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Angel of Meth
The only thing worse than being home and watching a dozen police officers and EMS workers gather in front of your apartment building is to head home and FIND a bunch of squad cars and EMS workers in front of your apartment building. I learned this five years ago when my good buddy Rachael and I were headed back to my cracktastic apartment on Clay Street late one Friday night.
By the time we had reached the intersection of Eagle Street and Manhattan Avenue FOUR SQUAD CARS tore past us rollerballs ablazing. I turned to Rachael and said, “Fifty bucks says they’re headed to my block”. They were.
By the time we reached Clay Street on foot there were 60-70 gawkers (clad mostly in wife beaters and boxer shorts) milling about the remains of the ‘action’. I asked my Super (who was one the aforementioned wife beater wearers) what happened. He cryptically replied:
When you look for trouble, someone will give it to you.
After this sage wisdom left his lips, the Super proceeded to take a long swig from a bottle of Domaine Caton, his wine of choice that particular evening. Fortunately, my downstairs neighbor was a little bit more informative. “Angel” told me that some Dominicans and Mexicans got into a fight involving “machetes” and “pipes”. Ducky. Now jump to…
Yesterday, March 25, 2007
I arrived home at 5:00 p.m. to (once again) find a horde of policemen and EMS workers hovering around the front of my apartment building. Thankfully, machetes or pipes were not involved— unless one counts a crack pipe— but I digress.
Once I got past all the ‘looky-loos’, I saw a circle of 8-10 policemen and one civilian. In the middle of this pow-wow was a man lying face down on the cement with two tazer prongs stuck in his lower back. Unlike what I have seen on “Cops” this man was quite alert and talkative. This was probably so because ‘homeboy’ was tweaked out of his fucking gourd.
Follows are some highlights from his ‘discussion’ with New York’s Finest…
Cop: So, what have you been doing?
Tweaker: I’ve been runnin’ like Rocky Balboa.
Cop: What’s the problem?
Tweaker: I’ve been awake for three days, that’s the problem.
“Tweakie Bird” could not understand why the policemen were so interested in him…
Tweaker: Man, don’t you guys have a job to do?
Cop: We’re doing it right now.
This bon mot was met with a roar of laughter from all the onlookers, myself included. Having had my fill of ‘fun’ for the day, I went upstairs to my apartment. This was a bad call on my part: I later learned from my upstairs neighbor that he was hauled off in a straight jacket after rattling off a rather choice rant about being a U.S. Marine.
Miss Heather
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