Two.

One of the things Moms gets to talk to me about, when she’s not at one job or another, is to be careful and think first. I think she’s afraid I’m just gonna fly off the handle and pick a fight with the wrong motherfucker and end up pushin up daisies. She tells me this with a worried look in her eyes, like I’m being sent off to battle every morning. Only thing missing with that is that I don’t get welcomed by a couple of virgins on my return.

“We’re so glad you’re back, Daddy. We were getting so worried, we were holding each other for support.”
“Y’all keep doing that. Daddy’s gonna get out of this armor and join y’all.”

I suppose Pops is the one supposed to come up and teach me the ways of the streets, but this shit seems new to him, too.


I suppose I don’t have it as bad as I’m supposed to. We don’t live in the bombed-out, Detroit-looking, post-armageddon hood that the news stopped talking about when Bush got into office. We live on the outskirts of those, kinda like a moon around a dead-ass planet. I know cats who live in the MadMax area, and I don’t fuck with them much. Shit’s depressing, and all they can talk about is how hard they are and how many guns they bust off and how many bitches they smack. Fuck that. I don’t need gats to bust, and am only hard when bitches can tell me what they wanna smack on. Ha! That’s what I’m talkin about.

Thing is, when we go to school, the teachers and principal and all of them think we’re all Thunderdome rejects who escape to come get our learn on. So it’s easy to be drawn into that rough and tough shit; no one wants to admit that they don’t get shot at and shit when it’s clear that plays on their concern and feelings and shit. I’ve probably gotten away with some shit that way, but I can’t really put a word in. Low-expectation-having muthafuckas.


I walk Ang over to her friend Cee’s, if for no other reason than to get out of the house. Cee lives maybe a block and a half away through pretty quiet territory as far as gangs and shit goes, but Mom and Pops would fucking kill me if I let Ang walk over by herself and something happened to her. If I was gonna be her older brother/knight-in-shining Nikes, I might as well play the hardcore role to the utmost.

“Why you gotta come with me?” Ang complained. “I can walk myself.” She had been getting more and more annoyed at my presence lately, which I marked off to her getting older. I handled her like a princess who simply was too stupid to know that she happened to be my sister. “Because,” I said as sweetly and feminine as I could, “I’m responsible for your well-being.”

She then took a swing at me, which I didn’t expect, but her punches were slow and telegraphed. When she aimed for you, she was slow, but when she was just flailing her arms around, her movements were quick. I jumped back to avoid the right hook, and jumped back into her range to aim for her armpit. Her upper body compacted as her seriousness evaporated under the tickle assault. “STOP!” she screamed, giggling. “You play too much!”

That kind of shit doesn't happen in the fucked up urban areas, does it? From what I’ve read in the paper and seen in the “Dangerous Minds” rip-off movies, we need saving from ourselves. We’re wither upper lower class or lower middle class. If Mom or Pop lost their job, I’m aware of the fact that we’d be up the creek without a paddle. Thing is, I never saw the point of living like animals and acting like them, too. That’s what I see all the time on TV; poor muthafuckas acting out, robbing folk, stealing shit, slinging the crack, until the good ol’ police puts a few holes in they bitch ass. Sure, we didn’t have the hot shit, didn’t vacation in the Hamptons or wherever the fuck rich folk went, but we were okay. We’re posted up quite comfortably in a two-flat and, as far as I knew, the bills got paid, and the rent
is taken care of.

So my non-stereotypical ass dropped my sister off at her friend’s place and made my way to my man’s spot. Me and B-More have been friends since second grade, when his pops moved to Chicago for some job thing. According to how I’m SUPPOSED to act, we’ll either fall out over some bitch, starting running drugs together, or start excelling in some Hoop Dreams-level fantasy where we start collecting posse members like football cards and get big heads. Oh, and don’t forget the women. How could I forget the women? Dimepieces of every color, all ready to do what it do. Big titties, big asses, big lips, little waists...

I recovered from this daydream in time to discover that I had walked right by B’s house. Dammit. I hate when I do that.