What the fuck? This is not the plan! I thought to myself way too nonchalantly, considering the situation. My left cheek laid on cold, wet, grainy asphalt on a miserable, cold, damp January morning in 1988. I faced Eddie, my sometimes best friend but more like a brother that for some reason, for better or worst, you’re stuck with for life. Eddies eyes were consumed with fear and rightfully so. There were no less than five shotguns pumped and aimed at our heads by a posse of intense New Jersey State Troopers in the middle of the Palisades Highway. Pissed because they knew we were New York City boys crossing the George Washington Bridge to commit our crimes. My mind raced to every heist film I’ve ever seen and I tried to calculate what kind of time I was facing. Twenty years? Ten years? The only thing I knew for sure was that I really fucked up this time and whatever I have gotten away with in the past, this surely was going to make up for it.
Eddie, Eddie what the fuck did you get us in to? Like me, Eddie had a gift of making the worst idea seemed brilliant. Thing was, I knew this idea sucked from the second I heard it. My only one true answer is that desperation can be a motherfucker. What a difference a few days can make in ones life.
Laura and I rode home from a night on the town in a car service provided Lincoln Towncar by way of the West Side Highway. Laura was my girlfriend, my first love. The girl I believed I was going to spend the rest of my life with. Laura was a Puerto Rican beauty from Hunts Point, one of the ugliest and seediest parts of the Bronx. The girl was a human Puerto Rican Barbi doll. At seventeen years old, she was voluptuous with world-class breasts and an ass that made every Latin man insane with lust. Although I was one year older than her, Laura was way more experienced than I. She loved to fuck, again and again and again. She had no preference whether it was in my bedroom, the rooftop, and the park or even on the George Washington Bridge during a summer storm, just as long as she got to fuck. At eighteen, I was handsome but I was not yet the most confident guy with the girls. Before Laura, I only got laid by the chance that some girl decided I was cute enough to have sex with me. So meeting Laura was a dream that came true for me. We had been together for five months, but it felt more like years. We were set up by mutual a friend named Blue who wrote Dero and was down with the Five. Within one hour of meeting, we were naked in my bedroom and I decided that she was a keeper. Since my very first memories, I’ve been unnaturally preoccupied with women’s anatomy and sex. Laura made me very happy and as far as I was concerned, she could do no wrong. We both shared tragic upbringings that bonded us to each other. Her father murdered her mother and now the man was dying from AIDS. Upon hearing that story, I made it my job to protect her. But for the time being, I just wanted the Lincoln Town Car to get us home as quickly as possible. It was already a fabulously decadent night of doing coke, binge drinking and provocative dancing at the hot night club of the time, Heart Throbs and I could only assumed the night was only going to get better. Laura was already manhandling my cock through my jeans, talking dirty while making deliberate eye contact with the pock mocked dark skinned Dominican driver through the rear view mirror. I thought this was a bit sadistic of her, but the only thing I cared about was helping Laura out of her clothes and eating her pussy and licking her asshole and then fucking her crazy. Life was good. I was young with a hot girlfriend and my life was plentiful with sex, money and ambition. The future never looked so promising for me.
The slick looking black car finally arrived in front of my building on 177th street in Washington Heights, a neighborhood of pre-war buildings in Northern Manhattan populated by mostly immigrant Dominicans. The neighborhood was notorious city wide for cocaine and murder. In the year 1987, I had paid attended eight wakes, all murdered friends or old classmates. I paid the driver, who could not peel his eyes off Laura, not even to count the money I gave him. I was sorry that I didn’t short change the sleazy looking motherfucker. She threw him a kiss as she slid out the car, hiking up her jeans to reveal even more camel toe ass crack than she was already revealing. What do you think you’re doing? I snapped.
Shut up! Who am I going home with? She snapped right back.
Still.
Still my ass!
The driver stared at Laura until we fully disappeared inside the building, making me angrier than I already was.
You have to chill. You’re too jealous for me! My man has to be confident.
I am confident. You fucking bitch! But you go out your way to make me jealous! I protested.
Do you want to fight or fuck me, Laura asked with attitude, with that juicy, luscious cock of yours?
You nasty little bitch!
Laura stimulated her best fuck faces and ran up the stairs to the second flight to my apartment where I lived with my aunt, Titi Olga. I chased her and hemmed her against the hallway wall by my door. She stuck her tongue out her mouth. I put it in my mouth and we made out. She pushed me off.
Come on. Let’s fuck!
She urged as I fumbled with the keys, making an attempt at being stealth, as not to wake up my sleeping aunt. We stumbled in, shushing one another, giggling at our poor attempt to be quiet. My room was conveniently located right next to the front door. Once inside my room, Laura stripped out of her clothes. She grabbed me, unbuttoned my jean s and tugged on my zipper.
Chill! I had to check on my baby inside my sock drawer. My baby being ten ounces of fish scale quality cocaine. Just the gasoline like smell of it gave me the chills. Looking at the chucks of off white rocks made me feel good. I knew that at a six thousand dollar wholesale value, I was dealing at a relatively low level, but I liked to pretend that I was big time. It was fun.
Come on! How many times do you have to look at that shit? You’re gonna make it melt by sweating it so much. Laura complained.
I pulled open my sock drawer and knew immediately that my coke was gone from the lack of volume within the socks. I moved the socks around anyway, and checked the other drawers, even though I knew better but hoped for a miracle anyway. My stomach dropped to my testicles. My heart almost came out my chest. I can’t imagine what my face looked liked.
What’s the matter? Laura asked with genuine concern, knowing that something wasn’t right.
It’s gone! I said in disbelief.
You sure? She asked.
Of course, I’m fucking sure! I snapped. Its not here!
Laura got up from the bed, topless. Even in such a dire situation, I couldn’t help but stare at her beautiful eraser tip nipples. She tossed around socks and came to the same conclusion I had.
Oh my God! Laura knew the consequences just as well as I did. I attended four wakes that month. All murder victims. I knew that my own wake just might be days away.
I walked out of my room and marched to my aunts room. I knocked on her door and stuck my head in. She removed her eye mask, revealing swollen eyes from being drunk hours earlier.
Yes Hon? She asked in her usual sweet voice.
Titi did you happen....to find.you know.....Anything.in my room tonight?
Oh that? You know better than to bring that stuff into my house.
I entered the night light lit room. She sat up in bed, her negligee hanging off a breast, revealing a pink nipple. I tried not to look.
Where is it?
I flushed it down the toilet.
No you didn’t! I hoped.
Her voice changed within an instant.
Don’t tell me what I didn’t do or what I did!
Please Titi I pleaded. I felt my eyes tearing up. Tell me you’re fucking with me. Please!
The lady couldn’t look me in the eye. Something wasn’t right. She’s walked in on me in my room, while weighing grams and ounces on my electronic triple beam several times. She’s always walked away, turning a blind eye. Knowing that most of the rent and bills were being paid with street money.
Your stuff is gone. I flushed it like I said; Her voice changed again, this time apologetic.
If this is true and I pray to God that it isn’t. You just killed me and you don’t even know it. I hope you realize this! You just fucking killed me!
What are you talking about? You’re crazy.
I’m not crazy! I’m fucking dead! That’s what I am.
You watch too much TV.
What a stupid fucking bitch I thought to myself.
What are you talking about? I don’t watch TV! Where do you think that coke came from? The Pope!
I stormed back to my room. Laura looked anxious, waiting for an answer. She flushed it!
I told you to buy a safe! You never fucking listen to me!
Laura. Please!
Laura sobbed. I sat next to her on the bed and we embraced each other tight.
What are you going to do? I love you so much. I don’t want to lose you more scared for my life than I was. I can’t lose you. Ever!
It’s going be okay. Ill figure something out. I said with out much conviction.
If I didn’t come up with six thousand dollars within four days, I was destined to die a very violent, bloody death on the streets of Washington Heights. I got the coke on consignment from some people called the “Jheri Curl” gang on whom the book, The Wild Cowboys are based on. I counted all the money I had, less than seven hundred dollars. I might have been lucky to be able to pawn my jewelry for another five hundred dollars.
Laura and I had sex hundreds of times, but we made love for the very first time that night.
My is Vincent Mayta. My birthday is January 24th, 1969. I was a sweet, innocent looking boy with soulful looking eyes. Still very much blissfully aware of the impact of being born to an angry, suicidal father and mentally ill, schizophrenic mother would yet have on my life. So very unaware. Until now.
Posted on October 20, 2007 at 02:55 PM | Comment (5 comments)
