“James, your best writing, your most unique content is the city stories, the harrowing bus rides, the strange eggs at the bar, the outings with Mescaline Franklin, crazy bitches and hos. What has happened—are you retreating to some scholarly abyss?”

-Eugene

You nailed it Eugene.

Yes.

I’m sleeping 12 hours a day instead of three, writing and doing rehab exercises and hobbling back and forth to my three-night a week grocery job, lifting cases of milk with one arthritic claw-like paw as Old George exhales his four-pack a day soot into my face, bracing himself to receive the case weight neither one of us can really handle, trying to keep the other guy from blowing out whatever gasket is still left—because then we are well and truly screwed…

Eugene, I’m just trying to keep a roof over my head so this computer doesn’t get ruined in the rain.

I buy one 30-pack of beer a month when my son meets me after work. I am trying to avoid the street and have very well. I’m no white rabbit but an asphalt groundhog. Most of my Harm City writing comes from first hand experiences and observations and talks with strangers—which I’m trying to keep below zero.

I can tell you that a bitch with blonde weave lost a fight with a bitch with pink weave at Sefton and Mary two weeks ago. I counted the tracks as I limped by…

Two nights ago a dope fiend died in the Mondawmin mens’ room twice and was unfortunately revived thrice…

Eugene, I am busy trying to publish a few books I completed in 2016 and working on primarily literary projects. I am sorry. Hopefully by spring I’ll be getting tracked by hoodrats, harassed by pigs, threatened by hordes of Dindu youth and otherwise back on the Harm City beat.

Until then, my great adventures of the week repeat thrice and are chronicled in ‘Good Ev-en-ing, Sir’

The next article on the Harm City page.