The Cretins of Karen Ave

Nothing out of the ordinary to a man wearing sunglasses and sombereo walking down Karen Ave at 5 in the morning or the senile old man crusing the midnight streets in search of lost memories. The cops seem to have either hit or miss attitude to the street. Sounds of angry husbands beating on their wives during a backyard barbeque echo from the nearby apartment complexes, reminds me of the old days as a child when I lived in such rundown locations, full of broken homes and adults who spent more time getting high than paying attention to their kids. This particular moment was no exception, just an act of violence that is all too ready accepted in such places, the old school beat down shouting match, no cops around to stop this one so the hostilty continues, as small children munch on hot dogs and hamburgers never really understanding that this type of behavior was anything less than normal in the general public. Other nights, there will be a ten car squad staked out on every corner, looking to flush some fugitive out from the catacombs of apartment complexes that make up a large vacinity of the Karen Ave gauntlet. The street that leads to one of the entrances to where I live has been, barred, gated, and made impassible, not sure of the reason, maybe to keep random fools from driving at high rates of speed through the guard gates, the barrier has been there as long as I remember.

No one really appears to care about the nightcrawling transsexuals up the street who use the Las Vegas Lounge as their homebase to ply sex trade to the conga line of vehicles that drive through the small strip mall on any given night. At times, it looks like a freak show car wash, as the ladies gyrate, intice, and expose skin to help drive customer traffic to the little one lane entrance where a small cluster of trannies wait for curious johns to pick them up in tinted window cars. A few of the ladies will take the walk down Karen Ave toward the Hilton hotel, maybe to go home, like throwing a chum line of blood and guts out into shark infested waters. The police drive right by the entire lot of them with no desire to inquire what all these trannies are hanging around looking to be solicting themselves. So much for cracking down on prostitution, maybe there is some sort of prearranged agreement between the trannies, the Las Vegas Lounge, and metro, what the common thread may be is beyond me, but drive past on any weekend night, jeez, any night after dark and the party will be well under way. At other times, the cops pull almost anyone over regardless of the time of day, most of those pulled over will be out of the car, against the hood in cuffs, the woman might be sitting on the sidewalk or in bracelets herself.

There does not seem to be any consistancy of letting this stretch of Karen Ave become totally lawless or overly patrolled, flashing lights can occur at any moment and just the same the street can transformed into sexual solicitation extravaganza. Plenty of characters passby, massive overweight woman in a two piece bikini, junkies dressed in black on a summer afternoon slowly withdrawing from their last and possibly final fix. The dawn patrol makes the rounds now that the weather is nicer, usually women who will do anything for a negotiable price, they linger like shadows in the bush ocassionally revealing themselves to passing cars like a cat with the mange looking for a home, but different things turn on different people, a market for everything exists in this town with this street, a microcosm of low grade indulgence at affordable prices where pleasure is a boardsword containing a bookend edge of STD's. Danger exists here but it is packaged in such a disgustingly base way, like a Francis Bacon painting, a John Waters movie, or song by Tool. Filth,need, disfigurement, and imperfection which may be the driving forces to the large amount of middle aged men cruising these streets as I pass by on my way home after working out at the gym. Fleets of high priced luxury sedan sailing in like ships in the night, discreet, with detection, stealth perverts who have crossed so many lines in their lives that doing drive bys on transsexual hookers seems like sunday church. This is my neighborhood, no children play here, only adults with a strong sense of release endorphines in their body, crack, smack, and sex are the invisible forces that drive this hurricane circling Karen Ave where boarded up half burnt down apartment buildings are home for scores of squatters who brave the hundred plus degree temperatures throughout the day, ten foot fences keep them in, the grass is dead, trees fallen over, long alleyways leading into eternal darkness where anything is available, but only for those resigned to the horrors that call those paths their home.