The Billiken's Bluff

Marvin, Asian American 2nd generation barely, but his first name all like baggy shorts, Cross Colours, 80s baby, Tribe Called Qwest and hanging out at the bus stop, it was Queens proper as if his parents had predicted where they would settle and what it would look like for junior high students a baker's dozen years paid forward when they left Qingdao or wherever. Marvin went to the corner store, veritably on a corner otherwise they would have called it something else entirely, and got them drinks, quarter waters red, green, blue bright like pixels on a tube TV. Called by their color not their flavor - blue, not berry. This is not unimportant. This is a litmus test of sort when applied to Gatorade. It's not where you're from it's where you're at. Lemon-Lime and Yellow. Are you from the city extended or Western Pennslyvania? Let's talk as pointedly, as specifically as possible, only talk in pixels - red, blue, green.



4 on 4 plus those who had next and those who where there to watch. Maybe $4 bucks in total when it was all said and done. He returned to the court, slanted on hill, hoop at the summit - all angles and bank shots. He distributed the cache and attempted to recoup that $4 - one coin at a time. Nobody's fool. Cheap yes, petty maybe, but he didn't want to be that guy tasked with buying and paying for things.










Basketball shorts without pockets, I got nothing yo. I got nothing dude. Argued as a matter of principal and logic. No pockets, no coin. They kept their money in your shoe, sweaty, crumpled bills.

I take quarter water sold it in bottles for 2 bucks,
Coca-Cola came and bought it;
for billions, what the fuck?




New and improved - it doesn't burn the back of your throat going down, maybe it's the vitamins or the additional volume. The colors are too nuanced to be called anything other that guava and pomegranate. Whitestone Queens, from your corner store to ours.



Marvin went to Stuyvesant, studied piano and Calculus AB or BC. M.I.T, beaver class ring the whole thing here we come. Unique, special, a minority, you know? He was in, fo' sure. He bought the Air Max 95s off me, despite their size being too big - this didn't see to be indicative of good decision making outside of the classroom, too eager. Marvin had a kid 2 months into Senior year of high school.

have a baby by me; baby
be a millionaire
i write the check before the baby comes,
who the fuck cares

Falling Man:

Someone told Rumsey one night, it was Dockery the waggish adman, that everything in his life would be different, Rumsey's if one letter in his name was different. An a for the u. Making him, effectively, Ramsey. It was the u, the rum, that had shaped his life and mind. The way he walks and talks, his slouchings, his very size and shape, the slowness and thickness that pour off him, the way he puts his hand down his shirt to scratch an itch. This would all be different if he'd been born a Ramsey.

Bill Lawton is Bin Laden on a cell phone with static. Anthony Fernandes is working out of a call center in Mumbai, minus the nom de plume. Barack's middle name is Hussein and his last name is not Ramsey.



Holiday shopping season 1998. He sat shotgun outside Short Hills mall,



newly-purchased Tupac Shakur Greatest Hits double CD in bag. His dad's CD player, he wanted to hear IT. A patriarch who opted not to curse, ever, casually or seriously, above it all. Son opted for Changes because it stood for something cause both Black and White smoking crack tonight, gave him a goose bump when the climate control was right. Different versions of heaven, albeit. They agreed to disagree.



When new of Biggie's death was broadcasted on NY1 he was seated in front of his Grandma's wood framed television.



The shot heard round the world, this was not. He remembers this living room with thick carpet and a parakeet suspended in cage above the television when he heard that Biggie was not going to be alive for the release of his second album presciently title Life After Death. Why? And why did he only have one verse on Notorious Thugs. This wasn't enough, neither. His grandmother remembers where she was when JFK was gunned down or so they tell her. Plates did not leave her and crash to the floor in appreciation of gravity framed on the wood TV.






Sublime's Date Rape a jaded warning with a beat. An aunt, a feminist ready to attack, does not appreciate any nuisance when they talk her through it. But Santeria, yea there is all types of chauvinism and gun play but listen to it on the way back from Jones Beach and then write your book report, savvy?

What we care about, this type of shit, does not transfer by touch, time is not on our side yes it is.



You can't talk anyone through it. It's like liking a presidential candidate just because maybe he reminds you of a would be member of your family, just because.



You know?