“Owwwwwww!” someone else yelled as everybody egged him on.
Needles suddenly stiffened. It was like his muscles tensed up, as if he had even more bones in his body than he started with. It was like something clicked, and he froze up. He waved the girl off and stepped away. Thankfully, everybody just jumped in the circle, giving Needles the chance to disappear in the crowd.
“Yo! Yo!” I screamed out and waved so he could see me. He made his way back over, all out of breath.
“That was crazy, man!” I said.
“Thanks, man,” he said, huffing. He slapped me five, then wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“I didn’t know you could dance like that! You could be on TV!” I couldn’t get a hold of myself—I was just so shocked at Needles doing all those moves. Every girl in the room wanted him. He got the party started. He was the man. Syndrome, what? I wished Noodles had seen.
Needles and I pushed through the crowd to the drink table. I started reaching for a beer at first, but when Needles reached for a soda, I reached for a soda too. Sidenote: There was no bartender, and I didn’t see no strippers, neither. I mean, pretty girls, yeah, but not strippers. Matt, my sparring buddy, didn’t know what he was talking about.
We had been at the party for about thirty minutes when I spotted the girl with the legs. The one I saw when we were coming in. I checked my shoes. Still clean. I took a sip of my soda and decided it was time to make a move.
“I’m gonna go talk to that girl, man. You gonna be okay?” I asked Needles. I knew he’d be fine, but I still had to ask.
He nodded—“I’m straight, man”—and made his way to a corner on the other side of the room. He leaned against the wall and began to fool with his yarn. It was dark, so nobody could really see him, which was a good thing. It’s weird to see a dude with a bunch of fly clothes on standing in a corner of a crazy party, knitting. Most folks just wouldn’t understand.
I glanced over at the front door. Noodles was still over there with Tasha. Perfect. Wanted to keep a close eye on my boys. I put on my cool, which wasn’t much, but on this night, way more than normal, and strutted over to where the girl with the legs was standing. She was sipping something pink. I think it was the punch they had on the table. I heard someone call it “loose juice,” so I guessed it was spiked. In my mind I ran through a couple of icebreakers. “Dope party, right?” or “You look absolutely beautiful tonight” or “Didn’t I see you coming in?” None of them were sticking, so I figured I would do what Doris always tells me to do when her friends come over—just open my mouth and say hello.
“Hey,” I said. She didn’t hear me over the music, thankfully, because once “Hey” came out, I realized how lame “Hey” was.
So I tried again.
“How are you?” I asked, a little louder. I knew she heard me because she smiled.
“Fine!” She was yelling, but I could still tell she had a nice voice.
I took a sip of my soda. “You look amazing tonight,” I said. Then I suddenly felt the need to explain myself. “And I don’t mean that in a sleazy way. I just mean you really look nice.”
I lied. I meant it in the usual way, which was sleazy, but I figured that half the men in the party had already tried their hands, probably all saying that she looks amazing. “You look amazing” was probably getting pretty boring to her.
She smiled again and took another sip of the loose juice.
“Thanks,” she said. Then she held out her hand in that soft girly way. If we wasn’t at a MoMo party and I was sixty years old, I would’ve kissed it.
“I’m Candace.”
“Ali. Nice to meet you, Candace.”
Candace shifted her weight from one leg to the other. I took another swig of my soda and tried not to stare at her legs. She smelled fantastic, and I could tell she did that thing Doris does with perfume. A dab on the wrists, a dab on the elbows, and a dab behind the ears.
It got awkward for a moment. I didn’t know what to say next. But once she finished her drink, I just offered to go and get her another. It was the only thing I could think of. My only opening. It was just like in the movies. I went over to the drink table. When I got there, MoMo was standing in front of it, all hugged up with some girl who was clearly drunk or high or something. I pulled my hat further down over my face and scooped the punch as fast as I could without making a mess all over the place.
Once I made it back over to Candace, without spilling a drop, which was important to me, her head was being talked off by some other joker with a fat gold chain on, and big diamond earrings in his ear that I could tell were fake. The reason I knew they were fake is because I looked at his shoes. Busted. Ain’t no man with busted shoes can afford no real dime-size diamond earrings. My shoes were spotless, and I couldn’t afford them either, but I was only fifteen. Just saying. She was sipping at another cup of punch that I guess “Busted Shoe Dude” had brought to her. I didn’t want to make a fuss about it, so I just walked away and went looking for another girl to talk to. Meanwhile, since I’d poured the cup of punch, I decided to have a sip myself. Why not? It tasted just like soda, but I felt a little cooler drinking it.
I knew it was time to check on my boys again. Needles was still in the corner, knitting. The party that he got started was now happening, full-out, but now he was all of a sudden too shy to participate. Noodles was dancing with Tasha in the front area. They weren’t too close to each other, but still, MoMo would’ve flipped if he caught them.
Right when I took the last sip of loose juice, I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“Where did you go?” Candace’s voice and sweet breath came down on me like summer heat.
“Oh,” I said, my mind going blank. She was looking for me! “I went to get you a drink, but when I came back over, you were being entertained,” I said. I was pretty proud of myself for saying, “You were being entertained.” That was smooth.
“Yeah, by a clown,” she said, laughing.
I smiled. “Yeah, it looked that way.”
Candace downed what had to be half a cup of loose juice. She twisted her face up as if it tasted nasty, but it didn’t.
“You gonna dance with me, or what?” she said, demanding. She put my hands on her hips and started swaying them right to left and back again. I couldn’t believe it. And I couldn’t believe where my hands were. She kept rocking back and forth, and my hands kept following her, back and forth, to the beat of the music. I couldn’t have moved them if I tried.
We started grooving. I won’t pretend like I’m some kind of spectacular dancer, but for some reason I was feeling it. I mean, I was really moving, and everything was on rhythm, which is usually pretty tough for me unless I got on boxing gloves, and even then it ain’t so easy. It might have been the loose juice. I wasn’t drunk or nothing, but I was definitely a lot looser than normal. Candace smiled and gave me all kinds of sexy looks as she danced around me and beside me and behind me. She was everywhere, and all over me, and man, I was loving it, but I acted like it was nothing. I pretended like I was used to older hot girls showing me love. At one point she was in front of me grinding. I moved my hands up around her waist and rested my chin on her neck like a professional. I mean, I’ve grinded before at other parties, but never with no grown woman at a MoMo party.
I could not believe this was happening. I didn’t even have to sneak a feel. She took my hands and put them on her thighs and everywhere, and the whole time I’m trying to keep cool and not be fifteen. I kissed her on her neck. Just a nibble. I don’t know where it came from, but it seemed like the right thing to do. She didn’t say nothing, so I kept doing it. My brain was going crazy. All I kept thinking was, This is unbelievable. I tried to back up a few times—I didn’t want her to feel me or anything, because that would be embarrassing. But every time I pulled away, she yanked me closer.
I don’t know how long we were dancing. It might have been an hour, but it could have been twenty minutes. Both of us were soaked, and Candace had ta
ken off her shirt and just had on a tank top. Her hair started to frizz up. She grabbed my hand and started leading me through the crowd. I had no idea where she was taking me. There was a hallway right by where the DJ was set up. She led me down it. It was dark, but Christmas lights lined the ceiling there, too, so I could see people. Some were making out against the wall. Some were talking. Some were flicking lighters, but I wasn’t sure what they were lighting, and didn’t want to look long enough to find out.
Halfway down the hallway was a room. Okay, so Matt was right about the room. Candace took me in there, and I realized then that things were getting way more serious than I had expected. She didn’t close the door. She just threw herself on me, wrapping her arms around my neck and kissing me. And while my brain was still going, “I can’t believe it,” another part of me was starting to get nervous. I mean, I had made out with girls, but something told me we were going to be doing more than kissing and touching and stuff. I wasn’t really ready to go all the way. I had never done it before. But I also didn’t want to come across as a stupid kid, so I just went with it and prayed something would happen to distract her. Sort of like how John busted in on Noodles and me when we were about to fight in the kitchen. I needed another one of those random interruptions. A drunk guy, a sick girl. Anything. If not, I was going to have to go all the way. My mother always said that once you start a lie, you gotta keep lying. So if Candace and I were going to go all the way, I was going to have to either pretend like this was no big deal for me, or lie my way out of it. I mean, really, I don’t even know how I’m thinking about all this—about anything—with this hot girl all over me.
It seemed like Candace was kissing me forever. I laid back on the bed, and she got right on top of me. She kissed me hard and then looked at me for a second and asked if I was all right.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I whispered, holding her tighter around the waist. For a second I thought she could tell I was nervous, but I tried to play it off by pulling her back down on top of me to kiss more. I wondered if she knew I was younger, and if she did, how come she didn’t care? Maybe she was underage too. Maybe it was too dark for her to really see me. Maybe it was the liquor. She whispered something in my ear, but I couldn’t make it out because it was kinda slurred. I think she said I kiss good. Something like that. Then she leaned up again and tried to undo my belt, and I know I should’ve been crazy amped, and let me tell you, part of me was, but another part of me was thinking that this girl didn’t even really know me. She didn’t even know my last name. And I just couldn’t shake that thought. I knew that I would probably kick myself later, but I just didn’t want to do it. I mean, I did. It’s hard to explain. This girl on any other night, maybe would’ve been my first. But it wasn’t the right time. I think I just couldn’t get over the fact that it was all happening so fast, and it all was so awesome, but I was too uncomfortable.
Another crazy thought running through my head was whether or not I was going to lie to Noodles about it, or if I was going to tell him I was scared to go all the way. Probably lie. He’s the type who would tease me about it until I was sixty, and then lie about how he had already done it before.
I had to figure out how to stop her. There was only one way I knew. As she pulled at my belt, I grabbed her hands and whispered, “Ah. I want to. But I don’t have a rubber.” I pretended to be bummed. Truth is, I don’t really know how I felt. Maybe I really was, maybe I wasn’t.
“It’s all right,” Candace whispered. “MoMo keeps them in here.” What?!? She leaned over and slid her hand in the drawer of a night table beside the bed that I hadn’t even noticed was there. When she pulled her hand out, she was holding a condom.
“Look what I found,” she chirped, and at that moment I knew I was a goner. This is the story I was going to have to tell about my first time. A MoMo party, with a gorgeous drunk older girl, that for some reason I wasn’t really comfortable with. Maybe Doris’s training had made me soft, I thought. Naw, not soft, just safe.
Candace stared right at me while pulling her tank top over her head. I wondered if she could see how nervous I was, if it was in my eyes. I wondered what my face looked like as I tried to play cool, like I had done this before. I wondered if I would have to unsnap her bra, something I definitely would not be good at. She reached for my belt again, and as soon as she got it undone, someone came running down the hall screaming.
“They fighting! They fighting!” the voice yelled. The music was loud, but those words cut through the throbbing bass.
I don’t know what it is about the hood that when a person yells “They fighting!” everybody stops what they’re doing and runs toward the fight. Logic says to run away from the fight, but there’s nothing more entertaining than a good brawl.
Candace jumped off me and reached for her shirt. I didn’t wait for her to put it back on because to me, this was more than just a fight, it was my excuse to bail. So I ran out of the room and into the hallway, where people were crowded and yelling. I jumped to try to see over the crowd. I couldn’t. I could hear the skin-on-skin contact, though. The punches sounded clean, and painful. I pushed through the crowd to get closer to the action, at the same time trying to spot Needles and Noodles to make sure they were okay. It didn’t seem like anyone was trying to stop the fight, so I guess there were no bouncers or security guards like I expected. If they weren’t careful, this thing could turn into a free-for-all, I thought. I didn’t want Needles to have to be involved in nothing like that, and I didn’t want to be involved either. Once I got close enough to see, I couldn’t tell who was getting pounded on, but whoever it was would thank God for life if they made it to the morning. I looked for Needles and Noodles. I glanced over to the corner where I’d seen Needles last. Not there. Maybe he had gone outside. Looked to the front. Didn’t see Noodles, either. Tasha was standing just enough inside the party room to see what was going on. Her hand covered her mouth, and her face was wet with tears. Then I looked to another corner. There stood Noodles—looked like he had seen a ghost. I made my way over to him to see if he knew where Needles was.
“Yo! Where’s Needles?” I put my hand on his shoulder.
He didn’t respond. He just stood there, like he was going through some kind of shock or something. Like his head was empty.
“Nood!” I yelled. “Nood!” I stepped directly in front of his face. “Where’s Needles?”
Noodles looked at me, and his face crumbled. All of a sudden, my legs felt funny. I felt like I was going to pass out. That look on his face told me that Needles was the person getting pounded on in the middle of that brawl. And his punk-ass brother was just standing there like a freakin’ sissy, scared, watching it all unfold.
If I could’ve burned a hole in his face with my eyes, I would have. But there wasn’t time to try. I turned toward the fight and thrust my way through the crowd. I normally would’ve been terrified, but I didn’t have time to be scared. I had to get to Needles.
Once I entered the danger zone, all I could do was imagine myself training with Malloy. I’d never even had a real boxing match. And the way I always got my ass handed to me in spars was enough for me to know I wasn’t the best. But I couldn’t let them kill Needles, so I had to hope the training worked better outside the ring than inside. Fists tight, thumbs down. The guys beating on Needles didn’t see me coming up from behind. I grabbed one by the shoulder and spun him around. Once he faced me, I gave him a stiff jab right to the nose. Didn’t put too much arm into it. Snapped it just like Malloy said, and put him right to sleep.
One thing Malloy always joked about was how guys who fight in the hood only know one punch, and that’s a hook. They throw it wild and free, and because everybody does it, everybody gets caught with it. It’s silly, but it’s the way it is. Once I knocked the first guy out, the second guy turned around and noticed me. He did exactly what I expected him to do. A right hook. Before his fist was halfway to reaching me, I had already zapped him—boom boom boom—three times in the fa
ce. The hook never landed. Another one down.
I tried to scan the room as quickly as possible. I could see there was somebody else about to come at me, but another guy held him back. I couldn’t recognize who he was. Maybe someone who recognized me from the neighborhood? No time to think. Somebody else came out of nowhere and snuffed me across the face. It stung, but surprisingly, my recovery time is pretty good, especially for such a lightweight. I stumbled but didn’t fall. Somebody tried to hold him back as well, but he broke away and threw a few haymakers at me, missing. I could tell people were trying to break it up, but no one knew how.
He kept coming, but I switched to southpaw, which I could tell confused him. Malloy always said it would. Dude threw a jab but was way off. I gave a clean hook. I felt my hand meet his jawbone, and I knew that one of my knuckles was broken right then and there. It was my own damn fault—my fist wasn’t closed tight enough and I knew it. Dude threw another jab, and I hit him with the same punch, followed by an uppercut. That might have been the first combination I had ever landed in real life. The pain shot up my arm, making my elbow and shoulder tingle, but I put it right on his chin, and through all the noise, I could still hear his teeth click. Out.
One guy left, which I was glad about because I was getting tired. He was a big guy. Much bigger than the other three. When people saw him coming, everybody just stepped out of the way. Nobody tried to stop him. He just football-tackled me. There was nothing I could do at that point but try to block my face. My lip busted right open when he landed on me. He caught me a few times right above the eye. I could feel a few random feet kicking me in my side, sideline suckers trying to get free licks. It felt like a house was on top of me; I could barely breathe. But I kept trying to punch him in the back and give everything I had to his ribs. A rib shot hurts like nothing else. I gave him what seemed like ten blows to the breadbasket, but they didn’t faze him! I was outweighed big-time and was scared that if he didn’t get off me, I would suffocate. Finally, out of nowhere, I heard Tasha’s voice yell out, “Cops! Cops!”
When I Was the Greatest Page 11