We felt the hostility of the city the second we pulled into town.
Everyone was in on the grift and Adrian and I were the Marks.
The flophouse advertised as a hostel was straight out of a skid row novel.
Our baseball tickets were juiced up by about 50 bucks and we knew because
the patrons sitting next to us had sold them to the guy we’d bought them from.
No bar or restaurant was open past 9 pm on a Monday night in the middle of downtown.
This was no Wrigleyville.
As we meandered about just trying to find any place that would sell us food,
some middle aged Italian guy was halfway inside his car
yelling at some poor woman standing on the other side
sobbing loudly; head in hands
it was surreal
and I was mostly mesmerized by
a similar image from the night before
of me berating my own sobbing girlfriend
as she was halfway getting into her car,
because she had tricked me into
thinking she’d eaten all my weed brownies–a whole panful.
“HEY NIGGER!” The Italian man yelled in my direction. Snapping me out of my stupor.
“What are you looking at?”
My buddy gasped.
I laughed. “Nothing man. Just minding my business” is what I wanted to say.
Instead we just kept walking, laughing awkwardly at our luck,
stomachs growling.
It was really unfortunate that the Royals weren’t in Kansas City
until Tuesday.
It would’ve made for a much nicer trip.
~Bob E. Freeman
Nuclear Polio Vaccination 