When I graduated from Auburn University, I was still hanging out with people I met on my first day of college. Some grew up in two-parent homes with health insurance, 401(K)s and two-car garages. Others were first-generation college students who carried razor blades in their mouths. But whether we were from Akron, Ohio, or Grove Hill, Ala., we all had something in common that bound us together.
We were Black.
That’s it. And in America, that is enough to bind you together. Although Black people are not a monolith, if you are Black, America doesn’t care. Whether you are an anti-capitalist atheist who turns the Black Student Union into a Black Power organization or a churchgoing conservative who sings in your college gospel choir, this country’s treatment of Black people is pretty monolithic as fuck. In many cases, one’s ability to build community is a product of a shared, common experience
And sometimes, it’s hate.
My sophomore year, three of my friends and I rented an apartment together. A few weeks into the semester, one of our mutual day-ones asked if her boyfriend could stay with us for a few days. We didn’t mind “until a few days” turned into weeks, and the dude was still there! He wasn’t in school. He wasn’t working. He was just chilling.
Plus, he smoked a pipe.
I’m not talking about marijuana. I’m not even talking about crack (It was the early ’90s, so that would have made a little sense). No, this dude smoked a real deal, Django Unchained, slavemaster pipe. Like the corncob one they gave Frosty before he caught stage-four snowman cancer. Like Sherlock Holmes’ homeboy. But our pipe-smoking freeloader didn’t solve mysteries. All he did was hoop and make sandwiches.
Of course, we were nice to him. He was a friend of our friend, which made him part of our community. He was arrogant, light-skinned and had hair so wavy that you could see his scalp when you were up close—like when white people get out of the swimming pool. Then, one of us came home, and he had a girl over. Not our friend, mind you! Another girl!
We couldn’t stand that dude. We continued to treat him OK, but we sometimes fantasized, in private, about whipping his ass for eating gallon-sized bowls of cereal. And, as if that weren’t bad enough, he once said that Color Me Badd was better than New Edition!
Now, our condo/apartment had a basketball court, and Al B. Pipe Smoker was there every day. He wasn’t very good, but he was tall, so he rebounded and played defense (which is what guys who can’t hoop always say, “But I be rebounding, tho.”). But since we always needed five players, we would let Sherlock Homebody run with us. Plus, our place wasn’t near the campus, so there would be random hood dudes from around town playing.
Now, I know that sports is supposed to be a sanctuary. You’re supposed to be able to talk shit on the basketball court—up to a point. There is an invisible line that most Black people know not to cross. Especially when hood niggas are present.
Well, one day, we were on the court and hood niggas were present.
Pipeboy ran with our team against the hood niggas and promptly commenced talking mad shit. I don’t know if he grew up in a light-skinned community of people with hair so good they didn’t need Dax grease, or if he just didn’t notice that a few of our opponents had prepared for the pickup game by wrapping their guns in their durags, but he didn’t seem to care about crossing the shit-talking red line. I was gonna say something to him, but I glanced at my roommates and saw the unmistakable look of “fuck it” in his eyes.
Rowdy Roddy Piper was throwing up trash shots and getting them blocked. Everyone could see his game was trash (he do be rebounding, tho.). But late in the game, Rowdy Roddy Piper went up and blocked the king of the hood niggas’ shit into the next census block and screamed…
Hold up. Wait a minute.
Now everyone knows that you can’t talk about people’s mothers in the Black community. We don’t fuck around about our mamas. Maybe octaroonish suburbanites don’t know this, but on historically Black basketball courts, talking about people’s fathers is also frowned upon. Someone’s father is always recently deceased or just locked up.
So I was genuinely surprised when the brick-laying pipe smoker smacked the ball and said the most aggressive thing I’ve ever heard:
“Fuck yo daddy!” He snarled
That’s it. There was no context. It wasn’t the lighting round of a daddy-insult contest that had been brewing all afternoon. Scotty Pipin,’ just out of the blue, decided to conjure up a daddy-fuck.
My roommates were more appalled than I was. None of us said anything. We just looked at each other, communicating “he’s on his own,” telepathically.
Y’all, the durag thug whipped the light-skint off that the pipesman!
I mean, he put hands on that young man! He offered ALL the smoke that boy had been wanting from that pipe. He dragged Pipey Longstocking so bad that he was lucky it happened in Alabama; I’m pretty sure it was a hate crime in a blue state. And as this Black-on-Black violence commenced in the negro community, we all just stood there and watched with delight.
Piper called his girlfriend and told him he “got jumped,” so she came over and started crying. Then all my friends came over because they thought we got jumped. One of the neighbors saw this impromptu convening of negroes and negresses and called the police. It was so much chaos and noise, and right then and there, we decided this wavy-haired, pipe-smoking motherfucker had to go. When we told him, he looked up at us, pipe still dangling from his lips and said:
“Man, I thought we was homeboys.”
I wanted to fight him again. But instead, I responded: “Man….fuck yo daddy,” which cracked my official roommates up and confused everyone else.
Anyway, the pipe smoker and our homegirl eventually got married. All the day-ones were invited to the wedding except for me and the other three roommates, which we all understood.
After all, you can’t trust any man who wouldn’t fight to protect a member of his community…
Especially if they disrespected your daddy.
He do be rebounding, tho.
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