Red Bull

Red Bull Chapter 3

Red Bull Chapter 3

Dear God, I’m not your favorite son.  Some say you like Joshua a little more.  Other people say you like Jamison. Today though God, I think we all are praying.  All three of us have fucked up but the next generation is better than us God. They have so much hope.  I can see it in their eyes that they are going to bring love back to the Wallace family.

Don’t take my baby away.  Don’t take away my Isabella.

God, if you’re listening.

Keep her safe.

I made the promise before.

I was 16.  I had been fucking girls by then.  I had become a legendary player in my neighborhood, so notorious that no girl would give up any drawers and I ended up having to start up two separate rosters in neighboring school districts.  Lets just say there are cold nights when you are young and horny and shit just doesn’t happen like it used to.

I’m at Londrick’s house and he says his homie is coming over.  A homie we haven’t seen in a while.

“Whattup--shorty----miss you man!”

I still remember how attractive he looked.  It was as though my big roster didn’t mean a thing.   Meek had left the neighborhood and I had filled his shoes.  I had become everything that Meek was supposed to be. I had literally become Meek.  The shy, quiet guy that I was had been replaced. Now the man who I modeled my life on was right in my face again.  Young, baggy pants sagging below his ass with a Tupac T-shirt and a Blue bandana tied around his waist. He crip walks all over the place with excitement of seeing me again.  I spread a smile but all the while I’m more amazed then anything.

“I wasn’t even planning on staying here,” Meek states halfway through the night, “But damn, I missed my little homie.”

I remembered my face being flustered like I was a young kid, “You did?”

He smiles slightly.  Londrick notices I think.  It’s late at night and by now we had been smoking and drinking.  Everyone was lowkey chill.

“Yeah bruh...we were close man,” he states, “So fucking close.  Remember how we used to look at our dicks to see which one was bigger.  I was with you when you nutted for the first time and you thought something was going wrong with your fuckin’ body.”

He laughs.  I want to. It’s one of the most hilarious thoughts in my life but I can’t because Londrick---a nigga from the hood, is there.  And for some reason I can’t allow myself to have happiness. I can’t allow myself to be great in these moments. I am anxious wondering about what someone was going to say if they misunderstood what I meant.

“We were fucking a girl...riding a train on her,” I correct for Londrick so that he understands that there was a third party in the room.

God forbid he get the wrong idea.  The worst thing in the world was if Londrick got the wrong idea back then.

“Oh...yeah…”  Londrick states.

Londrick’s voice trails off because at this point Meek had made his way over to me in the house.  Again it was late and he was high. He keeps rubbing on the side of my shoulder and I don’t really think nothing of it.  Niggas in the hood get touchy when they high. That’s just how things work sometimes. You never thought nothing of it.

I even struggled to think something of it when Meek settles his eyes on mine, smiles and stops rubbing me.   He just presses his hand on my arm and holds it.

“Damn, you changed…” he states, pausing, clearing his throat and adding, “I mean, you look good.  You grown up man. Look at you.”

I’d been so star struck by him that I hadn’t said much that night.  I had forgotten that by this point I was THEE Joyous Wallace. I was out here really having young niggas in the hood looking up to me.  They looked up to me so much that at that point I was a boss. At that point everyone knew my name. That was during the heat of the war with AK’s gang.

“I’m OK.”

“Nah, you look really good,” he states,  “I know bitches go nuts over you huh. Like they probably think you are so fucking FINE…”

He sucks his lips, hard.   The way he does it makes me do it as well.  I guess it’s some weird as shit where you see someone do something and you do it.  Not like I was flirting with no nigga. I was a G. I was tough. There was no way I would ever be on no homo shit, especially back then.

Out of no where I say the only thing that comes to mind, “I mean I ain’t all that.  You probably get more love than I do...look at you.”

It’s a compliment in an attempt to get attention off of me but I realize too late what it sounds like.  He likes it though and he drafts his arm around me. He begins laughing at that moment, slowly letting it roll of his tongue.

“I gotta go man….” Londrick states and I swear I hear him mutter underneath his breath an additional, “Ya’ll niggas on some other shit-----”

I’m not sure if I hear it right but I suspect it.  It scares to the point that my nerves are bad. Meek seems to pick that up and maybe that’s why he took a step back.  Maybe that’s why he hands me a blunt. A few minutes of marijuana and I realize that things are not as bad as they seem in those moments.   Life seemed a little bit more at ease and I was again, pulled back into the smoky haze that was Meek.

He returns to his original position getting close to me but things are different this time because this time he’s alone.

“I think about you sometimes,” he says out of nowhere.

It was as though he couldn’t wait til Londrick left to get it out.  He literally spits it out as though he may never see me again. I guess after all this time of not seeing someone you were that close to you wonder things like that.  You wonder, am I ever going to see that person again? Is it ever going to be worth it to reach out to them?

“You tripping…”

“I’m not tripping, Almond Joy.  I’m really not. I meant it.”

Almond Joy.  It was the nickname that my Grandma used to call me.  No one else used it. No one else really knew about it except Meek.  I’d told him about it and he teased me about it a few times. Hearing him use that word...bring up my Grandma almost immediately makes my chest burn just a little but but I can’t understand the emotion attached to it.  

I pause.  He was allowing himself to be vulnerable.  It was something that he wouldn’t have said years ago and at this time I was 14 and he was my idol.

So I form the words, “ I miss you too.”

I don’t know how it happens.  I don’t know how his lips end up on mine but I remember how wet they were.  I remember thinking how weird it was that his mouth was wetter than any girl’s mouth.  It was as though his body was getting wet like Shay Eliza’s pussy. I remember feeling his hands grasp onto mine and thinking about how hard he is.  I remember thinking about how aggressive he was and not knowing where to put my hands. I didn’t know where to put my tongue either in his mouth as he explores.  It felt as though I was being combative if I pushed back against his tongue but wondering whether or not that was a good thing. Did he prefer aggressive kissers or not?

Did he prefer aggressive men or not?

It wasn’t as though I was passive.  No one ever said Joyous Wallace was feminine, passive or any other word that could be attributed to the female gender.  I was all man. So I kiss him back. We battle in this weird way for possession of the kiss.

And before I know it he stops kissing leans back and says, “Damn….I don’t think I ever kissed someone for an hour straight.”

“An hour?” I ask.

My mouth is dry at this point.  My lips are chapped. I looked down and realized we both had hard dicks.  There are wet stains between them. Meek looks me dead in my eyes. It would have been OK if in that moment it was just exploring.  It would have been OK if I just kissed a guy, realized I didn’t like it and just walked way. But that wasn’t what was happening with Meek.  Not back then...not ever.

Things were different with Meek...they always were.   And it’s because of him that I realized the Devil can send complications in such beautiful forms.  

This is the moment I realized that sin perhaps can be quite enticing.

I see shades of grey when we arrive at the hospital.  I can’t breathe. My on-again, off-again girlfriend Marcella is with me.  She holds tight to my arm, her jet black hair falling in Korean waves down either side of her shoulders. Sher has focused eyes with square rimmed glasses and she doesn’t ever offer much condolences.  

She kind of does this tapping thing but that’s all.

I need more but I realize I’m in no right  way to ask for more.   Who do I blame? Do I blame myself? Do I blame Meek? Do I blame the sins that lead me to be so fucking careless as to allow Meek to leave his gun where a child could get it.  I see how Joshua looks at me when we get to the hospital. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even ask but sooner or later he is going to want to know what happened.

“So were you alone when the kid got shot?” Marcella asks me.

“Jamison was there…”

“That’s not what I asked,” she states, “If you ever plan on talking to the cops and not being sent under the jail you are going to have to get your story straight.”

That was the kind of person she was.  Marcella was so structured. She was so grounded in the world that everything she said held an extra value and extra weight to it.  

“I got this…”

I state.  Just at that moment I see a kilo of coke hit the floor.  My heart drops. Just at that moment she is about to turn and see it.  If Marcella knew that I still sold coke on the side I wonder how she would react.   She’d leave me. It’d finally be the end of us. And for some reason that scared the hell out of me.  

Just when she is about to turn and see it, someone steps into the room.

“Yeah he does,” my brother Jamison walks in the room.

Somehow Jamison positions his leg right in front of the thing of coke.  I see Marcella get up adjusting herself.

“Don’t work my man too much Jamison,” she states, “I’m going to head back to look after the kids.  I’m thinking we should separate Eva and Sean.”

“Why would you say that?” I butt in.

“Because Sean shot her sister.” she asks, “I know in the hood you...boys...are used to getting shot all the time, but Eva wasn’t raised in that environment.”

“I know where MY niece was raised,” I state immediately, “That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

I want to argue.  My lips curl and my blood heats up.  For some reason I think Marcella knew that a comment like that was going to get under my skin and for some reason I think she is doing this because she wants to argue.  I don’t like how she says it. I don’t like how she makes it seem like Sean premeditated shooting Isabella. Of course we had no proof whether or not he did. Right now I can’t worry about that.  Right now all I had to worry about is whether or not Isabella was going to get out of it.

“He doesn’t mean anything,” Jamison butts in.

I don’t respond.  I just shake my head.  As she walks away I don’t even give her another look. For some reason I’m so turned off by Marcella.  For some reason I keep thinking about how Meek was different. I keep thinking about how he never tried to make me look stupid.  He never tried to belittle me...not even when we were kids and he could have.  

As soon as I reach for the coke my brother swats it away with his foot.

“Really Joyous?” he mutters, clearly interested...

“It’s just a side hustle…”

“I’m not talking about the drugs,” he states, “I’m talking about the other thing in your pocket…”

I reach in my pocket and feel what he’s talking about.

It’s a ring.  A ring that I was going to give to my girlfriend Marcella.  I just didn’t know when the right time was so I carried it around with me wherever I went.  

“Don’t…”

“You don’t,” Jamison spits back as soon as I say it, “You want to sell drugs.  Do your thing. I couldn’t stop you back then and I can’t stop you now. But this other thing that you’re doing…is this really what you want?”

He’s talking about the ring in my pocket.   I look down at the ring. Perhaps he was right.  Perhaps I was making a mistake right now that I shouldn’t have made.   Just then we are interrupted by my other brother. Jamison gives me a look as though saying, “Good luck.” I knew why.  

He’s going to want to know why  I let our precious Isabella get victim to gun violence.  He’s going to want answers and truthfully I was scared as fuck to give him those answers.

For the first time in my life I contemplated killing myself before having a conversation.

“The cops want a statement..” AK comes over to us as we arrive at the hospital.

He has his eyes on me.  He has since they’d arrived after hearing Isabella got shot.  By then the ambulance had come to get her. She was still alive but barely clinging to life.  Her little sister Eva had been crying all night. I couldn’t stop her. I couldn’t make it stop.  No matter what I said to her, I couldn’t ease her pain. I couldn’t mend her sadness.  

And that was supposed to be my job.  I was her Uncle. I was supposed to keep them safe...and I failed.  I failed miserably.

“Not now…” Joshua states, seemingly looking at my face and seeing the defeat written on my face like chalk, “Joyous is way too shaken right now to tell the police anything.”

“But---”

“He’s too shaken, AK!”

I don’t know if he says OK or AK because he says it so fast, but none-the-less, it has it’s intended consequences.  

The cops want a statement from me about what happened and AK has come to deliver the news.  The look on his face tells me that he isn’t liking how Joshua responds. In a way Joshua was right.  I was way too shaken to say anything to any cops. They’d have to wait. Everything would have to wait.  Isabella was in the hospital.

Sean had shot her.

It felt like my entire world was shattering.

“Jamila has the kids…” Jamison tells Joshua.

Jamison and I gather around our brother.  That’s the thing about Wallaces. We may argue and fight but when the worst days come, I was going to be there for my brothers.  I was going to try to work it out.  

“What the fuck happened?”

AK comes at me.  I don’t expect it as soon as we get in the hospital and the doctors rush my niece into the ER.   I followed the ambulance so closely that I pulled up the exact same time that they did. My heart is racing.  I’m scared to death. I was watching my niece when this happened. I was making sure that she was OK.  

“Not now nigga…” I warn him.

“Yo that’s my fucking daughter,” AK states.

“That is NOT your daughter,” I correct him.

AK wasn’t even her legal father, let alone biological.   Isabella and Eva were both from Joshua’s previous relationship.  I know this is pissing him off when I say this. I know he doesn’t like it and for some reason I want him not to like it even more.  So I get up in his face knowing damn well it will antagonize him.

And it does.  AK definitely must be feeling himself.  Maybe it’s because he’s muscular or something.  Maybe he feels as though he has to be the man in the family because he’s married to a Wallace.  Even if he took my brother’s last name, AK would NEVER be a Wallace. I lead this family and that’s something he’d have to recognize.

He takes a step forward though as though challenging me or some shit, “I don’t give a fuck  I want a fuckin answer NOW!”

He gets in my face.  It is a big mistake. I don’t know who swings first but we are in the hospital getting down like hooligans.  There is a storm of curse words and then all hell breaks out as we wrestle all through the fucking hospital waiting room.  I feel my hands clash up against his face as he elbows me into the side of my abdomen. I am face down before I know it feeling a crushing blow over to the back of my head from him.   I think it’s Joshua who manages to pull him off of me, but not before I get one last hard crack at him.

It’s hard enough to shatter his nose completely.   His nose gushes at that moment all over the place. Jamison is pulling me back.  

It’s Joshua who looks at us with this look of straight disappointment  etched out on his face.  He looks over at me and I just feel as though I let him down. I feel as though he needs me and I keep fucking failing him over and over.

“Is this what the two of you want?” he asks, “My daughter just got shot and the two men she loves the most are bickering over petty shit.”

It’s almost like a bolt to the heart when he delivers the words.  I immediately get quiet and stand off to the side. The whole time I have to admit that my heart is racing especially when the doctor only decides to let AK and him in the hospital room at the same time.

I’m left outside just wondering.  Is my niece going to be OK?

“What really happened?” a voice states.

Jamison is sitting in the guest area.  He has on his peacoat and underneath it a plain white button up jacket.  He’s been going for a real low-key clean-cut look since finding himself and finding God.  

“I…”

I pause.  My heart is racing.

Jamison gets up and makes his way over to me.  He was there that night. He was there when Sean shot Isabella.  It was an accident. But the question remained the same? Who was to blame for Sean getting a hold of the gun.  

“Talk…”

I sigh a little bit looking around to make sure that Joshua and AK were indeed off with their daughter and away from us.  The last thing I wanted was for Joshua to feel like I had done something so foul as to leave a gun around his child.

“I wasn’t alone last night,” I state, “You remember Meek...from back in the day?  He came over…”

“Pretty boy Meek?”  Jamison asks me.

The way Jamison looks at me says it all.  He knew exactly who Pretty Boy Meek was. He remembered from back in the day.  Every hood had that one boy. The boy who all the other boys learned their swag from.  Growing up that was Meek.  

“I’m thinking he might have left a gun in his jacket when he left…”

“Why’d he have his jacket off?” Jamison asks me.

A part of me thinks that it would be so easy to lie.  I even open my mouth in order to make up some natural lie about why Meek was in my house at that hour of the night.  The fact that we sold drugs would have made it easy. Jamison was so far removed from the drug scene. But then I think about the conversation with Joshua.  I remembered how comfortable Joshua made me feel.

And it puts down my guard. So I don’t respond.

I say nothing.

After a few awkward seconds, Jamison shakes his head, “Please don’t tell me you’re hesitating because the two of you were...messing…”

Jamison almost spits the words out.  I can see the disapproval all over his face.  He is brown skin, even darker than I am but somehow he manages to get really pale.

“You really going to judge me?” I ask.

“Yes, I will judge you.  Since when did you become a  FAGGOT----!”

WHAM!  I slap Jamison across the face with a fire that I’ve been waiting to slap him with.  My hand is strong. Jamison spits when he hauls his face back. He looks over at me and he becomes himself again.  He must realize really quickly after that who he is talking to. I wasn’t Joshua. I wasn’t going to be spoken to with disrespect.

“Watch your mouth,” I warn him, “Clearly all of us were born with the same genes.”

He gives me a hard look, “Genes?  You been listening to Joshua, haven’t you?  We weren’t born like this. What you are seeing is a generational curse.  We have a demon attached to us. The Wallace name is cursed.”

“Says who?”

“Says God,” he grunts even louder, “Look at us...look where we are…”

He had a point.  I was in the hospital because there was a kid who got shot. A fucking kid.  Isabella didn’t deserve to get shot. She didn’t deserve to go through all the shit that she went through.  It was my fault and I planned on making it right.

“It’s my sin.  It’s my fuckin’ sin that did this…”

“Homosexuality isn’t your fault,” he explains to us, “It’s Joshua…”

I pause… “Don’t Jamison.”

Jamison doesn’t stop though.  He crosses his arms and shakes his head, “The homosexual demon is spreading throughout our family.   I spoke to Mom. She called me. She said that God spoke to her. She said that God told her that we have to repent.  She had a prophecy. If we do not repent our homosexual ways...we will be tossed into the fire…”

The heaviness of what Jamison is saying nearly chokes me.

“Man here you go with that fucking shit.  What you know about God? Only person in our family that actually spent time looking into God is Grandma.  Grandma said that gay people were born gay. She said God loved gay people…”

Jamison grunts.

“Grandma wasn’t right about everything.  Our father hurt us. I stopped him. But in the end it doesn’t matter that I went to jail,” he explains, “We have a demon on our backs and we must repent.  It’s him...Joshua...he started this…”

This wasn’t the first time Jamison tried to convince me that the reason he enjoyed sucking dick was because Joshua enjoyed sucking dick too.  He felt as though homosexuality was jumping through our generation as though it was a curse.

“That isn’t how homosexuality works…”

“Then explain how you’re feeling with Meek,” Jamison responds quickly.

I stop responding.  He had a point. I wasn’t gay.  I wasn’t bisexual. I wasn’t curious.  I wasn’t any of those things, but for some reason I had this cosmic connection with this one soul in the universe and for some reason after all these years I could never shake it nor fill the void of excitement I felt from just being in the presence of this one soul.

We always met in the most random places, at the most random times but we always managed to find our way back to each other.  It was as though the universe was attempting to put us together, but then again Grandma told me there was no such thing as the Universe attempting to do anything.  She tells me there was only one source.

God.

And she tells me I should fear him.

“Joshua is good,” I remind Jamison, “You know it.   I don’t like AK but they are doing a good job raising those kids.”

“You can’t raise kids in sin.  This is what happens...THIS…”

He is referring to Isabella getting shot.  I immediately feel this break down in my chest but I shake the feeling.  I shake it all off.

“You aren’t going to fucking do this,” I tell him getting up, “Not again.  You having issues with your sexuality Jamison. That’s what this is. You’re insecure.  I know who I am and if I decide I want to try something that’s on me. You will NOT come into the family and add all the malice that you bring Jamison.  I’m not allowing you to do that again.”

Jamison was a snake.  He’d always been one. And the thing about snakes is that you had to keep them close.  You had to watch them.

“Just hear me out.  That cop out there wants someone to blame for this.  No one knows Meek was in that house. No one knows it was Meek’s.   AK is a known drug and gun dealer.…”

My heart stops.

“You want me to say that it was one of  AK’s gun?” I ask, shocked.

He shakes his head, “This is not my will...this is the will of God.  This is from Mother’s prophecy.”

I shake my head, “Goddamn it Jamison.  You really trying to frame the father of your niece’s…”

“Stepfather,” Jamison corrects me, “And we must remove the homosexual spirit.  You, me and Joshua must repent. Or else worse things will happen…”

“I don’t believe you.”

Just at that moment I see someone coming out.  

I look at the man who is approaching.  He is a doctor. He clearly seems to be intent on telling us something but when he starts walking slow I’m concerned.  When he steps in front of us I am bothered…

But when he looks down on the ground before he speaks----I just can’t breathe.

“Can you all please come with me…”

~

I don’t need to go into the room to break down.  I don’t need to go into the room to know what is happening.

Isabella has died.

I don’t ever think I knew hopelessness before.  It felt as though the air didn’t smell the same.  I couldn’t see the same. A dark cloud comes over me.  

And I’m just stuck…

 I hear the wailing coming from my brother.  I hear AK as well. And I know that now is the time that I must repent.  This was the sign that I was looking for.

“What do I need to do?”

“Just don’t say anything,” Jamison explains to me, “I’ll make sure that AK is behind bars.   As soon as he is out of the picture we will rebuke this demon. And with all of our gay lifestyles removed from us, we can all spend time repairing our souls...together.”

 To read the next chapter in advance go to www.crushedcrown.com