Bilyeu Zoo...

Amber Alert Christmas...

Again, more season greetings from the Cosmopolitan Epicure, during one of the most wonderful times of the year. I haven't revisited the topic of mixology in some time, so please, shall we? I became privy to this drink last weekend with the homie Poke at the McNulty's Pub on Coventry road in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. The Heights. Up the way. The new jacks may say Uptown. Anyhow, the Xmas Bomb is the perfect alternative for any of you carbomb fans out there. This concoction is taken in a similar fashion as the carbomb as you drop a shot of Bailey's and Goldschläger into a Christmas ale of some sort and down it before it coagulates and curdles. Around these parts, we're using Great Lakes Christmas Ale. This libation is a welcome change from the dispeptic epilogue that comes from imbibing egg nog. The shit tastes like gingerbread, mayne. Happy Holidays, no matter which one you fuck with. Peace and goodwill to all of y'all muthfuckas...

Xmas Bomb

3/4 pint of Christmas Ale
1 shot glass filled half with Bailey's, half with Goldschläger

...drop that shot in the ale and down it! Watch out for momma getting too loose with Santa!

Your Christmas Lights Suck, Dog...

Boy, I'd hate to live at 2 Kime Avenue in North Babylon, New York and have to go up against Andrew and Elinor Spadafora and the man-made aurora borealis that is the Kime Christmas House. I remember a Holiday Season that was far more luminous than it is now. It's probably due to the current economy, but I sure do miss a nice Nela Park display. If you're lucky enough to be in or near Central Islip on Long Island go ahead and check out the awe-inspiring display. I went with my Grandmother and took these pictures last year. They put all other efforts to shame. The few illuminated blocks that I see nowadays look as feeble and flaccid as Charlie Brown's little fucking tree. As we prepare for the what will be deemed the most frugal Christmas ever, I will try and bring back a little holiday cheer with some pictures of the amazing Kime Christmas House. Remember, consumer consumption is the reason for the season...

If You Could Have One Superpower... Black Bacchus...

Hard Pressed For Pussy...

The club is like a nasty-ass hoe. You really don’t want to be associated with it, but when you’re all up in it, ain’t nothing better. I hate the club because I love the club, and I know that if I find myself in the club, I end up acting a muthafucking fool; far too drunk off of far too many drinks that was all far too expensive, attempting to interact with far too many ladies who is either far too fine, dumb or ugly for me to fuck with. It’s a beautiful paradox. The club demands a commitment to superficiality that most people are not financially secure enough to be subscribing to. The Hip-Hop videos serve as paradigm. One is expected to come looking, first and foremost, “grown and sexy”. If you have no clout or connections, you’ll be waiting amongst the rest of the commoners paying at least twenty bucks to gain entry past the sentry. To party properly, one should get a bottle and a couch in V.I.P. The sharper your garb and the more exclusive the locale in which you drink, the better you’ll do trying to cut in the meatmarket. However, when you realize that most of these people in here are just like you, swinging from check-to-check like vines, you quickly come to notice the insecurity, the denial and the sadness in many peoples’ faces. Everyone is perpetrating. People have responsibilities they should be tending to, bills they should be paying off, kids they should be rearing and raising, retirement funds they should be investing in; instead we are all here living in a fool’s paradise, paying $12+ per drink and $300+ per bottle to walk from the Hip-Hop room, to the Salsa/Meringue room, finally ending up in the Techno room, just to game and grind the most obnoxious possible lot of people. A man takes a moment to figure his debt-to-floss ratio just to make sure he’ll have enough to get that telly he just promised this young tender. A Salvadorian lady grabs a light-skinnedid lady by her hair and tells her to stay the fuck away from her husband. A girl too pretty to be throwing up is doing just that. An inebriated bartender has poured over $500 in free drinks on her own. A young man walks in the entrance only to faint within 12 seconds. A couple on the dancefloor is damn near simulating sex. Another couple in the men’s bathroom is having sex. A young man is standing in line at a nearby fast-food restaurant reviewing the numbers he got from the young tenders that evening, 96.7% of which will end being false numbers, stank bitches, ugly skanks or broads that are just plain full of shit. But all of them had fun for the moment, and that is the ultimate achievement of the club. Forget it all for a bit. Be V.I.P. for one night. Escapism. Present-time orientation. No matter how low the dollar limbos or how much high-skill level employment steps from the country, people will always celebrate the weekend’s arrival like Debbie Deb and Zhané.

I went to the club with my homie Jabari on a Friday in February. Black History Month and Black night at the club. Culture. I had a long-standing invite from a friend of mine that heads security at one of DC’s premier clubs. I finally decided to iron up some of the Polo shit I never wear and arrive fly on the scene about 11:16pm. I had never been to the superclub Ibiza prior to this. I’ve been to all of their previously existing competition around town; DC Live, Platinum, H2O, Love, all of which are nice, but not easily distinguishable from one another. Ibiza is the same shit. It opened the July 4th weekend of 2007 with Kim Kardashian as the host, so you already know the debt-to-floss ratio is weighted heavily in favor of debt. The lighting was better than I knew in most clubs, but other than that, I was tranquillo como camillo and trying not to let the sensory onslaught get me in too festive of a mood. Once I get festive and manifest the weekend demon, it’s beyond my power or ability for reversal thereof. After doing the lemming thing around the club, stopping along the way to dance with women you accidentally hit like pinball bumpers, Jabari and myself ended up in the Salsa/Merengue room on the first floor. It was near the coat check, so it had a rotating cast of women coming towards the Salsa like mosquitoes do the bug zapper. Bzzzt. We, of course, belly up to the bar and look at the bartender, say, “Damn,” and then look back at each other. The lady pouring hooch was bad. She was obviously mulatto, but was it Filipino and Black or Black and something else? She had an Asian-eye-thing going on. Homegirl was jacked though. Not none of that vein popping shit, but definitely sculpted and defined like those cool statues of Michelangelo’s. She looked like she could kick my ass and I’d like it. Beyond that, she was affable and gave us service with a smile, assistance of which has seemed to have gone the way of the LaserDisc. We get two Sapphire and tonics and as she gives them to me, she tells me that I’ve got a fan in my fanclub behind me. I tip her really well, defying racial stereotypes the world over, hand Jabari his drink, turn around and lean up against the bar, inhale through flamed nostrils and take in the dance floor. I get locked in to a particular couple doing that Salsa shit and take notice of how two become one in movement and take another note that I need to learn that shit. Never forgetting why I leaned this way in the first place, I allow my glance to briskly pan right and I lock sleazy eyes with a banging ass broad. I blink and turn back towards my homie Jabari just to act way cooler than I actually am. From what I saw, the broad was Persian. This I’m guessing. She was fine as fuck. This I know. Never thinking that I’m all that or guessing that any woman would think that I was, I played it low-keyed and sipped my drink. Some little sexy thing came over to Jabari and got to showing him how to properly Salsa dance. I look to my right and realize that the Mediterranean jumpoff is right next to your dude looking drunk as fuck. “Ay.” She looked up at me with diluted poise and smiled, stumbled and said, “Hey baby.” Definitely upped my ante. “What brings you out to this wonderful place tonight?” She moves her wavy, jet-black hair out of her face and with that same hand points at the girl Jabari is making a valiant attempt at doing something that somewhat resembles Salsa dancing with, and then moves her index to another exotic, pretty-ass broad and says, “I came out with my girls. Girls night out.” “True indeed,” as I look into this tall, pretty girl’s eyes without having to do my neck akimbo. She had that crooked Middle Eastern bridge of the nose, but for me, imperfections are attractive. Her hair was luxurious and her skin was flawless with the hue of gold bullion. She had the cleavage out. I love cleavage. I often wonder if women knew the degree to which I aesthetically peruse their entire being, not just their tits and ass, would they be flattered or self-conscious? I looked at her hands and asked her if she wanted a drink. She stared me down and kissed me real quick on the lips. I looked at the bartender, who was smiling and said, “Can I get another Sapphire tonic and, what you want girl? Rum and Diet. Thank you.” She comes back with the libations, winks at me and says in my ear, “This round’s on me. I don’t like that bitch.”

“So, what’s your name?” I ask this girl realizing I never got it. “Sara. What’s yours?” She says lifting a glass she need not lift to her pretty mouth. “Chad.” She looks puzzled, so I say, “Chad. Like Central Africa,” like I always do. “Oh. You don’t look like a Chad.” “Thanks.” I was really shocked at how good this girl looked and how long she was hanging around me. I noticed that she was a fast drinker and was damn near done with the drink we just got. I threw mine back as she was getting two more from the bartender. Jabari, done with Salsa lessons, asks me how it’s going with that Egyptian broad. I tell him surprisingly well, and I ain’t even doing anything more than licking my lips like LL. I also told him that I thought she was Persian, but she’s definitely somewhere from the Middle East and that I’ll get to the bottom of it and then do my damnedest to get to the bottom of her Fertile Crescent. I look back over at the bar and Sara is arguing with the bartender over something or another. I grab my drink from in between their war zone and lean back on the bar. After one of them gave in, which one I’m not sure, Sara comes over to me and says, “I don’t like that bitch.” I smile and stay neutral; I’d fuck ‘em both. “Take my number,” Sara tells me from right field. “Alright…” I say as she dictates the digits and I take dictation into the iPhone. “Ooh. You’ve got an iPhone? Call me.” “I’m calling you right now, girl.” She pulls a Blackberry out of her purse and declines the call and saves my name alongside my number and downs her drink. She then grabs me and we start to do Salsa as good as a big muthafucker untrained in the art and a drunken bitch can. It was nothing more than her excuse to get close to a quadroon. I broke one of my rules to never be the guy making out in the club, but my mere existence itself has been nothing short of civil disobedience, so I suppose I’m just being real with myself. After a bit of this, I back off because I hate to be teased. Sara comes over and just watches me as I drink and pretend not to be interested in her. “What are you doing tomorrow?” She says and grabs my hand. “Chilling with you,” I say like I’m supposed to. She smiles and says, “Tomorrow.” She then puts my hand right in her nice-ass cleavage and kisses me again. Then I remembered something, so I had to ask, “Sara. What’s your ethnicity?” She pushes her hair out of her face again managing to look both drunk and pretty and says, “Egyptian. My dad is from Morocco though.” I’d have to tell Jabari he was right. Damn. No wonder she was so banging. Good breeding. Mutts are the best. Her friends were ready to leave so they came and got her and said it's time to jet. She kisses me yet again and as she stumbles away, I was looking her in her pretty-ass eyes as she mouths the word, “Too-Mahr-Row,” in three distinct-as-fuck syllables. Tomorrow indeed. I get my tab from the pretty-ass bartender, Jessica, and me and her and Jabari chat as we get one last drink. Jessica tells me to watch that bitch. She’s got something wrong with her. I wondered if I should take Jessica as a good judge of character or a hater. I took it neither way and remembered something, so I asked her, “Jessica. What’s your ethnicity?” As she’s putting chaser in someone’s drink she tells me, “Black and Italian. People always think I’m Asian though.” Even more good breeding. If only I could construct a bitch like Dr. Frankenstein. We leave the superclub Ibiza and I can tell Jabari has had it and there is no way he can drive home. On the way home I stop at 7-11 and while there I get a text from Sara that says “Tomorrow.” As I grab some Flaming Hot Cheetoes, I get another text. Again from Sara. This time it says, “(Today)”. I smile and admire her temporal awareness.

Later that day I woke up too early at about 9:36am. I remembered Jabari was sleeping on the chair in my living room. I felt good with no sign of a hangover. I immediately hopped in the shower to wash off the stank and sin of last night. Jabari and I parted our separate ways and I went off and ran a few errands and read some literature in a bar over near Capitol Hill. At around 4:16pm I decided to give Sara a call. Standing outside on Pennsylvania Avenue while drinking a hot cup of joe, I let the phone ring. After three rings she picks up sounding refreshed, “Hello?” “Hey girl, It’s Chad.” “Hey! What are you doing?” “Just studying. You?” “I’m doing laundry. Studying? Are you in school?” “Nah. Not anymore.” “Why are you studying then?” “I got to be on-point girl.” “OK… well, what do you want to do?” “Shit… I’m getting slightly hungry girl. You wanna get some food in a bit?” “Yeah, where do you want to go? Is Adams Morgan cool?” “That’s fine with me. Where?” “Let’s go to the Diner. Cool?” “Cool. About 7-ish?” “Yes. Yay! Can’t wait to see you!” “Word. See you in a few.” “Bye.” I sipped my joe and looked over at the Capital building and felt an American gust of freedom. It was a brisk March afternoon and it seemed that today I may not even have to use my A-K.

After taking about forty minutes to find parking I walked westbound on Columbia towards 18th street NW wondering why I don’t just pay for parking; time is worth more than money. I was about a half hour early, a novel habit I had picked up over the years. This way I could get my mind right before she got around me. To waste time I ducked into CD/Game Exchange with the expectation that they wouldn’t have anything good because they never do. They’re only good for taking your media and giving you fuck-all of its worth without having the decency of using lubrication. Fuck them. They didn’t have shit good. Anything that was good, I already owned. I ducked into Idle Time Books next and read an article hanging on the wall from March 1, 1971 regarding whether or not Bobby Seale, at the time Chairman of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, could wear a goatee during the New Haven Black Panther trials. How far we’ve come, for race is no longer an issue in this bastion of freedom and/or equality. While reading I got a call from Sara, who said she was running late. I offered to come and get her. Gentleman. She said she was all the way in Tenleytown and that it would be a waste of gas and of prime parking. I appreciated her predilection towards logic and decided not to offer again. I kept reading various books and eventually got a text from her saying, “I’m here.” I leave Idle Time Books, walk past the bossa nova billowing like reefer smoke out of Bossa, which was improperly juxtaposed next to the blues emanating from Madam’s Organ. I looked inside of Tryst at all the smart and beautiful people that were, for whatever reason, studying and drinking coffee and chai tea on this lovely Saturday night. I passed an empty Pizza Boli's; it was too early for anyone to be drunk enough to want to eat a jumbo slice just yet. Through the window of the Diner I could see into the waiting area where Sara was patiently in the vestibule. I opened the door and she parted the black curtain that kept the winter chill to a minimum for the paying patrons. She looked even better sober and done-up and that cleavage was back for an encore, so I smiled and we gave each other a hug that was surprisingly sensual for two people that have only interacted for about an hour in total. The hipster that was playing the host led us to the rear of the restaurant and gave us one of those skinny two-people tables. I always sit on the outside of such arrangements since I get claustrophobic and end up breaking out in an uncontrollable, profuse sweat. I figured this would be a bad time for that, so I waved Sara towards the inside seat. Finally seated we exchanged some of those forgettable, mandatory opposite sex interview questions. From my questions I gathered that she was a 21-year old student at American University, originally from the Virginia Beach area. In high school she was an overachieving athlete, Basketball and Track, with a 4.0 and she even belonged to the Glee Club. She, like all other women, was a Psychology major and worked part-time up at some center with bad-ass teenagers in it. She just got out of a pretty long relationship. How long? About two and a half years. As a matter of a fact, her ex was the manager at Nolan’s, an Irish pub right down the street that was about as Irish as Chipotle is Mexican. This was why she was out at the club, on a Holy Grail quest to get acclimated to being single again. Her girls thought there was no reason for her to be moping around; get out and strut your stuff and she’d definitely find a nice, young man to talk to. I guess I was playing that guy. The hipster that was playing the waiter comes over with two clear, plastic glasses full of fresh DC tap and puts them on the table and says, “Hey folks. I’m gonna be your waiter. Can I start you off with some drinks?” Sara, wasting no studio time, says “I’ll take a rum & Diet.” I look at the waiter and say, “Sapphire and tonic, please.” “Alright, I’m just gonna need to see some IDs from you guys.” She’s faster on the draw than me so he looks at her ID… gives it back to her… “Thanks.” Grabs mine… looks at it… looks at me… looks at it again… looks back at me and says, “Holy shit, man. How do you do it?” I then give him a look like, “You asshole. This 21-year old, hot-to-trot harlot don’t know my age yet, and I didn’t really plan on revealing it in this fucking fashion.” He catches on to what I’m trying to say without me having to say it, and he says, “Oh. My bad. Let me get those drinks.” Sara looks a little more interested than confused and as I’m putting my ID back in my card folio, she asks to see it. You see, I look young and pretty. No one thinks I’m 32, which is a good thing mostly, but it usually results in younger women being attracted to me. Sometimes they trip off of the age differential; sometimes they think it’s hot. Sara says, “Is this a fake?” I say, “Why would I get a fake that says I’m 32? There’s no societal advantage to being thirty.” She was twirling my ID around in her fingers like border patrol and says, “So you’re 32?” I nod in agreement. She bites her bottom lip and is like, “That’s hot.” The hipster waiter chimes in, “Here you guys go.” He puts each respective drink next to us respectively and we hold them up and have a toast to meeting one another. Clink.

Sara ran her interview on me and found out a select few details about my life; the ones that inspire awe and intrigue only, of course. She was impressed by all of the spots around the globe the intercontinental champ had been and mostly with the fact that I graduated from Georgetown. If the card will win the book, play it. We were on our third drink in what would have been for most people second drink’s time. Legs started to touch. We began to compare hands. She noticed that I had nicer hands than her. She was right. She asked to use my lip balm and began looking at me for too long. She revealed her insecurity with her big feet not knowing I’m into chiropody. That made me think of my boy Kip who once told me that if a girl has big feet and hands, then that directly correlates to the depth of the coochie. If Kip said it, then it’s probably scientially sound. The topics became more philosophical and seemed to deal with the matters of the future. I told her that I was moving soon. “Where to?” she asks, looking better each time I look at her. “First I’m moving to Cleveland…” “Oh,” she interjects, “why would you move there?” I furl my brow and tell her, “Calm down, girl. That’s where I’m from.” She looks legitimately embarrassed that she took it there and apologizes. I pay it no mind as I am used to defending my hometown, but I did wonder for about two seconds how someone from Virginia Beach had the audacity to naysay against a city with three major league teams, a river of hellfire and a history of race riots. “I’m going there to chill with the family and to write a book.” “Oh. That’s cool.” “After that, I want to move to LA.” “Wow. LA. What are you gonna do there?” I smile and say, “Shit girl, it’s only one thing to do. Become a star. Or not.” She smiles and reaches into her purse and checks a text message. “Hey Chad. Would you mind if my homegirl comes and chills with us? I’m not trying to cramp your style, but I rarely see her. She stays out in Fairfax and is in the vicinity now. She’s from South Africa and is so cute and funny. You’ll love her.” I often think that this comes from a need for women to present possible suitors to trusted friends so they can go to the bathroom and talk about a dude and pretend that they are on Sex and the City. I said, ‘Sure. Cool with me.” The way I figured it, I’m usually witty enough that the friends won’t hate me even if they don’t understand why their friend finds me attractive. And, who knows? Maybe the South African girl will be a possible out if me and this Egyptian jumpoff don’t jumpoff. Whatever. I was feeling myself that evening. You could have brought Pat Buchanan and Ann Coulter and I still would have been shining bright like that light reflecting from so many diamonds. I chuck the deuce to the hipster waiter and he rather swiftly gets us two more drinks and then takes our food orders.

As me and Sara finish eating, her South African girl comes in. They hug each other and the lady sits down and we introduce ourselves, but for whatever reason, I don’t retain her name. She was indeed cute. She looked like Aaliyah, but whereas Aaliyah was sexy, this girl was very cute. She had those clear braces, which didn’t help her to look anything else but cute. People that weren’t intercontinental champs like me may have mistaken her accent as British or Australian. Her eyes were big and expressive as if she hadn’t done drugs before, or if she had, then she was just one of the lucky ones that don’t get that yellowed sclera like most do. I think she had my affliction, looking young and pretty and being far older than her cute look would implicate. She sat down and began to get loquacious as fuck, but in an endearing way. Evidently she had just gotten her appetite back as she had recently undergone some operation on her cervix, for which she apologized to me for mentioning. It was her first time out of the house in some time and her husband had been driving her insane. Yeah, she said, she had a husband, but it wasn’t as simple as it sounded. She came here directly from South Africa and was having a difficult time renewing her work visa. A white dude she had met and had been on a few dates with offered to marry her so that she wouldn’t be deported. She initially didn’t want to do it, for she felt that it was not honorable to marry a man for money or power, much less citizenship. However, after considering her options, she went ahead with the marriage. In an attempt to truthfully love her new husband, they began to have sex, but he was absolutely awful in between the sheets according to her. I wondered exactly how bad can someone be in between those sheets, and she tells me, “Believe me. There is no hope.” Alright. I believe you. She ordered a grilled cheese with fries and the same thing Sara was drinking. I felt myself fall in love with her for about three minutes and then I realized that I just met her ten minutes ago and that I only met Sara 18 hours ago, so I should calm my sucker-for-love-ass down. We sat and watched the South African girl eat and drank even more drinks and laughed an awful lot; far more than I usually do when surrounded by women. Not to be sexist, but most women just aren’t that funny. This South African girl was hilarious and Sara was a quick-witted lush, so I thought life to be headed in an upwardly mobile direction. I asked the hipster waiter for the check and thought of fucking them both tonight. Overzealous? Possibly, but shouldn’t one aim high? The check came and Sara offered to pay for it, but I insisted on handling it since I ain’t too much of a fan of women paying for shit for me. They may think I owe them something by the night’s end or some shit like that.

We left the Diner to enter the hullabaloo that is Adams Morgan on a Saturday night. It was about 10:30pm; things were moving towards full-on party mode. There were even a couple of people eating jumbo slices already. We walked down the block past the predatory Africans and Latinos that insisted on gaming Sara and the South African girl even though each of them were on my arms. We walked past the fu-fu European places that I never go into and the fu-fu people that were taking smoke breaks outside of said places. As we weaved around drunken people, trees and cars whose rears were parked too far onto the sidewalk, I had an hankering to go into the Toledo Lounge since the owners are from Ohio, but mainly because it’s really ratty-looking and I hate nice bars. Once inside, the ladies grab barstools and I insist on standing. I tell Sara it's because I’m fidgety, but really it was so I could have the best possible vantage point of her ridiculous cleavage. She orders up everyone more drinks and we get to talking and laughing even more. I felt at home if nothing else, and was beginning to feel Sara’s hand on mine often. I took the opportunity to put my nails to the back of her neck and play in her hair. The South African girl was smiling at us and said we should get a room. Sara smiled and says, “Maybe later.” She orders another round and excuses herself to the bathroom. Me and the South African girl get to talking and she says that I’m in good with her girl; don’t even worry. I believed her since her statement supported much of my evidence. Sara comes back and touches my leg as she sits down. She asks if I can play pool. I say I’m alright and she suggests that we all head to the pool hall down the street, Kokopooli’s. We down our drinks and I ask for the tab and Sara tells me to chill out cause she’s got it. I chill out as instructed and wait out front for the ladies. They come out shortly thereafter and we head south towards the pool hall. Sara is walking at increased drunken speed right in front of the South African girl and me. As we were walking past one of the most obnoxious parts of 18th street, the area with the Spaghetti Warehouse, Toms Toms and all of that other shit that should be moved by tractor beam to any state school’s fraternity row, I noticed a dude creep behind me. I kept an eye on him as it was obvious that he was making an attempt to be clandestine with whatever he was trying to do. He was about 5’7” or so and had on some black shoes, cheap grey pants that might have been Dockers, and a black leather jacket that was either weathered or just old and beat up. From the quick glance I got of his face he resembled a thinner Tone-Loc. Anyhow, this guy creeps around the right side of me and then with far more force than was necessary, yokes up Sara from behind into a hug/Heimlich maneuver of sorts and kisses her on the back of her head without a hint of love, lust or passion. I was a little thrown off by all of this random action, so I look over at the South African girl who looks like she’s about to cry. Through my peripheral vision I see the sign for Nolan’s and put two and two together and look back at the South African girl, who between tears and gasps for air and a face full of terror says rather ominously, “Oh no... it’s her ex-boyfriend.” Well, I’ll be. Sometimes even Batman can be wrong. Never in a million years would I have thought that the ex-boyfriend who was the manager of one of the most rowdy, white-boy, college bars on the street would have been Tone-Loc. The South African girl grabs my arm tighter and says, “Let’s just go into the pool hall. Let her talk to him.” As we passed them en route to Kokopooli’s me and Tone-Loc locked eyes and dude looked even more pissed since I looked way better than him and turned back to Sara, whose head is now down in an attempt to avoid the whole populace of Adams Morgan for fear of embarrassment. I quit looking behind me and descend the stairs into Kokopooli’s lead by the twitching hand of a South African girl.

As dark as the mood had turned, the lighting in Kokopooli complimented perfectly. I leaned against the bar while the South African girl sniffed snot back into her nose and cut off the waterworks. I handed her a bar napkin to wipe off the tracks of tears. “He’s horrible,” she told me looking into the distance, of which there was none. “I first met him with my husband. We used to drink at his bar and he seemed a little crazy, but OK. Then we met Sara. I always used to wonder how in the hell she decided to be with him. She’s so intelligent and has so much ahead of her in life. He’s just a bar manager.” I ordered another Sapphire and tonic and asked the South African if she wanted anything. “God, yes. This is the first time in years I feel like I need a drink.” I agreed and got a round. After handing her the rum and diet, she continued telling the story. “I don’t really know much about their relationship because I never really wanted to know. They broke up about a month or so ago. I don’t know why… all I know… is the next time I saw her after that… she’s got a black eye… and she said it wasn’t the first time!” She starts crying again, so I grab her and hug her close. People in the bar start looking at me like I’m the one making this pretty young lady cry. I return the gaze and they turn away. “Girl, don’t let this asshole make you cry. Let’s try to just chill, breathe slow and enjoy the rest of the evening.” She agrees reluctantly and while I’m holding her I notice Sara come in Kokopooli’s. Sara walks over to us at the bar and goes right up to the South African girl and they give each other a long hug and both start crying. I have watched enough full episodes of Sex and the City to know the best thing to do at the moment was to remain quiet. After a minute of tears, they wipe away the remains and Sara apologizes to me for the idiocy of her ex-boyfriend and urges us all to let her get another round and forget that it even happened. A habit of mine, I really haven’t discovered if it is a good or a bad habit as of yet, is to forgive and never forget. It may be possible for me to forgive a dude that stole from my house, but I’ll be Goddamned if I let that same muthafucka back into my house. That’s just hella counterintuitive. So we get back to drinking and after a few minutes it seems as if the collective mood is back on track. The two ladies even began to smile again. Then Tone-Loc came in the pool hall.

He was engaged in a conversation with the bouncer of the pool hall. I was correct from the giddy-up; dude did look like Tone-Loc. I turn my head to the ladies and the South African girl is crying like once again it’s on and Sara has her head on the bar fortified by her arms and purse. I look back towards Tone-Loc who is now walking at the speed of George Jefferson towards his ex-girlfriend. He yokes her up a bit more gently than he did the first time and the South African girl jumps as if he yoked her instead. I lean around to the bartender and tell him to “Give me a Corona quick,” and I slap him a ten-spot. The long neck makes it the best bottle to use as a weapon. I turn back around and the scene is much the same. Tone-Loc’s got Sara’s right side rapaciously groped up next to him. He says some shit in her ear, looks at me with the eyes of a shermhead and then turns his head around to Sara’s ear again. The South African girl gets closer to me and I tell her, “For real. Stop crying.” She takes a deep breath and leans back on the bar like I was doing and she reminded me of when you tell a toddler to quit crying, lest I give you something to cry about, complete with the sniffing and the delusional straight face. I’m keeping a sharp eye on Tone-Loc and he finally turns around and sizes me up. There was a pillar that divided us near the bar. He walks around the pillar at the speed of Barry Allen and steps about a foot from my left side and says to me at the speed of Blur, “So, uh, homie. You on a date or somethin’ with Sara?” This is when time paused and I had a split second, which seemed like an eternity, to think this situation over. I first wondered where the dude was from. He sounded like he should have been from Oakland, but his manner of dress made his origin indiscernible. He had the opposite of my affliction, as he looked old and crusty. I thought the dude to be no more than 26, but he looked like he was that 37 year old uncle that had never been married. That beard he kept wasn’t helping either. Poor guy. No wonder he has to strong-arm bitches. The one thing was that he didn’t seem to be was a threat at all. He played tough with the ladies, but when I rolled off the bar, stood up and sucked my gut in and said, “Nah, dog. I don’t go on dates,” he did nothing but look me up and down twice, flick his nose with his thumb and speed walk back over to his ex. Not that I’m a tough guy, but neither was this dude. Real gangsters ain’t gonna be doing no sucker-for-love-ass spectacle shit in public like that. Any man with two bits of wits knows that women make the choice. They’re always in control. A woman chooses who she wants to be with. When you get into rapacious methods to force a bitch into a changing her mind… man, that’s some old bitch-made shit.

This dude was in Sara’s ear with what seemed to be intense psychological warfare. I never took my eyes off the dude. At one point he takes enough time to stop tormenting the girl to tell me really fast, “Homie. I hope you ain’t buying no drinks. You know this daddy’s little girl right here. Yeah. This my little moneymaker right here.” Then he goes back to speaking to her through the back of her head. I actually laughed to myself in disgust from the complete lack of humanity it took for this dude to tell me that shit in her presence. I thought of busting the Corona bottle over Tone-Loc’s ugly fucking face and taking three steps over and grabbing a cue stick and beating the fucking shit out of his head with it and then stomping the muthafucka’s chest and kicking him in the stomach eight fucking times and walking over and grabbing a cue ball from the pool table with the two girls looking terrified and then walking over slowly as he lies on his back moaning with the South African girl crying and Sara screaming “Stop, stop!” and me looking her in the eye and saying “Shut the fuck up,” and taking the cue ball and bashing that shit up against the side of that muthafucka’s skull and then knocking his teeth out his muthafucking, bitch-made mouth with it and spitting on the fucking loser. But for what? Over a broad I met last night? Hell no. Fuck that. I am not saving no hoes. She can deal with this shit, or else I planned on boning the fuck out after I finished my beer. Tone-Loc was over there talking to her again and he grabbed her arm and dragged her outside like my mom used to do me out of Kiddie City. The South African girl was looking at the door and says, “That mother. Fucker.” I says, “Fuck him.” “He’s crazy,” she tries to convince me. “No really, he is crazy. I am scared what he will do to her.” I kept quiet, not really having anything pithy to say. I started to wonder if I was caught up in the middle of some sick-ass, abusive relationship in which Sara got off on being beaten and Tone-Loc got off on being her. I couldn’t see her as exactly innocent in all of this; it seemed that if she really wanted to end this she could have. I was expecting very little at that point and made the decision to leave just as Sara came back downstairs by herself. She wiped her face and said, “I’m sorry you two. I’m really sorry. He won’t be back. Can we just… just get a round and a table and forget all about it?” I didn’t audibly agree with her, but I went along with the plan as she got the balls and a rack from the bartender. I carried the drinks she ordered up over to the middle table. As she racked the table I leaned against the wall and looked around this dark, dank pool hall and wondered what the fuck movie this is I’m in. Then I got a little pissed. My life is usually a comedy. At times it may be a thriller or a bit of a drama. On occasion it’s an action flick. Often it’s porn. But it’s never no psychological-fucking-horror with no psycho-crazed, abusive ex-boyfriend in it. I was starting to get a little peeved at these muthafucka’s for putting me in it.

The South African girl, seemingly in better spirits after imbibing some spirits, said she didn’t want to play pool because she’ll tire of it after the break. Sara, who had had two more drinks with me since her ex’s departure, was also quite festive and jovial. It was a sudden turn of events. The best possible peripetia I could have asked my favorite superhero, white Jesus, for. What I thought was about to be the dénouement, luckily, wasn’t. Sara had me break. KKCRACCKK!!! I ended up getting both a stripe and a solid in, so I went for a 5 ball right by the corner pocket. This lined me up for a 3 ball on the other side of the table. Sunk that. Sara says, “You’re good.” As I’m lining up to nail the 4 ball back on the other side of the table, Sara bends over with her big-ass titties hanging right over the corner pocket. It’s like a cleavage lover’s pizza. I hit the cue ball and, of course, botch the shot. I look over and smile at her and she smiles back and at that moment I remember how good she looked in the club and life gets to looking good again. Sara claims she can’t shoot right, so being the gentleman I am, I show her the proper position for one’s arms, chest, legs and hips whilst aiming. She’s a wonderful student; eager to learn. She, of course, misses the shot. For my attempt at the 7 ball, she puts her nice ass right over the corner pocket. This time I nail it. She laughs and I walk over to get my drink from the drink ledge and to talk to the ladies. Sara immediately grabs me up as soon as come over. The South African girl says that we should go get a room for the second time. We laugh. Sara leans in and kisses me. She was a sensuous kisser with a tongue that moved like an American flag flapping fucking freedom freely in the wind. I grab her ass hard and porno-like and she’s with it. We say fuck pool and start laughing and enjoying the night again. All was going well… until Tone-Loc came back in.

The South African girl, on cue, starts crying. Sara looks like a deer in headlights, but drunk. The bouncer, who I assumed he had to have known as he is the manager of a bar six doors up the block, was keeping him from entering. I couldn’t hear what he was saying to him, but it had to be something along the lines of, “Yo man. Every time you come in here, bitches start crying. Calamity ensues. Dude, I can’t let you back in.” I imagined that Tone-Loc would have replied to the tune of, “C’mon homie. You know how these hoes be doing. That bitch got my money. Just let me say one thing to her and then I’m out. I put that on my mama.” The bouncer must have bought it, as once again this ugly fuck ends up in my midst. He yokes up his ex again while he wonders why she left him. He takes her by the arm to the other side of the pool table, says whatever he says to her, she breaks out in tears, runs over to the South African girl, who is still by me, grabs her, and the two head into the bathroom. I look from my side of the pool table to Tone-Loc’s side and he’s staring me down, so I stay leaned on the wall sipping my drink waiting for his fast-ass comment. “She ain’t even gonna fuck with no nigga like you. Look at’cho gear.” Not many things offend me, but on the days that I have made an effort to look halfway decent I’ll be Goddamned if someone is gonna speak on my Polo’d down, sunrise-to-sunset, fine-ass self. Sheeeeet. I push myself off the wall with my back into an upright position, take a sip from my drink and say, “My gear? I’m Polo’d down, Wild Thing. You rocking Dockers, Tone-Loc!” He looked offended from the Tone-Loc reference moreso than the Dockers comment. I guess if I wore Dockers I wouldn’t think it to be an insult either. He tells me, “You corny suburb nigga…” Then just as I was about to retort… I stopped. I thought. I then realized that I sounded like a fifth grader talking about this guy’s clothing and that I was lowering my standards of couth on account of this fucking imbecile. I realized that I had no reason to fight this dude, much less even talk to him, so I says, “Listen, dude. I don’t even fucking know you. Your ex and you can handle y’all’s psycho shit however you’d like. The fact is, she’s out with me. She chooses where she’s going. If she wants to go with you, so be it. Otherwise, be a man and except the decision she makes. And don’t say shit else to me. You wanna bring it to me? I’m right here.” Then I leaned back against the wall and sipped on Sapphire. Tone-Loc stared at me with the hatred that was formerly reserved for Judas. About ten seconds later, the girls came out. The South African girl comes over and hugs me and then grabs her drink. She was obviously doing her best not to cry. Sara walked over to Tone-Loc and they had their final words. He flicks his nose with his thumb again and walks over to me real fast and says even faster, “Homie. You better get a room. Cause if you go to her crib… I’m there. Guaranteed. Guaranteed.” Then he stepped off quick-like and walked up out of Kokopooli’s. I stood there in total disbelief. Like the altercations before, the girls would both dry their eyes like René & Angela, get another drink and ten minutes later they were acting as if nothing had happened. Not that I minded making out with Sara’s fine-ass, but damn…

As the girls were turning in the pool balls and rack, the bouncer came up to me. “What up fam?” he says as he gave me dap. “Chilling man, what’s up?” “Listen fam, it looks like you just trying to do your thing… I don’t really know that nigga like that, but this ain’t the first time he been tripping over that broad all up and down the block. That nigga pussy-whipped like whoa, fam. If I was you, I’d just leave out the back. You don’t never know what no pussy-whipped muthafucka is capable of.” Even though there are po-lice up and down the block nowadays on 18th Street, I did indeed heed the words of the brother and told the ladies that we’re going out the back. I grab the two of them and go through the kitchen doors and say, “Hola amigo” to the Salvadoreños and exit through the back door. I felt like I was taking the bitch way out, but maybe dude was right. As I’m walking, I’m finally realizing how drunk I am. I look at the ladies and from how they was walking I thought the road was forged from cobblestones. We walked about six blocks to this 2006 Jeep Liberty rental car I had at the time. I felt like I grew up off exit 6 on the Jersey Turnpike. We pile in with Sara riding shotgun and the South African girl in the rear middle like how kids do in back seat before you tell them to put their seatbelt on. I start driving around the area aimlessly as we crack jokes and watch the let out at the various bars on Columbia. “So ladies, where we gonna go? My house?” Sara asks, “What’s at your house?” “A hot tub,” I say, then make like the aforementioned René & Angela and smile. The South African girl claps twice and says, “Ooh! I love hot tubs!” Sara turns around and looks at her and says, “But I don’t have a bathing suit.” By way of the rear view mirror I could see the South African girl raise one eyebrow like Arnold Drummond and she tells Sara, “We’ll just go in the buff!” Oh God. This is perfect. I always say that if you can visualize something, set your sights on a precise goal, with enough perseverance, anything can come to fruition. Anything.

I feel the need to reiterate my drunkenness at this point. I wasn’t too drunk too drive, but I would have failed a Breathalyzer test for sure. Maybe that mere fact does make one too drunk to drive. Anyhow, on the way up Connecticut I spot a po-lice car behind me. To try and duck him I turn westbound through the neighborhoods of Cleveland Park. The po-lice keeps tailing me. “Fuck,” I think without realizing I’m thinking out loud, “I’ve got herb on me.” Sara puts her hand out and is like, “Give it to me.” Word up. Mami’s a rider, and I’m a roller. She takes my two grams of kind bud and does whatever she does with it. The South African girl puts her fingers in my mouth, and whereas I wouldn’t have had a problem with that had she washed her hands first, I didn’t think this was the time for kinky shit. After she removed her fingers there were two pennies in my mouth. “Suck on the pennies! The copper will kill the smell of alcohol.” I sucked on the pennies and tried very hard not to think that I have in my mouth the nastiest, most frequently found-on-the-ground coin in America. Fuck it. Between all these preparations for the police to pull me over, I had begun to think that maybe I wouldn’t get pulled over after all. The red and blue lights served as the idea bulb for that bright-ass thought. I gingerly pull over and sober-up like only getting pulled over by the po-lice can do a person. My ID was out and ready, as was the rental agreement. As I rolled down my window, the Park Po-liceman, who are federal po-lice with all the powers and privileges granted to feds, was walking up to my window with a Mag-lite whose light shifted between all of our heads. At the last possible second I remember to spit out the pennies. “Good morning sir.” “Good morning officer.” “Seems as if you sort of ran that last stop sign back there sir.” The po-lice shines the light in the car, first in my face, to which I immediately close my eyes, then he moves it to Sara in the front seat and the South African girl in the back seat. “No sir officer. I do not believe that I did. If so, I assure you that it was an accident.” “Have you had anything to drink sir?” “No officer. I’m Muslim.” The officer looks at me flummoxed and clicks a button and off goes his Mag-lite. “Excuse me?” “I am Muslim. It is haram for me to drink.” The po-lice asks, “Where were you on your way to?” Sara then chimes in at a surprisingly appropriate time, saying, “We were on the way to my apartment. It’s right on Massachusetts.” Massachusetts? I hadn’t even realized that I had driven so far out of the way of my house. The officer gives us a look in our pupils and says, “Alright. Just slow it down and be careful out here. The roads are slick.” “Yes sir, officer. Have a wonderful evening.” I wait for him to get in his car. He hits reverse and does a u-turn and I feel relief combined with an adrenaline rush at the same time my inebriation comes back. I got a God-awful head rush. I put the car into drive and pull off.

For whatever reason, I began to drive towards Sara’s house. It was about 4:30am and I figured that since we were closer to there I’d rather just get off the road for a minute, so I head towards Massachusetts Avenue NW. The girls were talking about how close a call that was and how much a fool I am for saying I was Muslim. Whatever. They see whatever they want to see and I know that, so when I can, I use that to my advantage. I look over at Sara who is still looking good as fuck and I grab her thigh and she puts her hand on top of mine. I remembered something so I ask her, “Hey. Where’d you put that reefer?” Embarrassed, she shrugs her shoulders and squeaks out, “In my… you know…” Yeah. I know now. You see, I was curious as to whether she just put it in her panties considering that she wasn’t going to get searched and that it was an insignificant amount of herb, or if she took it to the Nth level and jammed that jont all up in her puzzy. Like previously said, mami’s a rider. “Let me see it,” I realized a few hours too late that this girl enjoys being told what to do. She commences to reaching down the waistline of her jeans and poking her ass out. She squirms and shifts for a bit and like a rabbit out of a hat, she yanks a couple of grams out her coochie. I put my hand out like the call is for me and she puts the bag in my hand like a good girl. I flick my wrist to the left and the bag slaps me right under my nose and my nostrils flare and then constrict. The pussy smelt good. I liken it to the redolence of Jell-O. Hear me out. Take for instance, cherry flavored Jell-O. While it does taste like cherry, one never enters the house and is like, “Mmm, mmmm! Is that cherry Jell-O I smell?” Why? Because Jell-O, like pussy, shouldn’t smell up the room. But if one gets close enough to a fresh cherry Jell-O mold and cups one’s hand, using said hand to waft a feint breeze from the Jell-O mold towards one’s nose like a chemical in a test tube, they will indeed catch a slight whiff of cherry. The plastic bag had a very conservative aroma of pussy. Not that Massengill vinegar/chemical, too-clean-to-be-true smell, nor was it that rancid gust of wind that makes you do the Thizz face when you’re banging that thang out doggystyle. Just good, clean, natural pussy. Sara looked at me like smelling that bag was hyper sexy, and I knew right then and there that those panties just hit the dew point. I popped the bag in my mouth and sucked the muthafucka like the last bit of meat on a buffalo wing. Sara sits up, back erect in her seat, grabs my leg and says, “Let’s get home,” with a look of lust in her eyes. “That’s my building there, turn in up there to the right.”

After parking in the rear of her building we shake and wake up the South African girl. I grab my unopened fifth of Crown Royal as I figured we would probably drink some. We all stumble up to the main entrance with each of them on my arm. Using a credit card she gets in and we walk past an older Ethiopian gentleman working the door. He smiles and gives me a “thumbs up.” I smile back and hope he’s a soothsayer. We catch the elevator up to her floor and get off looking like we’ve been drinking for six hours straight. The first thing I noticed was that the walls were pink and the hallways were extraordinarily wide; like 16 feet across. “Yo. Why are these halls so wide?” Sara, walking sloppily, felt the need to turn around and walk backwards while looking at me to answer. “This place used to be an mental hospital.” The South African girl says, “You live in an insane asylum? I wouldn’t live here.” I silently agree. We get to the middle of the hall and turn left down a normally sized hallway. Her door was obviously the first one on the right, the one she was ungracefully waltzing towards while pulling her keys out of her purse. As we walked nearer to her door I noticed that it was directly opposite the stairwell door. I knew this because it had that small window in its frame. Sara is fidgeting with the lock for about twenty seconds, and the second she gets the door open, the stairwell door opens violently and out walks Tone-Loc. “I told you homie. I told you.” She tries to go in her house but he grabs her and walks her around the corner from where we just turned. I look over to the South African girl, who is crying once again. Then I hear a thud, as if someone just got her own body thrown against an asylum wall. The South African girl grabs my hand and says, “Come on. You have to leave. You are too good of a person to have to deal with this. That’s her choice.” She leads me back down the hall towards the elevator. At first I didn’t look, but then, like Orpheus, I had to. Sara was on the ground in a fetal position while Tone-Loc stood over her inflicting more Guantanamo Bay-esque physical and psychological torture. The elevator door opened and I did my best to erase the image. As me and the South African girl descended, she held on to me and cried horrendously. We walked past the Ethiopian gentleman and he throws up his arms like, “What happened?” I shoot back a look like, “I have no idea.” She walked me out to my rental car and took both of my hands and stared at me for a few seconds. She then lets my left hand go and grabs my face and brings it down to her mouth and we start kissing passionately as fuck. I bring her next to me and start holding her tighter than I should have. I got lost in her mouth for minutes. I could taste the salt of her tears, as she didn’t stop crying the whole time we were kissing. I grabbed her by her thin waist and she leaned back and wiped the tears from her face. She looked at me as if she had done me emotional harm, said “Goodbye,” turned around and walked slowly back to the apartment building. I stood there for what had to have been three minutes. A voice that wasn’t mine told me that it was time to go home.

It’s about 5:21am. I’m back at my house sitting in my boxers watching the Travel Channel, rolling a joint and slowly sipping on that Crown Royal. It was the cheapest form of escapism I could muster at that given moment. I was wondering how a dude as corny as Anthony Bourdain could get his own television show when my thoughts did a u-turn back to the evening’s earlier madness. A feeling of sympathy started to take over my consciousness. I began to think of Sara, and even though I wanted nothing to do with her again in life, I felt compelled to know that she was at least breathing. Part of it stemmed from my curiosity and the need to know the ending. I grabbed my iPhone and called up Sara with intentions of only checking as to her safety. One ring, two ring, call connects, and instead of the sweet female voice I expected, I got Tone Loc. “Damn homie. You hard pressed for pussy tonight.” I cackled out loud from double entendre. Firstly, I was pissed because he actually got me pretty good, I hadn’t heard the term “hard-pressed” in years and his mercurial tongue delivered it perfectly. This guy deserved to be in films. Secondly, I couldn’t believe he had the nerve to bill me as the one hard-pressed for pussy, as he was the guy who was just standing in a stairwell for an hour, waiting for the broad who dumped him to get home so that he could abuse her. I told him this much, and he says, “Yeah, well. I’m over here and you’re there.” Then he hangs up. Son of a bitch. Hell no. I call back. Dude picks up and hangs right back up. I call back. Same thing. Repeat process twelve times and finally say, “Fuck it.” I lit up the joint and watched Bourdain make his way through Cleveland, and had to give him one prop for actually going to the Hot Sauce Williams on Carnegie Avenue. As I’m sipping Canadian whiskey I hear “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog”; my ringtone. The caller ID tells me that it’s Sara. I look from the phone to that place I always look when I know I’m about to do something I shouldn’t, then back to the iPhone, and say “Fuck it” again and answer the phone. “Hello?” The quick lip of Tone Loc blesses my ears once again. “Yeah homie. That bitch called the feds on a nigga. You can go back over there if you want. See homie, that’s my babygirl of two years. I ain’t gonna just let the bitch go like that. Aight homie, I’ll get up wit’choo.” Click. I flared my nostrils and frown, sipped some whiskey, re-lit my joint, turned the station to TV Land, got into the episode of Cheers that was already in progress and wondered if old Sammy Malone ever dealt with shit like this while compiling that legendary black book of his.

Fuck Brian McKnight...

The Gods of basketball come down from high and grace us mere mortals with an extravaganza of unparalleled athleticism every February. The NBA All Star Game is, by far, the most entertaining of any All-Star events. The players that represent the Eastern and Western conference are the elite of their league, chosen by a ballot less vicarious and more democratic than the one used to elect America’s politicians. The actual game is the least important of the weekend’s festivities; the following Monday, mere mortals are talking about the dunk that made an entire arena rise to its feet and say, “Oooooh!!!!” The All-Star Game runs in tandem with the debauchery of All-Star Weekend. The stars and comets of entertainment, fashion and music collide and create a supernova of celebration. As the word travels throughout the host city, people prepare for a party like one they have never been privy to. The men get vined to the nines knowing that the women will be out in crazy force, looking far sexier than they normally do. The women are primping and preening to perfection, for there is chance, albeit less-statistically advantageous than winning the lotto, some of these women, those considered propitious, may get shined upon by God himself and meet one of the patron saints of promiscuity and become impregnated with the seed of Shawn Kemp and give birth to a demigod; thus insuring financial stability for all eternity. A weekend in which everyone is looking for the stars and hoping for a million dollars, all result from a game that doesn’t count towards the lifetime statistics of the athletes. In 1997, this entity manifested itself in the only city to never fully recover from the Great Depression… Cleveland, Ohio.

On Friday, February 7, 1997 I was in Viking Hall ironing some garbardine wool slacks and a silk and cotton Polo shirt. Myself and my Pittsburghian roommate J-Akshun, B-Roc, Mike Diesel and Logan the Shogun were pre-gaming in our room, which served as the unofficial headquarters for all things fun that took place in Viking Hall. While drinking some Bombay Sapphire and blowing some herb we pondered how fucking excessive this shit was going to be, for we young Clevelanders had never seen an influx of tourists to our rust-belt city. The east coast constituency, consisting of Sean Corleone and Moe Murda, were getting ready as well and announced they would link up soon. The Primate Foundation was on their way down from Shaker Heights. The presence of the Primates always guaranteed two things: our dorm room would definitely end up fucked up and the night on the town would be nothing less than impetuous. Our homegirls, Erica and Janice were putting the finishing touches on their respective fine-asses and we agreed that we would all meet up in their room in about an hour to really get bout it and leave from there. Janice and Erica were the link to the harder, white-boy drugs and they had an ounce of shrooms on the way which eight people had all bought an eighth of. It was to be my first experience with the drug. I had a knot in my stomach from anticipation. The stars were out and the constellations were perfectly aligned in Cleveland this weekend. I envisioned the Belt of Orion with myself playing the Alnilam between Queen Latifah’s Alnitak and Monie Love’s Mintaka. Ladies’ First. Yes? Yes.

I asked B-Roc if he could get the knock at the door since I was putting the crease in the sleeve of my shirt. I heard the door open and heard B-Roc say, “What up girl?” The voice of the young lady who replied made my stomach knot up even worse than before; to the degree that I could have shit myself. I knew exactly who it was without even having to turn around. I knew everything except for the one thing that mattered to know about the girl. Her name was Lissette. I was utterly fascinated with her. I met her the first week of the academic year at the dorm’s mixer. I thought her to be the most exotic thing I had ever had the privilege of gazing at. Lissette was 4’11”, and although miniature in height, as she said succinctly while grinding her ass into my crotch at said dorm mixer, “I’m little, but nothing else on me is little.” Fuckin’ A right. Her ass had its own personality. I used to waste time talking about some fairly meaningless shit just to keep her within my ken. She hailed from Youngstown, about an hour and twenty minutes southeast of Cleveland, which is an extremely gangster town considering its small population. I was 21 at the time and was not game tight, at least not in the vicinity of this little Puerto Rican vixen. We used to flirt to a degree that all of my homies would frequently ask had I hit that yet. An unwritten rule of life is that one can never lie on their dick, so I would always make a Thizz face and say, “Naw.” It must have been the fact that she resonated with my paradigm of beauty and that caused me to always nut up in the fourth quarter. A choked-up Chad is a rare sight to see, but my crew saw it every time this fine-ass broad walked on air around me. After I put that crease in my shirt I walked Lissette down to her room. She lived about five doors down from us in her own room at the end of the hall. She wanted to know my plans and whether or not we’d get to chill and take some pictures later. I told her that we had a few clubs that we planned to go to, posse deep, other than that, we would, as usual, play it by ear. Her and her girls had gotten tickets to some high-profile party that was sure to have those stars present. I was a bit jealous, as I always was when I heard things like that from her. I wanted her to say, “Chad. Fuck this star-studded bullshit. I just want to be with you, Papi. Take me now.” She ain’t say that shit though. She asked if she and her crew could come by in a few and smoke one with us before they headed out for the evening. I never said no to this girl. Wasn’t about to start. “Of course.” For whatever reason I mentioned to Lissette that we were all waiting for shrooms. She looked at me like a fiend of sorts. “Chad. Why do want to do that shit? You know I worry about you when you get too fucked up.” I thought to myself that maybe if I get fucking bonkers out of my gourd, I would be able to knock on her door ultra-late and she’d nurse me back to sanity as I laid in her buxom bosom drooling. I smiled and said that I’d see her down at my room in a bit.

J-Akshun was the host with the most. Admittedly, he was a hubristic asshole, but he did know how to make the ladies feel comfortable. We had the drinks and L’s rotating and Lissette and her crew were looking stunning. J-Akshun started to take some flicks of all the party people. I had just opened the bathroom door, nearly dressed and Lissette tells me how handsome I look. I tell her to come keep me company as I put the finishing touches on in the mirror. “Wow, Chad. You really look nice.” She said it like every other time she saw me I looked like a vagabond. We get to looking at each other in the mirror with that stare that goes about six seconds too long and ends in an awkward silence. J-Akshun busts in and is like, “Yo. Family. Y’all need a picture. I was feeling excellent so I swooped Lissette off her feet and held her like an injured dog and strike a pose. J-Akshun says, “We some more ambiance.” He then reaches behind me and turns on the shower and says, “Yeeeeeeeeaaaahh,” whiling pumping one fist. My drunk-ass kisses this fine chick on the cheek and feel honored for the opportunity. Click. Life is just a moment in time.

Lissette’s posse leaves for their gala extravaganza, so we figured it was time to get busy ourselves. Up to Janice’s and Erica’s room we go. When we arrived the Primates were already there. M-Double-A-L was getting his game on Janice’s fly-ass. Janice was quite the specimen. She hailed from Columbus, Ohio and was one of the few women I knew that looked amazing with her hair cut extremely short. No bald-headed-hoe here, just a beautiful, dark-skinned young lady with an impeccable wit and infectious laughter. She was like a dude to me. Not in mannerisms, rather in spirit. Erica was also very gorgeous and had some rather shapely legs. She used to have a donkey-ass, but lost the majority of it when she began to exercise regularly. She still was pretty, but that former ass of hers was unearthly. I was always curious as to how good she was in bed, she had an inexplicable sex appeal, but I considered her a friend and never tried to go any further with that. Sucker. I also thought that she had a thing for white guys as her previous boyfriend was this wigger-dude that was always waiting for her outside the dorm no matter what time it was. Janice gives me my eighth and tells me to gobble them down because she and Erica were already on one. Never having tasted psychedelic mushrooms before I assumed they would taste like non-psychedelic ones. I popped some into mouth and started chewing, almost gagged and heard the family feud buzzer in my mind, for I was wrong as fuck. “These taste like shit,” I says. Chuck Dukie was crushing them up and downing them with orange juice and suggested that I do the same so that I wouldn’t have to chew them and get that disgusting flavor. I had brought up my fifth of Bombay Sapphire and started taking slugs from it while I waited for the effects to kick in.

Our crew was posse deep as fuck. There were about twenty people in Janice’s and Erica’s room. Janice was pumping Dancehall, as she always does, and I was talking with Erica as everyone else in the room was entertaining themselves and each other. About forty minutes after I swallowed the shrooms I began to see random sparkles of light all around me. I had only been privy to drunkenness and the high one gets from reefer, so this shroom shit was sort of freaking me out. I couldn’t stop yawning or keep my right leg from shaking uncontrollably. Life just didn’t seem quite right. Erica puts her hand on my leg and says, “Just relax and let it do what it does.” I looked her in her gorgeous green eyes and her light-skinned ass glowed radiantly like gold bullion and she began to look like a princess to me. Janice screams, “Y’all trying to watch a movie?” Everyone said, “Sure.” I didn’t say anything because the sparkles that I had initially seen started changing into Will O’ the Wisps. The fairies were floating around me and kept saying evil shit like, “Tonight you meet your doom, fatman.” My hands felt covered in glycerin and I began to sweat baby oil profusely, but Erica told me that I wasn’t sweating at all. I believed her only because she was now the princess, and I, like Super Mario, had a mission to rescue the princess.

In our dorm was this flaming gay guy who would walk Prospect Avenue at night in drag and turn tricks. Janice was sort of a fag hag, so this guy was often times in her room chilling and he’d leave a lot of his belongings, mostly his dresses and makeup, in there. This I remembered later. Janice puts an unlabeled VHS tape into the VCR and presses play. Everyone is either drunk and/or high off of reefer and/or shrooms, so all attention was on the TV. The TV shows a headshot of a man with his neck back and his eyes closed with his mouth open in ecstasy. Because I’ve been sucked off before I knew the dude was getting head. A couple of other detectives in the room figured this out about the same time that I did and one yelled with joy, “Hell yeah, nigga! I love head!” The TV then cut to a shot of the genetalia region. It took about 1.2 seconds for us all to realize that the muthafucka administering head had a mustache. “Arrrrrrgh!!” “Janice!!” “What the fuck?” “Turn that faggot shit off!!!” It was taking all I could muster to keep from hurling up the shrooms and this only made the sensation worse. I thought I was going insane. Those fucking Will O' the God-damned-Wisps came back with crazy force and I then felt reality shift. No better way to explain it. Sounds were distinct yet indecipherable. This must be what Matt Murdoch feels like. That Dancehall shit was driving me fucking bonkers too. After thirty minutes of that shit when I'm sober, I get queasy. Buju Banton was about to make me throw the fuck up. I had to get some fresh air and escape from humans.

The elevator was taking for ever to come. I saw the view of downtown Cleveland from east of it, the only way one should see it. The city looked grandiose. Regal even. There were lights going through the air calling Batman, bouncing off of skyscrapers comprised of ice with aurora borealis behind that. The elevator hated on me while I was in my zone, so I got on it and took it to the first floor and it felt like the first time I had ever been in the building. But if this was the first that I was in the building, then how did I get inside in the first place? Wait. None of this makes any sense. Stop. Did I bring that bottle of Bombay with me? Yes. Can’t I get arrested for this? Stop thinking. I exited Viking Hall and walked to our next door bar and pizzeria, the Rascal House. I bypassed the front counter, said hello to the guy that is always there and walked down the hall to the left past pinball machines and more contemporary video games, and halfway up said hall, turned into the bathroom. I turned on the faucet and it played “Baby Come Back” instead of emitting water. I turned off the faucet, the song stopped. But hold up. That song's the shit. Turn the faucet back on. “Doin' anything just to get you offa my mi-hiiiind.” I then looked in a dirty-ass mirror and told my reflection that, “I’m way too fucked up. I can’t do this.” My reflection answered back, “Quit being a bitch, nigga. This is All-Star Weekend. Get out there and find Queen Latifah. Take the good Will O’ the Wisp with you. That nigga got your back.” I looked to the left and saw a Wisp floating like a harrier. The faucet said, "All day long, wearing a mask of false bravado..." Then I looked at my reflection and said, “Thanks, man.” My reflection nodded his chin up and said, “Aight, my nigga. Be safe.” I turned off the faucet and left the Rascal House bathroom and walked, making very little noise, back to Janice’s room. Erica was like, “Where did you go?” I reply, “I had to talk to a wise man. I'm good. Take my arm.” She grabs my arm. The posse organizes as Janice announces that our cabs were out front.

I left Viking Hall and walked out to Fashion Avenue. I had to have been in New York City. There was absolutely no fucking way that Cleveland would ever be this exciting, populated and festive. Half men with the lower torsos of limousines were riding up and down Euclid Avenue leaving streams of baller’s champagne behind them. Myself, the Will O’ the Wisp, Chuck Dukie, Janice and Erica got into a taxi and sat in silence as we inched our way towards the Flats. It sounded like somebody died, which was appropriate since I was certain that someone, somewhere had died. "Up early in the morning, dressed in black..." I yawned and closed my eyes and when I opened them we were standing in line on some stairs in a narrow diagonal hallway. I felt like I was in an M.C. Escher. “Where are we?” I ask Janice who became the leader as she was the only one of us who had been on this crazy hallucinogen many times before. “I don’t know. Some club in the Flats.” I took a slug from my talisman and then I felt my psyche drop a level further into inebriatorial limbo. The stairs never seemed to stop until they actually did. Can’t stop. Won’t stop. The ladies got in without getting frisked by the sentry, who looked like a mutant wildebeest to me. Chuck got frisked and in, then comes my turn. “I don’t want you touching me,” I tell the wildebeest and he gives a look that would have punked Medusa, so I temporarily transform into a scarecrow and he pats me down, somehow not noticing the powerful talisman that only those gifted enough can lift. Once I change back to my Chad B. form he grants me entry. I go over to Chuck and say, “Yo. Why couldn’t he see this shit?” pointing at the talisman. Chuck grabs the bottle and takes a slug of elixir, smiles and says, “Because, nigga. It’s invisible.” We cackle loudly then agree to traverse the club and look for the queen. I knew she was there. Where? It doesn’t matter. The thrill of the hunt is all that matters. I see a woman whose breasts were growing out of her dress at a phenomenal rate. She said something to me that sounded like alien information. I can’t comprehend alien language, woman. I paid it no heed and told her, “I’m looking for the queen.” She tells me that she’s a Nubian queen and takes my hand and leads me to the center of a creature made up of arms, legs and human heads and it’s having an orgy with itself. We get sucked into it like Kaori into the mutating Tetsuo. "Hoes with no clothes, sho [lust]" was like a spiritual at a bacchanal. I almost became one with the creature, but was saved by a yearning for the elixir. I yawn and close my eyes and this time we are all out in the front of the club and Janice is hailing another cab. Hopefully this time, the cab can fly like the DeLorean at the end of Back to the Future so that we don’t have to sit in silence, mourning dead homiez too long.

I asked the cab driver if he could fly over to the west bank of the flats to save time. He called me crazy. I then wondered if I was indeed crazy. The Will O’ the Wisp, who said I could call him ‘Will’ now since we had become cool, guaranteed that I was sane, merely hallucinating. That’s reassuring. I thought I'd have to think like this forevermore. We crossed the Cuyahoga River, which I thought should have been burning, but then I realized that it wasn’t July 22, 1969. If it were, I would have been wearing a “Free Huey” pin. Damn that’s fucked up what Cointelpro did to the Panthers. “Chad! Get out the cab!” My bad, Erica. Shit. Save that aggression for our real enemy. We had arrived at the Powerhouse entertainment complex. Most of the Primates were there already as was my good friend Dru Haze. Dru Haze was the keymaster; he could talk his way into a Japanese brothel and leave his shoes on. He tells me to follow him. Word up, Moses. We walk upstairs past a line of people dressed in clothes that looked like they wouldn’t want to be in the same room with my clothes. Racist clothing. “Nigga! Come on!” Dru waves me into this fantastic ballroom with hordes of beautiful people who all seemed to be looking at me. Dru starts to work the crowd so I bite his idea. I notice that every guy in this ballroom is tall as fuck and then it hits me. I’m in Olympus. Dru Haze has gotten us in amongst the Gods and Goddesses. Impressive. I headed over to the bar to get something different than the elixir I had been consuming. I needed a different flavor. The bartender says, “Can I help you?” I yawned for four seconds and then told her, “Yeah. I would like something that tastes like something that a star would drink.” She laughs and says, “Will a Long Island do?” “Sure,” I say. “My family is from Long Island.” I take a slug from the talisman while waiting for my flight to Long Island. Amityville. De La Soul. Brentwood. EPMD. I ain't never been to the Hamptons. I think they have clothes like these people have and they don’t like my clothes. I get poked in the arm and hear, “How did you get that bottle in here?” I look to the side that got poked, my right side, the positive side, and see a Goddess. Whoa. It can’t be. It’s not real. Will tells me it is indeed real and that my doppelganger ain’t no lie. Completely in awe, the only thing that my mind allowed me to say was, “Queen L-a-t-i-f-a-h in command?” Her royal badness smiled and said, “None other.” I realized that since I was in Olympus it would be to my benefit to go undercover and act as if I too was one of the Gods. “So who are you?” At that moment the bartender gives me my flight to Long Island and I feel compelled to give her a tip, so I dig into my pocket and tip four dollars too much. Then as I’m double fisting a talisman and a Long Island, I tell Latifah, “I’m Chad B.” She then wrinkles her brow like she’s looking at the horizon, but she's looking me right in the face. That confused me, for I wasn’t in the horizon. “Am I too far away?” Queen Latifah was like, “Nah. I’m just looking at your pupils. What drug are you on?” I lean next to her ear and very clandestinely tell her, “A very, very awful one. I think I’m losing my mind.” Then me, my talisman, Long Island and Will leave the ballroom. I tire of the emperor’s clothes.

I’m in another taxi. Fuck that. If Cleveland can be Manhattan for a weekend then surely this taxi can be a DeLorean for my trip home. I'm in a DeLorean. It's just me and Will. I felt myself drop a level deeper towards insanity and asked Will, “When the fuck does this shit stop?” Will tells me, “It lasts for about eight hours.” My temporal awareness was all fucked up, so I ask Will how long have I been on this shit?” “About five hours. You know I’m about to leave?” “What? Why man?” “That’s just how it is. What you have to do, I can’t be there. You do know what you have to do, right?” I shook my head “Yeah,” and then Will phased through the roof of the DeLorean and I never saw it again. I get dropped off at Viking Hall and I exchanged money for his services. I felt cheap for eight seconds and then I got over it. Back in my room was J-Akshun, Corleone and Moe Murda all discussing what they ended up doing that evening. I finally was beginning to return to the land of those that think sane, but I was still having strange thoughts of the evil that men do, or maybe that was just me reacting to having met Queen Latifah. I began to ponder if I had actually met her or not. It could have been a doppelganger like the one I saw of myself in the Rascal House bathroom. Everyone’s banter was fucking with my sanity, for I remembered that they weren’t on shrooms like me. This could result in some serious shit. There was really only one place I felt as if I would feel comfortable, so I left the East Coast constituency. I then remembered that none of those guys were actually from New York. I was hitting the elixir as I boned out.

Close my door, turn right, take about sixteen normal-sized steps, stop, turn right 90 degrees, knock. The shrooms were making me quantify my every movement. This drug was honestly better when I was completely out of my mind. Coming down just made me think too much, which I do anyhow. Paralysis via analysis. The door opened, which shocked me because I forgot that I had knocked. Lissette was standing with half of her body hid behind the door which was cracked at a 64 degree angle. The first thing I noticed were her feet. God damn your feet are pretty as fuck. She really did walk on air. My eyes drove the parkway of her short, shapely leg; I got held up around her calve area though. She looked as if she ran sprints or played field hockey. But I knew she had only been a cheerleader. Fuck cheerleaders. By the time I finally looked her in the eye I had a vision of her in a one-piece white negligee that when I looked back down, I saw was reality. “Hey Chad. Come in.” She led the way into her extremely clean dorm room and I got the best shot possible of her ass cheeks cupping as she walked six steps to her bed. She slaps the bed twice and says, “Sit down.” I kick my shoes off and sprawl out across 62% of her bed. I’m big and the dormitory twins are fairly small. I offer her some Bombay and she swiftly uses her hand to say, "No thanks." She started rambling on about her night. I’m not listening at all. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her exquisitely shaped legs. I caught her catching me ogling. She looks me in the eye and says, “My skin is really smooth.” She grabs my hand and puts it on her thigh and I follow her lead and squeeze and feel nothing but silk with firm muscle behind it. It was indeed the smoothest skin that I have ever felt in my entire life. I wondered if it was really that her skin was that smooth or was it the shrooms or a combination thereof. “Stop Chad. That tickles,” she says, so I stop and digress back into talking.

She wanted to know which famous people I ran into that night, if any. “A lot of tall guys who I suppose were basketball players. I did meet Queen Latifah though.” “What? I love Queen Latifah! Is she just as pretty in person?” I tell her yeah, the queen is the shit. Lissette then one ups my celebrity sighting with a paparazzi picture worth way more than mine. “That party we were at, you’ll never guess who came up and talked to me.” I guess this was my clue to guess. I hate guessing. “I don’t know. Shawn Kemp?” She frowned up her face and was like, “Ew. No. Guess again.” I discovered guessing is even worse when one is coming down from shrooms. In the interests both of being a good sport, and trying to get some pussy, I say, “Kwamé.” She laughs and is like, “No. Not a rapper.” “I don’t know girl. I’m really not in the mindstate to be guessing shit right now.” “Brian McKnight." To this day I think I missed my cue to respond. "Brian McKnight came up to me and bought me a drink. Can you believe it?” Fuck yeah, I can believe it. Grammy-winning Mr. McKnight sees a young Puerto Rican college-aged fox like you and thinks to himself, “Damn. Her little ass is fat as fuck. Maybe my status can bag this one without me even as much as biting my bottom lip.” At that moment I considered myself in competition with a man with the nickname, “Vocal Sex.” Fuck that. I had put in far too many hours and paid $20 for these shrooms. That night had to go perfect. So yeah, not to hate, but fuck you Brian McKnight. You’ve got it all; the successful career, the golden voice, the chiseled pretty-boy looks, Grammys, the wind blowing your shirt in your video... What have I got? Nothing. Nothing except for the fact that I’m here with this pretty-ass college girl instead of you and the fact that I’m going to win for once in my life. Ain’t that guy fucking married anyway? I had to change the topic from Brian McKnight quick. I saw her nipples getting hard just from talking about the dude. Fuck it. Brian done warmed it up for you, make it broil, Bilyeu. “Lissette. I can’t believe how fucking good you look.” Then I gave her the tuxedo once-over. Her eyes got really big like no one had ever told her that and did they eyes like that at the same time before. “I think you are so handsome, Chad. It just doesn’t seem like you want me.” Then she looked down and pouted. I didn’t say shit else, I leaned over her from behind and started to kiss her neck slowly and cautiously as I grabbed her legs tight like I did before. She angled her neck up and grabbed the back of my head and moved it towards her mouth and kissed me like she’d really been waiting for too long to do so. There was no thought, at least not on my part, and little sound other than her feint gasps of ecstasy and the sound of me slurping her down. Me eating a hot bowl of chili probably sounded about the same. I started exploring parts of her body that I had previously only pondered and put on pedestals. The shrooms were keeping me cool and in control. I could tell she was impressed by my ability to lead after being so coy for so long. Her breathing was getting carnal and her manner more voracious… for [lust]. I had finally gotten past the point that she was too good looking for me and then entered into the realm of “I’m about to knock the dust off this pussy.” Just as I had a hand cupped on her inner thigh, about to check her humidity, the phone rang. I stopped licking her down, watched her look at the phone, then me, and then pick it up. “Hello?” All the while I’m laying next to the this fine-ass Latina waiting for her to hang up the receiver so we can continue exactly what it was that we was into, or rather that which I was not quite into, yet. I didn’t pay any heed to her conversation until I heard, “Hold on one minute.” Lissette then, looking disheveled with one titty out of her negligee, tells me, “Oh my God. Chad. It’s Brian McKnight.” Then she starts jumping on the bed like I used to think teenage girls did daily. I’m still laying on the bed and while I was appreciating the asscheek and neathage views, I felt nothing but disgust. I get up and start straightening up my outfit and grab my faithful talisman. Lissette was on the phone with Brian McKnight talking about whatever things superstar R&B singers and college-aged women talk about. I slipped my shoes on and headed towards the door. As I was on my way out the door I heard Lissette yell out, “Wait! Chad! Don’t Leave!” Fuck that. I was already gone.

I went up to Janice and Erica’s room. Janice was sleep but Erica was wide awake. We finished the Bombay and smoked a spliff to help with the coming down of the shrooms. As we watched informercials, Erica revealed her attraction for me. We started to make out and she told me that I smelled like a woman. I told her I had no idea what she was talking about. Erica adamantly refused to do any penetrative sex until we both got tested for cooties. I wasn’t mad since she gave me the best handjob I ever had in life. By the end of that weekend, she became my girlfriend and remained so for about 18 months or so. I guess I rescued the princess, indeed. In August 1998 I moved to DC to attend Howard University. On one of our many reconnaissance missions to the female floors in our dorm, I heard this one girl playing some sappy-ass shit real loud. “Who’s that you listening to?” She tells me "Brian McKnight." I stopped and listened to the lyrics and discovered that that pretty muthafucka McKnight wrote that “Anytime” song specifically for Lissette. "You like it?" I look at the girl like she's the messenger that's finsta get slayed and say, "Naw. Fuck that pretty muthafucka."

Hate all you'd like Chad... "Anytime" was the shit, and I'm sure Lissette is still fine as fuck. Here's to short women...

The Intangibles... Plexiglass... Liner Notes...

The group formed in a rather odd way. It's somewhat a fateful, act of God-sort-of affair. Me, Chad B., or Onasuss Maximus the Antagonist when rhyming, met the Grand Glorious Chuck Dukie, secret identity Charles, in 1983 on a street called Sudbury in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Chuck was the dude I knew to start rhyming first; circa 1993. We would freestyle purely for fun before that, but no one really started seriously rhyming until Chuck met the Primates at Shaker Heights High School. BLG, Reno Raynes, Sciencimatic, M-Double-A-L, Tha Nigga K, and shortly after, Dukie himself. Those dudes were all tight on the rhymes and we became real cool. They were the impetus to start Chuck rhyming. Chuck got a four-track and the Gemini mixer with the four sample banks as his first studio. You had to be precise with that thing. No waveform to view on a computer screen for ease of looping minus the pop. His dad had all of the old school hits, so Chuck got to digging. Looking to upgrade, Chuck worked mad hours at a gas station to get a MPC2000. On that machine, the boy got really busy making some ahead of his time hits. Chuck Dukie's demo is a bona fide classic. I lived down at the dorm at Cleveland State and we had mad MCs too. B-Roc and Black Male as 2/3 of Mental Ka$e, J-Akshun and Sean Corleone as Mental Chess, Crazy Steve the Barber, Rich London and those T-Dot boys, the Evildoers, Rafeeq Washington and a gang of others, myself included, were on some freestyle dojo shit. It really worked to hone the skills as we would go up to Mekkah Sunshine's radio show on WCSB and freestyle almost every weekend. We'd also steal a shitload of records. We were really on some Hip-Hop shit keeping it real as fuck at the time. I ended up moving to Washington, DC in 1998 to go to Howard University, the real HU, as an exchange student for a year. I get there and meet a gang of muthafuckas that, while weren't necessarily really trying to be MCs and pursue careers as rappers, loved to fucking freestyle and were quite good at it. Chris Adams is a freestyle dynamo and observant comedic asshole all in one. He is definitely the wrong dude to battle. Rob Bacon, CJ, Kevin, and a slew of mostly New York dudes would be in front of Slowe Hall on some serious rhyming shit. Because Howard is so international, you had to be on it, cause you were really representing your city. I came with the polished mercurial tongue from Cleveland; ask if you doubt me, step if you see me. I remember the homie Eric from Belgium would flip it in French and in Anglish. Howard also served as a serious rhyme dojo. One day, this one dude from Cincinnati who I had seen around often but never really conversed at length with, Jabari, jumped in the cipher and came quite tight. I was shocked cause he really ain't look or seem like the MC type. Dude was too magnanimous for that ego-driven role. I dapped him up and we stayed in touch. Instead of going back to Cleveland at the end of the academic year I decided to stay in DC. I had a decent job at George Mason and was able to stack a few, so I purchased a 61-key Triton and went to work on the beats. I randomly ran into Jabari on the streets and he says that he had been thinking of getting some equipment himself. Me and him ended up doing some song called "Throat Punches" which was horrible and stupid, but by making it we learned that we did work well together. After coming over and checking out my Triton, he went and got the 88-key Triton. Baller. Chuck Dukie moved out to DC in 2002 in the apartment I was staying at in Landover, MD at the time. We lived right in King's Square and it was perfect for making music since no one ever called the police. Chuck's MPC wasn't working properly, but he was quick to learn the Triton. Chuck and Jabari got along cool, so we decided we should all start the band up. The name "The Intangibles" was inspired by the philosophies of MC Hammer, as we, like he, knew ourselves unable to be touched. A funny thing was that Jabari himself really never had a rap name. At first he was "Legend", but that lasted for like, 3 weeks. Then he became "Hot Merchandise" or "The Hot Merchant," both of which I thought were dope, but he never kept to those. It's not of much consequence as he never says his name on the whole album anyway. As I stated previously, the guy's way too humble to be an MC. The original plan was to make a song a week, but that turned into a song every two months or so. We did however, record many beats, but just proved too lazy to record vocals. When we did do the tracks, our ritual was to get some decent vodka, usually Stolichnaya, and some cranberry juice and like mulattoes, mix 'em. Our rule concerning vocals was one take. No punch-in bullshit. If you couldn't spit the rhyme then you had to adjust it accordingly until you could. Imagine how this could hinder an MC on stage attempting to spit rhymes one hasn't the dexterity of tongue to say. As we got drunker, this could often result in many takes. Chuck had the record with 58. Sometimes the liquor worked perfectly as was the case on the song "Hooch." After we completed a track we'd record it to MiniDisc and go out. The usual location to party was Adams Morgan. The Common Share (R.I.P.) mostly. On rare occasions we'd hit up Dream. We never really pushed the album even though most people seemed to like it. We almost did it. Husky Records, was a legal entity, we were ready to go, but like so many other farts in the breeze, it didn't amount to shit. When I went to Tokyo in 2002, I passed out about 200 CDs for free, so maybe we're large over there as I haven't been back since and wouldn't know. We are though, a hit in Saipan. I moved into DC and everyone just seemed to get busy with life and kinda said "the hell with the rap game." Such is life. We're all still real cool though, and all in DC at the moment. Who knows? Maybe we'll start the band back up...

Anyhow... Download the album, Plexiglass, here, and then check the track-by-track notes below...

"Hooch" Produced by Anachronus

To make the track I chopped up and pitched down parts of the Persuaders' "Love's Gonna Catch Up (And Walk Out)." It was made on a Triton, as were most of our beats. I wanted for us to make a cut concerning alcohol, but the point was to be brutally honest about the effects of the drug and the asshole-shit we are prone to doing while under the influence thereof. The final product satisfied my original plan, and I thought we personified alcoholism as well as any Hip-Hop song I have heard before or since. This is probably due to the fact we were extra drunk off of Stoli and cranberry the day we laid the track down. The drunk fellow doing the intro, chorus and outro was our downstairs neighbor, Wes. Wes had a large family and used to come up to me and Chuck's apartment to escape the fam for a spell, have a beer, a smoke and philosophize. He came up once while I was laying the beat down on Pro Tools. I miked him up and let him chat shit over the beat, which I then later chopped up into the intro, chorus and outro you heard. There is also an alternate version of this song with DJ Reemycks on the cut, but I didn't use it as the primary one here only because it is a little low in volume.

"Fox In Socks" Produced by Redfoot Jones

Jabari banged out this dope beat and came to me and Chuck with the concept to flip real quick 4-bar rhymes using the same word over and rhyming the surrounding words. We had no idea that in a couple of years that all these lil' young rappers would begin to do this all the time. Sorry. No unifying theme other than the rhyme structure, so everyone was free to be their own respective asshole self. This track went without a chorus for quite sometime. I believe that Chuck and Jabari thought up the chorus you hear and laid it down in my absence. I personally think the chorus is great and resonates with the title perfectly. "We write and jot, for tykes and tots. The game we spit, is the game we got. Your game ain't shit. We claiming spots. They say you hot, but we know you not." Dr. Seuss would have smirked. That's the homie Kevin doing the intro with his weird-ass Trinidad/London/Chicago amalgamation of an accent.

"Tedious" Produced by The Grand Glorious Chuck Dukie

Chuck called this beat "Tedious" as a comment regarding the process of recording from the Triton to Pro Tools. Like most of Chuck's beats, this beat has an evil tinge to it. Unlike most of Chuck's beats, this one had no samples. Chuck's primary instrument was the MPC2000, but at the time his Zip drive wasn't working, so he started to bang shit out on my Triton. The lyrics matched the evil aura perfectly. My rhyme was basically about me as the angel of death. Jabari has the gall to challenge perpetrators and God in his verse. Chuck comes the fuck off on this. I always thought Chuck to be the best lyricist out of all of us. The dude is a natural. "Pipe bomb at the address. It said C.O.D., and you paid for it." C'mon man. That's dope. Listen and tell me I'm wrong. The little kid at the end of the verses is Jabari's little brother (little brother as in the Little Brother/Big Brother program) doing his DC Errea thang. I don't think Chuck really wanted him on the song. Whatever. We write and jot for tykes and tots; or so we claim.

"Fiefdom" Produced by Anachronus

The samples came from some Chinese film, Triton drums and a lot of sounds from Portishead's website. We usually came off on the album as some carefree hedonists, but we all actually read from time to time. Tired of having our race card trumped by white privilege, we decided to voice our aggressions on this cut. The homie B-Roc came down for the weekend from the Land to lay down a verse. Everyone was on point on some pro-Black shit. It took us for ever to lay down the chorus as everyone sort of did it their own way, and not exactly as Jabari had originally intended. Jabari was usually the one able to formulate choruses best.

"Rubix" Produced by Redfoot Jones

One of our more upbeat songs. Jabari wanted for us to write a rhyme about how people try to figure you out but have no idea who you truly are or what you've been through. A very no-frills song. No chorus or adlibs. Just three 16s one after another. Something I consider to be a cop out on our part.

"In the Club" Produced by Redfoot Jones

We made this song way before 50 Cent did his club song. This was our closest thing to a club-banger. Jabari was playing this beat you hear here one day at his house with me, Chuck and our homie Jamiel listening like, "This shit is tight." Chuck comes right off the top with the chorus, "Jumpin' in the club, smackin' hoes, poppin' Mo." We all crack up and decide to write our verses and make it a done deal. The next week we bang the shit out and don't get it right until we get drunk. A lot of women that have heard this song thought we were talking about smacking the shit out of the hoes in the club. No. We don't condone violence against women. We just meant smacking on the respective hoes' asses. That's all.

"Very Good Years" Produced by Anachronus

At first this wasn't gonna be on the album because we didn't think we would get away with sampling Sinatra. The concept was simple, rap about a good year of your life. I chose 1998, when I was balling and told the story of my move from Cleveland to DC. Jabari took it back to 1986 by painting a portrait of a young Black adolescent and the hijinks inherent. Chuck Dukie brings it back to 1995 when he gets the MPC2000 and gets busy with the beats and rhymes in Cleveland, representing the Primate Foundation properly. Another well-manifested idea from them Intangible boys.

"Me to You" Produced by Anachronus

I made the beat from a poorly looped Indian sitar lick, a sample from the Four Rooms soundtrack, and some of my horrible synth licks. A slightly faster-paced beat for us to be MCs over. No theme at all, just loosely-knit braggadocious rhymes. Again we have Jabari on the chorus. The way the songs ends is great.

"Icarus" Produced by The Grand Glorious Chuck Dukie

The sole MPC2000 beat on the record courtesy of Chuck Dukie. Not sure where he got all the samples from, but I do believe they were mainly from a movie. The concept was based upon Icarus, the wax-winged dude that tried to fly to the sun. Fucking idiot. So we all made up what I thought to be excellent stories of rise to fame and fortune and the fall from it. I owe Chuck and Jabari an apology because I wrote a 32-bar rhyme that I thought was 16-bars. This was the first song that we recorded together, and this was during the time when I never wrote rhymes that adhered to a sensible, even number of bars. My bad. This song, like "Hooch", was one of our best produced. The rhymes and beat perfectly complimented the title. Hopefully the young kids will hear this one and not want to become superstars.

"Perpin'" Produced by Redfoot Jones

(Addendum 11/11/2007) I forgot about this song until Jabari reminded me about it after a night of drinking in which both of us claimed we weren't trying to drink. This was our hidden song that came on following seven minutes of silence from the conclusion of "Icarus." The concept is simple, talk about those fake-ass, perpetrating, uniform-wearing, automatons that think they're prodigies. One point about this song... it's hilarious. The rhymes are spot-on, but the chorus is utterly ridiculous and best exemplifies how we got increasingly intoxicated during our vocal sessions. This was a very fun track to make and it can be heard in the music. We once flew DJ Reemycks out from Cleveland to lay down some cuts on the album. I remember that he did some on "Hooch," but I forgot that he cut on this song too. Real Hip-Hop. Scratches hoes.