Me and Chris went in, already drinking, so we were revved up. There was two groups of guys—all white guys—and there’s tension. There was already about to be a fight. I don’t know if Chris knew one of the guys or if he just interjected himself into it. He got into this argument. I believe he was instigating. I don’t know who threw first. But it turned into a fight that engulfed the whole bar, people throwing bottles and bar stools.

This guy wings a punch at me and I grabbed him by his biceps, drove him into a corner and kneed him in his gut or nuts, kneeing the shit out of him. I go down from a barstool across the shoulder. I go down and I see Chris is on the floor getting kicked in the head trying to get up. I got up and tackled the guy that was kicking him, grabbed him by his arm—he was laughing about it—and said, “Let’s get out of here!”

People were on the ground knocked out. You had seven to nine guys a piece in the two groups. It was a big mess. We ran up the street to the Coach House and drank whiskey and ate hard boiled eggs. The sirens were going for a while arresting all these guys. These guys were still fighting when the cops got there. We stayed in the coach house and got reports from all the bar flies.

Chris got swallowed up by Harm City, became a heroin addict. Went into Angelinas on Harford Road all fucked up and stole forty pounds of shrimp. He left his I.D. so he got arrested, went to prison for a year and a half. His Aunt Rose was feeding the neighborhood with shrimp salad all week. He had hooked up with this chick who got him on the drugs. Then he gets out and does some kind of burglary and does six years for that. His brother was a junkie too, ended up dying of AIDs. He was in prison and they had plenty of heroin, but only one needle, so everybody comes down with AIDs and then they threw him out of prison because they didn’t want to take care of him. I Chris one time after he got out of prison seven or eight years ago standing on the corner of Northern Parkway and Harford Road.

I heard he lives over in Chase now.