Once I returned for the following year I morphed back into the old me with relative ease, unfortunately. Before leaving on the Central America trip I rented out a slightly dilapidated large 4 bedroom house with a friend and his 2 good friends in a nook tucked back behind the ghetto of Church Hill. In those days as the kids these days would say I was heavy into trappin’ and this was the trap house.
I was also delivery driving at a couple pizza places to pick up extra customers and potential party friends, as well as construction jobs here and there.
Spent time on an island in Maryland dropping in a massive brand new septic tank that we floated across the channel then heave hoed up the beach and rolled it into a giant hole.
Turned out the house was never built on the property, but it was pretty there and nice weather so no complaints. Also, well known rumors of the island being haunted by a fisherman who died on the island.
Only because of how exciting it was I’ll give highlights of the year but keeping it abbreviated; all things considered for how it could have gone in multiple situations things went quite smoothly.
Got close with a few people, who originally were just in need of my “garden delivery” services, but turned into a regular hang out spot and I wound up there more often than my house. As well as with another friend who had a condo across town, which had a very nice pool. 1 of the people mentioned above needed money and since I thought I knew him well I loaned him some. The same weekend his roommate and I found out via power outage that the bill hadn’t been paid. She had given him bill money, but after a little research found out months had passed since any bills had been paid. We went through cabinet drawers and discovered a different name for him. So I cleaned out the contents of his room, which consisted of a cache of designer sunglasses, a wardrobe of cheesy funny shirts, a camera and other various items. Soon after he actually paid me back so I returned.. most… of the items back.
A more hype event was a party where 2 adjoined houses combined forces. A girl was pistol-whipped by the main character of this story as her and a male counterpart wandered down the street exiting the party. The pistol whipper wandered up to the houses and started yelling towards the porches. There were 6 or so people lined up, about 3 to a porch, he walked up to each of them 1 by 1 screaming profanities punching each of them in the face 1 time. Everyone stood stunned watching the madness unfold. I was leaning against a car next to my roommate, who was a fairly big guy of Iranian descent, and was looking very forward to this little ghetto fellow getting to him since he was going in order.
I knew things would take a sudden turn once this happened, and so it did. He gets hit in the mouth and immediately gets him in a headlock. Another person jumps in and goes to town with body shots and for the finishing touches a random bystander appeared out of nowhere to smash a brick on top of his head. Well it just so happened he had a partner in crime who suddenly retreated back to their car while this took place. I watched him remove a towel from the car, unroll it and out popped an AK-47. He started charging the party with the rifle and suddenly the alley beat down session broke up, we scattered like roaches and ran for cover. We rendezvoused at a gas station 10 minutes later and most of us were just glad to be alive, but my roommate who got the last shot of the evening to the face had other complaints. Pointing out his newly chipped tooth, hootin’ and hollerin’ about a lack of dental insurance and he now needed to go get his gun and kill that mother fucker. This continued for a couple more minutes then I think he possibly laughed at himself with the rest of us or just decided to sulk in silence while everyone else thanked their lucky stars they were lacking a 7.62 round to the body.
Sometime before or after I threw an epic triple kegger birthday party for myself at the House in the Hood, the stars aligned perfectly and way more people than expected made it out to the shadows of the city that night to drink and be merry. This is where I first became aware of a neighborhood kid who is the star of the rest of this last tale. 1 of the roommates decided he should turn this kid into his own private street dealer while giving him deals he couldn’t profit off of, so like all starving dogs do he finally bit back.
I got a call that our house had been broken into and a few things were missing, so I had my roommate break down my door to see if things seemed askew. All seemed normal so I came by that night and picked up the bulk of things I felt comfortable driving across town to my friends place and figured I’d be back for the rest the following day. He broke in again that day before we all got home from our daytime locations; again magically nothing went missing from my room. So I put the transport off for 1 more day and when I returned the following day my roommates had hatched a plan to hide out in the dark and lay in wait for him, my large Ukrainian friend and I obliged the idea. Unfortunately the girlfriend of the roommate who had originally invited the invader in thwarted us, and she broke up the plot so she could move her belongings out.
The roommates went to the corner to confront the kid and heated up between his friends and my roommates as the Ukrainian and I walked up. The kid looked to me for some reason as someone who may sympathize in his innocence but he was incorrect in his assumption. I called him out like everyone else. He rushed to get in my face but was intercepted and met the large palm of a Ukrainian man then suddenly met the floor. His friends retreated up the block as he called for their help, but there was no need because we left him in peace… Or so we thought. Back at the house we agreed the situation would likely not improve so we would move out our valuables as soon as possible and let the owners know we were ending our lease.
Soon after we heard yelling by the door while the girl was moving beds and what not outside. It was our friendly neighbor and since his friends were cowards he brought a bat as back up this time. There was a choice between an old diesel Mercedes and maybe a Honda, he was smart and went for the Honda. Suddenly the hood was covered in dents and we were trading threats back and forth while the girlfriend scrambled to call the police. This being the ghetto it took much longer than most people are used to so while we waited his family became involved and decided to yell at us as well. Finally they show up and he’s in cuffs but since he was 17 and I believe the only crime to pin on him was vandalism, he was actually released then and there. But not before yelling and screaming about a grow op in the house (strong exaggeration), that we were drug dealers and so on to the police and somehow incorporating that into his reasoning for his actions. So seeing as I still had multiple things I would not want police to find on the off chance they decide that was probable cause to search the house, which I had a strong assumption they would, I ran upstairs and started packing up certain items. Luckily a hoarder must have lived in the house before us because the basement was trashed, so I ran a travel bag full of fun times and some other things down to a furnace closet, closed it and threw a bunch of items in front of the door to make it look unused. As I was bringing the last items down I heard yelling that they were coming in the house so I left it at the bottom of the stairs in a neat little pile, which I may as well have put a bow on for them.
They go through the house and detain me until they search through my room because it had a strong odorous scent due to a wild skunk escaping earlier in the evening, but they just wouldn’t believe me. After they came up empty handed they searched the general areas of the house and for every blunt roach and gravity bong piece they found they would exclaim, “Chris you gotta throw away your roaches!” and so on. By this point they were actually being friendly and joking about this to our surprise. They found the questionable package at the bottom of the basement steps, but they weren’t exactly illegal items per se, just suspicious, and once we satisfied them with a fairly true story they gave up. They moseyed and poked around a while longer then finally decided they had better things to do than mess with some teenagers with an invisible grow operation in their house and we got off scot-free. And that was the grand finale for our lovely abode in the ghetto.
I spent a few more months in the area but then my suppliers’ comrade was arrested for transporting across the country and gave up everyone close to him, things went south quickly for all parties involved so I cashed out and went West for a while.
