Cobb

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November 14, 2004

Losing the Flavor

This morning I have climbed out of the queen size with aching thighs to find bad news to my surprize. ODB is gone, and I hardly knew him. If he did, 'ooh baby I like it raw', then I know one more tiny thing more than his duet with Mariah Carey. But what catches me a bit flatfooted is the reverent nostalgia for the very concept of an Old Dirty Bastard.

Down here in the Wonderbread Heartland of the Left Coast where everyone wears desginer sandals to the gym showers so as not to catch something requiring Lamisil, we don't know jack about ODB, and couldn't miss him if we wanted. This is the pudding I'm dipped in, and I'm always making a way when I can. So when I read Jimi's ode, I wanted to wipe a tear from my eyes, but the tears didn't come. I no longer have the ghetto heart. I seem to have left that man's heart at Crenshaw and Jefferson about 15 years ago.

Just like that one nigga in your crew, he wasn’t on no bullshit--rapped about life, the life he saw as ya’ll rode around looking for a liquor store. He’d rap about the girl crossing at the light---with the window open, loud enough so everyone on the streets could hear. The girl might give him a finger or give him a number---lines like “Girl, I’d eat all the shit out yo’ ass” can be seductive---but no matter what, when that nigga hopped in your ride, you made room. Because everyone knew there was adventure afoot. The night might end in a fight or in jail--- or both. It was all par for the course. That nigga was trouble--- he was a trip. And he was priceless. That’s why you kept him around. And that’s why we tolerated Ol’ Dirty.

I haven't had that nigga in my crew since the days we snuck in to see Bruce Lee movies. I haven't had that crew since the days of waffle-sole Nikes and powder blue sweatsuits. I haven't tolerated men like ODB since before gangsta rap. Like the pit in my stomach feeling watching a man in a white wifebeater, large pink curlers and 18 inch arms swagger in my direction, those feelings just don't happen any more. I know the feeling well, I just don't feel it.

The ghetto lost all of its flavor to me suddenly. Of course nothing happens all at once, still I can remember the day back in 1994 when I took it upon myself to walk 125th Street in Harlem end to end. For years afterward I would continue to cruise the ghetto streets from city to city. But after that day on, it would be a distant monologue of observation, not an intimate call and response. From Albany Avenue in Hartford, to MLK in Tampa, ghettoes failed to leave me breathless. They became stunningly similar with canned drama. Why? Because I didn't live there and I didn't have to care. But in '94, when I did live there and I wanted to care, I found there was nothing for me there.

It was rather disappointing for me to find little in Harlem to care about. I had once tutored kids at St. Luke's Church up on the hill. I knew the place well enough to know where to find excellent fish fry ,which blocks not to walk, and familiar faces at the Studio Museum. But hoping for Harlem to be an example of something special was a failed hope. It was just a city with a lot of blackfolks in it, and I imagined that most of them, like me, just wished that Harlem would assist their ambitions rather than challenge them. In the end, it is the quality of deprivation that gives rise to the special hunger of black emergence. Harlem like many other American cities develops that hunger but rarely satisfies it. In that way Harlem like every other ghetto is a good place to be from, but only if you end up somewhere better.

I've been wearing the metaphorical khakis and loafers for a decade now. It has only been my life as Daddyman that has required me to take money as seriously as I do. In certain moments, especially when hanging with my dog K, I kick myself for not kicking my financial game up a notch when I was still a young player. But at the time, I wanted to be an coder, an artist, and a politico. BAP/Boho days are fondly remembered and those ambitions were mostly satisfied but new priorities emerged and I had to leave all that challenge behind. I headed to the juicy suburbs of Atlanta, the acknowledge First World Black Mecca of my generation, and I never looked back.

I have a neighborhood where people push strollers, jog at night and can order Thai food for delivery. The Bruce Lee movies are all on DVD at a number of local establishments. As I have expected it to, it has made life pleasant and removed the challenges of ghetto life, and the flavor of ghetto personalities from my daily routine. I have no special desire to relive my past, or immerse myself for the sake of keeping it real or remembering where I came from. I'm not where I am by accident, but as an expression of what I want. I am where I need to be.

As I watched Chapelle's Show last night on the tele, it was cool to see where I might be if I was single and kept to the old dreams, managing my ambition from the 'hood, with regular forays into the underworld. I can't say with any precision that's where Dave goes, but I know he knows what I would know if I hung more with the homefolks. It takes me a minute to distinguish Lil Kim from Faith whatshername. But on the passing of ODB, the man who inherited king fool from Coolio in my book, I note the passing of a section of my old flavor.

Pour a drink for what once was but is no more except in vivid memory.

Posted by mbowen at November 14, 2004 08:47 AM

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Comments

Posted by: David Scott Anderson at November 14, 2004 10:51 PM

Posted by: Cobb at November 15, 2004 08:06 AM