Oh, good lord it has been a long time since I have posted. If you visit this site, I apologize. I haven’t been feeling too inspired lately. I’ve been coming to terms with the fact that this is a small city and good material is few and far between. I’ve started to write a few posts, and decided to delete them. I felt like I was just repeating myself with the same old stuff. Pictures of crumbling architecture, stories of junkies and transvestites, repeat.

Blah.

I was complaining about his to a friend of mine, C. C is this very sweet, older, diminutive and effeminate tiny black man. He was once a drag performer, and has been a make up artist for years. Long ago, he used to do make up work on Waters’ films. For years he has been living in various cities around Europe. He has recently returned to Baltimore to be near his family for a short while before returning to Europe.

Friends of mine, who known him from around the neighborhood when they were high school students at the Baltimore School for the Arts, ran into him once again while they were living an Amsterdam. They have since returned to Baltimore and now have wives, children and mortgages. These friends and I were hanging out at the pub a few months ago and C walked in. It was a very warm reception between these young men and this very peculiar little old man. This is when I first met C. With his odd nature and his amazingly warm sincerity, it was impossible not to like him.

Anyway, as I was saying, I was talking to C at the pub last night. He was telling me about the monologue he was writing (his third) and was planning on putting it on stage when he returned to Europe in a few months. He told me the monologue was about human warmth and the loneliness he has been feeling lately. I was telling him about how I hadn’t felt like writing lately (either for this project or my supposedly more serious less sloppy stuff which never seems to get written. i.e. stuff I actually proof read and rewrite.).

As I was explaining this all to C, a young man limped into the doorway. He was tall, slim and well shouldered. His hair was blond and coifed into a semi-pompadour style, was wearing a typical indie style shirt with the sort of sport coat that one would steal from their father’s closet.

It’s also significant to tell that his face was covered in raw, swollen bruises and cuts. A cold compact was strapped to his left wrist and a hospital band was wrapped around his right wrist. I was quite a sight seeing him slowly limp down the bar, walk to my right side and order a shot of whisky from the bartender. He kicked back the whisky like an old pro and ordered another.

C leaned over me. “Honey, are you all right?” he asked the young man. The young man looked over and shyly smiled through his cuts and bruises. He nodded and said that he was fine but had been mugged a few hours before. The mugger had roughed him up pretty badly and he had been in the emergency room down the street. The doctors had told him that he needed surgery on his leg, as tendons were exposed from being thrown into a fence, but that he had to wait an hour or so until they could get around to it. He had decided to limp out of the ER and find a bar for a shot while he waited for his number to be called.

Of course, three or four of us were listening to him by now. We asked him if he lived in the area and he explained that he had just moved here from Kentucky and was a MICA freshman, which surprised me as he looked much older.

It’s important to note that in this neighborhood, it’s not really a question of whether or not you will eventually be mugged, but rather a question of when. It’s an absolute certainty that sooner or later your number will come up. After living here for a while, the prospect stops terrifying you and you begin to look at your eventual mugging as a right of passage.

The four or so of us that were listening to the young man all nodded in understanding and began to offer advise as to how to tip the scales in his favor against the muggers. One of us said to walk in the middle of the street, another said always know what is going on behind you. Walk confidently, always let your body language show that you are paying attention, make a subtle slight eye contact with everyone on the street, avoid alleys, look mean, dress mean, etc….

None of this advice guarantees safety, but used together, chances are the muggers will overlook you and hit someone else that appears greener.

This young kid had only been in the city for a couple of months, was from rural Kentucky, was as green as they come, and the mugger knew it.

Surprisingly, he was very jovial and open to conversation. This was probably the effect of whatever pain medication they had given him mixed with the alcohol he was now consuming. We asked him about his studies, and he was very excitedly telling us about his painting projects and a photo shoot that he was scheduled to model for the next day. He thought the bruises were going to make the photos look much cooler. He was very happy about that. He told us all about how he and girlfriend wanted to design clothing. C explained to him that he was a makeup artist and told him about the photo shoots he had worked on in Europe and America over the years. With the confidence and ambition that comes with being 18 years old, the young man naively suggested to C that they work together. C was very polite and supportive. I found the whole scene very endearing. I liked this young man.

We continued to talk to him for quite a while. Over time, he became more and more oblivious to his wounds as he told us about his plans and ambitions. Eventually, I had to tap him on the shoulder and reminded him that he needed to return to the hospital for surgery. “Oh yea!” he said, “That’s right!” He kicked back the beer he was now drinking, confidently shook our hands with his good arm, told us he looked forward to meeting us again and happily hopped out of the bar and into the darkness outside.

“Well,” C said to me, “you could write about that.”