Over at my man's, Avery is running down some of the slang from his highschool years. I put in some paragraphs and got carried away.
Not long ago there was a hiphop dictionary and some kids from Finland or Sweden were the first to put it on the 'Net, but Charles Isbell and I were the original kings and spent a lot of time setting the etymologies straight. I forgot how much fun it could be and how deeply into my psyche the argot and challenges of young black manhood are. I say young black manhood guardedly because only in abstract political ways and basic human ways are there any similarities between what I mean by it and what you might interpret that meaning to be today. The only way out of that impasse is to pass along some of the original language in context. And so I continue.
I never bought any weed in my entire life. Everything I know about weed comes from the fundamental act of sharing the illicit commodity. There are a lot of things one might assert about blackness, but there is little that matches the intimacy made by passing the herb.
In retrospect I cannot call those people friends. Nobody said anything about 'friends' except your mother, who was always immune to their elements of cool. No matter who TeeDee and Boo where to you, to your mother, they were always your 'little friends'. Depending on your willingness to be associated, they were 'just some dudes I hang out with' or they were 'my boys'. I never ran with a gang. If asked what set I'm from, I had no answer, which is not to say I shut up. I simply told them that there are no Crips or Brims in my neighborhood. And this was perhaps known well enough about Crenshaw and Jefferson that it was rarely a problem. I didn't have a 'crew', but I did have my boys. A crew had purpose and we had no missions, only each other and the games we played. We were boys, and that's the best way to describe it.
The Arnold's front porch was good for three things. The other two were hopscotch and hair braiding. It was painted red and sat under an aluminum awning. The rain gutter came down on the driveway side and the wrought iron was painted black. The steps were too shallow for sitting but there was plenty of room to sit on the milk crates in the corners back in the shade even as the laggers were tossed for clicking heels over the six. It was usually Wanda who had the shoebox, but what she was doing with the weed and the seeds was a mystery to me then. I never held the bag, only the harsh sweet smoke of the second toke. They knew I was no good, and I cultivated that knowledge, of holding the roach or hitting the second joint. So I always got a good fat draw of the first fat splif and passed what was left the herb to the next kid on the porch.
I was the best diver and the best wrestler. I was about as fast as anyone so I got to play wide receiver and free safety but in our small world everybody had to hike sooner or later. But not everybody got to QB or roll the joints. Those were specialties. I can throw a football from pole to pole now, which was all the bomb anybody needed. Four front lawns were forty yards with a first down at every driveway but we were not about rushing and played three completes. Even a punt was a pass if you downed the ball first. The rules for football were clear and the competition was one I gladly engaged, but I didn't want to know so much about the herb. I didn't ask much and they didn't tell me anything. It was part of the conspiracy to keep me brainiac I suppose. There must have been some delicacy in the knowledge that I would have to be seduced every time to get high; I never came asking and I only said no enough to make them ask me.
The ladies know that I started drinking at age 26, right around the crisis that birthed my black political agnostics. When the guys start talking about their exploits to get beer and booze before they had peachfuzz I think to myself 'whiteboys!'. I don't have to explain the intimacy of the Arnold's porch. It shares no context with the adventure to the corner liquor store bribery and barfing out the car trope. Adolescent drunkenness is a competition, a headlong rush to pukey oblivion. These days, they say 'sick' as a compliment. The invitation to share weed is a circle of badness tangential to intellectual ferment. You're supposed to be enlightened high, you were supposed to take to the sky and compose Strawberry Letter 22. Drunks are supposed to punch holes in drywall and each other, beer is something to hurled at hockey games. That's why I always laugh at that little white lie, 'medicinal purposes'. The bad boy life of smoking and drinking at 26 I composed and ended of my own volition two years later. That's why the ladies know it.
There are other paragraphs to come, I suppose. Just not today.
Recent Comments