THE LITTLE BLACK BOOK OF A GRINDER

I was 16 when it happened. One day, one instance forever molded me to the man I am today. You see I was on the fast track to either a casket or the penitentiary. I grew up without a pops and mom worked way too much to keep tabs. I did my own thing since I was about 9, that’s when the color was added to the outside of my book. I began flying solo in a sense and was introduced to the streets by my cousin Jonathan a.k.a. Jon-Jon. He was a few years older than I so naturally I looked up to him. Jon-Jon was about 13 at this time if I remember he became a part of my everyday life. He was my care taker turning the pages in the evenings until mom came home from work. Jon- Jon’s mom was a junkie so Nana had custody of him for as long as I could remember. When she went down he came to live with us in our 2 bedroom apartment.

He was the coolest dude I knew in my young 9 years. He had nice clothes and shoes, the way he talked was different than I was accustomed to. He had a gang of friends, and they all talked about having a story of their own for their own book. At the tender age of 9, I was being molded to see the world through a narrow lens. I was the youngest on the block and had no concept of what was going on originally. By the time I was 11, a year and some change in I was pitching like a minor league player with aspirations of making it to the big league. I was living way too fast pushing Nicks and Dimes, profit was the main focus, and soon after I finished my first chapter to my little black book. That summer going in to 7th grade I lost my virginity. The crew pushed me into the room and was like “When you come out you’ll be a man.” I didn’t quite understand, but I did what the crew said and took on the persona as such a man.

Everything changed that summer. The respect for others dropped dramatically. Me and mom dukes we’re clashing left and right, and I spent many nights, hell even a few weeks at Twan’s house. He was a part of the crew as well, we were closer in age though. He was a year older and we went to the same school. We’d stay up playing video games, smoking out back, and killing the fridge in the middle of the night. I became an expert roller following Twan. He was more of brother than Jon-Jon. He spent that whole summer locked up on a petty possession charge. So Twan became the next chapter being a bigger influence on me that summer. His mom died of cancer when he was 8 and he didn’t know his pops so we hit it off on the strength of that. He stayed with his aunt who gave less than two shits about him. She just wanted the check that came for him every month. That day we ran the train he was after me. He lost his virginity the same day I did and to the same chick. We were close.

That summer we made it our thing to stack up for the upcoming school year so we could be fresh every damn day. I knew mom’s pockets were going to be tight and Twan’s wasn’t about nothing. So we went hard. Even started growing a few plants of our own. We were booming in own right. We skimmed from the older dudes, they weren’t as smart as us. They made their little profits off of us, but we had set it up so we could do our own thing come next summer. We made due this summer and by the time August rolled around we had 1500 a piece to do some school shopping. We hit four malls over that last two weekends before school was set to start. Our business boomed as we walked home from school with more kids, namely high school kids. The older niggas in our crew were either all in alternative school or had dropped out so this market was ours for the taking. We did just that.

We were the number one suppliers at Pascal Middle School and High before we were even enrolled there. Twan left to go to Pascal High the next year while I still had a year left in the middle school. That year my grades slipped some as plenty of days I would have to buck class to meet up with Twan to exchange product mid-day. We had a bit of a reputation, and being young we just thought we were popping. Little did we know we had eyes on us from the upper classmen. Now on the block we had safety in numbers and here at school it was just us. This one day while we were making a routine drop between each other. Then some dudes ran up on us and got us for our product and about 800 cash.

We met behind the corner store like we always would. We dapped up and soon as the bags opened up 4 guys hit the fence on us. The first guy swung on Twan busting his lip, I tried to grab the bag with the cash and take off, but a small guy clipped the hell out of me. I hit the deck skinning my calf up. Crazy thing is, we knew these guys from passing. They were from another hood, but you know how stuff goes. The third dude drew down on us and was like, “Give it up my G.” We had no choice, we took the L. We let the block know and they were like, “Consider this handled.” Jon-Jon gave me a little 25 after he found out what took place. He didn’t take to kindly to that. Plus he had previous issues with these same niggas. It was actually them who were partly to blame while he was locked away that summer. Jon-Jon felt indebted to me too, on the strength that I had him straight when he came home. His pockets were straight and I shot him a couple OZs to get off to get right. Even as a youngin’ I was big on integrity.

Jon-Jon and the crew had us scoping the other gang hood out in two Box Chevys. We rolled thru maybe five minutes apart. We didn’t want to stirrup too much suspicion Twan was in the first whip and I was in the second. We rode dark tint most of the time, one because it was Miami, and two we didn’t like other people in our face. We pointed out the same guy both times. We didn’t roll with them when they got busy though. We didn’t want them to know where the hit was coming from. It was handled and we reaped the benefits of the lick. The crew came up on about 5 racks and beat the hell out of the four clowns who had hit us over the head a few weeks back. Twan and I got about 250 a piece and we were satisfied. Twan said he saw one of the fools a few days later in the hallway of school. He said that boy was all lumped up and had his arm in a cast and shit. It felt good that the homies went to bat for us.

Time went on, and things were rolling pretty well. We perfected our business. Niggas got jammed up and went away, a few homies didn’t make it to see 21. We remained as low key as possible and under the radar. We both maintained GPAs above 3.0. It was the end of my sophomore year when shit hit the fan. First it was Peanut, he got knocked off on the expressway on the way to the beach. That one hit the block really hard. He was a solid dude. Jon-Jon took that one the hardest he and Peanut grew to be something like brothers over the years.

I went over to Jon-Jon’s apartment to check up on him after I hadn’t heard from him in a few days. Twan was with me as well. I had a key since Jon-Jon was like big bro and I often took lil breezies over there to smash. Come to think of it Miami Lakes had become my second home. I was at moms during the week for school, but mainly on the weekend I was here. When we got to the spot the vibe clearly changed from the Young Dro that was bumping on the way over. As we walked in, you would have thought it went from day to night. Every shade was drawn shut, no lights were on. I could smell light remanence of incense that was over powered by the weed aroma. Jon-Jon was on the couch in the corner of the room, he was visibly zooted. He had had Glock on the end table, Henny in one hand, and a blunt in the other. He handed Twan the spliff as we sat on the adjacent couch. Silence filled the room for about 20 minutes before he spoke. He reminisced about the time he and Peanut had growing up. He laughed and cried, and we were there for him. After an hour and some change, Twan and I were able to get him out of the crib to grab a bite to eat. We got him out of that funk, but he was hell bent on finding out who did our boy in. The little black book closed only to be a continuation to many little black books.