Kym King > Tdiddy Smalls congratulations to my boo. mr. football 2011.
“Why does your grandmother put plastic on the sofa, dawg? My butt is itching and sweating at the same time.” This is the main reason we don’t watch TV at Willie Mack’s house. Plastic on a couch. Who does that?
“Then sit on the floor, B. She’s trying to keep the couch from getting dirty,” Willie Mack says.
“Well, she ain’t doing a good job, ’cause it’s dirt all up under this joint,” I say, and lift up a torn piece of the plastic. “Whoa! B, tell me I didn’t just find a fifty-year-old Froot Loop.”
“She need to go green and recycle this ish,” Belafonte says, tearing off a dangling piece of plastic.
“GoGreenRecycle. OhSnap! That’sSomeFunnyIsh,” Fast Freddie says, talking as fast as he runs.
“Save the planet, Miss Mable. Save. The. Dayum. Planet,” I add to a barrage of laughter.
“IHopeYouDon’tBringNoBroadsUpHere. TheyMightGetCut.” We laugh, ’cause we’ve all bled on this frickin’ couch.
My phone buzzes, but I don’t answer it. I know who it is, and so does everybody else.
“YouHittin’ThatTonight,T-Diddy?” Fast Freddie asks.
“C’mon, son” is all I say, because everybody knows that’s a stupid question.
“Bong bong!” says Belafonte.
My girl, Kym, won’t let me touch her hair when we’re kissing. “Not my weave, T-Diddy; please, not my weave!” But she loves it when I place her hands on my chest, melts when I blow on the back of her neck. And tonight, after the party, there’s a strong wind coming on. Believe that!
For real, though, I must be off my game, ’cause we started talking right before Thanksgiving break, and it doesn’t usually take me a whole month to bong bong! I even had to buy her a Christmas gift. Those sterling silver bangles cost me forty-eight dollars. She better be worth it, especially since she’s number twenty. Real talk, since I moved down here from Brooklyn, I’ve smashed nineteen girls—one from the college. It’s not even like the girls down south are easier than up north, it’s just the perks of being the star quarterback on the state championship football team. Not to mention, T-Diddy looks gooooooooood.
“WhatTimeWeLeavingForThePartyT-Diddy?”
“It’s the end of the game. Sit back. Chill, Freddie. Pass the bag.” The game we’re watching is the shaky-cam video that Willie Mack’s mom made of the state championship. The painful plastic-covered couch we’re sitting on in Willie Mack’s living room is his grandma’s. And the bag is roasted sunflower seeds, my favorite.
“How many times you gonna watch this, T-Diddy? Let me tell you how it ends. You throw it to Fast Freddie, he catches it, dodges three linebackers, and runs—”
“C’mon, son, stop hating ’cause I didn’t throw you the ball. I can’t help it if Freddie is faster than you.” Willie’s last name is Howard, but that joker is built like a Mack truck, so we call him Willie Mack. It doesn’t matter whether he’s playing defensive end or tight end, he will hit you, run you over, and never look back. Hit and run, real talk.
“AndBetterLooking.” Me and Fast Freddie dap each other.
“Willie Mack, did your moms get the part where that fat-ass left tackle tries to slam T-Diddy at the end of the game?” Belafonte says, then grabs my bag of sunflower seeds from Willie Mack.
“And then you hurdled that woadie like what!” Willie Mack says to me, laughing.
“ThatWasClassicT-Diddy.”
“If the refs didn’t get there sooner, might have been a good old-fashioned West Charleston–Bayside rumble, real talk,” I add. I don’t even know when the rivalry began, but I know it’s crazy intense. At one of the games before I came here, I heard, most of their whole school wore referee-style shirts and flashed fake dollar bills, trying to say that we only win because we pay off the referees. Last year, somebody from our school graffiti-painted their bus during the game. Those jokers were pissed to the highest level of pisstivity when they saw the big Panther on the side of their bus. That joint was classic!
“IfWeSeeThemJokersAgainIt’sOn!”
“Can I please get my seeds?” Fast Freddie hands me the almost-empty bag. These jokers are greedy. “Now y’all shut up and let me watch this.” I fast-forward the game.
“Hole up, T, stop right there,” Belafonte hollers. “That’s the halftime show. I don’t want to start nothing up in here, you know, on your grandmother’s freezer-bag couch, Willie, but I know he didn’t just skip the best part of the game.”
“FreezerBag. What!” Fast Freddie laughs it up.
Belafonte is the drum major in West Charleston’s marching band. Before T-Diddy arrived, they were the talk of the town, the numero uno, the primo luciano. Their rep was unchallenged, unstoppable. Still one of the best bands in the south, but T-Diddy put the gridiron on the map. Now, football rules. Believe that.
Belafonte’s cool and all, but if he wasn’t Fast Freddie’s cousin, I wouldn’t be hanging with him. Don’t get me wrong, he goes hard. That Katrina tribute they did last year to Lil Weezy’s “Tie My Hands” was straight gangsta. They got like 200,000 hits on YouTube.
They have cheerleaders and dancers, but nobody really pays attention to them, especially when the band starts high-stepping. I can’t really get with the uniforms—feather plumes and capes and whatnot—but they do bring down the house fo’ sho. But, like I said, they no longer run West Charleston. T-Diddy does. So no, I won’t be stopping to watch the marching band.
My phone buzzes again. Dang, Kym. I’m coming.
“How you gonna be late to your own party?” Willie Mack asks.
“Next year, when I’m playing for Miami in the Sugar Bowl, maybe you’ll be the state player of the year, then you can be as early as you want for your wack party.”
“Maybe y’all will get an invite to the Toilet Bowl, ’cause y’all squad be getting flushed every Saturday.”
“OhSnapHeSaidTheToiletBowl.”
“C’mon, son, you know T-Diddy at the U is gonna change all that. Peep the plaque on my wall at the crib: SOUTH CAROLINA’S MR. FOOTBALL. Recognize.”
The only thing I love more than girls, and sunflower seeds, is football. When I was in New York, our team won a lot of games, but I wasn’t getting any real love. The Apple is a hoops town. Down south is where football reigns. But it wasn’t even my idea to leave New York.
Some kid tried to steal my MetroCard one day after school. He pulled a knife out, but I punched him before he could even think about using it. I got arrested, but the charges were dropped since I was just defending myself. On the way home from the police station, my dad says to me, “If you’re young, black, and male in New York City, chances are you’re either on your way to jail or coming back from it.” After Mom finished crying, she told me it was going to either boarding school in Connecticut or down south. That was two years ago.
I was hoping to live with my cousin Jerome in Atlanta, but when we Skyped that joker, he sounded drunk, looked high, and started bawling like a baby over his missing cat, Roberta Belle. Apparently she’d crawled through an open window, while he was working. At the strip club. I didn’t have a problem with it, but Mom was like hells naw.
Next, Mom asked me if I wanted to stay in Orlando with her sister, who worked at Disney World. As a clown. C’mon, son.
Finally, Pop called his mother in Beaufort, South Carolina. Grandma told him that his brother Albert had just bought a big place in Charleston.
Uncle Albert is the coolest uncle in the world. When I was little, he’d give all the kids envelopes with cash for Christmas. Before the motorcycle accident, he used to host the annual Smalls family Christmas football classic. We didn’t play touch football either. That woadie was hard-core.
When Uncle Albert agreed to let me live with him during the school year, I was amped, until he told me I couldn’t bring Muppet. That was a deal breaker for me. We ain’t been apart since Dad brought him home from animal rescue like five years ago. But my options were limited. I miss that dawg.
Uncle Al also made me promise I’d attend Howard University, his alma mater. Mom said, “Yeah, whatever, Al,” even though she and Pops were sure I was going to Syracuse, like them.
Funny thing is, I’d decided in the seventh grade where I was playing college ball. The minute after I saw Ed Reed, Clinton Portis, Jeremy Shockey, and the rest of them Miami ballers storm Nebraska in the Rose Bowl, I knew I wanted to be a Hurricane. I know they kinda fell off lately, but T-Diddy is bringing back the funk and the noise to the U. Plus they got some beautiful waters down there. And a bunch of beautiful women swimming in them. Holla!
“Okay, here it comes,” I say, turning up the volume. “T-Diddy’s about to show y’all why he’s Mr. Football.”
“Kym texted you like thirty minutes ago.”
“Shhhhh! She ain’t going nowhere.”
“BeCarefulSheMightBreakUpWithYouAgain.” Kym breaks up with me like every other day over something stupid. Then she’s all up in my face the next day. She needs so much damn attention. If it wasn’t for that colossal booty, it’d be deuces.
“Good, ’cause her birthday is next week, and I really don’t want to have to get her nothing.”
“SheGetsNuskins.”
“Pass me them sunflower seeds and pay attention,” I tell them.
We watch the last play of the last game of my high school career. State championships. West Charleston High vs. Bayside High. And even though I’ve watched it like a million times, I want to see it a million more.
Fast Freddie lines up on my right.
I yell, “Red-23-4-17-23-hut.”
I hand off the ball to Willie Mack. He tosses it back to me. Flea flicka.
On my left, I glimpse a six-foot, three-hundred-pound monster charging at me like he hasn’t eaten in days. And T-Diddy is dinner.
I dodge out of his way. The Matrix.
I Peyton Manning that joint. Throw a perfect thirty-yard bullet to Fast Freddie.
The entire crowd at West Charleston High School jumps to their feet and yells. . . .