Report From The Trenches

Weirdest and most-poignant combination of filial loyalty and poor parenting I've ever seen...



Last night, per the usual, there was much shouting outside on the sidewalk. The drama of the evening was apparently something like this:



(This, incidentally, is translated from its original American Thug--my "*"-typing finger is too tired to adequately reproduce all the cussing, n-words, and nonprintables involved in their conversation.)



Joe had driven Courtney to the store, and parked in front of Will's to wait for Kisha. Will, evidently, had a past fling with Courtney and deeply resented the fact that Joe was now spending time with her, and since their breakup was rather hostile, it appeared, Will was going into great and emotionally-charged detail regarding why Courtney should leave immediately and not darken his sidewalk again.



Two factors lifted this incident beyond the usual level of weird:



1. Throughout this conversation, Will punctuated every epithet, every pejorative for the female of the species, with an apology to his mother--the nice church lady from next door, the one who sent me a plate the day of the block party--who was sitting on the porch. So Will's end of the argument went something like this: "B***h--sorry, Momma--You better gone out of here--Joe, take this b***h home--I'm sorry, Momma--get this 'ho outta here. I'm SORRY, Momma!"



2. Courtney--herself no slouch in the cussing-and-threatening department--spent most of the time promising to come back to this street EVERY day, just to get on Will's nerves. Needless to say, Will didn't appreciate this at all, and explained--again, in great and passionate detail--the amount of physical damage he planned to inflict on Courtney. At one point, the prospect was raised of who might win a fight between Will and Courtney's brothers, and Will decided to address Courtney's little son--a boy of about six, who had been standing by throughout all the argument. "Go home and tell your uncles I'm gon' kick they asses," he informed the boy. I did not hear his response, but a few moments later--after Courtney had assured Will that her brothers' intervention would not be needed, since she would herself be more than capable of beating the living shit out of him--the little boy nudged his mother. He was holding something in his hand, and when she didn't answer, he nudged her again and profferred the object once more.



"Huh?" she said. "Oh...Naw, I don't need no bottle right now," she said. Whereupon he dropped the weapon on the ground, and left his mother to her own devices.



Shortly afterwards--after it was established that Courtney's butt was too big for the outfit she was wearing, that Will still owed money on the throwback HE was wearing, and that Joe was "a petty n****"--the company parted ways and peace reigned once again on the West Side.