Saved and SAINTified (22 page)

“
Wait, sorry to interrupt you but do you know how he got the name, ‘Bomb’?”

“Because he could go off at anytime and when he did, the shit was explosive. He was a real smart cat, but crazy as fuck
. He was good to me though...”

Xenia
raised an eyebrow and shook her head.

“Anyway, I couldn’t believe it
. I watched him fuck his girl, right? I can’t even tell you, from a six year old’s mind, what that was like. He acted like I wasn’t even in the room. It was sexy. It was raw. They got naked and used this old, filthy ass nasty mattress and I remember looking at her tits. I was completely mesmerized. I had never seen tits before. Well, wait.” He chuckled. “That’s not true; there was this red head prostitute, in retrospect I think it was a wig, but she’d always flash her tits to try to get johns. Anyway, Bomb had this big, curly afro, and all of these home-made tattoos. That was a common look.”

“You know what, S
aint? I remember some photos you showed me in one of your old photo albums and one of them was you standing with some guys that looked like that. They were built like track stars.”

“Yeah, if you were running from the police, fighting all day, trying to move fast after robbin’ someone or being hired to burn a building down, you’d have a constant six-pack, too. They were
often running for their lives, Xenia. None of us that ran the streets were fat. Poverty meant you just didn’t eat all the time.”

“But like you said, you were
one of the few lucky ones because your mother worked at her parents’ grocery store.”

Saint nodded.

Xenia patted his hand. “Tell me more about this Bomb guy you seemed to idolize.”

“He was skinny and tall, like I grew up to be, and
all
the girls loved him. He was considered really handsome. It was like he was some sort of ghetto rockstar. He was really smart, too, even though he dropped out of school at like, age thirteen. I was so stupid back then, just a kid. I thought it was cool when he said to another guy that he had got a lot of girls pregnant but he didn’t know where those kids were at. It’s sick, in retrospect, but I didn’t know any better. That’s why he was like a role model to me ... crazy as fuck.”

S
aint delved deeper into his memories, images of Bomb grabbing rival gang members, slamming their heads against brick walls, stomping others until they coughed blood and shoving a gun so far down another man’s throat, he gagged and threw up. Sometimes Bomb would force Saint to leave, especially if the other gang members were about to go in on someone.

“He knew I was a little kid though, he respected that. He would flip in a nano-second
. I saw it enough times and I’ve never met anyone like that since.”

“And you looked up to him because of that?”

“Xenia, I was five when I first met him, maybe, six, going on fifty. Yeah, I didn’t know any better and like I said, to me, he was the baddest mothafucka the Bronx had to offer. You have to understand. Many of these cats didn’t have any parents or if they did, their parents didn’t care where the fuck their kids were. These children—because that’s what they were, Xenia—practically raised themselves. On top of that, they oftentimes stayed high. Yet Bomb could fight his ass off, sober or not. Nobody fucked with him. He showed people that you didn’t have to be muscle-bound to fuck somebody up ... and of course, he had...”

“The girls!”
Xenia laughed.

“Right! So, I’m sitting there on that damn floor, watching
...”

“You keep not finishing your story. Stay on task!” she teased.

“I know! You keep interrupting me, stop!” He laughed, leaned over and kissed her softly, seductively. They looked at each other for a moment or two before he began again.

“So, this mothafucka fucked this girl, less than three feet away from me.” Saint exhaled a deep breath. “I remember so clearly, the sounds they were making, everything he did to her—it was all so real, so vile, so lovely. The shit was authentic. It was just natural, like he was eating a piece of fruit or taking a walk. He treated it like nothing special, and that made it so unbelievable. That was the beginning, I believe, of how and why I see sex the way I do. It was important. It served a foundation, a healthy one, believe it or not. You know, to me, it’s just a normal part of a person’s life, a normal part of our day, like eating and sleeping—an expectation that has to happen, especially when you’re in love.”

Xenia
smiled at him.

“What?”
He smiled back.

“I just love it when you talk to me like this
.” She ran her finger down the center of his chest. “I love how open you are, how you describe things. It’s one of your best attributes.”

He l
eaned down into his pillow and once more brushed his lips against hers.

“So, you know
, he asked me if I wanted to kiss his girl.” Saint rolled the silky sheets between his thumb and forefinger. “I was real shy around girls, but I did want to kiss her, you know? So she sat up, the girl was probably only like, sixteen, and she walked over to me. I’m looking up at this Puerto Rican chick. She was just a child herself but physically, she looked like a woman … and her fuckin’ bush is right in my damn face and I remember staring at all that fuckin’ black hair between her legs.” He laughed. “This was the ’80s, so you know…”

Xenia
smiled. “Yeah, the whole bald pussy thing wasn’t in fashion yet.”

“Exactly
, and I had never seen any damn pussy before, not in my face like that. I saw magazines, but never any poon actually in person. So she kneels down in front of me, and she kisses me, right? And my eyes are open all wide, and Bomb starts crackin’ the fuck up. He asks me if I want to fuck her, and I say ‘no’. I was too scared for that, he was just messing with me, but I remember how proud I was, that I knew I had kissed a girl, a cute girl, at that.” Saint shrugged. “That was basically my introduction into this shit. I was never the same after that. Then, when my mother died, it was a wrap. I went fuckin’ wild, Xenia … lost my virginity at fourteen to a girl I was just crazy about. You know that story though. I don’t need to go into it again.”

“Yeah, I remember you telling me about that. It really affected you
—the way her mother reacted when she walked in.” She stroked his hand. Saint sighed.

“
The gangs, all those damn girls, the crimes, the weed, the wine and beer—it was so fuckin’ surreal.”

“I hope you don’t think I’m like, making light of this
. I just find this really fascinating. You’ve never went into this much detail about it, and I like knowing. This is part of who you are.”

“Nah,
I don’t think you’re making light of it.” He smiled weakly. “In the environment I lived in, Xenia, if you didn’t have something, and someone had what you wanted, then you’d take it. Period, point blank. The cop presence was watered down at best but when they were there, they’d terrorize mothafuckas because honestly, shit was so out of control and some of them didn’t get any respect. The few that did – they’d built a repoire with everyone.” He shrugged. “So you knew the cop by name, you know? So you didn’t do anything stupid in front of him. When the police weren’t there, you had to fight your own battles. We are talking serious dysfunction, here, Xenia.”

He looked back down at her stomach then turned away.

“And the getting high … man! Whew, I
stayed
high as a teenager. I was trying to fit in, and then I really started liking the shit. I was smokin’ weed practically every day. I have no idea how I even graduated high school, and made pretty good grades at that. I rarely got anything less than an A-, but I was a burnout. I learned a lot during that time though, and as fucked up as Bomb was, he was good to me and taught me how to defend myself.”

They stared at each other.

“You’re looking at me like you’re mad. You’re shocked, aren’t you?”

Xenia
shook her head. “It’s because I just realized something that I always suspected. I know your heart is in New York, Saint, and sometimes I feel so guilty that you live here. Sometimes I can tell you really miss it.”

S
aint slumped down closer to her in the bed. “Why would you say that, baby? Nah, my heart is wherever
you
are…” She smiled at him. “I can go back home anytime. I go back at least four times a year, usually more. I think that’s why I kept my penthouse. A part of me still lives there. I need New York, but I think I’ve adjusted pretty well out here. Is it a comfy fit? Not exactly. I was used to running the streets, harsh winters, and all the New York shit that comes with that but you and my seeds are here … so it feels just fine.”

Xenia
nodded and kissed him, pressing her lips softly against his. He returned her kiss with equal passion, then enjoyed some silence together.

“It was a different mentality,” he continued. “It was truly a jungle, a bunch of damn animals running around. Now, when crack came
, and my involvement with hanging around the Savage Skulls increased, I was yanked away, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “My parents couldn’t afford it, but they found a way for us to move to Brooklyn and around that same time, Raphael’s mom was movin’, too. It was a hopeless area at the time. We moved just before it reached the pinnacle of destruction. People were getting sick and no one knew what was wrong with them. The drugs were all over the place so now you had people strung out and living in the abandoned buildings and then the gang members, who once gave respect, were now turning into drug dealers, so that went out the window.”

“What were people getting sick from? The drugs?”

“Yeah, that too, but I was talking about HIV. No one knew what that shit was at the time. It was turning into AIDS. Everyone was just saying, so and so is sick, then before you knew it, they had full blown AIDS and were dying. So many people I grew up with, Xenia, have died from drug overdoses or AIDS related illnesses. Many of the other guys that lived past the age of twenty-one are in and out of prison. Some have life sentences for murder one, rape and assault, armed robbery—you name it. A few got out, like I did, but it was harder for the old heads. I’m certain that without a doubt, if we hadn’t moved, I would’ve suffered a similar fate. I was too much of a follower back then, impressionable, and I was tired of being messed with. I didn’t have my own identity or a backbone. The gangs offered protection, or so I thought.”

“I’m glad you
moved or I wouldn’t have had you.”

S
aint grabbed her hand and kissed it. “By the time we left, I was like ten or eleven. One more year, and I would have been indoctrinated  ... jumped in. I was already helping to beat up people toward the end, doing petty crimes, and knew all of them by name. I was out of control, but my mother was able to keep me from going too far overboard. For the longest, some people, some of the shop owners especially, thought I was actually the biological son of the Prez, because he treated me well, too. No one messed with me when I was with them, even after they figured out I wasn’t Puerto Rican. They didn’t care, Bomb couldn’t care less. He introduced me as his little brother to most people and it just went from there.”

“Really? I thought you said before they were an all Puerto Rican gang
, so did they discriminate usually?”

“
They were mostly Puerto Rican but they had a couple black guys, if I recall, and they weren’t racist, just had pride in their culture. If they really liked you and knew you well, you’d still have a chance, Puerto Rican or not.”

“Do you know what happened to Bomb?”

Saint shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not certain. I know he was in and out prison for a while. Last time I saw him was like in ’87 I believe. I had left from a KRS-1 concert and saw him standing on the street talking to some of his homeboys and then I realized some shit was going down, so I didn’t approach him.”

“What, a drug deal?”

“Yeah. I know his best friend, a cat I remember, too. He went to prison for rape. Some of those cats were raping girls—if they wanted sex and you didn’t give it, they took it. I’m talking about everybody, not just the gangs. I remember my mom’s friends always saying it was a good thing I wasn’t a girl. Any crime you can think of was happening there, at an accelerated rate. Bomb wasn’t like that though. He didn’t do shit like that and it was another reason I looked up to him. He did have some damn standards, some lines he wouldn’t cross. Regardless, that was the brutal mentality.” Saint narrowed his eyes as his thoughts continued to drift. “These young cats nowadays don’t really know what a gangsta is.”

“
They are afraid to fight, and just pull out their guns. These cats would tear your ass up with their bare hands back in the day. I saw my share of dead bodies before I got out of there. Many times it was a result of brutally getting their asses kicked inside out. Once a gun was pulled out, it was after a lot of fighting, not initially, unless the dude was a straight up punk. I grew up around
real
gang bangers, Xenia. They taught me how to fight, just like Bomb had—beat my little butt up, too, to toughen me up. I knew how to cover my ass thanks to them. I know it sounds strange to be thankful for such a situation, to people that society for the most part looks down upon, especially since they really did do some incredulous shit—but some of them really did have good inside of them. Yet but when nobody cares about you except your gang family, you do what you have to do to survive.”