I dropped Melody and the Girl Child off at their apartment, and then headed back to the house I shared with my bandmates on the West Side of Chicago. The five of us occupied a derelict brick bungalow in Humboldt Park that we referred to as the Cursèd Place. It may or may not have been cursed but it definitely was a dump. Everything about it, from the sagging roof to the crumbling foundation, reeked of decrepitude. It was infested with pests that included but were not limited to, myself, an ex-addict, a trans-woman, a redneck, a runaway, and a strutting all-black rooster named Mary May whom I’d been told, on good authority, was ‘unclean’.
Home sweet home.
I let myself in the front gate but no sooner had I crossed the property line than Mary May charged out from under the porch and launch
