I envisioned God as one of those white business men looking down on the ghetto from one of those towering office buildings downtown, aloof and immune, wondering how he can suck more profit from our misery. In my mind God was white and he hated us just like all white folks did.
My Mom started dating this Muslim brother that tried to tell me that God was Black. I laughed in his face at first but he persisted. He said that we were all God’s chosen people descended from the tribe of Shabazz. He was trying to make me feel better, I know. I’m sure my Mom had told him about my little episode at the church and how I had refused to ever go back. But all he did was piss me off even more. If God was Black than why the hell wasn’t he doing anything to help Black people?
I thought about all the bourgie Blacks I knew: the doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and politicians, who talked a good game to gain Black support and achieve their positions and then promptly turned their backs on us once they achieved their desired status. They would put as much distance as they could between themselves and the people who helped to make them what they were. I thought of all the big-time players and pimps, the hustlers and gangstas who leeched off the black community and exploited their own brothers and sisters worse than any white man ever had. If God was Black then he was just another bourgie nigga who got large and forgot where he came from. Somehow the idea of a sell-out, house-nigga god, was worse than the idea of a racist white one.
There was that reference to the white man as the devil again. It seems all these Muslim cats believed that shit. I just couldn’t buy it though. Just like all the other racial conspiracy theories, it gave white people too much credit. I just couldn’t see how they could be that slick and crafty to keep Black people fucked up for so long. All the dirt Scratch was doing in the hood would have been more than enough to convince most mutherfuckers that his ass was Satan. I could definitely believe that he was evil. I just still couldn’t accept that all of them were. Still, even if that shit was true, God created Dr. Yaccub, who created the white man, so it was all God’s fault anyway. Besides, he damned sure wasn’t doing shit to correct the situation.
I stopped believing in God. I was convinced that the lives of Black folks, and mine in particular, was just some cruel-ass joke. I started drinking again and getting high. I had never stopped fighting but even that got worse. More and more often I skipped school. Mrs. Greenblade kept trying to bring me back around but I had lost all interest in school or anything else. It was all pointless anyway.
“What’s going on with you, Malik? You were doing so well. Is everything all right at home? Do you need someone to talk to? You are just too bright and you’ve got too much potential to just throw it all away like this. I might have to fail you if you keep going like this,” the overweight, middle-aged schoolteacher pleaded with me. She looked like she was on the verge of tears.
“Do what you gotta do. Ain’t no thang to me.”
“Malik, please. Just tell me what’s going on?”
“Remember that last book you gave me by Jean Paul Sartre?
“Yes?” she seemed relieved that I was opening up. I guess she thought I was giving her a chance to talk me out of whatever I had gotten into my head.
“I gotta confess. I really didn’t understand much of it. But, it seemed to be saying that if there is no God and life is without meaning than there are no rules, no restrictions. That man is as free as he allows himself to be. I think that’s what he meant by the idea of an absurd freedom. If life is absurd then we are free to create meaning, define our own destinies. Anything is possible.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what he meant. I wanted you to see that your race or your economic situation need not hinder you in becoming anything you wanted to be.”
“Yeah, I got that. But if life is without meaning then there may be no restrictions on our actions, but that also means that there ain’t no motivation either. If everything is meaningless then there’s nothing holding us back, but there’s nothing to drive us either and what type of freedom is that shit? It’s like puttin’ a kid in a candy store, but first removing his taste buds. The fact that life is meaningless makes me want to do nothing, but you can’t live doing nothing and everything you do creates conflict, especially in the ’hood. Conflict creates pain, and that pain demands the question ‘What the hell am I suffering for?’ To which Sartre answers, ‘Nothing.’ That’s truly fucked up, man. As much shit as we go through it should mean something. It should be worth more.”
“Malik, you’re wrong. There’s plenty in this world that’s worth doing. That’s just one man’s perspective.”
“But he’s right. Maybe there’s something worthwhile in your world, but not in mine and despite all that bullshit about freedom my world is all I’ll ever know.”
That was pretty much my last day of school. I’m mostly self-educated. I continued to read about philosophy and only succeeded in depressing myself further. No one had anything that was worth believing in. All the philosophers were just cowards and liars, afraid to see the truth or afraid to speak it for fear of being unpopular. No one knew the truth and no one even seemed to be looking for it anymore. I gave up on everything but my friends.
Huey, Tank, and I began going downtown into Center City, to South Street, almost every night to jack white boys for their cash or even their clothes if they looked expensive enough. It was during this time that I got arrested for the first time.
We were down on South Street on a Saturday night feeling roguish and hostile. It was just three nights before Halloween and about ten minutes before midnight. There were already many people out in costume. Early Halloween parties disgorged onto the street and blended in with the gaggle of freaks and weirdos that packed the dozen blocks that led from the harbor to the Broad Street subway. South Street was Philadelphia’s version of Greenwich Village or Haight Ashbury Street. Every nationality, sexual persuasion, and alternative lifestyle the city offered paraded up and down the street in outlandish regalia. From thugs to transvestites, punk rockers to pimps, there was not a single group lacking representation in some form or another. Even the suburbanites from New Jersey and the main line jammed the sidewalks snapping pictures at the urban cultural oddities.
The closer it got to Halloween the weirder South Street became. Between Seventh Street and Front Street cops occupied every corner looking nervous and tense, clearly aware that they were outnumbered and probably outgunned as well. Riots on South Street were almost a Philadelphia tradition. They were so common they hardly even made the news anymore unless someone got killed or something. From Eighth Street to Broad Street however, a short mile that took you within a few blocks of the Martin Luther King projects, there was not a police officer in sight. There the streets were dark with shattered street lights and abandoned tenements. Each alleyway you passed was a potential death trap. And if you were dumb enough to leave South Street anywhere along it’s length, even as far down as Front Street, you were just asking for pain.
The three of us stood outside the pharmacy at Fifth and South watching the hoes, hookers, and naive young suburban bitches stroll by. The suburban girls were even easier to pick up than the hoodrat hoes. You could almost hear the rap lyrics playing in their heads when they looked at us, wide-eyed and expectant. There was a six-foot red-headed girl grinning at me from inside the store and I couldn’t stop staring at her. She was fucking gorgeous! I knew Huey would have some shit to say about me fucking with some gray bitch, but all I was thinking about was getting my dick wet. Fuck all the politics. It’s all pink on the inside.
My eyes traveled up and down her body and I shook with want. Her breasts were tremendous. I would have put her bra-size somewhere in the middle of the alphabet. Her ass was thick and full, but with as much muscle as fat and her hips were wide as well. Her waist however was small and narrow with just the slightest hint of a tummy.
“Yo, Tank.”
“Wa’sup, dog?”
“See that red-headed snowflake in the store? I bet you I can pull that before the end of the night.”
“Aw, bro, she’s fine. You think you could pull that?”
“Shit, all a Black man needs to pull a white bitch is a big dick and an attitude.”
“Yeah, and a little self hate.” Huey interrupted, scowling in disgust.
“Dog, don’t even start trippin’. Pussy is Pussy. Some just got flatter asses and straighter hair than others, but when you up in it, it all feels the same.”
“How the fuck would you know? You ain’t never been up in nothin’ except Yolanda’s fat ass!”
“Fuck you, man. I gets plenty pussy. Just watch me pull this snowflake bitch.”
