these street lights will inspire you
So Detroit’s now smoke free and Chris is all for it. She’s never lived in Detroit but I guess she’s into Detroiters having their liberties taken away. Brad told me this when I went to visit him in Bushwick, which is the new Williamsburg.
I went there first btw, Williamsburg. I got off the train ready to hate on it with all the extreme beards and asymetrical hair cuts. Trust me there were tons of them but I breathed through it. Hating hipsters is too easy, it’s like punching munchkins. Shit’s played. The bottom line is hipsters are people too, just dumb people.
Being in Williamsburg everything’s so fucking cool!! We ate at the hipster BBQ joint with Debbie Wunder and Punk Rock Rusty. At first I was skeptical but I gotta tell ya, I got the ribs and brisket, the meat fell off the bone. Fell off the fucking bone.
I saw a girl there in pink jumper getting a jug of beer from the bar. I fell in love. I do this every now and again, fall in love with strangers. I’m like that James Blunt song where he sees the chick on the subway and writes about loving her. I’m like the white James Blunt. I’m the James Blunt of hip hop.
I’m a fuckin fag.
She was pretty but not a knock out, but it wasn’t her features that got me. It was her smile, she had me with her smile. It was warm and kind and her eyes lit up when she spoke to people.
She smiled like she’d been loved as a child.
I wanted her to be my girlfriend. I wanted her to smile like that at me. I wanted her to wake up with me every morning and give me that smile bed, and kiss me before she brushes her teeth with her hair all messy and hop up to make tea and start her day.
And maybe when I’m being grumpy and difficult I want her to smile and say, “Oh Jude, you’re being ridiculous.”
And melt my heart.
I wanted her to have my kids, I wanted to get her pregnant. She looked like she’d be a good mom with her kind eyes. I think I love her. But what do I know, I’ll just finish my ribs and drink my whiskey, like a cowboy.
She was in the doorway when I we left. I had to speak.
I said, “Excuse me miss.”
She turned around startled. she said, “Yes?”
I looked her in her eyes, said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m not hitting on you, I don’t want nothing from you, I don’t even live out here. But lemme tell you, you are the most beautiful woman in this place. Just take that for what it’s worth.”
She looked taken aback at first and then she smiled at me, with her mouth and with her eyes. And it felt as good as I thought it would. I walked away wishing I would’ve said something more. Something clever, something heartfelt, maybe ask to call her. But I didn’t. I said what I said and now it’s off to Bushwick.
The bar was on Wilson and Troutman. The block reminded me of 70’s New York in the movies, with the people on the stoops and the girls in their little shorts popping bubble gum talking to the guys hanging out the window.
The cars drove by with their Puerto Rican flags and their loud music. I was laughin with Chris, they had Puerto Rican flags everywhere, on the porches, on the roofs, all over.
They might as well have been white flags, it’s over for ‘em. Cuz if I’m in your neighborhood coming for specialty cocktails and grass fed beef chili, you might as well give up.
The white people are coming, and where we go, death and destruction follow. Death, destruction and carrot, apple, ginger juice. I give ‘em 5 or 10 more years and it’s a wrap for Bushwick as we know it.
Brad’s one of the white people that’s gonna change Bushwick. He tended bar at the spot. That’s why I was there, to see Brad, to catch up. He was the one that told me about Detroit being smoke free.
How fucking gay is that?
Chris’s like, “I used to be all against the non-smoking laws, but now I love coming home not stinking like smoke.”
That’s the common argument for nonsmoking laws, that people like the way they smell at the end of the night better. That’s the most selfish fucking argument I ever heard.
I tell her, “It should be a business’s right to decide if they wanna allow smoking, not the government’s. And if they want to, they can have nonsmoking bars and let the market decide. If there’s enough people like you, I’m sure they’ll do fine.”
She’s like, “We can’t trust people to make the right choice. We have to tell them what to do.”
“So basically we gotta pass laws to protect people from themselves?”
“Yes!”
And that’s where we disagree, fundamentally.
She’s all about saving people from themselves and I’m all, Fuck People.
If a motherfucker wanna smoke, let him smoke. If he wanna eat 100 cheeseburgers and get fat let him do it. If he wanna do some shit that’s gonna kill him… Let him die. What the fuck do I care?
That’s problem, we got all these laws protecting the weak and the dumb. And that ain’t doing shit but fucking with people who got common sense and weakening our gene pool. In the old days if you were dumb or weak, you got ate by tiger or you starved. Now you get taken care of and get to find another idiot to reproduce with. This is all done in the name of protecting ourselves.
Like the seat belt law for instance. How the fuck did that pass? Who the hell voted that in? What dipshit saw that ad telling you that more people die from not having a seat belt, saw the car crash with the dead baby shoe dangling, had their heart strings tugged and voted that in?
So more people die from not wearing a seat belt. So the fuck what? Let ‘em die. Cats act like we got a people shortage. News flash!! We got shit loads of people.
That law is nothing more than a racial profiling, let the cops fuck with you law. They act like they give a fuck about your life but all it is, is an excuse for cops to harass. You know how many times I’ve been pulled over on that bullshit? Sat on the fucking curb and had my shit illegally searched because of my seat belt not being on?
A bunch.
If I wanna crash and fly through the window, it’s my god damned right.
These motherfuckers wanna keep me alive so they can ticket and tax me some more.
I tell this to Chris and she tells me to relax and I do. Sometimes I get a little too passionate. We head home, the gypsy cab drops her off and I go up to midtown for a couple more drinks.
It’s damn near three when I’m heading home. The streets are empty, just me and the garbage trucks. I see some couples staggering out the bar together, hand in hand. What they got that I don’t got?
The cabbie’s gunning it down 5th. We pass the whore house I used to go to when I lived out here. I feel that ping in my chest. I almost tell him to stop, let me out, but I don’t. We drive on by.
I don’t need that. I don’t need that in my life.
I don’t need that cramped room, fucking some Korean whore, laid out on a towel. She’s fake moaning her way through it, stinking up the joint with her kimchi breath. Trying to get me to cum fast. Don’t worry sweetheart, I will. I don’t last long with hookers, and when I’m cumming, I look in their eyes and hope that they smile.
They never do.
