Lit Riffs

by Matthew Miele

  “Hector, you got to talk to him.” Inelda’s head was wrapped in a yellow towel. Her mother was a fourth-grade teacher and a student had infected her with lice.

  “I’ll try.” I was out by the hallway because Inelda didn’t want me to come inside, due to the apartment’s smelling of ammonia because they had just fumigated.

  “I mean, he’s gone crazy, Hector.” Her voice was almost a whisper, like she didn’t want the neighbors to hear her. “He broke up with me you know.”

  “He broke up with you? With you?” I couldn’t believe Indio would dump Inelda, because Inelda was gorgeous. Her mother, Doña Flores, was one of those middle-aged women who could wear tight dresses and not look ridiculous, and all her four daughters had been blessed with the same beauty. Three of the daughters had gotten married and left the neighborhood, and every day you could hear the older guys in Spanish Harlem mourn them. They spoke about the departed Flores girls as if they had been that ice cream cone that falls to the ground before you even got a single lick. The last of the Flores girls was Inelda, and like her mother and sisters, Inelda’s breasts had springs like a mattress. Her whole body gave off this flowery heat, and the neighborhood perverts had been eyeing Inelda since she was eight, waiting for her to blossom. But it was Indio who had caught her eye.

  “Get out? No way.” I still couldn’t believe it. “Why he broke up with you?”

  “Well, when he was doing his time in camp, you know I visited him a lot at first, but then he started to get weird. Instead of telling me he loved me or things like that, he’d tell me about these books to read and these movies to see, or read actually, because those movies were in some other language.”

  “Yeah, my boy Edwin told me, Indio gave him a book.”

  “Yeah, that’s his thing now, giving books. He mailed me a couple of books from camp.”

  “I never got any books,” I said, “and I sent him letters and he’d write back, short, normal letters.” I had visited Indio only once because he was detained way upstate. Unless you had a car, you had to take a train and then a bus to get there. When I last saw him, I hadn’t noticed anything different about him.

  “He got home yesterday, Hector.”

  “I know that.”

  “Well, the first thing he did was to quiz me on those books he mailed me. Asking me all these stupid questions.”

  “Like ha?”

  “Shit about the soul—”

  “The soul?”

  “Something about a soul creating worlds and leaving worlds behind. That souls only know other souls, weird shit—”

  “Wow, you’re right,” I whispered to myself, “he’s gone nuts.”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Inelda heard me. “When I told him that I tried reading some of those books but I couldn’t get into them, he said—” Inelda’s face tightened. “He said that he ‘couldn’t see me in the same light anymore.’ Couldn’t see me in the same light? What kind of shit is that?”

  “Do you still got the books?”

  “But the fucking worst part of it, Hector”—Inelda didn’t stop—“was that bitch from the CIA, Yvette, calls me. I’ve no idea how she got my number, and she fucking makes fun of me. Can you believe that bitch?”

  Yvette Sanabria was this girl with big tits who had fallen in love with this giant retard, Lucky G. He had no artistic skills whatsoever, like his hands were made of stone. Yet his crew, the CIA (Criminals in Action), was well-known because Yvette’s tags were beautiful and she had vision. Yvette was an innovator. She once did this piece on the 4 train of Blondie and established her reputation. Every graffiti writer that looked at it deemed it a “masterpiece,” the highest compliment any work could receive. Yvette’s Blondie was “all-platinum.” There were no drips running down the piece and it took up the entire car, from top to bottom, even the windows had been painted. Yvette’s Deborah Harry sang in a black miniskirt and a red leather jacket, the band played behind her as CBGB’s exploded in lightning bolts of all colors in the background. Even people from the Upper East Side who hated graffiti would stare at it when the train pulled in. It was Warhol, it was American Expression, it was what real action painting was supposed to be. Soon every writer began “biting,” copying Yvette’s lightning bolts. Her Blondie piece lasted only three days before the city washed it, but her fame was established. Her tag, Lady Y 109, was associated with the CIA. And if you sucked, if you were a scrub but dared write your tag next to hers, you had Lucky G and the CIA to deal with. None of us in TSC could write on trains like Yvette, except for Indio. And after hearing how Indio had gone soft, I had no idea about the future of my crew.

  “So, that bitch Yvette tells me,” Inelda continued, “she tells me, ‘You don’t know men. Now I know men. See, Inelda, there are dumb men and smart men. Smart men are always unhappy. They always want more and more and think they can always do better. Now you should get yourself a dumb, ugly guy, like I got with G. Dumb, ugly men are always happy, are always spending money on you and praising you all the time. Smart men don’t.’” Inelda pressed her lips and exhaled. “She fucking tells me how G always calls her sweet names and he buys her anything she wants and shit like that. How G is always telling Yvette how he feels so lucky that she loves him, and that’s why he never looks at other girls. And then she tells me, ‘You get yourself a gorilla like I did with G. Ugly men will treat you mo’ better.’ And you know what, Hector, you know what?”

  “What?” I sighed.

  “After that bitch stopped rambling, I wondered why I hadn’t hung up on her. And you know why, Hector? It’s because some of her shit makes sense. Then I got really mad.”

  “What you tell her?”

  “Oh, I wasn’t mad at Yvette, I was mad at Indio, stupid. I waited all this time for him to come back from camp and do some beautiful pieces on the 6 train declaring his love for me, and what do I get? What do I get? I get weird shit about the fucking soul. I don’t want to see him ever again,” Inelda said, but I knew that wasn’t true. She tightened the yellow towel on her head, which had loosened a bit.

  “Do you have any of those books?” I said again.

  “Nah, I threw them away.”

  “All of them?”

  “I think I found a little one under the sofa. I think I was trying to read it and fell asleep and forgot about it.”

  “Can I look at it?”

  “It’s got lice, Hector.”

  “I don’t care,” I said, “I want to see the book.”

  “God, all right, let me go look for it.” She closed the door.

  Alone in the hallway I wondered, what was Indio’s problem? All this shit about nonviolence, not tagging? What was wrong with him? This was 1981. New York City had almost been bankrupt. It was a time when if things broke, they stayed broken. Poor neighborhoods were deserts full of vacant lots. It was a bleak time and I was a teenager stuck in a helpless ghetto. Then graffiti entered my life. To me, graffiti was the ultimate. The beat-up subway lines became an opportunity for me to create something to believe in. A “piece”, a “masterpiece,” a “burner,” even a lousy “throw-up,” I did on a subway car. The Stillwell stop in Brooklyn was my train yard, as it was for other writers. And I did my pieces there, better on Sunday night, less transit workers. I always carried a loaded Polaroid to shoot my work before others tagged over it or before the city could wash the train and my piece along with it. Sometimes I ran out of a color and had to improvise. Sometimes the cops chased me. Sometimes I had to stand on top of the wooden plank that covers the third rail so I could reach the top of the car and continue my piece; one slip and I might come in contact with the third rail and get fried. This was part of the fun, part of the danger, why people looked at me differently. As graffiti writers we risked our lives for art. Your life was part of the work itself and you became more famous if got caught and did time. A famous writer like Indio who got pinched was eulogized by a lesser writer like me, who kept a vigil for his return. Anticipating the new styles this pinched writer p
icked up in juvie or in prison from tattoo artists. New styles that now would break out to the street where lesser writers could bite off. That’s what I wanted from Indio, his newly acquired styles. I worshiped Indio because to me graffiti was a calling, and it didn’t matter that I was not one of its prophets, that I was a scrub and would remain a scrub. I was happy enough to be a part of an underground movement invented by a bunch of talented teenage outlaws who were responsible for the ever-changing traveling show of the subway system.

  “If you get lice,” Inelda said when she returned, opening the door a bit wider and handing the book to me, “don’t blame me.”

  I noticed Inelda was wearing a light blue bathrobe. She was naked underneath from shampooing and bathing. The top of the robe was a bit loose and she had to hold it shut with her hand.

  “This is it, this little book?”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” she said, “and I’d go home and change that sweatshirt. The CIA see you wearing that, you might get jumped.” She shot me an air kiss and closed the door.

  I just kept looking at the little book in my hand. No more than three inches and skinny, The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Going down the elevator, I started reading some of it. It spoke about preparing yourself on how to die and all this stuff. I was mad just thinking Indio would be into this shit, but what really got me angry was the tag CIA on the elevator’s door. In Indio’s own girlfriend’s project! I took out a thick, black permanent marker I always carried with me in my back pocket and tagged TSC over it. I walked out of the project and in a burst of anger started to bomb everything in sight. Nothing big and stylish. One color, one hand motion. If I saw it, I bombed it. I was tagging cars, windows, sidewalks, street signs, abandoned buildings, garbage cans, everything TSC. Then I was stopped dead cold. High above a supermarket billboard, lit by a lamppost, I saw a glorious piece: five colors, true Manhattan style, geometric lettering with serifs, loops, and arches like mosques. The background was highlighted, giving the piece a 3-D effect. There were so many little, tiny things happening in that piece, every detail worked, and I could tell the piece was fresh. I stared at it as if it didn’t belong high on that empty billboard but in some place protected by sensors and guards. The masterpiece was Yvette’s tag, Lady Y of 109 loves Lucky G of CIA, and the letters and numbers were so intertwined, so together, anyone who didn’t know would think it was an abstract painting.

  “You gonna fuck with that, Hector?” I heard a laugh behind me. I turned around. Yvette with an arm around Lucky G.

  “I ain’t going to fuck with that,” I said, looking at Yvette as I flung my marker to a nearby garbage pile. Then I looked at G. “But if you want my sweatshirt, G”—it was all I could do—“you gonna have to fuck me up, cuz I ain’t fucking giving it to you.” Graffiti writers never give up their colors without a fight. If your sweatshirt gets taken and you land in the hospital, your dignity is intact. You are in good standing, a part of the crew. You only lost a sweatshirt that costs five dollars. But if your sweatshirt gets taken and your face is clean, you bought years of humiliation from those who were once your friends, and your tag became worthless.

  “Fuck you up, Hector?” G let go of Yvette and grabbed me by the sweatshirt and raised a fist at me. “Let me ask my honey if I should take your colors. Should I fuck him up, baby?” G’s eyes were glassy and he kept laughing. It didn’t really matter. High or not, I could never take Lucky G.

  “Nah, baby, he ain’t worth sore knuckles,” Yvette said, “who gives a shit about his colors.” She was chewing gum and her face was speckled with colorful dots. They must have been celebrating the finishing of the piece by doing some serious pot or something, because Yvette’s eyes were insect slits.

  “Hector, Hector the Garbage Collector. You just a scrub, man.” She dug into her tool bag and brought out a burgundy sweatshirt with the white iron-on letters TSC. She held it up for me to see.

  “Look familiar to you, huh?”

  “Who you take it from, Edwin? Victor?” I said, and they both laughed. It seemed that everything I said was funny to them. I stayed quiet from then on.

  “Take it?” Lucky G clutched my sweatshirt tighter, wrinkling my iron-on letters. I was sure he was about to punch me, or spit at me. Either one is humiliating enough when you know if you hit back, you’ll just get more shit kicked out of you. “We didn’t take shit. Your homo friend Indio gave it to us.” Yvette laughed and G let go of my shirt and joined her in the laughter.

  “Then … then,”—Yvette was laughing so hard she was having a hard time getting the words out—“then Indio says we are … all … God! … Ha … ha … God!” All hell broke loose. It was like watching two hyenas slapping each other five after the kill. I always hated the way Yvette laughed, like a seal barking. She breathed in and out hard. If she’d clapped the back of her hands together, I bet someone would throw her a fish. Yvette got away with that laugh only because she was a good writer and she had Lucky G protecting her.

  “Look, man,” Lucky G said as Yvette threw Indio’s sweatshirt at my face. I caught it in midair before it hit me. The sweatshirt was clean, as if Indio had sent it to the laundry before they took it from him. I don’t know how they got it, but it was definitely Indio’s. “Tell your homo friend we don’t need his colors. You guys are done, TSC is Memorex.” They walked away and left me there, didn’t beat me up, didn’t take my TSC sweatshirt. They just left me there holding Indio’s shirt. That’s when I knew that what I had heard had to be true. There was no glory in beating me up, no glory in beating up anyone from a dead graffiti crew whose best writer had gone soft.

  But now I needed to hear it from Indio. I wanted to hear it from him. I hated going to his house because his mother was aware of what we did and didn’t approve. She knew we were always “getting up” to go “bomb” trains at crazy hours of the night. She thought graffiti would lead to more violence, and she had told on me since my mother and her were friends. They went to the same church, Our Lady of Carmel on 112th and Lex. It’s where me and Indio met as little kids, bored out of our skulls. So I didn’t understand Indio’s sudden change.

  I walked toward Indio’s project, it was getting late. The orangey sky was a reddish yellow glow that bounced off the project’s walls like a tennis ball. Above the rooftops, red-tailed hawks hovered over Mount Sinai Hospital, looking to snare pigeons. The New York skyline had already lit up and there was a middle-of-September breeze. With evening on the way the streets came alive. People were returning from work, while others gathered their friends to come out and play or drink out by the benches. When I reached Indio’s project, I took the elevator up to his floor. I stood at the door and wondered if I should even waste my time knocking. But I did. His mother opened the door. She was not happy to see me. I didn’t blame her. Her son was back and she didn’t want anyone rekindling old habits. She only smiled a half smile and told me Indio was in his room and pointed.

  I knocked and there he was lying on his bed reading a book. When he saw me walk in, he put the book aside and stood up.

  “Hey, man, good to see you, bro,” he said warmly. Besides his room being really clean, there was nothing different. The posters of baseball players and swimsuit models were still taped to the wall, his trophies were still by the window, his comic books were neatly stacked. His Polaroid camera was on top of the desk. I didn’t see any aerosol cans, but you always kept those in a nice and dry place, like the closet.

  “I got this TSC sweatshirt. Lucky G says it belongs to you. Know anything about that?” I gave it to Indio. He took his sweatshirt, neatly folded it, and didn’t say anything for a little while.

  “You haven’t seen me in about a year and you want to talk about a sweatshirt? Come on, bro.” Indio smiled.

  “I just saw Inelda and she said stuff about you. Then Lucky G and Yvette said you said some shit about God? Now, bro, all I’m asking is, what the fuck is wrong with you?” I closed the door behind me. “What the fuck’s going on here, Indio? What’s all this
stuff I’m hearing about you going soft, no tagging, or fighting.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What don’t you know?”

  “Just that,” he said.

  “So won’t you just tell me, just what the fuck you don’t know.” I knew I wasn’t making any sense either, but I had to ask him. “Tell me what you don’t know, bro.”

  Indio sat on his bed. I sat on the floor across from him, leaning my back against the door. Indio was calm like he was sleeping.

  “Things, bro, just things.” He stared at the wall and not at me. “When I first entered that place, you know”—Indio shrugged—“I thought, all right, I’ll just have to carve a new rep here till I get out. I’m still the baddest dog here. But then after doing dishes, a lot of dishes …” He trailed off. “You had to be there, Hector.”

  “At camp?”

  “No, not at juvie, at the time when it all didn’t make sense, or may be it did?”

  “Yo, bro, listen,” I said, and dug into my pocket, “I have some weed. We can open the window like old times and your mom will never know.” Indio smiled, as if he had wanted a joint for the longest. He stared at the joint I began rolling. “So maybe after smoking some of this,” I said, “maybe things would make more sense, dig? I mean, if you don’t want to be with Inelda anymore, though I don’t see why because she’s fine, but, hey, that’s your thing. And if you also don’t want to be part of TSC anymore, then that’s cool. Even though you’re the best and want to quit, hey, that’s your thing. Just don’t talk stupid shit, Indio. Like some fucking crazy person.” I sneaked a look at Indio, to see his expression. To see if he minded my cursing. He was nodding his head, smiling a bit.