About Chez Gladys

One of my loyal reader/commentors, eatmisery, asked me a question today which seems to deserve an answer. In response to yesterday's post about the drug spot and its sandwich truck, she asked:

"Chez Gladys will be okay, right? Would you ever consider selling the place to move elsewhere? I know you love where you're at, but is it worth it? What would be a good reason to stay? I'm genuinely curious."

Chez Gladys should be fine. This block is rough, but it's a two-sided coin, you see.

I've posted here and there about LJ and his "job", which I like to characterize as "freelance herbal-pharmaceutical sales". And in this capacity, he is involved with a loosely-allied organization whose members profess similar employment. Really, it's not much different from any other professional organization; it's like the Teamsters, only with more guns. They have their rules, their policies, their ways of doing business, things which are not to be violated, and they police themselves.

The nice thing about it is that all the members of LJ's "union" know each other, or know someone who knows someone who knows everyone. And so, for example, the other morning when I came outside and there was a strange man retrieving something from under our front porch (which he swore wasn't drugs, but c'mon now), all it took was a two-minute call to LJ to ensure that such a thing would never happen again. "I talked to dude," he said later that night, "the one with the motorcycle, the one who runs the block? And he said he was gonna talk to everyone and tell them to stay away from our shit."

Another example: the other day when Tim was here and we were running errands, we came home with our hands full of bags. In trying to juggle everything while taking my housekeys out of my pocket, apparently I forgot to press the "lock" button on the car remote.

Just before he came to bed around 3, LJ went out to get a few things out of the truck that he'd left there--a couple of CDs, some mail. He came back in and said "I think someone was fuckin' with the truck--the glovebox was open, and that little box inside the armrest--like they was lookin' for something." I thought about it and realized what I'd done, and apologized even though they hadn't stolen anything (there was nothing to steal!).

The next day LJ called me at work to tell me that he'd talked to one of his other associates on the block, who told him that he'd seen someone in the truck--probably a crackhead, he said--and that he'd run him off before he could do any real damage.

I've tried to explain this to various friends and family members, but it's hard to understand unless you're here: the drug dealers want trouble just as much as I do, which is not at all. And the worst kind of trouble would be trouble involving me, because of the fundamental politics of race here in Chicago.

See, if a black person kills another black person in this neighborhood, it might make the news, depending on the circumstances. Mostly, though, it's just "expected" somehow. But if a white person dies at the hands of a black person, that's a headline. And if the victim was a white woman? An educated, professional white woman? That would bring down the police like the wrath of God--and THAT would be very, very bad for business. All the drug dealers want is to do what they do in peace, really.

Some of them know me by sight; they'll say hello when I'm sitting out on the porch, or laugh at me when I go stand in the spray from the fire hydrant. They smile at me as I drive past; like my neighbors to the east or the woman on the corner who keeps offering me free kittens, they're just part of the neighborhood. I know they don't quite know why I'm here, though I'm sure some of them see LJ and draw their own conclusions; but they also know I'm not going to interfere with them, and between that and the affiliations they share with LJ, they don't interfere with me either.

Could I sell this house? Maybe. It wouldn't be easy; there are five or six other vacant houses on the block, most of them with "For Sale" signs in the window, and my house (as we know!) has some flaws that need to be corrected before it would really be salable. If it sold, I'd almost certainly make a profit. But if I stay longer, if I fix this house up the way I plan to, I will quite likely make a killing. This neighborhood, sooner or later, will be one of the hot places to buy. I've watched for ten years as the gentrification crept westward, and it's coming closer. I don't think I'm entirely happy about that--there's a reason I don't live in Lakeview or Lincoln Park--but from a financial standpoint it's not a bad thing.

More importantly, though--I feel like this is where I belong, somehow. (Or at least, if I don't belong here, there's an actual REASON for it, instead of the nebulous not-belonging I've felt nearly everywhere else in my life. I can deal with not belonging somewhere as long as there's a good reason. It's that inexplicable, I-should-fit-in-here-but-somehow-I-don't feeling that I can't stand.)

Plus: I'm a writer. Someday all these experiences will be useful...I hope.