Jay looked like Butterbean, but bigger. His fists were as big as my head, huge guy and strong, that athletic fat. He looked like King Kong Bundy, the wrestler. He could move, was a hard fat. He was an Armistead Gardens guy. [A tough white neighborhood off of U.S. Route 40 and Erdman Avenue.]

Joe was the dog panhandler at Inchon John’s liquor store. Sandy, who was Jay’s girlfriend lived next door to Joe. They lived off of Cold Spring Lane and Harford Road, behind the old folks home—they were next door neighbors. Joe, he inherited his mom’s house and turned it into a junkie flop house, tents in the yard, whores, ended up losing it –owned it out right and never paid the taxes.

Thanksgiving we are eating at Jay’s—at his girlfriend’s. Her father gets in argument with the neighbor, Joe and Jay goes out there with is big fucking fist and lays the guy out. He got arrested, had Thanksgiving dinner in Central Booking.

His girlfriend’s father, Jay and me went down Crazy Rays together for an 8-cyllinder engine for a ford F150 and Jay pulls the whole fuckin’ engine out of the truck and carries it to the casher.

I got him a job at this company I was working at. We were doing a job at Fort Meade high school, right at the gates of the military installation. There was this other guy on the job. He was on TV, had won a TV tough man contest on FX. It was on West Virginia on TV. He was about 5’9”, a real stocky, weightlifter type guy. Him and Jay are having a “whose dick is bigger” type arguments on the job. We come back from lunch and the guy sucker punched Jay, with a sucker punch right hand and a hook—they just go off his head. He might as well have been a baby hitting him.

Jay threw a straight right, not put up, just a rising arm thrust. It was not technically punch, just kind of a closed-fist stiff-arm. You never thought it would have hurt like that—but his hands were as big as my head. The guy drops: 23 stitches. He was out, not unconscious but done. Jay just flicked his arm straight out and this guy went off his feet—it was comical, like a cartoon. It wasn’t even really a punch.

Both guys lost their job—a good paying job.

There was two other incidents on that job.