Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Our American Neighborhood

Rain is pouring down outside the window right now and I find it more annoying than soothing. It sounds more like God or Mother Nature or whatever is taking a piss on the world. That's what winter is like.

There's a narrow alleyway between this house and the next with about a nine foot drop from the window. In the summer time it seems like people are constantly walking through there and it feels like they're just cutting through the yard. Indeed, kids who didn't live here were using the backyard to smoke pot, as I found out once the warm weather arrived, and one time I went to grill some hamburgers on the back porch and some cops had kids in handcuffs. One of the cops came inside the house and told me that the next time I saw someone who was unauthorized to sit there acting like it was their home, I should call 911. Turns out there were some issues with drug dealers using the alleyways to deal their wares and things were getting a little bit closer to bad. But the cops were monitoring the area and it seemed to clear up after that. Damn socialist cops, using our tax dollars to clean up crime!

I was kind of in a rush when I began living in this place. I moved back to DC two autumns ago after a summer in Ohio and a winter and spring in Lebanon and I didn't have much money to start. That September I took a temporary place in a group house in Columbia Heights, a neighborhood you wouldn't dare walk in at night ten years ago. It's now fully developed with a Target and Best Buy and box stores like that. You can't even find a little market for several blocks because they were all wiped out by what we call "development." I suppose in this case "development" really was development because it also wiped out most of the human trash that had made this place uninhabitable for good souls. Despite all the chains, it still has character to it. And characters, too.

I thought I'd be traveling a lot on my own when I took this place a month later and the price was a steal for the area. I had to share a bathroom and kitchen with others, but I didn't mind that. There's no other common area so it feels like my space is my space. Then last summer Chris moved in and now there's no space. It's a good tradeoff, though. :)

In the summer you have to walk pretty far to get to real green space, which usually I don't mind, but if I'm not in the mood to go to far I'll walk the half block from the house to the neighborhood square - I guess it's called Kenyon Square - and sit there with a book and watch the people. This is the square where the farmers market sits in the warm months and the Christmas tree in December, though this past December some asshole knocked the tree over before Christmas and they didn't bother putting it back up. Anyway, one time during the summer I was sitting there texting someone when I overheard this fifty year old black guy chatting up this teenage Asian girl. I say the races because it was not a pairing you'd normally think of; there was something off about it. I began to eavesdrop on the conversation - the guy thought she was "pretty" and he wanted to help her out with a job. He was in the "modeling" business and thought she could be a model. The disturbing conversation went on for a bit and he handed her a business card. It didn't occur to me at the time to warn the girl not to contact him because I thought he was just a disgusting old man. Turns out he was the most disgusting, despicable type of human being scumbag on the planet. After the girl left, he strutted (more like limped) over to a guy whom he called his business partner and they started up a conversation in lowered voices. I got bits of it. That was enough.

He realized I was typing on my phone and he said, "She's reporting us, that bitch reporting us." They hurried out of there. I had only been texting a friend but I immediately looked for a sex trafficker site so I COULD report him. I gave a description of the scum and what I had overheard. Later I learned that the area was once a hotbed for human trafficking.

That's slavery, for those who don't know.

I never saw that guy again. He probably moved on to another part of the city, but I hope something awful happened to him. Human trafficking - largely in the form of sex slavery - is a global industry that generates billions of dollars for scumbags of all races and nationalities. It's allowed to exist because there is great demand by men with no respect for women.

Unfortunately, Bad exists in this world. You're never going to get rid of it all, and you can't hide from it, because it will find you. Once you accept this, you can live a much fuller life. Fear destroys people; it's destroying our country's social cohesion. More and more Americans think it's perfectly acceptable to kill another human being for trying to take their shit. More and more would rather arm teachers than spend tax dollars to get at-risk kids an equal education that would keep them out of jail.

The cops - funded by taxpayer dollars - cleared out the drug dealers. I reported the slave trader. It takes all of us, folks, to nurture America. If you don't get that, you've been living in a bubble. Come on up to Columbia Heights - I'll show you around.

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