Is That a Gin Bottle?
I'm sitting at my homegirl's living room table right now, sipping Bombay Sapphire and tonic. I figured if I was going to tell a story about gin, I might as well drink some. Also, shorty was telling me earlier that it's the perfect summer drink. For some reason when people talk about gin and tonics in the summer it makes me picture rich goofball white dudes in seersucker suits or plaid shorts, the same way I can't drink mint juleps because the drink conjures images of slave masters sitting on a porch and cooling off with a pitcher of that shyt, watching slaves toil in the hot ass sun all day. Odd how the mind works.
Anyway, gin never tastes right to me. It's not the botanical flavor or anything, because I can drink shyt like Chartreuse and Ouzo all night. I guess I've always been wary of gin. I suspected my grandmother compromised some aspect of her virtue over gin - her saying was "gin is nature's drink." She'd say that shyt with a weird tone in her voice and fix you with an intense stare, like she had just delivered a grave warning. She drank a lot of different things - her favorite twist was Peach Schnapps - but never gin.
So I never so much as tasted gin until my homie Alvin got me fukked up off that shyt in college. Him, my nikka Rome and I were kickin' it in Alvin's room, swapping stories about life. We were all between 18 and 19, so inevitably the conversation shifted to women, and we traded war stories. Among other things, I was telling them about the time I saw this Puerto Rican chick suck my cousin off in a project staircase in exchange for a loosey. We were 14, on our way to play ball in the park, ran into the chick at the corner store, and my cousin Skoob brokered the deal with her. Rome had a couple wild stories from high school he shared. When it was Alvin's turn, he took a swig from the bottle, grinned, and was like "y'all boys ain't seen no wild shyt." He told us a few stories that had us like :sayword: Then he was like "you know what, I could show you some wild shyt tonight. They doing this thing for the recruits at this nikka E's. Y'all wit it?"
I wish I could upload an MP3 of my memory of Alvin's voice and let you hear how that dude sounded when he said "Y'all wit it?" Son's accent was possibly one of the 5 most offensive things to a nikka's auditory system, ever. He was Jamaican, but grew up in Mississippi. I can't do justice to how fukked up the combo of his Jamaican and country inflections were. It took me a couple months before I could understand more than 50% of any sentence he uttered.
The only accent I heard that was worse was at Thanksgiving dinner that same year. The break wasn't all that long and the ticket home wasn't all that cheap, so I linked up with one of my cousins who was stationed at a military base an hour-and-a-half away. My cousin was living on the base with the mother of his two kids, a half-white, half-Vietnamese broad. Her fam was visiting for Thanksgiving too: her pops was an old vet from West Virginia who carried a pistol everywhere he went, walked with a cane, and continually had his lower lip bulging with chewing tobacco; her mother was a Vietnamese lady who the pops had scooped during the war and flown back to America. Let me assure you that you have never heard an uglier sound than this woman's accent, which was an unholy hybrid of Vietnamese and West Virginian backwoods. She also had the foulest mouth I think I've ever heard on a woman. It was an unusual Thanksgiving to say the least.
As many fukked up dudes as there were on the football team, there were also some real cool cats, and Alvin was definitely at the top of that list. Son had a good heart, stayed in his own zone for the most part, listened to mad reggae and R&B, sat in a chair on the balcony in his wifebeater smoking weed on the regular. Real laid back dude. This nikka's closet was essentially 30 white wifebeaters. shyt was hilarious. Dude knew what he liked and stuck with it.
Oh yeah, and Alvin looked like a model, b. Son had the He-Man action figure body; dude was so cut that it looked like he had been constructed in a lab. He was mad dark - talk about being darkskinned... my nikka Alvin was coffin black. He rocked a baldy. The nikka had like 700 bytches following him around. I hate when nikkas get on that corny ass sucker shyt like "I don't know if another nikka looks good, I would be gay if I did." fukk outta here with that bullshyt. I always noticed the same nikkas who claimed that shyt would magically know which dudes not to bring their girls around. Alvin was a nikka not to bring your girl around. He had bytches wide open: white, black, hoood, uppity, all of them.
Son was also a case study in Blackleticism. When I think about Blackleticism, I actually don't think about dudes like LeBron. I think about those random nikkas from around the way who never went to the gym, never played organized athletics, ate pork rinds and lemonheads all week, had dope fiend parents so they were only eating dinner like 4 out of 7 nights, and even then it was just an order of chicken wings and french fries, but they could casually throw a perfect spiral 70 yards. I got dunked on by a nikka like that once, he was in Timbs, no front teeth, no draws, asscrack hanging out his jean shorts. Sometimes you gotta hit life with the take your L and charge it to the game.
Alvin was a natural athlete that way. I remember I asked his roommate, who was a defensive end, whether Alvin was taking supplements or some shyt. His roommate died laughing. "Al? That nikka barely be in the weightroom. Coaches be on his ass about how lazy he is." Dude was born to be a college linebacker. Genetics are wild.
I usually ain't get invited to insider shyt. I mean, I hung with individual foootball dudes,would go to parties with them, kick it with them and drink, etc. but I wasn't in the inner circle like that. So this shyt sounded like a rare opportunity. We hopped in Rome's truck and Alvin gave us directions to this two-story condo that a former player owned about 20 minutes from campus. Dude spent a couple seasons with the Jets, I think. I don't remember his name at all. To be honest, I don't think I ever heard anyone call him anything other than E. I do remember the nikka ain't look like a professional athlete in the slightest - dude had a short, squat build with the Gucci Mane get money gut. Maybe that's why he was out the league after just two seasons.
The vibe was from the moment we stepped in the spot. Compton's Most Wanted was blaring, like 25 nikkas was up in there, mad weed smoke in the air, empty MD 20/20 and Boone's Farm bottles on the floor. The homie's crib was fly though, I'll give him that. The south opened my eyes to just how shytty the standard of living was in NYC. nikkas had condos and big ass apartments for less than some of my family was paying for their cramped spaces in shytty neighborhoods. E's place had mad rooms, wall-to-wall carpeting, he even had a pool. Homie actually didn't want to let us in, but Alvin vouched for us heavy and I cracked a couple jokes that endeared him to me. He was dissing the shyt out of Rome though, because my dude was carrying a pack of Zimas, which was the only thing that cat would ever drink. E was like "I don't know how I feel about a nikka drinkin' Zimas in my house." He was dead serious. Alvin had cracked a brand new Tanqueray bottle open during the ride over, so we were sipping that.
We kicked it in the living room and kitchen area for like an hour, everyone getting high and drunk and talking shyt, and then E switched the cd to The Chronic, and announced that all the recruits needed to head upstairs, take a right, and walk to the back bedroom. Alvin motioned for us to follow him and the three of us walked upstairs behind the recruits.
When we got to that back room...
There were condoms laid out in a row on a dresser, and two white chicks were on the bed with their titties hanging out, skirts hiked up to their waists, no panties on. bytches had pure lust in their eyes.
E stepped in the room, shrugged at the recruits and was like "who finna get this poppin first?" And just like that, it was on. I backed the fukk out the room with the quickness - I just do not like watching other dudes have sex, man.
I went back downstairs, talked to Alvin a little bit about whether this kind of shyt was a regular occurrence, and listened to some of the details he had about his recruitment visits. I was super fukked up off the gin, but I wanted to drink more so I asked him where he put the bottle. Alvin was like it was right over on top of the fridge. We couldn't find that shyt. All them dudes in there, someone probably drank the shyt. I was heated, because there had been half a bottle left in it. Alvin was like fukk it, let's leave. That's when we noticed Rome wasn't downstairs with us.
We went back upstairs to look for dude. Figured he was passed out in a bathroom from all the Zimas he drank. Opened the bathroom door and this nikka E was on the toilet getting domed by a lightskinned broad named Crystal I recognized from her job at the food court. E looked at me like and I quickly shut the door. It smelled foul as hell in there too - dude had really taken a shyt then got some head right after.
That's when I heard Alvin call to me, "Ay boy, I found Rome." He was standing in front of the back bedroom when he said that. I was thinking, nah, no way. Rushed down the hall, looked in the room, and
A recruit was beasting out one of the hos, and Rome was standing next to him, leaning over the bed, thrusting something in and out of the other one's coochie with the face.
I tapped my nikka Alvin's shoulder like, hold up... is that a gin bottle? Rome was so drunk he was up in the spot trying to Tanqueray that bytch to an orgasm. Shorty had a confused look on her face too, her eyes were locked on the top of that bottle going in and out of her stankbox as if it was a science experiment happening to someone else, and she was just as curious as all of us as to what might happen next.
This was another moment that ruined a song for me: I can vividly remember that while Rome was fiendishly thrusting that Tanqueray bottle up in shorty's p*ssy, Rage was in the background talkin' bout "come come come again, come come come again, get with the wickedness..." Alvin was laughing too hard to go get the dude, so I stepped in and grabbed Rome, pulled him out of the room, and I remember hearing RBX rapping "I have no remorse 'cause I'm the fukkin' murderer..." while we walked down the stairs.
We hopped in the truck, but Rome was too drunk to drive. Being from NYC, I had no idea how to operate a car. Alvin's license was suspended or some shyt, but he drove us home anyway. And yes, the bottle was still half full. And yes, Alvin still drank from that motherfukker while he was driving. And yes, I saw Crystal again at the foodcourt 3 days later, and many times after that. Sometimes she worked the register, sometimes she worked with the food at Chik-fil-A. I wanted to stop eating there, knowing how nasty she was. But those Chik-fil-A sandwiches... So I had no choice but to let ol' doodoo mouth hook my food up.
And that's yet another reason I almost always pass on drinking gin to this day. shyt, I already switched back to my Makers while I was typing this shyt.
I'm sitting at my homegirl's living room table right now, sipping Bombay Sapphire and tonic. I figured if I was going to tell a story about gin, I might as well drink some. Also, shorty was telling me earlier that it's the perfect summer drink. For some reason when people talk about gin and tonics in the summer it makes me picture rich goofball white dudes in seersucker suits or plaid shorts, the same way I can't drink mint juleps because the drink conjures images of slave masters sitting on a porch and cooling off with a pitcher of that shyt, watching slaves toil in the hot ass sun all day. Odd how the mind works.
Anyway, gin never tastes right to me. It's not the botanical flavor or anything, because I can drink shyt like Chartreuse and Ouzo all night. I guess I've always been wary of gin. I suspected my grandmother compromised some aspect of her virtue over gin - her saying was "gin is nature's drink." She'd say that shyt with a weird tone in her voice and fix you with an intense stare, like she had just delivered a grave warning. She drank a lot of different things - her favorite twist was Peach Schnapps - but never gin.
So I never so much as tasted gin until my homie Alvin got me fukked up off that shyt in college. Him, my nikka Rome and I were kickin' it in Alvin's room, swapping stories about life. We were all between 18 and 19, so inevitably the conversation shifted to women, and we traded war stories. Among other things, I was telling them about the time I saw this Puerto Rican chick suck my cousin off in a project staircase in exchange for a loosey. We were 14, on our way to play ball in the park, ran into the chick at the corner store, and my cousin Skoob brokered the deal with her. Rome had a couple wild stories from high school he shared. When it was Alvin's turn, he took a swig from the bottle, grinned, and was like "y'all boys ain't seen no wild shyt." He told us a few stories that had us like :sayword: Then he was like "you know what, I could show you some wild shyt tonight. They doing this thing for the recruits at this nikka E's. Y'all wit it?"
I wish I could upload an MP3 of my memory of Alvin's voice and let you hear how that dude sounded when he said "Y'all wit it?" Son's accent was possibly one of the 5 most offensive things to a nikka's auditory system, ever. He was Jamaican, but grew up in Mississippi. I can't do justice to how fukked up the combo of his Jamaican and country inflections were. It took me a couple months before I could understand more than 50% of any sentence he uttered.
The only accent I heard that was worse was at Thanksgiving dinner that same year. The break wasn't all that long and the ticket home wasn't all that cheap, so I linked up with one of my cousins who was stationed at a military base an hour-and-a-half away. My cousin was living on the base with the mother of his two kids, a half-white, half-Vietnamese broad. Her fam was visiting for Thanksgiving too: her pops was an old vet from West Virginia who carried a pistol everywhere he went, walked with a cane, and continually had his lower lip bulging with chewing tobacco; her mother was a Vietnamese lady who the pops had scooped during the war and flown back to America. Let me assure you that you have never heard an uglier sound than this woman's accent, which was an unholy hybrid of Vietnamese and West Virginian backwoods. She also had the foulest mouth I think I've ever heard on a woman. It was an unusual Thanksgiving to say the least.
As many fukked up dudes as there were on the football team, there were also some real cool cats, and Alvin was definitely at the top of that list. Son had a good heart, stayed in his own zone for the most part, listened to mad reggae and R&B, sat in a chair on the balcony in his wifebeater smoking weed on the regular. Real laid back dude. This nikka's closet was essentially 30 white wifebeaters. shyt was hilarious. Dude knew what he liked and stuck with it.
Oh yeah, and Alvin looked like a model, b. Son had the He-Man action figure body; dude was so cut that it looked like he had been constructed in a lab. He was mad dark - talk about being darkskinned... my nikka Alvin was coffin black. He rocked a baldy. The nikka had like 700 bytches following him around. I hate when nikkas get on that corny ass sucker shyt like "I don't know if another nikka looks good, I would be gay if I did." fukk outta here with that bullshyt. I always noticed the same nikkas who claimed that shyt would magically know which dudes not to bring their girls around. Alvin was a nikka not to bring your girl around. He had bytches wide open: white, black, hoood, uppity, all of them.
Son was also a case study in Blackleticism. When I think about Blackleticism, I actually don't think about dudes like LeBron. I think about those random nikkas from around the way who never went to the gym, never played organized athletics, ate pork rinds and lemonheads all week, had dope fiend parents so they were only eating dinner like 4 out of 7 nights, and even then it was just an order of chicken wings and french fries, but they could casually throw a perfect spiral 70 yards. I got dunked on by a nikka like that once, he was in Timbs, no front teeth, no draws, asscrack hanging out his jean shorts. Sometimes you gotta hit life with the take your L and charge it to the game.
Alvin was a natural athlete that way. I remember I asked his roommate, who was a defensive end, whether Alvin was taking supplements or some shyt. His roommate died laughing. "Al? That nikka barely be in the weightroom. Coaches be on his ass about how lazy he is." Dude was born to be a college linebacker. Genetics are wild.
I usually ain't get invited to insider shyt. I mean, I hung with individual foootball dudes,would go to parties with them, kick it with them and drink, etc. but I wasn't in the inner circle like that. So this shyt sounded like a rare opportunity. We hopped in Rome's truck and Alvin gave us directions to this two-story condo that a former player owned about 20 minutes from campus. Dude spent a couple seasons with the Jets, I think. I don't remember his name at all. To be honest, I don't think I ever heard anyone call him anything other than E. I do remember the nikka ain't look like a professional athlete in the slightest - dude had a short, squat build with the Gucci Mane get money gut. Maybe that's why he was out the league after just two seasons.
The vibe was from the moment we stepped in the spot. Compton's Most Wanted was blaring, like 25 nikkas was up in there, mad weed smoke in the air, empty MD 20/20 and Boone's Farm bottles on the floor. The homie's crib was fly though, I'll give him that. The south opened my eyes to just how shytty the standard of living was in NYC. nikkas had condos and big ass apartments for less than some of my family was paying for their cramped spaces in shytty neighborhoods. E's place had mad rooms, wall-to-wall carpeting, he even had a pool. Homie actually didn't want to let us in, but Alvin vouched for us heavy and I cracked a couple jokes that endeared him to me. He was dissing the shyt out of Rome though, because my dude was carrying a pack of Zimas, which was the only thing that cat would ever drink. E was like "I don't know how I feel about a nikka drinkin' Zimas in my house." He was dead serious. Alvin had cracked a brand new Tanqueray bottle open during the ride over, so we were sipping that.
We kicked it in the living room and kitchen area for like an hour, everyone getting high and drunk and talking shyt, and then E switched the cd to The Chronic, and announced that all the recruits needed to head upstairs, take a right, and walk to the back bedroom. Alvin motioned for us to follow him and the three of us walked upstairs behind the recruits.
When we got to that back room...
There were condoms laid out in a row on a dresser, and two white chicks were on the bed with their titties hanging out, skirts hiked up to their waists, no panties on. bytches had pure lust in their eyes.
E stepped in the room, shrugged at the recruits and was like "who finna get this poppin first?" And just like that, it was on. I backed the fukk out the room with the quickness - I just do not like watching other dudes have sex, man.
I went back downstairs, talked to Alvin a little bit about whether this kind of shyt was a regular occurrence, and listened to some of the details he had about his recruitment visits. I was super fukked up off the gin, but I wanted to drink more so I asked him where he put the bottle. Alvin was like it was right over on top of the fridge. We couldn't find that shyt. All them dudes in there, someone probably drank the shyt. I was heated, because there had been half a bottle left in it. Alvin was like fukk it, let's leave. That's when we noticed Rome wasn't downstairs with us.
We went back upstairs to look for dude. Figured he was passed out in a bathroom from all the Zimas he drank. Opened the bathroom door and this nikka E was on the toilet getting domed by a lightskinned broad named Crystal I recognized from her job at the food court. E looked at me like and I quickly shut the door. It smelled foul as hell in there too - dude had really taken a shyt then got some head right after.
That's when I heard Alvin call to me, "Ay boy, I found Rome." He was standing in front of the back bedroom when he said that. I was thinking, nah, no way. Rushed down the hall, looked in the room, and
A recruit was beasting out one of the hos, and Rome was standing next to him, leaning over the bed, thrusting something in and out of the other one's coochie with the face.
I tapped my nikka Alvin's shoulder like, hold up... is that a gin bottle? Rome was so drunk he was up in the spot trying to Tanqueray that bytch to an orgasm. Shorty had a confused look on her face too, her eyes were locked on the top of that bottle going in and out of her stankbox as if it was a science experiment happening to someone else, and she was just as curious as all of us as to what might happen next.
This was another moment that ruined a song for me: I can vividly remember that while Rome was fiendishly thrusting that Tanqueray bottle up in shorty's p*ssy, Rage was in the background talkin' bout "come come come again, come come come again, get with the wickedness..." Alvin was laughing too hard to go get the dude, so I stepped in and grabbed Rome, pulled him out of the room, and I remember hearing RBX rapping "I have no remorse 'cause I'm the fukkin' murderer..." while we walked down the stairs.
We hopped in the truck, but Rome was too drunk to drive. Being from NYC, I had no idea how to operate a car. Alvin's license was suspended or some shyt, but he drove us home anyway. And yes, the bottle was still half full. And yes, Alvin still drank from that motherfukker while he was driving. And yes, I saw Crystal again at the foodcourt 3 days later, and many times after that. Sometimes she worked the register, sometimes she worked with the food at Chik-fil-A. I wanted to stop eating there, knowing how nasty she was. But those Chik-fil-A sandwiches... So I had no choice but to let ol' doodoo mouth hook my food up.
And that's yet another reason I almost always pass on drinking gin to this day. shyt, I already switched back to my Makers while I was typing this shyt.