Carmelo Valone - November 2007

I had heard that the rap group ‘Public Enemy’ was playing in Springfield Massachusetts and I was determined to go.

My ‘friends’ all didn’t care or want to bother with a concert over a hundred miles away. So I would go alone.

It wasn’t scary or strange to me it just seemed like the right thing to do.

I needed escape through music, and I’d have it.

It was winter and I somehow made it to the greyhound bus station, wearing a winter parka a baseball cap. I had about $60 and two packs of cigarettes and a notepad loaded in my pockets. That’s all I needed. This is what it meant to be a writer I thought. To go and just try something how ever small it was. I thought about the music I would mix someday and the stories I would write. I didn’t even need anyone on this trip I felt like I was good enough company with myself.

I had arrived in the dankness and slum filled streets to Springfield.  There was nothing pretty or profound about any of it. But it was honest at least in its presentation. The streets were littered with overweight Puerto Rican street walkers, junkies, and kids with nothing to do.

The concert was long and deafening someone I didn’t know passed me a joint then a bottle of brandy. I drank and smoked with vigor and drank with the heart of a drunk.

I loved every second of it. As soon enough it was over.

I walked to the bus station feeling good about myself. I thought to myself as I walked in the station, I could just go and leave for New York City right now. I could and would figure out a way to survive. I survived this far right?

I went to the ticket counter and asked for a one way to NYC.

I reached in my pocket and realized all my money was gone, every last cent of it.

I panicked and thought I must have dropped it in front of the station.

I looked in the dirty streets at 2:00 am and found nothing.

I walked up and down on the same route the hookers did. I thought one of those junky whores must have seen it and grabbed it. It probably meant one less hour with a dick in her ass.

The police cars came and the ladies scattered. I stayed still looking at the ground obsessively.

The cop asked me what I was doing?

I told him I had lost my money, to get home to Connecticut. I asked them for twenty bucks. They laughed and told me to go piss off.

I argued that I wasn’t a con artist, or a hustler and I was telling the truth.

A brand new red Volvo just then appeared. Inside was a black man with a thick accent. He sounded Haitian, and asked me what was wrong?

I walked up to his car, and the cops just laughed and drove off.

I told him I lost my money to get home. He told me to get in he won’t hurt me, he kept saying, “It’s cold outside, it’s too cold for the street.” I had to agree, it was getting colder and colder by the minute. I told him no funny business. I told him again I was crazy and if he tried anything it would be the last thing he’d do.

He laughed and asked me where I was tonight.

I told him about the Public Enemy show, and talked about every song they played.

He said he had money at his apartment and I reluctantly agreed to go.

My mind was racing with thoughts. Does he think I’m some rent boy with a stupid story? I bet he thinks I’m underage and he wants to fuck me. I’m eighteen but look at tops sixteen, the curse of the baby face.

It might be just maybe, he’s a nice guy. Anything can happen right?

We arrived at his apartment. His apartment was not the Ritz Carlton more like Motel 6.

He had a small black and white television a bed without rollers on the floor, a violin case and a quaint kitchen.

I asked him again if I could have the money. He told me to sit down and warm myself up first.

He offered me a drink of Jamaican Rum, I took it. And thought at any moment I could kill him if he tries anything.

He started to tell me about how he was a violinist from Haiti and how he had to flee his country due to the evil dictatorship of a name named “Papa Doc Duvalier”. He poured me another drink and went on about how horrible it was and his time when he left fleeing for Austria in order to study the violin. I didn’t ask how he ended up here, in the ghettos of Massachusetts.

He started to ask me if I had a girlfriend, and I told him a firm no but I was always looking. He asked me if I liked girls. I told him yes. Of course, I felt stupid. He was so ambivalent about things I couldn’t tell what he was trying to do. He then asked me what I wanted to do and I told him I didn’t know. I wanted to write or make films or even music.

He asked me again if I wanted to relax. I told I was fine. I didn’t need to relax anymore.

I felt kind of sick and drunk. I had drunk four glasses of Jamaican Rum and Coke.

I asked him if I could lie down, as I didn’t feel so good.

I told again not to try anything, but I knew that I was so drunk if he wanted to beat the hell out of me and rape me, he probably could.

He told me its okay and I should just go lay down. I lay down on the floor next to his bed and almost passed out.

I closed my eyes for a few minutes and then felt his hands on my back.

I asked him what the fuck he was doing. He says I’m just helping you relax.

I let him do it for another thirty seconds, trying to figure out how to talk my way out of this and here. I then just told him he should get his fucking hands off me and give me some money now.

I stood up in a drunken haze. He had his shirt off and had in his hand two fresh twenty dollar bills.

I looked at him and grabbed the money. I pushed him as best as I could. He started yelling for me to chill out. “Chill out man! Chill the fuck out!” I grabbed my coat and made for the door.

He ran into the next room for his coat, I guessed and I ran out the door, down the stairs. I am off to the safety of the crack head filled streets.

I started to run, and run. I looked and looked and listened for his car or any sign of him.

I was in a nearby alley. I was hyperventilating and thought to myself. Does anyone in this world not want to fuck me over?

Do I have ‘Loser’ stamped on my face?

I kept running, passing full street corner after full street corner of gang members and drug dealers. They were baffled as I ran by probably thinking it was really good Angel Dust they just smoked.

I made my way into a 7-11 store and asked quickly for directions to the Greyhound station.

The cashier was freaked out by the whole incident, this white boy who’s sweating and hyperventilating in ten below degree weather.  He just sighed and wrote me directions on a napkin.

I started to run again following his words line for line.

I finally found it, the Greyhound Station.

I ran inside and saw a red Volvo sitting in the front.

I heard his Haitian voice calling to me but ignored it.

I started talking to some kids my own age about the time for next bus and then asked them if they could stay with me until it came. They saw my Public Enemy T-shirt and saw I was dripping in sweat at minus ten degrees. I then just thought of the film ‘Dead Poets Society’. The poem that Ethan Hawke first gave in front of the class; ‘I am the seething sweaty toothed mad man’. I talked more about my adventures making it sound like I wasn’t so stupid.  I finished my story by pointing at the red Volvo sitting in the front of the parking lot.

They all looked at me and told me not to worry. The biggest kid who must have been 250lbs and looked tougher than nails lit a blunt full of weed right in the station and walked outside to the Volvo.

He yelled something at the Haitian future sex offender and then the red Volvo sped off.

They fed me Brandy, as it seemed the drink to have in Springfield, and we made jokes about the corny white people I grew up with, and the country club three blocks from my house. This was after of course I had explained why all my “corny white friends” all were too ‘scared’ to come to the show.

I didn’t tell them that truth was that everyone thought I was crazy and I started to scare my classmates with my dark thoughts and actions.

The bus came and we parted ways. I came home around five am.

I never told anyone my brush with being a rent boy as it was too strange for anyone of these ultra Anglo Saxon country club types to fathom.

I just pretended that everything was okay aside from my usual mess of a life.

I had slept until three in the afternoon that day and then was told to leave again by my mother. I was forced to start yet another tour of my “floating in suburbia” as I call it.

Being rich and homeless can be fun if you let it, but that’s another story.