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 ...

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...

One night I was walking home from a place I worked, a pub in East Baltimore called the Life of Reilly. I was on the bridge near home, I lived on St. Paul St. I was just minding my business, smoking a cigarette, tired as a dog, walking along. There was another man on the bridge, probably about a hundred yards up the way. He was just minding his own. I'm not sure if the date is correct on this, ...

It was 10:45 Saturday night. The air was cool and crisp. But one house stood out from all the rest. That was Mr. Hernandez' house. Sirens squealed, police lights flashed, and the groggy, uninterested voices of the police officers filled the air. A silver Mercedes pulled into Mr. Hernandez' driveway. Pete Lawson stepped out of his brand new silver Mercedes. He was about 5'8'', and 180lbs. He had...

DOWN BY THE OLD MILL POND: Sixth grade was pretty exciting for me. It was the grade where my teacher acknowledged my writing skills to the whole class and to the PTA. She read one of my stories to them and I got a reward. You would think that after having such a good experience in school that I would have had sense enough to leave well enough alone. But no, I had to push my luck. My best fr...