It was a sort of group home I was living in, where the rent was only $250 a month for this basement room. We used to sit on the stoop, like anyone else, drinking our forties and sometimes smoking weed. Usually we smoked weed inside, but we weren't opposed to it--the police hardly ever came through our neighborhood. One night, we were just sitting there smoking cigarettes, my friend Dameka and ...

One night, shortly after I moved into this place from my rented room on Odd Street, I was standing on my porch with no shirt on and smoking a cigarette. I was pretty high. A girl walked into the building from the parking lot with her boyfriend. He was like holding her by the arm and she didn't look very happy. She had gigantic breasts, I remember. I decided to take a nap before going to work...

This is the first place I ever lived on my own, in this three-bedroom house in the darkest parts of the Athenian ghetto. I worked at a place not far from it, called DialAmerica, and I would walk home each night tired and worried about getting robbed. I remember the first time I got a paycheck, I went to the nearby Shell station and bought Winston cigarettes for the first time, they were $3.75 a...

When we were kids, before my cousin was killed in a car accident and before I left the state, we were outside my aunt's house there on Park Street, throwing snowballs and building snow forts. Eventually we tired of fighting and throwing snow balls at each, so we turned on the traffic. First we built a little bunker behind which we could hide. We kept chucking snow balls at cars and hitting th...

I didn't know what I was going to do. I was in terrible financial shape. My wallet was empty. I had even recently been robbed, but there had been money following that. I was just broke, now. I'd spent all my money getting to New York. Right off the China Town bus I'd taken from DC, I found some labor. A couple guys were hucking and breaking down these boxes. I offered to help them for whatever...