Capital City

  “Aw, man, why move out on free food, free rent, and free use of a telephone for this-type shit?”

  I smile. “Well, when you work for a telemarketing firm, this is all you can afford,” I respond.

  “I thought you make up to eleven dollars an hour doin’ that shit,” Walt says.

  I pick out my outfit and start to iron it. “No, that’s just what they put in the newspapers. You have to be a pro on sales to get that kind of hourly wage.”

  “So what do y’all sell?” Derrick asks from my bathroom, taking a leak.

  “Aw, man, a lot of things. I don’t even feel like going into it. We get, like, new things to sell every week.”

  “Yeah? So y’all damn near like a telephone catalog, huh?” Walt asks me.

  Marshall laughs. “Telephone catalog? That shit sounds funny, you’n.”

  I smile. “Yeah, I guess you could say something like that.”

  “You gon’ wear a yellow shirt, man?” Derrick walks into my room asking.

  I look at him confused. “Yeah, what’s wrong with that?”

  “Yo, I got a yellow shirt like that back at the crib,” Walt adds.

  “Yellow shirts are see-through, ’cause you can see your undershirts through ’em,” Derricks tells us.

  “Aw, dis silly nigga worried about somebody seeing his damn undershirt. What’chu got stains under your arms, Joe? Buy some new ones then,” Walt says.

  “Oh, let’s not talk about stains, Walt, with your ringaround-the-collar ass.”

  Marshall laughs real hard and loudly.

  “Fuck you laughin’ at, Marshall?” Walt challenges. “What about them bamma-ass jeans you got on? Nigga wearing jeans with pleats in ’em.”

  “So, what’s wrong with that?”

  “They look like girly jeans, that’s what.”

  We all laugh but Marshall.

  “Now, that don’t even make no sense. He ain’t never seen no girls wearin’ no jeans like these.”

  “They might start wearin’ ’em after they see you in ’em t’night. They might wanna borrow them joints.”

  We laugh out of the door.

  “Oh, yeah, Wes, bring that Digable Planets tape you got,” Marshall reminds me.

  “They out already?” Derrick asks as I run back inside. “Naw, Wes just got the single,” Marshall answers.

  We get to the Roxy and Marshall rides around several corners in the Dupont Circle area trying to find a parking spot.

  “Damn! It’s a lot of niggas out here t’night,” Walt says.

  “Yeah, that’s them Howard students coming back to school,” Derrick says.

  “You know, as much as we be around them Howard girls, I ain’t been able to get with one,” Walt tells us.

  “I had one. But that girl got on my damn nerves. She was just tryin’ to use me for my car,” Marshall says.

  “Use you for your car? Aw, man, this piece a shit,” Walt retorts.

  Even Marshall laughs.

  “It gets you around though. And she always wanted me to take her to malls and shit like that so she could shop. But outside of that, she acted like she was too busy for me.”

  “Man, I got some boys that tell me some of them Howard girls is freaks. You just gotta know which ones to talk to,” Walt says.

  “Well, I don’t want no freaks,” I comment to him.

  “Aw, nigga, ya lonely ass’ll take anything,” Walt says.

  After finding a parking spot, we hop out of the car and walk back toward Roxy’s.

  “Yeah, some of them Howard girls are cool,” Derrick says. “My cousin Jerry went with a Howard girl for a long-ass time.”

  “Why they break up?” I ask him.

  “I’on know, man. It was somethin’ my cousin did.”

  “Yeah, but your cousin is light-skinned,” Marshall comments.

  “You light-skinned too, nigga,” a darker-skinned Walt says.

  “Yeah, but I don’t have the hair, nor the money.”

  “What does being light-skinned have to do with anything?” I ask innocently enough. Really, just want to see what kind of discussion comes from it.

  “Man, you crazy! This whole damn D.C. area is color stuck.” Marshall responds.

  Derrick nods in agreement. “I know, ’cause when I was in New York last summer, the guys who had the most game got the girls.”

  “That’s the same way it is down here: game and money,” Walt retorts. “I think y’all niggas just makin’ excuses because y’all ain’t got no game.” Then he adds with a laugh, “And no money.”

  “No, girls down here are definitely more into light-skinned guys than they are up in New York,” Derricks persists.

  Walt frowns. “Yeah, whatever, man. Guys are more into that light-skinned shit than girls are. And I know more dark-skinned guys that got more girls than all the light-skinned niggas you know.”

  “What about that boy, Spoon?” Marshall asks.

  Walt looks shocked. “Oh, now, I’on know nobody that got more girls than Spoon. But that nigga jus’ in wit’ all them go-go bands.”

  “Yeah, he drive a baby-blue Beamer, too,” Derrick adds.

  “That’s just one nigga,” Walt says back to Marshall.

  “Aw’ight, what about that boy, Butterman?” Marshall asks next.

  Now I’m shocked to attention. I didn’t know Marshall knew Butterman.

  “Oh, now, he got some honeys too. But did you ever see his girl?” Walt asks with stars in his eyes. “Yo, you’n, that girl is bad as hell! She look like a straight-up model.”

  “Yeah, she is like dat,” Marshall agrees. “Everybody was trying to book her when she went to La Reine, back in the day.”

  “Ain’t she down at Spelman?” Walt asks as we get into the long line at Roxy’s.

  “Yeah, he needs to hide that girl somewhere, ’cause I know brothers is going crazy over her,” Marshall comments.

  Derrick sighs. “Okay, let’s stop ridin’ his girl and see which one of us can holler at the most honeys in here,” he says, cooling off the heated girls/guys and complexion discussion.

  We all get searched down for weapons, pay our way, get our hands stamped, and head up the stairs to the dance floor. I don’t know why I keep wasting my money for these parties. All I do is go in and admire the best-looking women and the guys they’re attracted to. Walt usually dances the most because he’s always been the most sociable. Marshall usually finds someone in the crowd that he knows and starts to hang with them instead of with us—as if he’s met up with a long-lost friend. And Derrick and I usually scan the crowds and chill.

  “Ay! Wes, look at that girl right there,” Derrick says, nudging me.

  I look toward a girl my complexion in the middle of the dance floor. She’s wearing all blue and looking sensational. But she’s dancing with some thick, dark brown, hip guy who can dance his ass off.

  I nod my head and smile. “Yeah, she’s nice.”

  “Excuse me,” another sister says, squeezing by me at the dance floor’s outer edge. I almost get a hard-on from her just touching me. Damn, she looks good! But like that Positive K song, “I Got a Man” is what she’d probably say to me if I wanted to talk to her.

  Derrick nudges me again. “Yo, ask her to dance, right there beside you.”

  I look to my left. A tan-skinned girl wearing all black is bobbing around to D.C.’s “Go-Go Rump Shaker” by Proper Utensils, as if we’re not already tired of the original song by Wreckx-e-Effect and Teddy Riley.

  I almost get ready to ask her to dance, but I procrastinate. As soon as I do, some other guy does and they’re out on the dance floor.

  Damn! I feel like The Pharcyde: She keeps on paaas-sin’ me-e-e byyye. But it’s no one’s fault but my own. I wish women could know how hard it is to put your ego on the line every time you ask for a dance. I guess the “dogs” have the best principle: If the first girl ain’t wit’ it, then fuck it, move along to the next trick. Then again, that’s not for me. I have too much respect fo
r the black woman. But hell, that doesn’t mean much if I’m afraid to even approach them.

  I remember how I met Sybil up at UDC my sophomore year. We were both waiting on the U bus on Connecticut Avenue in front of the school.

  “Is the bus supposed to be coming any time soon?” she asked me.

  “Yeah, it should be,” I said back.

  It was during the spring semester. She had braided hair, and she was wearing a pair of long, pink shorts and a white T-shirt with red roses designed on it.

  “That’s a romantic-looking shirt,” I commented.

  “Oh, this?” she asked, pointing to it with a grin. “Thank you,” she said.

  In fact, she had so much positive energy that I was impelled to continue. “Where did you get it from?”

  “Virginia Beach.”

  “Do you have family in Virginia?”

  “Yeah, how you know?” Her brown face glowed with friendliness.

  “Well, I figure that most black people have family in Virginia or North Carolina.”

  She smiled. “Yeah, that’s where a lot of the first slave ships ported.”

  I was surprised at that response. “So you’re not shy about slavery?” Most American blacks seem to be, especially those who would like to move on and forget the past.

  “No, I want to finish up at UDC and then get a masters at Temple University in African American studies,” she told me.

  I was surprised again. “Oh, so you’re going all out.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, I am.”

  We dated for three months before we started going together. But now that I think back to it, it was easy. I mean, it wasn’t as if I had to “book her” or anything. She was just there for me to talk to. And I’ve had girlfriends before her, but they were always girls who went to school with me, like when I went to Banneker Senior High School.

  Unfortunately, when I get out of UDC in May, if I don’t go back to school for a masters or a PhD, I don’t know if I’ll have the balls to meet a woman at a club or something. I may have to go back to the old methods of family associates and asking my mom to fix me up with one of her girlfriend’s daughters.

  “Yo, man, stop daydreaming and ask that girl to dance,” Derrick tells me.

  I look a few feet in front of me to a light-skinned girl in loose-fitting blue jeans, a green blouse, and a matching headband.

  “N-o-o-o, she probably dances too ‘phat’ for me,” joke.

  “Well, I’on know about you, but I’m tired of just standing here,” Derrick says. He walks out and asks her to dance. She obliges.

  Damn! This is going to be a long night. I turn around energized and ask a short, dark sister if she wants to dance.

  She smiles and says, “No, that’s all right. I just got here.”

  So what? I’m thinking. But instead of saying something harsh and selfish, I say, “Okay, I‘ll wait until you’re ready.”

  She grins at me as if it was cute. And I think it was. But I doubt if she’ll really dance with me. She’s already looking through the crowds curiously. She’s probably looking for the guys with the game and the money.

  Aw, to hell with it! Maybe I need to hook up with Butterman after all.

  CHAPTER 4

  Butterman

  My four-man crew finally hustled up ten grand. Me and Bink going up to New York tonight to make that buy on a quarter-kilo. I’m taking eight grand with me.

  I roll my 3000 through Southeast at about eight thirty, looking for Bink. He said he’d be out here on Martin Luther King Avenue, but this a long-ass street! It’s kind of rugged-looking with a million old storefronts and some new ones. It looks like they’re rebuilding a bunch of shit over here.

  Oh, shit, there go Bink right there! He’s standing outside of a black Toyota 4Runner jeep across the street to my left, up near Portland Street’s corner in front of a liquor store. It looks like he’s out here talking that cool shit of his to these winos. A bunch of young’uns are watching him in amazement, like he’s a ghetto don.

  I blow my horn and holler out of my window at him, “Yo, Bink!” I make a U-turn and whip up next to the curb.

  “Yo, ain’t that nigga name Butterman?” I hear somebody ask.

  “Yeah,” Bink answers. He hops in on my passenger’s side. “Right on time, man, jus’ like my women.” We giggle like shit. “Yeah, we gon’ follow them niggas up,” he says. “I already let my boys up New York know, so you in. You ain’t have ta go up there though, B. I could’a got the package for you.”

  I wanna make my own connections up there, nigga! Fuck that middle-man shit, I’m thinking. “Tell you da truth, I just wanna go up to New York. Never been up that joint before,” I lie to him.

  “Oh, yeah? Well, shit, New York is just like Southeast, twenty-four-seven live.”

  We roll out behind the black 4Runner, heading for I-95 North. ·

  I ask Bink, “Yeah, why you stay in this shit down here when you paid like you is?”

  Bink looks at me confused. He’s wearing a blue velvet Kangol and a black leather jacket. He’s looking as sharp as a pimp, as usual.

  “I jus’ tol’ you, man, it’s live as hell in Southeast. This where all the real niggas be at.”

  Yeah, you got that shit right, I’m thinking. I laugh. “You know, I was watchin’ some talk show—I forget which one it was—and they was talkin’ ’bout drug dealers an’ shit, right. And this ol’ lady stood up and said, ‘The thing I jus’ can’t understand about these dealers is why they wanna stay in the ghetto even after they done got all that money.”

  “Yeah, Joe, that shit hipped me out. ’Cause ain’t even gon’ lie. I live in Silver Spring, Maryland, like a muthafucka. You ain’t gettin’ me to live around these damn fools out here, you’n.”

  Bink sits quiet. And yo, this shit is strange as ever for him. Bink is always saying some cool shit about something.

  He nods his head in deep thought. “Look, man, on’na down low, it’s like takin’ a lion out of his jungle. You know what I’m sayin’? Niggas gotta have their jungles, ’cause the white man got his. I mean, like, that integration-type shit ain’t for e’rybody, man, and them niggas that did that shit knew it.

  “Martin Luther King wasn’t no poor man. His family had money from jump. And how it all went down is like this: Them integratin’ ma’fuckas wanted to have e’rything white people had, but they also wanted to separate themselves from the poor niggas. So when King started talkin’ ’bout a poor people’s march on Washington instead of another rich-nigga march, ma’fuckas stopped supportin’ ’em. So, like, I stay in Southeast because that’s where the people I love is at.”

  Bink nods to himself like he’s satisfied with the shit he just ran down to me. I just drive and keep listening.

  Bink says, “No matter how much cash you get, you gotta fit in wit’ da people or you end up isolated. Like Michael Jackson.”

  I start to laugh while Bink continues, “Yeah, man, ’dat ma’fucka got all ’at money an’ livin’ like a freak: runnin’ round wearin’ disguises an’ shit.”

  I’m laughing my ass off! We just now getting on I-95 North, behind the 4Runner.

  Bink is still going at it, “I mean, it’s just like Mayor Marion Barry—or former Mayor Barry. That nigga felt his best around real niggas. So when he got out of jail for that shit they set him up for, where did he set up at? Southeast.”

  Yeah, it was amazing that Marion Barry was able to win a City Council seat for Southeast’s Ward 8 after he got caught sniffing blow in that hotel with that trick three years ago. He probably could have run for mayor again and won. For real!

  It fucks me up how much street niggas like Bink know.

  But when I think about it, Bink been in the game for years and ain’t did no time—me either—so you figure he has to be smart enough to understand the life to the extent of not getting caught. You have to always understand the position you’re in as it relates to the world. That’s why I’m all fucked up in the head now. I don’t
know where the hell I belong. But I guess I’m in this game more so for the power than anything else. I love the power to make things happen. I’m actually in charge and controlling shit.

  My father been working for the federal government now for about twenty years, and with all the promotions and money and shit that he gets, that nigga still has to ask his authorities if he can make certain decisions. Even President Clinton has to answer to higher powers. Read about that white nigga being one of those Rhodes Scholars. My father used to talk about that shit all the time when I was in school. All them Rhodes Scholars kiss ass to older ranks just like any other nerdy fraternity. That Rhodes Scholar shit seems like lifelong ass-kissing. That’s why I know that if Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar, then he was kissing somebody’s ass. And it don’t stop just because he’s the President.

  We take it easy, cruising on I-95 North until we get up near Philly. Then these niggas in the 4Runner start ballin’, doing over a hundred.

  “Get them niggas, B! How much this ride do?” Bink shouts at me.

  “One-forty.”

  “Well, push this muthafucka, man! ‘Come on, Speed, we have to win the race!’” he says fast and animated like they do on the cartoon.

  We laugh like shit while I push the accelerator to a hundred. But that damn 4Runner is holding right next to us.

  Bink rolls down his window. “We’ll see y’all niggas in Brooklyn!” Then he looks back to me. “Now gas dis muthafucka, B!”

  I push my 3000 to 120. We jet out ahead of the jeep, flying past the few cars that are still out. Them niggas in the 4Runner are holding tough on my ass.

  Bink is enjoying the hell out of himself. “Man, I ain’t had no fun like this since the last time I went to King’s Dominion!”

  * * *

  We get up to Brooklyn, New York, by two o’clock in the morning. But don’t ask me what part because I couldn’t tell you. All I know is that young’uns are still outside, little niggas! Then again, it is Saturday. But still, young’uns at two o’clock in the morning?

  We ride up to this brownstone apartment building that has like twelve soldiers surrounding it. Bink gestures for me to follow him up the steps to where these niggas are.