Gangster's Paradise

Footsteps fading away. Alone on a dark street. Quiet. Dead quiet. I feel cold. Teeth chattering. Drenched in street lights, I’m slumped against a lamppost – my soon to be tombstone. Its steel touch coxes away my warmth. Getting colder. Each breath is quicker and shallower than the last. My nostrils are flooding with gun smoke and the whiff of blood. My blood. I instinctively reach for the yawning hole in my gut. My life force seeps through my grasping fingers and runs into the nearby gutter. Crimson mixes with sullied water and cigarette butts. I Look up. Beyond the florescent blanket overhead, I can just about make out the splendour of the night sky and its spluttering of white and silver. Stars – they glint like diamonds in the dirt. The last time I looked up to them…

I was nine and eager to wish upon a shooting star. Unlike other nine-year-olds, I wasn’t hoping to become an astronaut or the President of America. No, with little hands clasped tight and eyelids squeezed – I wished for a gun. What for? The same reason everyone else in my block wanted one, both the kids and the adults – respect. And I wanted it more than anything else in the world. Where I grew up a gun was all you ever needed to get all you ever wanted. Like a magic wand, it had the power to conjure your hearts truest desires.

Unlike those prissy suburban kids, I didn’t have to go to the movies to see fake gangsters. I saw real ones every time I looked outside my window. Except these gangsters didn’t wear phoney suits like Tony Montana or The Godfather… they wore either red or blue. Never at the same time though. But who needed Superman when all your heroes were right on your doorstep? I looked up to them and did everything I could to be just like them. I learnt how to rob before I learnt to use a calculator. I was having sex before I knew what love was. I was in jail before I finished high school. I lived life godless and reckless in the pursuit of the gangster’s paradise.

It wasn’t too long before I was swallowed up by sirens and flashing red and blue lights. Robbery, gun possession, drug dealing… I denied it all. They had the evidence to put me under lock and key. As the foreman prepared to give the juries final verdict, my eyes couldn’t help but fall into the deep glare of an elderly woman – the sole Black face in a sea of White. In her face, I saw it – disappointment, in giant neon signs. In her mind, I was just another disgrace to the race. It cut deep. I felt my bravado falter. She reminded me of my grandmother.

Forever alone in my jail cell, drowning in white walls and silence… I had time to think. And thinking is what I did. During those long days, months and years trapped in the prison of my thoughts, one word just kept on returning to me… At first, I tried to disregard it or ignore it completely. But, like a coil, suppression only ensured it sprang right back up. Belonging: the feeling that had alluded me my entire life. It’s a natural trait in humans; the wanting to be a part of something bigger than oneself. How else could nations exist? Unfortunately, while others found belonging in patriotism and sports, I found mine in street life. The concrete jungle was where my heart was… but hearts can be broken.

On release day no one showed up. All I got was empty sidewalks and thin air. Not a soul in sight. My decision was finally made – escape the gangster’s paradise. But…when you sign with blood… when you do a deal with the devil… there’s no turning back. There’s no freedom. When I finally told my elder about my decision, he looked me dead in the eye and said, “You can never leave; I have your soul. You belong to me.” I refused to be intimidated. Fuelled by defiance and rage, I turned around and left without a word. I only made it half-way down the street…

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