"Bullets, Booze and Bastards"

Sample chapter from In Nine Kinds of Pain by Leonard Fritz

This is Detroit, so welcome to the jungle. No, scratch that. I take that back. It’s not really a jungle. It’s more like a zoo. In a zoo, you have all kinds of different animals, all living separately in what appears to be their natural environments, quarantined for life, with all those creatures who are less savage, less primitive, less beastly, keeping at a reasonable distance (as not to get hurt) and just observing, observing, observing from the other side of the barricades. No, actually, I take that back—Detroit really isn’t so much a zoo as it is like one of those drive-through safari parks that you’d find in Florida or somewhere. You know what I mean, where some idiot piles his wife and two-point-fives into the SUV and drives through what appears to be the Serengeti so that his family can see “wild animals” in their “natural environment.” Sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, you’ll see on the evening news a story about a pack of baboons at one of those parks getting way too frisky, and the baboons all attack the one family’s car because—it was stated when they entered the park, DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS!—they fed the animals.

Yeah, I guess that’s what Detroit would be like. One of those safari parks. The great thing about those types of safari parks is that the animals don’t really turn on each other unless they have to. They mostly turn on the visitors. The Chain of Aggression goes like this: 1.) Visitors, 2.) Helpless saps (either foreign or native), 3.) Enemies, and 4.) Nameless victims. Those terms are rather broad, I know, but that’s the one thing you can count on in a place like Detroit: there are no hard and steadfast rules. Like anarchy. Like a jungle. If the feeling hits you, you go ahead and do it, and if there’s a price to be paid for doing what you did, then you run from it with the swiftness of wings and hope it doesn’t catch up with you. And if it does catch up with you, someday, as it usually does, then you lie your ass off and swear it wasn’t you.

I used to know some people from the suburbs, what one would term in this day and age as being adventure seekers, who would make it a point to drive through Detroit’s roughest, most crime-ridden areas every single weekend. They got a rush from it. They knew I was from Detroit and almost felt a bond with me because I lived in Detroit, and they drove through Detroit every weekend. See how that works? The symbiosis. We were practically twins. I guess it never dawned on them that I was insulted by their condescension, but, hey, what the hell did I know? I was just one of the beasts who lived in Detroit <Go ahead . . . feed me>. Driving through Detroit gave them a rush, I guess, like bungee jumping or public masturbation. I guess the idea that their car could break down in the middle of a place like the Corridor really got them off. Sort of like the idiot who took his family to the safari park.

And like the animals in the safari park, the people who live in Detroit can’t leave. You may be saying, “Of course you can leave. Why can’t you? You aren’t forced to live there.” And if you’re saying that, then you’ve never lived in a place like Detroit, where you’re held there like a fly on a glue strip because your family has never faced the trying immanency of being able to rub two nickels together.

Or finding a job to support the family even before you get out of high school as opposed to the expectations of college and graduate school.

Or living paycheck to paycheck and it’s still not enough, and the word savings is defined as the residue money in your wallet (along with the change in your pocket) after the bills are mostly paid, and retirement will only realistically come by hitting the Powerball or winning a major lawsuit, not through a 401k or company stocks.

Or the city schools that teach absolutely nothing (schools only in the broadest sense of the word) except hand-to-hand combat in the bathroom stalls, or running for your life from the kid who brought his daddy’s gun to school to “teach everyone a lesson.”

Or just trying to get through your day without getting robbed. Tell me, again, how do you plan to leave?

Anyway, what do I know, said the wild baboon.

What do I know?