GHOSTS OF WEST BALTIMORE
An excerpt from the new David Simmons joint.
David Simmons is my friend, my brother. He’s also one of less than a handful of writers I consider competition. Discovering David’s work was like Griffith meeting Guts in Berserk. Finally, someone to keep me on my toes, encourage me to stay sharp, because this motherfucker is capable of chopping down everything in his path to claim the throne.
I’ma let the work speak for itself, but off rip, what sets David’s writing apart more than anything—beyond the oddball characters that are simultaneously alien and true to life, or the pitch perfect dialogue, or the blending of grounded reality with bizarre monster mayhem, esotericism, and Adult Swim level humor—is my boa does his homework. He’s always got boots Jordans on the ground, riding around and digging in the trenches and niches with people who live the shit he's writing bout, and that translates in the work. There are layers of authenticity here that can never be synthesized. This that raw.
Below is an excerpt from Ghosts of West Baltimore, available now.
The Rebbe stroked the boy’s shoulder and muttered a prayer under his breath. “…shehecheyanu, v'kiy'manu, v'higiyanu laz'man hazeh.”
A clear length of tubing, an inch in diameter, ran from the top of the boy’s skull and up through his kippah. The rest of the tubing hung down the back of the chair the boy sat in. The Rebbe lifted the tube and attached an oversized hypodermic needle to the end of it. In between the boy's legs was a platform with a red button. The Rebbe stuck the needle in his arm and pressed the button. A gray liquid began to creep out of the boy’s skull and up through the tube.
“Oy vey,” squeaked the Rebbe, his eyes rolling back in his head as the child’s endogenous DMT passed through his blood-brain barrier. He pressed the red button once more, then fell into his Herman Miller lounge chair. He gripped his thighs and panted like a golden retriever.
The boy was awake. He stared off into the distance, his left eye squinting, as if he were skeptical of something. But he said nothing as the viscous, gray liquid left his skull.
The Rebbe was transported to a world of vibrant colors and shifting patterns and fractals. Every time, the chemical took him to a world beyond words, a divine temple of pentagonal gyroprisms and shimmering dodecahedrons. He felt weightlessness. He heard the distant sound of the kudu shofar, a low rumble that seemed to come from the heart of the earth.
“Mordechai!” yelped the Rebbe. “Come here please, Mordechai.”
A boy, older than the one with the tube in his head, entered the room. He was dressed in a black double-breasted rekel that reached his knees, a worsted wool formal vest on top of his tzitzis on top of a white button-up shirt, and black and yellow basketball sneakers.
The Rebbe was staring at his shoes. Mordechai felt his face grow warm.
“What are those?” said the Rebbe.
Mordechai looked down at his Thunder 4s. They were black sneakers in the silhouette of the Air Jordan 4, originally released in 1989, but this iteration had the smooth black nubuck and the contrasting yellow accents on the eyelets, quarter panel, and internal tongue. The woven Jumpman emblem on the molded heel panel. The Air sole unit tucked away in the heel of the yellow polyurethane midsole.
These sneakers were his only indulgence. They were everything to him.
The Rebbe closed his eyes and exhaled through his nose. “I’m disappointed in you, boychik. For our people, clothing is not for boasting. We should be modest, yes? A person should not feel that he is something special. HaShem does not want this for us. The clothing, it does not make the man. The man makes the clothing.”
“I’m sorry,” said Mordechai, hanging his head. He was stupid for buying such flamboyant sneakers.
The Rebbe opened his glassy eyes again and glared at the boy. “If you’re sorry, Mordechai, then why are you still wearing them?”
Mordechai felt a lump growing in his throat. He pressed the toe of his right sneaker against the back of his left sneaker and kicked the left shoe off. He sniffled and kicked off the right.
“You’re looking at this wrong.” The Rebbe removed the syringe from his arm and draped the tubing over the catatonic boy’s shoulder. A gray drop of liquid beaded at the end of the needle. “Our style of dress is a uniform. Tzniut. You know this, yes? The kapoteh, the shtreimel—they make one aware that they are a part of a particular group, with its own set of values, customs, and rules.”
Mordechai fixated on the Rebbe’s last sentence. With its own set of values, customs, and rules, he thought.
Rules.
How was it acceptable for the Rebbe to do what he was doing? Getting high off the boy’s naturally occurring chemicals.
But Mordechai knew that when it came down to it, it was a halachic question. To an Orthodox Jew, the question came down to whether it followed the dietary laws.
Was it kosher?
Milk from the body was kosher. And the Rebbe seemed to benefit from it. The Rambam himself had said that eating things from which the souls of most people are revolted—food and drink mixed with vomit, feces, foul discharges, or the like—were not kosher, but the Rebbe was certainly not revolted by it.
Mordechai was not revolted by it. The session would end with the boy unharmed. Sure, the child would need to sleep for a few days to recover, but otherwise he would leave unscathed and in good spirits. No harm, no foul.
Could it be made holy?
It had been previously decided that stopping an epileptic from having a seizure was a holy purpose for cannabis. Could the endogenous DMT coming out of the other boy’s brain serve a holy purpose as well?
The Rebbe did not speak about this practice. Mordechai had no way of knowing the Rebbe’s intent. Perhaps he received prophecy with the assistance of this act. He had never asked. Mordechai had never been instructed to blindly accept anything the Rebbe did, anything anyone did. Judaism was not a religion of blind acceptance. Questioning, doubting, these were not prohibited things. He could question, if he so chose.
But he did not.
Had it caused the Rebbe to become a baal taivah?
Mordechai saw the Rebbe as an ambitious man, a passionate man, larger than life, but he would never view him as someone controlled by their desires.
Was he committing chillul HaShem? Was he embarrassing His people, making a fool of God in front of the Jews and the goyim?
Certainly not.
Rabbi Amram Menachem Tzvi was a pillar in the Upper Park Heights community, loved by all from Slade to Northern Parkway, from Twin Ridge to Quarry East, from Glen to Cheswolde. He was a tzaddik. He would never be perceived as a buffoon, an embarrassment. Quite the opposite. What he was doing, with the boy and the chemicals and the needles—it wasn’t shameful. This use, this resourceful utilization was not equal to a room full of Yeshiva boys laughing hysterically at the Talmud because they’re all tripping on acid, the effect of the psychedelic making a mockery of holiness.
Mordechai considered all of this.
The Rebbe had so much responsibility, so much weight on him, so many people depending on him. What could a teenage boy possibly know about that? There were no shortcuts, no running before you walked, Mordechai knew. But they were living in the messianic age, right? Anything could happen.
Let’s say the chemicals did change the Rebbe’s state of mind to the point of dysfunction and embarrassment, Mordechai thought.
He recalled that the gemara said that when the temple was destroyed, prophecy was given to children, dogs and the insane. So even if it did change the Rebbe’s mindstate to the point of insanity, perhaps in the depths of his madness he would find prophecy.
Besides, it was kosher.
And who was Mordechai to question him?
David Simmons lives in Baltimore where he has worked as an optician, rapper, electrical estimator, and drug dealer. His work has appeared in Strange Horizons, the Washington Post, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Another Chicago Magazine, Snarl, 3 Moon Magazine, Apocalypse Confidential, Tahoma Literary Review, Bridge Eight, Across The Margin, the Washington City Paper and numerous anthologies.
His novels Ghosts of East Baltimore and the sequel, Ghosts of West Baltimore are out now via Broken River Books.
Started reading this yesterday. Got to “Thass” and haven’t stopped smiling since.
Yerp....dats da Lick.