I’d secured a room by this point—my first closet-room in West Philly—but still considered myself a van dweller.

My closet-room more a home base / amenity spot.

Was still spending nights in my van.

Except awake.

Writing in my van at night with a propane heater.

Red Bulls.

Reds.

Weed and the occasional (honestly for some moons there daily) microdose.

Was sleeping inside—in my sleeping bag, on my mat—mornings till late afternoons.

So sleeping in my van for the Xmas mish was no biggie.

If anything luxurious since big sis had an off-street driveway.

But big cuz E, that Xmas, was living upstate also, with his on-and-off bae of ten-plus years—since college, like ex bae had been for me—working some sort of renovation construction of this old mill turned art space.

Hella isolated with on/off bae.

In the town adjacent to the one he went to college at in VT.

Seeing me, he felt like any domesticated bro would upon seeing one of his ‘un-contained,’ single bros.

Like tf am I doing.

Like this dude out here!

Masculinity challenge.

Even more insidious/challenging since I presented so woke and self-aware and self-deprecating about how dumb ideas of alpha-beta masculinity were.

Purported implicitly to inhabit a new category, of alpha-beta immunity.

To sidestep this problem entirely, by pivoting the angle.

Although, ultimately, still tryna establish myself as above that shit.

Anyway, on the evening of that Xmas day—2016—we drank and smoked in arctic-ass upstate, in my van, Canadian hotboxing that bih, huddled around my propane heater, till we damn near couldn’t sit up straight.

Canadian hotbox: regular hotbox except with cigs.

Listened to Savage Mode (2016) on loop, me telling E to listen carefully to 21’s lyrics.

“He’s in Savage Mode,” I said.

“He’s showing you what it feels like to be a ‘Real Nigga,’” I said.

“Hear how sad he is,” I said, cutting E off and demanding silence. “He’s not proud of it. Or rather, it’s not about whether he is or isn’t proud of it. It’s not even a choice. It’s just how it is. How things are.”

Less than a month later, E cut things off with his longtime on/off bae and jetted out to Hawaii, where his parents were posted. Where his pops, my uncle, a U.S. naval chaplain, was stationed. To ‘start over.’

“That fateful Canadian hotbox,” E said as I led him into the van, to set up his bed for him. “Changed the course of everything.”

•

It rained nonstop the entire drive up.

Through NYC, along stretches I’d never driven.

Over bridges I’d never crossed.

E drove the whole way.

I DJ-ed.

Things mellowed once we hit the Taconic.

I slept the last two hours.

Forearms cut up, face swollen.

But I distracted myself by IG storying so much of the drive my feed was a bunch of dots.

The farm was something else.