Touring with Tweety - Ghettoside

"Hey! Can I ride wit 'choo?"
I hear it all the time. A few times each day. My typical response is "Ha ha" or "You couldn't keep up, baby!" or "Get a bike, honey! We’ll race!" But I always keep riding, and only a handful of times has one with a bike endeavored to race me - usually little kids who give up after two blocks, despite my efforts to go slow so that they are never far behind me.
On the hellacious five way corner that is McMicken and Vine, I heard "Aw, c'mon - just let me run inside and get my bike; I'll be right back."
And I waited. Maybe a full five minutes.
He hopped on his bike and we headed up hill, complimenting one another on our mutual strength and ability to ride well with one another.
"Well, what you doing riding around here?" he inquired.
"I ride through here a lot - I live on Main - but I'm actually looking for my stolen bicycle."
"Oh yeah? You're riding with the right guy. Follow me."
I thought I lived a block from the ghetto. I thought I'd ridden through the roughest parts of the ghetto alone quite enough. But there were streets I missed. And others that I just flew down too fast to truly experience.
"Tweety" took me under his wing - and on the craziest ride of my life.
"If anyone asks, we're looking for crack - NOT a stolen bicycle."
I looked in his earnest eyes and understood completely.
We rode slowly. We rode on sidewalks. We rode down old cobblestone alleys.
"Drugs, drugs, drugs" whispered persistently in my ear as those who once shot silent stares at me with fear and hate, suddenly saw me as "one of them" with my new companion in tow.
"Hey, Tweety! What's going on, man!"
Jovial faces were greeted with his stern expression. "I'm okay, buddy. But listen: something was stolen from me. You hear anything about a good bike coming around these parts? 'Cuz if you do, it's mine." Informants whispered and buzz filled the streets, but noone really spoke.
I saw upwards of a dozen drug deals within two hours. And I think one dozen is a gross underestimation.
Tweety devised plans – specific for each area of town – as to how we should “safely” execute the apprehension of my beloved bike. “Now, thirteenth ain’t really my turf, you know what I’m saying? I mean, they’re not really my peeps and don’t necessarily got my back. So, I’ll do my best to distract ‘em…. Can you carry one bike on your shoulder while riding the other?”
“Sure. I mean, never tried it, but I can.”
I assumed all the folks approaching us were Tweety’s buds. But one was headed toward me: “Hey, you find your bike yet?” “Nope!” “Well, I’m keeping my eye out for it sister. You’re my nigger; I got your back!”
I think I’m supposed to be flattered by that expression of respect.
The ghetto that I discovered that day is far worse than what I’d already known. And worse than any I’d seen in movies. I mean, if you remove the creepy underscore, camera angles and various tension enhancing effects out of most films in the ghetto – they are all infinitely kinder than this one. Nauseating piles of trash everywhere. Needles, broken glass, fast food containers, plastic jugs and endless crap piled thick on the ground. Open spaces sprouting rot instead of grass. Filth festering on broken stoops, cluttering doorways and filling the spaces between uneven cobblestone. And babies riding their Hotwheels on through while gangsters trade guns and drugs; mommas ignoring the cries of the bruised and fallen.
“This is so fucking weird man!” Tweety was nervous. “Everyone’s staring at you ‘cuz your white!”
“No shit. That shocks you? At least now they’re looking at me more with curiosity than hate.”
People were virtually silent in shock. Usually it’s hoots of “Hey! Hey! Watch it! Po Po!” or “Hey baby, slow down” or “Bitch, what choo doing in my hood.” Maybe it was the combination of being with Tweety and riding down streets that quite possibly no white person had been down in years. People just froze: jaws dropped, drugs in hands….
I had to go to work at 6:30. Promoting Cadillacs to the rich white folk who patronize the Aranoff Center. Quite the extreme shift in surroundings!
I was searching for my bike; Tweety for his daughter. Neither of us were successful. “Next time?”
“Yeah.” I gave him a hug, grateful for his kindness, his protection, his risk, and for this experience.
His smile was immense. “Damn! I got a hug! Thank you, baby! I’m gonna find you that bike, you hear?”
“I hear. Good luck to you. And thanks.”

An inordinate number of transvestites

There's a remarkable number of transvestites in my life right now. The retarded maintenance man in the apartment beneath me is dating - perhaps living with? - a transvestite hooker.
Wait.
Something phenomenal just occured to me.
I've never seen her.
I mean, I've seen him pay a transvestite hooker before, and I've heard one or two calling his name from the front gate, though they didn't have this voice....
I hear her "voice" all the time. She sounds like Miss Piggy. It's high-pitched, iritating and seems to ring with the "coo" of one who is in love. I see HIM - maintenance man - all the time. I see him coming and going and standing outside. I see the crack dealers that visit and those that sneak in and I see them high and stumbling out. I see him and his only older white buddy (the other visitors are all 19 year-old thugs, while these two men are probably in their 60's). I see maintenance man twice a day. But I see HER - the tranny whose voice I hear almost daily - never.
How is that possible?
Maybe it's his alter ego! Maybe he has another personality - or the ultimate imaginary girlfriend - that loses his incoherent stutter and lisp and speaks in an awfully faked, high-pitched she/he tone!
But they both giggle a lot. And moan. Yes, I've heard them moan. And that would take a LOT of talent to make two different personalities giggle and moan virtually simultaneously.
So maybe she doesn't leave the house. Ever. Weird.
Tranny number two is Red's new Flop. When Red said "You like the new Flop?" I jumped to all sorts of conclusions as to what that meant.
"Eeww! You're sleeping with her!?"
"Noo!" he screeched in horror.
"Is Jason sleeping with her?"
"No. She's a Flop. Yet another person in need of an emergency crash pad who is thus Flopping on my couch."
"Oooh. I got it. So she's staying awhile, eh?"
Her name is Tara. Those who know her find it offensive to use a word as classy as transvestite in conjunction with her name. "She's a dirty, dirty man with waay too much facial hair wearing combat boots and a dress" as one friend put it.
She smells like a wet dog. I'm not quite sure how a human being can manage this feat, but it is trully the case.
We are all hoping Tara gets her twiggy ass out of the building quite soon. She's been "crashing" with Red for about a full week now.
The other FOP in the building is Red's friend, Jason. As if there weren't enough Jason's milling about my life. Jason is from Lexington. He's a sex addict. Two weeks ago he found out he was HIV positive, had to put his cancerous dog to sleep, broke up with his boyfriend, packed his bags and moved in with Red. Jason looks white trash (wife beater, cowboy hat and a moustache) but decorates goth and practices devout Wiccan. He has a creepy energy that I just can't approve of.
I used to keep my doors unlocked.
I used to love the safety, comfort, and positive energy of my building. (This was in the days when the Pimp lived two floors down.) Now I feel little violated.
The worst is that I just caused my friend Steph to move in. I mean, I told her to look at the place and before I could even tell her about the Maintenance Man and his make believe girlfriend, Steph moved in.
And then the FLOPS came and entered Red's life. And mine.
And about two months ago, the only guy that I happen to sleep with once in a great while, moved in next door with his depressedly sick and co-dependent girlfriend.
And now my bike was stolen.
I might need to move soon.

My Bike Stolen...Again

My bike was stolen today. Again. Three witnesses saw an older, heavy-set black man take bolt cutters to the chain around my bicycle - in the middle of the day, on Main Street, mere feet from the glass windows of the coffee shop I just started working at yesterday. I went to the coffee shop quasi defeated, uncertain I could subsist off the meager wages of my various part-time and freelance jobs, thinking I might need more money. And so today I lost my $800 bicycle. I know: I'm a jackass for even riding such a thing through my neighborhood, instead of leaving ten minutes earlier and simply walking. I got into the habit of riding everywhere - I had a sweet but crappy old school bike that was my close-to-home transport until last week, when a friend said "wow that bike rocks! If I had one like that, I'd never drive."
"You'll ride it all the time?" I looked her in the eye, she said yes, and I gave her my bike. That was last week. Karma is as false a notion as religion. This week I give in and got an "extra" job, and my mountain bike is stolen. The best part, is three people witnessed it. Stood by and watched and not a single one of them said "Hey, buddy, what are you doing?" They all just stood by and watched.
How can someone do that?! He had bolt cutters!!! It was evident to all parties that such a man did not own such a bike.
I know without question, that if I were fortunate enough to NEVER have had anything stolen, to have NEVER been hurt or struggling, I would still ALWAYS be the type of person I am today: the type of person who stands up and screams when they see injsutice; the type of person who fights for good and beauty in this world; the type of person who says "Back away from the bicycle, Mother Fucker."
The glory of the ghetto is wearing on me.
Though at one moment, as I was stolling down the street telling everyone I know to look out for it, I was approached by a familiar face. One of the myriad of street people who I wave to regularly, though I don't believe we've ever spoken.
"Hey honey! I hear you got your bike stolen" There is sincere pity in his eyes. "Well that Niger messed with the wrong white chick. He don't know it, but that dumb ass got the whole Main Street posse on his ass. We gonna rip him apart. You is good people and don't deserve none of this. Don't worry pretty lady; we'll find your bike."
And he is only one example. There is a community here.
It doesn't mean anything positive will come of said community, but it's good to know its there.
I need to go break things now.