Previously: After helping to rescue Hurricane Katrina victims, I got flown on a Delta airplane from New Orleans to Washington, D.C. And then crammed busses took us to the DC Armory. It was set up like a big, ol’ dormitory with cots and nice clean bathrooms and a trailer with showers. With so much to eat, it smell like a soul food place. They had a van to take us out on medical trips to clinics. I had to go, because I’m diabetic. Outside the armory, celebrities drop by in limousine. Shaq came, and I sit next to him and compare my shoes to his. A FEMA worker told me it might be hard to get a place of my own ‘cause of my history of being in jail a lot.
I wasn’t scared of bein’ in a strange city, and I wanted to check out what was happenin’. My new 20-year-old friend—a little short guy named Marcus—and I started walking. At a nearby Metro station, a lady asked me for a cigarette, so I released one of my Camels for her.
I notice she smokin’ weed, so I asked where we could get some. She thought we be police. I told her “No. We just thugs.”
She said, “You from Baltimore?”
I said “No, we from the dirty South.”
I said, “We have some money and we want to get high.”
I said, “We ain’t got high for two or three weeks.”
She say, “I don’t know if you all be killers or rapists or what, but you all seem like good brothers.”
She said I can take you, but I can’t let you see the person I deal with. Everyone knows that.
I started doing street talk with her, like, “What make you think I’m a cop? I don’t really smoke weed, but I’ll hit your weed a few times to show you I’m not no cop.”
So she took us to the hood, which was only a few blocks away. And then she say, “What’s in it for me?”
I asked her do she get high off of crack too. She say, “Yeah.”
In my mind, after she say yeah, I think she looked real good and I asked her do she fool around.
She say, “Yeah I’m bouty bouty,” which mean she a hundred percent down with whatever activity take place.
She told us she got a girlfriend house we can go by and nobody gonna bother us. I say, “So the house cool? Not gonna get us in trouble with no old man?”
She made a joke to me. She say “Y’know my fave station? I’m a fan of HBO.” I didn’t catch the joke until she say, “I Help a Brother Out.”
She told my homeboy he look like Master P, the rapper, because he had about 18 golds in his mouth.
We walked with her into an alley in the hood, where her dough boy—her dealer—sat in an abandoned car. She told us we gotta stand on the side. So I told her, “Then we gonna stand on the side with our money, because just like you don’t know us, we don’t know you.”
So she said, “Here’s the deal, the one with the money come with me.”
That was me. I told my homeboy “Stand down, I got this.”
To be continued . . .
Coming soon on Amazon: My Katrina story.
