Why Hitler Better Clear a Bunk for Me

Though the obviously vast amounts of effort and money put into this page would make it appear that I make my fortune as a successful radio entertainer, witty blogger and elite cocksman, there is a less glamorous job at which I also toil in order to make ends meet: locksmith. Lately, my bread and butter in that field has been changing the locks on foreclosed homes so that the families tricked by their Hebrew usurers can no longer re-enter their homes to pray to the one true God and light, Jesus. Usually, by the time I get to the houses, the families are long gone, and I’m treated to any number of sights inside the house upon arrival (typically a plate of cookies and milk and a note wishing me the strength to continue with my ethically challenging yet necessary job in the white families’ houses and piles of bootlegged Tyler Perry DVDs and discarded lotto tickets in the black ones).

A personal favorite was the house of what must have been a failed dog breeder (because who wouldn’t trust the strength of their infant’s skull to the pedigree of a large, vicious animal bred in a South East DC row house). The basement looked like a relief map made of feces, hopefully belonging just to the dogs (they sure tasted like they did). The middle and upper floors were a little lighter on the poop presence, but rotting food and soiled underwear took up the slack. Situationed among all this were two items of note: a pristine, still shrink wrapped Taxi Driver poster (which I was tempted to take if I wasn’t sure it would have made my room smell like the set of a German porno film) and a small, almost pathetic box of Arm and Hammer Pet Odor neutralizer. Talk about throwing a hot dog down a hallway. I mean, Christ, were they planning to dust the turds like powdered sugar on funnel cake?

About once a month, I am treated to a sheriff assisted lockout, where the family has yet to move and things get ugly. Most of the time it’s some trash that you convince yourself had it coming and you laugh with the owners of the property and the sheriff as you all smoke cigars together and the rubella-infected children of the abode are marched out in their Dickensian rags. But, once in a blue moon, even my Grinchlike heart is wrenched by the occupants of these houses. This is the best of one of those tales.

I showed up at the property early before either the sheriff or the realtor in charge of the lockout got there because I enjoy reconnoitering it and playing my favorite game, “Guess the Ethnicity of the People Whose Lives You Are About to Ruin.” It was a racially mixed area, but the neighborhood was fresh and new, with tons of construction going on. That said, they were getting evicted, so I took a cue from Mr. Snipes and bet on black. After my initial inspection, I returned to my car and killed a few minutes flipping around the dial listening to various radio shows, convincing myself that each of the hosts was incredibly beneath me in intellect, wit and talent as a lover, and that I should be the one on air pretending to give a shit about the pretentious douche bag rockstars they were interviewing, not them. Then the sheriff, realtor and the cleanout crew (the guys who rip the family’s possessions out of the house in front of them and throw them on the front lawn) arrived simultaneously. It was showtime.

As the sheriff walked up to the door, a black girl (winner winner chicken dinner!) of about 20 walked out to greet him. She explained that she was on her way to college (what an implausible fabrication! There wasn’t a colored school for miles! The audacity!) and that her mother was about to come home from a meeting with the bank that would allow them to keep their house. All kidding aside, I never feel good about evicting folks, but the “No, the bank said we’re cool” lie that I hear every single time does get a bit old. If my hairy Greek ass is out there, it is way beyond any hope of you keeping your house. Bullshitting me is about as productive as running up to the grave of Freddy Mercury clutching a box of Trojans with some pamphlets from the health department taped to it.

The sheriff escorted the girl back to her front door, where she was greeted by her large brother (yes, her biological brother, smartass), who told the sheriff a story along the same lines. Sheriff Whitey T. Simmering Racial Tensions was having none of this, gave the wave to the cleanout crew (which consisted of a big white guy who was the brother of the realtor and about four brothers of the non-biological variety and yours truly), and before you could say “PTSD expressway,” to work we went.

Usually, by this point in the proceedings, the family goes silent and gets that far-away look in their eyes, just waiting for the ordeal to end (which leads me to believe that every family I’ve ever evicted has been possessed by the spirit of a woman I’ve slept with), but the gang was in for a spectacle this time. The girl was crying. Don’t get me wrong, the lamentations of a woman are nothing new to me. I’m well versed in all manner of them: the “you’ve failed as a son and man” cry, the “please just let me walk in on you masturbating to some semblance of normal pornography and I’ll stay with you” cry, the “my mommy’s name is Casey Anthony and she’ll pay you whatever you want if you just return me unharmed” cry, but these were sweet, fat black mama tears. Kizzy Kinte getting ripped away from Kunta and Bell wailing. And, so help me god, it got to me.

The matter was only compounded when her brother, who could not have been more understanding and classy about the whole affair, took a break from trying to get the belligerent sheriff to wait for their mother’s return to walk up to the realtor in charge of the operation, take her hand and pray to Jesus for her continued success and prosperity as he thanked God for raining his blessings down each and every day. I was flabbergasted. To pray to the lord for something other than metastasized cancer in the bodies of your enemies? I would have had a better chance of understanding this kid if he were speaking in tongues.

The young man’s life hit an all-time low as he approached me and began to ask, as if I were some kind of authority figure, if our crew could simply wait until his mother arrived before scarring him for life. At that point, my heart broke. How do you tell someone that the person he just addressed with a hint of respect is a fatbodied nothing who can barely turn a living at 28 and whose plans for the day after ruining the guy’s life don’t extend beyond watching DVR’d re-runs of Star Trek: the Next Generation and masturbating straight into his waste basket because he’s too broke to afford tissues? I did what I could, informing him that we weren’t taking anything away, that it was simply going on the front lawn, and told him to hang tight. What can I say…I felt bad. That and I had noticed various African statues around the house, leading me to believe this kid commanded the powers of both Jesus and various voodoo gods. Fuck with him and I could wake up with my penis shrunk down to a paltry 14” by the Almighty.

As the entire affair wound to a close, I did a final tour of the house and said my goodbyes to the crew. I was struck by how jovial they all seemed, and how, if I had been black and witnessed that, the affair would have driven me to Nat Turner every white person within a three mile radius. Or at least pull an Oprah-spitting-into-Danny-Glover’s-coffee-in-The-Color-Purple, since I’m a gigantic pussy. Later in the night, I thought about what I could have done, like slip a spare copy of the new house key into the young man’s hand and given him a sly wink, as if to say “fight the power.” But the hell with that: I need this blood money to stay alive. And, to quote some guys with some really sharp uniforms, “I was only following orders.”