My health continued to decline despite gulping down a pile of pills every day. No chance on the soccer field, out of breath. Our team had played two games, but I hadn’t played a minute.  

“This is supposed to be your team this year, but you keep missing practices, and you’re still out of shape,” said the coach before our third game.

“I know, I had a doctor’s appointment during the last practice, and I’m still waiting on my medications to kick in.”

“That’s what you said last time. Anyway, I can’t play you if you can’t run.”

I watched from the sideline as we lost a close game, the only spectator on account of light rain. Coach gathered the team postgame, “Don’t need to tell you guys that performance was weak, it seems like no one gives a shit, so why am I showing up?” Cause you’re getting paid.

“If you guys don’t get it together, there might not even be a team next year.”  

Dejected teammates dispersed, Tom and I walked down Houston Street towards the subway.

“Can’t believe it, last time we lost to them we were freshmen,” said Tom.

“No control in the rain on the turf,  the ball was skidding like crazy.”

“Yeah, coulda used you just to collect and distribute.”

“I’m on a new medication, so hopefully it’s gonna kick in and I’ll be good to go next week before coach disbands the team.”

“Yeah I don’t know what’s up with him this year, he’s clearly checked out.”

“You see him shooting off text messages while we were playing? My guess is home troubles.”  

“Well he’s not helping the situation. Anyway, I wanted to spark this for celebration,” said Tom taking a joint our of his backpack, “but I guess it’ll have to do as consolation.”

“Let’s walk down to Rivington so we’re not out in the open.”

We turned left and saw a police car coming quick down the block, Tom cupped the joint in his hand below his waist, the car came to a full stop next to us, passenger window rolling down as Tom flicked the joint into a gutter.

“Hey, you guys see two porto reekin kids just run round that corner?”

“No sorry, didn’t notice anything,” said Tom.

The cop nodded as they drove on through the red light, ain’t too smart.

“Good to light that now?” I asked.

“Dude, I ditched it down the sewer drain, I thought they saw it and were gonna pat us down.”

“Man, they didn’t even get out of the car!”

“My bad, I got nervous.”

“Well, shit. It’s so dumb that you’re allowed to smoke the cancer plant in public but not the harmless weed.”

“Yep. All the head shops on St. Marks say intended for tobacco use only.”

“Thanks to industry lobbyists, no doubt.”

“Weed would bring in the same amount of tax revenue or more if given the chance.”

“No it wouldn’t, it’s not addicting as nicotine. Government doesn’t care what drugs you do, they care whose drugs you do and how much tax revenue they can get. If it’s not something you’re addicted to, they can’t make as much.”

“If I move to California I could get a prescription for my stomach.”

“Oh yeah? I thought maybe it could help. What does it do?” asked Tom.

“Stimulates appetite, gets rid of nausea.”

“And maybe relieves stress?” asked Tom.

“Yeah definitely, the doctor said stress can cause flare ups.”

“So it’s your medicine? Guess we gotta go get more.”

“Could try Tompkins or Washington Square Park.”

“You’re more likely to step on an infected needle full of heroin than find a nice dime bag in Tompkins, but if you wanna walk towards Washington Square Park I can see if Foster’s home, he’s just around the corner on University Place.”

“Oh cool, I didn’t realize he had a spot in Manhattan.”

“Yeah, he’s been making bookoo bucks selling to NYU students. Also I need a new power cord and the Apple store is on the way.”

We turned right on to Rivington and walked west. Tom flipped open his phone and rang, “Yo Foster, what’s good, you around?”

The only crime that a president can openly admit to having committed, as long as they qualify that it was their boisterous youth.

“Okay he’s there, he said to bring a dutch, lemme run into this bodega real quick.”

Delgado’s Grocery faded in red on tattered yellow awning, windows covered in sticker ads, Arizona Camel. Even a crude mixture of leaf with abundant stem and seed components has been shown to help patients, but we don’t have a large enough sample size for empirical truth because Science hasn’t been allowed to research enough. If it was legal, we would know more, and if we knew more, it would be legal. Dispel all of the old fables.

“Alright, good to go,” said Tom, flashing the shiny blue wrapper.

We walked through Sara Roosevelt Park with pickup basketball, big man in a wife beater dominating down low, and then passed a bum washing windows on the Bowery. We turned on to Prince street and continued into the cast-iron industrial streets of SoHo, artist enclave for our parent’s generation, now an outdoor fashion mall with tall chic boned models catwalking on Broadway, careful in heels on the cobblestoned side streets.   

“Wanna stop in Sharper Image and sit on their massage chairs, or Evolution and look at their anatomical trinkets?” I asked.

“Don’t you need a new iPod?”

Stolen from my backpack at a party, full of songs from Limewire, living in a den of thieves.

“Yea but I don’t have the money, gotta wait for Christmas.”

“I’ll just be a minute, I’m not gonna dilly dally looking around or anything, and Foster’s expecting us soon.”

“Alright, alright, let’s go.”

We continued down Prince Street to the Apple store, Station A above the heavy glass door. All white pristine inside, attention drawn to the screens with their pixel flickers, austere like the doctor’s office but with the young bustle of counter-culture consumers walking up the transparent stairway to techtopia in the middle of the ground floor. Our computer science teacher made us watch Steve Jobs’ Stanford commencement speech, ‘The graduation speaker who never graduated cause he knew he was wasting his parent’s money. Most successful guy in America. What do you guys think of that?’ I think I’m gonna ask my parents for one of his laptops as a graduation present to take to college, not everyone can work at the genius bar. If you’re a successful genius you can pay to hire the best doctors and beat cancer apparently. He had a miracle biopsy, the magic diagnosis, curative surgery, and now continues to mold the interface of personal computing. Advertising a discount and free iPod for college students, could try the different models out if they weren’t all occupied. Slight rrrr in my stomach, wonder if there’s a bathroom. Arm on my shoulder, “Alright I got my cord, let’s go.”

“How? Wasn’t there a long line?”

 “I guess most of these people just came to ogle, the actual checkout line was short.”

We walked uptown across Houston Street, around Washington Square Park fountain with dancing performers, hacky sack circle, skateboarder grinding on a bench, through the arch and up to Foster’s apartment building, enter the elevator, lifted to floor fourteen, down the hall and knock.

“Yo guys, what’s goin on?”

“Hey Foster,” pounds all around.

“Tom, how’s your brother doing? Haven’t heard from him much since he went off to universe city.”

“He’s good, got a girlfriend taking all his attention.”

“Course he does. You guys want water or anything? There’s also seltzer and coke in the fridge.”

“Actually, could I use your bathroom?”

“Yea man, right here.” He opened the door.

“Thanks.”

Checkered black and white tile, toilet needs cleaning. Framed photos of graffiti: stay high 149 smoking saint, DONDI subway car, SAMO as an end to the 9 to 5. I washed my hands and walked down the hall to Foster’s bedroom. 

 “Yo check out what Foster’s got for us.” Sweet earthy fluff.  

“Smells classic.”

 “Yeah man, it’s that NYC Diesel, I’m rolling up for you guys to sample,” said Foster. Split at the seam, guts in the garbage, keeping just the raw leaf, replace brown with green, thumb from tip to tip, licked along the edge, pinched close, and dried with his lighter. He pushed play on his boombox.

Fam, you know what I’m sayin? 

“So you guys know about this track?”

“I’ve heard it, kinda sappy for Biggie isn’t it? No bravado,” replied Tom.

“Yeah, everyone knows him for his party bangers, but Miss U is more poignant than any other rap song ever. You guys know about how Marvin Gaye died?”

“Overdose, right?”

“Nah, let me school you guys for a minute. The sentimental beat for this track is sampled from the supreme Diana Ross’s Missing You track that she recorded to commemorate losing Marvin, her soul duet partner. They were the greatest Motown had to offer.”

Blunt between his lips, quick thumb twitch, flame raised and inhaled.

Daydreams everyday… 

“So how’d he die?”

He passed the blunt to his left and took a gulp from his coke can. 

“Los Angeles, 1984, Marvin was in his bedroom, listening to his parents argue over an insurance policy letter, like a scene from his childhood, only he was a man now, had put an e on the end of his last name to distinguish himself from his father and bought the family mansion a decade earlier, but his success and income couldn’t keep his mother and father from fighting like they had when he was a boy, and with the stress of touring and his cocaine reliance giving him the exasperated confidence to intervene and show his father that enough was enough and that physical domestic abuse could not be tolerated when his mother was recovering from kidney surgery, he assaulted his father with retribution for the painful childhood memories, but then his mad father had a tumor talking crazy to him which he must have thought god telling him that his son was the false idol who had been touring gospel of sexual healing as opposed to the penance which he taught him as a choirboy and was therefore helping to prolong the sin of the sexualized seventies while the AIDS epidemic punished like a modern plague of Egypt, and hearing the call of divine intervention to put an end to the sour grapes of his loins, he grabbed his .38 and bang, shot his own son, laid the usurping prince to rest. And then Diana comes out with her heartbreaking eulogy, the original miss you song, as Marvin was laden with posthumous awards and turned into legend the way that only artists who die tragically can, and then Biggie takes Diana’s track and flips it into this eulogy for the common no name drug dealers who ran out of options or never had any to begin with and got mixed up in a topsy turvy game and lost their lives, thereby saying that they are just as worthy of your bereavement as any pop star because he used to slang and knew perfectly well that he was lucky to have lived long enough to make his first rap album, Ready to Die, let alone a second album, Life After Death, both of which romanticize the juiciness of surviving and thriving in a system that is stacked against you while remaining fully aware that it can all be over in the flash of a gunshot.”  

“Woah, take a breath man, I think you lost us.”

Tell me why the road turns…

“What I’m saying is, Biggie died for my sins.”

“What sins?”

“You know, selling drugs.”

 “Pharmacists do the same thing.” I replied.

“But they do it through the system.”

“Is it a sin to go outside the system?” I asked.

“Deviance is considered negative by society,” said Tom.

“Terrorists believe that what they are doing is god’s will,” said Foster.  

“Only false gods deny the golden rule,” said Tom.

“Maybe terrorists are masochists,” said Foster.

“Haha, Osama in leather with a ball gag,” said Tom.

“Well, you’re alright by us Foster,” I said.

“That’s cause I just got you guys high. Be careful bringing this dankness into your parent’s house,” said Foster as he nustled the roach into the ashtray mug, “you guys wanna get falafel from Mamoun’s?”

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