I am such a tough white dude that even black guys are afraid of me. Some years back, when I was supportin' myself hand-to-mouth as a warehouse worker (and hardware salesman, all connotations intended) I met a young black dude at Father's Three on Mass. Ave. This was, like, back in the day, keep in mind. This was past the Afro-wearing epoch and before the wearing-your-pants-halfway-down-to-yo'- ass epoch, in terms of how black dudes accoutred their persons back then. I started up a conversation with the dude. Turned out he had some cocaine to sell. Hey, I was game. Fuck! I'd just been paid, and was ready to part with my hard-earned cash like any other wage-earning fool. He led me out the door. I half expected to be mugged, so I made sure to walk behind him, rather than vice versa. He kept turning to look at me, bright-eyed and nervous-like. He got me into his car, of all things, and then we took off. "Where we goin'?" I asked. "Roxbury, man," he said. "Mission Hill." Turned out he didn't actually have the coke on him, mind you. Ah, well, my life was okay while it lasted, I figured. With me strapped into the passenger seat, we zipped south on Massachusetts Avenue, then hung a right after about a mile and drove on up through a cluster of crappy-lookin' clapboard houses all stuck together on some hill. Sort of reminded me of this Positano-type Italian village, all hilly and cramped, but rendered Boston style. However, this was sure as hell no
Italian neighborhood. This was The Hood, period. We arrived at some house. We walked in. Two other black dudes were there. It was like three A.M. already, and they were all lookin' fidgety and shifty-eyed at me. One of the guys camped out at the kitchen table and cut some fresh cocaine. The other guy from the house jabbered sotto voce with the guy that took me there, asking (I think) if I were gay or something. (You know, not that I was.) I noticed all three of these black guys were shorter than me. Not munchkin short, mind you, but we're not talking Wilt Chamberlain here either. I got the coke all right, but the guys wanted to share it with me. Pleading, clamoring for it. Intimidation in the guise of neediness, I guess. I said, "Yeah. What the fuck" to avoid getting shivved. I thought we'd do it there, but no. The guy that drove me down and one of his pals (the chubby one that thought I was gay) zoomed all the way back downtown to the campus of some fancy-ass women's college of all things, where one of these dudes had a girlfriend, and we end up snortin' it all on the men's room floor.
In a freakin' girls' dormitory! No shit. Wussy as that. We spread a paper towel on the tile floor, and I took out a box cutter from my warehouse job. It wasn't one of those big Stanley box-cutters, one of those huge, honkin', I-want-to-hijack-your-plane-you-infidel box-cutters. It was one of those miniature box-cutters with a blade about a quarter inch long. I was gonna use it to form the lines. But both the black guys started getting hysterical, crying, "
Don't cut us, man! Don't cut us!" I cursed under my breath, explained what I was doing, and it was copacetic after that. The last thing I remember, we were on all fours like a trio of hogs, snortin' as much coke as our noses could handle. The black dudes ended up getting at least half of what I'd freakin' paid for - but what the hell! It was worth it to see the bloods cringe and squeal at my tiny knife!
No comments:
Post a Comment