[dropcap]I[/dropcap] am currently in Inglewood, a few blocks up from my High School at this motel called Cloud 9. It’s spring break & l literally only came out here because I got invited to come to Revolt TV’s studio. Other than that I literally have no business out here. My pops and step moms are staying with my step moms folks in Victorville until they can find a new place that takes section 8.
Im definitely staying clear away from my cousins/grandma pad because me & my cousins just always end up bumping heads hella since I left for college and its not like they have any place for me to lay my head anyways. So I decided to rent a cheap room for a few nights & hope this invite leads to a concrete situation. God willing everything will happen how it shall.
So yea, I decided to go to the store for some snacks and it was crazy because in my mind I was like I’m going at 10:00 (Thug life I never am spooked in the city at night although its perceived to be a danger zone) and plus the store was only a block over. Perks of neighborhoods where minorities live, there is a liquor store on almost every corner opened late night.
So I head out and on my way back, me and this boy walked past each other and I called out to him because he was a familiar face. It was the homie Mykel from my Inglewood High days. I always tripped off running into people. To me its like I did everything in my day and you did everything in your day, for us to run into each other at this specific time. Its mind blowing to me & sometimes I believe it is meant to be.
Now Mykel is a very handsome male about 5’6 chocolate skin with a gap that only add to his features. We actually went to Homecoming together. Running into him was one thing, but the things he relayed to me was on a whole other level.
He told me about how after high school he enrolled in the local community college but his family life at home was just dysfunctional & he wasn’t receiving financial aid, so he wasn’t able to purchase his books. He would be in class listening to his Professor & writing down notes but overall it was not helping him to excel. Not to mention he was on the football team & not being played. Eventually he grew apart from the school joint, bounced from home and involved himself in the streets. In high school he was already into gangs and had been to jail.
So the street life was all too familiar for him. He said he got into some trouble and ended up getting shot 5 times & his best friend died in his arms. God spared him and he has his life. He pulled up his sleeve showing me his arm that shows he obviously was shot and suffered deep wounds just by the way it healed and scared. He pulled up his pants leg to show me his leg which showed the same type of bruising mentioning he had a steel rod in his leg now. I tried to stop myself from crying but the tears silently fell.
He also talked much about how he had a super crush on me in high school. That he was in love with me on some love at first sight type joint. He said that he thought he would never see me again, maybe when we were like 40. He talked about how he used to talk to his God pops for hours about me. Mykel said that he was shy in high school and also mentioned having this schizophrenia type joint to where he was Mykel and normal and nice at school, but when his other personality hit, he was this super turnt-up type gang banger and he didn’t want to involve me in that. Crazy.
He talked about how he felt that in high school he thought that other guys offended me, and that I had developed this complex about boys and he didn’t want to be categorized as another one of those dudes. He said that I INSPIRED him & he even went hard in his school work getting 3.0’s knowing that school was where my head was at saying that he knew I was trying to get up out of our environment. He said he figured if he got into a honors class, I would notice him or something.
I mean, but it was hard not to notice him. He was chocolate skinned and just like beautiful to me. And he had this super broad, buff body that came from playing football. He was my type no doubt. But a homecoming dance was as far as we took that, words never said, feelings never expressed. Until now. He kept making a reference to God putting me in his path. And I believe he was right. We talked about him being depressed for a while after he got shot, with his best friend dying in his arms and him loosing so much weight. How his mother smoked dope all his life and he hasn’t seen her this year and it hurts his feelings when she does that.
He encouraged me, telling me that he knows I will be a good writer and he thinks ill be good at whatever I put my mind to. Life is crazy sometimes and people are put in our paths for a reason. I would have never guessed this boy felt for me like that seeing as I was so focused on getting to a 4 year University in high school that I completely put boys out my mind. I told Mykel that I would be renting this room for a couple more days and to come back tomorrow so that we could chat some more. I also told him about College of the Redwoods a community college in Humboldt that has dorms.
I told him I would be supportive of him coming up to get away from the city and to just be an encouragement for him. He told me that he didn’t want me to have sympathy for him and I told him I am deeply empathetic and that there is a difference.
Man…. I wish that I could save the world… but Im a dreamer though??
