A Day in the Life : El Centro Medellin

After moving into my place in Prado Centro L and Dutch took me knife (switchblade) shopping, I have never even owned a knife before. If I was ever going to use it it would probably be at night, and most of the clubs here pat you down quite rigorously as you enter.. so I would have to be careful not to get it confiscated.

While traveling along the Caribbean coast Dutch mentioned one of his friend's has an "office". The friend that owns this office is the one who just went to prison for getting caught killing someone. The only other details I had about this place was that "it will be the saddest place you have ever seen, people hanging out laying around tripping out" and that L wanted to lure some semi-homeless girl to the office so she could taser her in a 'safe'(or maybe 'controlled' is a better word) environment.

Dutch and I meet up with L at her place in El centro before we went to the knife shop they normally use. I don't know why we went to the office but it was on the way, this might have been a little 'initiation' or something.

In front of this 2 story crumbling cinder block building some of the office owner's buddies were selling coke etc. If you needed a place to dope up, you went upstairs.
L introduces me to a few of these people, one of them blurts out, "aww man, I used to live in New York City. Taxi driver, lived there for 11 years."

I barely stop myself from asking why he left NYC, shit he probably got deported. I'm thinking don't bring it up, don't bring it up.

"..So, uh, why did you leave?"
Fuck.

"aw yea I would go back. I would go back in a second, I loved it there" He replies, giving me a good view of his crack teeth. He has major yellow and brown discoloring on his shriveling front teeth, with the root starting show on one of them.

Oh phew.. I think this guy misheard me, he probably hasn't spoken English with anyone lately. -- or he didn't want to talk about his deportation.

"Shall we go in?" Dutch says, "You ready for this?".

On our walk to L's apartment he told me if anyone in the office hassles us they're dead. "Oh, so someone will fuck them up a little?" "No, they'll just kill them on the spot if they step out of line".
L has status with these people, so we're supposedly untouchable.

Someone shouts up the stairs that people are coming up and it's cool, don't freak out.

"Oh man it smells" Dutch says as he begins up the stairs, L follows, and I'm the caboose.

The first thing I notice are the walls and the ceiling covered with a wetness you get with concrete and humid rooms. At 6' 4" I'm also hunching over so I don't drag my head on the ceiling. My elbows are curled in towards my body creating a stance that looks like I'm boxing, with my fists level together out front.

As I come up the last few steps I see that there aren't any lights up here, nor furniture (excluding the wooden bucket I discover a few minutes into the future in a smaller room used for shit and vomit). The only light source in the room is sunlight streaming through the cracks and holes in the crumbling cement ceiling (I'm sure that's stable...).

My eyes adjust and I see about 50+ people laying on the floor all over in filth. We have to step over their bodies to pass through the hallway which leads to a larger room also packed with more people on the floor. This larger room was darker than the hallway, I see and hear the flick of a lighter against tinfoil in the corner.

After checking the place out someone from a corner in the dark shouted in a deep slow voice, "Norte Americanos..." L later said they thought we were looking for whores to fuck. We decided it was time to leave and made our way to the stairs, once again hopscotching over the mass of bodies covering the floors in every room and hallway, hoping no one stabs me in the leg with a knife or a needle. Once again I was the last one out, delicately walking down these dark steps trying not to touch the walls HOPING (again) no one grabs me from behind. If they had, the stairs were too narrow for me to turn around, I would have been fucked.

A few years earlier L saw the husband of the school administrator her roommate works at fucking two hookers up here. In the ass. Without a condom.
He also has 2 young children, if it matters.

As we walk into the bright sunlight and along the sidewalk L and Dutch shoot me inquisitive glances. "..So.. how was that?"

When I first met L I didn't think she liked me very much, I probably looked like the hundredth gringo trying to fuck her roommate. But after this day she was much, much warmer towards me. When Dutch took the Brits up there they looked nervous as hell, she even had to pat one on the back to make him chill out. My facial expression for the entire thing was the exact same; nothing, and I guess she likes that. L's daughter, S (4.5 years old), has expressionless eyes, and L has been heard saying that's how she wants them, expressionless and cold.