Damn, This is Pussy Fever

 

Boo (certainly not his real name) looked like a short, chubby MC Hammer impersonator, mainly because of the gold wrap-around glasses.  Really friendly.  He lived on the block his whole life.  His sister, a really large red-headed girl with black freckles and a wheezy voice always sat out on the front stairs and offer sexual favors to anybody walking by for five dollars (Baltimore prices!).  If anything, her only clients was the occasional construction worker put up to it by his friends.   

She would also always ask me to borrow five dollars.  The one time I gave in and gave her five dollars, Boo never looked at me the same.  He would give this dissapointed, frustrated squint as if his whole life he's had to live with his sister just sitting on the steps, smoking, and trying to turn tricks while he worked for the DC parks department all day and he didn't want anybody encouraging her.  That's just a guess. I'm not sure what really went on there.

They had a vicious German Shepherd named Tammy who would bark until her throat was hoarse if anyone came near their backyard, but she'd then completely switch and become the friendliest puppy when Boo was around.  One day, Boo's mom, who must have never left the house, died, and we watched the ambulance take her away.  Boo showed me some pictures of her and Tammy in happier times.  A few days after that, in the middle of the night, Boo ran out of his house screaming and hollering, without a shirt, and proceeded to roll around in the street yelling, "Momma, I'm coming to you". 

He must not have taken it well; his mom dying, and his sister then dying, who I later found out was actually his brother, sent Boo a little crazy.  He invited a group of drug dealers to stay in his house.  They turned the backyard into a chop shop for bikes and sat out on the front in lawn chairs seeing if anybody was wanting.  One day, there was a bust by the cops who arrested half the house.  Some guy, who I'd never seen before, came up in a fancy car after the cops left and started screaming in the streets about "she fucked me over" repeatedly Marion Barry-style.  A day or two later, Boo died, from what we were told was a heart attack after he was pulled over by the cops.  We never saw him again.

The dealers continued to occupy his house for a solid month until another family member finally found out about the situation, kicked everybody out, and sealed the house up with plywood.  The house had become such a fixture of vice at that point, that people continued to break in, pull plywood off the doors and windows, just to do what they did before.  Failing that, they would climb through an opening in the fence and use the small shed in the backyard.  When the fence was redone to block the entrances, somebody took the effort of ramming their car into the fence to knock it down and gain access to the carnal shed of ickiness.  At some point the house was sold, gentrified and a couple of environmental kids on interships moved in.

I found this note stapled to a page from a pornography magazine in the thrown-out remnants of Boos' mystery shack after they kicked out the dealers.  I scanned it in for reference for all future inhabitants of that house.  Then I autoclaved everything it had ever come near. 

 

—September 11th, 2009

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