I went around a cement truck that was
traveling too slowly; well, I was traveling too fast. Well past 70 m.p.h. on a 45 m.p.h. road. Bushes and trees were on either side of us.

A few bus stops we zoomed by. It was muggy and hot today and he didn’t have on the radio or the AC.

“Denial, my Niggah. It ain’t no fun when
it’s about you.” He lit a joint, sucking in the
smoke. He felt it in his lungs and his eyes watered.

He was taking it to the head. I was getting frustrated, because he was right. We were young then.

Very naïve. But the more experience in the sack we gave in to, the more we got people to do what we wanted, the more it built up our self-confidence. And that was dangerous because the minute the sex was overwe fell hard.

Back to earth.

We were sad, lonely and depressed.

“Whatever.”

I slowly braked at the red light by the Cutler Ridge Mall. I gripped the steering wheel, my legs wide open, his joint between his lips.

He looked at me with a grin. “Jabari. Didn’t you fuck Gio and got her to take your math test for you?”

“Yea, and?”

“Didn’t you fuck Linda and she gave you
twenty dollars?”

“Yea.”

“Don’t you always fuck Linda and get
twenty dollars, in addition to the ten dollars a week your Moms give you?”

“Yes?” I failed to see the connection.

“Then boom. There it is. You fuck to get
what you want. That’s the only relationship you have with Linda. Sex for money. Tricking we call it these days. So don’t come down on me.”

He was right.

I’d graduate like this. Using people to get
what I wanted through sex. It grew inside of me, manifested.

Kenny was so far gone into using sex to
control women that one shot him in the back when he was caught climbing out of her sister’s window a little after we graduated.

He didn’t die, but present day, 2006, eleven years later, he’s still handsome, smooth but he’s in a wheel chair. When he was shot it didn’t change who I was and what I was doing. I got worse.

I was the quiet Niggah. Rarely talked. Joked
around. But I was the biggest freak. I was
manipulating married people, getting what I wanted, people years older than me.

I was going with Hanna and at the same time I got in a relationship with Lisa Lane Waters and used her. I didn’t have sex with Lisa; I fucked Lisa who I called myself being in love with.

She had two sisters and three brothers. But I used my charm, looks and smooth voice to con her into doing this and that for me.
I was ruthless. I didn’t accept the answer “No.”

I got Lisa to do threesomes, let other
Niggahs fuck her while I watched. I fucked her and let Niggahs watch.

I got her to be video taped, just her face and our sweaty bodies fucking into oblivion. My face was never put on there.

It was all about power and control. I didn’t
love her. I had swore into the US Army, with the intent of marrying Lisa.

I made big plans. Wrote them out. She
was, at the time, a sophomore at Southridge. I had got low test scores on the ASVAB test. But scored high enough to go there.

My first choice was the Airforce.
But I scored too low. So I was like fuck
flying high.I wanted better test scores. I scheduled to take it again.

I met a sergeant while at the M.E.P.S. center in Miami...