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At the Well of Conduction
Gimp Graphomania #1: Pittsburgh, PA, 6/27/2023
Datz rite Groe, you drunk, back dat shid up!
Yes sir, baked up.
Punky was somewhat flumuxxed moments ago when I asked her to mix 2 shots of rum into each of my three morning coffees…
It has been 7 days since Doc Dread informed me that my knee was “structurally sound” and then showed me by way of x-ray cartoon shadow that “your spine is compressed.” He then shot me in the lumbar with magic juice and Young Brett ushered me fourth into the world, five minutes with THE MAN having tought me more about by structural dysintegrity than 3 hours at urgent care.
“James,” says the strapping stud, “Doc looks tired. Back in the day he was never tired.”
What a fine young man—took me to pharmacy, bank, pharmacy, diner, back to the Brickmouse House, where he handed me off to the stud who retired me from stick in May and said, “We ought to spar some time,” and as Brick Mouse shook hands and swallowed hard, edited, “easy like, no ego, just technique.”
After he left and Brickmouse, more of an over-built creature like me than the apex HE, while helping me through spinal decompression evolutions counseled, “James, it would be an honor to help Brett prepare to Smack down other cavemen. However, for me, that is a hurdle too far—let me see if I can decompress this for you.”
And we fall together as a team: the Titan, the Artificer and the Empathetic Genius: one boldly, decently striding, one sympathetically conniving and one actively caring. We are the three Monkeys of Could: beast, brain and heart.
Brett took my scripst in. But I would have to pick them up, because one was an opiate pain killer. I wanted to cry when I asked Doc for that and he shook his head and gave me another chance to pussy out and I did… this man, 2 years ago got crushed by a tree and took not an asprin and I, shaken and craven had asked for the mercy of the Poppy.
I was experiencing the myopic selfishness of the critically spent, unsure of those around me. Brett, patiently stalking me as I hobbled a-crutch back to the pharmacy, took control as old ladies looking at me with fear, like I would would die and them be unable to aid though near, would ask if I was in line, and Brett’s strong, clear, commanding voice would say, with a note of kindness, “Ma’am, our script is not filled yet—you go ahead,” and I would nod thankfully, as if it was something gracious I had said.
What a man.
28, I think.
I was stocking shelves and sneaking by hoodrats on my way to work.
He is training with British SAS troopers, a Gurkha, even, at Fort Dicks, and returning to thank me for, “Being there for me when I was young.” [2]
I try not to cry.
He tries not to notice.
“James,” he says, before we pull off into the gathering rain, which I did not realize until then always gathered anew about a hopeful mane, “I knew, when you told me that you were too bad off to lay it down [1] that you were bad off. So I’m here, whatever you need, James.”
I felt like Nestor being put to tender bed by Achilles.
The next morning, after Brickmouse had tended me and I took 5 hours making my guest bed and clearing the visitor deck, he came home from a hard day at work and drove me to Megan, the loyal cook and wife of the wandering creep who she knows, damn well stops off first to see Miss Ezz, and says, “So nice to meet you, Megan. I believe I will see you tomorrow. Please take came of him—he’s not very good at it.”
She sucks off her cigg and blurts, as the Mexicans marvel at a white guy double parked, “He’s a dumbass and a half, Baby,” thanks for bringing Poppy home.”
As he leaves and I practice traction on the crutches she wonders at his departure, “Fuckin’ Keeanu Reeves with Patrick Swazzy’s ass—and God let you hit that with a stick—no wonder your buggered up! Well, here’s to the view!”
“Fawk, babe!, I’m dyin’ here.”
The second brother of the two next door, the brawny Mexican who told me once upon a Negro Shewing time, “Don’t worry Poppy, we got this!” came home and looked at me, hobbling on the porch, “Poppy, what happened?”
I could tell by the look in his eyes he hoped dearly that I had not fallen prey to Negroes.
What a man, like Brett and Brickmouse, about 5’ 11” and all muscle. I immediately save the next feral Negroe to skulk through the hood and say, “Oh, my rucksack was too heavy—should not have tried to make off with all of Cibolla’s gold!”
He pats me on the shoulder and reminds, “Poppy” if you need anything, I am here!”
I get it, the strong, the striving and the raw young, they crave that example of the Fallen that snarls, “Never done,” and it helps in there quest to become.
The next day, a Friday I think, five days past, I spend 2 hours relearning how to walk and stand. I check my phone and Megan has texted me at 7:27 A.M.: “Saw Keeanu first thing, what a beautiful man!”
“Yes, babe. I hit him with a stick once and then he put me down… and yes, his wife is a beautiful as you imagine and I never look twice…”
“Fawkig lyin’ dawg!” she texts back and all is rite in the world.
At 10:45 I head out a-crutch to Eastern Avenue to get the Essex, Whispering Woods or Franklin Square bus to Stemmers Run, were I will board the Towson bus and meet The Man in the Hat, Father of Brett, at Towson Town Center. Our land Lady, Georgia, widow of such a better man than me, Bruce, Megan’s oldest brother, say, “You be careful now, come back to us.”
I had been supposed to sand and paint that porch of hers that I now limped off of into the gathering rain.
It takes a half hour for me to get 5 blocks!
I get soaked in the rain and two tractor trailers stop and wave me across Rolling Mill Road. I must look near death for these Jippos to shed a care.
I am covering old ground. In 1993, I came here by night to work at the supermarket—now I pass it by by the morning light. The original back injury put me out of work here, exactly 30 years ago setting me on this course.
I board the bus and the driver says, “Money man, it but $2 dollars to take this shuttle can, Big Money—Big Money!” and I fed those two ones into the meter, confident that the next bus would have a broken meter and that there was no need to buy a $4.80 ticket.
Aboard the bus, I receive 2 pics of me crutching along Rolling Mill from Brickmouse, who had been working on the rack system above Megan’s job site, accompanied by a text, “You are moving better today!”
Afoot for four minutes, I boarded the bus for Towson and the meter was jammed—go figure, and arrives in Towson at 12:30, 30 minutes ahead of The Man In the Hat.
He is stuck in traffic and I turn and see The Brass Tap, “I’ll be in the Brass Tap, bro,” text I, and by the time I get into the place, past the other, fatter, blacker negro on crutches outside, I recall that The Operator had paid me $300 for “talking to me about stuff that would melt a psychiatric brain” and decide I’m buying.
Confidence thus extruded, I get up on a stool and see Kelly Blake form Portland’s favorite drink, Apple Crown, and order, a double shot, a Bud Light, and salt shaker.
By the time The Man in the Hat entered, and I introduced him as “My brother,” the decks were cleared for his trademark deprecation, “Miss, you are beautiful and the bar is well appointed… But how can I sit down and enjoy myself in a place where you admit a one-eyed pirate—with one leg no less?”
“Oh, because he’s a perfect gentlemen sir!”
“Oh,” says he, “Only because he hasn’t been able to lurch off that bar stool and haul you off—I will remove the reprobate from your midst, miss!”
I smile at her and turn to him, “Like that, Bro? She thought I had money—now I’m your red-headed step brother?”
“Pretty much.”
My scrap-made brothers and fate-made caretakers—I thank you.
Notes
-1. I had a Wednesday morning date with Miss Ezz, my darling top girl, a shorty who could raise the dead, even drunk and morning fled, a loyal, lusty girl of some 30 years, which I canceled, for fear that she would look at me and cry rather than…
-2. I discover while talking with his father 2 days later that he had written the Dog Brothers and they never got back to him, even though he had bought there products. He is probably the third best stick fighter in the world, and they snubbed him. He would never tell me such a thing, pitting he mentor [me] against his hero [Top Dog] for he is us come together, and senses it as a her should. As the ladies at the diner gawked at him and I eyes his shoulder I said, “What is your nickname in the army?” he grinned, “Shoulders, as soon as they saw me they said I was hauling the SAW.”
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posted: March 27, 2024   reads: 341   © 2023 James LaFond
‘When the Wheels Fall Off’
Ambulatory and Ocular Notes: Baltimore, 6/22/2023
Two years ago a friend chewed me out for being a hobo, told me that I was not “the Mister Jim you used to be” [meaning I was not looking so rugged] and that I ought to consider closing down “the minstrel road show,” and renting a room from him. He continued, “What happens when the wheels fall off?” I have not spoken with him since, and no regard him as a sending, for events have conspired to fulfill hi prophecy.
Heading east I had many plans for the 3 scheduled months:
-Visit a sick friend monthly
-Get the guts checked for hernias
-Do podcasts with Don Jefferies, The Myth of the 20th Century Crew, The White Monkey and Lynn Lockhart
-Fight at Man Weekend
-Complete 3 novels
I did fight at Man Weekend, the only two days in the East that I have not been afflicted with the return of the screaming eye seizures. For the entire winter and early spring the eye had been behaving. The eye abated for training day and fight day and as soon as the Appalachian highlands were behind us, the pain returned. Maybe it has to do with being between Tranhattan and Brainwashing City. As I lay abed in Jersey, making a piss poor house guest, hiding from the light, I even wandered if the goboment were beaming microwaves at me. On the precipice of Tin Foil Hat Pychosis I took the train to Baltimore to get my hernia checked. In so doing, an hour and a half standing at bus stops and then rocking on a city bus where there was standing room only for an hour, trashed my right side. Every time that bus stopped my weight and all of the weight of my every possession shifted to my right leg as I stood on the spinning disk at the center point of the over-long accordion bus.
It is June 22, cool and wet, as I right, exactly two weeks to the day since I could walk. I now hobble on crutches. Tomorrow I begin a crutch mobile odyssey by bus, multiple cars and train, to visit a sick friend. I have written perhaps 3 chapters since the onset of this, with the pain preventing me from sleeping or sitting or standing. Tying as a post anthropod shrimp squirming on the floor and crawling to various softer places is tougher than I thought.
Also, my once high pain tolerance has become crushingly bitch-like—quite the blow to the geriatric hobo ego. Hernia surgery is out until next year, ironically put off by a mishap had while making my way into health care range. Yesterday morning I was beginning to feel like a fish caught in a net and hauled ashore. Then three fellow fighters, my head coach Doctor Dread, Brett and Brickmouse, turned my condition aroudn just as I was thinking of quitting and renting a room in their terrible town.
One day I did spend 6 hours on crutches, using busses and accessing a distant Urgent Care. The staff were pretty much horrified by my condition. But, as Brickmouse told me yesterday, I am only that lonely hobo in spots, for most of my times getting by in this negation matrix, I am lucky in my friends:
“James, it is an honor and a pleasure to help you. You are stubborn and self sufficient. So, and I think I can speak for the rest, its nice to help someone who avoids help and then hits bump in the road.”
He said this after he bought me a lighter backpack and a plug in heating pad, performed traction on my spine and filled up bottles of water to place by the guest bed I inhabit.
This was a mere 3 hours after Doc Dread made room I his busy day to x-ray me and hit me with a needle that delivered me suddenly from shaking agony to just plain old hurts like hell pain. That was made possible by young Bret driving into town, taking me to Doc, and holding those many doors that you never really consider until you have to open them on crutches.
Brett then took me to the bank to cash the disability checks written for me by The Operator. Finding out that we couldn’t spar that man took me to a diner, said it was a consultation, and paid me for drinking on his dime as he had his pancakes and spoke of violent things. Bret then dropped off my scripts and took me to lunch. He wanted to talk about, history, power and the Bible and we did, making me feel like old Nestor advising Achilles.
I said, “In the Army, what is your nickname?”
“Shoulders, they took one look at me and said you’re the SAW gunner!”
I then discovered the irony of pharmacy placement in supermarkets as Brett patiently shadowed me while I hobbled back to pick up the subscriptions. He even directed traffic by the window, making sure the old ladies got in front of us.
That was yesterday. The people that have helped me move about and acquire the things a gimp needs over this past two weeks are:
-Brickmouse
-Brickmouse Bride
-Uber Joe
-My Sister & Mother, two church ladies who put up with the Devil on their couch for three days.
-Incognegro, who drove 50 miles with a pair of crutches
-Doctor Dread [three times]
-Lynn, who mailed me knee braces and scheduled my Kaiser appointments
-Nero the Pict
-Georgia and Megan who provided a bed on he same level as the bathroom and cooked for me
-Tami and Heather who called me an Uber
-Dereka, the hot Uberess who was kind enough to take me to the liquor store on the way to Georgia and Megan’s place in the Barrior
-Manuel, the Barrio Boss, who offered his assistance.
-Brett
And the people who have offered to drive me by stages to and from the train.
-The Man in the Hat
-Erique
-Mescaline Franklin
-Jennie
Brett spoke in kind tones, in his deep voice: “James, we will meet up again and train. I’m so glad that this didn’t happen to you in a fight. Because if anybody is going to medically retire you I want it to be me. I’m hoping one day, that between Sean and me, we’ll talk you into Christianity—or beat it into you.”
And he grinned, holding the door.
Despite the various misfortunes I have brought down on my own busted head, I look around and find that I am blessed.
Thank you.
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posted: March 27, 2024   reads: 326   © 2023 James LaFond
‘You Okay?’
Going to Urgent Care on Crutches in Baltimore City: 6/14/2023
Written from memory on 6/20/2023.
I have been unable to walk since Friday, June 9. On Wednesday the 14th I stepped outside of Georgia’s house, where Megan rents and cleans and I had lain up for the night.
Lynn scheduled me a 7:30 A.M. LYFT ride with a black guy named Michael in a small sedan. I was headed to Kaiser Urgent Care in southern Baltimore County, a 2 to 3 hour bus haul. Lynn is so nice. Pulling the door shut behind me I felt it lock, turned the knob, and knew it was secure. I have no key and the ladies were at work.
It was 7:27 A.M. I made my way on crutches out to the front walk by 7:29.
7:30 came and went, reminding me that we were on CP time.
7:35 Michael rolls up, looks at me, looks at the Mexican men coming home from their rained out roofing job—yes, it was beginning to rain—and drove off.
My knee and hip were in agony from the bus strip out of Baltimore the Monday before, in which every time the bus stopped, all of my weight and the rucksack’s weight shifted onto my right leg. It had gotten progressively worse until the leg froze around dawn on Friday. I felt like I had been cut down in the ring by a Muay Thai fighter. I needed a doctor to get a look and perhaps order an image.
Was I damaging the knee with all of the mobility work for the hip, thigh and groin, traitor muscle knots pulsated like some mutinous alien crew of the meat ship me?
3 larger than golf ball and 8 smaller knots yet remain.
I crutched for 15 minutes from Eastdale to Eastern along 54th.
Taking the Orange City Link bus down to the courthouse, I asked the driver where the Yellow line picks up and he pointed south across Fayette. Crutching to the curb barely before cars started pulling off I found that this was the stop to Mondawmin, not Kaiser, and began limping around in search of the southbound line.
Next to the Baltimore Police Department Central Precinct parking garage a light skinned man about my size and age, with an eager gleam in his eyes, and looking about for third party observers, said, “You alright?”
He was savoring, I am convinced, his last mugging, I haven fallen past most of the links in our food chain to land at his feet. I glared and he backed off, looking at me narrowly.
Over 4 blocks I crutched, the only paleface out of some hundred souls. Many SUVs and some cars and trucks driven by ghost people and BPD officers cruised about. I crossed 4 streets at rush hour on crutches while the white light walking man blinked on the crossing light, giving way to a red countdown, which I barely beat. I did discover that Baltimore drivers are not completely soulless. While they will normally try to hit you while making a left turn on red as you use the crosswalk, sometimes even speeding up to get you, these drivers simply tried to bump me at about 5 MPH, like sheepdogs nipping at a lamb’s haunches.
I noticed not a single police officer on foot, though numerous squad SUVs. The street was being patrolled by 4 African American armed private security. The detail leader seemed to be the man in unmarked BDUs, who was short, bald, and wore a .44 magnum revolver in a tied down leather holster on his right hip. Every person on foot either ignored me [most] by looking pointedly away, or glared at me with unconcealed hate.
Boarding the Yellow as one of only 2 patrons, the other being a Sikh in turban, I ask the very obese light skinned driver the bus’s destination, and he looked away, clenching his jaw, refusing to answer.
I sit in the first row of forward facing seats and observe.
Two stops out a security guard boards to go home and behind him an extremely muscular man of some 40 years. Even his face had muscles and his jeans and shirt fit like paint. He scanned his ticket and it gave off an invalid beep.
“Hey you, you back there? Yes you, you in red, your ticket is invalid.”
The man returns up there and says, “I just paid two dollas fo dis ticket.”
“Wrong ticket,” chirped the driver, “next time buy an all day pass. That one is retired.”
“Okay, okay, mah bad. Can ya juz’ let a brutha slide.”
“Why should I?” chirped the fat driver.
The man made a fist and to punch the driver and the driver pulled the plexi-glass shield back to cover him and pointed at the camera and then the legal notice about mandatory time for people convicted of attacking transit employees, saying, “Its Fed-eral!”
The man made two meaty fists and posed, “Well I’m gonna best somebody down on dis bus if dis disrespect continue!”
He looks down at me and I wave him to me, then looks back at the driver who says, “I’ll let you slide this time. No go do what you want.”
I waved the thug over again and he sat down across the aisle from me, “Look man, I’m goin’ to the hospital. This is a one way ticket for me en this is my last bus. They are not supposed to be transferable, so don’t scan it for this guy, but it will be good for the rest of the day.”
“Really man, you sure you don’ need dis?”
“I’m good, this is yours.”
He shook hands and bumped fists with me and said, “Mah Man, I will not foget dis. I see you sometime en I’ll do you a fava.”
As the bus made its way past the urban blight around Martin Luther King Boulevard and out through Pig Town on Washington Boulevard, into Baltimore Highlands the muscular thug spoke with the off duty security guard about peace and love and respect. At last, he offloaded at Baltimore Highlands, in the worst stretch and shouted to me, “Thank you again, Mah Man. I won’ foget!”
I waved as he walked towards a huddle of hos and yos before a boarded up wood frame house and the bus made off for its destination.
At I last got off at the Urgent Care door and hobbled in, some dozen of the diverse staff openly horrified at my pain levels as my every muscle was quivering with the effort of using the crutches. The x-ray techs complimented me on not crying or passing out when they forced my knee straight and my legs open, bumping fists and saying, “You were a trooper in there.”
The white queen though, Doctor Karen Manhate, MD. MP, she did a minimal check, threw my ace bandage in the trash and asked me if I wanted pain pills.
“No, I just want to know I’m not tearing the knee apart doing the upper leg and hip rehab.”
Her look of disgust, that had been etched on her face ever since I told her that I did this taking a city bus with a rucksack on, intensified. She dismissed with the news that the knee only had slight arthritis and instructions to rest for two weeks.
The sedan sent to pick me up arrived and I have been trying to evolve back into a biped ever since.
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posted: March 25, 2024   reads: 542   © 2023 James LaFond
‘My Good Brutha’
On the Irish Trace in Northeast Baltimore: 6/7/2023
Returning through the Inner Harbor by bus I noted, under the hazy sky and red sun [1] that heavy policing was present around the tourist and suburban attractions, that the pale land whales were being protected, explaining the thin city police presence in the Northeast. This made me curious, since I would be busing through Hamilton to the Brickmouse House, what had become of my old haunts, the small city unneighborhood I had lived in from September 2010 thru February 2018? That had been the period in my life that had made me as an urban blight and violence writer. I had not said goodbye to a soul, simply vanished.
I off loaded from the back door at Hamilton and Harford and stepped down on a high rubber tread platform. Three miles of Harford Road, from Parkside Drive north to the City/County Line, has been transformed, like many other American Main Streets via civic construction projects implemented in 2020-22. The four lanes have become two lanes. The unused bike lane has been placed between the sidewalk and a new broken, scalloped parking lane. Planter boxes, concrete blocks, wooden and plastic and rubber barriers bolted to the asphalt, has made this main artery into an elongated parking lot.
The Hamilton Tavern is papered over and shut down.
I stalked like a ghost inspecting the scene of his murder as the few motorists slowed and looked at me like an accident in progress.
I can hear loud music coming from the open doors of Brennen’s Pub, over which I rented a couch in 1981.
A midget with two twisted little legs, a small black man who must crawl, prowls along the raised rubber parking block at the Northwest corner of Hamilton and Harford and raises bottles of water for sale, his cooler behind him near the sidewalk. The drivers ignore his unfortunate form.
I am about to drink too much booze and have not eaten for a day. So, noting that the motorists are mostly Gawds driving really nice sports cars, gleaming white and silver, I circled back to him. He came up to my knee.
“How much?” as I drew out my wallet.
“A dollar, sir,” he looked up, extending the bottle as far over his head as he could, to reach my hip.
I gave him $2 and took the proffered bottle, the other wiry ashen hand wrapped around another bottle and a few $1s.
“Thank you, sir,” he said as he crawled towards traffic to hold his remaining bottle on high.
Entering Brennens I knew I could not stay for long. It has become a typical black bar, requiring on to gesture wildly and yell to order a beer.
Loud music that one has to yell over.
20 Kweens, screaming.
30 Kangs, yelling.
3 mudsharks, pallid, wilting wallflowers, one gimp to fatties.
2 towering, hair-hatted barmaids who ignore me. I tried to get served, but whatever of the three small gaps at the bar I found they turned away.
The Kangs glared hulkingly down.
I went to look for the bathroom behind the bar, having forgotten that the men’s room here is not next to the lady’s room but around back, and a kind, white bearded man with a smooth voice stopped me, standing and touching my arm, “It is around back, sir.”
I took his hand, “William, thank you.”
He was surprised, not recognizing my appearance but my voice ringing familiar. Hawk, Quin, and the other men who make their mark in the GQ Mugging Inquest of 2014, are not here, only William. His bar was becoming what I wrote of in The Last Whiteman, the haunts of Heavy Hand Fernando and Grope. The streets were not yet filled with tents. But the anchors and platforms have been put in place.
The bathroom was disgusting as I waded through piss to the urinal. Noting that the beers were only served in plastic cups, I left, out into the hazy light and walked up the hill past more closed businesses, the stone church that served in The Last Whiteman as the Meat Police Barracks and visitor hostel. Buildings had been leveled on the east side, where the stone church that served as the Guardsman barracks in The Last Whiteman, grinned wanly down.
The few groes on the street step away from me and give me space as I slowly amble and inspect what has become.
Two worn paleface wenches leave the Shamrock, where Big Ron and I typically meet for beer. I enter and Terry, the owner says, “Hey, where’s the crew?”
“Ron doesn’t know I’m in town—left the rest in Tennessee and Jersey.”
“Miller Lite?”
“Yes sir…”
I had four beers and two orders of chicken fingers over the next two hours and observed a more gentile changing of the pale to dark guard.
A southern man who remodels houses and rents them from the Carolinas to Maryland, arrives with his adult grandson to play pool. Four friends join them, a fat 50-year old with money, hipster tastes and a neutral dialect, and two other black men in their 60s, still working construction and showing up in their yellow safety vests after work, all to play pool.
The leader of the group, ten years my senior, addresses me, “How are you, sir?”
“Good, thank you.”
I observe their play for two hours and note that race even matters in pool. While the rowdy groes shooting pool down at Brennens could hardly keep the ball on the table and joked constantly, these men affected a serious air of respect for the table, and for the man shooting at the table. The grandson, a tall, lean fellow with willowy braids that hung past his ears, they called, “Black Jon Wick,” one saying, “I should take a picture when he’s bent from the side and say, “I’m shootin’ pool against a mop!”
Grandpa was training his scion by, “Whooping your ass,” Not through instruction, like paleface pool players tend to do, but by example. Overall, these men shoot well, but hit the ball far too hard. They shoot according to a hierarchy of risk instead of pure technical execution. If a bank shot is possible, then the easy shot is passed up for the risk. The style of the game fit the players. The wins were tallied, runs respected, but the real reward was the compliments that came when that needlessly risky shot was taken and made.
It was 9:15, so I texted the Brickmouse Bride that I would be home before 10.
“Cool, cool beans,” came the text.
Two mudsharks of a higher caliber came in to shoot pool and play mandingo bingo.
As I walked out I noted that there were drunken, insane, forlorn and homeless men about—a new development. The absence of the cops out here permit these creatures to defend themselves against the packs of wild yutes, who are nowhere to be seen.
I walk a block, stop and do a 360, knowing that this is a pure hunt zone and that it is serious enough that the packs of younger teens are done, no longer hunting the night, deprived now of their police protection. I do not want to fight any of these men over a perceived slight.
[9:07 AM, while writing this, heard a shotgun blast from quarter mile, followed by sirens and three .45 APC reports.]
Arriving at the Sikh Liquor Store next to the fire station, a large black homeless man with a Moses staff is preaching to two bums, one godly dark, the other the pale shade of evil. He was preaching about the evils of alcoholism, gathering a flock from the kind of customers the Sikhs are well rid of.
Looking for a glass bottle of lite beer for a nightcap, I see a fifth of craft vodka in glass priced at $9.99. I grab that for Brickmouse Bride, find a bottle of beer and am greeted by a man with a black luster of oiled beard, “My good brutha, what may I do for you?”
“Next week, I’d like to purchase some Johnny Walker for a friend, could you give me a price?”
“Right back, Good Brutha.”
His blood brothers are one watching the door, the other loading the cooler.
“Thirty-six dollars, sir. Comes with two glasses. Ask for the gift pack.”
“Thank you.”
“Tonight, fourteen, sixty, sir.”
I gave him $16 and waved off the proffered change.
“Thank you, Good Brutha, have a safe night.”
And I did, waking up here in a friendly home as my host made his morning coffee in the predawn dark.
Notes
-1. Canadian forest fire smoke, I am told, perhaps explaining the cool breeze.
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posted: March 22, 2024   reads: 840   © 2023 James LaFond
‘A Bottle of Water’
Notes on Being the Last Pale Distaff Pedestrian in Squatamalla: 6/7/2023
A matronly monologue.
Baby, work is crazy enough. A customer buys a detailed used car and inspects it and then, 60 days later, claims his rims came scratched. They won’t replace the rim this idiot scratched on a curb, so He rolls up to the front door. I never realized how nice people were when we were young when these buildings were made, until now, when you find yourself working behind a counter or a desk in a business and realize that any asshole can drive right through the storefront window or glass doors and do you in. That is exactly what this man was threatening to do.
He pulls up in front of the showroom and guns the engine, threatening that he is not leaving until he sees the boss, who is a petite little woman who I’m sure you would be into. All of the men from Service are up there, the desk men too.
“Where she at, a wanz ta tell her how bad her bidness is!”
Well, the dumb coon could not see her because she’s five feet tall in heels behind a line of big black men. The cops are being called left and right, you can believe that, and this coon is calling the cops too, even as he is threatening to drive his car through the showroom window!
Then, we get the Kaweens! Thousand dollar hair does, painted nails and wearing just enough cloth strips to keep those giant titties from flopping all over their five hundred dollar purse. They generally want to kick a white bitches ass. But the younger women protect me, give it right back, like, “Bitch, you talkin’ all high en mighty, but what junior high school bitch dressed you dis mornin’?”
Oh, then its on!
We did have this one really decent, respectful black woman. She had a legit complaint and we were addressing it. Then her white girlfriend comes in and wants to fight, is talking all this racism and discrimination bullshit. The white bitches are the worst. They usually show up with their black man, who they are buying the car for and who they parade around like he is king of the world.
Well, it could be worse, I could be getting called a bitch while I’m standing behind a register loading up all the shit these people eat and drink. At least at the dealership I sit. Baby, gettin’ old sucks. I’m hurtin’.
So, I was walking to the store to shop at about 1:30 in the afternoon and this well-groomed Latino man comes up to me, he’s a young man. Usually the Latino men—really always, all except this time—they go out of their way to give you space, say good morning, cross the street, step aside. But this guy was, A, Fruit, Loop!
“Ma’am do you have a bottle of water in that bag, I’m thirsty.”
“No, sir, I don’t.”
I didn’t and I remembered what you always said about when they ask for something, that its about the eyes and getting you to look down at what they want so they can get on you. Well, I was so flustered that I turned around and started heading back and he followed me. He had already passed me, then turned around and asked me for the bottle and now he was following me.
I turned and put up my hands and said, “You are freaking me out!”
“I’m thirsty ma’am. I want some water.”
I’m limping home on my tired old feet and he is following and saying, “Is it bothering you, that I am following you?”
Finally, I get to the gate and go in and turn so he’s not on my back and he stops and says, “So is this where you live, where you keep the water?”
“Yes, me and My Husband!”
He left and I kept thinking about how crackheads get so thirsty and that he was really evil. It’s just us women here, and the guy next door is now constantly drunk and worthless. He works, but she’s beautiful and fed up and I think might leave him. In any case, I don’t know Mexican, but I know drunk in Mexican, and that jabbering fool is drunk anytime he is home. Anna’s man, on the other side, he’ll come. But he wasn’t home, he was at work. It’s the same old thing when you’re a broke-ass bitch, if you have a good man that is sober and able enough to protect you, he’s not home...he might be coaching knuckleheads in Jersey, fighting in Tennessee, shoveling snow in the mountains...or, even if he’s here, he’s at work, at the gym.
Baby, the life of a broke bitch was never good, but being a broke old bitch is worse.
We were standing on the front porch for her monologue.
Three Latina children pile into the yard with their bicycles as she waves her empty hand and smokes her cigarette and they shout, “MegMeg, MegMeg!”
“Hey, Baby, does your mother know you are out?”
“Yes, Meg Meg!”
The fattest one, a 120 pound 5 year old, looks up tearfully over the wire fence at the one-eyed ghost standing next to Megan and the lady divines her fear, “Don’t worry, Nina, this is my very best friend, come from a long way away. He’s a good man. Don’t let the beard and the eye patch fool you.”
I waved and the girl waved back as their short broad and still pretty mother came out of the house with a papoose on her back, “MegMeg! You Poppy back!”
“Yeah, they let him out of jail again—let me see that fat little sucker on your back...she looks beautiful, just like her mamma.”
The children were now all clamoring around their mother as Megan turned to me, “Fertile Myrtle, God love her. Kicking out one was tough for me and I think she’s got another on the way.”
“So, Old Man, how long, a day, a week, a month maybe?”
“If you see the well groomed guy, you will point him out, you won’t play queen of the world?”
“I guess its a week then.”
“Two.”
“Sure, I’ll point the spic out. Coffee or tea?”
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posted: March 20, 2024   reads: 1092   © 2023 James LaFond
‘Bust a Move’ Baltimore
On Baltimore City Buses from Penn Station, Charles Street to Hamilton: June 5, 2023
[Unknown at the time, this bus ride ruptured a disc in my back, pinched the femoral nerve and damaged my knee and hip, injuries that yet prevent me from walking. -9/1/2023]
I wait outside of Penn Station for 15 minutes. The Orange Line heads to Towson Town Center in the County from somewhere deeper in the city. I board the bus with my ruck and it is fairly crowded. It is an elongated accordion bus. So I stand with my back to the accordion material on the spinning disc between the front and back portions.
The back deck is packed with Gro punks.
The mid regions are populated by working black men and women.
The front section is crowded with cripples, gimps, crazies, retards, mamas and babies.
At North Avenue a stocky dark rap gawd boards with his white bitch, both rapping to his phone, which is their studio.
At 25th an older, fatter version of the rapper boards and the rapper waxes ecstatic:
“Nigga-nigga-nigga—please!
Westside Nigga, Eastside Nigga, Northeast Nigga…
Watchyah gonna do when I goez upside yo Jew [1] wit deese!
Nigga-nigga-nigga-nigga—”
They rap insensibly on in a rapture of feral negrotude. Culturally, this unattractive white woman is the most Africanized creature on this bus of some 70 souls. They are two feet from me, her in an erotic trance rapping “nigga-nigga-nigga-nigga” in a duo to his “bitch-bitch-bitch-dick-hungry-bitch,” as all three primates gyrate and the bus spins. Then comes the conversation…
Nigga: “OG—what up!”
OG: “Heard yo was back in da game, Nigga!”
Bitch: “You heard right.”
OG: “Who you, bitch?”
Nigga: “She my bitch, OG. She white.”
OG: “Don’t care ‘bout dat race shid—is she a good bitch?”
Nigga: “Da bes’ OG. She done dropped a baby just da udder mont, second one she dropped fo me, and my fatha en me beefin’ ‘cause my bitch be white, en he all wit dat hate, so we on da street en dis bitch bring it.”
OG: “So I hears it. But a bitch ain’t got no race but da race o’ da dick run up in ‘er. I’ll tell yo fatha dat when I sees ‘im. Now whats dis I hear about my Nigga’s bitch steppin’ up?”
Bitch: “Look, OG, dat big-ass no account nigga up dare at Penn North gotta problem with ma man an dey both grown-ass men en it ain’t my place ta interfere. Dare was a poleese watchin’ da entire time but he weren’t gonna do shit wit deese niggas throwin’ hands, nor me—nigas is, niggas does.”
Nigga: “Lookie here, OG, dis nigga big, long, tall en swole. He give it en I take it en give it back—throw of muvafuckin raw ass hands. Den he keep reachin’ in his pocket en I keep hittin’ him en he reachin’ still—punk-ass nigga fo show.”
OG: “In front a da poleese? Dat a stupit nigga, dat nigga needs capped in da head fo he gotz no sense!”
Bitch: “See, OG, I gots my bottle, vodka in day Polish glass bottle, hard and square wita handle. So I see dat no account nigga pullin’ some shit on my man—and bam! Bam da fuck down! Now, I throw some hands wit bitches, done beat shit outta many a bitch. But a lady don’ throw no hands wit no big nigga, no she don’t, she bring da bottle!”
Nigga: “Yeah, den down go dat nigga en da knife go clatterin’ en my bitch is bringin’ down da bottle again an I bringin’ the shoeleatha...gettagettagetta, fuck a fuck ‘er betta!”
The phone is being clicked with a silver watch band and used as a rattle to keep rhythm as the three primates gyrate and rap:
OG: “Nigga-nigga-nigga!”
Bitch: “Bigga-bigga-bigga!”
Nigga: “North en Penn poleese frontin’ niggaz!”
End song.
OG: “Now, I needs ta know, is da poleese still skulkin’ up at dis 7-11 across Nort Ave.?”
Nigga: “Sho is. Gotz da boyz countin’ stash up oba da way down by where da devil pray—feel me, OG.”
OG: “Feel ya right—ged off here. I’ll stop next stop en double back hine da poleese.”
The ciphers of savagery soon depart as a mob of six foot hair hatted high school girls pile on the bus and crowd around the accordion area. A tall, thin, gay kid, light of skin, wearing yellow smiley face slippers and carrying a pink purse, hides behind me from the ireful glares of the big dark sisters.
Up and up, ever slower, the bus progresses under the red sun up the steepest hill out of Baltimore, past City College and 33rd street up Loch Raven Boulevard. It takes a total of an hour for the bus to make it from Charles and North Avenue to Loch Raven and Taylor a hundred yards over the county line.
I offload and cross to the south side of Taylor and the bus shelter. A homeless black man with wheely cart and a tall KFC Rite Aid clerk are there with two light skinned twins, a boy and girl of perhaps 14. A big beefy wigger with black hat and backpack is there and sees an old drunk with a bottle and a wheely seat and says, “Ole Man, watch you doin’ drinkin’? Dat ain’ no good for you.”
The old wastrel snarls, “What is Eddie doing dating your wife—answer me that?”
“I ain’t got no wife—I am DE-VORCED!”
The young fellow gets up and goes to stand next to the old wastrel, “I’ll help you get on the bus old man. Here, listen to this to cheer you up.”
The kid, about 25, then turns up his smart phone and it sings out a rap song, “I got da bird flu!”
The light-skinned twins think it is a great song and begin to sing, and laugh and dance to it, “I got da bird flu!”
A harried black woman of 40 years, losing her figure to those years, came shedding tears past me as she begged, “Anybody got a cigarette I can buy?”
She was in great pain and I coldly ignored her like the rest.
She yells, splashing tears and crying, “I didn’t ask to be give one—I just need to buy one! Don’t ya’all care? Does anybody in dis worl care!?”
She looked at me, tears gushing down her face, as I noted that she had three full grocery bags, one with assorted boxed cereal, [2] one with Irish Spring soap in shoplifted quantity and the other with clothes. “Please, mister, have a heart en sell a bitch a cigarette!”
She cried effusively in great spasms as we cringed collectively, the mute audience in the sad theater of her demise, “A bitch ain’t got no life in dis worl! I broke! I alone—no man! I’m a good bitch, I am! Please, somebodydydydydy—I’m dyin’ in my mind—please! Somebody-anybody, can ya’all buy some Irish Spring—as cheap as you want? Please, some-bod-eeeee! Ahhheee, please help a bitch out!”
She turned and looked up into my face, hoping that I wasn’t a total creep like the rest of Baltimore, that perhaps I really was an outsider, “Please, please, I beggin’ some-bod-eeee! Help dis bitch out—I got ta bust a move!”
And with a great sigh of pain, she whirred by me, her bags spinning as she cried loudly walking east on Taylor, unable, I sensed, to bear any longer the fact that we did not care.
The wigger started his music back up, “I got the bird flu!” and the twins began to dance and sing… and so the sorrowful woman was erased from the collective mind.
The #54 bus pulled up and we boarded. I kept the ruck on and sat longways on two seats by the back door and waited another 15 minutes for the various people headed home from work and to work to board and offload. Some of the young women dressed up at 2:00 to work the afternoon shift were quite easy on the eyes. I would have helped one of these women out. One of them had a small boy with her who kept looking at me and saying to her, “There is a pirate on the bus!”
At Northern Parkway and Old Harford Road I offloaded to take my hike to the wonderful Brickmouse House. Behind me the boy, all of five, declared, “The pirate is gone—will he be back?”
It took 2 hours to get from Trenton New Jersey to Baltimore City by train, then 2 hours by bus in Baltimore to get from Charles Street and North Avenue to Northern Parkway and Harford Road.
Notes
-1. Head? Wallet? Surely some Natsy can translate this.
-2. Apple Jacks, Fruit Loops, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Honey Nut Cheerios, two Kellogs and 2 General Mills brands.
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posted: March 18, 2024   reads: 1291   © 2023 James LaFond
‘Suck Mah Dick Merka’
Profile of the Patel Brothers American Empire: Somewhere, New Jersey, June 1-3, 2023
The eye had been sizzling badly and preventing writing. Resting was beginning to freeze up and bring back old injuries. So, in the warm afternoon sun I walked on Thursday June 1, towards the Wells Fargo about 3 miles off. The small town has been 100% taken over by Hindus. The many gold and jewelry stores brought in The Groes, who hit them about ten months ago. I wanted to see what kind of security measures had been taken.
I was armed only with a tactical pen.
The beautiful Bollywood women on posters tower larger than life from the storefront windows.
A private security detail is on duty: a blond, middle-aged female supervisor, a big, beefy, uniformed, mulatto, private cop, and a lean African private detective with open carry 9mm and an armored vest under his black T-shirt.
Ahead, as I walk towards the Garden State Parkway bridges, a lean, ashy Groe attempts to board a transit bus with some demand or another which is answered with a closed door. He is 200 yards out and flies into a rage at the world:
“Suck mah dick!” he chants with outstretched arms of rage indicting heaven.
“Suck mah muvafuckin’ dick!” he yells at the departing bus, indignant it seems, that submitting to felatio by a driver is not accepted as bus fare.
He then steps out into traffic and spreads his arms at the motoring Hindus, “Suck mah dick, bitchez!”
He spies me and heads my way, pulling open his shirt and showing his long, lean Haitian looking torso and screams at me, “Suck mah dick, nigga!”
That I am—he got that right. I am sure I can put this pen into his windpipe the way he is posing, but don’t want to. I start scanning for debris: big stones, bricks, discarded landscaping stakes, a pipe, retail shelf molding, windblown tree limbs that have been cut into club length and discarded, like everything the Hindus do, over the bank. An entire paleolithic arsenal is at my disposal. I cross a side street that will bring us together at the corner, thirsting for that five pound oblong rock to smash his skinny feet to mush, a grin of blood-lust creasing my face… and he veers back to the center line with a gruff and disgusted look over his shoulder at me, “Not taday, nigga!” then points at the fearful Hindu woman behind the wheel of the minivan I am passing to get to that holy stone of negro Nirvana and he yells, “You, brown bitch, suck my black dick!” and she winces and peeps.
I wave to her and smile, walking past my forsaken stone towards the pile of cherry tree limb clubs ahead.
A look over my left shoulder assures that he is focused on her, spreading his arms and grabbing his penis at 12:45 PM, “Suck mah dick!” then spinning in the street and daring motorists to affront the penile god he is. They speed around him in a panic.
Then, as I look over my shoulder and head up hill, he bellows, “Suck mah dick Merka!” even as he faces off with the protectors of the new Hindu America, Sergeant Karen and Mulatto Copman and rages “You, bitch, white bitch, suck mah fuckin’ dick!”
The female officer hopped back in the passenger seat of the private patrol car as the big cop confronted the scrawny face rapist. The urban Gawd darted around the protector to Segeant Karen’s command car SUV and began slapping the vehicle and yelling, “Suck mah dick—BITCH!”
I continued on out of ear shot and looked ahead, mapping the ground litter for weapons in case this Gro was about on my way back.
Thirsty, I stepped into a Hindu coffee shop and poured a cup of coffee as the owner asked, “Would you like milk, sir?”
“No, thank you.”
I paid the $2 and continued to the bank, did my business, and came back again. When I returned thru Little Hindustan I stopped at one of the many Patel Brothers establishments. They have restaurants, bars and other businesses and provide a good selection of Mexican food to feed their laborers. An out of date pint of Himylian salt yogurt drink made Rick’s list and I enjoyed that as I read the extensive listing of 17 states and the numerous addresses of Patel Brothers businesses on a sign outfront. Their motto is ‘Our Cuisine, Our Culture.’
The feral Gro is nowhere to be seen. The African detective, a private cop, is conducting a traffic stop of a Motor Gro!
Ahead, two large, pale electrical contractors with a work van and bucket truck, who are doing power line work for either the municipality or a private Hindu concern, are being told to move, that they do not have the proper permit, by a Somewhere County Plain Clothes officer with his $70k car with light up windshield. The big, bald, paleface foreman yells at the dapper mulatto cop and refuses the citation with a “Fuck you!”
As he gets in his van and slams the door the cop runs up like a divorce summons server and throws the citation through the open window of the van as van and truck pull off.
As I walk by, I see the private cop SUV cruising by, then, I cross a side street and halt as a big Hindu man in a van makes a left turn and stops. I motion for him to continue and he says firmly, “No, you, sir!” and I cross.
Coming down the street ahead of me is a beautiful 18-year-old Hindu babe wearing very little, sashaying along. Not wanting to be tempted to check her out, I cross the street a half block before we pass. Noting this, The Devil’s Bride crosses diagonally so that we get to the other side at the same time and place and she rolls her sweet hips under her bare belly and above her bare yummy thighs—quite the slut, and swings on by.
As I return to the neighborhood of my host, three county police cruisers are thundering in to support the plain clothes mulatto. On relating this, my host said that those electrical workers had been working there since 8:30 A.M. when he drove to work.
Two days later on Saturday, I walked the area to see what it was about at peak hours. A 20 year old babe, scantily clad and a solid 9.5 passed as close to me as she could, grinning and swinging her hips.
Families are out and about, two to three generations at a time.
The catholic church has a banner announcing a Spanish language Sunday mass.
A Christian church of unknown denomination is in service on Saturday morning, being attended by people who look like Christian Indians, having abandoned their traditional dress for Anglo style attire.
On the security detail I count:
2 SUVs, 1 parked, 1 cruising with driver type unknown
1 unmarked car, parked with blacked out windows, occupants if any unknown
2 plain clothes Africans who look very seriously dangerous, who seem to be operating from the unmarked car, from the weak side of the street.
3 African American armed security guards, strong side
4 mulatto uniformed security with body armor, strong side
1 commander, a good looking blond, Major Karen, strong side
That is just what I saw to cover the 4 by 4 block town center.
In our feudal future, I see the Patel Brothers, who have their own Sikh guards and lookouts in traditional garb at their store fronts, and whatever cartel of Hindu merchants they are in civic league with, as forming oasis’ of consumer security in the howling, Gro-infested wasteland of Suck Mah Dick Merka.
Notes
The weak side of the street is where there are few high value targets and narrow passage and offers a vantage on the deeper strong points for the roving detectives to observe whoever might be observing or approaching their stationary forces from behind.
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posted: March 15, 2024   reads: 1649   © 2023 James LaFond
Summer 2023 Writing Journal
May
-30. bad eye, proof and update front matter to Porch, Slave, Of Ichor and War and SPQR, finish scheduling posts for December, listen to Gibbon and rest, ongoing ocular disaster
-31. schedule posts thru January 12, ran out of calendar, listen to Gibbon 13, 14, 15, rest, buy train ticket to Baltimore, 1208 AD#10,
June
-1. eye bad,1407, noon walk, dinner in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, next to a gangster who had to be told to turn his youtube phone worship of Da Gawds down by my host and agreed he had been out of line, writing with eye patch and glasses on, midnight walk,
-2. eye bad 4 am, 1299, outlined back matter for SPQR
-3. eye bad, took walk, went to family cookout attended by Myth 20 listeners and was checked for a wire and interrogated as to whether or not I was a Confidential Informant, burying this account here and will use in fiction, not journalism, as my driver and area host was very offended and I am trying to write fiction and history, left early and went to strip club where we were treated much better by Latina whores and black goons than by big brained white men…and unable to make this up, the gangster from the eatery in Elizabethtown was running the strip club!
-4. woke with eye seizure at 4 A.M. a bit later than usual, wondering if I’m being remotely harassed by viewer, will use that in a novel, sparring with stick today with an excellent Jersey fighter, wash clothes, pack
-5. 8:30 am ruck out to train station for the trip to Baltimore on the 10:09 #185, afternoon ruck and bus from Penn Station to Brickmouse House, bad eye seizure, consult with The Operator
-6. woke by eye, 1238, listened to a Breck interview, visit Megan and assess the job of sanding and painting her land lady’s porch,
[the eye is just sizzling and it seems related to overcast but unproductive skies, the threat and not the wet of rain. Am working on blanking out in a trance for a few hours to avoid a second dose of meds in a day.]
-7. bus from eastside to northeast, coffee with Miss Ezz, 6 emails, 1530, to doctor on southside, visited bars in Hamilton,
-8. eye woke me at 4, 1465, 1059, hits snake and bag with fist and stick 30 minutes, dumbbell exercises 40 minutes, 1324, coffee with Brickmouse, Dinner with Doc Dread, 1466,
-9. wake with crippling hip and knee dysfunction, wash clothes, can’t walk or write, listen ti Daniel Defoe’s A General History of the Pyrates, therapy
-10. walk 200 yards and puke, therapy, rest, whiskey, Defoe, 1646,
-11. shrimping on floor, get crutches
-12. shrimping on floor and passing out
-13. barely crutch mobile
-14. 3.5 hour crutch bus trip to urgent care, xray clear
-15. therapy and rest
-16. began crutch therapy doing fencing and boxing footwork on crutches, first decrease in pain from 9 and 10 to 7 to 9. first increase in range of motion
-17. same as 16th, begin to write again,
-18. rest and therapy
-19. 1140,
-20. 1250, still can’t walk
-21. cortison improves crutch mobility
-22. therapy all day, eye cycle continues
-23. crutch and bus from eastside to Towson, man n Hat drives me to York PA, Mescaline takes me to Lancaster
-24. therapy 6 hours, try to write filling out this, try to do some discussion videos, can’t walk
-25. Erique takes me to train and I take Train to Pitt to visit Rick who is sick, Omar the trucker
-26. therapy
-27. 1645, improved brief standing
-28. 1337 AD#11, turned corner on therapy and mobility walked a bit, over did exercise and knocked back a bit
-29. 1715 AD#12,
-30. 1354 AD#13,
July
-1. 1599 AD#14,
-2. 1132 AD#15,
-3. 1104 AD#16,
-4 thru 12. a haze of painting
-13. 752,
-14. 1369, finished Immediate Post Life at 12,171 words,
-15. 2047, 1684, 1973,
-16. 2454, 2381, 2529, 2525,
-17. 1622, physical therapy evaluation
-18: 2226, 11 emails, 1342, 1803,
-19: 1933, 2268, 1011,
-20. 2921,
-21. 1393, AD #17,
-22. too much pain to write
-23.
-24.
-25. 1191 AD #18,
-26. therapy
-27. 1811 AD #19, surgery consult, dinner with The Operator
-28. Completed American Dog
-29. rest
-30. 734
-31. 1,078
August
-1. 1693, 2,245,
-2. therapy improvement, dinner with The Operator
-3. scheduled American Dog posts, therapy visit
-4. 2352,
-5. 8 hours therapy
-6. began writing SPQR #2
-7. 1893 SPQR #2, read Solomon
-8. 827, 1012, read Sirach, 1038
-9. proof writing from 7th and 8th, dinner with The Operator,
-10. 1446, 3 emails, 1545 SPQR #A1, coach The Operator, drinks with Brickmouse and Bride
-11. 1659 SPQR #A2, was able to stand and shave!, spend weekend with the ladies on the Eastside.
-12. 2131 SPQR #A3, outlined SPQR #AB
-13. 1273, 478,
-14. proof above articles, 1056, began proofing Prentice Dolphin to page 57,
-15. 937, 1583, proof Prentice Dolphin,
-16. spinal doctor, I have a rare nerve injury, dinner with The Operator
-17. began bundling unpublished and print only books into anthologies for the site estore
-18. set up 7 omnibus collections for estore, 1764 words SPQR A3,
-19. 303, 227,
-20. 1059, outlined 3 part book inventory, unable to sleep from nerve pain
-21. bad eye seizures and leg tremors, formatted omnibus ebooks for the site estore, summoned by Preston from across the alley to ward off Buckethat the Groe
-22. eye seizure wakes me, 1276, 1603, began Out of The Cookie journal,
-23. 1515, skyped with a reader from Greece, set up more site features, dinner with The Operator, emails,
-24. proofed uprising, proofed Ranger to page 22,
-25. proofed Ranger to 215,
-26. shopping and packing, to Eastside by car
-27. proofed rest of Ranger?, 804,
-28. Proof Seeker Cane, 804
-29. 1828, 1147, Proof Holiday Blue
-30. back to Northeast on bus, Proof Timejacker
-31. Proof American Dog
September 1: make features for novels edited above, email complete works to webmaster and editor, to Pennsylvania for final visit to Lancaster area
End of Crackpot Summer
Articles/Chapters = 67, all time low
May-June = 16
July = 24
August = 27
Books = 2
Journal = 1
Novel = 1
Expenses
Train tickets: Jersey to Baltimore $112, 80: $192
Room rent: $200, $200, 200, 300, 200, 50, 400: $1550
Sedan: $50, 25, 50, 20, 20, 100, 20, 20, 20: $325
Bus: $20, $5, 5: $30
Food: $54, $70, $10, $50, $70, [living with women who cook is getting very expensive, a can of peas is now over $2] $35, $90, $20, $10, 30, 10, 7, 40, 140, 44, 100, 100, 80, 20, 50, 80, 240, 10, 20, 270: $1650 [Wow!, and I lost weight?]
Meds: $20, $22, 75, 29, 1, 30: $177
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posted: March 13, 2024   reads: 1802   © 2023 James LaFond
Immediate Post-Life
Summer Spent in the Murkan Mid-Atlantic: May 30 thru August 31, 2023
Copyright James LaFond 2023
A Crackpot Book
Lynn Lockhart: Publisher
Dust Cover
The author, after having his final stick fights and boxing bouts, is stuck in the East preparing for post-life malingering via medical care. The following journal represents the writing that life forced upon that addled mind as it sought to only complete history and fiction projects.
Written under duress at the behest of some crueler muse.
Dedication
For the Brickmouse, who has offered his nice house as a berth for the recovery of an unworthy sack of skin.
Inspirational Quote
“My Aunt, God rest her soul, was one of the good people. Me, I’m one of the bad people and I’m still here. What does that tell you about this world? She was the bright Ying and I am the dark Yang. You, I can figure—you’re all smooth with the light, but then you’re dark like me. So, just in case, if I get whacked—that being a hazard implicit in being a jerk in our wonderful hometown—then I expect you to avenge me.”
-A Man I coached in Knife Fighting last night, being Monday, June 5th, as he dropped me off at the Brickmouse House
The type of journalism I do, was developed to expand my ability to investigate certain mundane things, like human aggression, and to be able to write realistic—which is not to say believable in our fake construct—characters. Most readers will insist that the man above does not, could not, and at the very least should not, exist. Yet, last night he bought me dinner and insisted on stocking the liquor cabinet of my darling land lady. I accept what God and his wicked sisters The Fates send my wretched way. The circumstances of this specific miserable life are above my modest pay grade and I regard as none of my business.
Since returning east my ears have rung like electric sirens, and my eye has sizzled like a my hand once did when I grabbed those live wires under a frozen food case in 1991. I have grown convinced that something or someone is stalking me. It is only a feeling supported by odd coincidences and strange sendings, insane people in obvious pane who have sought me out across the country, seemingly and in public according to some insensible giddy impulse.
This past Saturday, the 3rd I was threatened by an insane Bantu as I hobbled to the bank in Somewhere, New Jersey. Later that day I was threatened by a casual acquaintance of some five years, a philosopher with numerous publish works to his credit, if he discovered that his suspicion that I was a Goboment Agent were confirmed by yet more suspicion. I will not write about that event, as it involved third parties who are people I love.
On arriving in Baltimore yesterday I was approached by Bust a Move, an openly insane woman screaming and crying for my aid. The crazies have multiplied from among stranger kind in my life. So, amidst this, when a fellow dark spirit from the unhappy dusty corners of Murican life, contacts me for counsel; for advice, training and brotherhood—for he too is being sought out by random crazies—then I sense a quickening. That quickening, from under my tin foil sombrero, seems to be that the metaphysical underpinnings of this fake world are reshaping reality. Reality, as most people determine the visible world around them, is to me, merely a construct projected out of the Invisible World that we are not privy to. The over welming surge of insane people, to you might be drug addicts, but to me they are sendings from beyond. The Evil Gods are either sending the insane like T-cells to wipe out We the Virus, or are driving people insane on an inner level that compels them to seek out the random stranger who seems most at peace and either attach or attack.
I’d rather be attacked at this point.
Or, perhaps it is just me that is pulling apart. Perhaps I have simply lost my mind and the electric signaling in my head and the severe pain in my eye is merely a symptom of my poorly deserved demise.
I can tell you this, that college educated white people, now fill me with deep dread. I can hear the induction in their voice. I can see them seeking puppets for conduction into their zombie inferno. I am terrified of white people now. They seem more and more like blank bio-slates that the evil powers of the overworld etch their whims upon and unleash like a torrent on the few unwashed souls left bobbing down this terrible river of the damned.
I was alone on an extended bus yesterday with 60 feral negroes, total savages, most, kind souls some. They overlooked the weird old beard in the rucksack in the corner. But earlier that day as I sat on the train to Baltimore, packed with New Yorkers, going to Washington D.C. to work, all cipher-like whites of various hues, all speaking the same dialect with the same empty eyes and needy voices, tapping away on their laptops, I was gawked at like a zoo exhibit. Two beautiful woman [0], three men, and one crippled old woman, whose faces mine accidentally met as I hauled on my ruck and made to exit the train in Baltimore, a place none of those on my car were headed, looked at me like that black pygmy held in a British zoo some 120 years ago.
Some of these episodes will be told in detail in the early pages of his work. I will then strive to write as little to nothing as possible in this journal and keep my little eye use for important work. This will hopefully be my slimmest book ever writ, limited to the ten or so pages I intend to write today and tomorrow covering June 3rd in ‘Suck Mah Dick Merka’ and June 5th [1] on the bus in ‘Bust A Move’ Baltimore.
There is a problem with my writing mind in that I have great difficulty in not continuing the Harm City journalism and the burglarizing of mass transit conversations.
The initial two chapters, hopefully part 1 and 2 of this entire miserable journal, will be titled and hopefully written tomorrow:
‘Suck Mah Dick Merka’
Profile of the Patel Brothers American Empire: Somewhere, New Jersey, June 3, 2023
‘Bust a Move’ Baltimore
On Baltimore City Buses from Penn Station, Charles Street to Hamilton: June 5, 2023
Notes
-0. Looked like a Bollywood pinup girl, had gone to the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts and was working for an NGO in D.C. and Argentina before going into acting full time. My one eye did inspect her ample bustline while hoisting on the ruck as her big blue eyes regarded me with fear over her pouting ruby lips.
-1. Those miserable Manhattan/DC white people, aspiring to their cartoon riches, do not deserve to be trivialized in this rough screed. The pathetic, apish, chanting Groes on the green Line, hopefully one of their number having just been shot by that large caliber revolver that sounded to the west just now, do possess the virtue of entertaining anticisms and will be remembered below...yo.
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posted: March 13, 2024   reads: 1880   © 2023 James LaFond
Taking to the Night
Pondering the Cracked Rear View Mirror of a life Misspent: G-String New Jersey, 5/22/23
I was in Baltimore at the Brickmouse House after having coffee with Miss Ezz when Flop the Zero Phone lit up mutely and announced “Mr Saffronno.”
Answering, I heard, “Sorry, James, for not answering your call last night. I was out with my girlfriend, on our final date—you know she turns thirty tomorrow, and I have standards to maintain…”
The world was set to tilt our knucklehead way, as My Patron, Jersey Jon, The Brickmouse, Mister Grey, and Big Ron descended upon The Shamrock Pub in Baltimore City for $2 bottled beer. The Birckmouse, having found this was going to be my last fight, that I had promised numerous ladies that age 60 would see my final fights, had decided to attend so he could test himself.
I knew how it would go. Having been sparring 6 hours a week across the nation with novice to experienced fighters, and he not for a year, he beat me up sparring on Sunday morning without much effort.
Thursday was rising in Baltimore and a Tennessee arrival.
Friday was training, Paul showing up late.
Friday morning Paul and I got in the ring while Jon yet slept on the mat below and rolled over at 7 A.M. empty beer cans attesting to his revel last night, “Really, already,” and rolled back over as the Big Breed and the old twerp boxed. I was getting arrogant, had sparred with Dennis 45 minutes the day before and gotten the best of it.
Back up at the house I issued a written challenge to 7 year old Uriah to duel, and he agreed. I would be taking some knee shots in our exhibition bout the next day as I was booed and hissed and the spry critter waxed David over aged Goliath. Dennis would be served the same comic fate in the same corner. Being the bad guy looming over the fresh-faced is fun, even when you are undone.
I won most of my machete duels. The Brickmouse tooled me up and put me down with the stick. Sean disarmed and pummeled me. Dennis and Jon beat me up in boxing, while taking it easy on me. I am to the point where I can only be competitive in blunt force contests against novices and older peers, who are people I should be coaching, not fighting.
The format seemed to gel perfectly and we even developed our own knucklehead crowd scoring system which included awarding wins on moral grounds to the man who ate the most punches!
Esoteric urban blight and military history conversation over shepherd’s pie in the Tennessee Hills, beer in the rain, breakfast and coffee with far-flung friends of a common mind-frame and a fist in the face to remind you that they care; Man Weekend 2023 will be one of the memories I hope the shades maintain.
So, it was the right call. Other than doing some exhibition fights on video to show off The Brickmouse, because I can still make him work, I should limit my activity to sparring and coaching.
If Sean wants me to attend next year, I’ll do steel duels and coach.
I am willing to do an exhibition of London Prize Ring boxing from Figg’s Era of the 1720s with Jon or Dennis, using MMA gloves instead of bare knuckles, as a kind of reenactment and technical study of that extinct sport, and/or a pugmachia bout according to ancient Olympic rules. The first would be in the ring, the second on the mat and be an attempt to reenact the social setting as well, not just the methods of contest but the cornering and officiating as well.
Sean, Mr. Saffonno, Ivan, Jon, Dennis, Uriah, Paul, Brickmouse, Nero and the Man of Mystery [who had to retire due to illness], thank you, it was an honor.
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posted: January 31, 2024   reads: 3388   © 2023 James LaFond
‘Baltimore, My Home’
Recent Encounters in Harm City: 5/16/2023
Last Thursday night, at 10:35, after two hours sparring, the Operator and I discussed the night’s blunt knife action and he said, “You, Mister James, with the stick, remind me of my training officer from back in the day. This dude was an old cat with 15 years on the force back then. He was the last of the guys that walked with the stick. In my opinion, the stick is what is missing in police work today. These days, you get your ass kicked, electrocute the prick, of shoot him—like everything else, less physical than it used to be.
Hands shape the scene as the man reaches back behind intense glazed eyes to yesteryear:
“He told me, one question, that’s all they got. We go out on the street, closin’ time, knuckleheads need to be off the corner, time to go home—this is the line, I drew the line, don’t cross it. Then, of course, some drunk loudmouth has to come up and give me the what to and the why for and ‘Bam!’ right between the eyes, staggering off holding his head. That was called the law, the old guys were all about the stick—the City guys even more so—jeese, what they had to deal with, same is what you have to deal with, these knuckle-draggers hunting you up through The Oaks on your way here…”
On the way to the car, “Brutha, I really appreciate you always hittin’ the legal angle on this knife action, reviewing that. ‘Cause, ya know, if I run into a cop now, I probably don’t know him. My crop has gone to the silo. These young people—sorry about the mess sir. Hey, I have two burgers left, gobblin’ down chow on the way here. They’re yours. [1]”
Driving across Joppa Road past a mostly empty used car dealership lot that used to hold over a thousand cars and now has two dozen:
“Jesus, look at that, bright as day under the lot light… Are they boosting those cars?”
It appeared so and then a car started gunning its motor behind us the passengers gesturing aggressively. We pull up at the light at Perring Parkway and the sedan, with three 20-something, drunk land whales of the ghost pod pull up making threats and then look into the trash strewn car as I turn to look at them and the middle aged hippie in the suit at the wheel looks at them…
The scene held.
Then the one behind the driver, a big mug, bloated at 25, said, “Hey, y’all, have a nice night.”
They then ran the red light, raced across and turned left down Satyr Hill.
“Mister James, I think—and I could be wrong, but probably not—that your engaging personality might have just saved me from explaining to whatever poor soul has taken my place in the ranks, why I had to shoot all three of those motherfuckers. Thank you, thank you!”
The next day, as I arrived across town on the East Side, Megan was late getting off work at that dealership and said, “Sorry Poppy, we lost seven cars off the lot last night. Some broke ass bitch has to call it in—yours truly!”
Yesterday, Monday the 15th, in Harford County, Incognegro was running five hours late getting me for a video shoot when he rolled up in yet another new vehicle, of which he owns many. He insists on loading my ruck and says, ‘Sorry james, this wasn’t CP Time. One of my guys dropped a TV at a very important client’s house and I had to make it right. We’ll reschedule. For now, I’ll take you into town and to the gym.”
“Nice car man.”
He sat down and grinned, knowing I didn’t understand why it was a nice car, and tapped the emblem on the steering wheel that read BMW, “I’d rather have something else, but this was the only collectible they had. I’ll drive it for a while and get rid of it. This holds its value and I’ll make a profit selling it. Speaking of which, I need to confess some racist thoughts and suspicions.”
"There is this guy that owes me down in East Baltimore, Monument and Biddle. Well, I know better then to pull up in this after dark. So I head down yesterday afternoon, at two o’clock on a Sunday, and I see two black guys with a jimmy opening a car door and my first thought is they are stealing it. Just like that, like Dave Chapelle, racist on my own kind. So I check myself and walk on by and nod to them respectfully, having altered my assumptions to them having locked themselves out of their car. Then one of them turns to me—we are just around the corner from the Police Station—and says, ‘Ma Man, could you check around the corner en make sure da poleese not done wit dey roll call yet?’
[laughter]
“Just like that, these criminals are going to include me in their negro crime!”
“So, I have a friend who does some work for me and he tells me that the new Kia and Hyundai can be broken into with a USB cord and a screwdriver and he isn’t available for work because he is replacing ignitions in these things all day long, just in this area.”
We drive into town and see The Brickmouse and Bride walking and I direct Incognegro to pull up as I wave. As they come over to the car and shake hands my host says, “Nice car!” and my driver responds, “Thank you,” and we pull off.
Incognegro insists on carrying up my ruck, regaling me with a story of sparring with the Mexican landscaper cutting his neighbors lawn and glancing at my emaciated form, “James, being a hobo and having women across the country is good for you—you come back in better shape every year. You always were a savage. You might pick up a win down in Tennessee.”
“Oh yes, I know you spend time out in the boonies. So I have this contract with a satellite TV and internet provider and a free year of air travel, including South America, which I’ll probably mostly use for Spanish bitches. So, you go anywhere out of the way, let me know, so I can visit. And if any of your hosts need TV, I’ll come out. I’m hitting people in Houston right now. If you end up there, definitely let me know. You sure you don’t want me to drive you to the school?”
“I’ll empty this and use it for the gear, which is light, and ruck it up there. It’s a good warm up. Thanks.”
“Okay, James—nice to see you and see you soon.”
Nurse Mother Lynn then texted me about my activity and health [she taking care of my medical emails and appointments] and I let her know what I’m doing.
She texts back:
“Nobody can do what you do. You deserve so much more. You should be born on a litter by melinated individuals.”
I texted back: “Five more bucks to go!”
Notes
-1. The Brickmouse Bride advised me on my late night meal as I threw away the fries, unwrapped the burgers, threw away the buns, and revealed 4 pickle slices and two wafer thin meat patties, “Looks like a job for pork rinds!”
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posted: January 29, 2024   reads: 3501   © 2023 James LaFond
‘They Belong to the Concrete’
Part 2 of 2: Three Days on Baltimore Buses: May 8-10, 2023
The bus emptied except for the good man with the coffee and I. So I asked him about the hospital and he directed me on a “twenty minute walk” to it while he walked off to his destination.
My appointment was over within an hour and I joined two old black fellows at the hospital bus stop. They were about my age and dependent on canes, complaining of bus service, as the next bus showed up on time and took us back into the city. On the way back into town I had more leisure to observe and noted as we went down Washington Boulevard back into the City, that the level of decay had increased.
Motorcycle boys and scooter boys and homeless with shopping carts obstructed traffic. Houses and shops were boarded up. Crack heads, junkies and whores malingered on trash strewn sidewalks. A train stopped traffic and the big mamma piloting the bus chirped, “Derned trains is long as shit deese days—we goin’ on detour, y’all!”
She did a K turn before the tracks and circled back and around over Wilkens Avenue and down Monroe, over the railroad and back down past the monstrous old, white stone 1960s Montgomery Ward department store headquarters to Washington Boulevard. The bus matron dropped me off at a stop she assured me would get me on the #54, and it was so, that bus pulling right up behind her.
Stepping off at Glenmore and Harford Road, around the corner from where I lived for 8 years, I drank two sugar free Muscle Milks for lunch and walked down to the Sikh liquor store where I purchased peanut butter whiskey for the Brick Mouse and enough hard booze to keep me going all summer after surgery: Barbencourt’s Haitian Rhum: 8 year old, 4 year old and Panga, as well as craft Vodka for his bride. The youngest son was thrilled to have me there, offered to walk my booze to my car, and when he found out I was on foot, said, “Then I welcome you back soon, Sir!”
Squared away at the Brickmouse House, I read emails and downloaded 8 for article prompts and wrote a two part historical article on the origin of the term “White” as a racial noun.
By 3:45 it was time to head over to Megan’s on the East Side. On Northern Parkway, waiting at the bus stop, an older man, a working man of pecan skin tone and scruffy beard, carrying a side satchel, like a leather version of a newspaper bag, showed me his open hand as he passed and said, “Good afternoon to you, sir,” and walked on.
A #33 came by while I waited for the #36. The man yelled from behind me, down hill by 50 paces, “That’s not the stop, sir! He won’t stop there.”
I walked down to him, “Do I have to walk down to Valentino’s and catch it there?”
“No sir, he pulls over here, starts banking over where you were—just saving you the jog—you darn near as old as me.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You new in town?”
“Was born and raised here. But been livin’ out west for five years—come back here for medical.”
“I should of done what you did, up and moved and started a new life. Baltimore is like the woods, the wilderness, ain’t shit good left, not a Samaritan soul left.”
“That’s why I left. After the riots, by December 2017, I was the only man left taking the buses from here to Essex at night and had two pair of young men try to waylay me, so I cleared out, quit my job.”
“Don’t I know it, sir! Young hoodlums come up on me every danged week, think I can’t fight. Hell, you fit, younger then me, en I still battle their young asses! Please sir, I sixty-nine. We need to fight, battle into our graves ‘gainst dese no accounts ain’ worked a day in dey lives!”
“Agreed.”
“Yes sir, buzzards of a feather! They come, don’t neglect that brick, don’t shirk that stick, don’t leave that trash can lid when you can run it upside dey narrow heads! Hoodlems ain’ shit. En da poleese knows it. Finally the cops on our side, draggin’ dick while we sort it out, turnin’ a blind eye!”
I smiled and rocked on my heels, soaking up the uncivil dissent.
“Sir, we soldiers—en ain’t near young. Work done got us nothin’ but battle in dis world! Glad ta have you!”
I nod with respect and he points at his wide jaw with his big thick hands, a man perhaps 5’ 9” and 185, thick bodied and wind burned, “Weakass so-in-sos thought these ole chops couldn’t hang. Not a mont gone they come up side dis jaw en I was eatin’ a cold cut next day. Don’t neglect the curb, Ma Man! No siree, dem hoodlums come den da curb be dey dentist en da sidewalk dey undataka! Dey come up on us, den dey belong ta da concrete!”
“My Bus commin’ sir.”
We shake hands and I ask, “Your name, sir?”
“Jerome, they call me JR, en you?”
“James.”
“Goot ta meet ya, James—we ole, but we ain’t dead yet!”
Wow, as Jerome boarded the bus, I wished momentarily that I was flanker in his squad and he my NCO in the war against the gathering horde…
Offloading at Eastpoint and 54th, I go to the Paki liquor store, passing a 50 year old black man with a walker and an ancient paleface who asks me the way to a bank that has been closed for ten years.
“Sorry, sir, I’m from out of town,” I said as I walked in, past a large chocolate land whale cow in spandex hot pants and tube top, whose mop-headed mixed race child wailed for her attention.
I walk past to get two 25 ounce cans of beer and she mothers her wailing child of four years, “Nigga, stop yo bitch-ass winin’. Yo sound like a bitch—shut da fuck up!”
She ignored the child as she picked out her wine coolers and he tugged on her skirt. She backhanded him in the mouth and he cried louder as I got a bottle of Smirnoff for Megan and mamma, declares, “Nigger, you’d think I cut yo dick off! Whad da fuck—man da fuck up! You betta’ shape yo bitch ass up—cryin’ juz ‘cause I hit ya! Shiaa, if you wanna girlfriend when you grow up, ya betta stop sound’n like a girl yer own self or you gonna be da bitch—you feel me nigga!?!”
The boy wailed at the top of his lungs as his matron began his induction into the horde of violent sissies being prepared to put JR and I in our graves…
The next day, at about noon, taking the #36 home to shower and change for my urology examine, a man about my age, looking at his smart phone, glancing at the crowd of teens hooking school behind us and deciding on me as a guide:
“Sir, I got a new job site to go to. The phone is saying Harford and Echodale but they told me Harford and Taylor, said there was a Royal Farm store right next to the post office.”
“Get off with me, sir, and I’ll show you where it is. Echodale is down in the city 10 blocks. Taylor is the County Line, at the top of the hill. Right over the hill is a VFW and then the Royal Farms and Post Office, on your right.”
We get off as the punks are joking about waylaying “muva fuckas,” instead of going to school, “we goin’ ta fo real school,” and I pointed the way.
“Thank you, sir,” said the anonymous man as we shook hands, and we parted ways in the these hateful times.
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posted: January 26, 2024   reads: 3618   © 2023 James LaFond
‘Yo Gotz da Monay—Notz Me!’
Part 1 of 2: Three Days on Baltimore Buses: May 8-10, 2023
Monday
My sister works next to the doctor’s office I was scheduled to visit at 10:10 AM. After sparring with Nero and Erique in PA on Sunday, Uber Joe came to get me and bring me down into the Catholic Plantation. We had dinner and played a family game of rummy. My Brother in law and sister retired and I stayed up for three games with the Matriarch.
Entering the building I saw two, rather than the single security guard on duty, up from zero in 2019. The guard was helpful as I hauled my rucksack to internal medicine and then to diagnostics.
Emerging from the building I was gawked at by motorists who would not have blinked at an old runt packing a puck in The West. Arriving at the bus stop in time to board, I asked the driver if a $5 would get me a day pass and he cheerily said, “Yes, sir, come aboard,” an older black fellow seemingly happy in his work.
The bus, I forget the color or number, tracked south from hite Marsh to Franklin Square, where I offloaded and got right on the #36 to Towson. These buses are rarely half full and run much more often than when I lived in Baltimore. The system is up to national grade for the first time in my life. 5% to 10% of the riders, mostly women, wear masks. Some of the female drivers wear masks.
Offloading at Harford and Northern Parkway, it is a short hike to The Brickmouse House. It takes 2 hours to unpack my storage tote and my ruck, charge the Brickmouse Gift Laptop and take a nap.
Rising at 4 my host takes me to the basement gym for conversation and exercise, me hitting the snake and he using his weights and doing floor exercises. After hydration he runs me through a knee rehabilitation session. I pack my ruck with his fencing mask and gloves and mine, fill the canteen and hike the three miles gently up hill towards Jim Frederick’s Kempo school, which Morgan, his black belt, keeps running. It is 3 miles uphill and it is 7:18, my appointment with the operator at 8:30.
At 8:10, with the sun low in the west as I walk through The Oaks, where numerous packs of hoodrats congregate to the east, two Groes look my way, speak to each other, and then begin to follow me. I pushed up the flat polypropylene club from the base of my slot pocket so that I could draw the weapon from between my belt and the waist strap of the ruck and made a right up the alley behind the car wash.
As I come out of the alley across from the side street liquor store on Lakwanna, they are rounding the bend too late to cut me off and I walk through the gas station to the karate school. The Oaks Boys don’t pursue civilian targets past the liquor store out onto Loch Raven.
Morgan and I caught up until The Operator came in. The Operator showed up at 8:30 with a check for me for a commitment to train him as long as I’m back east. He is a generous man with a quirky competitive edge. He has the best mentality for knife that I have encountered. I convince him to give up on the FMA and Silat and simply adopt his Kenpo and experience tot he sparring and self defense scenarios we work. He is as old as I and there is no sense in trying to unwire his defensive hand work and guard, developed over some 5 decades.
He drops me off at The Brickmouse House where I visit with my Host’s bride, speaking of travel observations and the knew challenges of her changing work place. She hugs a stuffed critter as she winds down from an extended work day. The notion then strikes that I have added one more person to the list of people I’d intercede for beyond my normal insular code.
Tuesday
I sleep late and miss my Host for coffee, he and his wife already pursuing their 12 hour work days. I do not have change for the bus and need to take the Orange to the Inner Harbor and then the Yellow to Halethorpe where I used to coach at Damien Kestle’s MMA school some 18 years ago.
The 24/7 Food Mart at the gas station on the corner of Harford and Northern is a potroled by a young, mentally deranged, ashy, dreadlocked, hungry looking hoodrat who ask me if I can spare any change. I nod, ‘No,” and enter. The man behind the counter is African and polite. For $7.25 I buy a bang energy drink and 4 packs of peanuts. I go outside, set the 3 quarters and a pack of peanuts on the corner of the building and nod to the beggar that it is his. He thanks me and hurries over to his prize.
I take a drink of bang at the bus stop and it rolls up. I throw the full can in the trash and wait for last, since I have to ask after the fair, as I do not know what it was. The bus driver only charges me $2 for a day pass, which seems odd. He is a big, big whigger, 320 lbs, 6’ 5” and 30 years old.
At Echodale a perpetual disruption vector, a clean, hip hop kang stands in the door holding up the bus while he argues with a woman on the bust stop about money and with a woman on his phone, about money:
“Yo, gotz da monay—notz me!”
He never pays for his fare. The driver does not push it. The repairs on the bridge over Herring Run are finally done after 4 years.
As the bus descends into the ghetto half empty the urban blight is slightly worse than ever, though with so many store fronts boarded up across the country, the plywood front row houses and long ago abandoned businesses do not loom so starkly as they once did. The Hip Hop Kang saunters to the front door and demand to be let off at Asquith and North and the driver informs him that the next stop is down town, that this is express. The 140 pound Kang threatens and challenges and demands that the big driver get off at the bus stop and fight him.
The whigger driver says, “Ain’t my fault you haven’ a bad day. I’m on the bus. You see me on the street, then we can fight.”
The wolfing continues until we are past juvenile hall and the kang gets off. I think I understand the discount, though I would not have helped the driver.
Boarding the Yellow minutes later I end up seated between two homeless young addicts, paleface scum, and move as soon as a seat opens ahead. They gripe with each other constantly. An insane black woman cackles and screeches to her self across the aisle form me.
A light skinned man with a cup of coffee boards and sits next to the crazy bitch and answers her insane queries with kindness. She is having hard time deciding what stop is hers so I scoot to the window. The man takes my cue and slides across the aisle to sit with me and thanks me. He is my age and as light as I am.
The woman gets off near Lexington market as I note an increase of white homeless down in this black ghetto. A cryptic acronym facility, which aside form the 4 letters of the wordless name, proclaims BEHAVIORAL HEALTH is bustling like an LDS church on Sunday, though the churchgoers have not driven, but walk eagerly into their temple to partake of whatever beneficence awaits.
Concluded in ‘They Belong to the Concrete.’
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posted: January 24, 2024   reads: 3745   © 2023 James LaFond
Where Do I Go?
Musings on Getting Off the Anti-Autonomy Grid
Where do I go
Inbox
cudgel
12:11 PM (1 hour ago)
to me
James I am living in the Great Lakes region and need to get out. Is there anywhere in the US I can actually establish myself as a free man. I do not want to be a slave. Slaves birth slaves.
...

This is a slave nation. So being a criminal or being homeless is your only option for actual freedom. However, fractional autonomy is always there for the person willing to carve it out. [See Alienation Nation, 2015] Husband was a term created to recognize the enslavement of a male subject by binding him to a house and holding his family hostage for his good behavior. This is the basis for civilization, which we are unlikely to change in the short term.
Sir, I had this conversation with The Colonel's Wife yesterday as she asked me for advice on train travel.
Retiring from working in one of Uncle Satan's most evil cities, Seattle, The Colonel and Wife moved to remote Montana. They ran into retirement refugees from Chicongo, Maryland, New York, all of the evil nodes of satanic control. These folks are much wealthier, retired executives, people with double government pensions, Social Security, investments and so on. These people are living in a super high rent district because the billionaires have beat everyone to the most remote places, leaving the urban nests they fouled ahead of the flock.
The fact is, wherever you go, within 8 years, that location will be found by the millionaires and billionaires they serve, and your taxes and rent will go up, globo-homo laws will come in with the daughters of the rich who will run the government, and their private cops from majority African cities will bring the muscle to make you mind.
I go to east Tennessee were 50+% of residents are recent immigrants, and the writing is on the wall there.
Boise, Idaho, a prime Murkin flight zone, was colonized by the government as soon as it was noted as an escape zone. Now the city is like every other city in the U.S., same shit, same shitty people...
In the West, you actually have towns with names like Government Camp, Oregon. No shit.
A massive migration of every class of ghost people, homeless drug addicts, retirees, rich, poor, middle class, is under way. This serves the government and their banking masters. The instinct is to flee to good weather and to the old frontier, mountains, western, southern areas, as far away from the centers of Evil.
Get a map and circle the 20 largest cities, that have population growth. Check to make sure the population loss is not simply being pushed into the adjacent municipality. You want a real population sink. For instance, every person Baltimore loses goes to Baltimore County, pushing outward. You would not move in that path, but behind it, actually into the horrid city.
If you do not chose to homestead behind the groe wave of Gawdly reparations, make sure you move at least 120 miles from one of those centers.
Note that these flight zones from Baltimore and Philly meet around Wilmington, Delaware. Avoid such salients as they will be besieged.
People fleeing Portland, go to the coast if they can. People from worse places are still mobbing to Portland, and, as they seek better lives, make it worse for those there.
Northern California looks great, except it is government land run by Mexican Narco Mobs.
I like Willamuka. Nevada, Cofax California and helper Utah. Look for small towns on train routs, not bus routs and not interstates.
The people that change your laws and police you come by plane and interstate. Get away from those as far as possible.
The people that actually beat your sons and rape your daughters, come by plane and bus. Get on a train line rather than a bus line. Airports, are Satan's distribution hubs for dispensing evil into the world.
I Like Oklahoma, Iowa and Nebraska.
Wyoming I love, but the water is not accessible to you in rural settings and the Kardashians have beat you there.
You have to home school if you don't want slave children.
Ideally you can make money online and can pick a depressed area where there is little traditional work in an area with lower cost of living.
There will be criminals, due to the meth and fent plagues in those regions of despair. These will mostly be property criminals, not killers, like with Groes.
You want to move behind the wave, not in front of it. You cannot fight Leviathan any more than a Jap could stop Godzilla with a pistol. That is what Godzilla was about, a traditional culture being swallowed by Leviathan—America.
For instance, in NE Baltimore City, you can move in behind the hoodrat wave that is chasing the millionaires out of the adjacent County. In 8 more years a new wave of imported Muslims and Africans will be sent in to clear you out. But, where ever you move, it cannot be permanent. The greatest political machine in human history, owning more warplanes [dragons] than all other nations combined, is dedicated to, and has been since its infancy, to ejecting working people from major centers and then following that economically displaced population and taking over what they built in desperation.
Right now, this year, I would suggest Exeter Missouri. The area was raped by big food companies that got tax breaks for creating jobs and then brought in illegal and legal alien work forces instead of hiring locals. Prime Rocky Mountain country is out of the question.
In your zone, Burlington, Iowa is a good initial refuge.
You must be 100 miles from a ski resort, or the billionaires will clear you out.
North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee are 5 years from being up priced and have most of the urban refugees now that will not cause a total corruption. The West is mostly government land. I like the Mid Appalachian watershed from Pennsylvania Down to North Georgia. But, everyone with a brain is heading there, which means all the bad problems you are facing will move east from Memphis, Northwest from Georgia and West from Washington D.C. within 20 years. Right now the government has a shortage of Groes. once they get the Groes they need from Angola [they have an Angolan refugee camp in Oregon] Nigeria, Ghana, Somalia, Kenya, etc., they will be sent after your refuge.
Another metric is to look at the Hindu managerial class being brought in.
Move to an area they have not targeted with their grocery franchises. Look up a map of the Patal Brothers grocery chain and make sure you are 100 miles outside their service area.
In forced migration situations place knowledge is outdated quickly.
You need a migratory method, more than an ideal destination.
01.20.24   Bones — Northern California looks great, except it is government land run by Mexican Narco Mobs.

More and more people are getting killed on their daytrips into the Plumas and Tahoe national forests now. Parks in SoCal are no goes. Whole canyons are filled with garbage from migrants 'walking' through. Cartels are growing weed in all the nat parks. Don't stray off the beaten paths. Doing so can get you raped, tortured and killed. Don't even bother getting those senior passes to the park unless you bring your own body bag.
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posted: January 9, 2024   reads: 4265   © 2024 Bones
My Next Creep State Handler?
You Be the Judge
Below is an email exchange, forwarded to this sentient hoodrat by the gentleman known as Adam Smith, a man who has done me a number of good turns, for which I thank him. Checkout his Exit Strategy book published by Lynn. A few weeks ago I was called by an attire merchant who is promoting meaningful third position merchandise for alternative thinkers. He claimed to be living in Baltimore, in South Baltimore, where I worked, trained and dated for 15 years. He was really creeped out by my lack of interest in making money and most of all by the fact that I knew his neighborhood of South Baltimore so well, better than he. He even called the few original SOBO folks "townies," a term I never heard in Baltimore. I told him that most of the residents there, were new Marylanders who worked in DeeCee. That is a fact.]

Adam Smith
Mon, Dec 4, 2023, 2:48 AM
to Daniel, me
Hi Daniel - Cc:ed is James via his email.
Without knowing you personally I'll take everything you've said as good faith, but - and this isn't personal - a lot of us have heard speculation about the origins of your organization as being potentially tied to some of the government agencies. If you have anything you'd like to offer to clarify that view I'm sure that would be helpful.
Best,
Adam

Comment:
Hello, I've been a long time listener to the show. I remember it being pivitol in getting over libertarianism and coming around to seeing things the way I do now.
Today I was relistening to the show you guys did on the Fight Club movie and James LaFond was your guest host.
I live near enough to Baltimore and work in Baltimore.
Also, for about three years I've been doing Nationalist activism in and around Baltimore with the organization Patriot Front. Its taught me a lot of street smarts and been a lesson in the reality of the world I might never have gotten otherwise. Part of Patriot Front's goal is to get young men trained in martial arts for self confidence, self defense, and a lot of the ideas you guys discussed in the fight club episode. I'd like to meet and talk with James if he's open to it. I didn't see a way to get in contact with him on his blogsite or the sites that carry his writing other than social media platforms I do not have. I was hoping you guys could help get me in contact with him or sharemy email and this message with him. It'd be great to meet him and learn what I can to share with my guys.
Thanks
Keep up the best show in the scene.
Time: November 29, 2023 at 1:19 am
Sent by an unverified visitor to your site.

James LaFond <jameslafond.com@gmail.com>
Jan 3, 2024, 3:41 PM (19 hours ago)
to Adam, Daniel
Hey Adam, just got back online after 4 months of techtardedness.
Thanks, I have no problem with feds, I typically get interviewed by an MC or Naval Intelligence officer when I return to the east. I do those interviews at The Orchard Cafe in Towson, MD. So if you are my new handler, that is the spot.
Daniel,
I have met with numerous government goons and natsies and even train some of both.
It's not my world and I'm fine with coaching both sides,
I coach 2 pigs and 3 military service men.
I am currently crippled, and in the Pacific Northwest.
Uncle Sham willing, I will return to Baltimore by April 10.
I plan on being in the mid Atlantic until May 15 then back again for September and most of October
There is a training/fighting weekend set for mid May in eastern Tennessee where I will be coaching. If you train with me before that date, I can get you an invite, a mix of amateurs, pros and self defense novices from 7 states.
my phone is 443 686 0598 text before calling, so I will answer or call back
I have trained 16 Myth 20 listeners who have contacted me.
I still coach 4, having discharged the first 12 for declining to spar with me
Speaking loud enough to do podcasts or coach a group causes eye seizures, so I do 3 people at the most.
I will bring an assistant to do the physical tasks beyond me.
He will need paid.
I work for lodging and alcohol as i am homeless and generally too sober.
The session will have to be in Baltimore City or County. I have traveled to train people who have stranded me and am getting too old for that.
If you just want to meet and talk, I'll come alone. I usually use the Raven Inn in Towson, MD, 2 miles north of the city line, or The Shamrock on Harford Road in Northeast Baltimore. I coach at Towson Karate, across from the Raven, which used to be Jim Frederick's Kempo.
Good luck with your training, Daniel.

That is a cleaned up version of the email exchange. As for the movie Fight Club, I tried to be as polite as I could since it was a film that meant a lot to my younger hosts. I thought it was really gay but very entertaining with a weird twist.
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posted: January 4, 2024   reads: 4034   © 2024 James LaFond
'Body Language Protocol'
Increase Mather XXI Wonders about being Hunted by Three: 5/11/21
This email was sent by the JL website. The webmaster/moderator wants you to see:
Comment by Increase Mather XXI
This is beyond fascinating. What would one do if a group of, say, 3 were 'sounding one out' for possible attack? What would be the body language protocol?
Thank you for your interest in whatever article this comment came from.
To your question, Sir, lets go with three stages:
-Pack Aggression Cues
-Defensive Body Language Protocol
-Counter Measures
I have survived scores of these attacks, the most harrowing being 4 Groes deciding, on the way across the Middle River Bridge at 11:00 PM, on their way to Gussie's Liquors and my way past them to Gersebecks Grocery where I worked, to waylay me off the cuff!
I think the story is in the book, White in the Savage Night.
Let's deal in generalities here, with some specific notes. For instance, in 2017, while sick and injured and fat, three hale and healthy 30-year-old redneck carpenters decided to threaten me with a recreational beating, while they drove to work with just bought Dunkin' Doughnuts coffee in their hands, at Stemmers Run and Eastern Boulevard, at about 5 AM, when I was coming from the above-mentioned job.
The Groes were dealing with the Mythic White Devil of Yore, their superstitious minds agape at my apparent fearlessness. The rednecks knew I was a broke old runt and probably wanted to vent their rage on me for being out on foot among the savages who they had to buy their drugs from and suffer the indignity of a dark master. It has been my experience that when dark drug dealers take over an area, that some pale drug buyers seek to vent their rage on older, smaller, lone pale squares to repair their pride after having a handgun shoved in their face along with the suggestion of submissive gay sex and the naming of them as a “white bitch.”
Thus, as the Goboment imports more and more Groes to patrol your local streets, threats will come not just from them, but from the emasculated, working dope fiends who buy drugs from them under humiliating conditions.
Pack Aggression Cues
Upon sighting you in order of escalation:
-1. One nods, motions or speaks to the others.
-2. They change formation.
-3. They change directions to follow you.
-4. They change directions to intercept you.
-5. One asks you a question.
-6. One makes a demand.
-7. One makes a threat.
-8. There is a change in attire or wear pattern, like pulling up hood, zipping or unzipping hoody, pocketing hands in hoody or pocket.
-9. An effort is made to close distance.
-10. An effort is made to corner you.
Note that most of the above are common police behavior patterns signifying aggression in progress. Study cops in action, as they often use the same tactics and demonstrate the same behaviors as criminals.
Defensive Body Language Protocol
-1. Round down your shoulders.
-2. Lower your chin.
-3. Spider walk your hands, down by your hips, rolling and fanning fingers to ready them for action.
-4. Observe the enemy obliquely from under eye brows without raising chin or making direct eye contact, keeping their hands and hips, and especially movement of hands to hips, in focus.
-5. Do not answer questions or comments.
-6. Pretend you are deaf and do not stop or look up or startle in response to their escalated comments or actions.
-7. Walk past or away from them at a 45 degree angle, only making this much of an angular adjustment. Do not make a 90 or 180 evasion. You are not trying to get away, because you cannot. You are seeking an advantage, high ground, a pole to put your back to, a brick or trash can lid or chunk of wood.
-8. Seek an available improvised weapon before deploying your own, so that you take that weapon out of their arsenal and keep your carry weapon as a back up.
-9. Watch their feet and hips and hands from a side glance as you scan the ground for weapons and footing cues.
-10. Before two paces of contact you must place a weapon in your hand, while not brandishing it but obscuring it from behind your hip. Do not make eye contact unless you have decided to kill them. If not, raise your focus to their center of mass and ready for contact. Continuing to move away if possible.
Counter Measures
-1. Remaining silent is your most important challenge.
-2. Remain moving if possible.
-3. If you are cornered, wait for them to move and then move towards the closest foe.
-4. If he is in the middle do not meet him directly, but on the side of your empty hand, so that you may post off of him, using him to block the far side man, and as a spring board to get to the near side man. If he is a flanker, put him between you and both of his comrades.
-5. If you make contact you must wound at least two.
-6. Do not grapple, kick or punch, but move as you shoot, whip [1] stab, slash or club the enemy. With three guys there is one knife. Grappling, punching and kicking set you up for stabbing.
-7. When you are struck, strike back as you improve your position. Do not stand your ground, but take their ground.
-8. Do not chase broken and running foes.
-9. Attend to fallen foes by stomping their ankles and removing a shoe and tossing it on a roof. Then, break both thumbs or forefingers so they will not be able to come back on you with a gun. Drill this post combat action so you can stomp and ankle, take off and toss a shoe and break at least one thumb in under 10 seconds. Count to ten. Do not spend more then 10 seconds disabling a downed foe. Attending downed victims of your unprovoked rampage will keep PIGZ busy for a while.
-10. Run away, hide, change your clothes, leave town and tell no one. The PIGZ will seek to avenge their allies in the holy quest for your extinction. Act accordingly.
Notes
-1. With a jacket, shirt, antenna, strap, bungy cord, hose, belt or rope aimed at the eyes of the lead man.
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posted: December 29, 2023   reads: 4174   © 2023 James LaFond
Well of the Damned #3
Diridon Station Thru-Bus Stop, San Jose, California: April 26-27, 2023
Angry Wigger Wayne stood angry all the way down to the left in his black backpack and blue hoody, “Bitch, don’t be drivin’ better bitches off! We fo’real niggas up in hea!”
Viking Bitch: “I will cut your fucking head off you fucking homo—try me.”
Young Jemima: “That’s right, we bitches runnin’ this—go get some fаggot!”
Angry Wigger Wayne: “Look at that! Don’t ruin this…” his voice trailed off in fear and indecision as a short woman in fur coat—and nothing else—paced like an Olympic gymnast doing floor exercises to some unheard music, approached from the Great Road, and came dangerously close to the Cave of Norns.
We all gawked.
The little pixie, 5”, 3” short bobbed brown hair, wide blue eyes, a soft tan, and softly muscular bare legs and bare feet streaked with fresh dirt, mused in tiny circles under the towering Viking bitch. The reclining man gagged on his glass pipe and stared up at the little nymph in a flash of absent-minded ecstasy. Viking bitch looked down in wide-eyed fear into the lost eyes of the Nymph and recoiled as if struck. She then kicked her man in the meth pipe with her shin, scattering glass and sparks, and rolled him over into the gutter like a lesbian Lot trying to save his wife from looking back and being turned into a pillar of salt.
An unsullied 25 years, the Nymph was beautiful, seemingly wonder struck by the night as she wandered about towards each of us as if attracted by a mirage in the distance and then finding on closer approach that it was not real, wandering towards the next. In some ways her progress was like that of a stage actor doing a monologue, looking out into a darkened theater full of unseen watchers. Her voice was lush, youthful, never smoked a thing, and spoke in a highly cultivated middle class dialect:
“I fuck. I do? Yes, I fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck and fuck.”
Young Jemima looked on as if she glimpsed her death and walked off quickly for the bus shelter without a backward look.
Angry Wigger Wayne backed away and hid in the shrubs.
Viking Bitch and her man cuddled in the gutter under a blanket, shivering.
Little Dog Woman hugged her pet and pulled a spare coat over her head.
Trash Bag Woman squirmed more deeply into her corner.
The engineer in the train yard stood silently and stared, as did Yo, as if at a risen goddess.
Big Neon rolled away under his sheets and blanket, afraid to look.
Manila Trench, what convinced me that she was one of the crazies and not an anthropologist, looked on aghast and then hid behind the bus shelter where Young Jemima was lying on the bench looking into her hands.
I sat and looked only at her feet and legs, afraid to meet the gaze of those magnetic eyes. She seemed so athletic, that I feared, if I rejected her, I’d have to fight her like a man, despite her small size.
She paced, pixie like and lithe as a snake, towards Yo and I.
Yo licked his ashen lips in absent-minded thirst.
We were all, even I, by far the least cursed of the lot, hollowly alone.
I looked and noted that she wore a lush, high-end fur coat and that she was seeking eye contact with me.
She was not talking to me, but seemingly to someone she used to be, whose name she had forgotten, “All I do is fuck. I fuck, and fuck, and fuck some more. Did I ever do anything but fuck?”
She stopped, bent into a sprinter’s stretch to her right, our left, and then to her left, our right, looked away from me to the sky, and said, “It wasn’t always so. Then I drank the Orange Koolaid. Now,” she said as she stood and spun on the asphalt lot on bare tip toes like a ballerina, “all I do is fuck.”
She broke down into a low sweeping bow, looked up at a lifting plane, and smiled, then said, in dim recollection, “Yes, I danced!” and her arms rose to heaven and she smiled.
The engineer boarded the train and shut the steel door behind us.
Yo had a sad look gathering across his face, the lust seeming to fade.
I looked at her legs only as she walked in straight-legged, seeking, feeling strides, like a gymnast about to charge the pummel horse, towards the lit brick-pillared alcove to the closed gates. She was seeking the light, like a dancer on a stage did the spotlight.
I looked right and saw her there under the alcove and she declared in a rich, lush voice, full of youth and confidence, “I danced!”
In one motion her hands pulled up the bottom of the fur coat and it came off entire, with the Russian style hood, and she stood naked with the coat overhead stretched between her hands as she affected the pose that female gymnasts use to finish their dance routines, not the victory pose after the vaults, but the pose with one leg forward and bent and the other straight behind.
She was breathtakingly beautiful and I felt wrong for admiring her figure. I heard Yo smack his lips.
Then she asked the blocked out sky, “But who am I?”
She stood, her shoulders slumped, the coat balled up like a teddy bear before her belly. With her small breasts and stupendous dancer’s hips, she looked like a model for one of the 1970s Conan book covers, like she should have been a slave girl tossed over the barbarian’s mighty shoulder.
But there was no barbarian hero here to rescue her, merely we lesser, slower burning lights among the damned.
Now she looked only at the sky when she asked questions, and then looked at her expertly pacing feet as she tried unsuccessfully to answer them. Her tone and diction changed to that of a 4 to 6 year old orphan girl, the sky her warden auntie, declining to answer her many questions about who and what she had been before her debasement. This reminded me so much of listening to Little Emma muse about where her “Daddy” was when he was in prison and I was walking her around her block at 4, or when, at 6, she lost a Barbie doll and walked about the living room trying to summon her favorite toy from its lost place with questions about where she was and what she was wearing.
She mused in outward crescents of elegant feet, topped by toddler poses and innocent musings towards the great street named after the great man.
Despite her perfect form, I could feel no sense of attraction, even in the abstract, only a sadness.
I wanted to cry.
Yo, sighed sadly, unable to take his eyes off of her perfect posterior yet with guilt increasingly framing his tired, ashen face.
Then she was gone. The visitation lasted until 3:10 AM.
With the passing of that sorrow song tempest of madness, the lesser crazies emerged from their shelters and bathed their faces in the starlight.
4 AM came and I approached the first stop, near Big Neon, before Little Jemima’s napping form.
She rose and joined Yo on the wooden bench, the warmest spot, which they had granted me, as, I suppose, the least crazy of the crazies, all of us still feeling dwarfed in the wake of the Nymph.
Big Neon rose, a dark black man, with middle class university diction, and none of the ebonics of Angry Wigger Wayne.
“Good morning, Sir.”
I nodded, ‘Yes.’
“Sir, I always say it is good to beat the dawn. Look at this, sir,” he says as his neon sweat pants slip slightly and expose his clean white long johns. He holds, with some reverence, a red can of Pringles, with the Brand cartoon showing a big open mouth.
“Remember, the zombie movies from back in your day—the best horror, really—when the really terrible thing about zombies was their yawning mouth and not their nails and teeth, but their soul hunger?”
‘Yes,’ I nod.
“Sir, that’s why I postscript the dawn, bringer of the day’s sorrows, with a song. I will, for your peaceful soul, sing a song.”
The man shook loose his mass of glossy braided hair, spread his arms, held the red can to his mouth like it was a microphone and then belted out a song in a deep, though not baritone, pleasing voice. I can recall no lyrics, as I have a hard time absorbing song. The impression I got was of an upbeat plea with Dawn, who did seem to be a singular subject of the song, to intercede on behalf of we damned souls, with her terrible Daddy, the coming Day. Dawn, Daddy, Day and Happy are the only words I can remember, perhaps because they were repeated and emphasized. This was no rap, but a Motown style song.
The man then spun to a stop, a good 6’ 4” and 320 pounds of fairly athletic youth, and declared, making kind eye contact with me, “You have to start the day, Happy—only way to keep the badness at bay! Would you like this can sir?”
‘No,’ I nodded and he set down the can and attended to the packing of his things. The first buses were about to arrive. The silent pact these shadows of night seemed to keep with the civic authorities, was that they would not impede the progress of the first wave of the working herd headed for the Caltran, where the gates were being opened and Trash Bag Woman was gathering the shreds of her plastic world.
Manila Trench was walking to each camper, standing off three paces, and simply looking at them, like a silent, psychic alarm clock, until they gathered their things and pretended to be awaiting the bus or train, rejoining the illusion of the workaday world.
12.30.23   Barry Bliss — Haunting.
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posted: December 27, 2023   reads: 3991   © 2023 Barry Bliss
Well of the Damned #2
Diridon Station Thru-Bus Stop, San Jose, California: April 26-27, 2023
I sat the wooden bench, feet up until I dozed, and then stood and paced and stretched and did waist rolls and side bends.
Yo stood to my left, or sat the concrete deco wall, or placed his handbag on the curb, his feet in the gutter and reclined in crab-like comfort.
Pinky Blacktina wandered about to the various lone camps of the massive bus turn around lot, asking for a light.
Young Jemima sat to my right, on the concrete deco wall, on the other side of the pay phone.
A black hare grazed just beyond the iron fence behind me, sillouetted in the train yard lights, great black ears suspicious in the night.
Shirt Head tramped around in his wife beater and cargo shorts, still jealous of Kid Rock.
Little Dog Woman wandered about seeking a perfect camp site, her golden lab with pink bandanna obediently following on a pink leash.
A woman, did, and would ever through the night, call out from somewhere, in a harsh smoker’s voice so ragged that age or race was not determinate, “Louis!”
No more buses or trains ran.
Angry Wigger Wayne lurked down the way looking jealously at the wooden bench I was on, threatening the sky, but afraid to approach Yo or I.
Beyond the first bus shelter to the left stirred the sidewalk camper, a big, fat, young black man with copious braids and deep orange and green neon sweats and sneakers.
In the nearest center bus shelter a mated pair dwelt in the wedding suite shell. He was a small bald man of 30, 40, or 60, forever smoking a glass pipe reclining on the concrete walk, so that it glowed like a tiny camp fire buffeted by mountain winds. She was a tall, blond, square-headed viking bitch in a wife beater. She occasionally howled something raspy and indistinct at the uplifting planes, passing cars and ambling campers, all of whom gave her a wide berth.
The occasional plane lifting off, lit the sky.
A police car was ever seen parked in the distance, never coming near enough to see more than its top lights.
I was getting cold, a bag of bones grown suddenly old.
On the bench I dosed, being taken by the cold, my feet almost warm, permitting gathering sleep.
Stones rattled and woke me.
Back to Nod I went.
More stones rattled, scattering on the wide side walk and woke me.
I looked around. Behind me was Young Jemima, holding small landscaping stones in her hands, which she had been casting at the big metal trashcan where the Latina had left her plate. She looked at me and smiled.
I went back to sleep, gathering my hood close.
The aluminum shell of the pay phone behind me clanged from a stone and I woke and sat up, looking straight ahead.
Young Jemima asked me, “Sir, you have a light.”
“No.”
“Please, sir, you have a light?”
“Sorry, miss, don’t smoke.”
I looked at her and she dropped her remaining stone and patted the concrete next to her, a mimed suggestion that I sit there. I stood and began pacing in small circles.
Pinky Blacktina walked by, asking for a light and Young Jemina barked, “No bitch!” and Pinky Scampered on.
Shirt Head was walking by smoking a blunt and Young Jemima asks, “Yo, can I have a light?”
“You can’t have it, but you can light it from my hand.”
“Come ‘ere en sit,” she beckons, a plump siren of night.
“Naw, come ‘ere en fire up. I gots a car ta detail.”
He gives her a light and walks off as the Viking Bitch screams, “Walk the fuck around,” and he does, giving the aluminum cave of Norns a wide berth.
Young Jemima looks at me, sashaying seductively, as she sucked on a cigar and whispered, “Wanna smoke, sir?”
“Thank you, Miss, no.”
She sat down in a huff, wrinkled her wide brown nose, and put out her cigar. She then looked past me as Yo [who she here named] as he walked out to the bus sign and looked around, “Yo, you got a light?”
He shakes his head, ‘No,’ giving me the look, ‘I careful too, Old School.’
She then says, “Yo, come sit,” wiggles her ample ass under its florid dress, and winks.
He walks over, past me, to her, glancing at me and shrugging his shoulders almost in apology. Before he can sit she stands, takes his hand, and marches him over to the bus shelter to my left. They disappear within.
The sound of someone sitting down hard on the wood bench is heard. He moans. He moans as if he is dying. He moans louder, like the dead being risen to the pain of the living. His white sneakers with feet still in them, slide out past the opaque side of the rectangular aluminum alcove and begin to shake, shiver, quake and quiver as he moans into the night. At last his feet are still, then withdrawn.
Young Jemima emerges from the shelter, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and tying a scarf around her copious mop of hair as she walks to the trash can, gets the plate of food, winks at me as she eats, and walks to the concrete deco wall where Yo had been sitting, and where he was now returning, a cagey creature domesticated in an instant.
I suppose that was matrimony of a sort and brought peace to that small corner of dystopia.
Little Dog Woman emerged from the darkness down to the left, comes right to me, 5 feet tall and 100 pounds, 35 years of age, her dog eagerly sniffing my boots, and asks, “Sir, may I share this bench with you.”
“Of course, miss.”
She sits and arranges her luggage like a fort on her side and curls up next to me, “What was that parade about?”
“Don’t know. Just passing through.”
She looked up at me in hurt disappointment, gathered her things, rose, and headed for one of the less comfortable metal benches/bike racks to the right. Her dog does not want to leave me, but sulks away after her. They soon make a fort on the metal rack-bench and curl up, he as her coiled, golden-furred pillow.
Manila Trench, a light-skinned quadroon, in beige trench coat, over a black business dress, well coiffed hair, who could be Candice Owens’ stunt double, a cute woman of 35, steps up onto the side walk from the great street. She is holding a black leather purse and a large manila envelope, out of which protrude various tabbed manila folders, as if she were an NAACP secretary from 1956 reporting for work, at this bus stop, at 2:30 AM.
Everyone seems to know her. None speak to her. She is not lost or waiting, simply standing like a sisterly sentinel, as if overseeing a class for the absent teacher.
The homely, emaciated woman sleeping in the trash bags, rises under the lights of the station alcove, comes to her, presents a cigarette butt, and Manila Trench silently lights it.
A still cute, once hot, 35 year old bleach blond comes across the lot from the great street, “Hey, has anybody seen a red 74 Mustang? I was supposed to meet my husband here!” Her voice bespoke the crack whore of yore, a once cute cadence now eroded on the belt sander of life’s fast lane. 5’ 4’, 110 pounds, well built, and yet unattractive on account of her worn voice.
Manila Trench stepped between the two women as Young Jemima rose to prevent her rival from getting access to Yo or Sir [me].
Young Jemima: “He ditched you, bitch.”
OnceHotNowNot: “How can you talk to me like that?”
Young Jemima: “Like this, dumb bitch, with your bitch ass husband.”
OnceHotNowNot: “You don’t even know who I am!”
Young Jemima: “You a dumb-ass bitch, is who you is!”
OnceHotNowNot: “You better think about who you are talking to like that.”
Young Jemima: “You about to be a whooped-ass dumbass bitch!”
Train Engineer in yard: “Girl fight! Girl fight!”
Manila Trench: “Would you like a light, miss.”
OnceHotNowNot: “Oh, thank you, thank you so much. Please, have you seen my husband. He just wouldn’t ditch me.”
Young Jemima: “A course he would, dumb fuck bitch!”
OnceHotNowNot, turning away and looking at Manila Trench: “Thank you so, much miss. I have to find Tony.”
Off she walked, stiffly, smoking like a fiend that did not yet know it occupied the lower plane of Dys.
Viking Bitch yelled at her, “Keep goin’ bitch!”
Young Jemima and Viking Bitch were warding against this more attractive woman contacting their men.
Then, something came, on pixie feet, that struck every one of us with fear and quieted even the shrill sirens of this shadowed hell…
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posted: December 26, 2023   reads: 3950   © 2023 James LaFond
Well of the Damned #1
Diridon Station Thru-Bus Stop, San Jose, California: April 26-27, 2023
Twas Wednesday.
Vaxx Zombie took me to two San Jose sports bars, very loud media infused venues. If not for the conversation crushing volume of the music, I could have stayed at the one place, lots of happy tail end Ghost Boomers and Gen-X yetis having a good guilt free time, shooting pool and yelling. The second place was inhabited by a stern matronly barmaid who told one patron that she was going to punch his lights out. Then, a short, bearded Gen-X Eastern European man came up to us and asked if he could get his picture taken between us. He seemed to think I was a B-movie villain. We got the hell out of there and Vaxx Zombie said, “That’s the guy, your Deep State handler!”
Mr. DeGualle treated me to Jamaican food, a third beer, and then took me to his slot apartment to view fight videos. He works early in the morning, so I had him drop me off at the station at 10:30. The last buses arrive their at Midnight and my thru-bus was rolling in at 4:30. It was thankfully not cold, as I had left my windbreaker at a Mexican goat meat eatery. He helped me on with the pack, shook my hand and we parted ways.
Diridon Station is the outer hub for the Sunny Valley Transit Authority, one of the best bus systems I have used. The main hub is on the other side of San Jose, where I had ended up by accident that past Sunday. Caltran light rail trains, massive light rail trains, run here until midnight, then the gates are closed. Amtrak runs here until 10 PM, then the building is closed.
The building was closed, but an extensive seating area, outside under a 60 by 40 foot low roof, sheltering a ramp down into the tunnel that takes you under the tracks, offered some shelter. As one sits facing the ramps down to the tunnel, a row of kiosks and ATMs and actual working pay phones face you. To the left is a maintenance shed and janitorial closet under the Amtrak tower through which people might walk and disperse to the lots.
A janitor and a maintenance man, make their rounds. I and one other passenger were there, he, a middle aged Latino with no English, with luggage, waiting for the 11:30 thru-bus, me for the 4:30. The young bearded maintenance man in his yellow safety vest advised the fellow, “Tres, tres,” pointing out past the open gate to the lot, and then said to me, “This is open until Caltran stops running, then you want either bus stop 2 or 3 on this first run, right out the door and straight ahead to the left.”
He disappeared into one of the locked doors.
An insane person screamed in the tunnel, constantly. I could not tell what sex it used to be. The shrill, cackling was punctuated by variations of the F-word and bitch, barked in various bitter and unsuccessful attempts to sound human. Every half hour a good 60 Caltran passengers ushered through the tunnel and past us.
A young black fellow, dressed like a criminal, asked me politely for directions and I let him know that I was lost and passing through. He nodded respectfully and turned to a kiosk.
The benches were very old and comfortable wooden construction, polished by myriad butts.
The zombie fiend below screamed, and ranted, cussed, barked and shrieked, his misery echoing through the low ceilinged area.
A 30-something, small, black janitor rolled by with a bucket to go mop up some zombie juice in the tunnel. The thing below shrieked in offense of its dignity as the mop bucket could be herd being rung. The janitor returned and, ignoring the Latino, looked at me, nodded in respect and shook his head, indicating that the zombie would be here with me all night.
A once cute, now frightening 40-year-old Blacktina, sat between us and asked us each if we had a light, holding a smoke in her dark fingers. She wore, over leather sandals, faded blue jeans under a long one piece, tight fitting pink terry cloth pull over. We did not smoke, which shocked her. I would find, over the course of the remaining five hours, that her smokeless plight was the most common affliction of the homeless in San Jose, that they have something to smoke, but nothing to light it with. From my 8 hour stay inside in October, I was familiar with this set of homeless being refugees from more violent version of their kind. All of the homeless here had seemed mentally ill, from mild to screaming zombie. But none struck me as dangerous. I could not imagine them surviving long among the tweakers of Oakland, Emmeryville or Portland.
The thing in the tunnel kept screaming as the dark smokeless smoker walked off. After a half hour, I decided to go out to the bus stops and away from the insanity. The Latino man followed me.
To the right was a sidewalk that had benches and bike racks wrapping around to the Amtrak pick up lot. This faced the massive Sunny Valley bus lot, empty now except for a few of the last buses of the night, lit up and waiting or pulling off back to the main hub, banking left, and then right, out onto what becomes Barrack Obama Drive. Each bus # has a shelter, the typical open rectangular shell of the east. These all face out on that drive and the large anonymous buildings built in postmodern dreer there. The sidewalk with its back to the train yard, separated by old wrought iron fencing, is were the three stops for Thru-Buses are. These stops have longer and wider wooden benches in them.
On the far side of the shelter for Bus 1, are some homeless tents and grand tarps. I do not pass shelter one, but back away to a bench, with its back to the fence, next to an aluminum shell and pay phone. I can sit on this wooden bench with my back to my ruck and the ruck against the side of the pay phone. It is astounding that these things are still commissioned. It is cool, so this keeps my old chilly feet off the concrete and covers my back against the people coming up out of the Caltran tunnel behind.
The Latino with his luggage asks, “Tres?”
I answer with one raised finger and point down to stop #3, just past the homeless tent and the big sneakered feet of a fat homeless man. He cringes and indicated via sign that he would like to stand near me and did I mind. I gave him a tolerant nod and pulled up my hoody.
Caltran, with a cadent ring of bell, pulled up again behind us as the last buses pulled off in front. The four lane street was now a parade of fancy cars playing Mexican music, packed with well dressed Mexicans in younger years signing various songs. Well dressed Mexicans, mostly in male/female pairs, the men in suits the women wearing glitter skirts and scanty halters under their shimmering black hair, came to the trains from the direction of the cars.
One couple sat behind me on the concrete deco wall while she ate a plate of food, in which she lost interest, taking it over to the trash can in front of me in the bend of the curb, and placing it on top as they left, holding hands.
The train pulled off.
The crowd that had offloaded dispersed.
The gate closed.
The last buses left.
The party sedans thinned out on the great processional way.
A jet lifted off mere hundreds of feet over the third row of miserable bright buildings ahead to the right.
From the left, that half darkness of decorative shrubs and trees and a hilly lawn, emerged a slight gaggle, perhaps a half dozen, of people:
Two young, stoner homeless men in hiphop wigger wear and school back packs, appearing 30, with the blond one wearing a shirt as a do rag. They were not together, but of a kind.
A tall woman wrapped in a blanket and a small slight woman draped in trash bags, not together, but of a kind, both short of hair and homely, but not dyke-like.
Two women, one small, one immensely fat and in a scooter chair, both with leashed dogs, not together but of a kind. They could be mistaken for Amtrak passengers. The fat woman had a cart with luggage towed behind her scooter chair. The small woman had a back pack and two wheeled suit cases.
These people were frantically speeding for night camping berths, repurposing Diridon Station on the cusp of midnight.
Then came the black urban drifter, a tall, dark, glossy-skinned fellow about my age, in sneakers with a torn gray windbreaker with hood and a gray hand bag, come to stand ten paces from me, and give me nod of respect as he put his back to the concrete deco wall.
Then came a cute black girl of some 25 years, her Aunt Jemima destined curves draped in a flowered dress and wearing many scarves and a shawl, of florid patterns, her hair her own and picked out into a pleasing semi-afro curl. She walked in clogs and had very large and active—even seeking—eyes.
The 11:30 bus pulled up, at 11:43 down the way and the Latino man nodded to me and headed towards it, a dark and pleasingly quiet bus with a hydraulic quality about it.
Pinky Backtina emerged again, asking for a light, as if she had never asked me before and hurrying along as the screams of the damned in the tunnel could still be heard, if muffled, from behind the now closed doors to the train yard.
The stage is set for the strangest night of this hobo life.
12.25.23   Ruben — Fascinating facts here. I used to live near the E-ville Amtrak stop ... or the Berkeley one, just a bench under the freeway back then. No crack heads there yet, back then.

What an adventure you're on and what a pity I can't share it personally.

Best wishes for the new year for you and yours, and Lynn and hers.

You're on a mission from Gawd!
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posted: December 25, 2023   reads: 4021   © 2023 Ruben
Anton Ales #2
The Nighted Adventures of a Sending & Alienist Duo: Portland 4/20/2023
Anton stood drinking his wine, hulking over this wizened, gutter gnome of a hobo, “Bitches spend too much money, right—they are all whores and were sent here to keep us chained to The Man, right!?”
“Amen, my friend,” agrees the hobo.
“Motherfucker,” says Anton, “so long as your are inclined to blow smoke up my ass, I will let you. But I think you are still hiding what you are about.”
A shrug of the emaciated shoulders concede detection.
“That’s right, motherfucker, you can’t hide from me. I think you could learn something from all these Southeast Portland skanks I’ve fucked—well, some of them, anyway. Many of these whores—and what woman is not a whore—put on airs. But I love me a bitch that says, ‘Hey, Sexxy A, lick my nasty pussy, lick this nasty slit right here.’ You see, that bitch is not hiding behind perfume or a bath—she’s real.”
The old runt winces in disgust.
“Motherfucker, when you laugh you signal that I am telling the truth. But how can I trust a motherfucker that disagrees and won’t say so? Say it. You think I’m a lowdown soul, don’t you?”
“Alternatively elevated,” side steps the gutter gnome.
The wine bottle is drained and tossed in the grass to recline under the porch light among weeping daffodils and budding purple flowers of alien aspect.
“Motherfucker, you owe me. Walk with me to the 7-11 and buy my drink. Unless you got some place to be?”
“I’m good for two hours, then have to go.”
“Shit, man, you don’t even work. I got to get up for work in the morning and I’m burnin’ the candle of my life and here you are, afraid to even light that wick.”
“Yes” admits the alienist as they walk on down the dark lane.
“Thanks for coming. You a fo’ real dude, got you with me while I patrol my hood!”
The narrowing shoulders shrug in non-committal inflection.
The hulking sending and the wizened little alienist cross the street at a cross walk, the Portland motorists politely waiting in both opposing lanes. The sending is not content with this civility, bristling at the stayed insincerity, and places open hands of command at the drivers, informing them that he owns the road and they have no choice but to obey.
I know now that my big friend is looking to pick a fight with someone. I dastardly determine that I will abandon him at the first demonstration of negro vitality.
The odd couple achieve the 7-11 parking lot as two black men, who seem to be directly from Africa, unload the 7-11 18-wheeler with dollies, wheeling down and back up the ramp.
The hobo says, “I could only do that dolly work for two years before my back blew. Those guys have my respect.”
Anton raises his voice towards the two toiling souls and says, “You drivers ain’t shit!”
I walked ahead of him and entered the 7-11, going to the beer cooler where I selected a 20 ounce Bud Light.
He appears next to me as a young athletic fellow reaches between us and excuses himself as he grabs a White Claw. Anton responds, ‘Motherfucker, that was my White Claw!”
The man chuckles uncomfortably and goes to the check out as Anton says, “Look at his thievin’ ass go!”
“Here, Mister James, buy me that $4.99 bottle of wine.”
“Sure,” I nod and head up front past a worn looking white woman of perhaps 40.
Anton looks at her and says, “I bet that bitch was hot thirty years ago.”
I cringe inside and get in line, my hulking friend standing behind me, the woman he picked on hovering away from us.
Anton starts pointing at the hand of the man in front of us, a left hand holding a smart phone as the man makes his purchase with his right hand, “Look at his finger, watch, watch that finger.”
I note four fingers and a thumb and shrug.
“Look, look at his finger!”
I shrug.
The man is on his way and we are up. As I get out two $5s to pay for our drinks Anton looks in my wallet and sees another $5 and points at the meatballs on a stick and says to the man behind the counter, “I’ll have an order of meatballs too.”
I pay and we leave, me glancing apologetically at the worn woman behind us. As we enter the outer night Anton chides, “What kind of man are you to pity that bitch? Just a dick sucking bitch is all.”
I shrugged in agreement as the big man spied one driver coming down the ramp with a load and could not resist prying into the hours and pay rate of his rival big negro. He seemed obviously to be picking a fight, although I knew that what he was really doing was pretending to pick a fight so that he could make a meaningful friend. Even so, I never stick around for Big Negro fights, anymore than the first mammal wanted to be underfoot when T-Rex and Triceratops were doing battle. My presence would make things worse as he tried to impress me with the proper trash talking of the real man of the street.
On into the night I walked without a backward glance, not forgetting that I had pledged the remaining portion of those two hours to the porch light.
There I waited when he emerged from the deeper dark and declared, “Motherfucker you ditched me!”
“Yep.”
The wine bottle top is screwed off with the mouth and spat on the porch, “Motherfucker, you are yellow.”
“Yep.”
“Your yellow ass missed it when I dipped into the tattoo shop and asked for a tattoo, and that motherfucker, that painted poser who does nothing but decorate, didn’t like me. He didn’t want my business.”
“You didn’t really want a tattoo. You were picking a fight.”
“And where were you, motherfucker, you yellow dog.”
“Here.”
“Yeah, you’re here, been here for me—but you’re still yellow.”
Shrug of guilt.
Some personal doubts about his patrimony are now discussed by Anton, finishing with, “I know, I’m pretty fucked up.”
“At least you know that the world hates you, bro.”
“It’s hates you too, Brother.”
“This we know.”
“Thanks for hangin’ out, James. Glad to be your friend—you’re a ramblin’ man and it makes me half jealous. Good night.”
Away from the porch light I went, from he who was counter sent.
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posted: December 3, 2023   reads: 4553   © 2023 James LaFond
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