THIS IS MY LIFE 1.

NO DESCRIPTION NEEDED. THIS IS MY LIFE.

 

 

 

 

THIS IS MY LIFE. 1

In 1958 at Maimonides hospital in Brooklyn New York. A 43-year-old woman was diagnosed with a stomach tumor. Her belly was big, so the tumor must have been big. they were about to operate when the operation was brought to a halt by a doctor who shouted, “It’s not a tumor. It’s a kid!!”. 

That was the beginning of my miserable life. Now I don’t know exact dates, but I do know incidents. Like when I was four or five. Walking around, babbling as babies do. My niece’s boyfriend, (remember my mother was 43 when I was born.

 She had two grown daughters, and the child of my sister Toni Lived with me and my mom). 

Her boyfriend, Winston was ironing his pants on an ironing board. Me as a kid, walking around, putting my hands on everything. I put my hand on the ironing board.

 At that moment my niece’s boyfriend, (who was watching a baseball game at the same time he was ironing), put down the iron. Right on my baby hand. Of course, I screamed to baby high heaven. I was rushed to the hospital with a third degree burn on my little hand. Now the rest of that I can’t remember. 

I do remember my first best friend, and I remember my mom crying over the death of John Kennedy. Cecelia was more like my sister than my niece.

 We got along quite well, but I was somewhat a problem child.

 

I met my first friend while I was killing caterpillars.  I would catch the caterpillars and in a front door of another building, I would let them crawl while I opened the door, and then let it close squishing them. (I was a stupid kid alright? Nowadays you don’t see caterpillars, earthworms, or grasshoppers. As a society, we have eradicated much of what the earth needs, and we will, in the name of man, eradicate more.). The kids' name was Darrell. 

He watched me killing the caterpillars and wanted in on the action. So, we both caught and squished caterpillars.

 We became best friends. We would play dress up games. He would dress as a woman, and we would play house and have fake kid sex. One day his father walked in on the fun, and Darrell got beat. That was when I realized that I liked guys.

 I was an idiot as a kid, and I’m still an idiot. I met a Hispanic guy with a band, that practiced in a basement just less than a block away. He would invite me to watch his band practice. I took it a step too far.

 As a kid, you always want to show off. So, I wanted to show Darrell the band that made me a friend. I took Darrell there and the door was locked. I didn’t know that. I thought it was stuck, so I pushed and pushed until I broke the lock which was locked on the inside (I had unknown strength). I never got to watch that band again. A couple of years go by.

 The guy that burnt my hand takes me to a baseball game a Shea stadium (he had a contract to play for the Baltimore Orioles, but blew it off because he was in love with my niece).

He noticed that I wasn’t interested. He asked if I was interested in baseball. I told him that I wanted to be in Yankee stadium. Well, those years went by. Buy the age of ten I did things like taking my dinner to my room. When I didn’t like the food, I would put it in and paper bag and shove it under my bed. 

One day my mother caught a foul smell coming from my room, and discovered over twenty bags of rotten food. 

I found my mother wanting to send me to military school but choosing to send me to therapy instead. That was after I had written a horror story, which caused her to wonder, whether I was a genius or serial killer.

 My English teacher saved me from military school. I did have to see a therapist for the next four years. I didn’t speak a word for the first year or so, and we would communicate with drawings. I kind of fell in love with my therapist, after a year or so she said it was time to talk. So, I began to speak to her. She was a slim white woman with a Beatle haircut. 

After four years she told me that she was leaving with her husband. I didn’t care where, or with whom I only knew that she was leaving me.

 My mother brought me to meet my new therapist, which was some older white lady with terrible acne. I was fourteen and refused to continue. Before I was sixteen. I was involuntarily recruited into the “Ex-cons” which was the gang around my neighborhood. 

All we had to do was cross Eastern Parkway and we were in, “Jolly stompers” territory, our rival gang. Eastern Parkway was right around the corner, which meant we couldn’t go anywhere. 

It was like the Jews and Palestinians. One night at 11 pm, shots rang out in the schoolyard where we used to play. The Jolly stompers had invaded.

 The jolly stompers were guys in their thirties and forties. They invaded with intent. We ran and ducked behind cars. Some Jamaican guy was yelling, “they're shooting at me”. We looked at him and told him he wasn’t important. At that time Jamaicans were far and in-between. Meaning there weren’t many.

My best friends were Casper and Ramone. They interrogated Casper’s brother. Who got caught. At that time, I played hooky more than there were days of school. I had a sex partner, who would climb from the adjacent roof to my second-floor window when my family was gone. 

It was a spectacle that drew the attention of the kids at the school which was right across the street. On one day, he did his type wire act and my niece opened the window. Opps.

 I went on and became sixteen. Now you might be asking where was the father? 

I had seen my father three times in my life. Once when I was ten. He came and knocked at the door looking for my mom. He wore all black. My mom for some reason, which would be legal, left me with him and his girlfriend for a weekend. He put me in a room with a cot and a small window with bars on it.

 He was a hopeless, angry drunk. He would try to make small talk but was mostly just yelling at me to behave, even though I did nothing. The Livingroom was connected to the kitchen. 

His girlfriend made some food and brought the plates to the table. I was happy. It was the only thing that seemed normal.

That was until my father picked up his plate, and threw it at his girlfriend, who was washing dishes at the time and had her back turned to us. He missed her head by an inch as the plate and food slid slowly down the wall. He then yelled, “Where’s the ketchup!!”.

That would be the second time that I saw my father. The third and last time, was when I in a car with my niece Cecelia. She pointed to a doorstep, and there stood my father, drunk, with a bottle of Jack Daniels in the hand. He wore the same black hat and black trench coat that he wore the first time I saw him. 

Now let me digress. I was fourteen. I was a big Richard Pryor fan. I could recite his albums from back to front. I was so good that kids in the neighborhood would sit me down and ask me to recite his albums. Casper, Ramone and I were best of friends. Casper was a basketball genius.

 Ramone was a drummer who could rotate his arms against one another.  Meaning one arm would rotate forward, while the other rotated backward. Try it. Rotate one arm forward, while rotating the other arm backward. The mind blocks it. I noticed that Ramone would not look at his arms. He would just do it. He was and maybe still is a great drummer. We would hang out, drink forties, smoke joints and have fun. We were never violent or threatening.

 We just wanted to have fun. Still, there were the “Ex-cons”. I had a friend that lived below us. 

At first, his mom and my family were at odds. She always complained that we were walking around like elephants. Yet me and Buddy became friends, (kind of funny. My buddy was named Buddy). One day the boss of the Ex-cons was courting the landlord’s daughter. Buddies father was in the military, and there was a gun. I asked Buddy to get me the gun. He was apprehensive, afraid, and began to sweat. He asked me to promise him that I wouldn’t use it.

 Teddy was a guy about 5’10 and weighed 150 pounds. Yet. He was the boss of the Ex-Cons.

 Buddy, with tears in his eyes, gave me the gun. I immediately turned and pointed it to Teddy. He had fear in his eyes, and I loved it. I told him how he had made our community a place of fear and uncertainty. I was about to put an end to this bullshit. Buddy was on his knees crying. It was his father’s gun.

I never pulled the trigger. I told Teddy to leave. He grabbed me by the neck, and said, “This Ain’t over”. Thank god, my mother constantly attempted to beat the Ghetto. So, we moved from Saint johns place in Brooklyn to Lincoln place in Brooklyn. To East 51^st street off Utica Avenue Brooklyn. 

I would always see white people moving out and always wondered why I never saw them before they moved out. My mother tried her best, but could never beat the ghetto. Now even before then, there was bussing.

There was desegregation.

 Black kids would be bussed into white schools. There was supposed to be a quit quo quo, but it never happened. White kids were never bussed into black schools.

 I went to New Utrecht High. It’s a much different atmosphere now, but then we were met with picket signs, spits, and things thrown at us by angry white people. Once there was a riot that started in the lunchroom. We ran to the train. There stood a cop that said, “No more n*****s getting on this train”.

 We ran him over. There was then a backlash.  Blacks were attacking whites on the train for no reason, other than being white. Then we went into downtown Brooklyn and destroyed anything in our way.

 I never understood the whole racist thing. I didn’t hate anybody. I just wanted to go home. 

I quit school. My mother was pissed. She once said that there was a lot of hell in me. I don’t have hell in me. I’m just not Catholic. My mother wasn’t happy with me. Riots were not just on New York, but also in Boston. Desegregation wasn’t working.

You can’t force a community upon another community. Now, Well, Whatever. Gentrification is the thing. It’s about time. 

 I did nothing as a sixteen-year-old. I hung around and watched busses go guy. Then got a job, with Arty Liberman at a Thom McCann shoe store. I worked there with Arty and Tom. Arty was a great Jewish gut. Tom was a nervous little white guy. Then I met Bobby. Bobby was a Hispanic kid, whose hair weighed more than his body. This stupid little kid was bananas. 

 I never knew what to make of him. He wore binocular glasses and would speak of Hispanic gangs that he was a part of. 

I think he was in love with me. I don’t even remember how I met him.

Now on the other side, there was a district supervisor that hated me. He would come in with Jerry Lewis glasses and destroy displays while smiling at me. Arty told him that I was about to get upset. This guy would later fire me over the phone, not even talking to me. Before that, there was a break in. 

Bobby said it was his people. Whatever that meant. We didn’t know how to take Bobby, but f**k I was about to be thrown in jail for an inside job that I didn’t do. They broke in through the roof, but the supervisor just wanted me to go down so Bobby saved my a*s. Bobby was weird, but I like him for some reason. He seemed like a guy that needed a friend.

He once walked into my apartments, past my mother and nieces (Cecelia had two daughters). He walked into my room with a paper bag in his pants, took out a 9millimietter, pointed it to my head and pulled the trigger. Then he laughed. I kicked his a*s. But he wasn’t finished there.

 I think that he wanted my acknowledgment. He was in love with me. So, he steals his father’s car. I guess it was his father’s car.  It was a car. He was sixteen and without a license. He had these sunglasses on. It was ten at night. He pulled up the middle compartment. I don’t know what you call it.

 There was a half-bottle of Jack Daniels, and another bottle of Tequila. I then knew that this was going to be a rough ride. We picked up my boys Casper and Ramone. They were happy until they got in. Bobby had no driving skills. It was a like a bad movie. For some reason, Ramone was enjoying the ride. He was fearless. Casper was a ghost. We zoomed down a one-way street.

The wrong way. A cop car meets us at the end of the street. We stop. Bobby puts it in reverse and zooms backward. We were waiting for the cops to stop us. Nothing. Bobby zooms away. We go and pick up the white boy Tom. Tom was the guy whose job I took as assistant manager at TomMccan. (funny).

 We picked him up, and Bobby was drinking and driving. He didn’t like the white guy. Bobby continued driving erratically. I told him to stop. I was in the front passenger seat. He looked at me, not the road. I told Bobby to stop, and let us out. He refused.  I then opened the passenger side door and told him I was jumping.

 He stopped the car, and let me, Casper, and Ramone out. He told Tom empathically that he would have to stay. “You Ain’t going nowhere white boy”! I think Bobby was mad at me. Tom later had a breakdown, and now walks with a Cain. Ramone, Casper and I walked the streets of Flatbush Brooklyn. 

Flatbush was predominantly white at that time. We had no idea where we were and didn’t see a subway station. We walked for a while until we came up to a bar.

We were all too young, but Casper was in a panic.

 He stepped into the bar to ask for directions. Ramone and I knew better. Seconds later, like a cartoon, Casper came flying out on his a*s. A big white guy looked out and shouted, “get the f**k out of here N****r!!!”  Casper ran to the streets trying to flag a taxi. He screamed like a girl. We walked for what seemed like miles but made it home in the morning.

The weird thing about living on East 51 street, was the Friday night happenings. Every Friday night at about 11 pm, limos would drive up to a house on the corner. Drivers would step out and open the doors for the gentleman that were always dressed in black. It was a mafia meeting place. I didn’t know it then. I know it now. Who knows what mafia guys I saw.

While I was unemployed and out of school. I sat on the corner. Watching the busses. 

Two white guys opened a kiosk. Selling newspapers, candy and such. I made them my friends, or they made me their friends. 

They asked if I wanted to make money. What am I going to say, No?? I was to take a newspaper to a toy store which was in the middle of the block. Don’t open it, don’t look at it, just deliver it. I would get $10 bucks.

 I did that until I felt that my life was going nowhere. That’s when my mom’s entered my room and threw down an ad for the army. She had to sign for me. She did, and I went. I Spent three years with the military, and pride myself on being a guy that doesn’t see color.

That’s why I Lived for over twenty years in Germany, after my stint with the army. America sucks in the respect that you see color before people. Anyway.

 The one guy whose name was John, always received a one-year-old Cadillac, after his father bought a new one. Now you may be asking yourself. “Where is the mafia”.

There was a blackout in 1975 If I’m not mistaken. The store that I would deliver the paper to. While there were craziness and looting going on. Two guys with black trench coats and hands in pockets. Stood outside this store. No one fucked with this store. I could have been a Hit man a for the mafia, but me being black. I would have been a hit man, Deadman, Collateral damage. So where do we go from here?  The worst is yet to come…

Author's Note

IT''S ALL REAL