THE MOB

The great melting pot was coming, pot as in toilet

I was the one that went through a brief character arc, or brevity of sanity in my often insane life. I didn't mind being used like a Glad Bag on lawn cutting day. We all have to used to a certain degree to achieve a goal we're striving for. You have to play ball to be the coach.

Through the slobbering Daffy Duck Vice Lord -- I met a female Insane named Pat. Pat could roll more guys heads down the block with her fists than most guys I knew.  She was one gene away from being a man. She was one of the more infamous Vice Lords in this part of town. Her brother Big L was doing time for popping some caps at some rival G.D.'s. He was in the size range of Shaq and found it quite hard to get away down a 20 foot alley in width when he got stuck on both sides running from the cops.

I didn't have much to offer but my brain -- but my Ninja-like-covert ops-Manchurian-candidate-knives-for-razor-arms that could chop fingers off -- nope. I had nothing but intelligence to offer. And a distinct thirst for organization.

Here was the big problem...

After the Insane Vice Lords ceased to exist, most of the old Insanes hadn't chosen another branch like Mafia or Imperial Insane to be incorporated into. They wandered around with their gun barrels cut off.

Through the brother-sister act, I ended up meeting another Mafia Insane Vice Lord named Tongue. He took me to a set that showed the rap video Vice Lords with money, cars, women, dope slanging -- and once again, hustling the green leaf.

COME AS A MAN... SMALL PIMPIN'

I was 16, not much a man coming when size 24 jeans fall off you. That's what Tongue lips told me before hitting the set where the action was, I needed to "come as a man." These were the big Vice Lords, in size and name. I was intimidated so I stuck with Tongue like a dry turd in a baby's diaper. Dope was being slung. Fortys were... NOPE. The minute I got there and was trying to -- whatever to come like a man meant -- come like a man???  I had to do a gonad check and wonder if I went Bruce Jenner before I got here.

Was I supposed to introduce myself as "man." Or my name? So I stayed church mouse quiet until some shots rang off.  Before being admonished to "keep my mouth shut," a lot of the Vice Lords ran to the local liquor store. I should have been carded before I hit the parking lot because I had the appearance of a wet towel drying a fat guy off I was so skinny -- they didn't card because this was the ghetto. A bunch of the Lords out of earshot of Tongue -- or out of Tongue-shot, I should say, asked if I had twenty bucks for some 40 oz's. I actually had forty dollars on me for some forties I proudly displayed.

They borrowed my money.  I ordered a Forty Oz and kicked it like an O.G, slanging rocks, slapping junkies with five girls on my lap -- and -- no, the reality they bought themselves all forties with my money and I got seven dollars in change back and no forty. And some twenty years later I'm still waiting for them to give me my forty money back.

I MUST HAVE NOT COME AS A MAN...

...Or at best a Marilyn MANson type man...

I had had enough of them already and was growing unnerved about the whole experience. If I had to prove myself every time I stepped in a different area of Vice Lords, I was sure to be dead or locked up in another month. Isn't this the famed speech every sagely court appointed counselor, cop, or probation officer gives you? You better straighten up or you'll wind up dead or in prison. Well, being in a gang is tantamount to gambling. You know it's going  to hurt you, but you take the chances for some white-washed vanity lie of living ghetto fabulous. There's nothing fabulous about the ghetto.

I walked off. Fat lips Tongue called asking where I went after I got back in my house. I had nothing poetically aplomb to say, so I gurgled,  "I'm not coming like a man for awhile." 

I was disenfranchised. Even the paragon of the mighty Vice Lords were becoming turd toasters in my eyes. But the magnetic allure to the odious culture of extreme power was too attractive. Since I lived with two Hillbillies on the westside that were about as entertaining as listening to the yokel rube version of "Who's on Second?" for the fiftieth time, or watching a wet T-Shirt contest held by donkeys-- actually Isis would like that if it was goats.  Anyway, I decided to spend the boring hours rubbing my rhubarb into the floor as a sexually ignored teen to Baywatch or the neighbor mowing her lawn across the street through a telescope, vying for a good shot, until my brother caught me rub-handed. Raw, I mean.... raw handed.

This was me...

THE FUSE THAT LIT THE DYNAMITE

Sigh, I was never going to be the high-class gangbanger I wanted to be. Until one fateful day the inscrutable call came in that lifted my sold soul spirits. Spirits with an "s" because I probably had a fan club with all the evil thoughts that swirled in my cerebral toilet of mayhem back then.

Big L called from the joint as I entertained my time listening to my disparate hillbilly adoptive parents go on about tire sizes and how eggs can fix holes in your radiators. They can actually. I had the misfortune of applying their backwoods wisdom to an actual test. It was easier to steal an egg than a radiator so I tried it. Denny's Grand Slam! It worked and I drove home on an omelette. 

It was temporary until my pushing rods busted and I had the worst painted hood-mobile outside of parked car in a junkyard for 50 years with no upkeep.

So I was spending at least a hundred bucks a week to talk to Big.L. He was like my ghetto therapist and finally he said he was, "going to put me in the car." This is another one of those phrases I acted like I understood but didn't. If it was my omelette car he was trying to put me in, no thanks. It's over in the junkyard waiting for a tornado to carry it away.

What he meant was, put me in a position of power. Well, somewhat. Big L gave me the numbers of some guys and told his sister to get some numbers to a bunch of the Insane Vice Lords that hadn't chosen a set to fall under. Basically, we were going to be the beginning of a homeless shelter for Vice Lords that had no letter to fall under. And a freakshow.  We had more characters come than the Sanford and Son set.

But with a little organization...the city was about to be turned upside down. I had been bench warming since the beginning for this moment. Put me in coach!  And he did. My head swelled. My battered ego rose. I had a vendetta that needed to be a dish served scolding hot. 

And that was the beginning of a new type of Vice Lords.