Fresh Off the Boat (24 page)

The two things I hated dealing with were snitches and bum ninjas who couldn’t pay. We had a situation once where Krazy called me saying someone wanted an ounce and a half out of the blue. It was a lot more than recreational, but still not any serious weight so it didn’t make sense. Sometimes if people wanted to make brownies they’d cop a half, but 1.5 just smelled funny.

“Yo, dawg, he’s cool, man. He’s on the swim team.”

“Swim team?”

“Yeah, that kid Andrew.”

“I got English with him. The fuck is he doing with one-point-five?”

“I don’t know, he throwing a party or something.”

“Isn’t he in that house with the collar-poppin’ motherfuckers? If he wanted work, he could get it from Kaywan. Turn it down, man, don’t smell right.”

“For real?”

“Yeah, trust me.”

Two weeks later, Kaywan, a Cape Cod aspirational peon who hung with the J. Crew–lookin’ frat motherfuckers, got busted serving the swim kid. Those kids were the worst. Bunch of cokeheads with ribbon sandals, rollin’ around with croakies, popped collars, and sweaters around their necks. They styled themselves like the ruling class, but they were weak—halfway addicts who’d turn to rats in a second to save their skin. Kaywan was an Arab from Louisville who acted his way through Rollins, where anyone with swarthy skin could pass himself off as Freeway Ricky Ross. The truth was that none of his tree was good—and he was a glorified errand boy for another dealer. Didn’t stop him from getting popped when swim fan snitched on him.

A FEW WEEKS
after Kaywan got busted, some of his customers needed tree so they came to me. One dude liked to cop eightballs and quarters. He’d get up then blaze when he came down. Fool was a mark, coppin’ every three days real consistent, but people get funny around Thanksgiving break.

“Hey, man, I want a quarter but only have fifty. Can I give you the other fifty after break?”

I didn’t have a layaway program, but I didn’t want to get stuck with a quarter over break, either, because I was going home for the weekend. So for fifty dollars, I broke my own rule and let him get it on credit.

The first day after break I called this fool and he didn’t pick up, but I knew I’d see him. Around 6
P.M.
, I ran into him in the computer lab.

“Your phone broke, motherfucker?”

“Hey, Eddie, wassup, man! How was break?”

“Son, it’s fifty dollars, just pay it.”

“All right, cool cool, I’m just gonna go get it from my car.”

It was stupid, fifty bucks was bullshit, but the point was if we let this motherfucker get off on us, other people would, too. To be honest, people should have been smarter. I’d get in fights over random tomfoolery, but I already knew I wasn’t going to really hurt anyone. It wasn’t worth it. I’m surprised more people hadn’t already tested me. I wasn’t like other hustlers. I treated it like a job and kept it friendly ’cause I had the best product. I didn’t need to goon out, but this fool was testing us so we had to do something. I thought to myself … How can I make this dude fear us and tell other people without actually doing something
too
illegal?

I told Randall to be outside the back of the library ’cause I knew this dude was full of shit. By the time I got around the back, Randall had him gripped up.

“You trying to run, son?”

“No, man, I was going to my car.”

“Naw, this dude was trying to run to his crib.”

“Get the fuck in the car.”

Just to fuck with this dude, I had my six-foot-three homie Farama, from Sierra Leone, with us. Funniest thing about the situation was that Farama was Kevin Garnett dark so these Rollins kids assumed he was the muscle, but he was the only one of my friends who was actually a good kid. His family was aristocracy in Sierra Leone, he went to a New England boarding school, and just started running with us because we played ball together. Poor kid ended up masked up with a stunt Glock in the back of Randall’s car because we knew the Cape Codder would be shook just from seeing a black person. Even when we were planning it we could barely stop laughing, but we had to get our faces straight to make it work.

The stunt Glock belonged to Justin’s dad—it was a training gun for the SWAT team that shot blanks, but until someone pulled the trigger, you’d swear it was real. No one was ever shooting anyone at Rollins—the truth is I was the Kanye of hustlers, knew I knew more about Polo than Gaston Glock. But I kept the stunt piece because it solved problems. I always figured it didn’t matter if the gun’s fake if the piss in this motherfucker’s pants is real.

“Oh shit, man! Is that a gun?”

“It doesn’t have to be if you pay me my fifty dollars, bitch.”

“Dude, it’s not that serious, we don’t have to do this.”

“We ain’t doing anything. We’re just talking, why you shook? If you got my money, there’s no problem.”

“I don’t have it, though!”

“How the fuck do you not have it, you rich motherfucker!”

“My parents didn’t give me my allowance this week yet!”

“Allowance? You twenty-one, how the fuck can you say ‘allowance’ with a straight face, b? Get a fuckin’ job. Gimme your phone, man.”

“But if I give you my phone, I can’t call you.”

“Then gimme that watch.”

This fool didn’t have fifty dollars, but he was running around with a gold and silver link Tag Heuer—it was worth more than three thousand.

“Man, my grandma gave me this watch!”

“Ha, ha, you hear this kid? You watched too much
Friday
talkin’ ’bout your grandma-ma, bitch. Gimme that watch.”

If you’ve seen
Friday
, you remember Chris Tucker’s line ’bout his grandma-ma giving him his chain. We were dying in the car, if he didn’t give up the watch quick, we wouldn’t have been able to keep the act up, it was so funny. I might as well have been Ben Affleck with socks showing at a law firm screaming “Reee-tain-eeeerrrr.”

“Fine, here’s the watch, but can you drop me off at home?”

“Yeah.”

We dropped him off and then everyone wanted to wear the watch. None of us had ever had anything that nice. Everyone wanted to take photos with it but I knew that was the kind of silly self-incrimination that got people locked up. Still, I rocked the shit out of that watch. Two weeks later, the kid got his fifty dollars together and called me.

“Hey, I have your money, meet me with the watch.”

“Naw, it’s cool. Keep your money, I like this watch.”

I made this kid chase me for three weeks trying to get his watch back just so he knew how it felt. In the end, I sold it back to him for three hundred. Pay your bills!

Rollins was a resort. We did whatever we wanted and ran the place as freshmen (technically, I was a sophomore in age, but it was my first year there, you know the deal). One day, I got caught up and didn’t make it to Troy’s crib after I picked up the work so I went to my coming-of-age novel class with two ounces. This girl Connie that sat next to me got my attention.

“Eddie!”

“Wassup?”

“Wassup??? You have a giant bag of weed on the table!”

“Shit!”

I didn’t even notice, but I had left my bag open when I got my notepad out and the weed was just sitting on the table when Dr. Jones came in. Luckily she didn’t see it.

That class opened my eyes. It was one of my first classes in the English major and looking around the table, I saw what it was really like to be wealthy. In Orlando, we had new money, but like Chris Rock said, we were rich, but we weren’t
wealthy
.

There were kids in class with their own yachts, sailboats, and European chalets. These people moved different. They had mastered the art of saying nothing. You could ask them a straight question like “Don’t you think we should have welfare?” And they could go on for five minutes, waxing poetic, and say absolutely nothing. They were masters of leading you in the wrong direction, taking you on a ride, and dropping you right back where you were when you asked the question. These were the real hustlers.

“The welfare of the poor is of course a serious problem that affects the condition of the nation, but it’s debatable how to solve the problem while properly incentivizing people to participate in a capitalist society. You don’t want a situation where your tax dollars are incentivizing stagnant behavior.”

READ: I don’t care about poor people and I’m assuming that everyone on welfare is some single mom with five kids who keeps having them to get more money on her EBT card.

But there were also people there who came to the school because it had a good reputation for liberal arts. There was a rich history at Rollins—it gave rise to the Black Mountain College movement and was an innovator in interdisciplinary study and breaking down a lot of the traditional education structures. I didn’t know anything about the history of the school until I got there and hung out with professors. Here I was running around with a bunch of knuckleheads serving the whole school, yet, when I was in class, I saw a whole other life for myself.

Dr. Jones’s class struck a nerve. Reading coming-of-age stories like
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Catcher in the Rye, Huckleberry Finn
, and
The Liars’ Club
helped me answer a question I’d had for a minute. For years, I wanted to know if there was one person, one voice, one individual inside me. All my life people would call me a chink or a chigger. I couldn’t listen to hip-hop and be myself without people questioning my
authenticity. Chinese people questioned my yellowness because I was born in America. Then white people questioned my identity as an American because I was yellow.

No black or Spanish person ever called me chigger, but hustling all of a sudden got white people off my back. I was the same dude with a different job, but now I was finally “authentic”
^§
to white people, and it made me realize it’s all a trap. We can’t fucking win. If I follow the rules and play the model minority, I’m a lapdog under a bamboo ceiling. If I like hip-hop because I see solidarity, I’m aping. But, if I throw it all away, shit on my parents, sell weed, pills, and strike fear into unsuspecting white boys with stunt Glocks, now I’m authentic? Fuck you, America.

After class, I was still spending my weekends back home on the Southwest Orlando side with my old homies. I went out with Lil’ Cra and Muschewske to Point Orlando one night. We were up in the club, chillin’, drinkin.’ I dropped a Xanax bar so I was nice. Not super twisted, just zonin’. Everything was kosher, but as we left, I saw that kid M-Ron that fought me in my driveway.

“Ay yo, Cra, that’s that dude.”

“Which one?”

“That kid from my driveway in ninth grade. Remember?”

“Oh shit, for real?”

“Yeah, I’ma get him, son. Hold me down.”

“A’ight, I got you, man, no doubt.”

I always had a padlock on me in case we got in a fight, ’cause you wanted to throw a heavy punch. You put your finger through the middle of the lock and make a fist around the joint. That way, you won’t break your hand and it’s like having a brass knuckle. I saw this motherfucker in his wack ass Kenneth Cole shoes and a Ben-Sherman-looking shirt. Kid grew up to be just like all the other sellouts in the neighborhood chillin’ with some spiked hair, 9 to 5 bros. He was walking with two other dudes when I walked up to him. One of the Rollins kids I was with was this kid named Mike Harris. He was supposedly from Boston and talked a lot
about how he put in work back home, knew Israeli street fighting, could speak with his hands, etc. Blah, blah, blah, you know how it goes: college boy thespians.

“Harris, I’ma run up on this kid. Cra got my back, but hold me down if the other dude tries to creep.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean what do I mean? I’m sayin’, hit the big motherfucker if he moves!”

“Uhhh, OK.”

I walked up to the dude right in the middle of the parking lot.

“Hey! Hey, man!”

“Huh?”

“Yo, wassup, man? Long time no see!”

“Do I know you?”

“You don’t remember me, dogs? It’s Eddie, man!”

CRACK!

I whacked this motherfucker right in the teeth with my right and he crumbled to the fucking concrete like a sack of soybeans. One of the best punches I ever threw. He didn’t just fall, he stumbled twice, tripped over the other leg, and then yard saled.

“Ohhh, look at you now, son. Remember the name, motherfucker: Eddie Huang.”

BAM!

I pulled the classic bad guy shit that always fails. Remember, kids, if you knock someone the fuck out, don’t stand over them, don’t take your mask off, don’t tell ’em your name, and DEFINITELY don’t let their giant A-Rab friend kick you in the back of the head.

“Oh shit! Eddie, get up, man, the cops are coming!”

Lil’ Cra had one, but Mike Harris sat in the fucking car while we threw down. All that talk about Israeli street fighting and how he could kill a man with his bare hands was just sales puffery. That’s why real motherfuckers hate college kids, man. Hormones got you actin’ wild in the club in front of girls, but push comes to shove and you’re sitting in a Toyota Celica
smoking Parliament lights like a fuckin’ female. I got up and everything was spinning. The kick wasn’t that bad, but I didn’t expect it, so I hit the concrete parking lot facefirst and started bleeding everywhere. “Stop that kid! Stop that kid!”