Summer Heats Up Neighborhood, Part II

I'm in a couple of those moments at The Bank where you find yourself taking a stand. I'm trying to argue points and define my position, and I suddenly find myself in a meeting in The Gopher Hole with my two top management team, Harley A and The Castro.

I don't do well in these kinds of positions: my lips tremble, I lose my train of thought, my arguments get out of focus, I lean toward arguing The Big Picture instead of sticking to the details at hand, and I sound emotional. Throw on the fact that I was aware of the meeting until an hour or so ahead of time (plenty of time to prepare while running around and babysitting the bankers, no?) and I'd finished my fourth or fifth cup of coffee, and, according to Harley A (whom I find to not be a totally creditable source), I came across a little abstract and crazed.

I've been hiding out in The Hole for as much as possible and while continue to do so in the weeks ahead.

And then I come home, park the car, and step in dried paint on the sidewalk...do a double-take, and realize it's the blood from the other day. I'm strangely torn as I look down at the splattery oddly V-shaped smear of reddish-brown between total sadness and total apathy. In a way, this split of emotion makes me feel even worse...like I've lost something very important that makes up a "good person."

I walk to my back door, and say hello to my neighbor through their open door. They shout the usual, "Hi Neighbor!" (I don't think they know my real name after two years), and then proceed to tell me I just missed another shooting...6 shots this time compared to 3 last time.

Great.

Later that night, anesthetized with Jameson, I suddenly hear Hot Hispanic Upstairs Neighbor yelling for my direct neighbors. Through the kitchen window, both eavesdropping and later actual conversation with the mother, it turned out the 15 year old son had gotten stopped by detectives and they patted him down. I agreed with her shouting out at the neighborhood (and the lady has the volume of twenty Marshall Full stacks) that this was bullshit. Busting a 15 year old boy on the way to the store for ice cream, drug dealers all around (especially up on Birchwood and Wollcot by the school) and the cops gotta fuck with a little boy. And then she went the "if it was a white boy, this wouldn't have happened!" And as I normally don't like that kind of argument, in this case/neighborhood, I grudgedly admitted she was right. (Fresh! Remember when we were driving and the cops flashed the cop searchlight into the car at the stop sigh, then shut it off for no apparent reason? We laughed.."Ah, just a couple crackers, let 'em go."

And today, I look out the window, and there's a flickering blaze of blue flashing light up the other street. Five cop cruisers and two detective cars clogging up the street in front of that condo that always has an ambulance show up to it.

It's going to be a long ass summer isn't it?