Can we talk?

While listening to my roomie’s iPod on shuffle just a little while ago, I immediately I thought of one of my very first boyfriends. Let’s call him Aaron. Quick story: I first met Aaron through his cousin who was one of my best friends. We were all at one of those school concerts in middle school. You know, the ones where the band plays some lame songs and the chorus sings some lame songs all dressed in white tops and dark bottoms? I played the clarinet, by the way. Anyway, my girl (calling her Kira) was there and her family came to see her sing in the chorus. When it was all over we milled about near the school entrance.

I think how it happened was that Kira brought Aaron over to meet our other girlfriend (calling her Nia) who played the flute in the band with me. Standing there next to Nia, I was all googly eyed over Aaron. At that moment, “Can We Talk” started blaring from some nearby car and I thought, oh, this is too crazy right now! It never worked out with Aaron and Nia, not even for a little bit. Aaron and I, however, ended up dating (or “going together” as we preferred to call it) for a little while. After a while we broke up. I think it had something to do with him hanging out with older people and me not having sex with him. Who knows. What I DO know is that he went on to date like two more of Kira’s friends. It was no big deal. He would always ask about me. I’m pretty sure he even tried to marry me after he became Muslim. LOL. We may not have married bliss but we sure do have a song.

It’s such a good fucking song!

Flashback: 1995

Okay, 1995 was a hell of a year in my life. I was a freshman in high school. During the day, was busting out honors-level classes, playing varsity sports, singing in musicals (drama club) and being a perfect student. At night, I was running the streets with my friends, getting into all kinds of grown-folk trouble. Among my friends from back home, ’95 is notorious for many reasons.

1995 was also the year I got punched in the face for the first time. Here’s how it all went down:

First let me say that I really had nothing to do with the beef in the first place. I was friends with a girl I’ll call Consuela. We were tight since 5th grade. Anyway, Consuela had this neighbor and for some reason, they didn’t like each other very much. Her neighbor was a grown man, by the way. I guess the animosity between them escalated and he wanted to go after Consuela. However, being a grown man he couldn’t really step to her himself. So he did what anybody in the hood would do – he called his female cousin. Now, I knew Consuela had some issues with her neighbor. We’ve had enough run ins with him whenever I was over there to visit. We didn’t know that he had sent smoke signals to the projects calling for troops.

So on that day in 1995, I was sitting on Consuela’s stoop like I’d usually do, shooting the shit with her and a guy from across the street. While chillin’, we saw this gang of big, rough looking chicks round the corner. I swear, I can see it in my mind’s eye right now. The neighbor came out on the porch and was all “yeah, now let’s see how much mouth you got,” directed at Consuela. I’m kind of looking around, not fully understanding what’s about to take place. In a strange move, Consuela goes into the house. Later on, I found out that she had gone into the house to call our homegirls as backup. If you’re following along, you know that I’m outside, alone, with an angry neighbor and a gaggle of shrek bitches.