Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas

Author:Piri Thomas [Thomas, Piri]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Autobiography, Biography, Coming of Age, Crime, Personal Memoirs, Non-Fiction, Race
ISBN: 9780679781424
Amazon: 0679781420
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1997-11-25T00:00:00+00:00

19

Las Aguas del Sur

Two days later I woke up all burned out. Brew was staggering around too. This was the shipping-out day that our forty bolos had bought us.

At breakfast our heads cleared a little and our memories began to focus through the haze of a thirty-six-hour hangover. And it wasn’t the chicas we remembered, but Mr. Gerald Andrew West, the blended wonder.

“Ah still hates his mudderfuckin’ guts,” Brew said, “but at least he got the heart to make a choice.”

“Yeah,” I said, without enthusiasm. My head still hummed, and besides, the memory of Gerald stirred funny thoughts. What he had said about choice had shattered my own ideas on the matter. I felt like maybe I had bought a ticket to the wrong technicolor movie. Brew must have sensed my hang-up ’cause he asked me:

“How ’bout you, Piri?”

I forced myself to think about it for a while, a long while. “Brew,” I finally said, “I’ve been wanting it to be like there ain’t no doubts at all, but . . .” Brew looked at me, his eyes trying to break up what I was saying. I went on. “I’m . . . still trying to find what’s my kick. I’m still trying to find my own stick of living. Man, Brew, you gotta understand. I want to be wanted—not by them motherfuckers but by me! But I ain’t got rid of that fuckin’ status that I got brought up on. I don’t mean at home alone. I mean like I envied it on the streets, I dug it wherever it meant anything to be better than just a wrong color. I feel like shit. It ain’t just that I don’t wanna be what I’m supposed to be, it’s just that I’m fightin’ me and the whole goddamn world at the same time. Jesus, Brew, I don’t know if I’m makin’ any sense at all, but everybody knows paddies are prejudiced against Negroes—and Negroes want to be prejudiced right back.”

“Yeah, but them paddies are nuttin’ but fuckin’ ignorant.”

“Like you and me, eh?” I was trying to keep from getting excited. I didn’t want to turn my ace-coon boon against me, but all my life I had wanted to be for real. I had wanted to be proud of feeling just the way I’m supposed to feel. “Am I going down wrong with you?” I asked Brew. “You wouldn’t want me to bullshit you?”

“What yuh mean ‘like you an’ me’?” he said.

“You and me,” I said. “You hate Gerald’s guts because he don’t wanna be a spook and you hate whites for the reason known to a whole certain race that you happen to be part of. And I feel the same because I’m hung up. I still can’t help feeling both paddy and Negro. The weight feels even on both sides even if both sides wanna feel uneven. Goddammit, I wish I could be like one of those lizards that change colors. When I’d be with Negroes, I’d be a stone Negro, and with paddies, I’d be stone paddy.

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