Broadway Circle of life....A Chapter by Judas Hammer The seen stared to get boring...when the Ghetto opened up When I woke the light
from the adjoining Condo complex found my eyes, as I wondered who lived on the
other side. It was expensive, modern and screamed yuppie up and comers owned
space. Young lawyers trying slip and fall cases, while accountant write off
thousand dollar lunches in New Port Beach or some kind of banker denying an
ethnic family a loan they needed to move out of Inglewood to Culver city for a
better shot at the American dream and to keep their three son from becoming
Bisexual Bloods like Ty and Cory. I showered and
dressed into some basic club gear: black shirt and jeans. I was checking out
the Basement again. The last time I was drunk on Belvedere and cursing out a
woman for stealing my women. I was a changed man. I better man. I would behave.
I went to Maria’s a grabbed a fish burrito. A Mexican customer tried to pick me
up in Spanish. I ignored him and turned to my glorious fish burrito. I ate and
walked a block down to Tommys: a liquor store with a big smiley face on the
front. I had seen it for years, when I used to take Broadway to my Wilson High
Subbing assignments, but never knew what kind of store it happened to be. I
knew it had to be a happy store. Maybe they sold
smiles and joyful encounters! The store had a cool,
intimate interior, as the refrigerated isle met me at the doorway. There was
just enough room to walk in and could only fit no more than five people at a
time. The stock boy was a short, slender Oscar De La Hoya looking man in his
late twenties. The Cashier was a thin, regal looking man with a graying goatee
and a matching thick mustache. He has long hair and on first appearance could
have been mistaken for an artist, musician or a pimp. I walked in a grabbed
a Four Lokos because I didn’t like to play. Like I stated earlier: I get right
to the point. They stared at me like a stranger the first time I made a purchase
but over time we would all become fast friend. Throwing one-liners at each
other as we made friendly banter back and forth. Occasionally, they asked what
I was doing after work or where I was hanging, but nothing more than that. I started to get the gist of the Ghetto.
If you were straight: you were not a friend of the Ghetto. You were an outside
and enemy to be shunned and ignored. To me it was a myth that the homosexual
community it out to convert every straight man. I believe a straight man has to
have the urges already. If your heterosexuality was discovered you are treated
like a Pariah. Shunned! I had made it a point
to play by military rules: Don’t ask don’t tell. I would have never been able to scribe about the
ghetto as a straight men. I had to adjust myself to the community and flow like
water. I went to the Basement, making it before ten. I took my frisking like a
man and entered the door and descended the stairs. I drunkenly made fish eyes
at the beautiful young Latinas with the tight dresses dancing in girl groups on
the floor. After trying to get a few number and failing I returned to the Villa
and slept off the drunkness, while absorbing bites from the little, flying,
non-rent paying monsters. When was not working,
I was writing. When I was not working, I was working out. When I was not
working out, I was drinking and stumbling around the Ghetto: mad and sad at the
same time. I couldn’t be with the small angel that brought me so much joy. I
couldn’t blame her mother in retrospect: it’s the mother job to make sure the
child was happy and well centered. I played the background dad yet prayed
everyday for the chance to see he little smile and pretty, brown curls. After a month of the
same routine: work, Kettle bell and weekends at the Basement life started to
lose it purpose. While fun and new, I wasn’t meeting women and ones I did meet were
full of games and past damage. It wasn’t hard to get phones number, it was just
hard to get them to answer the phone. I think the madness grew in females,
after the age of thirty and only a few men knew that secret. The others didn’t
have the armor. The armor needed to take the emotional brow betting they
witnessed from their mother, Step mother and older, single sisters. My weekend crew was
Noland a tall, stout LA country sheriff with the west coast dance moves and the
baby face. He would double fist two drinks at the same time and grind on thick
Latinas to a smooth west side hip hop tune. He was clean cut but lived the hood
life in his younger days. He was a former Insane Crip from the Eastside. The
other partner in crime was Tracy a tall, thin, brown man in his early. He had a
short haircut and an expression that never changed. I never understood his
mannerism. He was odd and seemed a step slower, yet again he was from Central
California and they did things a little different up that way. It was better to
be seen at a night-spot with a group rather than solo. Going to a club alone
screamed Serial Killer. After stalking
drunk, Mexican girls strolling to their cars we parted ways. Tracy and Noland
lived together somewhere downtown. I walked back to Broadway making my way to
the Falcon to see if I could get lucky and find a bi sexual woman, who was
lonely and maybe left at the club by her lover. I would come along and save
her. I only wanted to save someone. Then we fall in love and move into her
place, then she finds I had been drinking her wine or she too comes under
control of the devil and I start all over again. I halted at the
Red light preparing to cross the street. A little blond, man of about forty
stood next to me. Hands jammed in his pocket, while he stared ahead around
anxiously. “He man how are you
doing tonight?” To me he had a little
bit of a Serial Killer, freak look: short non-styled hair with a plain everyday
man face. He wore a collared shirt and light colored Dockers. These situations became
common place. I remembered being
drunk one night and walking to the 7-11. While inside a short, dark skinner man
with big bulging eyes covered by a tight baseball cap and small gut hovering
over long, golf shorts. He approached me and asked what my plans were. I said, ‘walking
to 7-11 to attack to Big Bites with cheese and a Mike’s Hard Lemonade’ (even
though it was too late to sell liquor.) He asked me what I wanted, because he
would get me anything. I took him up on his offer and asked him for a Jamaican
beef patty and a Mike’s Hard Lemonade. The man said he had some
Mikes at the house. He got me the patties, but said I had to follow him home
for the Drink. I was drunk and
needed another one. I ate my food on the way. The strangers told me a little
about himself. He worked for the LA transit department. He was from Bakersfield
but lived in Long Beach for five years. He informed me he almost was canned
from his job because of his addition: the Willington Gay bathhouses: his thirst
for the stream and flesh almost led to his firing. I was surprised Dub’s never told me
about the bathhouse. Wilmington was a little big violent town between Harbor
City and Long Beach. There was
nothing nice in that tiny hovel that housed Velrico refineries and Fante tales.
I remembered one time behind Harbor College I stumbled upon an area where men
hooked up with men in thicket brush. Maybe the bathhouses were close to that
area. We made it to his
apartment. He lived on the ground level of a fourplex on the corner of Orange
and Forth. I walked inside and scanned the room. It was spacious and very
stylish. He didn’t seem like the artsy type capable of putting together a
quality room. He handed me a metal
canister filled with Mike Hard Lemonade. I must had been hooked on the idiot
juice. You follow a stranger home, don’t know his name and drink orange
stuff from a metal canister. You should be raped and dismembered. You fingers
fed to exotic animals! © 2013 Judas HammerAuthor's Note
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8 Reviews  Last Updated on August 23, 2013 Author
Judas HammerThe City of Angeles, CAAboutI like to write, live in La and write and make short films. and more..Writing
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