After Katrina: A Ten-Year Roller Coaster, Part 3

A photo of a telephone

Thomas Hawk/Flickr

Previously: I wanted to check out what was happenin’ in D.C. My new 20-year-old friend—a little short guy named Marcus—and I started walking from the Armory. At a nearby Metro station, a lady asked me for a cigarette. 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. 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. 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, “The one with the money come with me.” That was me…

The dealer heard the way I was talkin’. He say where you from, Baltimore or somethin’? I say New Orleans. He got out the car and hugged me. He said, “Man, if you’re people be wantin’ some product send them to me, whatever.”

After the lady help us cop crack cocaine for me and heroin for my homeboy, we went by her friend apartment. It was clean, but still in the ghetto with old couch, fridge filled with beer, that kind of thing.

My homeboy went to the bathroom. He come out buck naked. He was crazy high and telling the women “It’s partyin’ time.” I sit back laughing and tell him to just be cool.

I told my homeboy, “Man, put your clothes back on or we gonna put you out.”

I went to try my crack cocaine out. I took a hit and felt I was in a whole new world. All the pressure, all the drama was gone. It was like my first time gettin’ high again. After we sit there for a couple hours, we told the ladies we be back later, now that we know it’s cool, that there’s no drama with other men and no violent.

We got ourself together and headed back to the Armory. Back near the armory they had a lot of police cars. The high was so crazy that it had me thinkin’ they was waitin’ for me. So we sit in the park across from the armory.

We had some free cell phones with a thousand minutes. We called one of my homeboys up and tell him come across the street to help us get back to the Armory.

He said “What’s goin on?”

I said, “Cops waitin’ to arrest us.”

He said, “Man, ain’t no cops here just for you. Just come back.”

Then my cell phone rang and it was my case manager, saying we had some places to go tomorrow. I was so discombobulated I told him I was on the phone with someone and could he call back later. It was crazy. When you get high, someone call you, you gonna make up all kind of lies.

With me not bein’ affected with drugs for the past three weeks, the crack cocaine hit me so strong. I thought all kind of ways about my case manager. Maybe he working with the police. We don’t know—we just came here. Me bein’ a guy that’s experience a lot, I just didn’t know. Or trust.

To be continued . . .

Coming soon on Amazon: My Katrina story.


Issues |Weather


Region |Washington DC

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