So my big mouth almost caused a conflict for the first time in years…It all started when I went over my boys apartment complex to help paint one of his units. Confused? My boy owns an apartment building, one of his triflin’ ass tenants dipped in the middle of the night without payin’ the rent. Such people are often people with little regard for cleanliness. By DC law, a unit must be repainted every time a new tenant rents the place out. Friday, my boy scoops me out of the blue to run to Home Depot so he can stock up on the necessary supplies needed for five people painting an apartment unit. Many jokes were cracked, and many laughs were had. He got mad because I was making Howard jokes, like, “Dog, you know I can’t read, I graduated from Howard.” Seeing as tho’ we both graduated from Howard, he was a little peeved that I was so vocal about it around non- Howardites…namely white people. He didn’t say this, but I know that’s how he felt. Yeah, I got my degree from a great institution, but not every experience is as golden as the next. I developed more as a person and thinker than I did as an academian. It was a joke he understood, he went to Howard with me. I didn’t care about “other” people hearing. They’ll have their opinions regardless. And yeah, maybe I wasn’t helping with the wise cracks, but they couldn’t help but view me as a charismatic and intelligent person. We were all laughing, and not in that “Look at that idiot make a fool of himself way”. ‘Least I don’t feel that way.
The comedy is I was telling my boy what he needed for the painting experience, and he wouldn’t listen to me, but that was his main reason for bringing me. He didn’t know what to get for this mission, and I did. The irony is, even tho’ I was joking around a lot, I still was telling him everything that he was askin’ everybody else for. But he wasn’t listening to me… Ah, the talk of me dogging Howard, but not listening to your own brother…for shame :o) Anyways, we leave Home Depot, hit Giant up for breakfast food for the volunteers. Being a smart businessman, he knows if he ain’t gon’ pay the help, he can at least feed em. I said off the break I wasn’t going to be there @ no 9:00 in the mornin’ for breakfast. We cop the food, he looks out for me on the box of mini donuts. We go to his crib, which I haven’t seen since I moved him in. We talked about the music industry, watched some old videos, and looked at the “Superman” video on the 8 Mile DVD. It was…interesting. Translation: Don’t let your kids see it. Since I was tired before he scooped me, I told him to drop me off. I understood I was his entertainment until his girl got into town, which was any minute now. I showed him the beginning to Way of the Gun prior to him bouncing and that was that. Had a few donuts and my chicken fingers that I was going to heat up before he scooped me.
Which leads me to Saturday and my aforementioned big mouth. Woke up in pain with a bad stomach. Should not have half way heated up those damn chicken fingers and fries and wolfed them down like that. Should not have eaten any damn donuts either. Definitely shouldn’t have gone right to sleep after, but hey, whatever. I get to the painting party late due to sour tummy. When I arrive, everybody is in a jovial mood, which in turn lifts me out of my somber “I have a sour tummy” mood. I immediately get into the fray of joking and shit talking, especially since my boy Jumand is there. Lynn was nice enough to come and keep me company, which she was clowned for at some point I’m sure. There was this older sister there that I hit it off with on the humor tip when I accidentally shook her hand too hard when we were introduced. For a couple of hours she tossed jokes and insults, and I volleyed some back. Then it happened.
I am a very quick witted person, and if someone gets into a session of throwing quick retorts, I go into auto pilot. Meaning, jokes can fly out of my mouth in rapid succession without pre- meditation, sometimes a recipe for disaster. She threw out a joke about masturbation towards me, and I retorted with a completely inappropriate fellatio joke. (Don’t be surprised, I have a pretty crass sense of humor sometimes) It wasn’t said with malice, it was just an on- the- fly- rebuttal. At first she seemed to take it in stride…but soon it was apparent to me that she was pretty irate. Later realizing I took it a bit too far, I apologized. It didn’t occur that I didn’t really know her that well, but I thought all was fair since she felt comfortable throwing masturbation jokes, which I wasn’t offended by. Trying to apologize again became a chore that completely killed my euphoria, and sent me back to sour tummy land. I let some blatant attacks on my man- go (male ego…which is worse than your typical run of the mill ego) go because I felt she was rightfully upset. Suggestions of her beating me and other comments I would normally jump on I let slide, I was wrong. I took said comments with one of those game show smiles, y’know the ones that look like they hurt because they aren’t natural. She knew I felt guilty, so she hammed it up a bit. It’s cool, we were at least speaking like adults after about an hour passed. Was really embarrassed when I found out she was West Indian. A lot of women don’t play that in that culture, and if they do, they ain’t too public about it.
After we got back into semi- joke mode, we were about done. I had paint on everything from my hair, to my glasses, to my Tims. We all decided we would eat at Negril and Mr. Landlord could pay for it. We chopped it up, but I couldn’t even enjoy the food because I was still in sour tummy land. Watched as everybody else ate while I downed a Jamaican pineapple soda. Took my food to go because it looked like it was about to storm something terrible. The dinner was enjoyable, and so was the food once I got to some place I could enjoy it. Finally watched "Children of the Corn" with Lynn. She was scared to watch it because of its reputation for scaring the Bejeezus out of folk. She only watched it because it was still daylight outside...scary ass. Lynn's the coolest. I’ll tell ya’ll about Sunday later.
Peace!
PS- To the sister that I offended during the paint party, I sincerely apologize. There, now the whole world knows. Sheesh, the lengths one must go to to humble themselves sometimes...