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Crusaders featuring Randy Crawford – ‘Street Life’

After parting ways with Rafi Kam last night leaving the Gordan Voidwell / Mickey Factz / Das Racist / Freddie Gibbs show at the Highline Ballroom I caught the Brooklyn bound #4 train. It was half past 1am which is still relatively early as far as NYC streetlife goes.

While waiting for the train on the Union Square platform this shorty walks past me. I sort of laughed in my head like “uh oh, lil’ mama speedin’ with no brakes on”. I say this to myself whenever I see something wayward in the streets. This is because after uhdeen years of seeing this shit I know how it goes. I don’t really pay shorty too much mind.

Once we get on the subway shorty sits directly across from me and then proceeds to lay out on the seatbench like she is going to sleep. Dayyyyum lil’ mama. Let me find out you are homeless? She looks too clean to be a bum like that though. Not that she looked clean, but she didn’t have the grimey luster of someone who regularly slept on subways. I switched my attention from the Blackberry Brickbreaker program to the image capture function.

I snapped her picture.

Shorty asked me if I was taking her picture. I told her I was. I said that you never see someone as cute as her laying down in the subway. It was always oldheads and washed up peoples. Never really no one young, good looking and well dressed. Shorty had it in her mind that I was complimenting her and then she just opened up.

She was laying down because she was bored(?!?). She had just left the Bronx and she was thinking about going to Webster Hall, but she didn’t really know if she wanted to go there, but she still wanted to hang out and get some drinks. I asked her how old she was to be getting drinks. Lil’ mama def looked statutory status. She said she was 21. Ha. So was I. I’ve been 21 for the past 19 years.

I asked her what she was trying to get into tonight. She reiterated that she was looking to get some drinks somewhere. I asked her what she liked to drink. She shrugged her shoulders. Hennessy she offered. I asked her what she knew about Hennessy. I don’t even drink that shit I told her. I caught myself just before I started sounding like someone’s parent which I’m not. I’m not out here to save this chick either. She is on her way and she is going to find the things she is looking for. Will she be able to handle it when she gets it? Maybe, but prA’li not.

This was the type of shit that I would scrape after leaving the club. It was just this simple. Some little piece of group home shit that didn’t want or couldn’t go back home. I had a little one bedroom apartment in Corona back when I was 17yrs old. A lotta these type chicks fell through to drink 40 ozs and puff an el. It doesn’t stop internets. The cycle of life, death, desperation and redemption in the city stays on repeat like my iTunes player.

If this were twenty years ago then you already know the outcome. Instead I went home to my lady. I didn’t even ask shorty her name. I didn’t want to know it either. For all I know she could be my daughter.