Last night I went to a Northeast Baltimore bar. Upon entering this establishment one is always faced with three choices: sit with the whites up front; sit with the blacks in the back; or sit on the racial fifty yard line. I never pick the first choice, race-trader that I am. As it turned out, all five empty seats were at half-field.

After I took my seat next to a five hundred pound black man, a tiny, 120 pound white man came in wearing a backpack, and sat to my left. This man was short, had stringy gray hair bound with a dirty bandana, wore military surplus, and offered to share his bag of potato chips with me. I was a bit put off by his broken and blackened teeth and rank breath, but was intrigued by his mangled hands. He had taken a bullet wound to the left hand and had a recently cast boxer’s fracture to his right hand.

The man nodded at me, bought me a beer, and extended his broken hand for a shake. His voice was strained from smoking and screaming, having that torn pre-elderly quality shared by discarded urban survivors. He leaned forward and contorted his face in pain when he spoke, “Hi, I’m Kenny—Kenny Johnson, same last name as the man that drafted me into Nam. I grew up in Higlandtown [lower Eastside of Baltimore between Patterson Park and Greek Town] and shined shoes outside of Gus’ bar. My mom smoked Parliaments. Dad smoked PalMal. I used to steal me a PalMal en smoke it on the way to school. Smoke ta this day, especially now since I relapsed, relapsed after eight years.

“I come home from shinin’ shoes one day and Dad says, ‘Kenny, I got some bad news for you. The draft notice came in the mail today.’ Nineteen-sixty-nine: had an M-sixteen in my hand and my buddy dying at my feet. Army. Got out in Seventy-five.

“I got the disability. Twenty-three hundred a month, and the section-eight [subsidized housing voucher] and the V.A. hospital to go to. I’ve got to move though. I am also losing my section eight for getting evicted three times, on the street, homeless again. I’ll get committed, let the money pile up, and after three months be good to go and find a new place.

“I’m getting evicted because I am the only white at the Solar Circle Apartments, I play the Rolling Stones blarin’ loud while I sing, en call people niցցer when they complain. But I have my reasons. I relapsed.”

Kenny sings a rendition of She’s So Cold by the Rolling Stones, loud enough to drown out the MoTown playing on the jukebox. I cannot remember song lyrics, only narrative and dialogue, and did not have my note pad. I do remember him having a hard time with the word cold, stuttering it out. Kenny then forgets that we were introduced five minutes earlier, shakes my hand with his broken one, and says, “Hi, I’m Kenny, a Vietnam veteran. I believe in Jesus, and sure hope you do to, because he got me through Nam—Amen!”

“Yeah, the hand. Well, I have been a fighter ever since Nam, do not let people take from me. I was walking back to my apartment ten days ago, across Hillsway [the scene of two cabbie executions and various other stabbings and shootings over the past ten years] through the KFC parking lot when this gray car pulled up with four big black fellas in it. The driver asked me for a cigarette. I smoke, started smoking my dad’s PalMals when I was a shoeshine boy. Didn’t smoke Parliaments, that being a lady’s cigarette. I was getting him a cigarette when the other three got out of the car, grabbed me, threw me to the ground, and kicked me in the groin. I do not remember much. Don’t know how I broke the hand.”

I examined Kenney’s hand and determined he broke it hitting something, not from being stomped. He pointed to the twenty—mostly large—black men to my right, as he offered some potato chips to a black fellow behind him that was asking the barmaid for some chips, “You know, my dad always said they had hard heads. There you go, broke hand. I don’t remember though. I blacked out. I have blackout attacks as it is and the beating just brought it on.”

“Someone in a car picked me up and took me to my apartment. My shirt was so bloody I had to throw it out. My lips were busted. Both my eyes were black. My nose was gushing. I have a broken rib. My groin still hurts—they kicked me in the groin when they threw me down. My head hurt real bad. So I said ‘fuck it!’ and went down to the liquor store and bought a half gallon of vodka—relapsed after eight years. Then up goes the music. You know what my favorite band is?”

“The Rolling Stones are my favorite band—Hi, I’m Kenny, I’m a Vietnam vet, fell off the wagon after eight years after getting mugged. Now I drink and sing and blare music and say niցցer. I’m the only white guy in my apartment complex. The police say I have to leave—homeless as of today, sleeping on the bench.

“Yes, about the eviction. On account of a mugging by a carload of guys I lost everything, all my money, I.D., lost it all. So I went and got new I.D. Got my money again, and decided to wash clothes. Plus, my doctor at the V.A. gave me something called perk-a-sets for this terrible pain I am having. I met this pretty black girl at the Laundromat. She was young, real cute, and said she would be my girlfriend. So I took her home. Woke up: no money, no perk-a-sets, just the pain. But she left the I.D. and the vodka, and the boom box—Ten Years After, Rolling Stones…”

“Now I sing, and blare music, and say niցցer, and have to go.”

Kenny downed the rest of his beer and a shot, I bought him a shot of gin, gave him a Harm City card with my phone number, had a lady at the bar program my number into his cell phone, and patted him on the shoulder, “Hey Kenny, I’ve got to go [I can’t remember more narrative and dialogue than what he had given me and needed to get home to write it down.] He looked at me and squinted, then smiled, “Hi, my name is Kenny—Kenny Johnson, same last name as the evil man that drafted me to kill those Vietnamese people. I believe in Jesus, he got me through Nam. I hope you believe in Jesus. Have a nice day, sir…”

I walked across the street to the Ghetto Gas Pump, and stood outside the convenience mart while gangbangers streamed in and out to get their barbecued chips, and address each other with the very same word that Kenny is guilty of using to describe his neighbors. One car of ’bankers’ [drive-up muggers] were circling the block, looking for lone stragglers as the night wore on. These might have been the fellows who drove up and robbed Miss Dean—a sixty-seven year old black woman who still works fulltime—earlier this week. The Pakistani guy inside the convenience mart is being harangued by two hood-rats while two others rap out loud about "niggas en bitchez."

A raiding party is gathering across the street, three young thugs, looking my way as I use the backs of three receipts from my wallet to write Kenny’s dialogue before I start my trek home. After my talk with Kenny, and news of Miss Dean from the barmaid, I was a little nervous, and wanted to be keen for my walk home, not caught up in memorizing his story. I’m walking through the city at night three days before the welfare money comes out after a four-and-a-half week month. Times are lean and it is the day after pay day and two days after SSI, so working people like Miss Dean and I, and retirees like Kenny, are prime ala carte selections on the Harm City prey menu.

The thugs keep looking at me, looking at them and writing, using my wallet as a table. I make an ostentatious display of trying to force my wallet shut, full as it is with ones for the bus, and of shoving it in the side pocket of my cargo shorts. I pat my pocket and nod to the thugs as I walk up the dark side street behind the station away from the main drag.

Being defiant wasn’t going to do Kenny much good on this cool summer night, so I was doing it for him, hoping I was still young and ruthless enough to pull it off. On the way home I wondered, if Kenny would even last the night, and if I’d end up like him someday, a broken record of bad luck, dark decisions, and defiance.

James, 8/4/13

Recognizing and Surviving the Condition of Anarcho-Tyranny