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Gin and Juice before/after I was playing a melody of 'Gin and Juice' when I looked up to a table in the back. There were three girls, one was a bit older than the other two.� Maybe a step mom.� The one closest to me, he eyes glowed and she turned to her blonde friend saying something like, "I can't believe he's going to play that," .� Then as I looked at each one, singing some lines to them, their eyes glowed.� It felt nice to be appreciated. And I thought back, the song bringing back memories of when I first started listening to that album, and that song, a cross cultural thing at the time, me a sophomore in college, being drunk and high perpetually, running into Marcus Hodd and his girlfriend, Marcus too high to even talk, and somehow we found a bond, jabbering at each other, not making much sense.� I didnt even mind it when he drooled a bit.� It wasnt my business to judge. Still isnt. Eventually Marcus and I started haging out together, become one of those heterosexual partnerships between guys.� A sympatico unit.� We started smoking daily, playing video games, listening to music. "Hey, I cant handle any of that R+B shit."� I said. "Well, we gotsa' come to some sort of compromise." He said. "Play that 'Gin and Juice'...I kinda' like that." He looked at me, and it was as if he saw something different than what had been sitting there before. "All right," he said. We tried smoking different ways, with different devices, always to cover up the smell of the smoke, to no avail.� He liked to open the window to vent it, I always tried to point it out that this is what blew it into the hall.� One day we got busted but nothing much came of it, some sort of Residence Hall probation. I always fought all charges in the student court, and won.� I gained a reputation for this, and eventually they left me alone to do as I willed. One day the...hmmm titles fail me, the administrator for the dorm cornered us when we were really high, chewed us out good.� I had grown my hair long at that point, eschewing haircuts.� One part of my still parted hair hung low over one eye.� I hid behind it, but he made sure to get in my face.� A small black man chewing us out about throwing our lives away.� Shit made me laugh. Anyway, time went on as it does.� Marcus and I moved in together, always a freaky tight unit.� We'd always go places together, do things together.� He got me a job at the pizzeria that he worked at, and to this day it remains one of the best jobs I ever had. I'd stand outside the kitchen get high and then make pizzas.� I was good at my job.� The first day on the job, the head cook-kitchen boss cornered me, looked at me harshly as an ex con and ex smack addict making good on his "second chance" in life can look at a kid and said, "So...you're Marcus' friend.� Are you holding?" "Not now." I said. He rode my ass after that for a long time.� It didnt matter.� I was numb. I would go over into dish land after smoking down and wash the dishes.� Immersed in my task I would sing old blues tunes or whatever else would come to mind.� A beautiful girl would always be nearby, catching my eye.� Melanie.� Melanie with a dusky tan complexion, brown hair and soft green eyes.� The type of eyes that made you melt when she looked at you.� Gorgeous body, slim hipps, perky breasts. I couldnt help but fall into her eyes everytime she walked by. At first this pissed her off. "He's like, leering at me," she'd say.� Once or twice I think she hissed something mean at me, I'm not sure.� I didnt care.� I was too stoned to care.� Besides, I knew deep down that she liked me.� I caught her stealing glances at me as I worked, washing dishes, making excellent pizzas. Eventually her looks lingered longer.� And she started singing back to me.� It was bliss, it was heaven, this gorgeous little girl singing to me.� How I love women, how I always will. I was shy at the time, I didnt even really speak a whole lot.� Just didnt feel comfortable.� I was still getting to know my innerspace in a basic way, getting to know myself in an external way and the way that people looked at me, what they saw.� I was malleable and strange, and in a way, I knew this.� I kept other peoples fingers out of my head, became more and truly myself.� An accomplishment in these days and times of pigeonholing and identity theft from the pop-culture magazine covers in society. She flirted with me relentlessly, but to no avail.� I didnt know myself.� Plus I divorced myself from sex, seeing it as simple minded ape like and primal.� Simple.� simple. She'd always get flustered trying to speak to me, and couldnt even finish a sentence, garbling words and sounds in her excitement.� I adored her.� I adore her still. But I hung out with Marcus, and we went together everywhere, like mutt and jeff.� He taught me a lot abour racsism.� Always forgiving, and it amazed me.� Everywhere he went, he was harassed to some degree.� In the grocery store a guy would walk up to us head down, as if looking at a product, and growl like a dog in a low throaty noise "n-iii-iii-gger."� When we would drive around, guys would make ape noises at him in the streets.� Girls asked him where they could get a slim jim from him.� Even the guys that we smoked pot with, eventually stopping from doing so made comments, like when he got the end of the joint wet with saliva, which he always did, someone would say, "Hence the name...", referring to nigger-lipping a joint.� I made a point never to say that to him. But marcus was forgiving to all.� "They just dont know any better, argentum."� He was so sincere about it.� I guess he made his peace with it all. Eventually, hanging out one thanksgiving eve, I think he came onto me, but Im not sure.� We were smoking pot, really high, right outside in his car outside of the pizzeria, and he mumbled something to me. Something like, "C'mon, argentum, why do we spend so much time together?� You know you're curious. Come over here, Ill take my pants down.� I wont tell nobody." At least, that's what I think he said.� I was high as hell,� I could be wrong. I rolled out of the car and retched alongside of it.� It was something so wrong.� I was disgusted. I stood outside for a minute, paranoid as hell, shivering.� What did my friend just say to me?� How could he think that? Eventually I got back into the car, still shaking.� We said our goodbyes.� Things were different after that. His friends always pulled at him, questioning him, "why do you always hang out with that white boy?" and my friends were always pulling at me, questioning me, "what do you hang out with that black dude," After all that happened, we both succumbed to it all.� Besides, living together was no treat.� Something between us generated an unholy smell.� I still think it was him, but maybe it was something in both our sweat.� It took us forever to set up the room.� It was always, "We'll smoke this and then set up the room," but after smoking down, you pretty much want to eat, then sleep.� And that's what happened. One time I was in a neighboring room, drank much of a fifth of gin straight with no chaser.� Nerves, I guess.� Lots of girls in there.� They remarked how much I drank and held down.� Which I did.� Then the room started spinning. I went back to mine, where marcus had a roomful of sedate stoners and freshman looking for insta-friends.� They gripped my hand and greeted me obsequiously, trying to ingratiate.� My reputation preceeded me. "Yeah, Argentum, I'm a freshman on your floor, Ive heard a lot about you from the people around here, and I'm impressed.� I'm really looking forward to hanging out with you this schoolyear." "Yeah, great.� I dont know you, I wont remember your name.� Get out. I'm going to pass out." And they did.� The parties we had would rage from room to room.� Marcus and me. One day I took a different route back from class past the greenhouse, the butterfly house, and I saw a gigantic plant left outside. "Marcus, I want that goddam plant." So we got good and high, liquored up.� I was driving a hatch-back 89 mustang lx, blue, and we pulled up to the greenhouse, into the courtyard and foutain area, all up on the sidewalks past trees, threw the fucker in and split.� Kept it in our room.� Girls would walk by and say "The Jungle Room" or "The Jungle Book".� One girl would stick her head in and go OOGA-BOOGA!� I never got her name, the girls said she was shy.� I sat, got high and played my guitar. I told marcus about that. "yeah, I seen that bitch...what's her deal?"� he asked. "I dont know...you think its racist?"� I asked. This troubled him.� He had no answer for it.� I got him to drop acid once, it didnt go over too�well.� He freaked out and didnt cope at all.� Plus I think I scared him with the intensity of my eyes.� He said something about it, then fled, calling up his overwieght blonde girlfriend and presumably fucking the living hell out of her all night, although they never admitted it.� She had the look that he did, but apparently he never admitted the LSD to her until I exposed him for it.� "So that's why you were acting weird" was all she said. One time we were buying pot in a strange neighborhood, and I spotted narcs and a watched house.� He told his cousins.� I always wondered what came of that, but never asked.� We bought lots of pot together.� Often he acted as a middle man, and even as we drifted apart, I would go with him on a buy, for security.� Buying a pound of marijuana makes people some people nervous, some carry guns.� I never did.� Never dealt.�� Around it constantly.� Didnt even think too much of it.� It just seemed a bit natural in a way. We'd divvy up our little personal bags and he always got suspicious when we didnt have a postal scale.� One would divide, the other would chose.� He once told me that he was suspicious because he knew I was smart, and he knew I'd get the better deal each time.� So he'd wait for me to express an interest in one pile or the other than make his decision based on that.� Until I told him that I might be doing so just to fuck with him and still get the better deal...he didnt like that too much. Like I said, we started going our separate ways after that thanksgiving thing.� Then Marcus dropped out of school with bad grades after finding his grandfather dying on the living room floor.� He died in Marcus' arms, it really fucked him up.� I couldnt even talk any sense to him about it.� His grandfather was a big part of his life, as much as he bitched about gramps being on his ass, and his dying threw marcus way off. We still played basketball now and again, but that stopped.� The smoking together stopped.� It all really stopped. Then one day past, I had a really messy reconcilliation then betrayal from the girl who was my first.� My first in bed, not love. She reconciled with me, just to try to make it with my friends, this a few years after telling me she'd been raped (she hadnt) and involving the police, who investigated me for statutory rape, coming up with nothing.� But I was talking of marcus.� (Sometime I should talk of her.� And another the blue mustang.� Maybe tomorrow, maybe never.) I broke down sobbing, I couldnt take it.� I was weak.� My mother scheduled me for my only visit to a therapist, and he advised me well, telling me to go fishing with a good friend, putting it all into perspective. So, feeling betrayed by my clique then, who werent really my friends anyway but I didnt know that,� I called up Marcus.� Told him what happened.� He invited me down to hang out, spend the night. I did.� I dont think his parents approved, because they were nowhere to be found.� He and I talked, and Marcus, in his plain spoken way put it together for me. "You got played.� That's all.� Pick yourself up, put yourself together or something, and dont let it happen again.� She got the best of you, that's all." Through marcus, with the comments of the people in the streets and the people around me, I got a feeling of how pervasive racisim is, how children are indoctrinated not to think, how the culture war only tears us furthur and furthur apart.� Maybe someday Marcus can forgive me for not being as good a friend as I could. And I looked at the girls at the table as I sang the song, them smiling and blushing, involved, invested and listening.� I was jamming with a musician I had cornered and cajoled into jamming with me.� Eventually the songs winded down, and the poetry slam begun. � � �
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