part 1

So, what had happened was that my homegirl, the “queen” of the crew, was having her birthday party that Saturday, at her house. It would be off the chain for one specific reason; cool ass parents. Actually, her mom was just hella laid back, probably because she was a year or 2 older than my grandfather was when he died. Shed seen it all, anyway. Why trip now? Her father was even older. I’m not sure he knew who the fuck we were, or if we were even there to begin with. To a teenager, that lack of supervision spells freedom. By the boatloads.

[Sidenote: It seems like all my formative, young adult years, I was in those types of lackadaisical, care-free environments & managed to stay away from sex, drugs & alcohol until definitive adulthood. My parents did a pretty good job. What do you know...]

That evening, after traipsing through the greater metropolitan L.A. area to collect the crew, we finally got to her house for the party. Her backyard was a decent size, & she had a swimming pool. With lights. & a heater. Now, I could tell the story about how I almost boned some girl in a swimming pool 16 years ago, but later was glad that I hadn’t because, come to find out she had hair on her chest, but I won’t. Why? Because as the party started doing the filtering-out & winding-down of it’s goers, Shay, apparently now drunk, decides to wrench his crazy up a few notches. Like I said, he was that type of dude.

Our crew, which was comprised primarily of niggas too pussy to join real gangs, was called the ‘Too Cute Mob.’ Roffle mayo. Not for nothing, though, but it only took one bad apple for that name to not really mean much, aside from the fact that we all dressed like we worked at Banana Republic. (No homo that Banana Republic, because I used to work there. Saying that name, in some spots, is as bad as tapping your foot in a bathroom stall) Don’t get it twisted, I wasn’t fighting for anybody’s duck sauce reason, but we had a few skirmishes with another weenie tot band of wanna be’s. But, I digress.

Shay, had gone to his car at some point, & brought that big ass gun into the backyard. Not that we saw him do it, but we saw him brandish it on the diving board. He’s yelling “Too Cute!” this, that & the other, & just when I’m ready to hurl my beverage at his foolishness, he dives in the water. With his gun, mind you. Bear in mind, I’m sober. All the crazy shit I saw growing up, I was sober. Point is, this nigga is swimming through a Goddamned pool with a pistol, like we live in San Andreas. I don’t know what everybody else was doing, but I was watching.

He emerged from the pool, water glistening all over his body, & said “Too Cute!” as he put the gun to his head & pulled the trigger.

Click.

This is where that sobriety comes in handy, partly because adrenaline doesn’t mix with alcohol very well, because everybody else is now screaming, freaking out, & slowly getting the fuck outta there. The core dudes didn’t break, because we didn’t want to see our drunk homeboy murder himself for no good reason, but at the same time, life ain’t a cartoon; I don’t reach for guns. The girl whose house it was got her mom, & even though her mom had that old lady, rocking chair, mole on the chin nurturing way her about her, no dice. That nigga wasn’t doing anything with that gun but what he wanted to. No matter what anybody said.

“Too Cute!”

Click.

By now, we’re all thinking that he’s just drunk, & showing off, as usual. I asked about the bullets, to which his response was opening the cartridge, taking out the one bullet he had in it, replacing & spinning the cartridge, & squeezing at his temple again. As far as we were concerned, in a telepathic group hug type of way, we all stepped in on him, & moved the gun from his hand. See, by the law of averages, that last shot was strike 3, if you smell my cologne. The probabilities were only moving south from that point. As the kid who didn’t want to watch ‘Faces Of Death’ in junior high school, the last thing I wanted to see in high school was real life plasma & tissue & bone fragments strewn about like a sun-baked, stepped-on ketchup packet. Ha.

Shay kept doing dumb shit, for the rest of the year, until he got arrested before we graduated. The last I heard about him is that he was in jail again for robbery, but that was years ago. Somebody’s probably killed him by now, God forbid. But, I wouldn’t be surprised because he was that dude. Now that I’m thinking back, before we got together & watch ‘Strapped,’ he was intent on being in the NFL. Literally, that movie changed what he wanted to be in life, or it really seems that way. Shout out to Menace II Society, also.