I wanted to go and learn. I was excited about education and wanted to learn but it turned into a shithole education. The first year it was 70% Dindu and 30% white. The year I left it was eighty-twenty—people just started pulling their kids out. They were coming from all over, would pull all of those MTA buses up there. More of them coming from Harford Road, busing them out of East Baltimore. It didn’t have any rhyme or reason to it. This kid Angelo shot himself in the leg in class. These other two Dindus stabbed each other on the bus. It was just ridiculous.

I was in sixth grade, I was coming out of the main school to go to the other building for class and there was these grown men in their twenties, a couple white guys and dindus and this grown man—a black man—just ran up to me and punched me as hard as I could. I was twelve years old! I put my hands up ready to fight after that big old looping right hand in the mouth. These men were in their mid twenties! After I put my hands up ready to fight and started moving around like a boxer he ran away. I chased him around the corner, then his dindu and white trash buddies turned back and came for me. Maybe it was trap. I ran back into the school. The kids seen it and told the teachers and security. They arrested these guys. They made a big deal about it. I was really proud of myself that I took this punch and it didn’t phase me. I was five-nine about one-forty and he was a six foot man and two hundred and some pounds. He should have knocked my fuckin’ head off and he couldn’t do it. To this day, as boy who consistently beat down black men, it amazes me that our entire society is structured around fear of black men—that this fucking city turned tail and ran from men who couldn’t take out a skinny little white boy.

This man had a beard. I believe his name was Joseph. Hell, his beard was probably older than I was at the time. This was a full grown man in middle school—a big fat guy. He was a good six one three-hundred and fifty pounds—a full grown man in middle school. This was before they had the no child left behind. As long as they showed up and they didn’t kill nobody they kept them in school until they were twenty-one—in middle school!

He’s walking down the hallway as I walk out the doorway and I hear him say, “Look, Im gonna make all these bitches move around.”

The kids come out and went around him like a river goes around a rock and I rammed right into him with my left shoulder—you keep the right backwards. He comes crashing into me and ran me up against the lockers. I wasn’t that concerned. I was goin’ to take care of him. Didn’t think, it was either from stupidity or confidence—he wasn’t going to do nothing to me. I shucked out from underneath of him, grabbed the shoulders of his shirt and pulled him down to the ground. He was so off balance it was easy and he was flat on his back like a tortoise and I gave him some good ground and pound. I beat the piss out of him and the teachers are like, “Oh my God,” and pull me off.

What the fuck kind of place is this that lets a twenty-year old man push and bully children and then suspend a kid who sticks up for himself? I should have gotten a commendation. I got suspended for three days and he, being an innocent dindu, of course, quit school—nobody ever heard from him again after the little white kid mopped his ass up. My parents had nothing to say, just that I need to take care of myself and I had.

I was walking alongside the old wall on Hamilton Avenue before you turn the corner to the school, right down from the little grocer at the split. I came to school. It was just an old stonewall, a typical Baltimore garden wall with jagged stone—granite most likely—sticking out the top. They used a lime mortar back in the day, which holds. The top layers have been repaired with concrete, which does not hold and is already crumbling. Our entire civilization is built of something that turns to dust in a hundred years.

This skinhead was a good seventeen or eighteen. I should tell you at first this was where the Grits and the skinheads, the grungy white kids—that your oldest son hung with—hung and smoked and got high, not like the athletically inclined kids I hung with. I’m thinking to myself what a loser that this guy is fucking middle school girls and taking the middle school boys cigarettes—probably couldn’t get no girls his age.

I was getting’ pussy at the time. I don’t know if I was that concerned about him knocking off that middle school pussy.

I was walking up on the other side of the street and they’re all standing around with their mouths hanging open and he’s smacking her repeatedly in the face and she’s crying and her makeup is running and no one is doing nothin’. Well fuck that—I wasn’t raised that way. I’m not watching that go down.

I spied him out. On this particular day he had a bald head—a small-mouthed, peach-fuzz, white-trash motherfucker. He had a bomber jacket and stone washed jeans. He had cowboy boots on with pointed toes and metal caps. I noticed that when I was walking up to him. On his right hand he had a large silver skull ring on his ring finger with large spikes coming out. As soon as I seen that I knew what was coming—a right hand.

I said, “What the hell are you doing here, hittin’ this girl like this?”

I knew the girl, had gone to elementary school and he was slapping the shit out of her. He said some tough-ass shit.

He stepped back into a fighting stance and from there I mirrored it and from then it wasn’t much wasting time. This idiot cocks back the right hand, stepping back with his right and I stepped in with my left, what we would call now a check, caught him in the crook of his elbow with my left hand. We were already pretty close. I hit him immediately—never was one to waste time—never hesitate, that is what I was taught. It hurt him. He started to collapse and I jumped in with my head. If I wasn’t so close it would have been a KO, but I didn’t want to trade punches with that ring. After the big ոigger hit me in the jaw this guy just didn’t worry me. It was going to be over with in short time. I lost a lot of fear when I got hit by that big man. I drove in with my head, glued—right side of my head to his left temple. I drove him back on this wall, had him pinned with my head and was smashing him in the face with right uppercuts. Then I started coming over with some overhands, hit him with a couple of them, then he balls up and rolls over so I could have fucked him in his ass if I wanted to and he’s yelling, “I had enough, I had enough!”

While he was turned I stopped a moment and this girl—the girl I was protecting—comes flying over with a piece of broken glass she tried ice picking me in the neck. I seen it, it’s coming at me cheek-to-neck and I covered up and rolled [lifted right shoulder and turned in with the stab] and she scooped a good chunk of meat out of my shoulder—got a nice scar out of it. [The scar is almost an inch long, a quarter inch wide at one end and a 16th wide at the other, right over the ball socket.]I stiff-armed her back and she was being all emotional and he was laying there and I didn’t go to school—went home and patched my shoulder up. I poured some peroxide, applied bacteracian and then bandaged it.

I learned a lesson about getting involved between a couple after that. I never seen him again in my life. If someone’s got a ring on don’t let them hit you with it.

Big Earl, I didn’t have too much run-ins with. He was a bully, bullied a lot of the white and dindu kids there. He was lean six foot, one-fifty-five, a middleweight. I knew him from afar from reputation as a bully. I was in eighth grade—wasn’t having too many problems. I pretty much established myself beating up the ոigger man and the skinhead. He came up to me and said, “So I hear you run the third floor.”

I said, “Nigger, what are you talkin’ about?”

There was some words and he said something about fighting so I said, “Okay, so them lets go to the bathroom.”

I didn’t care about this guy one way or another. I minded my business. In retrospect I probably should have took him out a little earlier. There was all kinds of kids heard this encounter in the hallway and everybody went into the bathroom. Everybody was watching—it was a full blown chimpout. It wasn’t much room at all, the sinks here, the urinals there and probably fifteen people in this bathroom. It was decent sized school bathroom.

He leads off with a right.

I threw a wing block up to cover against this big sloppy hay maker, a pure pro-wrestling type haymaker—nothing too it.

I don’t even know if it was true wing block. I just stick my hand up. He did follow it up with a left hand windmill-style haymaker.

That’s the thing with dindus, they learn to fight from women and fight like women. Of all of my days in Baltimore I cannot recall a black man beating a white man in a fight. [Out of 1675-plus documented instances, the author can recall only one dindu-over-paleface victory in one-on-one combat] You see a lot of dindus try to get you with a haymaker and then try to beat on you after they get you. He was bent over when he did it. I grabbed him by his head and gave him my best knee butt to the face. He went straight down on his belly. I had a knee on the back and was hitting him with right hands on the side of the face, the ear, whatever I could get.

He was spilt open. He was crying and saying, “I had enough, You got me yo, you got me.” And then the chimps hopped in and said, “That’s enough, that’s enough.” I got up—adrenaline pumping—and I think I washed my hands right there while he was bleeding on the floor. So I got suspended—kind a hard to hide when the dindu is bleeding on the floor. That was the end of Big Earl—at least of the Big part. I suppose I should have took my throne on the third floor but I wasn’t too concerned about that. I had three days off. At that time it was called a disciplinary removal. He wasn’t punished. They asked me what happened. I said that it was a fight and I beat his ass. I told my parents what happened and they said, “Well, you had to take care of business. My parents knew dindus—they grew up in Baltimore. I would have gotten in trouble for running away. Could you imagine If I told my Uncle Rick I ran away from a dindu—Jesus, he’d a never let me, live it down. They probably would have beat my ass.

The family stuck behind you. Just don’t run away.

There was Mister Laroux, who did social studies and history, things I was always interested in. He did Civil War reenactment and had a big part in that Civil War movie, Glory. He was a real good teacher—a Confederate reenactor. I liked him a lot. I went from learning a lot in Elementary school to learning nothing but how to deal with dindus and what Mister Laroux taught me in that place. My mother had always given me books about wildlife and the only wildlife I learned about in Hamilton Middle was dindus.

[Laughter]