/lit/ - Literature

I was born in West Philadelphia. It was here where I spent most of my days relaxing on the playgrounds where we would "chill out," "max out," and "relax all cool" in the parlance of our times, and play basketball, the jeux d'esprit of the black inner city. One fateful day, however, a pair of hooligans was terrorizing our neighbourhood, their bojangles glistening in the warm summer sun. They were up to no good. What resulted was a lone "little fight" in which I was spun around repeatedly on the shoulders of a larger man, but its implications would reach far into my future. It was the turning point of my life.

Unsurprisingly, my mother became scared. I could see the tension in her eyes, an aging pensioner who had lived through the civil rights movement confronting the reality of sending away her only child. Mustering all the courage she could, her hands shaking with arthritis, Martin Luther King staring out at me from behind his faded framed print on the wall, she uttered the words that will echo in my mind until I draw my last breath:

"You're moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air."

I was devastated. Collecting myself, I whistled for a taxi. When it approached, I saw a cliché dice on the mirror, determining the car to be a rarity: camp was not something we saw often in the projects. But I thought to myself, "nah, forget it," cried "yo-ho, to Bel-Air!" and was off on the transcontinental journey that would forever define me as a human being.