I've been looking at rooms in Jamaica Plain this week.  I lived there off and on from '01 to '05, when I was back and forth from Budapest to Boston.  I like it there, but parts of it — particularly around Jackson Square, basically the gateway to Roxbury — are a little rough around the edges, especially for someone as smooth as me. 

I was on my way to look at what turned out to be a delightful place in the Hyde Square area last night, and debated  whether to get off at Jackson Square or ride one more to my old stop, Stony Brook.  They're about equidistant to the place I was looking at, but the walk from Stony Brook would be through quiet residential streets, while getting off at Jackson would take me past the lively projects and up the bustling Blatino section of Centre Street.

I was dressed more for Stony Brook — with my professorial corduroy blazer and leather satchel — but at the last minute I got off at Jackson, curious to see if much had changed since I was there last.  It was a tad before seven and the moon was just rising, a delicate sliver of mother or pearl in a cerulean sky, like something from an illustrated storybook, up above the bright lights and telephone wires — and I stopped to look it.

Two black kids were strutting down the sidewalk toward the T station, dressed like gangstas with all the necessary newfangled accouterments — the whole get-up worth more than I make in a year — and almost passed by without comment.  I must have caught the short one's eye. 

"My man!" He called to me.

"Yes, my friend," I called back, because what are you gonna do?  Why not?

"You seen my Uncle Lance?" He said.

"Um, no," I smiled gamely.

"How 'bout a nigga named Skeet?"

I laughed like I got the joke or didn't mind being the butt of it, whatever it was (the details didn't matter much — I got the gist), and we went our separate ways without event. 

But as I continued up the busy thoroughfare with all its messy life spilling out onto the sidewalk — an aimless exuberance bordering on violence — I debated the pros and cons of life on this end of Centre Street. 

Honestly, I don't know if I want to run the gauntlet every day to get to and from that notorious T station.  Of course, you learn to camouflage yourself, and soon enough I'd blend in, and no one would see me, much less have the urge to question me about Lance and Skeet, not that I mind so much. 

But after visiting prospective digs I decided to take the quiet route back to the T, past the Hi-Lo, down my old street with the Cuban place that got fire-bombed a few years ago on the corner above which Scooter the Underwear Thief used to live, and its giant Victorian-era triple-deckers painted garish colors.  Craggy cliffs and wild-looking gardens. 

I like JP, but there's a lot to consider.