Life changed in the blink of an eye. One night, we went to bed, and the next day, all we knew and held sacred changed. Our ideas of how we were supposed to be changed, out with the old and in with the new. The definition of who you were and how you were supposed to behave was destroyed. Our parents were then considered archaic, conservative, or just old pops who did not even know how to operate their cell phones.
Back in those not-too-distant days, the definitions were simpler: boys will be boys, girls will be girls. Of course, there were all kinds of grades in between, but there was an unwritten agreement, “live and let live.” That simple notion that you were able to be your person was liberating. But you had expectations: Boys and girls were supposed to get together and form a family unit and take care of their children. Most of the people I knew subscribed to that notion.
One summer in the early nineties, all hell broke loose! Society inevitably changed. Within a decade, we were bombarded with unimagined technological advances with not-so-good side effects. The role models shifted from home and the little universe of our neighborhood to T.V. and, later, social media. The nineties brought us computers, the world wide web, A.I., the human genome, and Sony PlayStation, but also new personalities emerged in our mental landscape: drug lords, sicarios, gangbangers, hood rats, internet porn, and others. “Alternative” counterculture lifestyles became fashionable.
We changed too. Even as our streets and buildings were frozen in time, our conversations became more about easy money and dreams of quick riches. We kept hearing about this Colombian guy. Pablo Escobar, who came from nothing and, in the cocaine trade, made multi-millions. For some of us, especially for Chris, Pablo Escobar was a role model. In our little universe, the Colombian drug lord quickly became a figure of legendary proportion.
We named our gang “the Wilson’s Crips”. It was me, P.R., Junior, Markwan, and Chris, the dreamer-in-chief. Chris was a transplant from Queens after his parents’ divorce. He lived a few blocks from us on Halsey St. He joined our H.S. and, from day one, preached about his plans to become like Escobar. “My father is a fool… he’s been working his whole life and ain’t got nothin’,” Chris would often say with disdain. He was determined not to make his father’s mistake: work for a living. He had no interest in schoolwork and did not even attend classes, but he kept on being passed on to the next grade. Chris was more passionate about picking fights, smoking joints, and harassing girls. He was a certifiable, obnoxious bully. He also had an impulsive, violent streak. Chris had already done some “Juvi” time, and little did he suspect that Rickers Island was waiting for him.
We lived in Bushwick, a neighborhood in the shadows of the far north end of Brooklyn. Our universe was a line of rowhouses on both sides of Schaeffer Street, near Wilson Ave, a few blocks from the L train. On one end, there was the laundry mat, a fire hydrant, a hair salon, and the corner, “Mia,” a Dominican bodega; on the other end, by Wilson Avenue, there was a Chinese take-out joint, “Chow fun,” and the “Cutz” barbershop. We preferred hanging out by the fire hydrant.
Our parents, mostly first-generation Afro-Caribbean immigrants, tolerated all the indignities of the newcomers but persevered in chasing the American dream. They still believe, with a few “Welfare-Queens” exceptions, in honesty, respect, work, and staying out of trouble. They expected their children to do the same. They believed that their children were their responsibilities and they would ensure that they were kept out of trouble. Thus, you screwed up. You had it coming.
My mother, Evangelina, was a devoted, no-no-nonsense, evangelical-twice-week churchgoer. She worked as a housekeeper for some rich Jews in Manhattan. She tolerated no silliness or unbecoming conduct, and my sisters often got their ass whooped by her as proof. They needed to behave like respectable senoritas, not hood rats; failing grades was not a choice either. She was the disciplinarian-in-chief. There were three of us, my two sisters and me, but I was her favorite anyway.
My father, Ruperto, was a quiet guy. He never said much. He was like an old laconic western-movie character that you don’t mess with. His revolver would do the talking. My dad did not have a revolver, but his fists and courage. On the rare occasions he said something to us, there was no arguing; he did not need to repeat himself. In this country, he was a laborer, but since he was eighteen years old, he has served in the military in the Dominican Republic. He retired as Seargent. Dad was not a tall guy but was built like a concrete wall due to his years of hard labor. He had thick callous on both hands, big biceps, and a sour temper. One day at work, at a factory, he got into a major fistfight with another guy who kept on cussing out in front of him. He warned him not to. Dad messed up the guy, and both ended up being fired from the job. At the time of the fight, my dad was in his mid-fifties.
He had a thick, broad, mostly gray mustache that, no matter how out of fashion and how much my sisters pleaded with him, he refused to shave. “Only officers and real men wear mustaches.” He would say proudly. But Dad had some sadness about him. I think he saw his life as a dead end. After he came to the United States with dreams of striking riches, he ended up working in back-breaking jobs and living from paycheck to paycheck. Taking care of his family became his sole purpose. He never complained. Only whenever he had a couple of Bacardi shots in him would he sadly say, “Ustedes tienen que llegar a algo.” Forcefully and with conviction, Dad said we needed to mount to something, but it sounded more as if pleading, like a devout religious old lady. My folks had the ethos of the new immigrant. You come to America to make it, not to be a bum or a burden to society.
Raising a family in Brooklyn was getting harder. The cost of living kept on escalating, and the salary remained stagnant. The minimum wage was four dollars per hour. Above all, some parents, including mine, were in fear of losing their kids to the streets. One of my older brothers, Quinto, had already been killed amid a gang shootout out a few blocks from home. I recall my dad being painfully stricken by grief, sorrow, and anger. Quinto was not my mom’s kid, and it pains me to admit it, but she did not like him. He was a thug through and through, and my mom was upset that he was influencing me. One day, they had a major blowout, as he kept on coming home at all hours of the night and brought some criminal elements home. Mom, who did not suffer fools, kicked him out. Less than three months later, he was killed in a street shootout, Wild West style. It was a close-casket funeral. The bullets destroyed his face. Dad blamed her for it, and I think he never forgave her.
In hindsight, probably Quinto’s death hardened my dad’s attitude toward me. He became more of a hard ass with me. He was always looking at me like a Hawk. One night, we were watching T.V., and I caught him intensely looking at me. As in a Kodak moment, he was not just staring at me but peering at my soul, trying to divine who I was and what I was up to. I guess he was trying to prepare himself for the worst. I was seventeen at the time.
I had a hard time getting in the gangster’s way. I was not thug material, and the streets were getting out of control. There was cocaine, freebase, weed, of course, and other drugs in every street corner. We used to call the drug-dealing street corner an “office” or “un punto.” The shootings from the fights for turf and corner streets were a nightly occurrence. Funeral homes in Santo Domingo, Miami, and here were doing big business. We all knew someone who “got shot.” Soon, all was bound to get worse. There was a new drug going around: Crack. Twice as potent as freebasing, one-tenth the cost.
My parents needed not to worry about me getting into that stuff. I tried freebasing once in high school and puked my guts out. A dealer from Knickerbocker Street was sampling it. I did not buy into it. The burnt freebase cocaine, mixed with whatever chemical was in it, had a nauseous-provoking, very strong, and strange odor, like burnt tires or something like that. Nasty.
Nafta hit our families hard. All factories were leaving the country like water down a stream. Labor work was becoming scarce, so Dad found a cleaning office second-shift gig. That meant freedom to me. Now, without being scrutinized by his piercing, intimidating, ever-suspicious eyes while keeping with his military schedule, I would be able to spend time with my Gang.
For a few months, we were doing very well. We were making a few bucks selling weed. Chris knew a thug from the Bronx, Narcisco, that provided him with the supply. He was constantly paging him. We were establishing our territory and getting a name for ourselves: “The Wilson’s crips.” Our self-broadcast name was more aspirational than real. There was nothing gangster about our association. Most of us, except Chris, still had plenty of innocence left and the remnants of very conservative teachings at home. I was still grieving Quinto.
One night, a bunch of guys approached our corner as if heading toward Myrtle Avenue. I recognized one of them. I had already fought him at school. Chris immediately intervened, “Where y’all niggaz think you are going?”. The other guys, who obviously were not gangsters, were quickly intimidated. “Ain’t nothing, Joe, we’re just walking.” Chris sensed fear in their voices, and his instinctual thuggish-bullying persona kicked in. “y’all punk mothe’fucka better get the hell back “and quickly made a gesture as if he was pulling a gun. The other guys promptly did a one-eighty and ran. We were all excited. Finally! We got some gang action. Mind you, we did not have any guns. We ran after them for a couple of blocks, but there was no chance of catching them. There’s no faster man than the one running for his life. They were Hussein Bolt on steroids.
We then started celebrating. It was all like a big joke. Personally, I did not care about those guys going by. I liked the idea of the West Coast gangster life that I had seen on MTV, but my heart was not in it. Chris, on the other hand, was all serious. “Yo, this is our corner, man.” He started scolding us as if indeed he was a chief or something, “We gotta protect our corner… this is where our Punto, yo”. I guess we did not run fast enough for our Gangsta Fuhrer.
I did not realize it at the time, but my gangster career was about to come to an abrupt stop.
A few weeks after the chase, around 7 pm, the guys gathered in the corner, across from the laundry mat. “Yo, have you seen old G?” asked Chris, as if passing a roll call. “Nah, I think his mom got him locked up,” said Markwan, the big boy from behind Wilson Ave. “What do you mean? She brought him to the precinct?” asked Junior, really concerned. “No, you dumb mother fucker, you know how she’s,” Chris replied exasperated. My mom made it very clear that she did not like Chris. More than once, pissed off, she prohibited me from hanging out with that “Dego”. I did not care; he was my friend.
They were waiting for me. I had a surprise for them. I was heavily into rap and kept track of all the new recordings. I lived on the East Coast, but my soul was on the West Coast. I finally managed to escape my mom’s Gestapo watch. She tended to doze off watching Telenovelas, and I would routinely find my wait out. My two sisters knew better than to say anything and often provided cover, saying that I was in my room. Mom did not look too hard; she did not want to miss her Telenovela. Anyway, I got stuff on them. Jeannie, my baby sister, was hooking up with the girl next door, and Mary, my middle sister, was seeing some thug, Dwight, a couple of streets from ours. She used to go and “study” with him on her way back from school while Dwight’s mother was still at work. She always smelled like old spice and had an exhausted look. They were doing some seriously hard work.
I was all proud of a new piece of West Coast rap I found. I was sure it was going to be hit with our Gang, and I could not wait to play it for the guys. I had recently purchased a Walkman, which was the newest thing in town, but we were still jamming with my Boombox like typical broke-ass gangsters.
I brought down my Boombox and made an entrance. “Yo, wha rup niggaz?. Chris seemed p.o. “I got something real hot, dawg,” I boasted as I swaggered my way through them. “Check this out, check it out!”. I wasted no time blasting it.
“Saggin, nigga g’d up, sippin, sig nigga, dip nigga, set trip nigga. Gotta grip nigga, getta grip nigga with tha gan. And rollin with tha alpine bangin. Homie whatcha got? A couple of sacs to sell”.
I stopped the cassette for a dramatic effect.
“Yo, who’ra? tha’s dope…keep on rollin’ it!”. They pleaded.
I continued playing the Cassette tape:
“Went from weed and dope to mics to sell. Hit a switch nigga. Don’t fuck around with bitch niggaz. Im a money cash nigga. Cash getting, hash hitten, Gang bang affiliate”.
They were stunned. They started instinctively making the moves that the rhythm called for. It was natural for us. We needed no instructions. We formed a circle, and Chris first got into it, of course, to a disastrous result. He was white, after all. Then, Junior, that as dumb as he was, nigga got some serious moves. He was the best dancer among us. He raised both hands to the air, with three fingers up, and started circling it, gangster style. At the same time, his feet, with perfect synchrony, moved back and forth, left-right, sliding and gliding. My favorite move was when he glided with both feet together, as if hopping, to the left at the beat of the song.
“Then have a gangster reunion, the homie told me whut he say? Get cha’ boggie on youngsta, c-walk homie, Get cha’ walk on, c-walk homie, c-walk homie.”.
They made me repeat the song several times, at the risk of scrapping my cassette tape. There was no doubt that I found our anthem. They almost went nuts when the song said:
“You know that ganstaz rock, gangstaz roll. Here the gansta shit, we on a gansta stroll . its ganstaz ride, gangstaz slide Then ganstaz rob with the gansta glide. Cuz ganstaz move, and gangstaz goove”.
By that moment, we were all dancing the C-walk.
“Most ganstaz got nothing ta lose. Gangstaz live, and gangstaz die. Ganstaz don’t snitch, and gangstaz don’t cry. Ganstaz boogie, gangstaz don t dance”.
Then, our final coronation came toward the end of the song:
“Ganstaz don’t run, and gangstaz dont ride. Im a gangsta ass nigga from the sick southside… Ya love the gangsta shit aint you a gangsta too, Then c-walk homie”.
Chris yelled top of his lung, “Dam y’all!, niggaz, that’s dope. It’s us… that’s some serious shit! It’s us, dawg”. I guess I found our Gang’s anthem.
We continued playing our West Coast rap, which I preferred to the East Coast junk. They got the real gangster stuff. Eventually, we got tired of listening to music and dreaming and decided to play some dice. Markwan was sort of addicted to it. We bet a few bucks at a time, more for fun than for profit. There was a problem, though. My father prohibited me from playing dice or ever visiting a Pool Hall. He said that only the lowest kind of people visited those places. Often, when he was in preaching mode, he would say, “Never trust a man who doesn’t have a firm handshake, speaks too much, and shoots pool. That’s not a man of character”. – Obviously, in Spanish-.
Since his voice was my command, I agreed. However, he was at work. So, we started playing dice. That night, I was killing it. I had gained three bucks. I was hunched down, one knee on the pavement, rolling the dice, excited to the max.
Little did I know that my dad was sent home from his cleaning gig. Things were slow. He came home earlier. My mom immediately ratted me out and told him that I was not at home. “I don’t know where he’s at…he sneaked out…again”. There was no way she was going to take the blame for my actions. A major storm was heading my way.
I continued rolling my dice. I was inspired. The C-walk song got me riled up. I swung my wrist to the beat of the music in my head like a master DJ. Suddenly, I felt a firm tap on my left shoulder. I thought it was one of the guys distracting me. I just shook off my shoulder, irritated, “C’mon y’all.”. I felt the tap one second time. A third tap felt like a knock from the police at the door. It got my attention. I stopped mid-swing and turned my face up to the left to cuss out whoever was tapping my shoulder. I only saw briefly half of my father’s furious face. I suddenly felt a burning and harsh scraping, like a mix of sandpaper and rock, of my dad’s right hand on my face, between my ear lobe and my jaw. Rather, it was as if a cheese grater and a hammer married and hit my face. He slapped me so hard that I rolled down the sidewalk. The rest of the crew, including Chris, ran out.
My dad grabbed me by my t-shirt, almost ripping it out, and dragged me down the sidewalk home. The neighbors came out like roaches in a fire. They feared for my life. He had an assassin look to himself. The nosy neighbors were terrified. Everyone knew of his temper. “Ruperto, don’t hurt the kid!”. They expected that I was going to be at least maimed that night. He did not say a word.
It was far worse.
My father swiftly, with the determination of a pissed-off marine, dragged my ass to our apartment. My mom and my sisters were there waiting. I was convinced it was going to be the mother of all whippings. Instead, there was a deafening silence. They all gave me a look that I would never forget. Dad did not say a word either. I expected a beating, or at least a long lecture about their harsh lives on the Island, how good we have it in America, the sort of immigrant speeches I’ve heard numerous times before. Instead, what I got was more painful- a deafening silence-. Their silent look of disapproval. A crude mix of disappointment, letdown, and shame.
Dad was deeply disappointed in me. I had let him down. His eyes seemed no longer furious but sad. Defeated. His worst nightmare became a reality. His son was playing dice and turning into a Thug. No more doubts. He seemed convinced that he was going to bury another son. My sisters and mom did not say a word either. I violated our family ethos; we were poor but an honest working family. One by one, they left our little family room via the kitchen and went to their bedroom. I was mortified. I could not stand seeing my family hurt. I hated myself for it. It was June 28, 1992. It was the last day of my “gangster” career.
Afterward, I only stayed in high school for a few more weeks. After graduating on my 18th birthday, I soon joined the U.S. Navy. I was smart enough to make it to college but not studious enough to get any decent scholarships. Besides, I just desperately wanted to be like Dad.
It worked out well. I ended up assigned to Amphibious Assault Ship Mechanic School in the Navy. After my honorable discharge, I made a successful career out of it. I landed a very nice job, earning almost six figures, working on diesel engines at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. I’ve made my parents proud.
Each time I visited my folks in Bushwick, my dad seemed glad to see me. He would not hug me, but after shaking our callous hands, I felt his satisfaction with his powerful grip. Knowing him, I knew he felt that he was shaking “a real” man’s hand. I stayed out of trouble, had a very good job, and got my own family. I even saw the semblance of a smile below his thick, graying mustache. He’s now retired, but his callous hands remained unchanged. I guess callous hands don’t smooth with retirement. I totally wanted to be like him, but I was not about to grow a mustache. I settled for a goatee.
Mom still goes to church twice a week but no longer works for the rich Jews in Manhattan. She spends her days watching Oprah and Television and babysitting for my sister Mary’s daughter. I was still her favorite, and her cooking demonstrated this.
My sister Jeannie became an Elementary School teacher and was dating another white chick in Queens. My middle sister, Mary, did not get pregnant by Dwight; instead, she married a Dominican guy she knew from high school. He got a biology degree and lined up a six-figure income job with a top pharmaceutical company. She has the brains in the family.
My parents’ hard times, sacrifices, and long hours of disciplining and lecturing us paid off. They are still residing in Bushwick, but they live with an unbound sense of happiness. We all turned out to be contributing members of our society. Job well done!
What was of my Gang?
On one of my visits to my parents’ home, I ran into Junior and Markwan. My friends both had family and children. They were glad to see me and genuinely happy that I had made it out of the hood.
I asked about Chris.
They informed me that he was the father of three kids with three different girls. But Markwan told me Chris managed to escape with his life after a drug deal went wrong but almost killed another guy in a shootout. He was doing a thirty-year flat sentence at Ricker’s Island.
He did not end up being like Pablo Escobar, who was murdered, but more like El Chapo, who’s doing life in a Federal Penitentiary.
In the end, he was the only one who made it in the Gangstaz life.
P.R. Thompson
June 15, 2024