. Yes, I am completely smashed—grammatical inebriation dispensation evoked.

The weather was very nice. So, on the way to the bar I was entertained by a ghettocross rider, a young guy in sweats illegally riding a dirt bike in violation of every traffic law he can violate, even driving against traffic. The cops no longer chase these guys for reasons beyond my knowledge, though I suppose their inability to catch these daredevils is a factor.

I entered the local NFL bar and discovered it was the local schizophrenic sports bar: with the MLB on the high definition up front for the white dudes who are completely annihilated, an NHL game on one screen for the vacant looking bearded guy in the corner, and the NBA on the two screens in the back for the five black dudes who are arguing over honey nut cheerios, cunnilingus and smacking down white European basketball players…

By 5:55 p.m. I had bought two National Bohemian drafts for $1.75 a piece and was now

paid forward and spiraling into the abyss...

I quizzed the baseball coach who dropped by to see an inning.

The barmaid called out, but the bar-back was dragooned into keeping the place open, and was spending five minutes making sure that I did not get suds but a 5.4% alcohol buzz.

My Negro League ball player protagonist led me into a conversation with William, a former rec. council coach in numerous sports who explained to me the bio mechanics of batting to right field, and the social mechanics of body punching and African American street life.

The local hooker with spiked platform earrings hovered around as the stumble bum white drunks who were already annihilated when I showed up at 5:10 p.m. faded into the evening.

William turned out to be a great interview and we started watching fight replays on the over head and on his smart phone. Richard, a New York man who played minor league ball for 13 years, showed up and gave us the update on the latest Floyd Mayweather fight, which he claims Floyd should have lost.

Richard and Spike Lee—I think it was Spike Lee—talked for hours about boxing and about African American history until only Richard was left...

I bought Richard a drink and he, with his very sheik watch and jewelry, reminded me to button up my polo shirt to keep up appearances…

It was late and Richard and I were walking home together since he lives three blocks past me. Richard, at six foot and one-sixty—as I guessed on the nose, was just as uncomfortable with me knowing his weight as he was with the fact that he and I lived on the same street. He was having trouble walking because he had been shot in the leg some years ago, and because we drank too much cheap beer, so I kept an eye on him so that my interview did not get hit by a car. That would be unseemly you know.

He looked at my collar and noted that I could be respectable if only I always buttoned up, then I pulled him out of the street onto the sidewalk as a car approached and pointed to my legs, “Richard, I’m wearing black sweats underneath of black cargo shorts with brown work boots—that is irredeemable, man!”

He laughed and staggered out into traffic, saying, “Hey, man, you are way too funny.”

We then walked by the house where I rent the room from the karate guy who leaves the doors unlocked so he can beat up any intruders Chuck Norris like. I was worried about Richard getting hit by a car. So I pulled him out of traffic again and told him, “This is as far as I go.”

He then pulled down his fly to water the neighbor’s untrimmed bushes that force pedestrians to walk on the curb or in the gutter while a Hum-V rumbled by, and I was out of there…

Harm City got my money in the end.

What is the answer to the question that is the title?

After deducting the one hour I spent writing the first segment, it took six hours for Baltimore to take $3.50 of my money. But she was having a bad day, and after she got warmed up, she, like a housewife who has finally finished her morning coffee and realized there was still something in your wallet, took $12 more in the same timeframe.

Over and out at 12:22 a.m. 5/6/2013…

Moral Minority Survival at the End of Caucasian Time Paperback