Excerpt From Nate, A Novel

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NATE By P. L e w I s Publisher: Back House Books Distributor: Book Clearing House ISBN: 0967195101 Excerpt from “Nate” (Chapter 8) On what I took to be my last day ever in Washington, I was out buying some last few items to take with me to the train station—when, out of nowhere, appeared this shiny new black Jaguar. I tried to remember where I had seen that car before, but I couldn’t conjure up anything definite. Anyway, the window rolled down. Lucius, my older brother, was in the driver’s seat. He didn’t look at me, but he obviously knew I was there, for he stopped the car, locked it, and got out. He never picked a worse time to show up. Here he was, driving around in a fucking Jaguar, when I couldn’t even bum pennies off these tundra-cold Washingtonians. The very sight of him pissed me off. Lucius was always the better-looking one, the better-dressed, and without question the most successful of all my brothers. Mom was always going through her shit about him—“why can’t you-all be more like Luc?” Very good question. Why not be like Lucius Morris? I was only five foot eight, 135 pounds, acne-ridden, with bushy hair. Undesirable, in short. Lucius was an impressive six-foot-three, dark-skinned, muscular, round-skulled and fine-featured. He wore green-gray slacks, cream-colored shirt with flashy tie, mahogany shoes, dark-blue nylon socks and gold cuff links. Many a woman stole two or three glances back at him—especially at his face. It was a face seemingly full of wisdom and fatherly dignity, and I supposed he possessed just a little, no more—for his looks belied the ignorant, petty, patronizing shit that always spewed from his mouth. “Ain’chu embarassed ta be seen ‘round town wearin’ dat piecea shit?” he told me, once he saw me in my new jacket. When I only sucked my teeth and sighed, he came back with, “why you down here, anyway?” “Down where?” “In D.C., dass where,” he snorted. “Why is it your business?” “Man, I axe you why you was here?” “Well,” I began, “I was thinking about going to Coon State, but now, I....I don’t know.” I paused, and felt one of the scars on my forehead aching. “Did you see anything about me in the papers?” “No. Why?”

He looked at me with a blank expression I knew was sincere; I felt a sinking feeling inside. “How come?” “Oh. I got mugged, I thought they talked about it,” I lied. “How’d you get mugged, Nathan? You ain’ hurt, are ya? What all dem scars from?” Lucius put his fingers along the wound running from my eyebrow to my hairline in a U-turn. “Daddy told you ta stay out dat war,” he carped. “No, actually, he forced me back into it,” I replied. “Fuck this shit.” “Huh?” “I said, fuck this,” I heard myself saying. “I’m going to New York. I can’t stand D.C.” “So, you gon’ get mugged dere again? Is dat it? Ain’ nuffin’ wrong wif it here. You jus’ gotta stop hangin up here widdal dese fuckin’ white boys. Get to know some bloods, Nathan.” He paused long enough to let out a sigh. “So where you gon go, now? Where you stayin’ at?” “I was gonna go eat around here,” I said. We were on 16th Street, at the intersection with U—the “imaginary train tracks,” because as soon as you crossed 16th and U down to 15th and 14th, you were among the niggers. “Nate, man, get inna car. Gotta talk to you about something.” So Lucius drives me back across the tracks, and the buildings get slummier, the streets more congested, the numbers of fried chicken and beer joints multiplying. “You ain’t seen Vernon?” he told me. “No,” I said. “What about that Spanish girl you got?” “Nate,” Luc snorted, “don’t be cute. Ya muvva’s worried sick, ‘cause we ain’t seen him in over three weeks. She worried about you, too. What da hell you doin’? What’s up?” “I’m getting the hell out, I already told you,” I said, irritated by the itching sensation in my left thigh. Lucius laughed. “So why’d you come? Nate, lemme ask you a question—” “I didn’t think it would be so bad here,” I blurted out, not knowing what else to say. Luc continued to laugh, and sucked his teeth. “Man....what kinda attitude is dat to take? How old are you?” “Twenty-one,” I groaned. “Twenty-one....an’ you come here to Washington, saying—” “I changed my mind, that’s all! I wanna go some place else! No, I—I, I need some time to think it over. That’s why I’m going on vacation!” “You’re goin’ on,—wait, wait, hold up. Back up. You goin’ on vacation....an’ you say, you need time to think it over. Boy, you needta get your shit together! How....where your girlfriend at?” “I broke up with her, she’s too fat, she gained too much weight when I was away,” I panted. Lucius sighed. “I think you should keep your ass in school where you belong,” he finally said. “Man, you ain’t even got no money for a vacation. Get a job....What? You mean you couldn’ get hired? I don’t believe dat shit. It ain’t hard ta get a job ‘round here, yo. You jus’ gotta put ya nose to da grindin’ wheel. An’ you need friends, Nate. You cain’ live out in no big city an ain’ have no people ta lean on, no folks ta get ideas from. You need ta network, see—dass your problem. Dass why you don’t work!” He drove us straight to Coon State University. As I expected. I knew the place very well now, because I often went up there to visit the library. The campus was looking more and more unattractive to me every time. “Nate,” he explained, “I’m a student here at this place. You don’ need ta pay no tuition, you all right. Plus, I got some frienss up here you can get in touch wif—as a start. An’ don’ be lookin’ all stupid an’ goofy an’ shit like you usually do. Change ya attitude when you deal wif dese niggas. You oughta know, you been inna Marines!” The Rockwell Center was a tepid, unimaginative Bauhaus construction in dreary browns and blacks, flanked by a fountain and a smattering of maple trees. In the middle of the fountain stood an imposingly and impossibly grotesque post-modernist sculpture by “ned tate,” a “conceptualist” black artist. Through enormous windowpanes, you could see students milling

about like flies in a stupendous cage. Their endless laughing is just one of the things about Coon State that drives one mad, other than its inner-city high school ambience: it’s just like stepping into a fucking Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Once inside we elbowed through the crowds towards the basement, where they had an old student dive called the “Flunk-Out”. The interior design was something of a joke. Subdued lights, polished floors, exotic paintings on the walls, old-timey malt shop stools affixed at the bar, ornate-backed chairs surrounding tables covered with checkered clothes, it looked like a Prohibition speakeasy. About the only thing it didn’t have were a bandstand and a chorus-line of fat yellow bitches. In their place, they had a gang of dark-skinned, surly, overworked, middleaged waitresses in tight white uniforms. And in place of Cab Calloway, a blaring, outdated jukebox, featuring a new rap group that sounded....weird. They weren’t at all like the rappers I’d heard two years ago; they were shrieking out their rhymes, they were actually cursing; they were even firing guns and mocking the sounds of bodies hitting the pavements. Something had happened; the evil spirit I had seen in Adjrar had made its way home, to the dance floor, to the pop charts. I was seized with such absolute panic that I rushed underneath a table near the jukebox. I kept patting my chest and hips, wondering where the fuck was my 9-milimeter handgun, or a grenade, or something to throw at the “camel-coons” firing at me from close-range. My brother’s loud laughter several chairs down cracked the illusion. “Boy,” he shouted, “get your butt up here.” I walked over; the other three he was with were laughing, too. That flashback I had really killed them. It wasn’t a war; that was just “Niggas Ain’t Shit” by the O.G.’s, the number one rap group in the country. (Rap group, my ass; they were a gang of Brer Rabbit mutants from Hell.) But I know I had already goofed up in their eyes. Whoever heard of a guy cringing at the sound of a jukebox? All four were neatly nestled in elongated, cushioned seats, digging the “music.” Well, actually, there were five if you included the busboy, a blacker-than-thou type with a crew-cut, obviously a Muslim, and obviously very pissed by what he’d heard. There was some argument, as far as I could hear, about the merits of the “O.G.’s”, and this new Gangster Rap that was “sweeping the nation”; the conversation nearly turned violent. This busboy was really laying it on thick with the neo-nationalist rhetoric. In response, I recognized this one white-boyish cartoon voice: Jerome Gates. He looked surprisingly dapper, compared to the way I last recalled him— dark-blue blazer, white shirt and red tie. Obviously, we were dead to each other, so we hardly talked; Jerome merely rolled his eyes at me and back to this very bosomy, black-skinned beauty named Doris Putaine. Actually, I had heard some things about Doris. How couldn’t you, her name was all over the school’s shithouse walls. And I knew good and goddamn well why. She had an hourglass shape to end all hourglass shapes. Never mind that her dark-brown skin was so smooth and satiny she looked like she was made of chocolate, or that when she turned around, she looked like she was one-half ass, or that when she faced you, she looked like she was one-half breast. She was in the School of Engineering, wasn’t doing too well in class, and about her as a person that’s all anyone ever knew, other than the obvious: her excessive love of money and expensive clothes and big cars and bodybuilders. Perhaps that’s all that there was, because she was such a superficial bitch, with the heart of a boa constrictor. The third guy was a handsome, nut-brown-colored kid named Joe Washington. He was the most approachable and apparently the most intelligent of Luc’s friends, but I sensed in him a calculating coldness, a desire to hurt that one sees all too often among young black males. He seemed very eager to get between Doris’ big black thighs, yet it looked as if Doris was more interested in Jerome, probably because he was light-skinned. The Muslim busboy—we had

almost forgot he even existed—picked up Doris’ tray, looked her right in her hazel eyes and said, “You are such a beautiful black woman, a Nubian queen.” Just like that. And then he departed. “WhatEVER,” Doris snarled. “Damn, dat nigga smelled!” Joe clucked, loudly. “Musta been all dem damn bean pies nigga be eatin’!” “What the fuck was he, anyway?” Jerome laughingly rasped. “He sounded like Buckwheat with an attitude.” “He’s some guy from the Nation,” I chimed in, trying to break the ice. “I guess he is.” Jerome suddenly stopped talking. He got the kind of look on his face that one gets when he hears his mother screaming at him. He rolled his eyes carefully over towards me, as did Doris; Lucius was reading a student paper. “Uh—what? He’s a guy from what??” “The Nation, you know,” I continued, not so sure of myself....Jerome and Lucius exchanged glances....“No, Nathan,” my brother said, “he don’t know.” “The Nation of Islam,” I added, irritated. All four responded with total silence. Then without warning, they suddenly giggled. “That nigger was stupid,” Jerome then carped, ignoring me. “What was he trying to say? He—I didn’t even know what language the motherfucker was talking in.” “Man, dat nigga was jus’ a fool, dassall,” Doris spluttered. “Dat nigga was goin’ off about dat ol’ afukan shit, what dey be doin’ to dem afukans. I bet he be screamin’ in his sleep bout dat stupid shit!” “I wonder where be goin’ now, wif his ugly ass?” Lucius snorted. “Probably went to beat off,” came this answer from a distance—a strangely sated purr, with a vague slur, like every word was emanating from his stomach. Oh, great, I thought—another one of Luc’s friends has popped around to add in his two cents worth of ignorance. That was before I noted the certain character of that voice—the light, high tenor, darkly glazed with obscenities and hip talk. I was instantly horrified. I had prayed so long for his death, for his departure from my life. But no matter how many beatings he’d taken so far, only a slight scar crossed his brow, and it seemed a cop had put that there, not me, nor Lambert, nor the shrapnel. He appeared before the five of us. He had been drinking, but he was pretending to be drunker than he really was. His green eyes were all red; he looked distastefully immaculate in an outrageous suit which was big-shouldered, white on one side and black on the other, with a white lapel for the black side and vice versa; one shoe was white on the black side and black on the white side. His shirt was black with a white silk tie; his long slender elfin fingers were covered with glittering gold rings. Roped around his neck—he was beefier, his skin darker now—were five or six gold chains, and, for God’s sake, an Iron Cross in gold. Over atop his ears were tortoise-shell sunshades, which he casually lifted up now and then to expose those green lanterns. Jerome’s mouth tightened; he swallowed. I was amused to watch how this arrogant, self-conscious little bastard froze up when he saw Guy—it made me laugh. But other than the wealth of expressions in Jerome’s eyes (repulsion being one of them), he had no other reaction. I know. He didn’t have to say anything to me; Guy was rich, and he made every cent the same way he himself had been made: illegitimately. “Hey, Joe, you like my shit?” he drools, sallying up to Lucius, running his fingers along the tight wool weave of his coat. “Cos’ my ass two thousand mothafuckin’ dollars. An’ I didn’t buy it at no store, neither; this shit is custom-made!” “Hello!” exclaimed Doris, shifting her legs in such a way that I clearly saw Jerome’s fingers wedged firmly between them. Whew....“Man, girl, whatever....that ain’t nothin’ but pocket change, yo. I was up here celebratin’ at Cafe what’s-his-name up on Georgia Avenue—man, the honeys, yo. We was partyiiiiiin, man—so you know I’m a little buzzed. I won the lottery for

50,000 dollars, so I decided to enjoy myself, you know, get a little load off my back before I get back to my studeeeeeeees, you know what I’m sayin’?” He laughed.... “Man, I’m trippin!” “Yeah,” I snapped, “the crack lottery.” “Oh, Nate, man, you just jealous of the nigger, thassall,” Luc carped. “Thass why you ain’t got no friends. ‘Cause you always got somethin’ stupid to say. Change ya attitude, man. Guy? Here’s Nathan Morris.” So, I think, Lucius is actually introducing me to somebody I have known since the eleventh grade....Guy, playing the game, shakes my hand and winks at me impersonally. “Guy, we’ve been friends since St. Floyd’s high school,” I spat. “Don’t play that shit with me.” Guy frowned....“What? St. Floyd’s? Wha....” He looked to and fro to the other jokers at the table. “You must have me mixed up with somebody else, whoever you are. But I’m not that guy, I mean.....I am Guy Sellers. I’m a student here at Coon State, but I’m thinkin’ about transferrin’ out ‘cause it’s kinda lame up here, you know....So where you from? You new here?” “Uh,—yeah,” I said, playing along with his ruse. “Yeah, I’m thinkin’ about transferring to this school. I don’t know yet, though.” Guy exchanged glances with Doris, Lucius and Jerome. Then he shrugged. “He’s your brother, Lucius? Man, is the dude okay? He askin’ me ol’ strange questions—” “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to excuse him. He was in a war, an’ all that fightin’ with dem Arrubs shook him up a little, so he just, you know, settlin’ down into civilian life again after his half-sister died an’ all....Yeah, it’s been hard on the boy,” Lucius drooled. Doris looked at me, half-smiling and said, “you was innat war? You mean over dere in Afuka where dey had a lotta dem bombs an’ shit?” “Yeah, I was in Numidia,” I said. “Numidia? Where dat at?” I didn’t answer her; I felt it was a waste of time and emotions. “Hello-o-o,” Doris broke in, rudely, still half-smiling, waving her fingers under my hazy eyes, “don’t be havin’ no flashbacks on me while I’m talkin’ to you! I ask you a question. Where Numidia at?” “In Northern Africa, right next to Egypt, that’s where it is,” I said, rather rudely. Lucius buried his face in his hands. Doris broke out laughing and began chewing her gum again and then exchanged glances with Jerome (still with his fingers between her legs, though by this time Guy had caught on to them)—who then said, “are you always this rude? Hey, big guy.” “My name’s Nate Morris,” I sneered, feeling cold and icy inside, “not big guy.” “Well, go fuck yourself, ya dumb sonofabitch,” he suddenly hissed, turning his head away, half to himself and half to me. Doris, Guy and Lucius all broke out into hysterical laughter, while Jerome stared at me now and then, shaking his head and sucking his teeth. Guy planted his hand on my shoulder, still chuckling. “Nate, man, you are the weirdest motherfucker I have ever run into. Boy, you somethin’ else. An’ you said you was inna war? Damn! What was that like? I bet it musta been rough, niggas shootin’ at your ass right an’ left an’ all them bombs an’ shot goin’ off....I heard from one nigger that it was insane, yo. Was it?” “You ought to know best,” I told him. “You were there, too. That’s why you are where you are today.” Guy suddenly looked askance at me. He was very quiet. He took my hand off my shoulder. “Huh?” “You know,” I said. Guy looked angry; he twisted his hand around and about. “Yeah? And?” Lucius impulsively giggled and looked at Doris, and then Doris looked at Guy and then Guy looked back at Jerome and Doris. Lucius got up and walked away, looking embarassed and disgusted. Guy shrugged....“You don’t remember the Hotel Afrique? The 3lst Ostrogoths? Colonel

Dachausky? All those mass hecatombs? All those bombed villages? Remember Tank? And all those....other....” “Man, what’s he talkin’ about? He sounds like he’s lost his mind. Hey, Nate? What do you mean, yo? I hardly know you an’ here you are, all up in my face about all this. I mean, I’d like to go to Africa, but I ain’t never went, so I donno wha’chu mean when you say that I ought to know best. Best about what? An’ what the hell’s the Hotel Afrique? Huh? A freak hotel?” The expressions and gestures he affected angered me. I asked him if Adjrar rang a bell. “No,” he insisted. The three of them laughed in my face; and for some reason, this idiocy, which I should have shrugged off, stoked the flames of a growing fury. “Nate, man, you heard the nigger,” Doris laughed. “Why you gotta be lyin’ just to get people to look at you?” “But I’m not lying,” I insisted. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him, he’s just going through his shit!” “Nigger FUCK you, okay?” Guy woofed, almost out the side of his mouth. “I won’t in no Africa, nigger! I won’t there!” “Don’t remember, huh? They put a chip in your skull or something?—” “Man....” More laughter. “Nathan, you know,” Guy finally said, “You just lie your ass off. It must be the artist in you. Why don’t you go enroll in Fine Arts an’ hang out with them funny-ass flower children paintin’ on walls an’ smokin’ blunts an’ shit? I ain’t been to Africa, man. I don’t even know you, so why you think I been to some goddamn jungle with dem ol’ stinky-ass African niggers? Fuck dem African, Arab niggers or whomever dey is, dem ol’ pipe-smokin’ big-lip jungle niggers—” I leaped to my feet. “You shot up eight or nine of them on a fuckin’ curb in Adjrar, cocksucker! War criminal! Semi-queen! You filthy-ass pimp motherfucker!!” Guy wordlessly walked away. He was going to get something to eat. It was a humiliating experience, to have someone who shared so much of your life—however negatively—jump up and suddenly deny it all, right in front of your face, in front of those who despised you. I had experienced it so many times already I felt numb, a dull pain like solid clay packed five miles up your asshole and held in with white-hot suppositories. And then Luc comes back, along with Guy; Lucius roughly yanks me up by my arm while Guy jives like a real “nigger,” his tray of food in his hands. “Man, Nate, don’chu embarrass me like that again,” Luc spat. And to think that not long ago, Guy had been found, dead, in an alley in Berlin. And that, just before, he’d been in a Spanish prison; before that, on a ship; before that, in the 3lst as a pusherpar-excellence. He was beyond human, I saw now. He stood for everything I hated in myself—but secretly yearned for, like glamour, a million lovers, an extreme popularity, money in his pockets, in his ears and ass and a fair share of fine clothes and a super-sleek car....while I had to content myself with poverty and Porky’s bastard black child. The others ignore me while I stride towards the bathroom. I’m already forgotten, merely the wind that passed through their sails. I bent over the sink. My head filled up with shame and disgust, plus that boundless irritation and despair, as if my head was a pisspot and all my “friends” were using it. I look up and see Guy standing in the doorway, cockily flinging one of his gold chains around his finger. “Damn, yo,” he said, “you sure gained some weight since I last saw you. Used to be skinny as a fuckin’ Holocaust survivor.” “Fuck off.” “Hey, man,” he says, now, “sorry about all that. You know how it is up here.” “So it’s that bad, huh?” I snorted. “I should have known, from that shitty music they had on the jukebox.” “Nate, man, it’s—about where I’m at, you know,” Guy splutters, gesticulating, “I can’t give it all away just yet! Man, I’d be finished, I can’t trust nobody here.”

“Oh, I figured what it was,” I added with sarcasm. “Well....you heard what happened up here, right? You go here?” “Me? Here? Well, I was....” “Anyway, dude, they found five niggers rapin’ this one nigger in the President’s Library. Fuckin’ inna mothafuckin’ bell tower. Niggers was so carried away they knocked four windows out that junk. Damn, that was some freaky shit. They also caught this dean with his pants down— literally. He was goin’ off on this fourteen year old kid, suckin’ his damn dick, while like eight niggers onna Board of Trustees were watchin’ and masturbatin’ an’ shit! Fuck—you still wanna go to Coon State, yo?” “Does it look like it to you?” I went into one of the stalls and pissed inside the toilet, rather than the urinal. “I don’t know,” he said. “So where are you headed, anyway?” “Back,” I said. “Back where?” “The military, that’s where.” “That’s dumb,” he replies, as I push my way out of the stall and zip up. “That’s dumb as shit, yo. You know what happened to all your buddies? Man, Red-Head and “Sweet” got iced. They were in this truck an’ they hit some kinda mine, or onea those rebels fired a rocket-launcher at ‘em an’ blew ‘em sky high. Aluisi’s in lockdown, man. Nigger went off after he got out. Or maybe he joined the Mafia, I don’t know. Whatever, your boys’ all fucked up.” “Aluisi wasn’t my goddamn boy,” I said. “What about that honky from Alabama?” “Oh, he’s alright, I hear he’s going into politics.” “It figures. They get away with everything, the cocksuckers.” “So you wanna go back? Man, Nate, you always do that stupid shit. We had this same goddamn conversation BEFORE you joined the armed forces. Remember you kept on saying, ‘I wanna go to CSU! I wanna go to CSU!’” he squeaks, cruelly mimicking my voice of two years back. “An’ then you look at some silly-ass broadcast an’ change ya mind. Why don’t you go to Howard?” “I don’t have the money, I’m sorry,” I said. “I got remission of tuition from Coon State, but I don’t have the money for day to day life. I don’t have the funds for an apartment—” “I thought you had one,” he suddenly added. “How’d you know?” “‘Cause I saw you when you were runnin’ out there one day. You remember? When you got fucked up? Damn—was that an accident?” “No, it was a....” Oh, shit, why tell him the truth? What would be care? “Yeah, it was an accident. I slipped and cut myself.” “You musta cut yourself pretty badly,” he said, with a smile. “But what about that fat ugly bitch runnin’ outta your apartment?” “Oh, I don’t know, I didn’t even see her,” I lied. “Was that Rhonda?” “I said I didn’t see her,” I insisted, gritting my teeth. Guy laughed.... “Okay, man,” he said. “But hold up.....why do you wanna go back?” “I can be a yeoman.....I’m sorry! I can’t stand civilian life! I hate this fuckin’ place—” “So? You just gotta learn to roll with the punches, dude, adjust to the life back here. An’ don’t let that nigger Lucius push you around, he ain’t shit. Fuck his ass.” “He’s my brother,” I warned him. “Well—doesn’t look like he respects you too much, Nate,” he replied, with a slight note of ridicule in his voice.

Absentmindedly, I pulled my pills out of my jacket, knowing it was time to take them. Oh, shit, I just remembered—I fucked myself. If I waited awhile, none of this shit would....oh, fuck it. I discreetly opened the bottle, turned on the faucet, and dumped two pills into my palm. Guy, predictably, looked at me with a devilish gleam in his eye. “Demerol, huh?....” “I got war wounds,” I said, hoping that would dissuade him from any sinister ideas. But it wasn’t that easy. “Man, Nate, look,” Guy added, lowering his voice with a chuckle, “look, man. You don’t need to take that shit to trip out on, boy. I’ll get you some real stuff. It won’t cost much. How much you want? A nickel? A dime?” “No,” I spat. “How much you want?” he asked again, louder. “Lissen, man,” I said, firmly, “these goddamn pills were prescribed to me. You got shit all wrong. Don’t push your garbage on me! Try that whore outside who’s waiting at the table for you.” “You mean Doris? Man, don’t talk back about the honeys up here, you know how fine they are,” Guy drooled. “Yeah, Jerome does, seeing he’s got his hand five miles up her snatch!” I stuck the pills in my mouth and swallowed. “You got it in the army,” Guy guessed. “Thass all they got, all they had. Pills! All the niggers in the army were loaded. I know what’s up, okay. I knew you were on shit from the get-go. You gotta habit, motherfucker.” “No I don’t!” I roared in a subdued voice. “Yes you do,” Guy replied, smiling. “Look, I already told you—” “Habit,” Guy laughed. “Fuck you!” “That’s what they all say,” Guy continued, as the drug began to kick in slowly, inch by inch, easing the pains away. I grew drowsier, and less able to fend off his actions, as he wrapped his arm around my shoulder and led me out of the bathroom. By that time—it seemed like hours had passed—Lucius, Jerome, and Doris had left. “Good riddance to them fake-ass suckers,” Guy growled viciously. “Fuck ‘em. I don’t mean to get on your brother, but he ain’t shit. He act like onea them Nationa’ Islam niggers, always bein’ so self-righteous about shit. C’mon, yo.” “Where are we going now?” “Where do you wanna go?” “I wanna go back to my apartment,” I panted, dizzy, “I need to lay down.” “Why not mine?” “No,” I insisted, “mine.” Back across the train tracks, and back into the apartment. I don’t think I ever told him that it wasn’t really mine. Anyway, once I got in the door, I flopped down on the couch, listening to Guy ramble on. He had lots of ideas that night. For one, he convinced me the military option wasn’t so good—it was best to go overseas and work. At what, he was still trying to figure out, as well as to where. I came up with Paris, but he disagreed; Paris was something he could afford, but it wasn’t what it used to be. Too many immigrants. His idea was Istanbul; after all, Turkey was cheap, the Turkish lira was about 1200 to the dollar, and with his money, he could stay there forever. “I always wanted to go there,” he said. “How about you?” While he was saying these things, he took his black briefcase up off the floor and opened it up. Inside it were a tablespoon, a long rubber tube, and a bunch of white, thin packages. Underneath the coiled tube were neat packets of some white powder....I took a deep breath. I didn’t take it seriously; I thought I could reach for that butcher knife in the kitchen if he tried anything. I wanted to keep the conversation going about foreign travel when I saw him take the white packets out. They were syringes. He took out the tablespoon, and laid it on the coffee table. He turned the television off. He opened up the syringe packages and casually chucked the balled paper on the ground.

All he wanted to offer was a small sample for fifteen dollars, just to see if I liked it. As a friend. He opened the Ziploc bag of one dope packet and waved it under my nose. He starts grinning. “Yummy, yummy, yummy,” he chants, “want somea this in your tummy?” “No,” I said, coldly. “Awwww, man, I didn’t mean it like that, I meant in your arm, ‘cause when you get it in your belly, yo, that shit—” “Goddamn,” I shot, angrily, shoving the crap away with my left hand, “get that shit outta my face!” Guy’s big grin quickly evaporated. His nostrils flared. He looked up at the ceiling and quietly moved away from me, picking his gold chain off the table and twirling it around his index finger. I noticed part of his thumb was missing since the last time I’d seen it. He wasn’t saying anything; he was just pacing around the living room with a blank look on his face. I sucked in my breath several times, not daring to glance back at him; my throat felt dry and lumpy, nerves jittery in anticipation. Finally I heard him going into the kitchen. I heard him turning on the stove, and then a drawer opening and closing. Another drawer opens and closes, and about three more. Then they stop, and Guy grabs something. My back is turned—I was too busy nodding off while all this was happening—and I hear him breathing as he holds the butcher knife under my throat. He holds it with both hands, careful not to cut his own fingers, and begins to push it forward until the sharp edge is gently pressing against my larynx. He said, with a soft voice, “Look, man, please don’t give me a hard time. Please don’t. I ain’t never messed you over in my life. You know, that’s right, I ain’t never done nothin’ to hurt you. All I asked for is for you to take this,—as a friend. That’s all I asked for. Why fuck with your friends, Nate? Why you gon’ piss me off?” He draws the damn thing up so close he cuts me on the side of my neck. The chair I’m in has a hole in the back, so Guy thrusts his knee into the small of my back. He says, “Nate, you always do this shit. Remember this afternoon, how you made a big damn fool of yourself? You always do this, man. Why fuck with people who just tryin’ to help you out, dude? Why?” He thrusts his knee in my back again. “Please, Nate, you know how bad it is on these streets. I’m your friend, no matter what. But I gotta job to do, an’ it’s rough. Please, don’t let me have to cut your throat.” “What do you want?” “Listen,” he says, forcing the knife ever closer, then taking it off and slapping it up aside my cheek on the flat edge. “You’re gonna do what I tell you. Or else....” And with a free hand, he unzips my fly, pulls out my dick and strokes it. He strokes it so lovingly, fondling the balls, that I wonder about him. And to my horror, my dick starts hardening against its will. Then he yanks on it roughly. He lowers the knife from my throat and closer to my dick. I remembered something of my Marine training to jab him under his jaw when he averted his eyes. Guy dropped to the ground; I got out of the chair, zipped up, and....saw him yank a huge revolver of gleaming silver out of his pocket. He stuck it right between my eyes. “Nate,” he panted, “when I said I’ll cut your throat, I wasn’t lying. Now, what’re you gonna do?” “Okay,” I panted, my teeth clattering, “I’ll take a sample—” He pushed his thumb on the revolver; the gun clicked, the chamber slowly, ominously turned. “That’s not good enough,” he snarled. I felt urine running down my leg. “Tell me right.” Absentmindedly, I said, “I’ll take a sample, sir.” Guy suddenly exploded into laughter, and drew the gun down. He put it back into his pocket. However, I stupidly refused to challenge him again. I guess I was too shaken up to think of what to do.... “Man, Nathan, you ain’t in Adjrar, nigger. Loosen up. I was just playin’. I was just fuckin’ with you, alright?”

In a curt, rude motion, while I sat back in the chair, he fetched a “dime-bag” out of his shit kit and hurled it on the coffee table. He pulled the pistol out of his coat pocket and suddenly screeched, “Hand the shit over, motherfucker.” I gave him fifteen dollars and he violently snatched it away from me. He wildly sifted through the bills, wiggled his fingers and then looked up at me with his green eyes burning with a weird unnatural fire.... “What the fuck is this?” he screeches, flinging the one-dollar bills all around. “I want FIFTY dollars, not fifteen!” I went to the bedroom to pull out a shoe-box filled with the month’s rent and utilities. Guy followed me, naturally, saw me digging out of my shoe box, and helped himself to its contents. He only left ten dollars. Guy pocketed it and strode into the kitchen to cook the stuff inside his big tablespoon, saying all along that he’s my friend, and he didn’t mean any harm in threatening me. The stench of the cooking crap reminded me of those days as a kid when I used to groove on the smells of gasoline while cutting grass. Some lost part of me was saying, fuck it; I’m not giving in to this shit. But the whole of me didn’t have that kind of strength. Meanwhile, Guy was rambling on about the effects of a “belly habit”. According to him, my “problem” was that my “pill-popping” had brought on a habit radiating from my belly. So it would have been better for me if I “skin-popped” rather than pop pills. Of course, there was no point in reasoning with him anymore, so I let him ramble on.... Some guys he knew took dope up their ass in suppositories. Which, he says, is the worst habit of all; you can’t shit—period. You have to drain your ass out every night with an enema. And in the rare instance in which you do shit, you have no control over your sphincter muscles, so you have to walk around with a diaper on all day and night.....I listened to all that, wondering if I was really still on this planet. All of a sudden he’s not just my friend anymore, but a cold-faced, scaly-skinned player. But I had to hand it to him. I had always underestimated his blood-sucking skills. Every situation he was in during his lifetime had something to do with drugs. No matter if it was his girls at Freedom or his boys at Coon State or Howard University, no matter if it was a job he had on the side between his occasional digs as a musician or journalist or computer specialist or soldier, it was always drugs, drugs, drugs. I don't know how or when he got involved, because I really didn’t know and still don't know Guy Sellers. As much as he’d tell you things, one would learn nothing, because he lived his life around a series of masks, one for each circle he revolved in—and there was no use trying to take the masks away, for every mask you stripped off there was yet another one. Guy then reaches for a brand-new hospital syringe. He pulls an elongated blue piece of tubing out of the attaché case and gives it to me. I only lamely tell him that this is for fun, not for keeps. “Yeah, right,” he laughs. He coerced me into wrapping the tube around my arm. And then I watched my precious veins, filled with blood I swore on all the gods would be pure, pop up through my medium-brown skin. Guy pressed his index finger on the big fat “mainline” running from the top to the bottom of my arm. I watched as Guy slowly sucked the liquid from the tablespoon into the brand-new syringe. With my head swimming in opiate-stink, I watched Guy insert the needle carefully into my big vein, slowly and carefully, with alcohol and a cotton swab—him repeating all along how important it was to keep clean, that I couldn’t share needles, that I should put my old needles in a container of rubbing alcohol after washing them with water, etc. The little shit went on and on, but at the time, I didn’t hear a word he said. Because when I saw my blood coming up through the dropper after his heroin entered me, it was like my soul was going inside it, only to be hurled into the trash.