The Lincoln Towntown drove slowly through the snow on 177th street. I noticed from a distance that my cousin and a couple of his workers were taking turns beating one of his employees in the crack business. It was an strange sight to see at 4 am in the morning.
“Oh shit, Laura…check this out!”
Laura looked. She didn’t think I’ve noticed but she loved to see people get beat up.
“Let’s get out!” She gushed.
I ordered the driver to stop and we got out to investigate.
“Cousin Psych!” My cousin greeted me as I looked at the bloody, battered worker.
“I guess he doesn’t work for you anymore?”
“Cousin Psych, he stole from me. It broke my heart. I gave him a job when he was living in a room in the basement. And look…”
My cousin cracked him in the jaw, hurting his fist in the process. I looked at all the guys hands and as I suspected, they were all swollen. I wondered how many hairline fractures they were causing themselves.
“That’s fucked up, bee.”
“What would you do if you were me.”
I laughed. “I would stop fucking up my hands, that would be the first thing I would do.”
“And then what?”
“What’s in it for me?”
“I’ll give you a five hundred.”
“Laura, do me a favor and run up to the house and get the duct tape. It’s in the kitchen. In the cabinet drawer. You can’t miss it.
“Why do I have to go?”
“Because you had a really good time tonight. And you’re my bitch. Now go. Also bring the oldest pair of Timberlands I have and any bullshit sweater.”
Laura reluctantly walked over the one block to my building. I looked around and pointed to an alley way.
“Take him in there.”
My cousin Junior and his boys escorted the dude into the dark alleyway. Once inside I addressed him.
“You think my cousin’s a bitch?”
The dude wouldn’t speak. I took out a 357 that I had concealed in me and cocked it and shoved it to his forehead.
“You think my cousin’s a bitch? Answer me before I fucking splatter you all over!”
“No, no. It’s not like that.”
I whacked him on the bridge of his nose with the butt of the gun, distorting it forever.
“Liar!”
I waited for him to recover from the blow as my cousin boasted to his workers that I knew what I was doing. At 17, he considered me a creative genius, especially when it came to handling my adversaries.
“Now take off your clothes. Everything off now!
The dude looked confused as did my cousin and his workers.
“I’m not going to tell you again.”
“I’m sorry!” The dude cried.
“Nigga, you know the deal in the streets. You knew when you stole from my cousin that if you got caught, very bad things would happen to you. Now guess what? You got caught. Now you have to deal. Take off your clothes!”
I hit him again in the same exact spot to motivate him a little. He stripped off all his clothes. Laura returned with the duct tape but forgot the boots and sweater. But it was okay since I had the dude’s boots and coat, which was even better.
“Duct tape his hands around his back and I’ll be back in like twenty minutes. Come on, Laura.”
“Where are you going?” My cousin wanted to know.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be back.”
Laura and I took a cab five blocks to 181 street train station. Since I was strapped, I paid my fare and we took the elevator to the train platform where a community of homeless people lived because it was warm. I spotted the gay, black, homeless guy with a dress and a flower in his nappy hair. He had on sloppy red lipstick. He was barefooted as always and smelled like a combination of the foulest things imaginable.
“Yo homo, you want to make twenty bucks?”
“For real?”
“Yeah, come on.”
Laura and I had to hold our breathe riding in the elevator with him. I gave him the boots and the coat to keep warm. We walked back to 177th street.
“Maybe you should go home now.”
“No. I want to see.”
“You sure?”
Yes I’m sure.”
My cousin and his boys laughed when I arrived with the dirty, homeless, homo. It was easy to imagine what I had planned.
“You sick fuck, how do you think of these things?” My cousin asked.
“I just think about what I don’t want done to me.”
“Makes sense.”
We took the homo to the alleyway.
“Homo, take out your dick. Tonight is your lucky night.”
I hit the dude on the nose again with my gun.
“On your knees, bitch and suck his dirty, nasty dick!”
“Noooo, please. I’m begging.”
I cocked my gun again.
“You really don’t have to if you don’t want to. I mean if it was me, I’ll just take the bullet. It’s on you.”
The dude reluctantly moved his head towards the,homeless homo’s dick. The homo helped him out by grabbing the back of his head and shoving his dick inside his mouth. Everybody laughed at once, except for Laura who looked horrified.
“Bust in his mouth, Homo!” I encouraged and in five minutes that’s exactly what the homo did. The dude immediately threw up. Again we all laughed.
“There you go, motherfucker! I hope the money was worth it.”
Then it occurred to me to ask my cousin how much money did the dude steal.
“Forty bucks.”
“What?”
“Forty bucks.”
“You mean I just had a man sodomized over forty bucks?”
“How much did you think it was?”
“At least a couple of thousand.”
“It doesn’t matter how much it was. He still violated.”
“It matters to me that I’m going to hell over 40 bucks. Come on, Laura”
Laura and I walked home in silence. I felt guilt ridden. Somehow I knew that 40 bucks could have been an accounting error of some sort and there was a possibility that the dude could have been innocent. Once in my room, Laura confronted me.
“I knew you were crazy, but I didn’t know you were such a monster!”
“Slow down before you start pointing fingers. I never wanted to throw this in your face, but didn’t your father throw your mother out the window and killed her because she finished the last of the coke?”
Laura looked at me stunned.
“You finish the coke each and every time we party. I can’t even look away for ten seconds and you’re sniffing triple lines and you’re still alive. I fucked up, but I’m not a monster.”
Tears were streaming down Laura’s cheek.
“I’m sorry about tonight. I love you.”
I didn’t sleep much that night. I couldn’t help but think my actions for that night would come back and haunt me big time. What a fucking asshole I am.
Posted by Psycho Love on December 30, 2007 at 12:23 AM
