People Who Hate Me: The Unlucky Parker
Friday, November 04, 2005
During November I’m participating in National Novel Writing Month. All of the stories appearing in November have been written in advance as has this generic little opening you’re reading right now. Instead of comic book plugging I’ll be linking comic sites, blogs, artists, publishers and writers I dig and I encourage you to go check them out, have some fun, try something new, whatever. Today’s link is:
The Small Press Association Forum
Feel free to check out my NaNoWriMo progress right here and, if you're up to the challenge, feel free to read my NaNoWriMo novel right here. The novel will likely be very raw and extremely offensive, both to your moral sensibilities and the English language.
Story time…
____________________
Dexter was a bad influence, I’ll never deny that. If there was one “good move” I made in my youth it was no longer hanging out with him.
Dexter was this kid that moved onto Columbia Street. Tall Jamaican kid who wanted nothing more in life than to be a thug and it’s safe to say he achieved his goal at a very early age. When all of us Woodhull kids were playing like we were hard, Dexter was doing it for real. Dexter’s defining moment came when I asked him if he was egging for Halloween and he replied, “Fuck eggs. This nigga’ throw bullets.”
And he probably meant it.
Before the gang fight (instigated by Dexter) and before the bullet-throwing Dexter was simply a thug who liked us neighborhood kids. He made us feel cool, made us feel tougher than we ever were. He introduced us to reggae, always had stories about the skins he hit – he was like an older brother to us.
One day we were walking down Hicks Street, it was Dexter, his cousin Seymour and I. Hicks Street ran parallel to the BQE – on our side of the BQE there were no apartments on Hicks Street from the Battery Tunnel all the way down to Sackett Street, about a six block stretch. The only thing on Hicks Street was the sides of the buildings that lined the cross-streets.
Due to the lack of apartments facing Hicks Street it never really got a lot of foot traffic, especially at night. Very few people parked on Hicks Street and when you did you fully understood that you were taking some nominal risk – if your car was going to be stolen or broken into it would likely happen on Hicks Street. People parked on it all the time, however, mainly because the cross-streets didn’t have enough parking spaces for everyone who lived on the block.
So as the three of us were walking down Hicks Street, amidst a row of cars hidden from site, Dexter pulls out a butterfly knife and starts going from car to car, slashing the tires. It was such an awkward moment, it was obvious that neither Seymour nor I felt at all comfortable with what was going on but what the fuck were we supposed to say? Dexter was the mother fucker with the knife.
He moves down an entire block and slashed every tire. Then he hands it to me and asks me if I want to go next as if we were playing Mortal Kombat. Seymour and I just sort of look at each other, no idea what to do, neither of us wanting to slash tires while at the same time neither of us with the desire to look uncool in front of Dexter.
Seymour grabs the knife first and does a couple of cars, hands the knife off to me. Now what the fuck do I do? Seymour and Dexter both did it so logic dictates that I had to do it. It was kind of painful to do but I started slashing tires. At one point Dexter tells me, “It’s funnier when you do all four” and gives me this look that tells me I’ll have that knife in my throat if I don’t do all four tires.
As a kid, doing four tires on a car was three more chances to get caught. As an adult and looking back, doing four tires on a car means that they can’t even tow that shit; they need to bring out the flatbed. If I ever woke up one morning to find all four of my tires slashed I would empty my bank account to pay bounty hunters that will find the dickfaced kids that did the slashing.
With that in mind, I think it’s safe to say whoever’s tires I completely slashed up is likely still looking for me to this day.
The Small Press Association Forum
Feel free to check out my NaNoWriMo progress right here and, if you're up to the challenge, feel free to read my NaNoWriMo novel right here. The novel will likely be very raw and extremely offensive, both to your moral sensibilities and the English language.
Story time…
____________________
Dexter was a bad influence, I’ll never deny that. If there was one “good move” I made in my youth it was no longer hanging out with him.
Dexter was this kid that moved onto Columbia Street. Tall Jamaican kid who wanted nothing more in life than to be a thug and it’s safe to say he achieved his goal at a very early age. When all of us Woodhull kids were playing like we were hard, Dexter was doing it for real. Dexter’s defining moment came when I asked him if he was egging for Halloween and he replied, “Fuck eggs. This nigga’ throw bullets.”
And he probably meant it.
Before the gang fight (instigated by Dexter) and before the bullet-throwing Dexter was simply a thug who liked us neighborhood kids. He made us feel cool, made us feel tougher than we ever were. He introduced us to reggae, always had stories about the skins he hit – he was like an older brother to us.
One day we were walking down Hicks Street, it was Dexter, his cousin Seymour and I. Hicks Street ran parallel to the BQE – on our side of the BQE there were no apartments on Hicks Street from the Battery Tunnel all the way down to Sackett Street, about a six block stretch. The only thing on Hicks Street was the sides of the buildings that lined the cross-streets.
Due to the lack of apartments facing Hicks Street it never really got a lot of foot traffic, especially at night. Very few people parked on Hicks Street and when you did you fully understood that you were taking some nominal risk – if your car was going to be stolen or broken into it would likely happen on Hicks Street. People parked on it all the time, however, mainly because the cross-streets didn’t have enough parking spaces for everyone who lived on the block.
So as the three of us were walking down Hicks Street, amidst a row of cars hidden from site, Dexter pulls out a butterfly knife and starts going from car to car, slashing the tires. It was such an awkward moment, it was obvious that neither Seymour nor I felt at all comfortable with what was going on but what the fuck were we supposed to say? Dexter was the mother fucker with the knife.
He moves down an entire block and slashed every tire. Then he hands it to me and asks me if I want to go next as if we were playing Mortal Kombat. Seymour and I just sort of look at each other, no idea what to do, neither of us wanting to slash tires while at the same time neither of us with the desire to look uncool in front of Dexter.
Seymour grabs the knife first and does a couple of cars, hands the knife off to me. Now what the fuck do I do? Seymour and Dexter both did it so logic dictates that I had to do it. It was kind of painful to do but I started slashing tires. At one point Dexter tells me, “It’s funnier when you do all four” and gives me this look that tells me I’ll have that knife in my throat if I don’t do all four tires.
As a kid, doing four tires on a car was three more chances to get caught. As an adult and looking back, doing four tires on a car means that they can’t even tow that shit; they need to bring out the flatbed. If I ever woke up one morning to find all four of my tires slashed I would empty my bank account to pay bounty hunters that will find the dickfaced kids that did the slashing.
With that in mind, I think it’s safe to say whoever’s tires I completely slashed up is likely still looking for me to this day.
Labels: mitc
posted by Jason at
12:00 AM
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jason rodriguez is an eisner and harvey-nominated editor and writer. email him. or become his digital BFF below:
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