As a man, it makes you feel small when you know what your limitations are. When you know you ain’t lived up to your potential, when you ain’t sure if you ever will. It can fuck your head up big-time when you know how you wish you could be living versus how you are. I guess the space in between is a big-ass blank you have to learn how to fill in.

At least I know Jamil ain’t over there suffering. He ain’t wanting for too much. I know he ain’t deprived. Donnetta may not be the brightest person in the world, but she’s a good mother. That much I give her credit for. They only forty-seven miles away from here, and I know for a fact that it won’t be long before I’m able to pull up in front of the house—or maybe meet ’em at the corner ’cause no way am I going into that house—and take Jamil somewhere. Plus, I heard she got another man coming over there on a regular basis. He supposed to be a religious fanatic like she is. But I don’t care who he is or what he is, as long as he don’t abuse my son, I do not under any circumstances ever want to meet the motherfucker. No way.

If everybody only knew. It has taken a lot of work just to get where I am. Considering. I mean, I don’t hold no grudges. Well, maybe a few. ’Cause it’s some people who’ve done some unspeakable, despicable shit to me. One thing I have learned to be true is this: relatives can do more harm to you than a total fucking stranger. They got statistics to prove that most homicides happen within the family, and believe me, I can understand why. As much as I would like to, I’ve tried hard to forget the fact that my sixteen-and seventeen-year-old cousins—Boogar and Squirrel—pushed me inside the trap door of our fallout shelter when I was ten years old and made me suck their penises. I couldn’t believe they was making me do it and I didn’t understand why. We were boys. Plus, we was cousins. I ain’t never felt so humiliated and confused in my life as I did that day. When I threw up afterwards, they just laughed and told me if I ever told anybody about this they would kill me. To this day, I ain’t never told a soul.

But I ain’t completely stupid. Just like I know what the gross national product is, I know that this incident has probably had some effect on my personality and everything, but I don’t think it’s been the deciding factor in what kinda man I am today. Hell, when I was locked up, to maintain my sanity, all I did was read encyclopedias and that’s where I started doing crossword puzzles. Plus I read all those psychology books by Freud and Jung and the rest of them motherfuckers who think they can psychoanalyze everything and everybody. But, like they say on the street: shit happens. And some shit don’t always fit so nice and neat into no textbook. Even if it could, so the fuck what? This is the reason why I never told nobody. People always want to analyze you. Figure out what slot you fit in. What if you don’t fit? If something traumatic happened to you as a child, they automatically think you’ll be fucked up or affected by it the rest of your life. Hell, look at me. I’m a perfect example of somebody that turned out okay. That’s why I don’t buy the shit. And I ain’t in no fucking denial either. If you smart, you can teach yourself to forget anything, put it in a little compartment in your brain that you know you won’t need, lock it, and throw away the key. This is particularly helpful when you’re dealing with shit that hurts. So what if it creep in every now and then? You still gotta live.