I knew how to fight. I had a older homie I used to hang around after my people split. He was a WWF fanatic. Getting out of the ‘Boston Crab’ is a bitch. Boxing was just geometry to me. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, right? That wasn’t hard to pick up. I wasn’t “hood” though. Not really. 

       My aunt bought me a skateboard, and I hated the thought that some onlooker might steal it while I was whoopin’ somebody’s ass over something I probably didn’t wanna be involved with anyway. I think I was nine then, so that would’ve been 1992. 

       My mom had moved us to this apartment complex that was real secluded, lots of white people. It wasn’t a nice neighborhood, though. They were all broke, too, and racist as fuck. I often visited their sins upon their sons. Those were the fights I liked. I had a slingshot from the hunting section of a mega department store that shall remain nameless here, and a tiny pocket knife from the same place. Nobody tried to jump in. It also helped that one of the gangbangers from up the street and around the corner liked that I fixed his little brother’s bike.

       The Commons were oddly diverse like that. About twenty-some-odd buildings tucked between a highway, some cornfields and a surprising amount of forestation for Columbus, OH. We had hillbillies, thugs, ese’s and just regular poor folks all sorta coexisting. Neighborhood scuffles tended to be more or less forgiven within 24 hours, and most of the parents knew each other. 

       I hung around Dwight a lot. Anthony was usually around too. We liked to act like a little guerrilla army. We dressed in camo gear we’d pieced together the best we could. The forested areas alongside our apartment complex plied us with plenty sticks and branches to be carved into all sorts of weapons. And we trained. We trained and we built bases in the trees and in the bushes. Anthony kinda looked like a young MC Search. Dwight wasn’t very Hip-hop at all. They were my boys and, well, who was gonna challenge us about our image or anything else? We used to jump out the trees on muthafuckaz! 

       Don’t get me wrong. We weren’t gangstas. Not even close. We were scared of Tony Patrusi and his boys, and they were scared of Brian Peasley and his crew. We were way down the totem pole. The ace up my sleeve, however, was that Brian’s little brother Brandon needed his bike fixed from time to time and I knew how to twirl a wrench. Go figure. 

       I probably could have exploited that relationship quite a bit more than I did. The simple fact was, I saw myself as a regular kid. I had no ambitions toward street life of any sort. My mom had painted a gruesome picture for me about the bloods and the crips of the West coast, and I’d decided I wanted no parts of that. My Ice Cube cassette tape was close enough. 

       This was the early nineties. Kids my age were being murdered over the $62 Starter coats that, inexplicably, we all wanted to be wearing. Beyond that the news was buggin’ all the time! They had the whole country on that wave. We thought that “super-predator” shit was really real. I was scared to death and I held no delusions that law enforcement would save me if I ever so happened to turn the wrong corner. 

       The first gun I ever held belonged to the mother of two younger kids that lived in my building. Coreyon (I probably misspelled that) and Cameron were cool. They weren’t into skateboards and pretend paramilitary adventures. They played football and basketball and always got the new Jordans. 

       None of us were allowed to have company over when our parents weren’t home. Coreyon and Cameron broke that rule just once that I can recall, an afternoon when the three of us went snooping in their mother’s bedroom. Atop her canopy bed—you know, the kind with the big mirror above it—we found a pretty little nickel-plated pistol. It was heavy. We all took turns holding it within the span of about a minute before fear overcame us and we put it back. We never spoke of it again. 

       I was ten or maybe eleven years old when Reno (rə-noh) and his extended family moved into The Commons. His family was hood. I bonded with one of his uncles over a mutual love of nunchucks, though, and boom: I was stamped–guaranteed access to all the block parties, all the fireworks parties and all the cookouts. I was good. 

       Reno liked to fight. I fought a lot, but he really REALLY liked to fight. Even I didn’t understand his motives half the time. Most of the other kids around the complex kept their distance from him, so some days, it was just us two. We ran around just sorta learning each other’s worlds. He was fascinated by the cache of weapons I’d amassed: knives, bows, slingshots, etc.. I’d even gotten my hands on a set of steel nunchucks by then. Perhaps he was even more fascinated by the fact that I wasn’t terrorizing the neighborhood with them. 

       When Mike moved in later that year, he and Reno hit it off immediately. Mike was bigger and tougher than Reno, and a lot more mature. We all assumed he could kick our asses, but he never fought. He never fought anyone. I learned that in a weird way when I tried to pick a fight with him one Spring day on which we’d both happened to skip school for totally independent and unrelated reasons. 

       I’d long since established my dominance in neighborhood foot races. I had precisely zero challengers from within The Commons. That is, until Mike arrived—sorta. He and I hadn’t raced. Everyone had just assumed he’d be the one to beat me as he was just as lean and nimble, only taller. Their logic was unassailable. 

       And so, that Spring day, with no spectators, Mike and I decided to find out. The plan was to race several times and average out the results. Only one race happened. He jumped out to a healthy head start, at least one full stride. I gained on him and, by the time we’d traversed the length of his building, I’d nearly closed the gap entirely, a feat which I knew for sure proved my superior speed. Of course he didn’t see it that way. 

       I explained and rephrased to no avail. He’d won so he was faster. Within minutes our debate was reduced to a “no you ain’t” “yes I am” back and forth volley that ended abruptly with me literally jumping to land a sucker punch to his jaw that, in one motion, morphed into a smooth turn and dead sprint home with him right behind me. Obviously he didn’t catch me because I was indeed faster. I would find out later that day, he was smarter.

       When 6 o’clock rolled around and my mother returned home from work, I assumed all was well. Mike was no snitch, and I wasn’t gonna tell if he didn’t. All would be forgiven soon enough and, just for good measure, I’d stay in for the evening. Nobody wanted parents involved. None among us could deliver a beatdown comparable to a mother’s switch. Not at that age. 

       So, when Mike and Reno knocked on the door around 6:30-ish with the perfect story that the fastest runner (me) must participate in a race to settle all, I played along, went outside and took my mark between the two of them. What choice did I have? Reno signaled the start and I took off right into Mike’s fist. That was the first, the last, the only punch I ever saw him throw. 

       The race had started and Mike had turned and repaid me my sucker punch, right in the mouth. Then he just calmly walked home while Reno jumped on me for reasons I’ve never since been able to figure out. I suppose all parties involved understood that Reno and I was the fairer fight. 

       It wasn’t our first, it was our last and by far the most epic of our time in The Commons. It might not have been so bad had this not all taken place on a Friday. We fought ‘til the streetlights came on, woke up Saturday morning, met in the same spot after cartoons and fought until curfew again, and again all day Sunday after church. I wonder, sometimes, how long that beef could have continued if it had taken place during the Summer. 

       I don’t remember hanging around Mike or Reno much after that. In fact, Coreyon and Cameron had moved away, as had Tony Petrusi and his people. Mike and his mom only lived there maybe six or seven months tops. During my last year at The Commons, it seemed Reno’s family were the only other people of color left in the complex, and I really didn’t see him much after the big fight. There was one little black girl who lived with her father in the building across from mine, but all she ever did was call me ugly and run back inside. I don’t think she knew, my mother had expressly forbade me from ever insulting her back.