Monday, June 23, 2014

Memories of Baltimore (2 of 2): Conversation with a guy on the street.

As I was walking from my hotel down through a bad few blocks in order to get to this one complex of historical Catholic sites, this kind of older drugged-out looking (black) guy with sunglasses who was standing on a cement slab in front of a building started wagging his left hand at me with his pinky and thumb out...

"Hey, sorry, I don't smoke," I was like.

"No man, I wasn't asking for a lighter," he was like, "I was just saying, 'COOL'."

"That's cool," I was like, "'Cool' about what?".

"You look like that one guy, you know," he was like.  "That one guy, that redheaded guy with the dreads."

"Who?", I was like.

"That one guy, the redheaded guy with the dreads," he was like. "He was in that band...  What was it... Level 42.  They're on my 'Best of the 80s' cassette."

Then, he kept swearing I looked just like him.

He also said he had a lot of gay friends, and that when he used to deal drugs, people would call him 'Santa Claus'.

"Because I would knock on the door," he was like, "And people would say, 'A-who who whooooooooo's, there?'", and the way he said the word "who", it sounded like "ho".

He added that he had good delivery times, but people were looking out to kill him and even shot at him, so he got out of the business.

The building he was in front of looked like it was transitional housing for homeless people, from the people who were coming out of it as we stood there talking.

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