Grrrrrrrrr.

Anyway. The fag nextdoor has covered our connecting fire escape with potted plants. Luckily his sparkly death foil ornaments didn't scare away the birds. A pair of mourning doves set up shop in one of the largest circumferential hanging terra cottas. Wittle baby peepers popped a bit over a week ago, and they have obviously been packing in the groceries. Already about the same size as the parents. A nice and cool event to wake up to every morn.

YEAR ELEVEN: The end of the salad days. I was, overall, a happy go lucky rascally rabbit until eleven. Eleven hit a wall made of dried manure with petrified worm layers. A crap parfait.

Brittany-Woods Middle School. Double ugh. Granted, I wasn't exactly king ding-a-ling at the grade school. I was able to carve a niche out for myself where I wasn't persecuted by the tardborgs too much. Almost none of my homies from McKnight joined me at Brittany-Woods. I was fresh fish day one in Sixth grade.

I have learned recently that most massive public schools are archetecturally based on the designs of federal maximum security prisons. Brittany-Woods epitomised that theory. The "yard" where kids were allowed open air activity time was a simmering pool of melted fangs. The vast lunchroom routinely had skirmishes. A sick and weak calf seperated from the pack usually got ganked for their milk money and grub. The occasional knife fight would have to be broken up in the classroom hallways. Couple times watching the unsurprised blank face of the custodian mopping up blood off of faux marble linoleum tiles. Stumble under the wrong stairwell and get snagged into an impromptu lump fest.

First week I was out in the yard, going back in after playing tag football, I had to square off. The viscious animal was looking for any excuse to beat the shit out of a white boy, but he said that I secretly flipped him off when I pushed up my glasses with my middle finger. We circled for what seemed like half and hour, my eyes darting around looking for any adult. They were good for not paying attention. He was lean and had fists like fat round bricks. Split my lip open and sent me to the ground. He was coming for more when some teacher intervened.

I avoided the yard and that thug from then on. He cornered me at a dead end in a back hallway with his boys a few weeks later. He was uttering his first few smug grinning tauntings when I slammed the corner of my thick European history textbook into his throat. He flailed about on the floor choking. I ran away. Wasn't fucked with by that posse again.

It dawned on me early, once you establish yourself as a crazy assed white boy, people let you go on ahead and be a crazy assed white boy all alone.

I also remember my eleventh year well cause I first took notice of music. At camp kids were making out to Prince's 1999. Prince has been the man ever since. Little Red Corvette still gives me a chubby. I also bought my first album that year; Duran Duran's Rio. Snicker all ya want, shit was good to me then, and frankly, still is. Me and the other kids in the hood taking a break from raking leaves and dancing on the front lawn to Eddy Grant's Electric Avenue. Oi! And then we'll take it higher.