I woke groggily, startled by the lack of an alarm blaring after an hour's nap and discovered that it had been two hours, I having stupidly set the alarm for the a.m. rather than the p.m.

Was I hung over or still drunk?

Neither, just tired,

It was 11:54. The last eastbound bus passed a mile from my lair a half hour before I woke.

I must head out to Harford Road and get the #54 downtown and take the Orange Line out to Whigger River.

Dressing in haste, I was walking out into empty Harford Road at 12:04 and flagging down a bus that crept down the street looking for passengers, no longer thundering by, half-loaded and on time, but creeping along trying not to get ahead of schedule.

There are about five of us on the bus, traffic near zero, no one on foot except a few thugs standing around, and, as if knowing there would be no more passengers waiting at bus stops south of Echodale, the driver put his foot on the gas and tobogganed downhill, ever deeper into the deserted city, a paved bowl broken against the dirty harbor water.

Approaching Sinclair and Harford, where hundreds of Baltimore’s people of the night used to gather for their impromptu block party ever Friday and Saturday night, there was not a single civilian in sight.

On the right was an elevated porch staffed by five uniformed thugs, 20-25 years old, double white T-shirts, black cargo shorts and sneakers.

To the left, the mouth of Bonaparte was taped off as a crime scene, with about ten cops dismounted from five cars investigating something on the ground.

Two houses down sat a younger squad of uniformed thugs on a low porch and stoop, as two cops asked them questions and they all shook their heads as if they had seen no evil, heard no evil and would speak no evil upon the subject.

The bus rumbled on, stopping only for lights, no one boarding.

As the bus rattled down Ensor only one lone figure was in view, standing before a closed Chinese grocer, in uniform, double white T, black cargo shorts, sneakers.

As we pass the Juvenile Detention Center and pass under I-83, I realize that only five lone thugs and ten packed thugs and no cops [outside of the crime scene at Bonaparte and Harford] on a mild summer night, on 7 miles of Baltimore’s fifth busiest primary street, have been spotted.

The total cop count is double normal, possibly due to the crime scene.

The total civilian count is zero, down from hundreds.

The thug count is normal, at about 2 per mile

One count is way up. Just before the bus passes under I-83, I look to the left and see over 100 homeless men sleeping on the steps and porch of a government building under glaring white lights.

Crossing Saratoga a few people come into sight.

Then we offload at the Block, Baltimore’s Red Light District, one and a quarter blocks of grungy Vegas.

The busier, east end is in front of the main police precinct.

The quieter west end is where bus patrons gather, away from the crowds of freaks, drunks and—cops?

The bus stop is under the awning of a Chinese carry out, long since closed for the night.

It is 12:34.

The Orange Line should come through here every hour, just before the hour.

One dude has been standing here since 11:45.

Was there a detour?

As the hours passed I had plenty of opportunity to compare this stretch of Baltimore—apparently the only stretch of Baltimore doing any business at this hour—to past experiences here in 2012, 13, 14 and in early 2015. I have not been here at night, waiting for a bus since the Purge began in April 2105.

What had changed?

Everything, almost everything.

There were four times as many busses running—except for the Orange Line—and unlike the packed busses of Friday nights of yore, these were empty to half-full.

One thing has not changed. I am the only paleface waiting for the bus.

Knowing that I would been standing just down the street from the police station and that a beat cop typically walks Baltimore Street on Friday night, with a pig in a cruiser driving by every 15 minutes, I left my knife at home and cleaved to me green, hero-making umbrella.

But everyone else is packing!

Micro-penis on a porn set!

2.3 years ago, 1 in 3 brothers carried a knife. Now they are all strapped: a Bush frontiersman sheath knife [illegal], a balisong [illegal], to clip folders, [legal], a large, tanto-point tactical clip knife [illegal], a brass-jacketed, clipped switch-blade, six inches and curved like a Gypsy fighting knife…

The population of strip-club goers and hedonistic street people is halved or less, down from about 500 to 200.

Hookers, however, have multiplied. Where once a single, model-quality black woman would walk the street in her dress shadowed by a vigilant pimp, 10 Vegas quality pussy goddesses parade without a pimp. Three of these arrive in a Mercedes and as they emerge in painted-on clothes the men at the stop collectively suck in all available air, creating a decorum vacuum and say, “Damnnnn!”

Where one fence used to resell stolen pillage, three now have stands set up.

Where one kid used to bike in to take orders for heroin or crack, a big black orbital depot with backpack full of smack and crack is tended by a little white kid on a bike.

A man gets out of a car and begins vomiting in the street, then goes to sleep on the sidewalk as his friends stand around and drink liquor.

Where no visible marijuana use was once seen, I see a dozen staggering men, each smoking Cheech and Chong-sized blunts, a man with a backpack full of weed selling in front of The Big Top. Also, half of the men at the stop are rolling joints and smoking them.

A brunette in a brown leather miniskirt, trying to have sex with the man driving in the white shirt and black tie at the stop light, accidentally leans on the door latch of the white Beamer and rolls into the street, he, holding his pants up with one hand and reaching across the passenger seat and out the door in an attempt to drag her back into the car as she squeals, “Fuck me, fuck me now!”

In front of the stop, playing in traffic, dancing on the center line, is an old insane, charcoal colored bitch with a stiletto or stiletto-style letter opener, using it to threaten the rat cavorting under the Ho-Mercedes, to stab cans and fling them at pedestrians, to scoop soggy trash and fling it on windshields, to point at the cloudy sky as she dances like a jungle demon in her rags, and to lift the tops off of trash bins and place them on the wrought iron fence at the Fast Park lot.

The man next to me says to her, “You ain’t crazy, bitch, you lazy. Get yoself ta Mac Donald’s and get a job!”

The woman then drives her empty hand up under her skirt, digs around and then pulls out moistened fingers, which she licks lizard like as she pirouettes on the center line and sings to the unseen moon.

A gorgeous whore in g-string and breast paint then struts through our ranks in sneakers, as a sore-covered red-headed kid asks us all if we have any Benadryl and the admonisher of the dancing Voodooess and a cook just getting off work try to figure out if they can pool their paychecks to afford her company together... saying after she blows them off with an elvish swish, “Affer dat, I gots ta fuck a bitch, any bitch!”

Then as the admonisher becomes the Bitch Fucking expert, explaining how “you can get even a fine bitch to do you fo free if you funny,” a youngish teenager with a Virginia accent walks into the group, sees the sage licking a paper to form another joint and says, “Can I buy some?”

The sage said, “Shid, I got juss what I needs. Yo need to go down there and make a buy. My man has nickel bags, dime bags and quarter bags and can even wholesale out a his pack."

The kid says, “You all are funnin’ with me, tryin’ ta get me busted!”

The cook says, “Naw, son, I juss bought mines right dere a half hour ago.”

The kid then points at the man with the backpack, surrounded by freaks, whores, sluts drunks and cops, while a dozen cops supervise the clean-up of a fender bender in front of the Hustler Club, two cops in tactical uniforms with DETECTIVE emblazoned in yellow across their jackets escort dancers to the parking garage, two more tactical detectives walk along with the three stellar hos and another tactical cop with DETECTIVE stamped on his chest shadow boxes out of pure boredom in the Fast Park lot, and says, "Y’all gotz ta be fuckin’ shitting me! There five-o everywhere!”

The sage then says, “Yeah, everywhere but here, so you don’t want to take no chances gettin’ yo fresh ass banked up in here. Go down the way where it safe.”

The short, handsome dyke, with clean braids, tapped down breasts, in thug uniform with string back pack, who had been skulking in my shadow for hours, then takes the boy’s hand and says, “I need some weed, didn’t know this bitch be takin’ fo’ever, so I’ll make the buy—come on, yo,” and they walked off like two eradiated characters out of a Mark Twain novel re-written into a rap opera.

We watch beautiful whores while keeping an eye on the transaction, ten cops making sure to turn their back as the drug dealer they are protecting doles out two dime bags and some cops break-off the accident clean-up to walk some hot redheaded stripper across to the garage.

The clubs empty for 45 minutes, half of my stop mates pitch in some “could-a-been” whore gangbang money for a hack from a white heroin addict, leaving the dyke, cook and I alone to board the 11:55 bus that showed up at 2:45 and rolled out of The Block, the one block in Baltimore where the beleaguered Baltimore City police have drawn a line in the asphalt sand and said, “Not here, we’re the heat on this street.”

At 3:30 I offload at Stemmers Run, just past, Old Eastern with the cook and a skinny white kid. A carload of thugs eased on the brakes and reversed, looking us over as the bus pulled off. I put my umbrella in a high guard to port, the cook mumbled something bitter under his breath as he shuffled off with his hand in the pocket of his baggy black slacks and the kid ran for his life across the lot and around the daycare center, the car following slow and deliberate, turning west onto Old Eastern to follow him, four dark faces shadowed within, eyes searching slits, as I crossed behind the bumper of their Cavalier and strolled East out Old Eastern, without a backward glance, out in the road like I fucking owned it.

Moral Minority Survival at the End of Caucasian Time Paperback