Oompaloompa.

Yesterday I spent most of the day with my Atlanta love Vanity, she had a photo shoot first and then we rode around Atlanta for a little bit, but in between all of this, while driving past the Hyatt in Buckhead we saw this guy walking down the side of the road with a blunt, now, I'm a smoker, a smoker who has watched a lot of Law and Order: SVU in my life so of course I'd have never done this by myself, but we immediately jumped out of the car. He even flashed unknown currency out to entice us into the decision, obviously that didn't work.

All I cared about was the weed.

And possible literary value, I have decided to live a bit of a more maddened life in this city, there is just so much I could write about you know? So many angles to see the world from. But I digress.

We get out of the car, young, vibrant and beautiful as we are, come upon the man as he attempts to light the blunt, he is successful so we sit on the bench with him and began to pass it around, the weed is pretty smooth, he claimed he just bought it from a being walking down the street. I found this hard to believe, but hey it is Atlanta.

Now this man, this incredibly interesting man, had a tracheostomy scar on his throat, if you don't know what that is, it's a tube they insert in the base of your throat if for any reason your ability to breath through your own throat is obstructed, while I stared at the scar thoughts of gun shot wounds and angry pimps filtered through my mind.

If anything, at least I knew, this nigga had been through some rough shit. His whole body seemed affected, he was tall and skinny, his body arched in a weak manner, the kind where you can tell he's been in the hospital and never fully recovered, the kind that he'll never spring back from, his whole life ruined within those few moments, there was no real way of telling how old he was, he'd simply been too beat up for me to make a sure observation on this. He had scars on his face, sharp cheek bones, he was just so thin, every time I glanced at the tracheostomy scar a string of pity ran through me.

And I couldn't help but wonder, 'How did you get here today?'

We smoked, in the middle of the streets, in front of the Hyatt, no one paid particular attention to us. He admonished me for my chipped nail polish, Vanity and I both laughed and asked if he was going to pay for a manicure. He told us about his girl who was just coming from a nail salon, and then proceeded, in the simplest way possible, then proceeded....

To attempt to pimp us.

I was flabberghasted. He asked if he we had a Daddy, Vanity's response? "Yes, I have a father". I thought he meant sugar daddy, so I nodded to appease him. But then he corrected our false understanding of his words and said "No, a Daddy that you give money to" I scoffed in response, what century is this? A Daddy who GETS my money? Fat fucking chance. He went on and on, telling us we need to get real pretty, that we were 'average' now, which was surprising to the both of us, extremely beautiful girls in our own right, average? Really? My goodness this woman he must be talking about must look like Angel Lola Luv or something.

He told us she ran tricks on the white boys, that why would you have 100 boyfriends when you can have a couple who just pay for everything? She fucks for 15 minutes and gets $300, with a condom of course, he made sure to add that to all of his sex talk. As if they pay extra for her magical love cave without one. In my mind $300 is cheap as a trailer park, but I kept those comments to myself, we did just smoke his weed, there is a level of decorum you must keep when smoking with others, don't be too rude, that'd be insulting Mary Jane.

Thoughts of this woman assaulted my mind, I swore she must've looked like Stacey Dash, did I mention he dropped the fact that his cousin was Allen Iverson a couple of times? He said that he makes his own money, that he's been staying in the Hyatt for the past 8 months, that he and his girlfriend work together and that's how they get paid, that she doesn't have to answer to her parents, she's doing her own shit, that we should be careful if we get into the game because there are a lot of undercover cops out there, that we need to hurry up and "use what you got to get what you want", that he had his own money before he even met the girl. Vanity asked what he did for a living. He replied "Baskbetball, my cousin is famous".

I'm sorry. I didn't realize that was a profession.

Honestly. I was amazed this was even happening to me. My smile grew wider every second as the incredulity of the entire situation tripled.

His name? "Oomp". There was a level of pride within him when he spelled the name out for me, it seemed as though he was riding the coat tails of second hand fame fed by the more important "Big Oomp". I saved him in my phone as "Oompaloompa", I mean you never know when I'm shit out of luck and need a quick prostitute. They're good for birthday parties and the likes.

So as we sat and conspired about what on earth this girl could look like he stood up and motioned for us to follow. Obviously that quickly got the "Hell no" stamp. I'm far too smart to get killed by some fake and possibly crippled Big Oomp.

So we dashed away rather quickly to meet up with her mother at the Rooms To Go right around that corner, Rooms To Go always fascinated me, the entire concept is just ridiculous, you can order an entire room like you can order a burger at a fast food restaurant, no method of individuality even within the confines of your own house? The whole idea is just so ridiculously lazy, and American. But once again, I digress.

When we were about to cross the street, Oomp and who we now know to be "the" girlfriend also rounded the corner. And I felt like a man in the heat of moment, fucking the hell out of the finest girl he has ever seen, looking up to the horrified eyes of his mother, his grandmother and aunts about to burst in tears.

Instantly flaccid.

1. She was WHITE. Basic, average, vanilla yogurt, spoilt, sat in the fridge too long. Expired years ago.

2. She was OLD. They way he spoke to us, we both assumed she was 22, 24, but this bitch was hitting 30. And not in the good way.

3. She was FAT. Not even the type of escort you envisage, definitely wouldn't get smashed by Tiger Woods. There was nothing beautiful about her, I mean, I wouldn't fuck her.

So we kept on walking, didn't even want to stop, besides I was high, too eager to share the story rather than experience any more of it. I think we offended him in some way when we didn't stop to correspond with them, I hope I didn't get any bad karma from that, but then again, he was trying to pimp us. And for $300 per 15 minutes? Please. I'm sure Karma understands.

In hindsight, the reality of his life was quite tragic, no real education, no real career, depending on this white girl riding on her last legs, "tricking" poor unsuspecting horny white men for $400 a pop, dropping his cousins name in all conversation as some kind of insurance for himself, like "Yeah I have brilliance in my family, you might be lucky, it could run in the blood" type of certification. His body ravaged by whatever put him in the hospital, weak and frail by the looks of it.

Soul gone entirely. Trying to bring others into his life of degradation. A shepherd leading his sheep to slaughter.

How very, very tragic.