by Omar Tyree
ON THE FLIGHT from Miami to New York, all Shareef could think about was his failure to stimulate his wife. Despite her claim that having children had nullified most of her sexual desire, he held himself responsible for not turning her on. He felt less masculine because of it, and tainted with a weakness.
Nah, fuck that! There’s nothing wrong with my sex game, he convinced himself. Jennifer’s just not interested. Some women are just like that. That’s not my fault.
As for their marriage counseling, he found it interesting to finally get so many of their issues out in the open, but he doubted if it would work. Unless Jennifer turned into a nympho, or he lost as much of his own mojo, he failed to see them as an equal match anymore.
Fuck it, I’m a passionate man, he assessed himself. Putting down my dick is like putting down my pen. And I can’t see that happening anytime soon, unless I’m either dead or crippled.
WHEN HE LANDED in New York at 7:34 PM, the plan was to have his friend Polo pick him up at the airport and drive him over to a small hotel on Frederick Douglass Boulevard below 124th Street. The hotel was a renovated spot right down the block from the Magic
Johnson/Sony Theaters and Hue-Man Bookstore. Shareef loved that the place was low-key and right in the middle of Harlem. He could do his research on foot while feeling a part of the neighborhood again. It wouldn’t feel the same if he stayed at a luxurious hotel in Times Square. Nor did he pack any of his upscale clothing. It was time to feel the roots of the grind and hustle from the street level again in tennis shoes. And Shareef looked forward to it.
Polo arrived at LaGuardia Airport in an old, two-toned Bronco jeep.
Shareef met him at the curb of the pickup area and asked him, “Where you been hiding this eighties ride at?”
“Man, I just got this thing back out the shop a month ago,” Polo answered. “I love this truck, man. It takes me back to the roots.” He looked like a bear of a man, with a full goatee, rounded belly, oversized blue denims, and a royal blue T-shirt.
Shareef shook his beefy palm and said, “That’s just what I was thinking about. That’s why I’m staying at this little hotel on Frederick Douglass.” He also planned to wear a lot of basic T-shirts with his slacks and tennis shoes to fit into the Harlem scene.
Polo looked at him in his black tee and said, “Yeah, it’s gon’ be a whole lot of other people in the roots staying at that hotel, too; junkies, Johns, hoes, young hustlers.”
Shareef paused and frowned at him.
“Yo, that hotel gets down like that?”
He looked concerned. Not that it would stop him from staying there, but…Then again, if he couldn’t trust to keep his luggage there…
Polo read the concern on Shareef’s face and said, “I’m just fucking with you, man, I don’t know that place like that. They’re doing a lot of renovations up in Harlem now. That place might be nice.”
Shareef grinned and grabbed his luggage to toss in the back.
He said, “I guess I gotta get used to everything again anyway now. There’s gon’ be some junkies, Johns, hoes, and young hustlers up here. That’s every day, all day.”
He figured he would need to sharpen up on his street lingo as well.
The two men in their midthirties climbed inside the Bronco jeep and headed for the Triborough Bridge toward Harlem.
Shareef took a deep breath in the passengar seat. He said, “This feels exciting, man. I got butterflies all over and shit.”
Polo looked over at him, smiled, and kept driving.
He said, “I’ma have to stop and get gas as soon as we make it over the bridge, man. I had to hustle up and speed over to the airport to get you.”
“Oh, it’s all good, man. I got you. What’s the toll now, three, four dollars, right?”
“Yeah, something like that,” Polo answered. He wasn’t as talkative and as animated as he usually was.
Shareef asked him, “So, you get a chance to read that new book of mine?” He had given Polo and Trap a book each when he was in New York on tour in early July.
Polo chuckled and said, “Come on, man, you know I gave that book right to my girl.” He said, “I can’t read most of that shit you write anyway. My dick be too hard. But it’s good to get her ready.”
Shareef laughed with him and said, “I wish my wife would read the shit and get ready.”
Polo looked him in the face.
He said, “Your wife be acting up on you?”
“As a matter of fact, we met with a marriage counselor in Florida this morning.”
Polo shook his head. He said, “Man, no matter what it is, a woman always finds something to complain about.”
“Ain’t it the truth. You can’t ever please ’em. Pleasing a woman is only temporary.”
“Yup,” Polo agreed with a nod, “’cause she gon’ act up sooner or later.”
Shareef said, “Speaking of women, I gotta call this girl back and let her know I’m here. She’s the one who gave me this idea after I met her at my signing that night at Hue-Man.”
Polo looked again and said, “Yeah, I apologize again for not making it out that night. A couple things came up.”
Shareef shook it off. “Don’t worry about it, B. I always do what I do anyway. I had a good time that night.”
Polo laughed and said, “Shit, I bet you did. What color panties was she wearing?”
Shareef shook his head and laughed it off without answering.
They made it through the toll at the Triborough Bridge and to the first gas station on Second Avenue in Harlem to fill up, with Shareef paying for everything.
Polo tried to bite his tongue while they stood outside the truck at the gas pump, but he couldn’t.
He said, “I bet it feel good to just dig in your pockets and knock shit off like that. I wish I had it like that, son. I be stealing and borrowing from my own pockets to pay for my shit. Rent due tomorrow.”
Shareef asked him, “You’re not living from paycheck to paycheck are you?”
Polo said, “Nah, I’m living from my next paycheck to my next paycheck,” and laughed. He said, “I’m like two paychecks and four weeks behind.”
“On everything?”
“What’s everything?”
“Rent, bills, car, health?”
“Health? Nah, my girl got us under insurance with her job. But yeah, I’m behind on everything else, B. It’s like I’m writing one of your books from page negative one hundred and eighty-four. And once I get back to zero, then I can start writing chapter one. I just gotta figure out how to get back to zero.”
Shareef asked his friend, “How much loot would you need to do that?”
Polo studied Shareef’s face to see if he was serious. But Shareef rarely said anything he didn’t mean.
Polo told him, “Yo, all I need is like two, three Gs, and I’m straight. That’s word to my whole family, B.”
Shareef nodded to him as the gas continued to pump into the truck.
He asked Polo, “Well, the streets are always talking, right?”
Polo looked into his eyes and read what he was really saying. The streets didn’t need to know their business. So he answered the question correctly, “Not in my house it ain’t. I’m like the little pig with the brick house. The wolf ain’t saying shit to me. So he can huff and puff all he want to, but he ain’t gettin’ in my house, B.”
Then he quieted down and added, “Shit, if you square me away like that, man, then I’m good on the hush. That’s word to my whole family.”
Shareef said, “So we understand each other then?”
Polo frowned at him and put his right hand up for affirmation with a shake and a hug.
“Come on, man, this is blood right here, son.”
Shareef took his hand in his and they embraced like urban men do with arms and shoulders.
He said, “I got you with five.”
Polo froze as if he had been zapped by an ice machine.
He said, “Yo, man, honestly, if you did s
ome shit like that for me, I’d fuck around and wouldn’t know how to act, B. I’d be like Antonio Far-gas in Across 110th Street, when he had that orgy and got castrated. Remember that shit, when we used to watch that movie all the time at my mom’s crib?”
Shareef went into acting mode, quoting lines from the movie: “You was a punk errand boy when you married the boss’s daughter, and you’re still a punk errand boy.”
Polo laughed his ass off. He said, “Yo, you still remember that shit, line for line.”
“Hell yeah, that’s my all-time favorite movie. I ordered two copies on DVD, one for watching and one to keep in storage.”
“Yo, you was always a collecting-ass nigga. I bet you still got old rhyme books from our grade school days and shit,” Polo stated. “I remember you was the first one in our projects with the Treacherous Three, Trouble Funk, and that Micstro shit.”
Shareef said, “I was always first. Arcade Funk blew ma-fuckers minds up here.”
Polo sang, “‘F-U-N-K’…Yo, somebody need to sample that Trouble Funk shit, B.”
“If they can still find it.”
They finished pumping the gas and climbed back inside the truck.
Polo looked over at his friend in the passenger seat and said, “I’m glad you back, Shareef. You like inspiration to a nigga, man. Word.”
“Ay, man, it’s good to be back home,” Shareef told him.
Polo started up the engine and nodded. He said, “I bet we’ll never laugh at your ass again for writing books. Books is the main movies being done now.”
He said, “After watching all that Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings shit with my son, I was seeing that shit in my dreams.”
Shareef laughed as they pulled into 125th Street and made a right.
He said, “Hopefully, I can write some bomb-ass shit like that.”
Polo looked at Shareef and said, “Shit, B, you ’bout to do that shit now. What you think you back home for? This shit is your mission. We were watching Across 110th Street before we could nut, like we was grown-ass men.”
Shareef smiled and said, “Yeah, and I heard it was a book first. So now I need to go and find it.”
SHAREEF CHECKED into the renovated hotel on Frederick Douglass Boulevard for five nights, and planned to hook back up later with Polo and Trap for something to eat.
The little hotel with five floors wasn’t bad. They even had a mini microwave in the room. But they had no king-sized beds, only double twins.
Shareef smiled and said, “I guess I can’t stretch out with Cynthia in here. She got her own bed.”
Then he called her on her cell phone.
“You just got in?” she asked as soon as she answered the line.
“Yeah. I’ve been off the plane for about an hour, and I just checked into my hotel.”
“Where are you staying?”
He knew that was coming.
“At a little renovated deal down the street from the bookstore.”
“You got plans for the night?”
Shareef was used to doing the asking, but a change in format from a fine, assertive woman was okay with him.
So he answered, “Not after midnight.”
“That’s when you want me to come? That may be a little too late for tonight,” she told him. “We have to get up early tomorrow to go up north to see Michael.”
“I’m always up early,” Shareef responded. “So, you should be more worried about you.”
“Well, if I came over there that late, then I may as well bring my clothes for tomorrow so we can leave from there together.”
“Aw’ight, so I’ll call you once I get back in. I need to meet and greet with old friends.”
She said, “Don’t have me waiting too long after midnight.”
“I’ll stay on the clock for you then,” he told her. “But the sooner I get out there with them, the sooner I get back here for you.”
“Okay, go do what you gotta do. I’m not a blocker at all. I understand.”
“Good. I’ll call you later then.”
Shareef ended the call and laid back on the bed that was closest to the window for a minute. It was therapeutic to hear the noise of street traffic again. The reminder of the 24/7 Harlem hustle was sure to keep him on his toes while he was here. Harlem was no Atlanta or Fort Lauderdale, and Fort Lauderdale and Atlanta were definitely not Harlem.
Shareef looked around at the basic necessities of the modest hotel room and figured he had come a long way. Some folks never had a chance to move up in life. For those who did, it was a mind-blowing experience they would be forced to live with and adjust to, or else suffer the consequences of slipping and falling back down to the bottom.
Shareef sat back and mumbled, “Shit, never that. I never been on the bottom.” But he thought about it. Because life had opposites. And if there was a top, then there was surely a bottom, and he realized that most of his childhood friends were now closer to that extreme than they were to his.
BEFORE SHAREEF KNEW IT, he had fallen asleep on the bed, and Polo was calling him on the cell phone from out in front of the hotel.
“Hello,” Shareef answered and cleared his throat.
“Yo, don’t tell me you up there sleeping, man, on your first night back in Harlem.”
“Yeah, I crashed for a minute. So what?”
“So, get on down here so we can get something to eat. We all out here in the truck.”
“Who’s we?”
“Me, Trap, and Spoonie. You remember Spoonie from middle school days and football?”
Who could ever forget a kid nicknamed Spoonie?
“With the teeth?” Shareef asked him subtly.
Polo laughed loud enough to cover up his answer. In their youth, Spoonie was tortured by a slight overbite.
Polo said, “Yeah. He wanted to sit down and shoot the breeze with you, too. I told him what you was working on.”
Shareef didn’t know if he liked that or not, but it was too late to pull it back. Polo had already made his move.
He said, “Aw’ight, I’m coming down now.”
He ended the call, rose up from the bed, checked his face, hair, and clothes in the mirror, and brushed his teeth.
When he strolled out of the building to join the group inside Polo’s Bronco, the front passenger door was left open for him.
Shareef looked into the back of the jeep and gave Trap and Spoonie a handshake.
“What’s up, fellas? What life look like now?”
“Not as good as yours,” Spoonie responded to him. “I see your face on the back of books everywhere now. And I stop people all the time and tell them, ‘I went to school and played football with that kid.’”
He was taller and thinner than all of them, wearing all dark blue.
Shareef asked him, “You tell ’em I used to lay your ass out in football, too?”
Trap chuckled and answered, “Nah, he didn’t tell them none of that. He just told them the good things.”
Trap was dressed in all black, and was usually a sly counterpuncher. No one ever had any idea of when he would speak. So his friends and foes were forced to expect the unexpected from him.
“So, where we off to first?” Shareef asked them as he got in and closed the door.
“Trap wanna take you over to the Native. It’s this place on one-eighteenth and Lenox,” Polo told him.
“What kind of food is it?” Shareef asked.
“Is like Caribbean, Indian, soul…I can’t explain it, man. You tell him, Trap,” Polo responded.
Trap said, “They got like a mix of everything. I just like the vibe in there.”
“Yeah, it’s low-key, like you like it, right?” Spoonie offered.
Shareef nodded and waited to see for himself.
They arrived at Native, a dark, red, cultural food corner at 118th and Lenox, and Shareef could see why Trap liked it so much. The place was out in the open yet hidden at the same time. In fact, a person could easily drive right past if they didn�
�t stop to look. There were no bright McDonald’s or Wendy’s signs out in front. The owners seemed to want it dark on purpose. Inside they used more candles than lights, and the dark, wooden tables and chairs were set close together for more intimacy.
Shareef grinned as the four black men took a seat at an empty table against the back wall of the restaurant near the bathroom and coat hooks.
He said, “This feels like a stake-out joint for undercover cops.”
Trap grinned at him from across the table and said nothing.
Shareef announced, “Aw’ight, so, am I the fat pig here, or is everybody paying for their own food?”
Spoonie looked at him while sitting beside Trap and hinted, “Damn, you did put on some weight over the years, son. What you been eatin’?”
They shared a laugh at the table at Shareef’s expense.
Trap said, “I got my own shit, man. They know me in here. They got my face on file.”
Shareef told him, “Nah, I can’t pay for two and leave you hanging. So I’ll just take the whole bill and eat it. But I ain’t doing this shit tomorrow.”
Polo looked offended. He said, “Who told you you was paying for my shit? I’m not homeless. I drove us over here.”
“Dig it, I’m a man up in here, too,” Spoonie added.
Shareef looked at them all and said, “Aw’ight, well, if everybody wanna pay for their own food, then that’s cool with me.”
Polo backstepped and said, “I mean, I’m not gon’ fight you over it, B, if you wanna go ahead and pay for it, then I’m good with that.”
Spoonie said, “That’s what I’m saying. We all grown, civil men in here. I know how to accept a gift.”
Shareef grinned and shook his head. He looked at Trap again and said, “What about you? You got yours?”
Trap answered, “Like you said, man, if you planned on paying for everything, then just go ahead and put it all on one bill. That keeps it simple.”
It was no big deal to Shareef. It wasn’t as if he was around those guys every day. So they started ordering drinks, appetizers, and main courses all on him.
Once they began to drink and dig into the sweet and spicy chicken, shrimp, and fish dishes, with vegetables and rice on the side, Trap asked Shareef, “So, what are you trying to do up here with your next book?”