by Eddie Huang
“Romaen, what you doing, man?”
“Yo, son, I got this recording from the Playboy Channel Hooman ordered. You gotta peep this shit. Pac got hos butt-ass naked with Jodeci in a limo drinking champagne and shit.”
“Ha, ha, I’m with this new kid, Eddie. He said he has PE with you.”
“Oh, the Chinaman? Yeah, that kid let me hold The Sporting News, that’s my dog.”
That day, Warren showed me how to hop the wall to Romaen’s. We lived in this neighborhood called Isle of Osprey, but if you walked to the back, there was a wall that divided us from Isleworth. Sometimes you could see Shaq on the lake jet-skiing. He’d have a kid drive a motorboat and he’d follow in his Jet-Ski to ride the waves. Life was funny in those years; we saw a lot of new money just stuntin’ in the neighborhood.
As soon as we hopped the wall to Isleworth, we saw security cameras and those sensors that shoot lasers everywhere we looked. Warren taught me to slide down the wall so we wouldn’t set anything off. The first backyard we were in had dogs and sensors so we just crawled under the sensors to get away from the dogs. They were supposed to be guard dogs, but they were some lazy-ass Rottweilers that just sat there. Then we were in someone else’s yard, but there were people chillin’ in the pool so we ducked behind bushes and crawled around again until we could see the road. Once we got around the bushes, we just bucked it toward the road and luckily no one saw us. Everyone had alarms, but they were sleeping. Money had them under a spell. Once they spent the money on a problem, they never thought about it again. It was hilarious. Two kids randomly crawl and buck through your yard, but you don’t even flinch. Three months later on TV, we saw that house with the Rottweilers on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. They were talking about how ill the security and dogs were. We just laughed.
Once we got to the road, I turned around to look and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Every single one of those houses could have been on Cribs. Benzes were the Chevys of that neighborhood. Most people were pushing crazy vehicles: military-issue Hummers, Rollses, Bentleys, I saw a Lamborghini, Range Rovers on twenty-twos. Kids were rollin’ around in golf carts, women were getting mail in Manolo Blahnik stilettos, it was like Monaco in Orlando. We walked up to Romaen’s crib and his mom had just made him salmon and jasmine rice. It was delicious. After watching uncensored 2Pac videos from the Playboy Channel, we went outside to play ball and Romaen just kept “Hit Em Up” on loop the whole afternoon. Between games, I sat on Romaen’s driveway, drank my Gatorade, looked around the neighborhood, and thought to myself. Damn … Pops, you came up.
* Chris Jackson, my editor, got my back with this one!
† What up, P!
7.
THE CHAIN REACTION
A couple of months into the school year, Romaen, our friend Ben, and I tried to join the debate club at school just to battle the smart kids. By default, I played the role of Will Hunting, which made Ben the half-Mexican Affleck and Romaen his Persian brother, Casey. At that point, I’d say we were like a lot of fourteen-year-olds. We all had Anarchy A’s on our backpacks and crew names written across the straps, like P.T.C.* There was a childlike playfulness to our rebellion. We were just kids having fun. Everything seemed OK, but looking back, I’d say that day with the Debate Club was our last dance, a final, fleeting attempt to do things through the ivory tower.
We went in like a bunch of assholes as usual, but it was a big thing for us. No one invited us to go, we didn’t know what it was about, and none of us had done anything like Debate Club before. It reminded me of my boy Deshawn looking at the YMCA pool: the only thing worse than admitting you want to swim is admitting you don’t know how. These days I wish there had been an adult in the room who understood where we were coming from. That stepping our feet in the door itself was an olive branch. No one grows up wanting to be a degenerate. We wanted to be like the other kids. We wanted to go to college. We didn’t want to be hooligans, but we also wanted to debate in our own distinct voices. We didn’t talk like the other kids, but we still had things to say.
Everyone sat in chairs as the president of the club gave this dry, convoluted orientation about how serious debate was and that the goal was to compete in Lincoln-Douglas–style debate or some shit. We didn’t want all the posturing; we just wanted to play ball.
“Yo, we just want to debate about legalizing marijuana, g! Fuck this other shit,” screamed Romaen.
Ben and I couldn’t stop laughing, but the president in his blue blazer and oxford shirt decided to make an example out of us.
“OK, you want to debate legalizing marijuana?”
“Yeah. That’s why we’re here.”
“Well, that’s certainly a novel topic that no one has ever tried to approach.”
His debate cronies all chuckled. I knew what he was doing so I jumped in.
“We know it’s not original, but we want the exercise of the discussion. Our way.”
“Your way? Well, that’s admirable and we welcome your participation in Debate Club, but that topic is probably better served in the columns of Hustler or Playboy, not a Debate Club like ours.”
“Man, fuck this shit. Let’s get out of here.”
That was it. We left embarrassed that we even tried to join something corny like Debate Club, yet also relieved that we wouldn’t be trying to fit into something the rest of the semester. That’s how it went for us. We’d all been through enough cultural cleansing situations that we knew something like Debate Club was going to try to remodel us, but I’ll never forget what happened when we left.
These were the days before cellphones, so I called my mom on a pay phone to tell her that we finished early, and she came to pick us up. We had waited about fifteen minutes on the curb when she finally pulled up. As soon as I got in the front seat, I turned the radio to 102 Jamz. I had enough blue-blood Debate Club talk for the day and wanted to hear the countdown. But there was no countdown that day.
“For those of you just tuning in, we are sad to announce that Tupac Shakur has died.”
“What the fuck?”
“Pac died?!?!”
We all knew he got shot, but Pac was invincible. He’d been shot before and survived, so none of us actually thought he’d die. The motherfucker was supposed to regenerate like Wolverine. It was almost a week since he got shot and we figured he was already up walking around. I remember the moment. None of us cried, we weren’t really sad, we were mad. Mad that Pac was dead. Mad at the world. Mad that the one thing that really spoke to us was taken away before we even had a chance to really know him.
Pac was unlike any other rapper. In the era of hip-hop where the art form was under siege for its lyrical content and motifs, Pac was the one guy we all pointed to and said, “Tell me this isn’t someone we should respect. Tell me this isn’t positive. Tell me he’s not an artist.” He was a bona fide role model regardless of his contradictions. If there was one rapper that you could see joining a debate club it was Pac. There was always pressure to wild out, but Pac was that dude we looked at and for a few seconds we could see ourselves with three-piece suits and glasses writing “The Rose That Grew from Concrete” and shit. He was a reminder to all of us that “it’s bigger than hip-hop.”†
A FEW YEARS ago, I saw a photo of all our homies taken in Ben’s backyard. We were just a bunch of cornballs at a fourteenth-birthday pool party but sixteen years later, Joey’s dead, so-and-so smokes crack, and most of us got two strikes. Suburban or not, something most definitely went wrong and we’re still trying to figure it out. But if you ask me, Pac and that dickhead at Debate Club had a lot to do with it. We never tried to join a club, after-school activity, or anything productive, for that matter, ever again. The Honor Roll wasn’t something we wanted to be part of. We gave up on doing it their way, we wanted to get free.
“YO, SON, YOU know dat dat kast comes back out today, right?”
“What’s dat kast?”
“N!gg@, you don’t know ’bout dat kast?”
“Whatever, man, you didn’t know what Hurricane Starang was.”
“Oh, hell naw, dog, this is the dirty dirty, you can’t be tellin’ people you don’t know ’bout dat kast …”
Outkast was another one of those groups that you didn’t hear on the radio, but people were certified crazy for Southernplayalisticcadillacfunkymusik. I got clowned all day because I didn’t know “ ’bout dat kast,” but I didn’t care, I just wanted the album. Romaen had an older brother, Hooman, who could get it for him, but Warren and I needed to find another way.
“Warren, you know ATLiens comes out today?”
“Yeah, man, we gotta go to Best Buy before it sells out.”
“My mom won’t take me, though. What about yours, dude?”
“Hell, no, my mom ain’t gonna take us to go buy dat kast.”
“I got an idea.”
Back then, there was a subscription service from Columbia and BMG records where if you agreed to buy their album of the month, they’d give you nine free CDs of your choice. We pulled a bunch of subscriptions out of music magazines, then signed up using fake names and credit card numbers. Somehow, some way, they never checked if the credit cards went through but we always got the CDs in the mail. Between the two of us we got thirty CDs apiece and then recorded and swapped to double our collection. That’s how we got ATLiens.
“Eh, yo, what are Atliens?”
“Yo, stop playin’, man, you for real?”
“Man, how the fuck am I supposed to know, I’m Chinese.”
“Son, it’s A-T-L. ATLANTA, motherfucker, and they aliens. It’s not that hard.”
“Man, fuck you.”
“You a funny ass, Chinaman, you know that?”
I was always a hip-hop head, but back then Romaen could school me on shit. Not only did he have Hooman, but he’d been around kids who listened to the same shit all his life. On the other hand, I’d been a loner caught up in the culture all by myself for fourteen years. Like the one kid in the hood who watches anime, I was the Chinese kid in Bay Hill doing the Bankhead. But if I didn’t know something, my homies would hold me down. Romaen, Easy Eric, Warren, Baber, Samer—I never had friends like that besides my brothers.
Private schools are funny. Everywhere you go, people are socially competitive, but different circles value different things. Rich kids care who your parents are, what they do, where your clothes are from. In public school we cared what we wore, but every one of us had homies in the crew dressed like straight assholes. Your boy with the giant North Pole pullover in Florida or the fool rockin’ RZA goggles. We would all crack on those dudes, but they could still roll. At private school, their passive-aggressive techniques were advanced. They had shit like the silent treatment. With public school, if I didn’t like the way you dressed, I told you, and if you had something to say, we’d just battle. You could look like Bushwick Bill, but if you were witty, had jokes, or a way to get money, pussy, or beer, we fux’d with you.
Warren and I were trading places. He used to go to Southwest Middle School with everyone, but in seventh grade his parents pulled him out and he had to go to First Academy, where I went in third grade. What were the odds? He went to TFA and of course, who’s his best friend? My boy Chris Nostro, who I used to chill with. I remember Warren called Nostro on the phone one day.
“Yo, Nostro, you remember this Chinese kid, Eddie Huang?”
“Wait, the Chinese kid that went to TFA in third grade?”
“Yeah, that’s my boy! He lives across the street from me now.”
“Oh hell, no! I remember when he put Edgar in the microwave, dude, ha, ha. That shit was wild. What’s he doing in your neighborhood? He got money now, too?”
Neither Warren nor I wanted to accept the fact that overnight, we’d become the “rich” kids at school. Warren was somewhat apologetic about it and I was, too. If someone needed money for lunch, I’d just hold them down because I remember being that kid even though my parents weren’t actually giving me money. I was just as “broke” as them but perception was a bitch and even at that age I didn’t want people catching the vapors. At Trinity, I used to eat this kid’s matzo and peanut butter because my mom didn’t give me enough money for lunch but I didn’t say anything. It bothered me a lot because people at public school thought I was spoiled, but I’d spent my life being the dirty kid at school wearing his dad’s old clothes.
Romaen and Easy Eric took my swag into their own hands. I always liked shopping for sneakers, Starter jackets, and Polo, but I would lace my shoes up high, not match, or just rock my shit goofy. I remember one day for lunch Baber clowned me, too.
“Eh, boy, your parents work at Champs Sports or something?”
“Oh hell, naw, Baber, this motherfucker paid! Stop clowning him, dude.”
“I’m not clowning him, Romaen, he wearing a Champs Sports Polo, son! They wear that shit at the register!”
“Man, it’s a Nike polo I got for ten dollars!”
“Aw, damn, man, we gotta go to the West Oaks Mall. Son, you can’t be steppin’ out like that.”
“Like what? It’s Nike for ten dollars.”
“Baber just told you, son, it’s ten dollars because it’s the motherfucking uniform, b! What made you think that shit was fresh? It’s navy!”
Easy Eric had paper because his father died in the Air Force and he got a six-hundred-dollar check every week. He spent it all on kicks and clothes but he’d sell us his shit after he wore it. Dude had mad style; I got a lot of my steez from Easy. He had all the Tommy, Polo, Nautica, Wu-Wear, Mecca; that was our shit. We were all little fourteen-year-old kids rockin’ tall tees, baggy jeans, and Timbos. I mean, it was Florida, we didn’t need six-inch Timbs, but we all read The Source and wanted to look like Capone ’n’ Noreaga posing in front of Queensbridge. I switched it up when the six-inches got played out and rocked the Beef and Brocs.‡
There were only two places to cop Mecca, Wu-Wear, Pelle Pelle, or Karl Kani. We had to go to the Magic Mall, owned by this rapper White Dawg, or to the Jamaican store, Nappy Gear, in the West Oaks Mall. The difficulty was an advantage; they only had a few sizes of each design, which made it harder for people to jack your style.
The must-have item of the late nineties in Orlando was the Air Penny II. After we’d been brainwashed by a million Lil’ Penny commercials, we were literally fighting at Foot Locker the day they were released to cop a pair. I’d never seen anyone fight over shoes without the Jumpman, but for three years, the Penny 1, 2, and Foamposite changed the game. Everyone wanted a pair of those shits with the wave on the side, ice-cold soles, and the one-cent on the back. That shoe was the one. I didn’t have the money to cop a pair, but Easy had two pair of each color so I just waited till the second week, when he scuffed the first pair, and bought them for half price. That Dominican had some stank-ass feet, but I didn’t care. I rocked those Pennies till they were talkin’.
Warren loved Mecca, but besides a few Mecca tees and silver-tab jeans, he wasn’t as materialistic as Romaen and I. He was a different cat. I’d come home from school and see Warren walking around the street with no shoes, sitting in the grass, or fixing his boat. There was this Sunfish sailboat he had in the backyard that he loved. One day, he let Chris Nostro and me take it out. Before we left, we all got high hitting this bong we made out of a plastic Mountain Dew bottle. Warren wanted to steer the sailboat.
“Yo, you guys are way too high to steer this shit.”
“Naw, man, you worried we gonna break your little Sunfish?”
“Ha, ha, ha, yeah, Warren, this shit is cheap, man. We ain’t gonna wreck this, anyway. I been to sailing camp!”
“My aunt gave me this sailboat. Just let me steer it.”
Nostro started laughing so hard he fell off the side of the boat into the water and then got stuck under the boat.
“Dude, what if he dies! He can’t get up under the boat!”
“Why doesn’t he just swim around?”
“ ’Cause he’s
high as shit, man, and doesn’t have his life vest on.”
We started bugging out. Nostro was under the boat for a good forty-five seconds and then we heard him bumping underneath it.
“I’ma flip the boat!”
So Warren and I flipped this sailboat over, which is usually OK, but then it slid out, hit a dock, and a few pieces broke.
“I’m alive! I’m alive!”
“You fucking bitch, you couldn’t even swim under the boat?”
“Yo, I think I inhaled plastic! I’ve never been this high. I thought I was gonna die!”
We ruined Warren’s boat, just like we’d mess up Warren’s house, or leave beer and weed that his mom would find later, yet he never got mad. Warren was the best friend I ever had. He was a wild-ass kid who would jump off his roof into the pool or off the bridge into five feet of lake water, wrestle a wild alligator in the dark, and break his collarbone snowboarding. He was never good with words, but he had this smile that’d do the talking for him. I never understood why he would put his life in danger, stand in the back of Jared’s pickup truck going forty-five down Apopka Vineland, or just go sit in the woods by himself. But I realized, Warren was looking for something.
Warren and I both came from families that worked really hard to get where they were. He was unlike any white people I’d ever met.§ In a lot of ways, he was just like me. He respected his dad for how far he’d come, but didn’t want to eat off his pops. Mr. Neilson was a lawyer and Warren would work in his office, but it’s not the life he wanted. Just like my dad had me work in the restaurant as a busboy, but neither of us wanted to be our dads.
Two or three days a week like clockwork, one of us got disciplined at home. We knew something had gone down when the other didn’t pick up the phone after dinner. A lot of times, Warren would come by the house and I was sleeping because I just didn’t want to deal with shit anymore, but he’d wake me up to go run around the neighborhood.