Mover, not so much a shaker

I got this idea from Dirty Jase. I’ve compiled a feature here on everywhere I’ve ever lived. I was raised in this house,

from the age of 5 until 20, in what I considered to be a normal, rational, well-adjusted upbringing. My dad was a plumber, my mom a nurse. I had a lot of great friends in the neighborhood, did well in school, hit it hard when I got to the teen years. My two oldest sisters and oldest brother were long moved from that home by the time I hit my formative years.

Moved here at 20

in late-August 1990 and this was my first time away from home, 90 minutes south down I-75 to Detroit, well, the suburbs of Detroit, but school was in the city. I made this ultimate leap with my friend HR. She would later prove to be one of my best friends. We’re like siblings now, 15 years of growing up together will do that. I moved in there in August and four months later, my mother passed away. I was 21 and even 15 years later it’s still kind of tough to digest, although it’s a lot easier now than it was then. It was still a good place to live, though. Nice apartment. Those two upstairs windows in the front? That was my room. A lot of Slayer and Public Enemy going on in there. I went home for the summer,

I did an internship at the local newspaper, stayed at the old house, which my brother bought off my parents before my mother passed. Went back to school in the fall.

I mustered up some goddamn balls and moved into the city.

I thought I was so cool filling out address labels with the word “Detroit” on them. The apartment was bizarre, this huge room with a separate bathroom and kitchen, with a window that looked down into this beat-up courtyard.

It was quite a lesson, in so many ways. It was a great-looking apartment, neighborhood and building. I looked at it three times. And the night I moved in, the first night I was in there, and the sun went down, it was like everyone around my block was holding a skeet shooting contest, I never heard so much gunfire in my fucking life. It got so bad I would later move out, after walking past the body of a dead man on E. Grand Boulevard, resting comfortably atop a short wall about 50 feet from Liquor Plus.
It was crazy there. I was a student, so I scheduled all of my classes during the morning and afternoon. I came and went as I pleased in an apartment building with about 70 tenants, all of them black. My unit was at the end of a hall, which I liked. My neighbor was an effeminate male who fucking loved gospel music. This, I disliked.
I learned two very valuable lessons in that apartment. First, unless your body is riddled with bullets, don’t try calling the Detroit Police Department. My first Saturday night in the crib, I’m digging the whole deal, it’s a nice night, I have the window open, looking out to the back 40. Some post-season baseball is on the TV, the beer is cold, the nuts are salty (not THOSE nuts, asshole). I hear a commotion. I look out from my third-floor view into the back alley and see that this poor guy is getting his ass kicked by two other dudes. Did the pair attack him? Do they have weapons? Did the guy on the ground getting stomped like a bee, did he somehow have this coming? Do I go help this man? Ah, I know, I’ll call the cops, tell them what’s going on. I call the cops and get this demanding broad yelling at me, and at the same asking me, what’s the nature of my call. I tell her this guy is getting beat up in the alley behind my building. “I can see them,” I tell her. “They’re kicking and hitting him.”
“We’ll have a car there in about 45 minutes.”
“Forty-five minutes?” I yelped, almost indignant, forgetting, clearly, where I was living. “This guy is getting his ass kicked right now. You can’t get here quicker than that?”
“Shuggah,” she said, “it’s Saturday night, somebody getting they (sic) ass kicked somewhere.” This is a shot of the alley where the guy was getting his beat-down.

On a side note here, as I was taking this photo, I could hear a dog barking behind me. I thought to myself “boy, I sure hope he’s not a stray.” I turn around to see this scary pit bull behind a makeshift sort of fence and I raise the camera to get a shot of him, before three of his buddies come shooting out from behind him, barking and running straight at me. This is me hauling ass.

Once I realized they were contained, I took a picture of them, from the safety of my car.

Lesson No. 2: Use spray-paint only in well-ventilated areas. The ideal venue for that would anywhere outdoors. I used it to paint part of my kitchen. I had a small kitchen window that barely opened and kitchen cabinets that were this industrial quality aluminum-steel. I thought they needed a splash of fresh paint, so I bought three cans of Krylon and started to add the first coat and then a second, in the kitchen on a November day. Twenty minutes later I stumbled out of that room, like a rummy from a saloon, overcome by the fumes. I aired the place out and split for a few hours, but man, that was a really dumb idea.

I looked at that apartment twice, both times during the day. It was a beautiful, tree-lined street. The other buildings on the block were brick and charming and it had a weird, big-city feel that I usually saw on TV or in movies. But after I moved in, and the sun went down, it as if every single resident on that block, went outside, drew a gun and started firing. It was insane, and it freaked me out. I lived like that for about three months before I called my brother Frank one night and told him what was going on. He suggested I move, which I did, from Seward Street, to Sixth Street in downtown Royal Oak, at corner of South Washington and Sixth Street, inside Aldor Manor

above what was then Repeat The Beat record store

I wish I had pictures of the apartment, it was really sharp. It had a cool tile bathroom and one of those big-ass ceramic old-school sinks with the ribbed surface to the left of the sink for the water to drain down. I wrapped up my final year of school in that apartment and they were some truly great times. About a year later, I moved to 803 S. Center with HR, John Waack and Lee Malone. I earlier lamented aboutthis place. at my old blog.
In a span of 11 years, I would move in and out of this house four times between this move and where I now reside so, heretofore, I’ll refer to that place simply as 803.
I stayed there for years before I split in 1995 to move in with Benny at 18650 W. Warren in Detroit on what I would, and still do, refer to as the “west side-west side.”

The apartment was phenomenal, roomy and spacious with this insanely long hallway from which rooms shot out on both sides. We threw a football back and forth down that hallway it was so long. It was located above a used appliance repair store and had this great bar, Chick’s Bar, a block away. Plus, we paid, like, a nickel a month to live there. I stayed there for just over a year, all the while working at the Ann Arbor News, from 4 p.m. to midnight, on their sports desk. It was great. My roommate worked banker’s hours, so when I got home at 1 in the morning, he was asleep. And when I got up at 11 or noon, he was gone. We saw each rarely, maybe one day a week. There was a stretch where we didn’t see each other for three weeks straight. When we finally did run into each other in the living room on a Saturday afternoon, we were like “Hey!! What’s up?? Shit, let’s go to the bar, haven’t seen you in a while.”

Things got crazy in that apartment, as the weather warmed and the fucking hoods came out in force. Two things happened at that address that were oddly monumental in my life. Once, my roommate woke me up at 9 a.m. on a Sunday (this, after I got off work at 1 a.m., got home at 2, lounging and getting high until about 5 or 6) morning. He wakes me up and ushers me out into the dining room where, on a table, sits a line of cocaine about as long as my arm. “Do it up,” he says, rubbing the palm of his hand upward across the front of his nose, from the fingertips down to the heel of his hand, rather quickly “That’s for you,” he said, pointing to it. I just looked at him in disbelief. Dude, I was sleeping. And I don’t even want this shit right now. You go ahead. I turn around to hear him not only wolfing down this line but to see two of the neighborhood’s nastiest, wasted junkie hookers you could imagine (think: rail-thin; bruised upper thighs), sitting on the couch. I look at them, I look back at him, I look at them again. This can’t be happening. I start back to my bedroom, stunned, when he comes up and puts his arm on my shoulder. “I got one of them for you.” I went back to bed. The place was big enough where I didn’t hear much.

The other fucked-up scenario happened when I was at work. Some fellas with guns came and shot up the entire side of our building, about five feet below our living room windows, and leaving a rat-a-tat line of bullet holes along the building, below my bedroom window and my roommate’s bedroom window. There was an incident in the apartment behind ours with this wigger asshole named Keith who had a party, someone got beat up, left the party and would return later in the company of some REAL gangsta niggas, who took it out on our building. I come home from work, again at about 1 in the morning, to find four Detroit cop cars in front of my doorway

I moved out two weeks later, and in about 3 more weeks, I would be here, in San Francisco, living with Dirty Jase.

That was a fun time, carefree and delightful in one of the world’s most beautiful cities. It was also a tough time. My stay in The City was brief, but well worth it and I still owe a hearty thanks to my friend for his hospitality. I returned to Michigan in November 1997, riding an Amtrak from San Francisco to Detroit, stopping in Colorado for a week. When I got back, I moved in the house on Maplehurst in Ferndale I rented with my friend Ethan.

We had a blast in this house, and those were some good times with him, but I was a miserable fucker in those days. I was out of control, drinking way too much, working this impossibly shitty job at a mortgage company, not writing and not publishing. I was always broke, always drunk and beating myself up over a situation that didn’t go so well with a girl I liked. I cleaned myself up, somewhat, and moved back to 803. That lasted about a year and I moved into this place down the street.

I was there for just over a year. It was there I started working at the newspaper company that employs me now. That apartment had zilch for aesthetics. It was gross and small and had low ceilings. But, for the first time since college, I was living on my own so that was kind of fun. I would later move back into 803 to ride things out. It was down me and Heidi in 803 and she would move in with the man she would ultimately marry. That was in 1999 and I stayed in that big-ass, four-bedroom house all by myself for two years. I watched the 9/11 coverage in that house all night long. I would move from there to this smaller rental house in Ferndale in 2002.

That house kind of sucked. Those were tough years. I had to put my dog to sleep while I lived in that house. Ten days later, at the age of 32, I had a heart attack. That fucked me up for a while, emotionally and whatnot. A piece of something (probably undigested bacon) broke off in my main artery and jammed it nearly shut. I had a stent put in, quit smoking cigarettes and kept a very close eye on my cholesterol, fat and sodium intake, as well as initiating an exercise regimen that was previously unseen in my life. I’m better these days. I’m due for a checkup, for things have been well in that department the last couple of years. I had a brush with death while I lived in that house and it taught me a lot about the value of life, not just mine but those of others. For three days I sat in a hospital bed alone, thinking of the shitty things I’ve done and said in my life, all of the mean, aggressive shit I put off on people who didn’t deserve it. I cooled out the temper, and the excessively constant binge drinking and a lot of the negative bullshit in my life. Like I said, I quit smoking, and that is one thing of which I’m extremely proud. I haven’t smoked one since, not even a puff, not even one little cheater ciggie in more than three years. Nothing. While that was a mess of a situation, it turned out for the best. It changed me as a person, sort of redirecting the puck of life a little closer to the net. Yeah, I still booze it up now and then, and I like to puff the kind, but not at all with the insane frequency I used to. The only other worthwhile thing to happen in that house was I met Kerry while I was living there. I would actually classify that as monumental.

I moved from Almont because the rent was a challenge to manage, paying nearly a grand a month in rent and utilities. I found a great apartment in Hamtramck, on Caniff, at the corner of Brombach.

I knocked my rent almost in half and was again taking part in some urban living. It felt good to get back in that environment, for a short while, but I got sick of it quickly. Admittedly, the apartment was a fantastic place to live. The landlord was super handy and the place was completely re-done before I moved in. I stayed there for a year before I moved in with Kerry on Oct 1. of last year. Two months later we would move into the house she bought on a fantastic street in Royal Oak.

All of those addresses served to build part of the foundation that is me. They all represent something, a certain time in my life, a specific reflective element of my being. Since I was a kid, I’ve always bored easily, which I believe is the root cause of my active imagination. I get bored in conversations with people, so while they’re going on, and I hear what they’re saying, I imagine them, I don’t know, morphing into a Muppet or something. As it was, I would often tire quickly of my environment. I have moved a lot, if you can’t tell. But it seems like the last two have been moves where I’m going nowhere but up, emotionally, financially, spiritually, whatever. I'm genuinely happy, stronger and I fucking love myself. I have both arms wrapped tightly around all of my friends and the people who care about me. I’ll never digress from here. That ascension will continue.