{"id":1861,"date":"2008-11-21T13:22:21","date_gmt":"2008-11-21T18:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1861"},"modified":"2008-11-20T18:25:45","modified_gmt":"2008-11-20T23:25:45","slug":"it-was-twenty-years-ago-today-part-bcd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1861","title":{"rendered":"It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part CIX"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was Monday, November\u00a021, 1988.<\/p>\n

Wyatt’s\u00a0“plan” to “repay” the money he owed me involved…:<\/p>\n

a) …spending a\u00a0few thousand dollars that his grandmother\u00a0had sent him on…<\/p>\n

b) …a bunch of cocaine, that he would…<\/p>\n

c) …sell, to…<\/p>\n

d)\u00a0…make money, to…<\/p>\n

e) …pay Shane and I.<\/p>\n

I suggested\u00a0the obvious alternative – give us the\u00a0$600 or so he owed us from the money from his grandmother, and buy his cocaine with whatever might have been left over – might have been better for all concerned.\u00a0 He had bigger plans, naturally.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I pondered – how do I get rid of a roommate?\u00a0\u00a0My ponderings usually resolved to “there’s nothing I can do”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Which seemed to be a habit I was in with most areas of my life at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I had left to do some grocery shopping early in the morning.\u00a0 I came home to\u00a0Wyatt presiding over a living room full of people – all of whose body language, dress and attitude\u00a0looked you in the eye and said “drug trade” without a hint of worry.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Hey” said Wyatt, “this is Marshall”, pointing to a stocky, unsmiling black guy with a big scar on his cheek in a Members Only jacket “and that’s Jeff”, a too-thin white guy with a porn-star mustache and long hair wearing a yellow plaid flannel shirt.<\/p>\n

“Hey”, I nodded.\u00a0 They eyed me, making not the faintest sign of acknowledgment.<\/p>\n

I walked into my room, shut and hooked the door.\u00a0 Then I sat down at my “desk” – a party table on which I stacked a bookshelf, which actually made for a fairly handy deskoid structure\u00a0– and called the radio station in New York I’d interviewed at last month<\/a>.\u00a0 The program director had told me to check in in a month or so.<\/p>\n

The receptionist answered.\u00a0 “Is Charlie there”, I said, asking for the program director.<\/p>\n

“I’m sorry, Charlie is no longer here”.<\/p>\n

My heart fell like a shot goose.\u00a0 I sat, my jaw too heavy to move for a moment.<\/p>\n

“Um…why?” I finally blurted out.<\/p>\n

“The station changed ownership and format.\u00a0 We’re now a gospel music station!”, she chirped.<\/p>\n

I thanked her, hung up, and leaned back in the chair, my legs and arms too heavy to move anywhere for the moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Crap.<\/p>\n

I sat for a moment, having a hard time focusing on much.\u00a0 I still have the voiceover gig at WOR, and that network gig\u00a0out there<\/em>, I reassured myself.<\/p>\n

But they’re not going to happen<\/em>, I de-assured myself.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

I heard Wyatt, Marshall and Jeff doing their business through the wall.\u00a0 It took a moment to focus; unsurprisingly, they were moving some of Wyatt’s “product”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I walked to my bed, and reached down behind the mattress and took out the little .22 automatic pistol I’d been keeping there for emergencies.\u00a0 I checked the chamber – empty.\u00a0 I\u00a0checked the magazine – full.\u00a0 I stuck it in my pocket.\u00a0 It’d stay there for a while.<\/p>\n

Crap.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was Monday, November\u00a021, 1988. Wyatt’s\u00a0“plan” to “repay” the money he owed me involved…: a) …spending a\u00a0few thousand dollars that his grandmother\u00a0had sent him on… b) …a bunch of cocaine, that he would… c) …sell, to… d)\u00a0…make money, to… e) …pay Shane and I. I suggested\u00a0the obvious alternative – give us the\u00a0$600 or so he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twenty-years-ago-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}