Nique leaned closer, pulling his knee up to his chest and brushing invisible dust from his high black Chuck Taylors. “He was saying how black folks riot stupid, burning our own neighborhoods and shit. How we gotta point our guns at something besides our brothers.” A hard, crafty glint danced in his eyes. “You know what would happen if every gangbanger in L.A. stopped trippin’ off of colors and united to take on the cops?”
“Yes,” said Dre, “and so do you. L.A.P.D. would roll down Crenshaw Boulevard crushing lowriders with tanks and blasting anybody dumb enough to be outside past the new seven P.M. curfew. In two weeks every black and Latino male under twenty-five would be dead except the thirty-five percent of us already in jail, who they’d probably wax too, just for good measure. And then Daryl Gates would run for governor.” Dre hadn’t smiled once all morning, nor unballed his fists. Last night he’d sat in front of the TV for more than seven hours, watching riot footage and the King tape until sleep glazed his eyes and he collapsed. His mother, for once, had stayed out of the way.
“Don’t get grandiose,” he told Nique tersely, “and don’t let the fire fool you. This is no time for revolution.”
“How ’bout retribution?” Nique leaned even closer. “We should beat Harley down this afternoon.”
Andre swiveled so he could look at Nique dead on. “Are you nuts? Harley’s one of the only cool kids in here. What did he do?”
“Not him. His father.”
“Harley fucking hates his dad, Nique, probably more than we do.”
“That’s not the point. His dad hurt one of ours, now we hurt one of his. Rodney King didn’t do anything either, and look what happened to him. The only way black folks are ever gonna come up is if we stop worrying so damn much about which cracker is guilty and fight fire with fire.”
“Rodney King was speeding and blowing lines on the freeway, Nique. Harley is sitting in his homeroom, probably listening to ‘Fuck Tha Police’ on his Walkman.”
Dominique stood up, apoplectic with rage, and threw his lanky arms in Andre’s face.
“So fucking what? Whose side are you on, anyway? Shit, I’m the one that’s gonna lose his scholarship. You’re actually paying to go here.”
Dre let the insults slide off him and tried to hold Nique to the point. “Harley’s our boy.”
“All the more reason we should beat his ass. You gotta put personal shit aside for the sake of the cause.”
“Yeah, brilliant. Goebbels’s ‘One Jew’ theory remixed for niggers in the nineties.”
“Goddamn right. Until we get cold-blooded like them motherfuckers, black folks will keep on losing every time.”
“Or, put another way, ‘niggers should start acting more like Nazis.’ ”
Dominique flung an imaginary cigarette to the floor in frustration. “Stop being an asshole. That’s not what I’m saying and you know it. Weren’t you paying attention when I made you watch Apocalypse Now? You got to be willing to cut people’s arms off and throw them in a pile if that’s what it takes. You got to be willing to eat rats to survive.”
“Dominique, what the fuck are you talking about? Why do we have to eat rats? Isn’t the food in the cafeteria bad enough?”
Nique dropped his hands and stalked off, then stopped and spun dramatically in the doorframe. Heads popped up all around the room, sensing the imminence of drama. Ms. Gardner book-marked her copy of Pride and Prejudice and tapped her manicured nails nervously against her desk, wondering whether to tell Dominique to sit back down.
“You know what, Dre? You don’t want to do shit, fine. I’m too mad for business as usual. I don’t care if I do the right thing or the wrong thing. I just want to see some fucking blood—his, mine, whatever. I’ll be in the parking lot.” He slammed the door behind him.
Ms. Gardner sighed with resignation and returned to her reading. Jeremy Gold approached Dre, wiping blond shags from his face with a hemp-braceleted hand. “Dude, why’s Dom so worked up?” he asked.
Dre stared back blankly. The eternal token-brother-at-a-prep-school question bobbed at him again: whether to explain, whether to educate, whether to even bother with these kids. Not for another year, when he would begin smoking pot in earnest, would Andre find even a toehold’s worth of common ground with the three hundred Jeremy Golds who comprised Princeton-Eastham’s student population.
“Stock market,” he said, and followed Dominique.
Halfway down the hall, he decided against catching up; better to leave Nique alone and let him come to his senses. Instead, Andre headed toward Harley’s homeroom, only to find him crumpled before his locker, face buried in his hands.
“Hey.” Harley glanced up and Dre winced; tear tracks ran from eyes that looked like they hadn’t rested in days.
“S’up, Dre,” he mumbled, letting his head fall again. “I can’t believe they let the fuckers off.” He shudder-sighed and swiped his wrist beneath his nose. “Got any drugs?”
“Sorry.”
“I mean, the fucking tape . . . It’s right there on the fucking tape.” A fresh drop dribbled down the worn runway of Harley’s cheek. He clenched his fist, then let it go limp. “My dad and the rest of them are having a fucking victory barbecue tonight. I mean . . .”
Andre crouched beside Harley, shoulder to shoulder, and tried to sound calm, comforting. “I know, Harley, I know. There’s nothing we can do. Listen, I came to warn you. Dominique is on some kind of crazy eye-for-an-eye trip, which will probably pass in half an hour, but for now he wants to kick your ass to teach your pops a lesson, so you’d better steer clear. Don’t take it personal. He’s in the parking lot.”
Harley’s mouth grew hard. He sprang to his feet and headed toward his car with heavy, swift steps. Andre followed, a pace behind, remembering the ride he, Nique, and Harley had taken to Fatburger last month when Harley got his license and gym class was canceled, Harley telling them how his dad had gotten the car for next to nothing at a police auction.
What kind of crappy drug dealer drives a Nissan Sentra? Nique had asked, his mouth crammed full of french fries.
When they reached the parking lot, Nique was pissing flamboyantly on Harley’s ride. A wide arc of urine glistened in the sunlight, spattering loudly on the metal hood.
“Hey!” shouted Harley. Nique looked up, tucked away his dick, and swaggered toward the cop’s son, glaring.
“I been waiting for you,” he said, hooking thumbs into belt loops and standing his ground, legs locked shoulders’ width apart. He glanced left and right as if expecting tumbleweeds to blow past.
“Dre says you want to kick my ass,” responded Harley, squinting rather than glaring. He sounded more inquisitive than angry. “So, uh, here I am. Beat the shit out of me.”
“What?” said Dre.
“Please,” said Harley. “It would make me feel a whole fucking lot better. Come on, Nique. Teach my father a lesson. Just, ah, watch the face.”
Nique walked toward him. “You ain’t gotta ask me twice,” he said, arm in motion even before he finished speaking, “and fuck the face.” He clocked Harley in the nose and knocked him back a pace. Nique was skinny, but he hit hard and he moved fast.
“Come on, Dre,” he shouted, landing a body blow that bent Harley in pain, “get some.”
Dre shifted his weight from foot to foot, wrinkled his brow, and shook his head.
Nique threw three more body blows, bouncing on his toes like a boxer, then dropped his hands to his knees and bent, panting. He saw Harley struggling to stand straight, and the realization that his adversary thought the fight was over spurred Nique back to action. He wiped his brow on his forearm, straightened, and pushed Harley with both hands, flicking them out from his chest as if he were passing a basketball. Harley stumbled, off-balance, and Nique kicked his legs out from under him, knocked Harley to the ground and brought his foot down on the kid’s arched back again and again. Harley flattened and then curled, knees tucked against his stomach, arms shielding his head.
&nb
sp; “Okay,” he wheezed, voice muffled by his hands and thick with bloody saliva. “Stop. Please. That’s enough.”
“The hell it is,” Nique said, kicking him again. He was trying to wedge his foot in between Harley’s knees, catch him in the chest or throat. “No time-outs left, bitch.” He kicked again and stepped back. Hearing Harley speak had calmed him down a bit, thought Dre. He hoped Nique would yell for a while, tire himself out.
“The nerve of this fuckin’ cracker,” said Nique, glaring at Dre as he gestured to the crumpled body lying between them. He bent at the waist to shout in Harley’s ear, like a drill sergeant demanding push-ups. “This ain’t no fuckin’ confessional!” He reared his leg again and Dre winced at the flat slap of rubber against flesh. Harley groaned and wrenched. “That guilt kinda fades when motherfuckers are beating your punk ass, huh?”
“Okay, Nique, he’s had enough,” said Dre abruptly. Halfheartedly, he locked his arms around Nique from behind and pulled him a few paces away. Nique twisted backward, looking at him with wild eyes.
“You crazy, nigga? I’m just getting started. You hear me, Harley? Why don’t you try to get up like your boy Rodney? Try and make it to your car.”
“Nique, homeroom’s almost over. Somebody’s gonna come out here.”
“Do I look like I give a fuck? Come on, Dre, kick him. You’ll feel better.” Nique wriggled out of Dre’s arms, kicked Harley again and stood defiant, hands crossed over his heaving chest. “We’re not leaving here until you kick him.”
“Hell no.”
“Come on. How do you know you won’t like it till you try? Go for the face.”
Dre looked around. “If I kick him, we can go?”
“Deal.”
Dre swallowed, feeling sick, and kicked Harley in the back, harder than he’d planned to. Much harder. Disgust fought back against the surge of power rising in him and disgust lost quickly. Against his will, Dre understood what Nique had meant: If you blurred your eyes to things like friendship, troublesome notions of allegiance, you could find the coldness to do anything. He could pound all his rage into this body, this receptacle, and never see it. Dre unloaded again and a clipped yelp escaped the boy. It jolted Dre back to his senses and he stopped short, foot drawn back in midair. He looked down and it was Harley on the ground again, squirming in pain. Dre dropped his leg and felt his stomach bubble with nausea. He raised his hand to his forehead and touched the same warm sweat that covered him after football practice, a reminder of how hard he’d worked. A rivulet trickled past his ear, and Dre thought he’d vomit. Relief that he was back inside himself tangled with horror at the proof lying before him that he’d been out of control.
Nique looked at him and smiled; Dre refused to meet his eyes. They stood in silence and never heard Mr. Rossini, school lacrosse coach and disciplinarian, swagger over on his parking lot patrol.
“Hey! Walker, Lavar! What are you two doing out of homeroom? The bell doesn’t ring for another—” He shuffled sideways through a row of cars and saw Harley lying twisted and blood-streaked on the ground.
“Holy shit!” Rossini yelled, red-faced. He pointed at Harley with the lacrosse stick he always carried. “What the hell is this? What happened?”
Neither Andre nor Dominique had any words. They stood mute, guilty as hell, and finally it was Harley who spoke. He pulled himself up, leaned against his piss-soaked car, and said, “Coach Rossini, this . . . this isn’t what it looks like. I fell and hit my head, and Dre and Nique were just helping me up.”
Rossini didn’t buy it. “You fell and hit your head on what?” he said, staring down the parties he held responsible.
“On my car, I guess. I don’t remember.”
Rossini grabbed Nique’s arm and shook it at Harley. “Why’s Lavar covered in blood? You’re telling me he didn’t hit you? Don’t be afraid, son. Tell the truth.”
“They . . .” Harley coughed and clutched his stomach. “They didn’t do anything. They were just trying to help.”
Rossini looked from Harley to Dominique to Andre, his tiny Mesozoic brain thumping along as fast as it could go. “You two come with me,” he said, pointing meaty fingers at Nique and Dre. “And you, you’d better get yourself to Health Services before you ruin that nice shirt.”
Chapter Five
The world-renowned Nuyorican Poets’ Cafe was an inconspicuous little joint on East Third; from the street there was nothing to see but a bald man with neck rolls plugging a doorway with his ass. Macon walked past twice before he realized he’d found it. He paid the five-spot cover and stepped into a long, narrow room pungent with Egyptian Musk, Official Fragrance of the Underground.
Legions of backpack rap kids milled around him like hot atoms, and Macon eye-checked them with a chilled blend of amusement and scorn. The scene spawned such generic denizens these days. Jansports and cargo pants were everywhere, set off with overstated polos, rugbies, and sweatshirts blaring the logos of hip hop designers. Hip hop designers: The phrase echoed oxymoronic in his head. The fact that the world courted hip hoppers these days, tailored fashion and advertising to seduce and reflect them, was still a mindfuck. You could buy your jeans cut baggy at the Gap now, instead of buying a pair six sizes too big and cinching the waist with some crazy industrial-strength belt. The days of appropriation and self-modification were over: Just hit Macy’s and grab your b-boy outfit off the rack, slide through Rock & Soul and cop a set of turntables—or, God forbid, CD players—engineered for beat-matching and back-spinning. No need to refit your spray cans with oven-cleaner nozzles anymore; just jaunt over to your local graffiti boutique and pick up a ten-pack of fatcaps.
Macon cut his derision short, realizing how hackneyed the goddamned-kids-today flow sounded in his head. He was no older than these knucklehead new-jacks, but they were of a generation he despised—for their presumption and their ease, the way they’d sauntered into hip hop like it was their parents’ living room and thrown their legs up on the coffee table. Hip hop hadn’t extorted them for any dues in return for the right to claim it as their own; it had been too busy to make them cover their eyes and count to a hundred and then find the jam session unfolding behind the unmarked door. These kids were hip hop’s third generation. Not the pioneers who’d conceived it in an orgy of sacred doubled drum-breaks and presided over its birth in the asphalt schoolyards of the Bronx. Nor the inheritors who’d nurtured the culture through adolescence, studying its brief history compulsively and feeding it bolder sounds, bigger ideas. This was the desultory multitude who’d never known a world in which hip hop didn’t dangle from every corner street lamp.
When Macon had started listening—ten years ago, and a good four or five before most of these kids, he guessed as he watched them strut by in their headphones and Kangols (I’m so real I’ma wear my Walkman even in the club, son, just in case the DJ plays some bullshit) at a ratio of three males to every female— information had been precious, limited. New York radio tapes, Red Alert on KISS-FM and Special K and Teddy Ted on WBLS, were dubbed and redubbed, passed from hand to hand, brawled over if lost. Macon had trained himself to wake up five minutes before two A.M. on Sundays to tape Boston’s only radio show; he couldn’t set an alarm or his parents would hear. He’d sneak downstairs and sit in front of their living-room stereo, yoga posing before some ten-watt city lighthouse of a station, ear to the speaker, volume knob at one. Even at such tiny volume, the subsonic ripples strained his parents’ unfit speakers and nudged the dial into Spanish feminista talk shows. When Macon memorized the tape, dime el problema con su esposo mi hermana cut through breakbeat breathing space inside a static sheath, becoming una parte de la rhyme scheme for all time. Now those cassettes were a reminder that the music was a sliver once, a tiny shard of drum and hard-speak coded into shortwave binary and squatting at the low-rent end of the FM dial, at 90.3 and 89.1, significant degrees below normal body temperature. Those who listened then were arctic nomads, becoming friends for life when they converged on frozen roads to
trade supplies.
How, Macon wondered as he cut a path toward the small stage at the back of the club, had the backpack rap set gotten so self-righteous so quickly? These kids were as dogmatic as the bitterest old-school has-beens, oozing with keep-it-realness and wistful reminiscences of a misimagined past in which hip hop hadn’t been shackled to capitalism. The backpackers scorned commercial success and radio airplay—corrupting the culture, yo—but spent all their money on niche-marketed hip hop accoutrements, from breakdance videos to old-school Pumas. They ordered water at the bar, not for fear of being carded or out of a desire to stay sharpwitted for the freestyle ciphers to come, but because their giddily professed pennilessness nudged them closer to the underground rappers they admired—rappers who for the most part would have traded all the adolescent-male dick-riding for a major-label advance check and used the money to move out of the projects.
This was hip hop’s whitest generation yet, the growth factor exponential—to the point where a white presence onstage or a white audience majority came as no surprise—and yet they never seemed to wonder what their proper place was, whether they were lounging at tables marked Reserved. Why should they? They were keeping it real. That was their only responsibility, not figuring out what real was, what it was, or for whom they were keeping it. They were masters of affect, strangers to cause—conspirators in a huge, fragile, hypnotic agreement of which Macon refused to believe he was a part: Okay, easy . . . nobody call anybody out . . . shhh . . . buy each other’s records . . . nod your head like this . . . good . . . the important thing to remember is that none of us is full of shit. . . . He had only himself to blame for hip hop’s gentrification, Macon reflected. If people like him hadn’t fallen in love with the neighborhood and put down roots, these clowns never would have found the courage to move in and ruin it.
Macon scowled, a touch of claustrophobia tickling his neck as he pretended to scan the room for a friend. Fly women speckled the crowd, and he found a spot along the back wall, posted up and smoldered his eyes at them, hoping in vain to catch some rhythm in return. Macon consoled himself by imagining how his lot would change once he’d busted his poem; hours too late to sign up for the slam, he’d settled for the open mic to follow.
Angry Black White Boy Page 7
