When I wasn’t hanging out, being a menace in the streets with my F.K. boys, I was usually at Eddie’s house. I didn’t have my own room yet and had to sleep on the floor in the living room. I wasn’t too crazy about this. On most nights I arrived after hours in front of Eddie’s window and threw pebbles at it until he appeared sleepy eyed and grouchy faced. He always knew what I wanted but had to ask anyway.
“What do you want?”
“Let me in, motherfucker!”
“Go home!” He would then disappear and I would panic.
“Okay! Okay! Come on, Eddie!”
He would reappear.
“Go get me a Pepsi. A big one.”
“Now?”
“No, tomorrow! Yes now. And hurry up!”
Bastard!, I thought and I jogged up the block to the corner grocery. I would ask for something that I knew the grocer had to make an effort to look for. Grab a 32 ounce Pepsi and roll it out the door.
“Forget it, you’re taking too long.”
“Wait!”
“I’m going someplace else. You don’t have it.”
I would rush out the door and retrive the Pepsi from the street and run back to Eddie’s house. He had a giant king sized bed and even with the both of us on it, I was able to stretch out and sleep comfortably.
A writer named Little Man lived on Eddie’s street and was at his house frequently. Eddie was known on his block for his art and graffiti. People who knew his talent and what he was capable of, believed that if he took his art more seriously, he would have evolved into the best graffiti artist ever. Period. At 13, he was able to burn most writers. We all wanted outlines from him, including Little Man and me.
I got to become good friends with Little Man and got into the habit of skipping school to pick him up to do mischief with him. We would comb the city, looking for spots where we could steal paint and whatever else we wanted. In Canal street there was astore that sold shitty, watery paint by the case and kept them outside the store with the rest of the junk they sold. For about a week straight, we went everyday and snatched a case and ran around the corner on Greene Street. The China men who ran the store chased us, but we always barely got away.
With the cheap paint, Little Man took me to the 3 Yard on 148th street with a kid named Joz One. Little Man did LM bubble letter throw ups and I just copped shitty, watery tags. I didn’t like the 3 yard because it was adjacent to the subway station and from the platform, civilians were able to see into the yard. I was positive that one could smell the paint from outside and all it took was a cop to enter the station to get busted. Despite my theory, many writers had success in the 3 yard, including Skeme and Dez.
At the end of a very long night, Little Man always got locked out of his house. I couldn’t invite him to my house and I didn’t dare show up at Eddie’s window with him and I never thought to leave him alone. We would search Saint Nicholas Avenue for large cardboard boxes, which wasn’t always easy to find and sleep on his roof top inside the boxes. It was always cold and miserable and made sleeping on the living room floor back in my house seem like paradise. Eventually I stopped going bombing with him at night because the end result just wasn’t worth it. I kept my activities with him limited to the day time.
Little Man wanted to go back to Canal Street to steal more shitty paint. I argued that it wasn’t a good idea, but he was determined. Once there, I saw that the China men were extra alert. I told Little Man that he could do whatever he wanted, but I was going to wait for him around the corner on Greene Street.
I waited and waited and waited. I peeked around the corner to catch him procasinating and looking obvious. I got distracted by a drug addict couple fighting over a last bag of herion.
“I know you got it stashed in your pussy, you lousey cunt!” The junkie kept on screaming.
“Fuck you Charlie. Go to hell!” She repeated back while picking on the nasty scabs her face. The junkie ripped the buttons on her dirty jeans but had a hard time tugging them down because she was slapping and pulling on his hair. I found it all very entertaining and wanted him to pull down her pants so i could see what her pussy looked liked.
All of a sudden, Little Man came running around the corner, carrying two cases of paint. The China men were right behind him and grabbed him by the back of his shirt. Little Man had a stupid look on his face and I couldn’t help but laugh at him. He caught me laughing and I felt bad. I controlled myself long enough to sneak behind one of the China men and kick him with all my might in his lower back.
“Run Little Man! Run!” I screamed. Little Man and I ran for blocks without looking back.
“Those motherfuckers can’t fuck with us!” He boasted once we got away.
I just laughed at him. He told me to shut up, but i couldn’t stop laughing. All this running got us hungry, we ordered hoagies from a fancy deli and ran out without paying.
I had good times with Little Man. He took me to many different yards like the D yard, Baychester, New Lots, City Hall and 145th Street One lay-up where I did my first piece. It was when my aunt Elsie passed away. We were entranged at the time and I had many conflicted feelings for her. I did a “Mom” panel piece. It was whack, but I was the first “toy” in my neighborhood to do a piece on the train and I got a lot of respect from my boys for it.
Even though I considered Little Man a real writer, he was considered a toy by some writers in my neighborhood. I remember Eps and Nel-One always used to diss him because they thought they were better than him, solely because they were down with Tc5. But Little man wouldn’t retire from graffiti before ecthing his name in the graffiti books.
Little Man was friendly with two street writers named Pek and Lock. I suspect that they sparked Little Man’s interest to start street bombing. He would pester me to go with him, but I wasn’t into it. I was a traditionalist and believed graffiti belonged on the subway, but really, I didn’t want to ever get stuck sleeping on a rooftop again. I really underestimated Little Man’s street bombing ambition. He truly and surely became one of the first in a new wave of writers who bombed New York City, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood and bourough by bourough, along with guys like Chino BYI, Track Two, Joz-One, Easy and later on, Sane, Smith and J.A. Little Man retired from graffiti being a true all-city king.
This feat gave me the first glimpse that little Man was actually very methodical and disciplined than most underneath it all. To this day, I’ve met very few personalities as intiguing and interesting as him. He was barely 5’3”, good looking but not in an obvious way and he was very charming and funny. Because of his playful and child-like behavior, it was easy to underestimate him and not take him seriously if you weren’t wise enough to scratch beneath the surface. He wasn’t a tough guy. He would try to talk his way out of a fight but when push came to shove, he was swinging first and if he didn’t win, you knew you were in a fight. It didn’t matter how much bigger you were than him. People slept on how strong he was, but he didn’t smoke, drink or use drugs. I’ve worked out with him and seen him bench press his own body weight up to 15 times and he wasn’t even a work-out person. The average man can’t even press his own body weight one time.
Little Man took a job as a look-out for a well know weed spot uptown called Fipher’s. People ridiculed him for taking such a lowly position where he was stationed on a rooftop with a walkie-talkie keeping an eye out over Saint Nicholas Avenue. I hung out with him a few times and not only was it cold and boring, but his boss spoke to him like shit. I wouldn’t have lasted half a night.
In less than 6 months he saved up enough money to have his own spot, except that he sold coke , with his own workers. He fixed his chipped tooth and dressed better with relatively sophisicated taste for the era. He was the first person to have a 4 finger gold, diamond encrusted ring and a fat gold rope chain and an equally impressive Cuban link chain with a Saint Lazaro medallion. Within the year, he had many cars, everything from Toyotas to Jettas to BMW’s a Mercedes Benz. The biggest and most dangerous drug lords paid him the utmost respect.
Some people claimed that he had changed, but I just think he treated people accordingly. I never asked him for anything and treated him the same, except that it was obvious that I was happy and impressed by his success. He always took time out for me and never acted funny with me in any way.
One night I saw him at a club with some fine white girls from Long Island. he invited me to hang with him and the girls. He lied to them and told them that I was the biggest drug dealer in all of New York City. That I just kept a low profile and didn’t like to be flashy. Afterwards, two of the girls sucked my dick at the same time in the back of his BMW on our way to eat at City Island. Sometime that morning he dropped me off in front of my building and I thanked him for the night. I also gushed how he always had the finest women.
“Psycho, those bitches don’t like me. They don’t even know me. They only fuck with me because of what I have. You’re much better off than me, because at least you know your bitches like you for who you are. I never know with these bitches.”
It was the realest thing anybody had ever said to me in my life. I felt bad for my friend, but the conversation made me see life from a different perspective. A more healthier one.
Little Man was shot point blank in the head, allegedly by his best friend and business assoicate over a conflict about money. He survived the shooting but would never be the same again. After that, his family sheltered him and I only got to see him one time. It truly broke my heart at a time when my heart was very much numb and cold because of my own life experiences. I shedded tears for my friend Little Man One.
Posted on October 09, 2007 at 02:57 PM | Comment (8 comments)
