Clairton’s welcome sign boasts that it’s the City of Prayer. "It can’t be that bad," Christina reasoned. "It’s the City of Prayer, after all." Having grown up one town over from Clairton, I laughed knowingly and corrected her. "Yeah, because it needs prayers."

Pretty much Clairton’s motto.

The kind of place Henry used to take broads before he met me.

Almost every speciality shop is closed up now, but there were still several small groups of people milling about. Not a single one of them passed by without eyeballing us with beady suspicion. I’m sure we stuck out like a sore thumb: two pasty girls shuffling around nervously, one with a giant camera slung around her neck; the other with bleached hair, a bright orange polo, and a visage of general retardedness.

Christina marveled at how it seemed everyone knew each other.  Sometimes I wish I lived in a place like that, but then I remember that means I’d have to talk to people.

I had to beg this guy for a picture. His eyes were yellow and red all at once. I lied and said it was for a school project, and he seemed a potentially volatile mix of skeptical and paranoid. He finally threw his arms up and said, "Aw hell, take your damn picture." I thanked him profusely and prayed that he wouldn’t change his mind afterward and jump me for the evidence.

I half-expected a pitbull named 8ball to spring against the fence with effervescent lips and a murderous snarl.

The one thing I noticed about Clairton is that, despite the degree of dilapidation and abandonment, there wasn’t too much litter. I wish I could say the same for my lame town. My yard especially is like a trash vortex. Every week, after the garbage is picked up, all the stray trash blows right to my front yard.

This guy was a very laid-back subject. He was kind of like, "Look, once you got the n-word spray painted on your house, very little phases you."

God saw you, indeed.

 

Pre-hospitalization dork alert.

 

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We went for a rainy walk yesterday in the ‘hood where Henry works. It’s one of those areas that’s half-abandoned and dilapidated but you just know the leftover residents have lived there their entire lives. A few people watched me suspiciously, not taking kindly to someone snooping around their hometown rubble; but there was a tall beanpole of a hooker strutting around down one of the back roads with an oversized umbrella, and she flashed her widely-gapped teeth at us when she passed and called Chooch  a handsome man. Chooch was like, “Whassat?” when she passed, and I was like, “Someone Daddy pays when he wants to have filthy sex, Chooch.”

I saw some broad idling on the curb in her Blazer two separate times, each time with a different thug-type talking to her through the passenger window. I wondered aloud what was going on and Henry said, “We’re not in Pleasant Hills anymore, remember that.

”

The block parties probably got too swingin’.

Every town needs a good cobbler.

Next time Christina and I are on the hunt for a sleazy dive…

I’m not sure if this is a barn or a house, but I bet the KGBs hiding in there. And possibly the Lost Boys.

If I lived there, I’d use a periscope as my window to the world.

Was there ever a door so seductively blue.

This bench has a weight limit.

Shortcut to meth lab.

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