Ghetto-Opoly pt. 8
We're running low on groceries in my apartment, so this afternoon I ate a bowl of long-grain jasmine rice with chopsticks, and drank two cups of black coffee. I remember that Paul Smith told me I make weak coffee --it used to be weaker than hotel coffee: Muddy water at the top and grounds at the bottom. These days I make my coffee black, and strong, and it hits me so hard that I feel the warmth rising up from the soles of my feet and pulsing through my arteries like liquid sugar --just like the old days when I used to snort meth anphetamine to write my college papers. I was wired, panting heavily and dancing in circles at the BART station, with my portable Discman blaring Biggie's "Kick In The Door": Jesus, get off the Notorious penis before I squeeze and bust. If theres beef between us We can settle it With that chrome-metal shit I make it hot, like a kettle get
You're delicate, you better get Who sent ya?
You're still peddle shit I got more rides than Great Adventure.

The lines lodge themselves in my brain like spat-out venom; words I should have volleyed at Paul Smith on the night of the great Ghetto-Opoly experiment, when he cornered me in the bathroom and put his arms around my waste, and stuck his tongue between my lips. It was a soppy, beery kiss that I would have hungered for, except on that night I pushed him away with a nervous smile. Oh, not right now.

Kick in the door wavin the four-four
All you heard was poppa don't hit no more.

When Ishtar Blaq left my apartment, just after midnight, he asked me to walk him to the door and as soon as the other players weren't looking, he slid his hands in my jeans and said oh, I don't think anyone suspects anything, well maybe Petey Pedrito Stretchito because he made a couple comments when we walked to the store, but it's all right because I think he's getting along with you okay.

I'm reminded that Ishtar Blaq sometimes rode his bike to my house on weekday mornings and smoked a spliff out the window while I blithely penned reviews of the newest MF Doom or Variable Unit. Once he told me oh, you're cute now, but give or take five years and you'll be knocked up and your nails will grow out all long and your hair will grow out all long.

And I remember I declared a moratorium on Ishtar Blaq that day, except I should have warned him:
Look how dark it get When ya marked with death
Should I start ya breath Or should I let you die?

One of my friends once tried to goad me to come to a Red Army meeting with him at an Erytrian restaurant on 51st and Telegraph, where he was supposed to convene with some members of the old George Jackson Brigade. He said, "Ghetto Sublime, I think we should make revolutionary communism a little more like hip-hop. You know, have a girl there to just sit around and dangle cigarettes, with no apparent purpose." And maybe Paul Smith was trying to institute the same thing in Ghetto-opoly.

When I sauntered back into the kitchen, Petey Pedrito Stretchito was eyeing my money gingerly --marveling at the slovenly stacks of bills with the hundreds crumpled up and the five hundreds soaking in a puddle of beer.

"Girl, you really need someone to manage your money," he said.

I didn't know what to make of this. It sounded like he was saying something private, and intimate. But he was talking about accounting. I was giving instructions on how to cook porkchops.

"Let me be your manager."

At that point, there were still two other players, and one of them was Paul Smith, and they were both pouring another six-pack of Colt 45 down the hatch. But I felt like Petey Pedrito and I had suddenly entered this hermetically sealed space where I could finally get a little outside the role that had been cultivated for me, and tap into this fantasy that I'd heard about in rap songs since I was 13, and still growing into my own sexuality, and not really understanding what rappers meant in their more benignly patriarchal songs about controling and handling women.

Secretly, I'd always wished something similar would happen to me.

By that point, Petey Pedrito owned about half the properties on the board --apparently he'd parlayed his ghetto tactics and his monopoly skills to succeed in this ridiculous game. And since we'd formed an alliance, he let it slide when I landed on his properties, and should have paid a sum of 200 or 500 daughters.

See, that's your hotel, Ghetto Sublime. I named it after you.

And I said "Okay Papi, move the piece for me." He looked at me a little funny, and I was getting butterflies again. I couldn't believe the words even as I said them --damn, I was acting the fool!

Paul Smith would definitely agree, except at that point, he'd drank so much he couldn't stand up without grabbing the table to steady himself. The dishes were piling up and the floor was tracked with mud, and I knew my roommates would kill me in the morning.

Slugs go touchie touchie; ya bleed lovely, with your spirit above me --or beneath me. Rest where the worms and the weak be. Here's a tissue, stop your blood clot crying; the kids, the dog, everybody dying, No lying, so don't you get suspicious. I'm BIG dangerous, you're just a little vicious.

I re-channeled all my anger into the sheer delight of behaving in the most morally reprehensible way possible --what Mikki would call "tapping into your inner-hoochie." And later, I tried describing the feeling to Petey Pedrito Stretchito, except I still struggled to wrap my mind around it:

" I guess what I was trying to tell you tonight -that I
> couldn't express then, and probably won't articulate
> well, now- is that, in the ghetto-opoly setup, it
> seemed like race/gender/sex/power/etc. were all in a
> piece --and yet, and still, I was turned on. And it
> took me a while to figure out why.
>
> What was deep, to me, was watching myself watch you
> play the pimp, and thinking, wow, I'm supposed to act
> a certain way in this setting, and yet I'm inclined to
> act the other way, and maybe that's just because of
> the taboo-ness of it all. In reality, I was vibing off
> you in this rich, rich, rich way --because pimping
> seems like a natural extension of your personality."

And I should have known, even then, that there aren't worlds of difference between Bazooka Tooth Joe, Ishtar Blaq, Paul Smith, and Petey Pedrito. And really, in the end, they were all out to bring in the pain.