Twilite Speedba- I mean "Synesthesia" (part 2)

(I'd like to reiterate to you guys about how I'm totally not a plagiarist. God awful narrator, yes. A coward, yes. A childish, vulgar, self centered individual, yes, yes and yes. But a plagiarist, no. Have FUN reading. Also I shaved a bit of the story off the end of part 1 to balance it out. If you've already read it just skip to the part that says "When we got to the community center...")

I stumbled down the sidewalk away from the boarding house with no idea where I was gonna go. Most of the houses in that neighborhood had their windows and doors boarded up with plywood. Nye’s house was the only one on that side of the street that still had people living in it. It was up on a hill where you could see the river and beyond that the city skyline with its lights glittering like a galaxy under the dark half of the sky. At that time there was a derelict ship capsized on the bank closest to our side of the river. It’d been there for years but the city never bothered to get rid of it. By the time they decided to haul it away it had practically become a landmark. I thought about me and the bow of the ship as two acute angles on a right triangle, the ninety degree angle was somewhere out in the water and the distance between me and the ship was the hypotenuse. I tried to keep track of the distance between me and the ship with each step I took til I couldn’t see the water no more. By that time I realized I was heading toward Joseph’s house so I just kept moving in that direction.

When I got to Joe’s place he was in his room pre-gaming for a party with a bottle of gin. Joe was my best friend who wasn't dead. He was a little bit shorter than me, kinda thin with black hair and a small scar over the bridge of his nose. Joe was the only member of his family who was born in the US. The rest of them were from some Latino country, he never told us which one and we always made fun of him for it. Just to piss him off some times we’d ask him something like, “Hey Joe, what’s the weather like in San Juan this time of year?” and he’d go, “How the fuck should I know, guey? ¡Yo no soy de Puerto Rico!” Joe lost his virginity to his babysitter when he was ten and he used his knowledge on the subject to give me advice on what to do when Naomi offered to braid my hair for the first time. I’d forgotten pretty much everything he told me by the time I got to her house.

My boy Antoine was also at Joe’s place. Antoine was this really tall dark skinned dude. He was kinda heavy, with thick nappy hair and a lazy eye. I always hung out with him because I could remember his face without having to draw a picture of it. Antoine was always the quietest of all of us and he was a lot smarter than you’d think from looking at him, the only one of my friends to ever beat me at a game of chess. Six months after this particular night he ended up catching a charge and getting shipped to Juvenile til he turned eighteen. We never found out what he was charged with.

When I came into Joe’s room they could both see that I was pissed off. Antoine asked me what my problem was and I told him, “Nothin, man. Nye’s jus actin’ stupid is all.”

Joe said, “Well fuck her then, guey. We’re gonna go scoop up some new bitches from the community center. You should come with us.”

It seemed like as good a plan as any, so we finished pre-gaming and left. Thinking back on it now I probably should’ve been arrested a dozen times that night, a minor stumbling down the street, smelling like weed and carrying a half empty liquor bottle. But the police only showed face in our neighborhood when somebody got killed so there was little to worry about. My right hand started shaking while we walked. It’s been doing that on and off since I was eight years old, another result of my bad hormones. It stopped shaking after I finished off the last of the tequila. Antoine asked me how I could stand to drink that stuff.

I tossed the bottle and said, “It’s not so bad. Hey Joe, ain’t that what you guys drink in Tijuana?”

Joe got all mad and said, “Shut yer ass up, guey. I’m not fuckin’ Mexican.”

Joseph didn’t much care for Mexicans, but he’d fight you if you said he was from El Salvador.

When we got to the community center the DJ was playing the Electric Slide. Joe and Antoine jumped in right away but I stayed posted up against the wall. It wasn’t that I didn’t know the dance, but my bad hormones was still acting up. They made it so I couldn’t stop thinking about Naomi strutting up and down Third Street with her ass poking out her little skirt like an indefinite integral. There were two hotels on Third Street and half the rooms there didn’t even have doorknobs. They had hotels like that near the neighborhood I lived in before I ran away from home.

Once when I was eight years old I was walking down the street to the playground when this tall white dude in a leather coat walked up to me and asked me how I was doing. I told him I was fine and he said, “You sure are,” with a big ugly grin on his face. He handed me a pack of purple Now-and-Laters and told me he had a whole box of Mister Goodbars sitting in a room at one of those old hotels. Said I could have them all to myself if I followed him there. When we got to the room it was this Asian looking dude in a silk shirt and a red haired lady in fishnet stockings waiting for us. The Asian dude said something like, “he’s perfect,” but then the red haired lady shook her head and said that she wanted a Mexican boy, not a Black boy. Their bad hormones must’ve gotten the best of them because they all started arguing with each other. The guy that brought me there kicked me out the room and told me to get lost. Even made me give him his Now-and-Laters back.

I thought about that old white dude when I was leaning against the wall at the community center. I pictured him with Naomi, running his spidery fingers up and down her body, slapping her in the face as she laughed her ass off. His belly bouncing on top of her. She’d leave him her Tweety Bird panties in exchange for a pack of Now-and-Laters.

“Dumb bitch,” I mumbled.

Thanks to the tequila my bad hormones were starting to settle down so I decided to quit feeling sorry for myself and walk around the party. I danced with any girl I could that would come near me. About an hour later me and Joseph were chilling next to the door when this cute white girl walked by. I could tell just by looking at her that she wasn’t from around there. She had blond hair and she kept it real long, just like Naomi. I liked that because in those days it was the style for a lotta girls in that city to have their hair cut real short. I grabbed the girl by the wrist and pulled her close to me. She looked scared.

I told her I was sorry but she was just too good looking to be walking in and outta my life like that. She laughed at my corny pick up line and we started talking. I asked her name, where she was from, if I could get her number, all the bullshit you’re supposed to ask a girl when you meet her. Turned out she was from Vista Ridge, this upper-middle class suburb north of our borough. She’d come to the party that night because he boyfriend’s step brother had some friends there. Her boyfriend’s name was Aubrey, this light skinned, athletic type dude. You could tell just by looking at him that this party was the most time he’d ever spent outside the suburbs. It must’ve been like sightseeing for all of them, being in our neighborhood.

It never made much a difference to me whether a girl had a boyfriend or not, but with that wandering variable in such close proximity I thought it best not to try and mess with her. I said goodbye to the cute girl and then Me, Joe and Antoine snaked our way through the party, stopping every so often so one of us could dance with a random female. We talked to a few other girls who didn’t have boyfriends with them but we didn’t get to mess with none of them. They was either too young for us, we was too young for them, or they was just plain ugly. Eventually it got to be past one o’clock. The party was dying down and I could feel myself starting to sober up.

I had to make moves quickly because with sobriety comes bad hormones. Antoine had already left the community center with this cute fat chick, so it was just me and Joe by ourselves. I saw that cute white girl from before leaning against the wall, looking all sad and lonely like a scared puppy dog lost in a dark forest. She was easy for me to recognize because the only other white girl at the party had brown hair and I didn’t need to draw a picture to recognize that girl’s face, it was ugly like two eighty nine. I went over to cute girl and asked her what was wrong.

She said, “Aubrey left me.”

“That’s horrible.”

“No,” she said, “not left me left me. He just had to leave early. He’s gotta get up for choir practice in the morning.”

I asked the girl how she was gonna get home. I was real careful with my choice of words so she wouldn’t figure out that I’d forgotten her name. She told me she and her buddy were probably just gonna get a cab. I told her it was real shitty that they had to cut their night short just so her boyfriend could make it back before bedtime. She laughed and told me it wasn’t that big a deal.

“Seriously though, it’s still pretty early. I know you ain’t trying to go home right now.”

Just then her friend walked up, this cute light skinned girl in black pants and one of those big purple sweaters with the collar hanging over her shoulder like girls used to wear back then.

“Cindy,” she said, “Come on, let’s get a cab.”

I thanked god for reminding me the girl’s name. Cindy told her friend to hold on a sec and I told her the two of us were just talking about what to do after the party.

Cindy’s friend gave me a sideways look. “Who are you?”

“Daniel. Who’re you?”

She said her name was Nicole. I said it was nice to meet her. She laughed and asked me how old I was.

“How old do you think I am?”

“You look twelve.”

She was trying to make me look stupid but I just laughed it off like it wasn’t nothing. “Yeah, well I’m not. In fact if you guys come with us I can prove it to you.”

That put a smile on both their faces. Cindy seemed like she wanted to go with me and Joe but Nicole was still having second thoughts. Luckily Joseph saw I was in distress and joined in on the conversation. He told the girls he had some weed back his place, said it was some “top notch-shit.”

part 1: post767752.html#p767752

part 3: topic70194.html