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One Year in Pittsburgh

Joshua Copeland

    I was a young fire breather, a member of the Nation of Islam, and I believed all white people, especially Jews, stood round cauldrons, lit from below, their faces coal orange, all of them conspiring against us as they tossed in eye of frog. Then I did a semester abroad in England. The country is racist. At their football games, every time a black player took the ball, the whole crowd sqawked like an ape. And the Nationalist skinheads—worse than Racial skinheads—beat me up, and tossed my poetry into the Thames, and then I decided I was wrong to be racist and anti-Semitic.
    I grew up in Pittsburgh and graduated from Pitt. I spent a few weeks celebrating in Amsterdam, a much more “open” society than England or America. Downers were my drug of choice. I returned to the US I decided to travel around the country to try and find work. The adventure soured. Fast. I couldn’t find work, or if I did, I couldn’t keep the job. After two years of wandering I found myself in Jackson, Tennessee. I applied there for SSI and SSDI. They always reject you the first and second time you apply. Then, the third time, you go before a judge, and he decides. There was a hearing, and an Occupational Vocational Rehab Rep was there to challenge me and play devil’s advocate as to why I couldn’t work. In the end the judge sided with me. I had a history of mental illness and had been in loony bins since I was a kid. I left to go back to Pittsburgh.
    My parents wanted me to stay in Pittsburgh but I wanted to move in with my sister in Sherman Oaks, California (She had made the offer). Living in the same city as my parents can become quite claustrophobic, so we compromised: I’d stay in Pittsburgh a year than move out to live with my sister. I got a studio apartment on the fourth floor of an apartment building. How I hated Pittsburgh. I kept telling myself, “You can make it. Just twelve months” I didn’t even unpack a lot of things.
    I entered the Western Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic. This meant that you lived at home and spent from eight a.m. to four p.m., sitting in groups with other failures and talked about how miserable you were.
    I got along great with my counselor, Rocco Marciano. After around three months there I asked him if he could hook me up with Occupational Vocational Rehab, and they could hook me up with a job. So he set me up with an Occupational Vocational Rehab job coach, Kim Buckwalters. She had an office at the Western Psychiatric Outpatient clinic, but her main office was downtown. She was so pretty, how I hungered, how I hungered. You hope she thinks all black dudes are like tripods. We met in her Western Psychiatric office. She was pretty, and she smiled a lot, and was very polite. She made good fantasies to fall asleep to.
    Kimberly got me a job at Pittsburgh Vision Services. It was a business that provided jobs for the handicapped. NINE MONTHS IN PITTSBURGH LEFT! My first three months there were great. They put me in the shipping department, and I didn’t have to deal with anyone except for my coworker and, at the end of the day, UPS. I packaged road signs and brooms and sheets and brooms and towels and shipped them up. It was manual work, you could zone out while you did it. I worked noon to four; I had never held a full time job for long. Before I left home at the start of the day, I’d pop six fifty mg of Benadryl—six times the recommended dosage—so I’d have a nice high as I worked.
    My shipping boss was an alcoholic, you could either smell it on his breath or smell the Listerine. He called off a lot, or came in hung over. He spent a lot of time taking a dump. Divorce payments forced him to work two jobs. The supervisor of all supervisors at Pittsburgh Vision Services, John Sosnak, let him slide.
    It was funny. Joe Dixon, who worked on brooms, on Monday and Friday he worked a second job bartending from six p.m. to two a.m. So he’s amp up on amphetamines those two days, and he talked so fast you could barely understand him.
    The anti-anxiety medication I was on—Klonopin—and the anti-depression medication—Wellbutrin—made me real tired and weak, and I got in trouble a lot for sitting down. I soon learned what everybody said, “This is a crazy place to work at.” And people were always cursing out other coworkers for things they didn’t do. What was great was that my particular job was solitary, so I didn’t have to deal with anyone else. EIGHT MONTHS LEFT.
    One day the boss of all bosses, John Sosnak, called a few of us into a huddle. He said he had finally fired my drunken shipping boss. He said he was moving me from shipping to Linda’s floor. I felt my bowels loosen. My new job would be managing blind people putting together helmets for Hoover Dam. Then he told me I’d be full time, and I practically shat myself. I imagined it running down my legs and soaking my socks. Linda’s room is huge; it takes up the whole floor. Everyone there sewed sheets and towels. The place was super-hot and it nauseated me. Plus, I can’t work full time. If I do I lose it. Worst of all was my reputation with the workers in that room. They were all white and hard-core and bare-knuckle tough, and they thought I was an “Oreo.” I didn’t act the way they expected black folk to act. They thought I believed myself to be above them all, cause I had a college education, and did not talk in Ebonics. They called me Urkel. I wasn’t a nigga, I was a House Nigger. Actually, since Tupac brought the violence of the street up with him when he became famous, I tried not to listen to hip hop.
    Three blind people constituted my workers. One woman had a crescent-shaped shit stain on the seat of her pants. They sat at a table, with bored Seeing Eye dogs at their feet. I did not “manage” anyone, I just supplied the workers with helmets and inserts, and they had to fit each insert into each helmet. Then I would take the helmet, package it in a plastic bag, and stack it in a large cardboard box. And then, when the box was full, Frank would come over with a huge staple gun, and I’d hold the top down while he stapled it shut. I didn’t know him that well, but he seemed like an easy going guy. He was in his mid-40s and looked like Al Pacino. Conversational and friendly.
    My job kept me running around, running around, back and forth, and then...
    Then began the Great Crack Up. The new job panic-struck me, in an all-out agoraphobic fit. Linda’s room was huge, with so many people in it. I drank too much coffee and slept about two hours a night. I scared students at my karate class. The caffeine turned me into a berserker. Or I’d go to the karate class with a coffee hangover in the middle of class and leave to the bathroom to puke.
    I also freaked people out at my job. I was pale—yes, black people can go pale too. One of my blind workers, he could only see what was close. One time he casually walked up to me, and when got up close he looked aghast. My special look: red like ivy wreathed my eyes.
    What was at stake was not the job itself. The thing was, it was symbolic. Look at my string of lost jobs around the country. You think I wanted to be on SSI and SSDI? Pittsburgh Vision Services was all about me fitting into the world. To be an earthling. I’d rarely had girlfriends, and chicks don’t dig a jobless brother. I berated my brain, “Why can’t you do this one simple thing?! Go to sleep at a decent time, wake up at a decent time, and go to work?!” I wanted to believe I had reserve seating in society. By the time the weekend came, I’d fall asleep right when I got home. I puked a lot at work due to coffee hangovers.
    My martial arts class, Oom Yung Do, they were like a second family to me, but the instructor kept telling me to leave, either because I was too hyper or too weak and clumsy. I threw up in the training room once, and it took a few days to get the smell out.
    So back at work one of my bosses, John Sosnak, gave me shit about the helmets. Scared the hell out of me. Like a lot of the workers there, he sported the Thousand Yard Stare... though I thought mine was better. If I spoke with anyone they’d scratch their lips. When I showed up at Supercuts, my hairdresser was like, “Jesus, Larenz.” I was doomed, it had chiseled itself into my face.
    Everything got exponentially worse, just keep tacking on those zeros, ten, a hundred, a thousand...One day Frank called me over to his sewing station. I walked over. “Larenz, the workers you manage, why don’t you get on them? They come to work late.” He was trying to provoke me.
    His accusation was an out and out lie. He was screwing me. I’d never been so frightened in my life. What to say? I quaked like Jell-O and said, “They don’t come in late.”
    Frank looked at his desk, a mean grin broke across his face, and he went back to work. I walked away. “Larenz! Get back here!” So I stopped, turned around, and walked back over to him. “Cause we’re good workers. We’re not spoiled like you. We do a good job. We’re not sellouts or schoolboys.” And he went back to work. I walked away.
    Later I asked Frank’s good friend Martha (I did sound like a little boy in school, heh, it got so bad I was regressing). “Did I do something wrong? What do they think of me in Linda’s room? Why is Frank getting on me?”
    She laughed, “Oh, that’s just Frank.”
    So Martha must’ve told him he upset me. Everyone there knew I took martial arts. So at the end of the day Frank came up to me and said, “Hey, Larenz, look!” and he did a few kicks in bad form, as if to synchronize, as if to say, “You’re okay with me.” But I was not okay with him. I’d dealt with hostility plenty of times before. But I was not going cuckoo on those jobs like I was on this job. It was like the butterfly effect: you stick your finger in a lake, and instead of ripples you get tsunamis.
    A few days later I dollied hay from Linda’s room to the broom room. Mostly blind people worked on brooms, and as I walked in one of them asked, “How bad is Lorenz looking today? Twenty dollars says he goes postal by the end of the week.” Everyone who could see looked at me and winced, but I didn’t care.
    One morning around 5:45 I clocked in and walked into Linda’s room. It’s huge and her office is at the opposite side of the entrance. She steam rolled out of her office—she was tall and big boned—and bellowed, “Larenz, we are out of helmets! You didn’t tell me we were running out!”
    So I wondered, how bad should I feel about Linda cursing me out and yelling at me? I saw Joe Dixon later in the elevator, and he looked sympathetic. So I should be upset. The real problem was, she was bitching at me for something that wasn’t my fault. No one ever told me to give notice if helmets were running low. Linda and I both caught the same bus home. I arrived at the bus stop and she was already there. I said hi, and she looked away like she had done something wrong. I began to drink whiskey in the bathroom stall at work. It mixed well with the Benadryl.
    It dawned on me: I will not last at this job. My brother worked as an advertising executive in Manhattan. Like a sponge, he had soaked up the entire New Yorker attitude, the no nonsense, tightly sphinctered personae. I called him to tell him how much I hated my job.
    “Well, so what? Everyone hates their job. Like this girl, I was talking to her today. She hates her job.”
    “That’s a shitty attitude, Steve.”
    “That’s a healthy attitude, my friend.”
    I hung up on him. He called me back and I screened his message on my machine. He left an apologetic message. Scratch off another idiot from my life.
    Most of my Pitt friends had moved to other states (I am not a social guy). Mugsy was one of my last three or four friends here. He had been married about a year. He called up Karol with a K and her husband, and we all agreed to meet at TGIF, eat a dinner, and then see Silence of the Lambs Part Two. Mugsy and his wife, along with Karol with a K, her husband, and me. The showings were selling out, so it was up to Karol to buy five tickets for a later showing.
    I have always marveled at the thickness of Karol’s skull. I drove to TGIF, all excited, parked, walked in the place , looked around, found them, and sat down in the booth. Nobody looked happy. Karol with a K told me she forgot about me and bought four tickets instead of five. No ticket for me. I was embarrassed. They were embarrassed. Hard to look anyone in the eye. They looked at the table. What to say? Karol talks super fast when she’s nervous, and she offered to buy me a meal. Mugsy would not look at me. I’m sure I was red. I felt the heat to the face. I walked out. Cried on the way home. What’s wrong with me? I’m crying at the drop of a hat; a weak-minded soul brother. I called Mugsy’s machine to say it was no big deal, and that I wasn’t pissed off. He never called me back.
    Around a week later I called up Mugsy and asked if I could come over and watch South Park. This was a ritual. I’d come over, and he, his wife, and I, would watch the show. Mugsy said, “Sure, come over.” So I drove home and called his room from the lobby, and I got the beep and scratch of the internet. It was getting harder and harder to get my male friends to socialize. They’re whipped. I was losing them all. It wasn’t like that five years ago, when all my friends were still in Pittsburgh and loved to hit the bars.
    I watched my Taxi Driver DVD over and over. I really wanted to shoot up Pittsburgh Vision Services. Every morning as I dressed for work, I cheered myself on, saying I wasn’t taking shit off nobody, no how, no way. I’d throttle Linda, John Sosnak, and Frank. I’d rip out the carotid arteries and they’d flail around like out of control fire hoses. And I knew how to do it, too. Yet when I clocked in I was petrified, and my nervous wink started up.
    One night, I called up my Occupational Vocational Rehab coach’s machine—her name was no longer Kimberly Buckwalter, but Kimberly Lance. A significant part of me did not want to talk to her. In my message I did not say I’d only be in Pittsburgh SEVEN MONTHS, ONE DAY, AND FOURTEEN HOURS MORE. I asked for a new job.
    The next morning I was stacking helmets, and who do I see? The last person I wanted to see at my job: Kimberly. She was pregnant. “Hi, I just had some things to take care of,” she lied. “So I thought I’d stop by and see how you were.” She flashed a Christ-like smile. Really pretty. I looked around. Was anyone watching? I had never seen her in the building before.
    She took me out into the hall. I said I wanted a new job.
    She asked if the problem was environmental or personal.
    I said both. “I don’t want you to tell anyone else, please, but I do have problems with the people here. All I want is a new job. I don’t want anyone castigated.” I gave her no names. That’d be occupational suicide.
    She said she’d get right to finding me a new job.
    Later that day I rode the elevator up with Linda and John Sosnak. They both looked fallen, they both looked pained, and they said hi in a funny way. Did Kimberly just curse them out? What I told Kimberly I told in confidence. Did she investigate, and find everyone I had a problem with, corral them, and shout at them? I froze. She went behind my back and found out who I had trouble with. She screamed at them and told them not to tell me. I said you cannot find all that out in a thirty second elevator ride. “You’re crazy,” I told myself. “Totally gone fishing.”
    I had told Kimberly I can’t hack a nine hour day, and I wanted to go back to my four hour a day schedule. And get me the hell out of helmets and back to Shipping. I told her I didn’t have the stamina for a nine hour day, especially a nine hour day in helmets. I got out of the elevator with John Sosnak and Linda, and Frank rushes up to me out of the blue and says, “I hate people who can’t work full time! I work two jobs, fifteen hours a day.”
    Later in the day I walked into Diane Salidonia’s office—she was one of my supervisors (Linda, John Sosnak, and Diane are all my supervisors), the nicest person imaginable. As soon as I opened the door I saw she was crying. She rushed up to me and yelled, “Larenz, are you okay?”
    I told her I asked Kimberly to find me another job. I sat there, in her office, and the fear of God went through me. Jesus Christ. Holy shit. As soon as I complained to Kim, she did round some of them up, then SCREAMED at them and told them not to tell me. But Diane, Diane, she had nothing to do with it. She was the nicest, kindest person in the world. Now, not only did I have the rep of a wannabe white boy, of acting I was teirs above all of them there, I had the rep of a snitch. Kimberly didn’t know these people. They’d harass me big time, just tuned to a more passive aggressive channel. In that office, with Diane sobbing, I knew I was done with any job at Pittsburgh Vision Services. When I told Diane I had learned a lot of good skills on the job, she cackled and sobbed at the same time, and said, “Oh Larenz, that makes me so happy!”
    So plans were made. I’d do two weeks up on Helmets, full time, then they’d move me down to Shipping, part time.
    Whatever Kimberly said scared the shit out of them. I repeat: Holy shit. From then on, everyone in Linda’s room looked at me with fear. They weren’t afraid of me, but of Kimberly, or what I might tell her. And I repeat, these were tough, working class, sand papered workers.
    Gary was a cracker head—a white crack head—who worked in Linda’s room. He was always trying to hustle money from people. Soon Linda and Frank found out he used the money for crack, and they passed word around: Don’t give Gary any money. Frank and Gary were good friends. Frank was helping him buy a house.
    All of a sudden Frank and Gary were super polite to me (I was still on Helmets). Every day, with the awe and fear of a child, I’d say hi to them both and try and make small talk. They were very receptive. Every day I’d make it a point to say a few words to them, and they acted very conversational with me.
    I heard Gary tell Frank that all the crack dealers in Homewood carried a pocket full of rocks, so they could throw it through your car window if they felt you ripped them off. Gary said this had happened to him a few months ago. As far as Linda goes, she wasn’t too sweet and clean herself. Every Friday, towards the end of the day, her voice would go super-nasal, and she was snorting like a horse.
    One day Linda stormed out of her office, screaming across the room at Frank, and Frank said nothing, he just took his materials and carried them to a sewing station farthest away from her. I tried to comfort him, “You know, we all know this is a crazy place to work.” The next day his friend Martha came over to him and he said he’d gone back to drinking while at work.
    My last day on Helmets Linda exploded out her office ala a supernova, yelling, “LARENZ! YOU ARE NOT RECORDING HOW MANY HELMETS WE ARE SHIPPING OUT! AND I AM ANGRY! THEY SHOULD HAVE TOLD YOU TO DO THAT!” See, this was a non-curse out curse out, so Linda could say, “I wasn’t yelling at him,” But she was.
    I came to work Monday, my first day back at shipping, and my first day back on half time. I had never told my shipping coworker anything about how I complained to my job coach, but he complained, “Larenz, it’s not fair. You get all this attention for being yelled at, when John Sosnak and Cynthia yell at me everyday.”
    My first order of the day was to dolly up a box of white cloth to Frank’s station. I stepped into the elevator, the doors shut with a clank! I rode up the three floors to Linda’s floor, the doors open, and I step out into the heat. Everyone in the room was looking at me, looking up from their work. I saw Gary across the room. I saw Gary across the room. He looked right at me. Just like every day, I shouted, “Hey, what’s up Gary?” he looked away and went back to work. I delivered the box to Frank. “How’s it going, man?” I asked him, as I did every day. he kept on stitching, totally avoiding me. Again, that gut feeling of fear. It was visceral.
    He had to be one step ahead of me. He knew if he ignored me—like he kept up conversation with me while I worked in Linda’s room, then ignored me when they put me down at shipping—that I’d complain to Kimberly. And if she contacted Frank about it, he could shrug his shoulders and say, “What did I do? I kept our agreement that I would not tell him you yelled at us. I played within the rules we all agreed on.
    My next trip up to Linda’s room I passed Jenny, one of the blind sewers, and she said, “Lorenz, you need to be less...you need to be less...sensitive.” Again, all eyes in the room were on me. Utter stage fright. I did not like that job, and what happened that day broke the camel’s back. I never got to say good bye to my coworker in shipping. I felt like an elated failure. Clocked out for the last time, walked down the main hall and I was gone. In a few weeks Kimberly Sharpe would have a new job for me. JUST SIX MONTHS AND THREE WEEKS LEFT IN THIS CITY!
    I didn’t want to talk to Diane Salidonia in person, so I called her office answering machine later that night. My message was circa twenty minutes long. I told her that I quit, and that the problem was with me, and not with any of them. I was cracking up and just could not work. I lied, “I blame no one. I’m sorry I got you all in trouble with Kimberly.” Then I called Linda’s machine and said the same things. I didn’t mention Frank, or my daydream of going back to Pittsburgh Vision Services with a 44 Magnum and paying him a visit.
    I went to my martial arts class that night. After class I told my instructor I had quit my job.
    “Maybe now you can get some sleep,” she said. It felt so good to hear that. But it was not to be.
    After a few hour sleep that night, midnight to four a.m., I lay in bed and screened Diane Salidonia’s call around nine a.m. She sounded like she’d been crying. She said, “I feel sorry for you, Larenz.”
    An hour later I screened Kimberly’s call. She sounded chirpy. “Just calling to see how things are going,” she said. She had never called me before. I still fantasized about her in bed. Here’s the whole entire planet angry at me, and this one beautiful lady is on my side. My saint. My savior.
    I called her a few days later. I tried to tell her I quit, about Frank’s and Linda’s antics. I told Kimberly I was not mad at her, Kimberly, and I told her I knew she yelled at them there, and how it rebounded back at me.
    Kimberly turned panicky. “I didn’t say anything to them!”
    I told her I know she did, I caught all the frightened micro expressions in Linda’s room, along with all the passive aggressive harassment.
    She didn’t reply, “What are you talking about?” She said, “You’re smart.”
    Nope, I majored in Film Studies, where, in acting, every twitch of the lip, every swivel of the eyeball is important.
    The Bridgeville office ran Pittsburgh Vision Services. I told Kimberly, “I’m going to report what happened to Bridgeville.”
    Kimberly wigged out. “Why?! What are you going to tell them?!”
    “How Pittsburgh Vision Services made me pay for complaining.”
    After our phone call I waited all day for her to go to Pittsburgh Vision Services, find out what happened, and call me back. She never did.
    I pondered, trying to make two plus two equal four. I knew Kimberly lied to me, I knew she yelled at those four. Why did my threat to Bridgeville make her more nervous. She was a job coach at Occupatonal Vocational Rehab. Bridgeville had no authority over her. So why worry when I said I’d contact them.
    Maybe she never told her bosses I complained to her. She didn’t want to break my confidence when I told her I didn’t want anyone at work to know I contacted her. Maybe...maybe...think...she yelled at those four and then, and I was not to know that, so she didn’t tell her bosses over at Occupational Vocational Rehab I complained. This sounds right. And key was that if Bridgeville got involved, they’d contact Kimberly and Kimberly’s supervisors, and Kimberly would be stuck. She’d have to explain to her own bosses why she didn’t tell them I complained. Instead of registering my complaint with her supervisors, she castigated those four and told them not tell me. She did not want to break my trust. That fits. All I could do is wait in utter agony to hear her voice.
    I called her office every afternoon for about a week and kept getting her machine. One day, two days, three days, Kimberly never called back. If I was a paranoid schizophrenic, and the harassment at Pittsburgh Vision Services was all in my head, Kim would have called back the day after I told her what happened, and said the harassment was my psychosis. I’ve been in mental health facilities since I was a kid. Paranoids and schizoids are always writing up complaints about other techs or patients. The system bends over backwards to create a gauntlet, so that only the real, the sane complaints go through. So if my complaints turned out to be psychobabble, she wouldn’t have acted on them.
    I needed desperately to talk to someone. I called up Mugsy, and we agreed to meet at Silky’s. We were only there a hundred seconds. We sat down in a booth, the waitress brought our beers, and I began, “I was forced to quit my job. My whole life’s gone to shit—”
    “The Penguins’ game is coming up.”
    “It’s not just a lost job, it’s so much more—”
    “My wife’s family is coming over.”
    “My whole world is shot to shit.”
    Mugsy winced in a major way, and said, “I can’t stand her relatives.”
    I stood up, threw a couple of bucks on the table, and said, “I got to go.”
    He looked shocked. “You got to go? Okay.”
    More crying, like a sista, as I drove home. I waited for Mugs to call me back, to let me know I had some meaning in his life, and that he was sorry. He never did. JUST SEVEN MONTHS LEFT.
    I had been calling Kim a few times a day for a week, and I only got her answering machine. Finally I reached her. I was going to ask her about that new job she said she could hook me up with. You could hear it in her voice, the growl, the white of the fang. She said, “You are going to come down here to my office, I am going to take down all the relevant information, and send you the hell on your way. And I do not want to see you again.”
    I gulped. “Kim, did I do something wrong?”
    “I CHECKED WITH EVERYONE AT PITTSBURGH VISION SERVICES! THE PROBLEM IS WITH YOU, NOT WITH THEM!”
    “That’s, that’s bullshit, they—”
    “AND WATCH THE LANGUAGE! I ASKED AROUND THERE! NO ONE KNOWS WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT!”
    Like a toddler, I began to cry. “Kim, you’re like the last person in my life right now. I lost my only friend here a few nights ago. You’re all I have.”
    “LARENZ, I AM CONCERNED ABOUT YOU!”
    You don’t know how bad it was to lose this job. I know there are others. But it underlines what I’ve always worried about, that I can’t hold a job and be part of things, I can’t be a spoke in the clockwork. I’m too weak.
    It was crazy, she’d oscilate back and forth, back and forth. She’d yell I was an idiot, and then she’d yell she was concerned about me.
    Finally she said, “Larenz, this is suicidal ideation. I will commit you.” She gulped. “No, I can’t do that, I’m just a job coach. What’s your doctor’s name?”
    That was more my turf. “You have nothing on me. I haven’t said I was going to hurt myself or anyone else, and I’m not on drugs.”
    “Larenz...”
    Safer to hang up on her, which I did. And then I mused: maybe she could find some way of getting around the rules and an ambulance crew and a few cops would show up here and take me away. I wondered, if I called her back and said I would rejoin the Western Psyche Outpatient Program, she might not pull a stunt like trying to commit me as an inpatient. I had to be safe. Better safe than sorry. Screw the upcoming job from Occupational Vocational Rehab. I’d go to the Western Psyche Outpatient Program instead. Soon I’d fly the coop anyway.
    I called her up.
    “Larenz!” she screamed, like she thought I was dead.
    I told her my plans.
    She gushed, “That makes me so happy!”
    “I’m good friends with a counselor there, Rocco Marciano. It will be good to talk to him again.”
    “That’s wonderful. I have his number right here.” And she gave it to me. And then she began to cry. Hard. Large, sucking gasps of air. Neither one of us said anything for a minute. She just cried. Then we said good bye.
    Later that night she called me up, all throaty, like she’d been sobbing, and said, “Do what you need to do to get better.”
    What explained her tongue lashing that blew the wax out my eardrums? A strong offense for a weak defense? If my complaints against Pittsburgh Vision Services were all my dementia, she would not have tried to avoid me, and she wouldn’t have screamed when we tried to talk. She would have called me back the same day I complained why I quit and told me to take my medication. So her rage was an act.
    That night I threw a hissy fit over jerking off. My days revolved around this, like a religious ceremony. My yellow-specked area around my TV was like a shrine. But Kimberly had upset me so much that all was deflated. And I prayed, prayed, PRAYED to God , “Please don’t take this last thing from me.” I did spurt forth, but it was more like a faucet leak than a fountain.
    The building I lived in was right across from the Giant Eagle Supermarket. But to get there you had to cross a huge lot that was mostly dark at night. A few nights after I dealt with Kimberly I left my apartment and crossed the street and began to walk across the lot. Out of the blue, a black panhandler approached me. This was surprising. White folk love to give money to beggars, but black folk know they only use it for drinking, and don’t give them a cent. But, what the hell. I gave him a few quarters. So we kinda walked into the store together. I got in line at the ATM machine. He got in line with the ATM machine. That didn’t feel right. I got out of the ATM machine line and walked away. He got out of the ATM machine line and walked away. I wandered around the store for a while, and then checked the ATM machine line. He wasn’t there. I stepped into line and got my cash.
    This was a really bad neighborhood, it could get pretty ghetto. And you really had to be careful; it paid to be paranoid. I kept seeing him in the aisles, and he’d look at me and grin. I picked out all I needed and then got into the twelve and under line. He got in right behind. I left the line and walked up into an aisle to wait him out. I attributed all this to bad news on my part, but better safe—in this neighborhood—than sorry. I waited and waited, and he came charging up the aisle, giggly. He looked at me, grabbed some muffins off the shelf, and walked away. I just stood there, doing nothing. Then I peeked out to look at the twelve and under checkout. The brother was gone. So I got in line, grabbed my bags, and began to walk past all the checkouts to leave. I passed a back lady dressed pretty ghetto. She was just standing there, talking to nobody. And as I passed her, I heard her say to no one, “Well, I guess I’ll be going.”
    And she followed me out. She stopped at the store exit and just stood there, looking at everyone else but at me. I made sure I stopped under a light half way across the lot. I tried to wait her out. This went on, five, ten minutes. Finally she looked right at me and walked back into the store. I picked up my bags and walked over the rest of the lot to my building. I opened the lobby door, then I opened the two security doors, got off on the fourth floor, and made it into my apartment.
    What the fuck? Am I losing my sanity? What would’ve happened to me if I would’ve left the store with the panhandler. Or if I’d have walked across the lot with the lady watching. It’s fiction, not fact. Nerves, it’s all nerves, I wrote it off as such...you could smell my neurons sizzling.
    I emailed Kimberly a long letter. Eight pages. It was wild. I wrote how, “At first I hated Linda, Frank, and Gary the Cracker Head, then everyone at Pittsburgh Vision Services, then everyone in the city of Pittsburgh, then everyone in the United States.” Maybe I should leave the country, if I’m that perturbed. Though not to England. Amsterdam, maybe. I wrote to Kimberly that, “My shrink, Dr. Lobl., doesn’t understand how bad things are with me.” A slip up: I gave my shrink’s name.
    I had tried to talk to Dr. Lobl (I had his wife as a Chemistry teacher in high school until she died of Thyroid cancer) about my work problems, but it was like the dude was deaf. He saw everything through happy go lucky visors. “Larenz, what’s so hard about keeping a full time job?” I’ve had a lot of explaining to do over the years, as to why I can’t do things everyone else can.
    So I waited the rest of the day for Kimberly’s reply. I was not angry at her for yelling at me. I checked my account every half hour. Nothing. Finally five p.m. came around. Maybe at home she’d check her email and write me back. She never did. Six, seven, eight, nine p.m...what time does she go to sleep.
    Overdosing on Benadryl can make you blather to yourself. I would always take ten times the prescribed dosage. It makes you obsess about the most miniscule of things. All I could think of, in whirlpool fashion, were Frank, Gary the Cracker Head, and Linda, and busting back into Pittsburgh Vision Services and doing some Oom Yung Do on the three of them. At this point I was sleeping four a.m. to eight a.m. , and laying in bed eleven hours.
    Kimberly didn’t email me back one day, two days, three days, every day, on the hour, I’d check my account. Finally I couldn’t wait any longer. I called my Dr. Lobl’s machine. He called me back.
    “Yeah Larenz, what’s up?”
    “I’m really anxious about Kimberly. I emailed her three days ago, and she hasn’t emailed me back, I think—”
    “I don’t have time for this, Larenz! We’ll talk at your appointment, Thursday, 4:00!”
    “But, but—”
    “Thursday, 4:00!”
    So what did I do now? Why was he angry with me?
    Thursday, at 4:00, came around. I had seen therapists for almost fifteen years straight, and I had told them all the bad things I’d done, but never had I seen them as angry as Dr. Lobl was that day. I walked in, sat down, whoosh! He spouts off, “Kimberly sent me your email.” He stared at me. “There will be consequences if you continue to email her.”
    I shrugged my shoulders. “Why? What’s the big deal?”
    Man, did that response anger him. Rage molded his face. It was almost funny. I changed the subject since I saw, unbelievably, he was emotional about it. But he kept brining the topics back to Kimberly. He said he talked to her, and that I scared her.
    “What do you mean, ‘Scared’? I never said a threatening word to that woman.” I opined that while I was not angry with her, I had every right to be, the way she cursed me out over the phone.
    “Okay, so she got a little mad.”
    He didn’t believe me when I said Kimberly went behind my back at Pittsburgh Vision Services and yelled at Frank, Linda, John Sosnak, and Diane Salidonia. And he said, “Your email should have gone to me. Not to Kimberly. It’s not her job.”
    I shook like leaves in wind. Again, fright. So much so that I cackled. As I left, he said, “For the next week, no emails.”
    I said, “What’s the big deal? She doesn’t have to open them.” I looked at his face as I left. Man, was he pissed.
    I went back home and tried to sculpt a coherent hole out of what just happened. Lobl had no right getting angry at me over the phone and cutting our conversation off when I complained about Kimberly ignoring me. Especially if he had already seen my email to her, and she must’ve told him about what she considered my suicidal ideation. As far as “threatening” her, Kim was my “end of the line” friend. I was not angry with her and I did not threaten her.
    A psychiatrist does not have the right to order a twenty four year old man to desist emailing someone. The shrink can warn you, “Occupational Vocational Rehab might get on your case if you keep it up,” but the shrink cannot warn you, ex cathedra, “You will face consequences if you continue.” Even if I was stalking and crank calling Kimberly, he could ask, but he could not tell, he did not have the right to order me to stop. Either Kimberly had sobbed to him, and he was all in a huff over that, or he noticed my attraction to Kimberly, and was jealous (Remember, I complained to Kimberly about him, it was in the email I sent her, and she had forwarded to him). I hoped it was the latter.
    I called up Dr. Lobl’s answering machine and screamed working overtime, “I AM DONE WITH YOU! FINI! KAPUT! I’M DONE WITH SHRINKS FOR GOOD! YOU HAD NO RIGHT TO SIDE WITH KIMBERLY OVER ME! AND ORDER ME TO QUIT EMAILING HER! I KNOW HOW TO WITHDRAW FROM MY MEDS ON MY OWN! GOOD BYE!”
    I screened his return call. “Larenz, I don’t think this is the route we want to go. You sound like you need tranquilizers. I’m sorry I offended you. I want to talk about it. I’m going to keep our appointment for next Thursday, 4:00.” I wanted to reach into the machine, stick my arm down his throat, and pull out his lungs.
    Then I emailed Kimblery. “My psychiatrist said I am scaring you. I will stop emailing you. Don’t ever yell at anyone in my position like that again. Good bye.
    She replied to me via email, “I was busy, that was why I didn’t email you back. And I thought it was more appropriate for your doctor. As for yelling, we remember our conversations differently. Good luck.”
    She didn’t tell me to respond, and didn’t tell me not to respond. I assumed she didn’t want to talk to me. so I was done with her.
    The bottom dropped out of my life. I was one. I freaked as I withdrew off my meds. Wellbutrin and Klonopin, they both had nasty withdrawal symptoms. Especially Klonopin. Benzo withdrawal will eat you alive. I tried to draw it out as slowly as possible, but I didn’t have much of my meds left. I drove around way past midnight, screeching in my head, awash in animal fear. After I quit Pittsburgh Vision Services, I slept even less. I fell into a routine of waking up about one a.m., driving to the local strip club ten minutes before they closed to down a few whiskey and waters, and drive, drive, and drive. SIX MONTHS LEFT! YOU CAN DO IT!
    One morning I was up till about nine a.m., trying to jerk off to Jailhouse Sisters. I couldn’t get it up. Then I got in bed and tried to sleep for four hours. Then I got out bed and dressed and left my apartment. In the hall I saw walking towards me, the fat white chick who lived in the apartment across from me. “Did you hear what happened?!” she asked.
    “No.”
    “They let everyone in Pittsburgh go home from work early! Two planes smashed into the World Trade Centers! They are not there! They are gone! You could see people on fire, jumping, leaving smoke trails! Or two or three people holding hands and jumping on fire!”
    After I talked with her I drove to Rite Aid and bought my Nytol (It’s all Benadryl) and Slim Fast. Every day I’d make the trip to Incredibly Strange Video to rent a Sexploitation movie to jerk off to. After Rite Aid I drove to the video store, and the cokehead owner said they were no longer renting, only selling. I wasn’t going to buy a video a day, so I was done with them. I thanked him and left. I’d have to use my computer more. I watched the news for a bit, then spent all night till nine a.m. surfing for porn on the web. It took me two hours to jerk off to vidcaps of Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS. I got in bed around ten a.m.
    My friend Dave, who lived in DC, was home here for the weekend. It also happened to be my birthday. He blew me off and went out alone. He called to apologize and I told him to fuck off, another numbnuts I don’t need out of my life.
    I’d try and read to keep the cabin fever at bay. I was reading the book Clockers, that was black face at its worst. Leave it to a bleeding heart white liberal to make a hero out of a drug dealer. Dealers should get the electric chair. Those of us, looking out, know this. Those that are out, looking in, do not know this.
    One night I drove over to St. Francis Mental Health—I had been on the adolescent unit there—and I looked through the dark windows into the cafeteria. I looked forward to the Western Psychiatric Outpatient Program again, and chatting with Rocco Marciano.
    So until then, who do I talk to? My folks lived about ten minutes away. It was around nine a.m., a few hours before I wanted to try and sleep. I chugged four coffees and drove over. Being careful not to break down, I told them in general I had quit my job, and that I fired Dr. Lobl. I found a way to tell them without mentioning Kimberley.
    “I’m so sorry you’re having an awful time,” my dad said.
    I left, drove home, got in bed, wrestled around, got out of bed, paced around the room and talked to myself, got in bed around one p.m., and slept about three hours.
    Ten a.m. comes around, and I drove back to my parents’. Recap: I had not mentioned Kimberly in any way. My mom started out, in the tone you would use with an autistic, “Now about Dr. Lobl. What if you were calling this woman and terrorizing her and frightening her, and she went to Dr. Lobl for help?”
    My heart raced. The anxiety walloped me in the face. “I never terrorized anyone!”
    My mom grinned a sharp V. The whole thing with my parents was like a dainty, feminine slap to the face at a cocktail party.
    I said, “You, you, you guys, a shrink does not have the right to order an adult patient to stop emailing anyone.”
    “He does,” my mom said.
    “He does not.”
    “He does,” my dad said.
    “No he doesn’t,” I said.
    “He does,” my mom said.
    “He does not.”
    “Son, he does,” my dad said.
    So they knew something, much more than I myself ever told them. How did they find out? Did they talk with Dr. Lobl? If you quit your psychiatrist, does that declassify everything you’ve told him? My parents denied talking to him. The argument turned into a huge blow out, as they laughed it up:
    It became a routine. I would tell them I never wanted to see them again, I’d slam their door and drive home, then drive back the next day and shout at them, or stop over around four a.m. and leave a nasty message in the door. In one note I threatened to sue Dr. Lobl. My parents got a guffaw out of that.
    The ruminating was bad. Wake up at night, get a massive Benadryl high, and go bouncing off the walls like a pinball. Muttering to myself, threatening to go back to Pittsburgh Vision Services and shoot the place up. If there ever was a time to enter the Western Psychiatric Outpatient Program, it was now. Just hang in there: FOUR FUCKING MONTHS AND I’M GONE!
    When Rocco Marciano was my counselor at my previous stint there, he told me I was in his top twenty patients, but he didn’t give me the exact number. We laughed a lot about the cartoon Salad Fingers, John Waters’ earlier films, other movies like Street Trash and Blue Velvet, and the movies of Nick Zedd and Lydia Lunch and Lung Leg. He said, kinda cornily, that higher powers intervened to place me with him.
    So I called Rocco with the number Kimberly gave me. I’d register in the clinic through him. I got his answering machine. I said, “Hey man, what’s up? I’m having a bad time or a bad freak out is more like it, and I need to come back to the clinic.” I left my number and told him to call me back.
    So I waited by the minute, hour and hour, up until bedtime, and he never called back, then the next day, please dude, just call me, time passed, he didn’t call. I lay in bed and writhed like a dying centipede. After a few days, I left him another message. I stared at the phone as if I could will him to call me. I called a third time, nada, nien, zip, he never called back. An insomniac knows his bedroom infinitely better than those who sleep at night.
    One night I left my apartment, took the elevator to the first floor, unlocked and walked out the first security door, then unlocked and walked out the second security door, walked down the lobby steps and out the glass lobby doors into the open air.
    A kid in Crip colors was standing on bicycle, one foot on the ground. He was talking to someone on a mobile phone (“They’re only paying me two dollars an hour!”). I drove to Rite Aid for my Nytol and box of Slim fast. As I drove back onto my street I saw the same kid, with no bike around, and he was talking with another Crip, they were both across the street from my building. They gesticulated wildly, like they were arguing. As I parked they walked across the street and into my building. I assumed to the first security door. I did not leave my car. I just sat there for thirty seconds. They both walked out and away.
    Were they waiting for me to go through the two security doors? What would’ve happened to me if I’d walked in there with them. And then a few months ago, with the panhandler and the lady in the Giant Eagle Supermarket lot...What the hell is wrong with me? Am I going nuts? No, I was not. This was not random. It was about me in some way I did not understand.
    I tried to keep a bird’s eye POV. I trusted my intuition, but as soon as John Sosnak moved me up to Helmets, I’d suffered a streak of terrible luck. And I had never had “paranoid fits” in my life. I was diagnosed as anxious, a neurosis, not schizotypal or schizo affective or schizophrenic, the latter three would make me psychotic. And those illnesses don’t begin this late in life. As a child I’d been in many a loony bin and they never diagnosed as psychotic, or with a paranoid disorder.
    I’d waited two weeks. No call from Rocco. I’d decided I’d get into the Western psyche Outpatient Program by calling their intake. So I called them up, a nice guy answered, very polite. He pulled up my file on his computer, and then he said, “You know what? This takes too long to do over the phone. Why don’t you come in person to the intake and enter the clinic that way. Cause it sounds like you need it.” That Klonopin withdrawal was kicking my ass.
    So I know the Intake at Western psychiatric is empty around six a.m. That’s when I drove over there. They interviewed me a bit, pulled up my file on their computer, and told me to have a seat and wait. And wait. And wait. The place was dead empty. The techs flashed me wide, unctuous smiles. I didn’t think anything of it. No big deal. I saw through a window the office behind the front desk. There was an Indian—like from India—doctor arguing with a pretty blonde girl, along with two other techs.
    Finally the pretty blonde comes out and sits down next to me with a Christ like smile and puts her hand on my shoulder. She had on bubble gum lipstick. She handed me a sheet of paper and told me, “I have made an appointment for you with Suzanne Scruezy, tomorrow morning at nine a.m. She’s a supervisor at the Outpatient clinic here.” Then, “good luck” she said with strange emphasis.
    I drove around for a few hours, chugged three cups of room temp coffee, and slept from midnight to five a.m. I had a distant, distant, DISTANT thought I should buy one of those mini cassette recorders and stick it in my pocket and hit record as I walked into Suzanne Scruezy office. No, be cool. My luck’s not that bad that they’d try and keep me out.
    So it comes close to nine a.m. I drove over to the Western Psyche Partial Program., took the elevator up to the outpatient clinic, sat down in the waiting room, Suzanne Scruezy walked out and called me into her office. She was marshmallow pudgy, mid 40s, had the serious face of cop, like motherhood was boring and a waste of time. I sat down across from her. She pulled up my file on her computer. Then she froze and looked hunted and frightened. “You really don’t need to be here,” I shook. I sweated out my ass crack. I stuttered in disbelief.
    “But, but, but, I do need it. I’m in a terrible, awful state. All I do is ruminate in my apartment all night, and make an attempt to sleep during the day.”
    “Well see, that’s why we can’t let you in. You’re on the wrong sleep schedule. Good bye.”
    Bitch, “I can change my sleep schedule to make it in here. I need to get out. I’m agoraphobic.”
    “Well see, you can’t come to the program. It will trigger and stress you too much. I am an expert on insomnia. It takes years to reverse a sleep schedule. Come back to us then. Good bye.”
    “That’s not true. I’ve righted my sleep schedule plenty of times. It takes a few nights.”
    “Okay, but you don’t look good. You look scary. If you came here, you’d upset the patients. For the last time, Good bye.”
    Her reasoning was desultory, one dumb reason after another. I kept shooting them down, and she’d come up with another one, yanked out of her big fat ass. I got pretty loud. “Kimberly Sharpe has an office up here, doesn’t she?”
    “She has an office around the corner. She’s here on Thursdays.”
    “Lady, I tell you now, and believe me later, but I will find some authority and rat you out if you don’t let me in!”
    We both stood up and walked out in the hall. Then I saw Rocco leave his office. He must’ve heard me. He was shitting bricks. “What’s up, dude?” he asked. A wreath of swear ran round his forehead and a blotch of sweat above his upper lip.
    I asked, “You, how could YOU, do this to me?”
    “Rocco,” Suzanne warned, “He’s going to someone with this.”
    I walked out the building with the yellow sheet the pretty blonde gave me at the Western Psyche intake. I thought the sheet was proof of some kind that the Partial program was fucking me over. I had sweat through my deodorant, drops of sweat tickled me as they ran down my face.
    The Western Psychiatric Outpatient Program was closing ranks to protect Kimberly. Apparently, me just be around her, or even on the unit itself, was dangerous to her—not physically—in a way did not understand.
    I remembered my previous months at the Western Psyche outpatient clinic, before Pittsburgh Vision Services. There was a muscle bound counselor named Charles. He’d always flirt with the prettier patients, and try and exchange numbers with them so they could meet up after the patient left the program. He pulled his shtick with Clair, a very pretty patient. And she did not fall for Charles. So Clair and I were in a group run by Charles and Rocco. Out of nowhere, Charles yells at Clair. He tells her to leave the group and go home. Right that minute. He gave no reason why.
    She kept bitterly asking, “Why Charles, what did I do?” she said it like she already knew the answer. We all did. A few of us patients talked about it with Rocco afterwards. We all agreed Charles was a dipshit. Rocco said, shaking his head, “He really is, but we’re supposed to back up other staff..”
    I arrived home, tried and failed to jerk off to vidcaps of Barb Wire Dolls, and looked up mental health advocacy in The Yellow Pages. I was scared no one would believe me. I tried the first number. A lady answered, I told her my story, and she totally believed it, like it was a common tale. She said she could help me file a complaint. I tried another agency, and I chose this advocate cause he was closer to my apartment...I made an appointment for the next day at ten a.m. I lay in bed the rest of the day limp and blue. I did not sleep. About five a.m. I got out bed and watched all the shitty shows on at that hour.
    I chugged three cups of room temp coffee and drove out to the advocacy agency. The advocate was a geeky white boy, kind of weak-limbed, all book smarts and no real life smarts. Our people use this kid’s picture to define the word “cracker.” I showed him the sheet from the intake and he said the paper didn’t mean anything, that it was just an entrance form, and after listening to me, he, unlike the female advocate I called first, did not think there was anything wrong, that it was all a misunderstanding, all much ado about nothing, there’s no problem. He said, “Go home, I’ll call up the Western Psyche Outpatient Program, I’ll get you in, and then I’ll call you.
    So I drove home and lay awake in bed, clockwatching, waiting, waiting, WAITING for the advocate to call back. Coffee hangover induced vomiting. Finally, around 4:30, the phone rings. I ran over to it. It was the advocate. The first thing he said, straight out, “They are not letting you in.”
    I shivered like someone turned the AC down to arctic levels. “Why not?”
    His voice quaked. “They just aren’t.”
    “Why? I need a reason. They just cannot do this.”
    I kept asking why, what reason did they give, and he never answered the question, all he would do is repeat, “They are not letting you in.”
    Then he says, “I got the phone number to the St. Francis Outpatient Program.”
    “Naw man, I’m tired of the system screwing me. I want in the Western Psychiatric Outpatient Program.”
    He said he talked with Rhodya Fink, the head of the whole Western Psyche program, and Rhodya said they are not letting me in. Period. Did she bully this guy in some way?
    His voice grew taut. “You know, Larenz, I care a lot about you {Save me the horseshit, bud} and I don’t want you hurting yourself to try and get into Western Psychiatric. Whatever you do, don’t go to their intake with slashed arms.”
    I was far from doing something like that. And so our conversation ended. Ten minutes later the phone rings. Again, I race over to it. It’s the advocate, stress detectable in his voice, “Go to the Western Psychiatric Intake yourself and try and get in. Go there and try to get in. Just don’t hurt yourself.” Was it his ass if I did hurt myself?
    I looked in The Yellow Pages for attorneys that dealt with mental health issues. I found a lawyer with a free first appointment, Scott Seewald. He had an office on the fiftieth floor of The US Steel Building. I call up and made an appointment on Wedsnday of next week. A long time to wait, too long. I needed input now.
    Later that night my martial arts instructor pulled me aside and told me they’d have to “let me go” until I was in better shape. “Your form and strength and flexibility, to be blunt, are terrible. Can’t you see a doctor about your insomnia?”
    “I’m done with shrinks,” I said.
    That class was one of my few chances to be up and around other people.
    The next day around noon I left my building to walk to my car, and I saw a beat up auto parked right in front of the entrance. I knew all the cars that usually parked there, and this was not on them. Two brothers were asleep in the back seat. I drove to Rite Aid for boxes of Nytol and Slimfast, drove back to my place, and as I passed the street just before my street that same beat up car turned out behind me, and they rode me close, like bumper to bumper, too close. So I did not park at my building. I drove past it, then made a right. They kept going straight. I looked back and saw all their faces, all wide eyed, like, “Where are you going? Aren’t you going to your apartment?” I hit the gas.
    I drove around for an hour, then back to my building. I didn’t see anyone following me. I parked, and as I stepped out of my car I saw two Crips sitting on the steps leading to the first security door, looking at me with fish eyes, watching me the whole time, just itching for me to come over. As I stepped back in my car to drive off they stood up and walked out the door and left the building.
    For another whole hour I drove all over the place, then back to my apartment. No one was around. I made it into my apartment alive. So I sat down on my futon and tried to make sense of a nonsensical, Alice in Wonderland situation. What would have happened to me if I’d walked up to the security door with them sitting there? Why target me? I don’t look or dress upper class, like I have a lot of money. So it’s not that. Think...use your head...Frank. Frank and Gary. Everyone at Pittsburgh Vision Services knew I lived there. Gary had strong connections to the gang underworld due to his crack habit. So did Linda. When I quit Pittsburgh Vision Services and threatened to go tattle on them to the Bridgeville office, maybe Kimberly screamed at Frank and Linda even more, cause it was now her ass on the line too. If Bridgeville found out, Kimberly would have to explain to her own bosses why she didn’t tell them I complained. Everyone might have been pissed at Frank and Gary for being so petty, and potentially getting them into more trouble. Look at all the trouble Kimberly’s going through to keep me out of Western Psyche outpatient. So, to put the whole thing together, Frank decided to get revenge on me and hire a few Crips through Gary the Crack Head to stomp me into putty. Yes, Frank had that much of a persecution complex. To him, I was a snitch twice over.
    So I put myself in Frank’s place. Everyone at my former job knew I took martial arts. Frank would have said, “Okay, Lorenz knows Karate, so whoever jumps him, they, the Crips, have to make sure they have a knife, or a gun, or maybe five or six gang members, all of them versus him.” It wouldn’t just be an old fashioned, old school beat down. So stay one step ahead of them. Buy a piece.
    About a week later I left my apartment to drive to Rite Aid, bought my Nytol and Slim fast, and drove back. But instead of parking, I drove past my building, did random laps around the neighborhood, and only then did I park at my place. One of the same dudes from last week from last week burst out the lobby doors, yelling to his cohorts who had left and were two blocks away, “He’s here! He’s here! I told you he was just driving around!” But they just waved him off, like they were sick of waiting. Then he looked at me. I stepped back into my car and drove off, and he walked away.
    That night round four a.m. I sat up at the Denny’s bar. The guy nest to me looked at me and winced and asked pushed over his pancakes to me and asked if I wanted any. I saw the attorney tomorrow. After that I’d drive down to the South Side and buy a piece.
    I brought my parents with me to see the attorney, hoping he’d respect me more. I explained the scene in the Western Psyche Intake, with the argument in the back office. I went on about Kimberly and Suzanne Scruezy and the boss of the whole program, Rhodya Fink. The attorney believed they rejected me, but said it must be a problem with my insurance. My parents thought the same thing. What?! No! You, reading this, go back and look at all that’s happened! I heard what I heard and saw what I saw. The outpatient clinic was protecting Kimberly from me. I was a threat, albeit nonphysical. The lawyer said I needed to go to a shrink and have the shrink recommend me to the program, and if the clinic refused to let me in, THEN the attorney could take action.
    After the meeting my parents asked me if I wanted to go to Katz N Kids deli.
    Many months before, when I returned home from my failed cross country trek, my parents rode me hard. “Why don’t you ever have a girlfriend? Or a full time job? Don’t you want to be like your friends? They date around. They work nine to five jobs. Zoltan just got married.”
    I replied to them that I was already too aware of everything they said, and I told them never to pull that stunt with me again.
    So at the deli we chatted in our booth. My dad said, “So...let’s talk about...your friends. How about, let’s see...how about Scott. He has a girlfriend in LA, doesn’t he?”
    My mom said, “Or how about...Greg. He’s married with a baby, isn’t he? He works full time in Manhattan, doesn’t he?” Ad infinitum, the whole meal. But my mind was elsewhere. I needed that gun.
    My parents dropped me off at my place. I redressed in a suit and tie, and I drove over to the hardware store on the South Side. I wanted a revolver, much less chance of the gun going off accidentally. As a black man, buying a gun is the same as renting a car. If you go into a car rental agency, be sure to dress up in suit and tie, or else they’ll keep you waiting forever, and won’t rent to you. Same with buying a gun. Make sure you don’t look the least bit ghetto.
    The clerk asked if I had a criminal record. I said no. So he made the call, gave them my name, we both made small talk as the party on the other line ran my name. I came up clean. Whew. That was easy. I chose the Crimson trace. 220 Bucks plus tax. And a box of bullets, Federal Premium Hydro Shock hand gun ammo, for thirty bucks plus tax.
    The dealer only accepted cash, so I needed to walk to the nearest ATM machine four blocks away. The store would close in an hour. I did not get to sleep last night. On that sidewalk, I felt like I was on a ship in a storm. My eyes burned. I did not walk, I LUMBERED. How I hated the world, and all the people I passed. They looked at me funny.
    At the ATM there was a line. A brother stood not in line, but next to it. He asked me, “Sir, have you used this machine before?” He started to talk about how his family was bone broke, bad plumbing, etc. I’d been through this con before. It wasn’t connectd to Frank, just my copyrighted version of bad luck. I left the line and walked around for half an hour, hit Dee’s Café for four whiskey and waters, and walked back to the ATM machine. No one tried to hustle me. I ran back to the hardware store just before they closed, and bought the revolver.
    Mine, mine, mine.
    I arrived home and turned off all the lights and placed the revolver under my desk light and turned it on, so the gun was spot lit. I grabbed my camera and photographed it at different angles, the last picture looked right down the black of the barrel.
    I had bought a Safari Holster with the piece. The holster was front-waisted, so I could put my shirt over it so no one would see—just don’t shoot your dick off.
    So from then on, every time I returned from my apartment it was like a cop TV show. I’d park my car, pull the Crimson out, de-safety it, and hold it out with both hands as I kicked open the lobby doors. I’d sweep the whole area, ready to shoot. Then I’d unlock and kick open the first security door and sweep. Unlock the second security door, kick it open, sweep. Then safety and reholster the revolver and ride the elevator up to my apartment on the fourth floor.
    I called up Dr. Buchdahl to get a recommendation to the Western Psyche outpatient program. I had seen her for a bit as a child. She had an office right across from my Dr. Lobl. I called her up, left a message, waited, and she called me back the next day. I told her I needed a recommendation from her. She seemed polite, but she wanted to know about Dr. Lobl. I had never told her I saw him, and I didn’t feel like talking about him. I think she picked up on that. It seemed to decide something for her. She told me she’s chock full of patients and had no room for me, but urged me to get help, because, “It sounds like you need it.” Later I lay in bed trying to fall asleep and she called my machine, “Um, why don’t you try, um, doctor Lobl?”
    I don’t know what Dr. Lobl was saying about me, but it sure was a doozy. So I pulled out The Yellow Pages and looked for a psychiatrist. I came across Dr. Garfinkle. I had seen him a few times when I was fifteen. So I met with him, and he would not give me a recommendation until I gave him permission to look at the records of my previous psychiatrists. When I said I don’t know if I want to do that, then he really wanted their names and their records on me. A week later he had run through the records and called me up to tell me he had no room for me. “But keep on looking, cause it sounds like you need it.”
    What did Dr. Lobl write that was following me around? I had vaguely mentioned to my parents I should sue him. I never followed it up, it was just a comment. Did they tell him? Remember, when I talked with my parents about all this shit, they knew immediately about Dr. Lobl and Kimberly, etc. Are the privacy laws out the window once you quit your shrink, and they can tell anyone anything about you? As far as his records of me go, did he write in them, to protect himself, that I was litigious? Maybe he felt he needed a reason as to why he went ballistic on me that final appointment, his extreme lack of professionalism. TWO MONTHS LEFT!
    One morning, a few hours before bed, I drove by the bus stop on Shady and 5th, I saw Diane Salidonia waiting. She was the one, the kind hearted one, who, back at Pittsburgh Vision Services, did nothing wrong to me but Kimberly had yelled at her anyway and made her cry. I pulled over and asked her if she wanted a ride. She stepped in. It was super cold and the snowflakes fell at the size of silver dollars. It was nice to talk to her. I told her I was sorry I got her into trouble. She didn’t say anything back. Then I said, “Let Frank and Gary the Cracker Head know their boys are pretty unprofessional.”
    I saw about four more shrinks, and it didn’t matter how much I told them Lobl was a crank, once they got my records, they didn’t want to have anything to do with me, and left me with a “Sounds like you need it.”
    The Marin family and our family were best friends. My parents and the Marins had grown up together. Bob Marin, the father, was a doctor on an inpatient—not outpatient—floor at Western Psyche Institute and Clinic. All those months my parents grew anxious, and they bugged me, “It doesn’t matter that Bob’s an inpatient and not an outpatient doctor. All we need is for him to say the word, and you’re in the Western Psyche Outpatient Program.” But that would be cheating. I was fine with help from an advocate or a lawyer, nothing nepotistic about that. But I didn’t want to get in through Bob, a family friend.
    So I made an appointment to meet with Bob. ROE were he was just there to listen, and he would take no action. Problem is I come off hyper vigilant. It’s those damn film school days. Bob didn’t believe a word I said. At least the attorney and the advocate pretty much believed me. Bob used himself as an example, his story ending with, “I was so stressed out I did not perceive the situation correctly.”
    The night before Christmas Eve I was up at the Denny’s bar, listening to the Christmas Muzak. I chatted with a sista next to me. I didn’t find her attractive, I just wanted to talk. A black waiter came over to talk to her, and I saw they were a couple. She introduced him to me, but he must’ve thought I was flirting, since he looked agitated and ignored me. Then, the next night, I sat at the Denny’s bar with a few other louts. I guess the waiter from last night forgot who I was, because he treated me, treated us all, with a lot of sympathy and care.
    Way past midnight, on New Year’s Eve, I was driving around, and I saw a pretty Asian chick waiting for a bus on Murray. Buses were closed for the night. I stopped and asked her if she needed a ride. She got in. Surprised me. Shouldn’t be so trusting. I dropped her off at her apartment in Squirrel Hill. She gave me a peck on the cheek and stepped out. I got home, kicked open both security doors with my piece, holding the Pierce Stance, and made it up to my apartment. In my bathroom my aim was not too good and I pissed myself.
    For a long time I wanted to buy a Joel M. Reed picture, Sex by Advertisement. I would have bought it from Incredibly Strange Video but they didn’t have it. I tried all over the web, never did I encounter a movie that was that hard to find. I emailed the director, he replied he had no copies. I checked amazon, but they didn’t have it, so I put word out all over Amazon that I was looking for it, and a few days later an Amazon seller contacted me. He said he had it on video, used (This was long before Amazon had solid standards). So I used a credit card and bought it for ninety dollars. The seller told me if I wanted to track it in the mail, not to use Amazon, but a site called www.buyrite.com. I was all excited. I couldn’t wait. After four days it hadn’t arrived.
    I’d go down and check for mail two, three times a day. I should have checked the web site he gave me. instead I emailed the seller. He responded, “Oops. I forgot about it. I’ll slip it in the mail today.”
    So I checked my mail another three, four days. No video. I was beginning to worry. I emailed him again. “Damn it! Why do I keep forgetting? I’ll mail it out today.”
    I went onto www.buyrite.com, the site he told me I could track the video on, and when I clicked on “Track my Order” the words popped up “Coming Soon!” He had conned me. I freaked. My heart raced. I shat myself. I checked back at Amazon, and they said you can get a refund up to fourteen days from the purchase date. I had bought it eight days previously, so I was able to get a refund. Whew. I complained to Amazon. I told them this seller was a joke, and gave them the web address of the phony site he used. “I told on him.”
    And then, THREE WEEKS later, a package arrived in the mail. I opened it. It was Sex by Advertisement. Now you tell me what happened. I cancelled the order. I did not pay for it. I got all my money back. So why would he send it not when I asked him to, but three weeks later? Why would he send it at all?
    When the package arrived, harassment over the web began. For the first time since I bought the computer, AOL warned me that emails I received had viruses attached. So I didn’t open them. AOL directed me to send them to the AOL authority, which I did. Every day, something would come. I just forwarded them to AOL HQ., which was called TOS.
    I belonged to the Microsoft Depression Forum. I had it listed on my Favorites menu. The idiot trying to sabotage me must’ve dug into my Favorites and also must have been able to tell I wasn’t opening the viruses he was sending me, because he sent me a nasty tidbit in the topic of an email, so even if I didn’t open it, I’d see the topic, “Larenz71, Join the Microsoft Depressive Forum!” He’d go to forums I belonged to and spread word around that I was a blonde haired, blue eyed, crew cut skin head. Every day I’d wake up and see some type of harassment. I’d log in to find I’d been kicked off another forum. It baffled me: Why would they believe him over me? It really limited my time on the computer. I’d end up getting enraged, and for a message to the forum I’d just slam and bang the computer keys and press enter: “dfgffhdeestrth”
    One night I crawled naked from my computer to my bathroom. My head was like bumper car arena. Frank, Gary the Crack Head, Linda...I should have shot the place up. A final stand. Sometimes I’d park by the Schenley Golf Course to watch the sun come up. I’d sit there and blast off on tangents about Western Psyche Outpatient Clinic, Kimberly Sharpe, Rocco Marciano, Suzanne Scruezy, and even the attorney, who said the reason they weren’t letting me in was about insurance...everyone, everything, everywhere...
    One night, in my neighborhood, I parked my car near a bus stop, just to day dream and ruminate. There was a guy there with supermarket bags. He kept looking at me, and finally he bolted, I mean ran, he took off. In this neighborhood it paid to be paranoid.
    One morning I sat in my car in my parents’ driveway, procrastinating going in and dealing with them. A pulsing sphere of light shot down from the sky to behind the horizon of houses and trees. When I walked into my parents’ house I totally forgot to mention it.
    They didn’t deride me today. Why were they both so antsy? They pushed me to let Dr. Bob Marin get me into the Western Psyche Outpatient Clinic. Lots of anxious micro expressions from them. I said I’ll get a recommendation from a shrink. They pointed out no doctor would deal with me. “I’ll find one sooner or later,” I said.
    I drove back to my apartment. As I walked down the hall on my floor, I noticed my door was the only door with a peep hole. Don’t ask me, I just work here.
    I slept about three hours. Lay in bed about five hours. At night Dr. Bob Marin called. Lots of “ums” between his words. He told me he called Rhodya Fink, the supervisor of the whole Western Psyche outpatient program, and he asked why they rejected me. Fink used euphemisms to say that Suzanne Scruezy was incompetent, and that’s why she didn’t let me in. WHAT? BULLSHIT! If you care to, go back though this story and you’ll see “incompetence” was NOT the reason. So Bob told me I was in the program. I told him he was not supposed to take any action without my consent, and hung up on him.
    My parents told him too call. I told them not to pull any stunts like this.
    I raced in hyper drive over to their house.
    “You told Bob to call the clinic! I told you not to do that!”
    My mom laughed. “Son, we did nothing of the sort.”
    “The plan was, we get in my way, without Bob! I don’t want to be in the clinic now!”
    My mom smirked: “Son, you will never be happy.”
    Then I went deaf, it was an epiphany of biblical proportions, the reflection of a lit match in the eye. I saw, but didn’t hear, my parents laughing, shaking their heads, all mute, and it came to me, in neon, on a marquee: “You two are evil.”
    They both sobered up. I had shocked them.
    “I’m done with you two. For good. I’m outta here.”
    As I left my mom lost her forked serpent tongue and turned importunate. “I mean, you’ll never be happy if you don’t go into the program.”
    I left, slamming the door. Good riddance.
    I tried to come up with a game plan: I cannot keep this lifestyle up. It’s stressing the shit out of me. My brain stretched taut. Every time I step out I wonder if I’ll make it back in alive. I can’t do this. I just can’t. I asked my parents if I could stay with them till my lease is up. But they didn’t believe a word I said, pointing out Bob Marin proclaimed me paranoid and schizo. But I was dead if I stayed here. What to do?
    Stay at a hotel. I drove out about half an hour to The Palace Inn. It used to be an apartment building, it was twenty stories high. And I had the place to myself. No one vacationed there. I brought my own coffee machine—hotel coffee is usually too weak.
    Per usual, I slept through the day and stayed up all night. My second night there I got in about four a.m. A cab was waiting about a block from the entrance. As I passed him he pulled out and followed me to the lot entrance. Then he stopped, and I parked, stepped out of my car, and noticed a guy sat in his car—the car running, it was super cold. He did not get out. He just watched me. The dude was scruffy and long haired. Caucasian. How did they find me? This is serious. And I couldn’t walk in holding my piece, that’d alarm the clerk. I walked up to the front desk and pointed out to the lady clerk that gangbangers were after me, on her property.
    “Sir, I cannot comment on that. I can say they are not gang members.”
    The next night I knocked on Wolf Face’s window. “Who are you? Quit following me.” He ignored me.
    Then who were they? They had to have the hotel’s permission to be there.
    I tried to put it together in my head...think...a cab follows me to the lot entrance, and then Scruffles sits in his car watching me...these guys weren’t connected to the Crips or my previous job in any way...private investigators. That’s their M.O., to park in front of the house or building they’re surveiling, and sit out there with their microphones pointed at the targeted area. But who paid? PI’s are expensive. My parents had the money. But why hire PIs now, and not when I lived in my apartment? I called my folks up. They said they didn’t know what I was talking about. An out and out lie. They really pushed me to go into the Western Psyche Partial Program.
    And the maids always woke me up around noon to ask if I needed some towels, even though I told them over and over, not to wake me in the afternoon. One night I was in my room, naked, and I did a jump flying sidekick, and I heard someone next door laugh.
    I stomped down to the lady clerk. “Old woman, if there are PIs watching me in your hotel they have to have your permission to be in here. So get them off the property.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. If there’s a problem, I’d contact your parents. They’ve been calling here, yelling that you’ve moved into this hotel cause you’re going to kill yourself.”
    “That’s a crock of shit. You don’t know my parents. They are frightening psychos. I came here to get away from my apartment. It’s a hazardous place to live. I ask you, standing there, me, standing here, do you have cameras in my room.”
    “Only you can answer that, sir.” Note the non-answer answer.
    So I looked around my room. Where would they place the camera? The TV speakers? I looked in them, but it was too dark to see. An empty light switch socket? I looked under the bed. Nothing, except for a big long screw. I left it there and drove to Denny’s for breakfast before bed. When I returned back to my room I saw someone had taken the screw and placed it on my pillow. It appears people will stomp all over your constitutional rights if they feel you’re a threat to yourself.
    So around four a.m. the next night I paged through the Yellow Pages, looking for private investigators. If I could find proof to show my brother and sister that my mom and dad were harassing me this way, maybe they’d put pressure on mom and dad, and get them to lay off. I found a PI agency open twenty-four hours.
    “Hi sir. I wanted to know if you could tell me how I can prove a PI’s following me?”
    He was gruff. “You can hire us and we’ll follow you and tell you if someone’s following you.”
    “I don’t have the money.”
    “Well, you can drive down a one way street the wrong way and see if they follow.”
    “No, I need something on paper.”
    “In that case, take down their plates, and for thirty bucks a plate, I’ll run each one, and print out for you their occupations.
    “Do cab drivers act as PI’s?”
    “They can, but rarely. They’re pretty expensive.”
    Around six a.m., in the dark, I drove to the Denny’s ten minutes away from me, pulled in the lot, and I saw a brother outside, I assumed for me, part of the op. I drove out the parking lot and drove to The Denny’s fifty minutes away, in the North Hills. As I drove up to the lot entrance I saw a North Hills Sheriff’s Dept. car coming the opposite way. By the time I drove into the lot, he was right behind me. He sounded his sirens. I parked; the deputy stepped out, and told me I didn’t have a plate. Someone had stolen it at The Palace Inn.
    So I ate, drove home, the cab follows me from to the parking lot. But he had a Texas plate. Then in the lot I see the PI car parked and running with a Minnesota plate. Before this, both of them had had Pennsylvania plates.
    I copied down his plate, then went up to my room to call the PI agency.
    “Do not call here again! I got nothing to say to you! Good bye!”
    “But I got a plate!”
    “It’s out of state! I can’t run it! Adios!”
    “Wait! Wait! Just let me ask you one thing! Why would a PI steal your plate? Just answer me that!”
    “It keeps you stationary. If you drive around that makes surveillance harder. So with no plate you’re less likely to drive around, cause cops will keep pulling you over. Good bye, and don’t call back!”
    The next night around four a.m. I drove to The Denny’s I had retreated from yesterday. No one was waiting outside. When I got to the bar the waitress, who was black, was pretty terse. I gave her my order and she didn’t move, just screamed it across the way at the chef, who I noticed was the same guy who stood outside yesterday. As I ate, she kept giving me the evil eye. She said to the chef, “Some of our own people think they’re too uptown for us. Like all of us are violent, muggers, and killers, and that we all talk in Ebonics, like we live in The Projects.”
    He kept replying to her, over and over, “I stay out there to catch a bus.” I drove back to The Palace Inn and stomped up to the lady clerk. “Lady, how is it protecting me by terrorizing me with a screw. I don’t need this.”
    “They said it’s to show you that you have no privacy, so that if you try and kill yourself, we will see you and barge in and protect you from yourself.”
    “Hey skank, if I go home, I’m dead. Got it? Dead. Comprende?” My hands shook.
    “If you went home, maybe your parents might calm down and lay off.”
    Later that night I picked out a Playboy I had brought with me. I knelt down on the carpet and began. Every time I got hard, I heard footsteps across the floor above me. So I kept going limp. Every time I tried to get it up, someone would walk across the room over mine. I could not engage. Finally I gathered up my coffee machine, checked out, and drove home. There was no avoiding it. The final act would play itself off in my apartment.
    Like a countdown—T minus ten days, T minus nine days, T minus eight days. I thought it over, and I decided to enter the Western Psyche outpatient Clinic, even if just for a couple of days, to make a point, and even though I told Bob not to get me in. So I called up the intake and I was made officially a patient. My start day would be tomorrow. I had a lot to say in the groups, I’d tell all the patients how the head, Rohdya Fink, Rocco Marciano, Suzanne Screuzy, and especially Kimberly, had tried to Jones me.
    That night I tried jerking off to some Playboys. Too droopy to get a good grip. My phone rang. I picked it up. “Hi Larenz. It’s Kimberly. I’m down here in the lobby.” Holy shit. What did she want? I hid my Crimson under my futon and rushed down through the two security doors into the lobby, and let her in. She was made up and carried a purse and smelled of perfume.
    “You’re the last person I expected to see,” I said. She hugged me, too long.
    “Can we go up to your apartment?” she asked.
    “Sure.”
    We stayed quiet in the elevator as the bell chimed past each floor.
    Back in my room I noticed I had forgotten to put away the Playboys. I think this made her gag. I shoved them under my futon. “That’s okay, I don’t mind,” she said.
    She breathed in deep. “Okay, I want to be here, but if you tell anyone I was here, I’ll deny it.”
    “Fair enough. That’s okay. I won’t tell anyone.” I got seepage. That’s where a trickle of sperm leaks out your dick like a bad faucet.
    “Your eyes are red,” she said, as she ran her hands through my fro. “I am sorry for yelling at you over the phone like that. I’m in way over my head here.”
    “I know, I know. It’s a no win situation for both of us.”
    She went on, “I have a life. If you enter that outpatient program you will kill my career. You’re the most innocent person in all of this, but please, go to St. Francis Outpatient, not Western Psyche. A dark, make up colored tear, rolled down her cheek like a snail.
    “Okay, okay, don’t cry about it.”
    Then she got down on her knees and unsnapped my pants. I pushed her off. “Holy shit! Kimberly! You don’t need to do that! To yourself! Don’t do it to yourself!” She looked up, her face tear streaked; she looked Goth.
    “Jesus Christ, I will not enter the Western Psyche Outpatient Program,” I said.
    She sat down next to me and broke down and put her face in her hands. “Promise me,” she said, “Swear.” She pulled a bible out of her purse. “Swear on the bible.”
    I put my hands on it. “I swear to Allah, Vishnu, and Yaweh, I will not enter your clinic.”
    “Because all I wanted was to help to you.”
    “Because all you wanted was to help me.”
    I saw her out. When we stepped out into the lobby, she said, “Thank you, for, you know what, thanks.”
    FOUR DAYS LEFT. Screw the St. Francis outpatient program. I wouldn’t go in. I’d be gone soon anyway. Frank and Gary the Cracker Head would not follow me to my sister’s in Sherman Oaks, California. That’s off their radar.
    That night I stopped off at The Cricket Strip Club just before close for my four whiskey and waters, drove around aimlessly, returned to my apartment building. I parked and walked up to the lobby doors with my Crimson drawn and de-safetyed, walked up to the first security door, stuck my key in and kicked it open. Nothing. Then the same with the second security door. No one. I safety’d it and shoved it in my Safari holster, my shirt fell over it, and I made the usual thanks to a higher power for not blowing my dick off.
    I got in the elevator, not too relaxed, and stepped off onto my floor, and then, a smashing pain to the back of my head. Someone grabbed my collar and I felt what must be the muzzle of a gun at the back of my head, pushing me forward from behind, virtually choking me.
    He said, “Finally! Gotcha bitch!” I lost my balance, he was pushing me too fast. “Don’t say nothing. Just walk.” I gagged. I made a choking sound.
    My revolver.
    He said, “You didn’t think we could get past those doors did ya?”
    It was weird. I wondered what chemicals my brain was activating, knowing it was endangered. I kept tripping and trying to catch my breath. We arrived at my door. Everything told me to scream for help.
    “Open it,” he said quietly.
    I dug into my front pocket for my keys. Should I go for the gun? I paused. My hands shook. “Go,” he said, twisting my collar even tighter. I pulled out my keys and opened the door. the guy holding me shoved me into the room, I turned around to look at them as his cohort shut the door and locked it. They were both Crips, around fifteen.
    “187, Football,” the gun holder’s partner told his friend. There were only two of them.
    I would have a single chance to go for my revolver. One chance.
    The gun holder said, “Now how does it feel, snitch? You’re a bad role model for our people. Hey Damien, look at the yellow spots on his computer.
    I saw a way out and gulped. “You need me to close the blinds, don’t you? So no one sees?”
    “Yeah G, do it,” the gun holder said.
    I turned my back to them, and walked up to the window with my back to them. My gun. I just stood there. Thoughts of bullets in my body if I miss.
    “Do it!” he yelled. I stretched the string and the blinds collapsed over the window. But the slits were open. I turned the rod to screw them shut. Now or never. He yelled again.
    I dug into my holster, de-safteyed the Crimson, grabbed the handle, spun around and fired. BAP! BAP! BAP! BAP! BAP! BAP! I kept pulling the trigger even though it was empty.
    He wasn’t quick enough. He had dropped his gun to his side, and had no chance to raise it. The five rounds hit him in the chest, like squibs, and he was dead before he hit the carpet. One round splashed through his partner’s leg. He screamed, unlocked the door, and took off. Then I don’t know what happened, I lost my memory. The next thing I know, my neighbors filled the room. One of them pressed rags against the dead Crip. I reached down to hug the dead kid, but my neighbors pulled me away. I saw one of them had taken my gun. The iron smell of the blood and the smoky scent of the gun filled the room. Cops came and called everyone out. I told the homicide what happened, and who was to blame, and where they worked. They interviewed me for a few hours at The Shadyside Substation.
    I spent the next two nights at my parents’ house, while my room was a crime scene. Then, the cops took down the tape, and I could go back in. A homicide took me for a walk around the block. “Plausible Deniability,” he said. “These guys you mentioned at your job. They might’ve put a hit on you, but there is no evidence they paid the two kids, or even talked with them. The kid you shot in the leg said they were there to mug you, and said he knows nothing about a hit on you. He’s not snitching.” The Homicide took out his wallet and handed me a business card of a company that cleans crime scenes.
    Then he put his arm around me and said, ‘Brother, you better leave town. The kid you killed, Football, his brother are hi rankers and shot callers. Word around the camp fire is they’re already after you.
    “In two days I’m moving to Sherman Oaks, in California.”
    He gave a social laugh. “Ah ah. I don’t think you understand. Crips are in just about every city on the map. They’re like a fucking network. And they’re all chimped out over this. What are the chances they’d find you if you moved to California. Not much, if you move to the right place. But they want you bad, like real bad, bad enough to track you in a city with no gang bangers. I think you should leave the country. At least for a year or two. Better safe than sorry.
    After that talk a cop car hung out outside as I got up to my apartment and boxed all my goods. My eyes were on fire. The blood crackled when you stepped on it. I called the moving company and rerouted them from Sherman Oaks to The A1 Storage Company here in Pittsburgh. I called the airport to schedule a flight to Amsterdam. I drove to The Social Security Office in East Liberty. When you walk in there to the immediate right there’s a wall full of brochures, anything you ever wanted to know about Social Security. I browsed, looked around, and finally found what I wanted: “Receiving Social Security Abroad” it listed all the countries you could receive SSI and SSDI in. I read, I read, and...jackpot! They accept it in Amsterdam. Ha. Downers and hookers galore. Having trouble sleeping? Buy some Perkeset. Hostels. Eurochicks. No racism like in England and the US. In that city they think every brother is a hip hop star. White chicks there go ape shit over us, like we’re built with three legs. I didn’t call the crime scene cleaning company. Let the landlords do it. I stopped by a sewer and tossed in my Crimson and its ammo.
    The next afternoon I went back up to my apartment a last time. I wasn’t sleeping at all. One day left here. I picked up one of the rags my neighbors had used to try to stop the blood. The rag was dark and stiff. It did not fit in my pocket.
    I left my apartment for good—good riddance—and drove to Pittsburgh Vision Services. People there didn’t look happy to see me. But I wasn’t there to see them. I was too run down to care what they thought of me. I got to the elevator and pressed three for Linda’s floor. The elevator door opened and I walked out. I saw Gary the Cracker Head across the room. “Hey Gary, how’s it going!?”
    Gary stole a quick look at Frank. Everyone had heard me yell, and now all eyes were on me. Linda walked out of her office. Did she know anything about all this? She looked over at Frank. I walked up to his sewing station, and threw down the blood-encrusted rag. “What do you got to say now?” I asked. He wouldn’t look at me. His fingers shook. “I have no street smarts, yet here I am. Alive. You should have hired more competent people. Peace out, partner.” I gave him the peace sign and walked out.
    I drove back to my parent’s house and spent another sleepless night there. Then, next day, it was time to leave. I’d leave my car in their driveway. I hugged them both and told them I’d call them. I meant it. They drove me to the airport in Moon Township. I felt myself fall into a doze as the plane lifted off. Finally...I was off, I was alive, and I was ready to live life all over again.

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