"No, I come back alive," the lady laughs.
A black man in his mid-50's confides, "I was one of them guys who does nothing but work, and I gave my woman all my money. It still didn't work out. I thought we would be together forever. All of my baby mamas were cheaters. The good thing is, after it's over, it's over. None of them give me problems, and I don't give them none. I take care of my children. In fact, I'm going home right now to be with my baby--my daughter."
A young white man taps me lightly on the shoulder, "Sir, do you want to buy some juice?" Turning around, I see that he has a tote bag filled with small cartons of corn syrupy drinks. People will walk in here to peddle DVDs, socks, roses or whatever.
Across the street, two white guys nod off on steps of train station's entrance. Sitting next to me, a man in an Eagles cap shouts, "Must be some good sh*t! Must be that wet sh*t!"
Bloated, clean shaven and in his late 50's, Eagles cap bartended at Jack's for eight years but had to quit after two strokes. Seeing a group of Hispanic females strolling by, some clearly underage, he blurts, "I want them all!"
"One at a time," dude next to him advises. He has on a Vietnam Vet cap.
Crown Chicken is two doors over. When its Dominican owner takes some trash out, Eagles cap comments, "I like her too. She's pretty." He then runs outside to catch a glimpse of his unsuspecting idol, now back among her thighs, wings and breasts. She also sells fish sticks.
Sex brings us all together. Hard up white men comb the world to bring home bedmates. In just about every English village, there's a Thai restaurant. Italians jet to Cuba, Romania and Albania. Old, deformed, crippled or mentally defective Taiwanese and South Korean men wed lovely Vietnamese brides half their age. I know a Russian born, Israeli divorcee who ordered the biggest boobs available for his live sex doll. Even the surgeon cringed. The gold digger from the Mekong Delta can hardly walk and is already planning her escape. The worse an American slum, the more clout a black man has, and so in Kensington, as in Camden across the river, many white women naturally gravitate towards black men. Sometimes, though, it's not a power thang, just love.
Last Christmas Eve, I was in Jack's when Pedro, a 57-year-old Dominican, gave me something to chew on, "It's like this. You have chihuahuas, greyhounds, german shepherds and bulldogs, but we're all dogs, you know what I mean, so we've got to stick together!"
After a lusty swig of Coors Lite, Pedro worked up another analogy, "There are head, arms, legs, torso, a**hole, but everybody wants to be a head, no one wants to be an a**hole, so they got rid of the a**hole. They threw the a**hole into the river, and the a**hole was doing backstrokes, like this, and they were like, f*ck you, a**hole! But when it came time to take a sh*t, guess what, they needed the a**hole, so you may be an a**hole, I may be an a**hole, but everybody has a role to play, you know what I mean?"
During the first half of the 20th century, Kensington had factories making textiles, carpets, hosiery, cardboard, stoves, ships, engines, boilers, hardware, beer, toys and hats. It has several dye works and six banks, not just two, and local merchants didn't have to compete with shopping malls, big-box stores and online shopping. The deindustrialization of the United States became catastrophic with the arrival of globalism, so just about every community across the country has suffered. The wholesale disappearance of manly jobs has hollowed out the young, working class American male, and that's why he covers himself with tattoos, struts cartoonishly or joins the military to kill or be killed. Many spend hours in the dark to shoot at glowing enemies.
It's afternoon in Jack's, and everybody is watching a cartoon on television. Some fat guy sits on a football referee and is repeatedly punching him even as they're having a friendly conversation. The ref's face becomes increasingly bruised and bloodied. Next comes a movie showing two young men driving recklessly through Manhattan. While causing tremendous mayhem, they casually banter. Our mass media has made cool, blase violence an American trademark and ideal, something for our young to aspire to.
Dumb flick mercifully over, Bob, the 51-year-old bartender, can finally share with me his thoughts on Kensington. As he talks, his bespectacled and crew cut head is haloed by five American flags hovering above the cash register. "If you know how this neighborhood used to be, you'd weep.
When I was a kid, we used to ride our bikes across the Betsy Ross Bridge to New Jersey. Sometimes, we'd go all the way to Camden."
"Camden?! That's so far away!"
"No, it's only about six, seven miles."
A black man in his mid-50's confides, "I was one of them guys who does nothing but work, and I gave my woman all my money. It still didn't work out. I thought we would be together forever. All of my baby mamas were cheaters. The good thing is, after it's over, it's over. None of them give me problems, and I don't give them none. I take care of my children. In fact, I'm going home right now to be with my baby--my daughter."
A young white man taps me lightly on the shoulder, "Sir, do you want to buy some juice?" Turning around, I see that he has a tote bag filled with small cartons of corn syrupy drinks. People will walk in here to peddle DVDs, socks, roses or whatever.
Across the street, two white guys nod off on steps of train station's entrance. Sitting next to me, a man in an Eagles cap shouts, "Must be some good sh*t! Must be that wet sh*t!"
"One at a time," dude next to him advises. He has on a Vietnam Vet cap.
Crown Chicken is two doors over. When its Dominican owner takes some trash out, Eagles cap comments, "I like her too. She's pretty." He then runs outside to catch a glimpse of his unsuspecting idol, now back among her thighs, wings and breasts. She also sells fish sticks.
Sex brings us all together. Hard up white men comb the world to bring home bedmates. In just about every English village, there's a Thai restaurant. Italians jet to Cuba, Romania and Albania. Old, deformed, crippled or mentally defective Taiwanese and South Korean men wed lovely Vietnamese brides half their age. I know a Russian born, Israeli divorcee who ordered the biggest boobs available for his live sex doll. Even the surgeon cringed. The gold digger from the Mekong Delta can hardly walk and is already planning her escape. The worse an American slum, the more clout a black man has, and so in Kensington, as in Camden across the river, many white women naturally gravitate towards black men. Sometimes, though, it's not a power thang, just love.
Last Christmas Eve, I was in Jack's when Pedro, a 57-year-old Dominican, gave me something to chew on, "It's like this. You have chihuahuas, greyhounds, german shepherds and bulldogs, but we're all dogs, you know what I mean, so we've got to stick together!"
After a lusty swig of Coors Lite, Pedro worked up another analogy, "There are head, arms, legs, torso, a**hole, but everybody wants to be a head, no one wants to be an a**hole, so they got rid of the a**hole. They threw the a**hole into the river, and the a**hole was doing backstrokes, like this, and they were like, f*ck you, a**hole! But when it came time to take a sh*t, guess what, they needed the a**hole, so you may be an a**hole, I may be an a**hole, but everybody has a role to play, you know what I mean?"
During the first half of the 20th century, Kensington had factories making textiles, carpets, hosiery, cardboard, stoves, ships, engines, boilers, hardware, beer, toys and hats. It has several dye works and six banks, not just two, and local merchants didn't have to compete with shopping malls, big-box stores and online shopping. The deindustrialization of the United States became catastrophic with the arrival of globalism, so just about every community across the country has suffered. The wholesale disappearance of manly jobs has hollowed out the young, working class American male, and that's why he covers himself with tattoos, struts cartoonishly or joins the military to kill or be killed. Many spend hours in the dark to shoot at glowing enemies.
It's afternoon in Jack's, and everybody is watching a cartoon on television. Some fat guy sits on a football referee and is repeatedly punching him even as they're having a friendly conversation. The ref's face becomes increasingly bruised and bloodied. Next comes a movie showing two young men driving recklessly through Manhattan. While causing tremendous mayhem, they casually banter. Our mass media has made cool, blase violence an American trademark and ideal, something for our young to aspire to.
Dumb flick mercifully over, Bob, the 51-year-old bartender, can finally share with me his thoughts on Kensington. As he talks, his bespectacled and crew cut head is haloed by five American flags hovering above the cash register. "If you know how this neighborhood used to be, you'd weep.
When I was a kid, we used to ride our bikes across the Betsy Ross Bridge to New Jersey. Sometimes, we'd go all the way to Camden."
"Camden?! That's so far away!"
"No, it's only about six, seven miles."
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