Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [89]
It was good that he had an entourage of women in his life, because he was somehow always getting himself into a pickle with at least one of them. My all-time favorite BG experience happened in early February. He was talking on the phone with Marisol, one of his girls from Kingstree, and he was “spittin’ crazy game.”
“So, wassup, girl, all fine and shit. You gonna come over or what?”
It didn’t appear that she was in the mood for an eleven o’clock booty call, but BG was fighting hard nonetheless. He was putting in a lot of work when a beep came in on the phone.
“Hey, girl. Hold on one second. I got another call comin’ in. I’ll be right back…Hello?”
It was Sheniya, his main girl.
“Oh, wassup, girl. All fine and shit. You gonna come through tonight or what?”
He spent thirty seconds or so feeding the same lines to Sheniya that he had just been feeding to Marisol. This was classic already, but his woes were just getting started. When he clicked back over, Marisol asked him who was on the other line.
“Oh, that was just my bro, checkin’ in. Y’know. Family business.”
“Really?” she said. “Interesting. So that wasn’t Sheniya, and you didn’t just tell her…”
Marisol recited the exact conversation that BG had just had with Sheniya. BG glanced, confused, at his phone and then he glanced at me with the same look.
“What?” I asked.
“Ah, damn,” he said.
Instead of hitting the “switch” button on the phone to click over, BG had hit the “link” button, thus turning the call into a three-way conversation. Marisol had heard everything, and there wasn’t much he could do from that point. For the first time in his womanizing career, BG was stuck. He spent the rest of the night trying to talk his way out, including putting me on the phone to vouch for his character, but Marisol didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t ever want to talk to him again.
Until a day later, when BG cooked her dinner. Then everything was good. And the house was clean.
Acts like that kept me constantly amazed at the unpredictability of living with BG, in an environment that I wasn’t used to. Each stage in the previous six months had brought on something new and different, something unexpected. Each progression upward had brought on new opportunity, new people, new attitudes, new conflict, and new resolutions. I mean, I never could have guessed when I first agreed to room with BG that there would be a direct correlation between his sociability and the cleanliness of our house. That was startling to me, but at the same time, it was his way of life. We had to compromise on so many levels. Just as he had to get used to me cooking dinner at night with the lights on, I had to get used to him forgetting leftovers in the microwave. We made sacrifices so that we could get along, and for the most part, we did. We had felt out each other’s personalities during the month of December and by January, we knew how to handle each other.
FOURTEEN
CULTURE SHOCKED
Wednesday, January 24
The greatest part about moving was the end of the day. As is the case in so many professions, it was so gratifying to look over what we had done. Every day, after settling the bill, we would hobble through the house to the truck, exhausted, with a smile on our faces. “We did that?”
Even after the moves where we only moved three pieces—especially after the three-piece moves, actually—the gratification would still be there. Three-piece moves were always the most burdensome, particularly since two or three would typically be assigned in one day. Nobody called Fast Company to move a few pieces unless those pieces were massive: ten-foot, two-piece bookshelves, fireproof file cabinets, safes, pianos, and armoires.
One time, Derrick and I got sent out on the “two-hour mini” from hell to move one piece