When I moved to Baltimore, the area I took up residence in was becoming the latest front in Baltimore’s race war, a war winding down as whites from virtually every Baltimore community fled to the suburbs. I began working a night job soon after the move. Walking two miles to work at night, through a neighborhood that was being overrun by criminals moving out from the ghetto, resulted in two very common occurrences:

Whenever I walked with a black coworker, white motorists at traffic lights would click on their door locks in such numbers that the street corner sounded like a carnival booth. We would just laugh at their cowardly nature. But my black coworkers would always remind me not to walk alone, that only the hunted walked alone—in their parlance "chumps."

Whenever I walked alone, which was most of the time, pairs and trios of black men, slightly older than myself—me being about twenty—would challenge me:

"You afraid, white-boy?"

"You think you can whoop ma, ass white-boy?"

"Come ‘ere, white-boy!"

"Walk-on, white-boy!"

"We own ya muthafuca, bitch!"

"I’z fuckin’ yo mamma, white-boy!"

and the most common threat, "Come ‘ere en give me da time, white-boy."

This was always an invitation to step into an alley, up a side street, into a yard, onto a lot, etc. I countered by arming myself with a number of large combat knives, my favorite being a 14 inch bowie knife held within my draped jacket, which I always carried to work, me being a frozen food clerk. I then became angry when they glared but remained quiet—seeming to sense instinctively that I was armed—from their ambush-invitation positions. The next phase was taking the sideways to work, the alleys, the lots, to be the one who came out behind these threatening figures—the creepy white guy from the shadows.

This race war stage is long over in Baltimore, with every neighborhood now ruled with an iron fist by the young black men of the streets, and visited only briefly by the police. We are now integrated, so the violence is far different, more inclusive, cultural apocalypse Romper Room style. Of all of the men I know who have lived their lives in Baltimore as a pedestrian I am the only one to have not been robbed. This is not black on white, as all men and boys on foot in Baltimore are targeted for violence by black men. Mostly, it is black on black, as most whites drive. There is no longer even a racial component to this dynamic.

During the race-war to hunting-matrix transition I lived up the street from our pretty-boy faɡɡot mayor M&M. I walked by his house nightly, past the pretty-boy faɡɡot cop who read magazines in his cruiser, on one occasion while a gang of five black youths tried to stone me in the mayor’s font yard. During this period I had been threatened with fists, feet, pipes, knives, handguns and vehicles. To this day, I have never permitted an enemy to take what is mine. Before I give you a brief on how I accomplish this, let me relate to you a tale from a few nights ago.

Joe, a tall, good-looking, athletic, confrontational white-boy of 21, was walking home to his pap’s house from the bar on the main drag. He was about to turn up the walkway to the house off of the sidewalk, when a black man approached and asked nicely, “Hey buddy, do you have the time?”

Even as Joe was telling him it was "two o’clock" he knew he had been had. It may be that he realized too late that he had broken discipline through civility. Perhaps he noticed the white car shadowing him too late. Maybe he heard the man stepping up behind him and cocking the handgun. In any case, his intuition told him he was being robbed before he heard, “I will blow your fucking head off! Give me your cash and your cell phone.”

Joe complied, made sure not to look anyone in the face, and did not turn and note any details concerning their white car as the men drove off. This is a typical ‘group with single firearm’ property transfer. Virtually all of this action goes unreported. Joe hates the cops to begin with, knowing that they would run a report on him because of his age, that they would take hours to show up, and that he would not be able to Identify the men, this being the very thing that guaranteed his survival, by abiding by hood-rat protocol and making certain he could not snitch and hence be assassinated for snitching.

All of my white friends will say, "This is typical black on white crime."

No, it is typical black on black crime, extended as a courtesy to whites as a byproduct of desegregation. Note the civil approach, the fact that ‘white-boy’ was not used to challenge, but that ‘buddy’ was used to disarm.

Having been tactically compromised to the point that any military squad leader would have surrendered in a like position, Joe salvaged his life, through passivity.

How, you may wonder, has little LaFond avoided a similar fate?

I have spent 30 years now in Joe’s shoes, nearly every night of my life alone, on foot, in one of the most violent cities in the First World’s most violent country. Without discussing the specific techniques I use, let me outline my moral guidelines, the Constitution of the Defiant States of my Ethereal Mind:

1. There is no unknown. Every man is known to me, as a friend, or as an enemy, he who is not my friend being my primal enemy, a rival in a kill-or-be-killed hunting matrix.

2. Any enemy [that is every male who is not known by me to be my friend] who asks something of me is only speaking to me to distract me for an attack by himself and others. I always assume he has reinforcements.

3. Any enemy who solicits me triggers the following response: I arm myself [hands on a weapon, even if just an ink pen or a bible], and visualize killing him as I use my peripheral vision and hearing to scan for accomplices, once he is killed in my mind I consider my options concerning the shell of a being left standing before me: antagonize, befriend, avoid, and act upon the very first impulse, trusting my instinct.

That is pretty much it. For more details on tactics read, The Streets Have Eyes #1 or Harm City Holdout below, or buy When You’re Food.

Above all, do not forget, that people who care about the time do not need you to tell them. Anyone who asks you for the time is measuring you for something. Maybe he just wants a friend, or maybe a wallet, or maybe even a dead body in a trash-bag. You can never really know at the outset. But you can rest assured that he does not care about, or require, your recitation of the progress of your contentious habitat through the heavens as measured by the sun, or even the atomic clock at Annapolis Maryland.

He is your enemy. Kill him in your mind and walk on.