When we were last with Gerald in his hometown, New Orleans, he was heading back out onto the streets after a stint in juvenile detention. Meanwhile, his crew, including his best friend, Greg, had gotten busted hard and were going away to prison for a long time.
Now that they lock my man, Greg, down, I come back home, back on the street again. I meet up with my friend, Minew.
When I first met him, he say, “They call me Minew because I’m like a cat, I got nine lives.”
I say, “Oh yeah?”
He say, “Man, I’ve been shot like, five, six, seven times. You know how that go, brah.”
I’d heard of him a lot, but I never met him one-on-one. He heard of me too ‘cause I’m from my up-town and my name carry weight.
Minew stay back of town, while I stay front-a-own. I go back of town some of the time. Hang out a little bit, mess with the girls back there. Still uptown was my area.
But Minew is a cool dude. So we clink-clink together–mean we ran together.
Then we start going out to different little clubs together. Guys start seeing us together, saying, “Damn. Third Ward running with Minew now? Sheee. Them boyz. Whoa, that’s a rough team there. Too slimy.” Slimey mean that they too low down.
So, when I go to tell Minew, I say, “Man, you know, I be out here, man, I be stealing cars, you know, I be doing whatever it is to get a dollar.”
He say, “Man, why you think they call me Minew? I’m like a cat, I go for it all.”
So we start going out, meeting girls, dating sisters and stuff.
We got this thing called Dark and Lovely, it’s a perming kit. I always had good hair.
So we had sisters come and one of them, Susan, say, “I’m gonna put that in your head, I’ll make your head look like Babyface, your head look like a newborn baby, especially you being dark, so…”
I say, “When you gonna do that, Susan?”
She say, “Whenever you ready for me to do it.”
So one friday, day time, me and Minew go over everybody’s cousin’ house, and we chillin’ and stuff. She say, “I’m ready to do your hair now.”
So she wash my hair, laid it down. Next thing I know, my hair was looking like I was a Spanish dude, curly hair.
I say, “Damn. Man, I swear we going out tonight.”
She say, “Girls gonna think that’s your real hair!”
So Minew got his hair done. We bust out to the club.
We’re all playing out there and shit. We thought we was big shots. We kick the bull for a minute.
Then Minew was telling me about this little beef he had with some dudes out the project.
I say, “Right near Nevada?”
Hey say, “Yeah.”
I say, “I mostly know all them young n****s.”
He say, “Nah. Them n****s been playin’ at me for a while. I got something for ‘em.”
I say, “Man, they like family to me. Let me talk to them.”
Minew say, “Nah. Ain’t no talking.”
It’s like this with me–once I run with you, and I mess with you, I gotta go with the power, that mean I gotta go with you.
But first, let’s see what else we can do. Because once you draw these guns out on people on the street, you gotta use ‘em. If you don’t use ‘em, you hurt yourself.
If you pull a gun on me–POP!–shoot me, and you leave me to breath… you done. Because the same way you pull it, the same way it coulda went off. That’s how I look at it.
