Fresh Off the Boat (19 page)

I read books, cut down on the smoking/drinking, and had my mind right. But, on the weekends, I’d still wild out, hang with my homies, and be a retard. I was never going to be a monk, but my consciousness was slowly rising. I remember one thing that I really regretted was hog-’n’-jogging from Steak ’n Shake one night. We ate, I was gonna pay, but Warren
and Mike wanted to hog-’n’-jog so I went along with it. Nothing serious, we did it a few times before, too, but this girl Sheila Jimenez said something to me at school the next day.

“You’re a real punk, you know that?”

“What?”

“I work at that fucking Steak ’n Shake you ran from! My coworker had to pay for you guys’ food.”

“I don’t give a fuck.”

“Well, you should. Not everyone is rich like your parents, you fucking asshole.”

I’d been called a lot of things, but that really cut through all the bullshit. She was 100 with me and didn’t even want my money when I tried to pay later. That was the turning point for me. I realized I couldn’t have it both ways. I was either a good person or a shitty one. There wasn’t one logical explanation for why it was OK to hog-’n’-jog. We used to say it was OK to steal from Blockbuster or Best Buy because they were big corporations, but this time we got it really fucking wrong. I never wanted to be that wrong again.

The two teachers who really made an impact on me that year were Mr. Barrows and Mr. Feddell. Barrows was the humanities teacher. A lot of the same kids that were in gifted and honors classes would take his class because you got college credit, but I just wanted to read the books he assigned. We got to read
Siddhartha
, the Tao Te Ching, and Socrates. It was like a hybrid humanities-philosophy class. I hadn’t been in class with those gifted/honors kids for a year so it sucked being around them again. They weren’t actually smarter than the kids in my regular English class, either. It doesn’t take much to get good grades. You memorize what the teacher says, write it down, and spit it back out. In regular English, it was like watching a movie in a theater in Brooklyn. Everyone had something to say and they were loud about it. People were from different parts of Orlando, different ethnicities, and no one agreed on anything. In Mr. Feddell’s English class, we had so many hip-hop heads we’d all talk about how lyrical Shakespeare was, compare him to Pac and Nas. For the first time, I became the teacher’s pet. Without a bunch of gifted/honors kids fighting
to kiss the teacher’s ass, I got to actually have a real discussion with Mr. Feddell. Instead of playing the contrarian, I just spoke my mind about
Hamlet, Macbeth
, and my favorite,
Julius Caesar
.

English was mad fun. Half the class worked at McDonald’s or Chick-fil-A after school and would most likely get GEDs, but for one hour every day, we really got into Shakespeare. Most of them weren’t reading between the lines, but they definitely understood it. Especially when we talked about Brutus, honor, and loyalty.
Julius Caesar
is the epic street tale. It’s all about betrayal, loyalty, honor, and going out like a G. Feddell couldn’t see it, but we did. We loved
Julius Caesar
.

I started to realize that books weren’t meant to be understood one way or the other. We took
Julius Caesar
and made it mean something entirely different than Feddell, Harold Bloom, or maybe Shakespeare ever expected. I remember Feddell was such a purist he’d cross-check all his thoughts with Harold Bloom but that was his weakness. You don’t need validation from anyone, not even the author. Just like we did with Nikes, breakin’ ’em out, wearin’ ’em with no laces, tying the Air Force 1 straps backward, etc. Like the Fab Five coming through with black socks, baggy shorts, and intimidation, we didn’t have to do it the Man’s way. That’s how we resisted assimilation. Every time people tried to feed us soma, we freaked it out. It was around this time that I stopped feeling helpless, became less nihilistic, and realized that if I didn’t want it their way it didn’t have to be, but that I’d really have to work. It’s harder to resist, but there’s honor in it.

THEN IT HAPPENED
.
Emery was at the mall with his homies one weekend. Nader, Emery, Yuel, and Raul, they called themselves Windmill because of the break-dancing move. Yuel was Hawaiian-Japanese dred, Raul was Latino, and Nader was Lebanese. Emery’s United Nations crew was chillin’ at Hooters with some girls when these two white boys kept eyeing them, talking shit. Once they left Hooters, the guys followed them. They didn’t want to ditch the girls so they kept walking, but these dudes wouldn’t give up. Finally, they told the girls to go home and Emery led
everyone into FAO Schwarz, where the kids followed. They went to the sports section, got junior baseball bats, and beat the shit out of the two trailing them. The next week at school, Emery was just eating lunch in the cafeteria when some kid ran up from behind, punched him in the face, and took off. I got home that Friday and Emery had a broken nose so my dad was like, “You already know.”

I had no problem getting the kid, but that weekend was rough. Sunday morning, we woke up to a car crashed right through a wall on Apopka Vineland Road, a mile from my house. The bricks were all scattered, the wall was shattered, and there was a champagne sedan stuck halfway through the wall with the other half hanging out. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was my man Ricky Santo’s car. Ricky was a year younger than me, but one of my good friends. I’d always watch sports with Ricky and he was also the first to put me on to Mos Def:
Black on Both Sides
. He was a two-sport star at Dr. Phillips, playing baseball and football, which was a big deal since a lot of our players ended up at D-1 programs. But more than that, Ricky was one of the most likable dudes. He never beefed with anyone, always smiling, and when news broke that he was in critical condition with head and neck injuries we all bugged out.

We went to school the next day and before first period, the principal was on the intercom telling us to have a moment of silence for Ricky. I was just walking into school so I stopped right inside the entrance as thousands of us stood frozen for Ricky. I lifted up my head, opened my eyes, and to the right I saw Emery coming out of the bathroom and that motherfucker that punched him was waiting. I was shook from the moment of silence, but I knew what I had to do and dropped my backpack. Warren was right behind me so I knew he’d scoop it. Those were the days right after Columbine so we all had to wear student IDs around our necks. I took my ID off, wrapped it around my hands, crept behind this kid, and yoked him right in front of Emery.

All the Tangelo Park cats hung by the bathroom so as soon as they saw it, you heard the motherfuckin’ bird call. Kids surrounded us and formed a wall so the cops couldn’t break it up. Emery froze for a second, but then reared back and mashed him right in the face. After letting him get the first
shot, I put the kid in a headlock and started punching him right in his left eye over and over. Emery kicked him from behind, then we threw him headfirst into a wall.

The kid fell in a pile, but the cops still couldn’t get through. I lost all self-control. When I got into fights, my hands would always shake and feel light. I could never feel the punches until after when my knuckles were cut and swollen, but every time I hit this kid it was heavy. I beat that kid like he was Ms. Truex, Edgar, Reaganomics, the Counting Crows, and
Moby-Dick
all rolled into one. I heard the kids surrounding us start to talk.

“Cot damn, y’all.”

“Oooofff. This some
Rocky IV
shit, boy.”

It really was like the Russian versus Apollo Creed. The Red Chinaman pummeling Mr. America. I stood over him, looked at the cops finally breaking through the crowd, and stepped right on this kid’s balls.

“Ohhh, hell naw. Huang done gas-pedaled this n!gg@?!?!”

“That’s too much. You already know that’s too much.”

“Ha, ha, yaaaooo, don’t fuck with these Chinamen y’all! Do not fuck with these Chinamen!”
^*

Usually I was quick to run when cops came, but I just stood over this kid. I don’t know what got into me, but I just never wanted anyone to fuck with me or my family again. I was sick of it.

The cops grabbed me and I spit my gum in one cop’s face and that’s when I’d gone too far. They arrested me, walked me out of school, and sent me to booking. Things done changed.

I
still remember the shoes I had on that day at booking: Carolina Blue Jordan XIVs. They made me take the laces out because they had metal tips, but it was cool, the XIVs looked good broken out anyway. Plus, a lot of kids in booking were walking around with tongues floppin’. I got lucky: since I was still seventeen they sent me to juvie. It wasn’t bad at all, looked like a doctor’s office with linoleum floors and holding cells with skinny dudes in long white tees. I wasn’t worried; I didn’t do anything wrong. Someone punched my brother in the face so I stomped him out.

It definitely didn’t faze my dad. I’ve never seen a parent so proud to pick his kid up from holding. “You dumb-ass … You’re not supposed to get caught!” he said with a smile. Around this time, I had become closer with my dad. He had stopped hitting me at home, we talked on the regular, watched Magic games together, and I was working at the restaurant a lot more. Once his restaurants were successful and that was off his mind, he could handle my mom. She didn’t get to him as much and the house was a lot more calm. Every day, she would still wild, but my dad learned
to walk away. He just rolled around in a bathrobe and boxers all day eating fruit and watching NBA games he recorded.

Just to keep me out of trouble, he’d been scheduling me for work every Friday and Saturday night, but it didn’t really help. If anything, it made things worse hanging with servers, bartenders, and cooks. Now I could get beer, weed, Xanax, acid, whatever, any time I wanted it. Once I got arrested, though, I knew I’d have to chill; I didn’t have that many chances left. The kid I knocked out never came back to school. Romaen saw him one time and found out his face was broken. I felt bad about that, but figured he should have thought it through before hitting Emery. We all chose to fight that day, just happens he took the L.

Emery was different, though. When the cops came that day, he took the kid who was knocked out and flipped his unconscious body on top of his own, which made it look like he was the one getting attacked. He never got arrested.

Emery saw what happened to that kid and basically quit fuckin’ around cold turkey. His friends were still wildin’ but he just stayed his ass at home, stopped listening to hip-hop, and got a little shook. He wasn’t scared of fighting, but became more wary of the consequences. I remember him saying to me, “That could have been one of us, man.”

He was right, people could catch you at any time. Emery was now getting turned off by my style, my music, my friends, and the drugs. I was doing a lot of ecstasy at the time and Emery got scared enough to tell my dad. The day he found out, he didn’t hit me, he didn’t yell, he took me out on the lake in our canoe, and we just kicked it. I thought he was gonna “Fredo” me, but he kept it real. It was one of the first times I really opened up to my dad.

He didn’t judge, he just listened. I explained that it wasn’t like I had a drug “problem.” I was just partying. I did it for fun. Kids love glo-sticks! But my dad knew this was one of those moments he had to be a dad even if it contradicted his own wild times as a kid.

“You remember I always talk about Len Bias, right?”

“Yeah, you hate Len Bias and Lefty Driesell.”

“No! I LOVE Len Bias and Lefty Driesell but they broke my heart. That goddamn Len Bias throws everything away. He could have been Michael Jordan, but that dumb-ass kill himself right after the NBA draft. I never been that sad in my life!”

I couldn’t say anything.

My dad was always an independent man. His family was poor, he ran the streets, and his mom spent most of her time playing mah-jongg. Like me, alone in the American wilderness, he just had his homies and the street in Taiwan. His father didn’t work and spent most of his time translating the Bible after seeing horrific acts during Chiang Kai-shek’s reign. Dad took care of himself and didn’t want to depend on people and he didn’t want them to depend on him, either. I didn’t notice until we both started working at Cattleman’s but we’re one and the same: horrible trainers. You’d always hear the same three words come out of our mouths when people asked for help.

“Figure it out!”

We always had to figure it out, so you can, too! We didn’t have the luxury of people explaining why I couldn’t use my left hand or why his family had no money. We just figured it out. But love is a funny thing.

Growing up, he loved the Bee Gees and basketball. That was it. When he came to America, went to university, and got to be part of a community—Terrapin basketball—he turned obsessed. Len Bias was the only person that gave Jordan a run for his money and when YouTube came around, the first thing I did was pull up old Len Bias videos, but my dad couldn’t even watch. Bias broke his heart and he hated being vulnerable to others. Len Bias was dead to him and he never wanted to think about it again. In a lot of ways, Len Bias mirrored his approach as a father. He was scared of heartbreak and tried not to show how much he cared about us. It was no problem for him to show love to acquaintances and business associates that came to the house. The show is easy when there aren’t real feelings behind it. My mom would always complain that he was cold and didn’t express himself well to his family, but was a maestro with strangers. None of us understood, but I finally got it that day. He was scared.

Pops hated not being more in control of my life, hated how I made
mistakes, hated how in many ways he couldn’t just live my life for me. It took a lot of self-control for him to not be like my mom. He knew he got a lot of his character from independence, struggle, and failure. That was the plan for me. Run out into the wild and hopefully return in one piece. It all worked in his head, but when the plan looked like it was falling apart and I came home with bad grades, bad manners, or a bad attitude, he kicked the shit out of me. As much as my friends thought I was Will Hunting, I wasn’t. I had a dad and he loved me. He just hated that I made him vulnerable. And when Emery told him about the ecstasy, he broke. Not in a weak way. Pops broke open.