Whatever You Say I Am_ The Life and Times of Eminem - Anthony Bozza [19]
chapter 2
i only cuss to make your mom upset a lot of truth is said in jest
“Buuuuhhhhhpp,” the blond kid blurts from inside the bathroom stall. There is silence for a minute, then he emerges, his face red and his eyes watery. He wipes his mouth on his sleeve and leans on the sink. He looks at me, then washes his hands and his face. I don’t know him yet, so I stand a little to the side, not knowing whether to say hello. I must look like I want something from him, maybe just a clear path to the stall, because he stands there tense, his body language betraying his awareness of my presence. When he’s done washing, before I can even say “hey,” he swaggers by me woozily, eyeing me on the way out.
“I just threw up everything I had,” he announces to the people in the conference room down the hall. “All I ate today was that slice of pizza and that fifth of Bacardi. Feel good now, though.” He ducks into his manager’s office, leaving the rest of us, his fellow rapper Royce Da 5′9″ and his boys, Dennis the security guard, and me to chat among ourselves. When he comes back in, it is to crack jokes on every topic in the air and every person in the room but me. Sure, he sees me, but he says nothing to me for the first twelve hours that I’m in his orbit. It’s a blessing and a curse: I’m never the target of his pointed jokes, but that only means that to him I don’t exist.
Two hours later, nine of us get into two limos, one of them white and immense, the other black and shorter. DJ Stretch Armstrong ducks his lanky frame through the car door and sits next to Eminem; he is singing, as he was in the elevator, an appropriate interpretation of a Cream song: “In the white room, with white people and white rappers.” The long white limo is now full; Eminem is deepest in, sitting behind the passenger seat. His manager and bodyguard are on one side, and as I get in, I am last on the bench. The radio is tuned to New York hip-hop station Hot 97 and Jay-Z’s “Can I Get a …” from the soundtrack to Rush Hour pumps from the speakers. “Can I get a fat fuck to all these chickens on these nuts,” Eminem says, substituting lyrics. There is a rap at the window and the security guard rolls it down. A guy in a hood looks in at me with his hand out, nodding for me to do the same. I do and a pile of pills falls into my hand. I feel a kick in my knee and turn to see Eminem, crouched forward with his arm outstretched, holding money at me. I exchange the pills for the cash through the window.
Eminem’s manager, Paul, puts his head in his hands. “I don’t believe this. Are you fucking stupid?” he says. “Do you know what you just did? The guy from Rolling Stone just bought your drugs. That’s it, fuck it. You’re on your own tonight.” Paul gets out of the car. He will rejoin us when we leave thirty minutes later.
“Hey, Paul, you’re already fired, you fat fuck,” Eminem yells at the slammed door. “You’re so fired and rehired, you’re tired, you skinny fat fuck! Fuck you, you bald fat fuckin’ fuck. Fuck you fuckin’ fuck, your life, it’s over.” Eminem loves the word fuck. He uses it like a basketball player uses a dribble, to get from here to there.
“Ohh, yeahh,” Stretch Armstrong says, imitating Eminem’s lecherous gay character, Ken Kaniff, from his albums’ skits. “Paul’s sexy when he’s mad. Oh, yeah.” Ken Kaniff was the goof persona of underground rapper Aristotle, who recorded a skit of a prank phone call to Eminem on The Slim Shady LP. After the album’s success, as with so many relationships ruptured by unequal fame, Aristotle and Eminem had a falling out over who had the right to play Ken. On his next records, Eminem, an able mimic of any voice, performed the Ken Kaniff skits. For his part, Aristotle recorded anti-Eminem songs in the Ken Kaniff persona and set up a website to sell an album of Ken Kaniff raps.