Everybody at the tabled laughed at Tyler for bouncing.
“Punk,” one kid yelled at Tyler’s back. Tyler kept going.
“Sucker,” a girl screamed.
Kids started giving Sean props and he smiled big at them. They gave him pounds. Patted him on the back. Including Vanessa and Kyle. Everyone except me.
Sean finally leaned over to me for a pound, saying, “I got that one.”
“You got it,” I said, putting my fist out to him, but I didn’t mean it.
We were back to old times. Sean showed he could beat up a kid with his words. He grinned at me like I should want to be him. A few months ago, I did. Except things were different now.
Now, I was realizing stuff.
Sean being quick with a dis used to mean he was The Man, but not anymore.
Sean went from dissing kids to bullying kids to putting his hands on them. I used to think his mom’s advice was hot. “Beat up kids with words so other kids get scared and don’t mess with you.” Yeah, dissing stopped kids from bothering you, but it was bad in a way too. Those jail guys had talked in Advisory about traps. Maybe following the rule “Dis or get dissed on” was a trap too. Because dissing trapped Sean into being mean. It trapped him into fronting too. Made him a liar. He hid things about himself from everybody. Even from me. His tightest friend.
I couldn’t stand to sit there, watching kids treat Sean like he and everything was perfect. I got up and left.
How I Wish It Was
EVEN THOUGH THINGS HAD BEEN BACK TO NORMAL with Sean for months, my mind was still stuck on loop. Sometimes, I felt cool with him. Other times, I didn’t know how to feel. Like right now.
On my dresser was a picture of me and him smiling at an amusement park. I flung the book I was reading at that picture. The book knocked the frame flat.
I turned on my TV, and the first channel had this new talk show called Debra. The guest was a man who looked like a supersized, diesel Sean. Half of me wanted to switch the channel, but another part of me was freaked out by how much that man really looked like Sean. It was bugged, as if I were seeing the real Sean grown up in some way.
On a screen behind the man and the host, Debra, were a few photos of the guy playing NFL football. He was a famous athlete, but I didn’t know him because I didn’t watch football. Vanessa, Kyle, and Sean weren’t into football either.
In one picture, the man wasn’t in his football uniform. He wore a suit and stood next to the president. They were both smiling and had their hands on the same award. Maybe the president gave him that? Bigger than that picture was an even larger photo of a book with this man’s face on it. He must’ve written it. It was called How Can We Make Being a Man Mean More?
The camera showed two ladies standing in the audience. One woman had Hershey-brown skin and a cute face, with her hair in tiny, curly dreadlock twists. She rocked a pink, tight turtleneck. The other lady was White and had on a black T-shirt. She must’ve worked for the show, because she handed the Black lady a microphone.
“Thank you. Hi. First off, I love you, Debra. I’m a big fan.” To the man, she said, “My question is about your fraternity. You’re saying in college you were with men in your fraternity 24/7, yet you still feel you didn’t know the real them? And they didn’t know the real you?”
On the screen behind the man and Debra now was a photo of the man and about twelve other guys dressed in tuxedos. They all were standing shoulder to shoulder and had their arms around each other, hugging tightly. They were smiling big at whoever was taking that photo. Black men. Latino. Asian. Two White guys.
Debra pointed at the picture. “Is that your fr aternity?”
From the picture, I guessed that a fraternity meant his group of homeboys in college.
“Yeah.”
“Nice shot of you,” Debra said.
He winked at her. “Thank you.”
He nodded to the lady in the audience and said, “Yes, the guys and me in that picture call ourselves brothers, but in many ways, we were and are strangers. We hid stuff from each other. We still do. For example, issues with my father. Take alcoholism. It runs in my family. I knew for sure that some of my closest boys had an alcoholic parent too. But we never talked about that. For a few reasons. Fear of looking weak or soft. Also, us not knowing how to handle those conversations. Whatever felt awkward to discuss, we kept inside.”
“Why do you think so many men are that way?” the lady said.
Debra made a curious face and asked her, “What way?”
“All macho.”
He laughed. “Let me ask you a question. How many times have you seen a boy make this ‘muscle man’ pose for a picture?” He flexed his biceps.
The lady said, “A lot.”
“Me too,” Debra said. “We all have, right?”
Almost everyone in the audience agreed.
“You see that?” the man said. “We all come from different places yet we know the same thing. Boys think it’s cool to look strong. Why? Because before boys can walk, they’re programmed with messages to be hard. They follow that script and grow into men who act as she said—hard and macho.”
“Where do boys get the message ‘Be hard’ from?” Debra asked.
“Sports, movies, music. Our families, schools. The list goes on.”
“And you think tough isn’t the way to go?” Debra asked. “I mean, some women like a tough man. It makes them feel protected.”
“True. There are some places and times guys need to show toughness. Not everywhere and all the time, though. We need to teach boys when to turn that hardness off and show other sides. Otherwise, boys act tough in places they don’t need to. Then they grow into men who act that way.”
“How can a guy change?” Debra asked him. “Be more multidimensional?”
“For me, I first had to see if I was a stereotype of a man. Next, I had to stop being that stereotype and act differently. It’s hard. When I changed, some of my friends acted weird. Some made jokes. But others were true friends. I was real with them and they were real right back. Meaning they didn’t put me down and they helped me work through my issues.”
“This is an important topic,” Debra said. “Why is it close to your heart?”
“One day, I hope to have a son. I want him to know from young that wearing a front and acting tough isn’t the way to be all the time. I’m not saying to boys, ‘Tell everybody your issues.’ I’m saying this: ‘Don’t hide. Don’t hide yourself behind one way of acting, and don’t hide your problems from people you think you can trust.’
“I did that and it limited me in my friendships. Many boys stay hush about their issues and their issues don’t get addressed. That can mess them up in their adult lives. We need to stop that.”
The audience clapped.
Seeing this man made me think about when me and Sean become adults. I wondered if the wack things about our lives from right now would mess us up for good. Like when Sean became twenty-five years old, would he still be lying about his father? Would both me and him be men and still be fronting and acting hard? Putting our real thoughts in raps in notebooks but afraid to be real with each other? Scared to be honest with other grown guys? It wasn’t just me and Sean. It was this football player and his friends too. And most boys out here in Red Hook and school tried to act hard. If you didn’t, you got punked.
I wondered if I’d be a dad someday. When I was grown, if I had a son, I’d teach him he didn’t need to follow the stupid rule of “Dis or get dissed on.” Me and Sean wore an armor all the time, how Ma said. Me and Sean kept things from each other, and that made us into liars with people we’re supposed to be close to. I’d raise my son different. No lies between him and his friends.
I hated Sean’s father. That deadbeat. Sean was so ashamed of him that he lied about his family just to seem normal. I hated all deadbeat dads. Mine too. They should just stop acting like big kids and see that their being gone so much, hanging out all the time, and leaving their famili
es messed their kids up. I was pissed at my mom’s brother for going to jail. I lied all the time about where he was at and I couldn’t stand it.
Most kids out here lied. But for what? The next kid had something wrong with their family too.
And Ms. Feeney tried to make the way Sean was all his fault. As if he enjoyed messing with kids. But our school and neighborhood had traps the way that prison dude in Advisory said. Sean just fell into traps at times. When Manny and Sean beefed, it was Manny who started it. Manny put that trap out there. Plus, those times in the cafeteria, where Sean clowned those kids, Sean didn’t pick on them. Those kids tried getting names for themselves, and they dissed on Sean first. He defended himself and fell into another trap.
And what about the other kids at the lunch table? They were waiting and pushing Sean to dis on kids. Like in Ms. Feeney’s class, when Sean and Manny fought, mad kids yelled, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” They weren’t screaming, “Stop! Stop! Stop!” And when Sean did dis or fight, kids gave him props for being good at it. That’s another trap too.
Out here it’s “Fight, fight, fight.” If you can, you’re The Man. Even Sean’s mother told him, “Be the one kids are scared of because if they are, they’ll leave you alone.” Ms. Feeney was stupid for blaming just Sean. She should point fingers at everybody else too.
The man who looked like Sean was still on the TV. I tried to imagine he was the real Sean, just grown up, free from all the drama the kid Sean grew up with. The show cut to a commercial. I grabbed the remote and zapped the TV off.
For some reason, the Debra show reminded me of this line from Black Bald, my favorite rapper.
Black’s rhyme went:
“By nine, I was addicted to street life.
As a boy, that’s when the kid in me died.
Even when I was my truest, I was a fake, just a lie.
Doing grimy things all the time to get a high, to get by.”
Have I ever been grimy with Sean? I thought. The answer came fast. Nope. I never lied to Sean. I started thinking about secrets I should’ve kept but had told him throughout our friendship.
Like when I was younger and my high school cousin Carl disappeared. He came back a year later with this huge scar on his face like somebody had sliced him. One day, Sean pointed it out and told me, “Dudes get cut like that in jail. Where’d Carl go when he left?” I knew for a fact I’d told Sean Carl was in jail. Oh! No, I didn’t. I didn’t want him or anyone knowing I had cousins in jail. I lied to Sean. I told him Carl was in the army.
Nah. What about that time my grown cousin Victor decided he was gay? He showed up on our block dressed like a woman, asking people to call him Vicky. Me and Sean were on the benches watching Vicky switch his skinny butt all up and down our block. Snapping his fingers and stuff.
“Son! Isn’t that gay dude your cousin?” Sean asked me.
I manned up and told him, “Yes.”
Oh dip! No, I didn’t. I was too embarrassed I had a gay cousin. That’s another time I lied to Sean. I told him some doodoo about Vicky not being blood-related to me.
But what about the biggest secret of mine? Why my dad left. I knew I’d told Sean the whole story with that. Nope. I hadn’t. I didn’t like that my father cheated on my mother and didn’t tell him that part. All I told him was where my father went and that me and my pops didn’t talk anymore.
And when me, my moms, and Sean were up on Fulton Street and Ma bought groceries and paid for it with her welfare card, Sean caught that and whispered to me, “Son, you on welfare?” I lied and said my moms had borrowed her friend Maggie’s card. I knew Sean knew I was on welfare, especially after I saw what he wrote in his rhymebook. But I never told him the truth.
My mind suddenly turned to Advisory when the gang guy asked us to raise our hands if we didn’t come from a normal family. I didn’t blame kids for not announcing that, because they’d get dissed on later for it, but I hated on Sean because he didn’t tell me, Vanessa, and Kyle he had a messed-up family.
Man. Sean had betrayed me, but I had betrayed him too.
I remembered the rest of Black Bald’s rap:
“Real friends help you get through. Your boys are just mirror images of you.”
I remembered that nightmare I’d had. I was the same as Sean.
I went to the top drawer of my dresser. Under my socks was my half of the piece of metal from the Grey House. I ran my fingers over its sharp edges where Sean had broken it in two. He still had his half. I picked up the picture I had knocked down. I was done with going back and forth in my head about Sean. I wanted us to be tight again. Period.
Back at the Grey House, I thought I knew everything about friendship. It was about trust. But right now, friendship meant I wished Sean would put himself out there with me. Let me know the real him. All parts of him. I remembered something my mother used to say when I was in elementary school. “You have to be the type of friend you want.” Thinking that made me realize I wasn’t the type of friend I wanted Sean to be to me.
I was afraid to tell him stuff because I thought he’d look down on me. But I hated on him for being scared to tell me things.
I lied to him at times, but I wanted him to be real all the time with me.
If you want a real friend, I thought, you have to be a real friend. Suddenly I had an idea of what to do. I went and got my rhymebook out of my top drawer, then checked the digital clock on my dresser. 7:05. Not too late. I could still call Sean to chill. Man up and tell him things I’d kept from him. Maybe read him some of my raps with the truth about my father and my cousins Carl and Vicky. I knew I had written verses on them at the time.
Maybe tell Sean how I felt when he punked me and didn’t accept the homework I’d copied for him. Maybe him seeing more parts of me would get him open. Then he’d share more parts of him, like the truth about his dad.
I went to my desk and pulled my cell out of its charger. I was scared but I dialed Sean’s cell anyway. It rang twice.
“Hello?”
“It’s me,” I said. I swallowed, nervous. “Can you come downstairs?”
“Yeah. What up?” he said all calm.
My heart started beating fast and hard. “I have some stuff I need to get off my chest,” I said.
Sean didn’t answer. Was he thinking he had some things he wanted to get off his chest with me? Or was he changing his mind about coming down? Me and him needed to talk. If he backed out now, I’d have to hype myself up all over again to tell him this stuff.
“Yeah,” Sean said, then paused. “I’ll be down there in one minute.”
I got happy. All of a sudden, I remembered my mother saying, “Boys and men out here think they can’t ever be sensitive because that’s considered soft or gay. And if the next guy shows some gentle emotion, they say he’s soft or gay.” What would Sean think when he was down here and I began telling him things? Would he see me as gay or soft for being raw with him? Whatever, I thought. Time to man up.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book happened thanks to the right people at the right time.
First, thank you to Charlotte Sheedy and Stacey Barney for an amazing ride. Charlotte, you knew which road to take. Stacey, you had the road map to drive my first book to the finish line.
I’m forever grateful to E. R. Frank. E.R., you’re real and our planet is better because of you. I deeply appreciate Mwezi Pugh for being one of my first readers. Your students are lucky to have you.
I can’t thank my mother enough. Ma, you sacrificed so I had an excellent childhood, bright future, and wonderful “right now.” Your love of reading and writing made me love reading and writing. You set high goals for me while knocking down low expectations others had for me. You taught me that my free mind mixed with motivation can do the impossible.
To my mother’s mother, Milagros, you were true to your name; and a miracle for me. You made space for my childhood drawings, and that grew into my painting pictures with words.
A big shout-out to m
y sisters, nieces, and nephews for your realness and support. Thanks also to my in-laws for showing me that family is more than who you’re born with.
For my wife and daughter, I love you. To my wife, you’ve helped keep alive the fire that my mother lit in my heart and fanned it to grow. To my daughter, you’re incredible—a little me plus more. You both are part of the everyday net that catches me, comforts me, and boosts me to new and greater heights.
Thank you to my Red Hook Community and my extended Red Hook family. Thanks to all my supporters from P.S. 15, J.H.S. 142, M.S. 88, Midwood High School, and Vassar College.
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