(Me)shach Jackson

There are 2 glass Starbucks Frappuccino bottles on the table next to my laptop. One is empty, the other knows it’s time is near. I worked hard to get these two. I broke up a fight between 2 ghetto, screaming women in their late 30′s this morning at the bodega. One chick got a busted lip and her weave yanked right off her head. The other girl didn’t wanna give the hair back, screaming “I ain’t givin you shit ’till you give me back my money…” I got involved when they tumbled over to the register, and bumped into my 2 lovely iced Mocha’s sitting on the counter.

“Okay ladies, you’re crossing the line now.” I’m not walking out of here without caffeine… or that weave. I’ll take that weave.

I’ve got a long and growing list of things to do before I fly out in a few days. I’m back heading to Texas. 5 years later. New York has been very good to me, and I fully expect to spend a lot more time in here in the future. But, once again, this city’s time has come.

Here’s the quick recap:
Baton Rouge, La – 10 yrs -> Harlingen, Tx – 2 1/2 yrs -> Austin, TX – 4 yrs -> New York, NY – 2 yrs -> Nashville, TN – 1 yr -> Brooklyn, NY – 3 yrs * -> Austin, Tx – ???

* In the time I’ve lived in Brooklyn, I’ve also visited Philly to DC, Nantucket to Dublin, LA to Amsterdam, Seattle to Zurich, and of course, all over New York state. **

I love this. I like travelling the way most people like eating. I feel ‘right’ when I’m in motion. If I sit still for too long, my legs bounce at a rate only matched by the chattering of my own teeth. So why do I need the 2nd frapp? you ask… I’m on the tail-end of a month-long all-nighter, trying to prepare for my move. With no money, no car, and as of last week when my wallet fell out of my pocket and into the street somewhere in Williamsburg… no driver’s license or debit cards.

Now, as I sit at the dining room table of this beautifully renovated Brownstone in Bed-Stuy, on a crisp early-autumn day, overlooking an actual yard, with actual plants, in actual flowerbeds (before Cita, my 1yr old pitbull got a hold of them), I can’t help but wonder, “Have I seen the best & worst that New York has to offer me?”

I don’t know, but it certainly feels like I’ve seen the worst that I’m gonna see here. I’ve had crazy ups, and proportionally-appropriate downs. I’ve swung for the fences, and I’ve even hit the ball once or twice. So, what’s in New York for me now…?

The answer, and I know this is corny, is the people.

I will miss the hell out of the great people here. If you’ve never lived here, you won’t understand. It’s a community. A village. Within a larger, messier network of villages. You are only alone in New York if you have made a conscious decision to be so. And even then, it’s not easy. I’m not saying I’ve never felt lonely here, but I can honestly say that I’ve always felt loved. People here either absolutely will not speak to you or give you the time of day, or they really, really care. Living here squeezes the sincerity right out of your pores. You can fake nice to only so many people a day, and in New York, if you’re not careful, you run out of your monthly quota by 10am on the 1st every time. There’s just too many freakin’ people to say ‘excuse me’ to all of them.

That said, when someone does reach out to you. Tries to connect. Really opens up… it matters. You feel selected. Respected. Trusted. It’s hard not to become close to people you see only a few times a month, ’cause you know that seeing each other required effort on both parts, so it’s not likely that you’re dealing with a lot trivialities and fakeness. Instead, you get real people, being generous, kind, and real with each other. I’m gonna miss that.

I’ll miss my friends from various jobs, and the constant feeling that at any time I just might bump into one of them. (…never happens. this place is huge.) I’ll miss friends from various clubs, bands, and shows. I’ll miss having access to such world-class expertise and talent, and to such grotesque displays of artistic laziness, bad taste, and poor judgement that you can only get in a city where so many people spend their existence clamoring for attention & recognition. I’ll miss ‘the family.’ You know who you are.

I’m coming back, don’t worry. But I just thought I’d make a note, that today, I already miss New York, and it’s all because of you, amazing people, that I call my friends.

Ciao, NYC. I’ll be back to play again soon.

- Meshach

Okay, I have to be honest. Here’s the…
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
- I’ll miss the subways. Can’t explain it. I just will.
- I’ll miss not having a car. I’m not looking forward to the headache.
- I’ll miss the food. Oh, the fooooood.
- Fights in the bodega.

** Jersey, alright. I also went to Jersey. I never liked it, and I only ever did it against my will. Well, that’s not totally true. There was once back in like 08 that I went to a Mute Math concert in Jersey with high hopes of having a good time. I was wrong. Mute Math didn’t enjoy it either, so I feel okay saying that. We got lost on the way there, ran out of gas on the way back… it sucked. Since then, every time I’ve had to pick Newark on the flight selector, my heart rate accelerates. I mean, is it that damn hard to make a road sign, Jersey? Really? Is it that hard to figure out that the sign goes before the exit, and not after? And shouldn’t all the bridges in New York that lead to Jersey have giant, flashing WARNING signs over the road? I swear I’ve never ‘accidentally’ been anywhere else so many times. And it’s never a happy accident. Jersey, get your shit together already.

I need some water. That second frappe dried my mouth out.

I recently heard about a theater group doing a show based on the theme “If I could take one thing back” where they each perform a monologue of someone’s true story. They were asking people to write and submit, and I immediately got excited about the prospect of submitting something.

Then life happened. Months went by, and I still hadn’t written the idea I had. Until now.

Here’s what I wrote, and I imagined a friend of mine reading this. She’s about 5’0” tall, with big eyes and curly hair.

——— If I could take one thing back ——–
——— by Meshach Jackson ——————

(The following story is about 75% true.)

At 13 years old, my life was basketball, fighting, church, and school. Basically in that order regardless of the context.

I grew up in a home for future assholes. I wasn’t planning to be one, they were.

It was my family who ran the home. My dad is a minister, and until I was 19, he ran a home for troubled boys. They were my first friends, allies, enemies, and brothers. I’ve got 2 brothers of my own, though. And I’m in the middle of 3 boys in a row, 2 years apart each. So we were very rarely bored.

We each had friends who were roughly our age, lived in the same house with us, and had a criminal record. But since the boys we took in were all teenagers, it took my little brother Luke a long time to catch up to having anyone but me to chase around and annoy. His first real compadre among the camp boys was Cedric. (‘Camp Boys’ is what my family called them. There were anywhere from 8 – 25 camp boys living with us from the day I was born.)

Everyone played sports, whether they were an athlete or not. ‘Ced was an athlete though. He was also street smart, mischievous, and a fearless little point guard with a loud, cocky attitude. He was the perfect first campboy-friend for Luke. But, since ‘Ced was 12, and Luke was only 11, we all still had to keep an eye on them around the camp ground. That, according to our family rules, was my job, ‘cause I was 13.

————

My dad was pretty slick with his rule systems. He had 3 young boys to protect from a dozen young criminals. But the criminals needed constant supervision, which meant we had to watch each other, and still stay out of trouble. The main trouble we could get in (on a campground that would take us an hour to walk across) was basically just getting our ass kicked by one of the older boys. Which wasn’t that terrible to us to think about, probably because we were so protected, but I think also ‘cause fighting just wasn’t that weird.

We were around boyish violence all of the time. I mean, fighting to us was considered bad, don’t get me wrong. But just also kinda expected. Like it was natural.

That’s it. Fighting was considered bad, but totally natural. Like sex.

So our family rules were basically as follows:

1 – If you piss off mom, assume that dad is furious.
2 – If you don’t look out for your younger brother, you will piss off mom.
3 – You are never allowed to speak with a girl unless under direct supervision by another adult who is authorized directly to supervise you by either Mother or Father respectively. Clear?

—-

Our camp was effing awesome, too. It was 80 acres of Louisiana forest with a huge cafeteria, dormitories with bunk beds, 15 cabins, 3 houses, a school, a church, a barn, an olympic-sized swimming pool, a creek with a rope swing, a softball field, volleyball courts, a lilly pond (which was disgusting since someone drove a golf cart into it and left it behind some bushes for like a week before it was found), and finally, separated from the pond by a 15 foot chain-link fence was our favorite place on earth – a basketball court. The fence wrapped around the end of the court to keep basketballs from constantly going in the pond. I remember for a while we didn’t have it, and we were constantly fishing out the ball from the mossy water.

When dad put in the new fence, it upgraded our lives. We didn’t have to break out the extra-long net from the swimming pool, and stretch out over the nasty, green water of the pond ten times per game, for starters. But also, it meant we could upgrade the type of basketball we could use on the court. We got rid of those cheap, rubbery ones that were water proof, but too bouncy. Instead, we got proper leather basketballs. The ones used in actual high-school games. Finally, it had the beautiful benefit of being a challenge to all adolescent boys to see what they could throw over the fence, and into the pond.

There were shoes, tennis balls and rackets, abandoned rubber basketballs (since our new leather ones had arrived), and even a broken ‘P-row’ sunken in the corner. The pond was a 24/7 science experiment. And there was a giant, challenging obstacle in front of it. And we had hands with stuff in them!

——-

I’m on the court this one time, and I’m standing on a ladder, and putting a new net on the rim. Luke and Cedric are playing one-on-one on the other side of the court, talking shit and annoying each other like 11 year olds do.

After they finish, and I’m just getting done with the net, I hear them start messing with each other’s stuff over by the fence.

I can hear what they were doing without looking back, so I hear when Cedric throws Luke’s shirt over the fence and into the pond. 2 seconds later, I hear Cedric’s voice get serious, and he’s like, “Yo, don’t throw my shoe in Luke. Yo I’m serious, dude. Yo that’s my brand new shoe man, seriously.”

My younger brother Luke, I will remind you, was a) always protected by our family’s rules, and b) 11 years old. There was no stopping that shoe from going over that fence. And, before I can turn around to see it, I hear the plop of the shoe in the water. Then I hear Cedric’s voice scream ‘Bitch!’ and immediately following, I hear the distinct smack of a fist hitting a skull.

It’s a sound you can’t really get from movies, or even those youtube videos ‘cause the sound’s always so shitty. But when you see, hear, and talk about fights all of the damn time, you get to be a connoisseur of all things punch-related. (The smack I heard across a counselor’s forehead one time, for example, was something we called ‘getting yoked’. It was a deep thud of a sound, and hurt like a mofo when you woke up. Seriously. Dude got knocked-the-hell-out for taking a photo of one of the boys’ mom away from him. Who knows why he did it. I don’t think he remembered when he woke up. The dude (the camp boy, I mean) was 14. I digress…)

The sound I hear this day after ‘Cedric calls Luke a “bitch”, is a ‘bitch slap’. It’s a bare knuckled back-hand across the cheekbone. ‘Ced’s right-handed, so I know instantly he just smacked the shit out of Luke’s right eye.

I don’t remember a lotta details about the next part. I think I knew everything was happening when it happened, I just don’t remember the details now. The next thing I remember after hearing the slap was that I heard Luke’s voice saying to me, ‘David, stop it. Stop it man. David! DAVID!’. I remember when he said that, I was standing over Cedric, who was curled up kinda like in a fetal position, but still standing up. Kinda crunched over like a boxer, you know? (Or like a kid who’d had his share of ass-kicking, and new how to cover up.)

Anyway, I was standing over him, and I was punching him in the head, hands, shoulders, ribs, face, whatever. I was hearing every type of Thud, Smack, and even Rattle (from hitting the chain link fence behind him once or twice), and I remember suddenly feeling incredible embarrassment.

It was such a shocking emotion to be feeling at that moment that it took me a second to even realize what was going on. Then, since I was facing down over Cedric, I was able to get a glance at myself, and realized that I had a boner. Not a normal boner. A 13-year-old-boy, don’t-know-how-to-hide-it, wearing-boxers-under-basketball-shorts-in-public, raging, testosterone-fueled, hard-on. I immediately got distracted wondering why the hell that part of my body decided to kick into gear at that particular moment.

I’m still not totally clear, to be honest. However, I can make a couple of guesses. First, I was effing 13, and around that time, I could get a boner by just about anything. I mean constantly. It was ridiculous.

Second, I think I was wearing boxers that day. For about 7 straight months, that did it every time. Too much space was a bad thing. You can’t possibly learn to talk to girls like a gentleman if your boxers can rub you just the wrong way and cause your boyhood soldier to stand at attention.

When I heard Luke call my name, saw myself mauling Cedric, and got a peek at my pecker, I stopped. I stormed off the basketball court toward my house, pissed off, embarrassed, and utterly confused.

——-

It was a 200 yard walk or so, straight up a gravel road that ran through the middle of the camp ground. I think I was so distracted by embarrassment that my woodie went away, and I must have been focused on what I was gonna tell dad when I got home. But I don’t really remember what I thought about. I think ‘cause this next moment just erased it.

I marched down the hall and opening my parents’ bedroom door without knocking, which meant instant wrath in our house, which must be why I remember doing it. It meant you better have something grave to say that can’t wait for a knock. Clearly, I thought this was that kinda situation.

Inside my parents’ room, I saw my dad, sitting on the end of the bed, and sitting next to him was my older brother, Elton. At this point, it was Pavlovian of me I guess, but I instantly realized that Elton is in trouble for something else, and probably something far more serious than what I have to say.

Seeing this interrupted what I was planning to say, which was something like, “Dad, I just hit Cedric a buncha times, and it was only ‘cause he hit Luke first, but I shouldn’t have beat him up for it, and I wanted to tell you myself. I’m sorry.” What I actually said was, “I just hit Cedric.”

I said it staring straight at my big brother. It was a statement of being a man. I was shocked. But I was suddenly proud. Then suddenly sad cause I realized that Luke was still out there, probably awkwardly trying to help Cedric fish his shoe out of the pond. God, I felt like a piece of shit at that moment. Not for beating him up, but for not knowing how to feel about it. It was so damn confusing. Even more confusing, my dad looked at me, then looked back at Elton, and said, ‘You see what I’m talking about?” Then he paused, and looked back at me.

“He okay?”

“I think so. I didn’t hit him in the face that much.”

“That’s good, but I meant Luke.”

“Oh, he’s fine. He only got hit once.”

“Close the door.”

“Yes sir.”

I started to close the door behind me, expecting to stay in the room and get thoroughly yelled at in front of my older brother for something I’ve seen him yelled at a million times, and my dad says, “We’re done buddy. Close the door behind you.”

“Oh.” I go outside and close the door behind me.

“What the..?”

—–

To this day, I have no clue what dad and Elton were talking about. I have no idea what my dad meant by ‘See what I mean?’ I’ve asked, and he doesn’t remember any of this. Again, this was totally insignificant in the grand scheme of daily events in our house, where it was a regular occurrence to catch someone stealing, vandalizing, fighting, or running away.

But it was effing huge for me. It was the first fight I’d ever won, and I didn’t even get the satisfaction of a stern talking-to afterward. I wasn’t dangerous, I was second the warm-up act for the opening monologue. I was the criminal’s sidekick.

The way it worked was, Elton hit me, I hit Luke, Luke hit someone bigger than him, and if they hit him back, Elton fought them. Elton was tough as shit, and took being a badass way more seriously than us. Which was great, ‘cause it was like having a bodyguard around at all times. Which I think was the whole point. But I only fit into that system as a cog. I played my part, drew within the lines, and never knew any better. When someone steps outside of the lines, they’re taught a lesson. It’s the way of the world. This had been the first time I’d stepped over the line just a little bit, and it was getting totally overlooked! I’d been robbed.

Anyway, here’s what I would take back, if I could take any one thing. I know you’re probably wanting me to say that I wish I hadn’t resorted to violence. Or that fighting never solves problems, only creates new ones, or whatever the hell. That all may be true, but it’s not what I regret. What I regret is that the first fight I ever won was completely ruined by the bazaar details of how it all went down. I know that’s kinda twisted to say, but that’s what I regret. Still, what’d I take back is something else too, but I’m getting to that.

It was my job at 13 to take up for my 11 year old brother. Cedric was bigger and older, and I trumped them both. That was how we survived. So I’m not sorry for taking up for him, and I’ve never been able to feel sorry for it at all.

What I do feel sorry about is wearing those goddamn boxers that day. It ruined all of my emotions. I cried the next 3 times I punched someone, and my boners made me pissed off, then embarrassed, then sad for like the next week. That’s not some shit you want lingering with you, man. That kinda thing has a way of staying in your psyche for a while. And believe me, it has.”

When all the cards are dealt
When all the guns are drawn
The take is scattered round
The staff too scared to sound
Recognition to be found
Behind the loaded round

When eyes flicker in fear
With vengeance drawing near
While sweat drops from noses
And gin glasses with roses
When distrust stings the air
Every gunman’s shoulders square

When the tension builds beyond what you can hold
And everyone regrets what they’ve been sold

Redeal.

This seems like the appropriate next step, blogging about the day’s activity.

I’ve been frustrated with the constant pursuit of money in my own life lately, and have been trying to find ways to bypass the middle man by simply asking for what I want, and offering what I have. That’s how I want to live. However, this is not at all a new problem.

Bob has a banana, and wants an orange.
Bill has an orange, and wants a banana.

They trade.

Bob has a banana, and wants an orange,
Bill has an orange, but wants an apple.
Larry has an apple, and wants a banana.

They have a Mexican Standoff.

Enter money.

Bill, Bob, and Larry all agree on the value of an item (gold, money, etc…), and then each start with one of those items (let’s call them ‘dollars’).
Bob offers Bill one dollar for his orange.
Bill agrees, and now has 2 dollars, and no fruit.

Enter capitalism.

Bill offers Larry one dollar for his apple, Larry says the apples are now $2.

… or something like that.

The middle man (in this case, money) was introduced to mitigate between people. Totally understandably. But what about between friends, family, etc…? Is it really still necessary? It’s totally unfortunate that I can’t simply do favors for my friends, with some sort of ‘IOU’ system that doesn’t involve money. Isn’t it?