Memoirs of an Accidental Hustler

by J. M. Benjamin

  “I can’t have my li’l mans out doin’ me, so I had to turn it up on y’all to show you who your mentor is,” he said jokingly. “Let’s go pick up y’all whips, though, so y’all can be shinin’ too.”

  When we pulled up, they were sitting behind the gate facing each other like they were on display for a car show. Words could not define how they looked. To me we had the hottest whips in the world.

  “Goddamn,” Mal said. “Look at our joints, kid.”

  I was speechless. I just smiled. Even Mu was impressed.

  “Them shits are pretty as hell,” he said. “Y’all niggas got some straight-up Pussy Machines!”

  We started laughing.

  “Ay yo, Sal, why you don’t put that much time into my joints when you hook ’em up?” Mu asked the short Italian man.

  “Come on, Mu, you know I do my best work on all your cars,” Sal said.

  “I’m just fuckin’ with you, Sal,” Mu said back.

  “So, what do you think?” he asked.

  I reached out my hand to shake his and said, “Sal, you hooked us up.”

  Mal followed up by saying, “No doubt.”

  Mu was leading the pack in the 300E, and we followed, riding through downtown and then down to Third Street. We saved the projects for last. I had my Slick Rick tape ready. When we got close, I put on “Children’s Story” and Mal played “Young World,” off the same tape. People were stopping in their tracks when we came through. I could see guys putting their fists to their mouths with the “oh, shit” expressions on their faces.

  Chicks were dancing to the different songs we pumped. This was the projects’ year to shine and this time we were a part of it. The projects were where we really got our props at when we rolled up. Mal, Mu, and I pulled up on the grass side by side.

  “You niggas went all out,” Trevor was the first to say.

  “I knew y’all was frontin’ about that impound shit. Yo, I’m going to cop something new tomorrow,” Ant joked. “You niggas ain’t gonna be shittin’ on me like this.”

  “Yo, they look all right?” I asked them.

  “Nigga, stop frontin’, you know y’all got the hottest shit in town right now,” Trevor said.

  They didn’t even say anything about Mu’s Benz and his was worth more than both of ours put together. All the other hustlers from the hood who were out came over to check our whips out. Everybody started talking about how they were going to cop this and that, or do this and that to the whips they already had after seeing ours. We had definitely amped the hood up around the way.

  Later that evening, we all pulled up in the diner parking lot one by one: Ant, Trevor, Mal, and then me. Mu was sitting on top of the hood of his 300E talking to some girl I didn’t know when we got there. It was perfect, because we pulled right over by him and a few other whips from the projects. Guys and chicks were checking out our whips telling us how phat they were. Some were checking us on the low because they didn’t like us, but they liked our rides. We all said what’s up to Mu, and then Mal and them went inside to get something to eat, while I headed over to the dice game on the side of the Kentucky Fried Chicken spot.

  “Ay yo, Mal, get me a breast and three wings with two extra rolls, and a Pepsi. I’ll be over here at this Cee-lo game,” I told my brother.

  “Leave them dice alone, kid.”

  “Could you just get me the number four like I asked?”

  “I got you.”

  I could tell that they were having a big game tonight because there was a lot of known money-getters in the circle of betters. Most of them I knew, but a few of them I didn’t. One face that stuck out above all, though, was the kid Tone’s. He was rolling the dice and had the bank. My first reaction was to run up on him and hook off, but I wasn’t sure who was with him. Besides that, I knew how gamblers got if they losing their dough and the game gets broken up, so I didn’t want to chance it.

  He was so busy rolling that he didn’t even see me. I just stood there in the crowd watching the game and listening to see if I could pick up on who was with him. The more I looked at him the more I wanted to knock him out. Just knowing this joker had violated my sister got me mad all over again. As he looked up to see who all was betting, he spotted me. I knew he knew who I was because he looked me straight in my face and said some slick shit that only I caught.

  “You niggas put ya bets down so I can get this money. I gotta pay for an abortion,” he said. Some of the betters laughed.

  That was all she wrote. I couldn’t take it anymore. As soon as he rolled the dice, went to pick them up, and came back up, I caught him on the jaw. I saw him buckle as he tried to grab hold of me. I pulled away. Out of the blue, I heard somebody say, “What the fuck!” and he caught me on the side of the head. He didn’t daze me or drop me. I just turned in the direction and ducked out of reflex in case something was following it, and then I grabbed the kid who hit me. I felt punches to my ribs and on my back from a different fist and I knew I was being jumped. The next thing I knew, I didn’t feel hits anymore as I leaned forward and pushed the kid who snuck me to the ground. When I lifted up, I punched him in the eye, and kept punching him until somebody pulled me off of him. It was Kamal. When I looked around every hustler from the projects was fighting somebody, including Mu.

  The shots that rang out caused everybody to stop fighting and take cover. Once I saw Mu and them jump in their whips, Mal and I jumped in ours and peeled out too. There was officially a beef again between the projects and Arlington Avenue. The last time the projects had beef with them was in 1986 when Terrance and Mark got killed, Shawn got paralyzed, and a couple of dudes from their block got hit up.

  * * *

  A meeting was called to meet in the field the next day by Mustafa.

  “Yo, the block’s gonna be hot for a minute, so it might be best to shut down until we handle this shit. Everybody who clocked around here is in this beef. If muthafuckas don’t fight or do something, then they can’t clock around here no more. I don’t care where you catch one of them niggas at; you better jump out and fuck them up, and whoever wit’ ’em. Everybody should have a ratchet so start bringin ya shit out ’cause if they drive through here they ain’t gonna be sightseein’, they gonna be bustin’, so you better bust back. If I find out anybody was on some sucka shit while we beefin’ I’m gonna step to you myself, so if you ain’t wit’ it you better say somethin’ now.” Mu had the attention of every hustler from the projects in attendance.

  Nobody said a word.

  “All right, then, let’s handle this shit,” Mu said.

  Everywhere we went, we went deep, clubs, movies, skating, bowling, wherever, and something always kicked off because they were always there. It was like we were going out just to beef instead of to have a good time. This was the longest beef the projects had ever had and it lasted all the way until school started back up.

  Besides me and Mal there were only three other kids from the projects who still went to “The High,” so we knew it was going to be rough going to school. Arlington had more than double our amount who attended and their block was right down there street from the school, but there was no way we weren’t going to go. Our reputations were on the line. Mu got us ratchets from New York and told us to take them to school with us. They were still in the boxes, brand new with an extra clip, two 9 mms.

  Throughout all the beefing, I wound up with a cut over my eye, a doughnut under the eye, and a couple of bumps, scrapes, and bruises, so technically I was doing all right. On the first day back only one out of the other three projects kids came to school besides me and Mal. He was a kid named Kev. He was a sophomore too, but nothing about him was soft. He stood about five foot ten, and was built like a linebacker. He was with whatever.

  “I didn’t think y’all was gonna show up, but I should’ve known better ’cause y’all be fuckin’ with Mu,” Kev said. “Chris and punk-ass Phil ain’t comin’, so I guess it’s just us three homies. What y’all workin’ with?” he asked.


  “We brought our nines with us but they’re in the car,” I said.

  “Nah, go get them, ’cause unless they got a reason to they don’t be searchin’ you up in here. Either you put it in ya waist or tote it in your book bags. You never know how these niggas actin’ up in here. I’m bringin’ it to them wherever,” Kev said, and we knew he meant that.

  We toted our guns around all day and showed face in the lunchroom to let everybody know that we weren’t no punks even in small numbers. It was no secret; everybody knew we were beefing. There were about nine guys in the cafeteria from Arlington, but none of them made a move when they saw us. I didn’t know why, but either they didn’t want to set it off in there or they knew we weren’t sitting up in there three deep without backup on us.

  Lisa came over to where we sat while I was picking over a piece of cake. “Kamil, can I speak to you for a minute?” she asked.

  I slid over so we could have a little privacy. “What’s up?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were a drug dealer?” she said.

  I almost choked on my cake. “What?”

  “Don’t try to deny it, Kamil. I already know. Everybody’s been talking about how nice your and Kamal’s cars are. Y’all don’t even have jobs or licenses. Then I hear y’all have been beefing with Arlington Avenue since the summer. I thought I knew you better than that,” she said. “That’s why I really haven’t heard from you or seen you all summer, because you were too busy selling drugs and fighting.”

  Now wasn’t a good time for me to be hit with all of what Lisa was confronting me with, but I did want to clear the air because it had been bothering me that I couldn’t tell her.

  “Everything you said is true. I’m not going to deny nothing, but what you don’t know is the reason behind everything you heard or have been hearing. Yeah, I hustle, but how could I tell you my moms threw my brother and me out in the street, and we had nowhere to go and didn’t know what to do? How could I tell you that if it weren’t for a friend of mine who hustles too, I would’ve had to drop out of school because I wouldn’t have been able to feed or clothe myself, or have nowhere to lay my head? How can someone just come out and say it? And what am I supposed to do if I have a sister who runs the street and sleeps with niggas who don’t give a fuck about her, and just knock her up leaving her all pregnant, and then brags as if he did something? What am I supposed to do if she comes to me for help, telling me she needs six hundred dollars for an abortion, and she had to drop out of school her senior year and shit? This is what drove me to selling drugs and this is why I’m beefing with them niggas from that block, but how am I supposed to explain all that to you, and make you understand, huh?”

  Her eyes began to moisten and the tears began to drop as I summed up all that happened in the past eleven months or so in my life in a matter of a minute’s worth of words.

  “I didn’t know,” she said with a shameful look on her face.

  “It’s not your fault.” I put my hand on her shoulder.

  “If you would’ve just told me, or tried to tell me, I would’ve tried to understand.”

  “They weren’t your problems; they were mine.”

  She dropped her head and I lifted it back up. “You’re actin’ like they’re your problems now.”

  “I feel like it, because I care about you, Kamil,” she said back to me, looking me straight in my eyes.

  “Wipe ya face, Lisa. I’m all right and I’m going to be all right.”

  “Kamil, if you have problems with these guys why did you come to school?” she asked, concerned.

  “Because I need an education,” I said with a smile.

  “You always think everything is so funny,” she said back, smiling too.

  “Nah, seriously, I can’t let this stop me from finishing school. I need this.”

  “You sure it’s not your pride or ego that has you here today?”

  “A little bit of that, too,” I said, laughing.

  “Kamil, please be careful,” she said.

  “I will. I always am.”

  After school, we headed to the parking lot and, sure enough, the dudes from Arlington was out there squatting on us.

  “Yo, we just gonna walk up and whip out on these muthafuckas, that’s all,” Kev said.

  “Hold up, they look like they standing out there waiting to talk. They don’t look like they in fighting mode, so let’s see what’s up,” I said.

  “How the hell can you tell they ain’t in fighting mode?” Mal said.

  “Look at ’em. They outnumber us, but they look more scared than we do.”

  The parking lot was crowded, as everyone waited to see what happened. We walked over to our cars. I hit my alarm on my car as I was approaching it. They all just stepped away from the cars a little.

  “Yeah, what’s goin’ on? What’s up?” Kev asked, spreading his arms out.

  “Yo, we wanna talk to y’all so we can dead this bullshit,” the kid named Keyshawn said.

  Mal cut him off. “Nigga, it ain’t over no bullshit. It’s over my muthafuckin’ sister, kid. That nigga Tone violated and my li’l brother stepped to him. You niggas know how the game goes.”

  A few of them didn’t like what Mal said and acted like they wanted to move out on us. Kev sensed it and pulled out.

  Clack! Clack! “Yeah! What’s up?”

  Everybody froze.

  “Yo, Kev, chill. Niggas just wanna talk, kid,” I intervened. “Ay yo, Keyshawn, listen, if niggas wanna dead it we can dead it, or it’s whatever,” I said, lifting up my shirt to show that I was packing too. “All it’s goin’ to do is boil down to some of your mans getting killed or goin’ to jail, and the same happening to some of our mans or maybe even some of us. So if we gonna squash it we can do it now; you just tell ya boys and we’ll tell ours.”

  “Yo, I’m with that, Mil,” he said.

  We didn’t shake hands, but we gave our words, which was as good as anything in the streets.

  * * *

  The block was getting back to normal now that the beefing was over. Mu was right when he said beef and cash didn’t mix, because while we were beefing we were spending a lot of dough and wasn’t really bringing none back in. I stopped messing with Trina because she was snaking me by creeping with a dude from Third on the low. Mu found out and put me on. I really didn’t care because between Lisa and Ke Ke I had my hands full anyway. Mu made Reecie put Trina out, and she did it, too. Even though Mu was my peoples I thought it was messed up Reecie chose him over her own flesh and blood, but I guessed Mu was more beneficial for her than Trina was.

  Seven months had gone by since me and Ke Ke had started messing around. She was way more experienced than Trina was, both sex-wise and streetwise. I remember the first time I had sexed her she wouldn’t let me unless I went down on her. I wouldn’t at first, but I wanted her so bad that I agreed to. She tried to dress it up for me by squirting strawberry whipped cream between her legs, trying to convince me that it would make it taste better. She was a freak and she was trying to turn me into one. She was always bringing some type of flavor to the bedroom like melted caramel, honey, or chocolate, pouring it over my joint and then licking it all off of me. One time she opened up my jeans while I was driving back from the movies and started giving me head. It took a lot for me not to crash and kill us both.

  Lisa and I hadn’t slept together as of yet. Our relationship wasn’t about that. I got from her what I couldn’t get from Ke Ke, like normal and personal conversation, nothing about the streets, because she wasn’t from the streets. I guess you could say that I had two girlfriends: a street girl and a homebody one. I felt like I was getting the best of both worlds.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  “Welcome home, kid,” I said to Shareef, as I gave him a hug. Shareef came home exactly ten days after my birthday, on March 13. “Damn, what they was feeding you in there? You got ya weight all the way up. You’re lookin’ good, baby boy,” I said.

  “Wor
d! What was you doin’, hittin’ iron up in there?” Mal joined in.

  “Nah, just pull-ups, push-ups, and dips, and eating like a mutha.”

  “Either you ain’t have no fights or you won ’em all, nigga, ’cause I don’t see no marks or bruises on ya ass,” Trevor said.

  “You know I’m from the projects, nigga. I ain’t takin’ no Ls,” Shareef said with a serious face.

  “Yo, back together again like the old days,” Ant said.

  “Nigga, you actin’ like I just did a ten-year bid or somethin’. I only did eighteen months,” Shareef said back. “Yo, while I was biddin’ you niggas’ names been ringin’ bells up in the youth house and the programs like crazy when I went down, especially y’all.” He directed his words to Mal and me.

  “I heard you niggas been gettin’ it and puttin’ that work in on the beef tip. That Arlington Avenue shit was all over. I even had to knuckle one of them niggas up in detention for runnin’ his mouth in there, even though Plainfield be tryin’ to stick together to go to war with them Elizabeth heads. When we get to the programs we click up with Elizabeth to beef with them Newark cats, ’cause they always think they run shit ’cause they be the deepest, but they be the softest. Even in the prisons it’s like that, but worse,” Shareef told us. “That shit used to have me feelin’ good whenever I heard about y’all, and I couldn’t wait to come home.”

  “Well, you’re here now, kid, and we gonna make sure you all right, know what I’m sayin’?” I said to him.

  “I know if I need anything I can ask, but Ice is suppose to have a few dollars for me, so I’ma see what he got.”

  Lately, from what we’d been seeing, the kid Ice wasn’t doing too good out there. It seemed like ever since he and Shareef took that fall, he hadn’t been able to bounce back. A few times he came to me and Mal for work because he had messed up Clyde’s dough and needed to make up for it. He always came correct with us, though, so we never had a problem with hitting him, plus it was on the strength of Shareef.