Ali picked me up around 10 at night, Jose was in the passenger seat. I sat in the back of the Escalade. The interior was torn and stained, sticky floor mats, roaches (spliff ends not bugs), sweet and sour sauce and sweat and semen. It felt like a home, living room kitchen bathroom bedroom. The only sounds were the idling engine, the heat turned to high, and the December breeze coming in through the cracked-open sunroof.
We murmured our waddups and peaces, “What’s good Sin.” Jose took Chinna, Little One, the nickname my family gave me, and turned it into Sin, Sinner, Sinna, Sinnamon Toast Crunch, Sim Simma Who Got The Keys To My Bimma. I think the irony was intentional, not to say that I wasn’t a sinner, but I seemed to sin the least, I fucked the least, I smoked the least, I drank the least, I fought the least, my only crimes were printing fake bus tickets and pirating music. I was a veritable saint. Not that I was opposed to doing any of those things, I just didn’t happen to do them, I didn’t know how to be more of a sinner.
Jose and Ali were both tense. They had this in common, as did most boys I thought, it was always obvious what they were feeling, if you knew how to read the subtlety of muscles and the radii of pupils, the difficulty came in figuring out why.
I parsed through a pile of CDs, hustler rap, Jeezy Hov 50 Cent, and some 70s funk that Ali took from his dead dad’s collection. I chose The Blueprint but inside the case was What’s Going On, I handed it to Ali anyway who popped it into the CD player.
Marvin: Mother, mother. There’s too many of you crying. Brother, brother, brother.
We softened and Ali drove. Jose skipped through the album, Marvin spoke. I just wanna ask a question. Who really cares? Jose sang in response. There’ll come a time. There’ll come a time. When the world won’t be singing. When the world won’t be singing. Who really cares? Who really cares? Who’s willing to try? Who’s willing to try? To save the world. To save the world. That is destined to die. That is destined to die.
Jose’s voice was sure of itself in a way that made me jealous, most of what he did nowadays made me jealous. I told myself it was only because he grew up singing karaoke with his family. His go-to used to be Barbie Girl or anything by Mariah Carey, but his dad told him to stick to songs by men, so he started singing Prince and then started dressing like him too. He made everyone call him The Former Man Formerly Known As Jose, all 7 words everytime, he felt, like Prince, that his name was owned by someone else, he said Jose was a Spanish Christian colonial name, and a word that his family used to control him. He later took on the name Dayang, he told me it was an old Tagalog word for princess, but it quickly turned into Yang like the Street Fighter character since people thought he was Chinese anyway. He eventually gave up and accepted his birthright: Jose from Genesis, the Pharoah’s dream interpreter, and Jose, Jesus’s earthly father, the one who got cucked by god, he said.
Live life for the children. Live life for…the children. Oh, for the children. You see, let’s…let’s save the children. Let’s…let’s save all the children.
“Yo Sin, how’s that charity scam, my guy out here saving the children for real, on some make a wish, if any of them get to meet MJ, you better holla at me,” Ali looked at me in the rearview mirror smiling with his buck teeth that made me think getting head from him would be painful, I didn’t think he was the kind of person who knew where his body rose and dipped, that his front teeth were like swinging shirts on a clothesline, that he would have to open his mouth wider.
I was selling charitable children’s hospital donations at the mall, that person who tries to talk to you before you go into the food court, sort of a job, except I only got paid commission and couldn’t sell shit to a pig. I could smile big, but everyone knew I was a fake, I didn’t actually care about the kids, the people passing by could see through the cracks of my teeth that most of their donation was paying my salary.
“I quit on Sunday,” I said.
“Which MJ?” Jose asked before finishing the song.
But who really cares? Who’s willing to try? To save our world. To save our sweet world.
“The fuck you mean which MJ, Jordan.”
Ali lifted his right foot off the gas and into the air to show us the Jordan 4s on his feet, achingly white, you knew he had a pack of toothbrushes at home to scrub them with, you knew it was one of the few things he truly loved, not hate-loved the way boys hate-loved their money, or their cock, or their siblings and friends, I would guess his mother was the only other thing he truly loved, most guys like him reserved their softness for their mothers and loved them in a way that was sickly sweet. I thought maybe the Escalade was one of those things too but the interior told me otherwise, it was less a fortress and more of a pit, a place to do things in the dark. I was ashamed that I didn’t love my mother the way I thought Ali loved his, or even the way he loved his shoes, I hoped I didn’t hate-love her, I hoped I didn’t blame her for who I was.
The next track: Oh don’t go and talk about my father (talk about my father), God is my friend (Jesus is my friend). Jose pressed skip. Whoah-oh, mercy mercy me, oh things ain’t what they used to be, no no.
I couldn’t get over Ali being flexible enough to lift his foot that high, most too-cool guys who weren’t trying to make the league like Magloire or Nash (i.e., 6’11 beast from Scarborough or, Captain Canada, the hairy-chested MVP white boy with windswept brown hair, damn I missed his NSYNC frosted tip days) or at least trying to get an athletic scholarship at some college in the States, couldn’t reach halfway to their toes. I pictured Ali doing yoga, upward dog downward dog Polo boxers in the air sticking out of baggy True Religion jeans – I wondered if it was him or Jose who was usually in doggy when they fucked, I always assumed it was Jose for some reason but Ali’s flexibility made me think otherwise, Ali’s secret flexibility made everything make more sense somehow. I imagined him doing ballet on the tips of his white cement 4s, or swinging from a trapeze, his jeans still somehow not moving from the bottom of his ass crack.
“Ain’t no one tryna meet freaky ass Michael Jackson, except for you JO-se,” emphasis on hoe.
“Don’t believe everything you hear, those white kids tryna get paid out,” Jose said.
“They’re not White, one’s Jewish Black Chinese, the other’s Latino,” I said.
“Is there only 2? I thought there was a whole school of boys saying he touched them,” Ali was still smiling, like fleas scratching his gums, he only smiled like that when he was in the mood to fight. We both knew, despite Jose’s affinity for Prince, that he had a deep and unwavering respect for the King of Pop.
Oh things ain’t what they used to be, oh no, radiation underground and in the sky.
Jose kissed his teeth hard, “Nah you’re too fucking stupid to have this conversation, all imma say is, Sony’s behind all of this shit, they coming for Prince next.”
“Freaky ass hee-hee MJ, that man used to be Black and beautiful, now he looks like your pasty yellow ass.” That was the first time I heard Ali call another man beautiful, well I had never heard him call a woman beautiful either, it was the first time I heard him use the word beautiful at all.
“He has vitiligo,” Jose murmured.
“You know who got the juice right now, Chris Breezy, I got friends and you got friends, they hop out and you hop in, let me see if you can run it run it, run it run it. Sin, pass me something else to play, this shit boring me right now.”
Marvin was crying about the dying earth, whoa-oh, mercy mercy me, oh things ain’t what they used to be, what about this overcrowded land, how much more abuse from man can she stand, whoa-oh, mercy mercy me.
I found The Blueprint inside the case for Bob Marley & The Wailers Greatest Hits, Ali’s dad’s. The opening bongos played for forever, 5 or 6 seconds, the beat dropped and Jay Z did his adlibs then, H to the Izzo, yo, gather round hustlers that’s if you still livin.
