body
Tell me, I said.
To pass the time, to get my mind off a bad high. We were lying in the closet that was a room, Kun curled up on a rumpled bed of sweaters that smelled like Ollie’s dreams. What was left of the blunt was burnt against my fingertips, and the smoke around us was thick so I couldn’t see Kun’s eyes or the knob of his spine.
Tell you what?
The smoke was some potent shit; I moved my hand and I could feel my stomach turning. Kun was the only one I knew who can keep his eyes that bright even when high off his ass. He sat with his knees pulled right up gainst his chest; he looked like Ollie so small and crowded like that. I usually don’t play, I know Kun even breathed one word of the shit between us and it would be over. I would pound his face in, prayed that he didn’t do the same to me and after, that fucker can’t even walk down the same street as me. I don’t play, I know how it like out there and things were never going to be okay because me and Kun don’t treat each other right and we know everyone else won’t either.
A story, fuckface.
In the closet that was a room where Lucia brought men to, where Ma cried cause life was hard and where Ollie slept, night after night, Kun leaned right over and breathed his sweet smoky breath into my face.
There was this woman. Kun never told stories about men, it always started with a woman with white skin, never brown, never black.
Next to Prith’s apartment and here I wondered out loud, who the fuck’s Prith? And Kun said, you know, the one with all ’em problems? Prith, used to be a badass then got sent to juvie now he just hangin round? Used to run crack round Franklin Park?
Yeah, I know Prith. Got his face fucked up by some mean ass niggas.
Fuck yeah, Kun shifted his eyes to stare up at a ceiling so low, we stood, we would have scrapped our heads, blood splattering everywhere. And Prith said he coulda died and no one would’ve given two fucks and it was the truth.
Kun took a breath. Prith got a room that’s next to the room where that woman sleeps. He jerks off to her crying, you know that?, asked Kun and hells yeah, I can believe that, he’s a dirty fucker, I said. Prith and I used to be mad chill till that day he was all up in my face and said spic, fag, motherfucker. Gotta give props cause he got beef so what I do but smash a beer bottle against his fucking head to show him what up, what the fuck up!
Kun nodded, I didn’t have to tell him the story about how it went down tween me and Prith. He was there, silent like always, when Prith and I threw punches and slammed each other against the street. Kun just stood there, drinking his 40 until it was done and then he handed me the empty bottle to me and stood back when Prith cried and cried and his proud, Cambodian blood dripped on the sidewalk. I remember that night after the fight, Kun twisted a bit of toilet paper round and round so I could stuff it in the hole where one of my teeth once was and kneaded my back like it was something precious, new clay or soft dough.
Prith told me that the woman next door as white as they come but she Cambodian, said Kun and I thought about how even after three, four blunts, Kun never smelled like anything but himself.
Said she’s the hottest shit cause she came over when she was mad young and now, she’s grown. Kun’s voice pushed the smoke to the corners of the closet and he said again, She hot shit, Ramon.
What wasn’t said was hung up between us, a line pulled tight, tight round our necks. We used to fuck the same girls round the barrio, me and Kun, comparing how long it took to make us come. Kun used to be a ladies man, a real pimp with his I won’t hurt you none eyes, the flash of gold in them that made you believe that there was something more out there. My hands felt like they were moving underwater, swimming towards Kun’s long drawn face. I still fucked girls every once in a while, at parties or when the boys be whispering shit bout me and Kun but I knew Kun hasn’t even touched a girl’s tits since last year.
And Prith told me, her husband mean as hell, through the wall, Prith can hear him fucking her, sometimes she crying, man, she’s crying like it hurts.
Kun’s eyes are wide, his hands shaking as he pulled out another blunt. You don’t need me to tell you this. Everyone knows her. Her life’s gotta be the worst.
Like a fuckin slave. I said, letting Kun blow curls of smoke towards my face. Right?
You know how it goes and goes.