do i need a candle holder?

For whatever reason, whenever walking down the street, all black men will greet other black men that they pass, be it with a nod, a "what up", "my man" etc. However after a few days in D.C I have noticed that there are quite a few other greetings mixed in the Negro lexicon, I was not so aware of.

I grew up middle class, and have no delusions of being some pseudo thug, or a big city cast away like so many of my fellow counterparts. So some parts of the new city are taking me by surprise. Take for example, the fact that there is apparently some city wide staring contest going on between all black men, of which I must have not gotten here too late to register for. Needless to say, just about every black man I come across finds it necessary to engage me in said contest. Oh, and apparently there is a housing shortage in D.C because damn, there are quite a few brothers on the street. With varying degrees of ways to ask for cash, ranging from "yo yo bro, got some spare change" this approach is entirely flawed. See from a marketing stand point, you've got to set your goals higher, that way you can at least work your way down. I bet if they came straight off the top with "yo yo, bro, you got 783 dollars I could hold?" . You might be inclined to think, whoa, this brother's got some stuff he needs to get taken care of, 783 is such an exact number, heck I could help a little with that, what the heck, here's 5 bucks, or at least .78 cents. On the other hand, you start asking for change, people already thinking "what the heck, are you gonna do with some change? what, are you collecting 50 state quarters? cause if so, all I got is New Hampshires, and I know you don't want one, speaking of which, what the hell are you doing collecting quarters when you need to be getting a job....See, its all in the marketing, but again, I digress.

There is another set of homeless, the one's with severe mental issues, to whom I have a great deal of compassion, and find it a sad state of affairs, that in the city where some of the most powerful men in the world, politically, can sleep with interns and make billion dollar underhanded hand shakes, mere miles away these folks can be forced to live like this, shames me to be American. Yet, there remains one set, of homeless that in my brief stay has left an indelible mark on me. That would be the "creatively lucid" crowd, or more commonly known as the crack heads. Just today, a creative lucid asked me if I wanted to buy his goldfish, mind you the goldfish did exist it was in a bag full of water, never mind how he got this gold fish, just know that he was willing to sell it. See, I'm no idiot, and I know he didn't wake up with that gold fish, which means someone earlier today, gave him this fish, and now look at him, what does he do with it, sit on the curb and try to auction it off, heck no am I going to give you anything, for all I know you'll be peddling it in 5 hours, and as I said, all I've got anyway is some New Hampshire quarters. So between the staring contest and goldfish peddlers, we somehow have no more time for the simple head nod I am so accustomed to, I'm baffled and lost. It's stained in my skull to do the nod, but now my mind is overwhelmed with two new default responses, the look away, and the "nah man". I still have trouble with both and sometimes end up looking away and saying nah man, which actually led someone to give me a gold fish thinking I was talking to myself (not really). It's a lot to be running through my head while just trying to find somewhere to eat during lunch, and just when I thought I was starting to get a grasp on things, right before I walked inside the apartment, some old brother on a bike across the street just hollered at me "YOUNGBLOOD, youngblood, you need a candle holder...?"(yes really) wait, what? Rather than answer, look away, nod, or stare, I just gave him a New Hampshire quarter.

ahhh welcome to big people world.