Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [93]
It seemed like that was the case with everybody in our neighborhood. Everybody was up to something. There was so much culture and flavor in our house just about every night. And you pretty much always knew what everybody was thinking, since few people held anything back.
That’s how it was when I met Bonesy, a friend of Derrick and BG’s who lived eight houses down from us. He was always showing up at our front stoop asking for a favor. He was a loudmouth with a heavy Brooklyn accent, just as wide as he was short, who had a reputation for speaking his mind. His speech, somehow, was eloquent and scholarly almost, but with a gangster twist. “Dog, I gotta tell ya. I just believe that you didn’t think through the ramifications of your actions beforehand. Nah mean?” (To which BG would reply, “B, what’d I tell you about using words like ‘ramfications’?”)
I’ll never forget the first time I met Bonesy. I had a monstrous cold sore on my lip, which everybody else was politely ignoring, but Bonesy wasn’t so kind. And once he got going, he didn’t stop until he was tired of listening to himself talk.
“Dog, what the fuck is that on your lip? Son, please, tell me. I gotta know. That shit is real aggressive. You get in a fight? You burn yourself? It looks like it has a mind of its own. I feel like we should distinguish it as a separate body part or at least give it a name. Do you put a leash around it and take it for a walk when you wake up in the morning? I don’t know whether to sit down and write an ode to it or grab a fly swatter and try to kill it. It doesn’t bite, does it? BG, go get some bug spray. I wanna pop it, but I don’t want to catch that shit, too. It’s not airborne is it? Dog, if I was your roommate, I’d have you quarantined. I was gonna try to bring some broads over tonight, but you can forget all that. You need to just buy some medicine and go to your room for a few days until that shit disappears. Unbelievable. That thing is real aggressive. And look right there. I think it’s having babies. Damn. That sucks. An entire herpes family on your lip. Dog, go to your room…”
He continued without taking a breath but, lost amid a cloud of laughter, I couldn’t absorb the rest of his tirade. By the end, BG had literally fallen over, partly at what Bonesy was saying and partly at the shock on my face from being introduced to him in such a manner. One of the guys that had come over with Bonesy was looking at the ground, merely shaking his head. “Aaaaats Bonesy!” Everybody needs a guy like him in their life, to keep things honest, and I was happy we had him as a part of the crew. He was the guy that would say what everybody else was thinking and, ironically, didn’t care what anybody else thought.
The biggest surprise of my time in Charleston was how happy we were. Of course we all had bills and family issues and other stress to deal with, just like everybody else in the world, but we—Derrick, BG, and whoever else was around—always found time for good times. We couldn’t afford the luxuries of going out to eat at elegant restaurants during the week or going to theme parks on the weekend, but we found happiness in simple pleasures. I’ve already mentioned my dancing escapades downtown, which became, at least by the looks I would get, more of a spectacle than anything else. “Who’s the tall, lanky kid, and why is he moving around like that?” But there was still plenty of fun to be had on the north end of town, like trips to the pool hall or to shoot hoops in Ferndale. Or push-up competitions where we would just put a movie on and go back and forth doing push-ups until we couldn’t lift our arms (I’m still the champ, D, and you know it). Or card games like “Dollar Tonk,” which may sound pretty harmless, but you