0
SPEAKER_05
So we come in and our same kind of clicks.
0
SPEAKER_05
Just think about it as being in Varsity Blues, like a movie like that.
0
SPEAKER_05
You know, the house parties that they re in.
0
SPEAKER_05
And it s just crazy because you walk into the house, you got one long table, beer pong.
0
SPEAKER_05
The next long table, flip cup.
0
SPEAKER_05
The living room, just straight conversation.
0
SPEAKER_05
So it s just different environments, different parties in one party, right?
0
SPEAKER_05
And you just making it through.
0
SPEAKER_05
You just making it through until three, four o clock in the morning.
0
SPEAKER_05
Now, let s get it.
0
SPEAKER_03
I was supposed to be in mourning right now.
0
SPEAKER_03
My friend just died.
0
SPEAKER_03
And that morning, and even the performance of that morning, it so quickly became secondary to what I knew was my mission, the thing that would make my dad proud of me, the thing that would give me an
0
SPEAKER_03
used to quit other stuff that I didn t want to do anymore, like piano lessons and Cub Scouts.
0
SPEAKER_03
The thing that would make girls pay attention to me, the thing that would make guys want to dap me.
0
SPEAKER_03
I knew I had to make this fucking basketball team.
0
SPEAKER_03
I don t know that there s ever been anything in my entire life that felt more urgent than making that basketball team.
0
SPEAKER_03
It was just like, either you re going to have a jersey and you re going to be somebody and people are going to know you, or you re going to be nobody.
0
SPEAKER_03
I want to get your point of view on how big a presence was basketball in our house and in my life.
0
SPEAKER_02
Oh, it was huge.
0
SPEAKER_02
If anybody walks in our house now, they ll see how huge it was.
0
SPEAKER_02
Your dad played basketball in high school and in college.
0
SPEAKER_02
He played for Columbia.
0
SPEAKER_02
He was a star in Detroit on his basketball team in high school.
0
SPEAKER_02
I remember when you actually made the team and you came home and you were very excited that you had made it.
0
SPEAKER_02
And you told me later, you said, mom, the main reason that I wanted to get on that team was I could not imagine coming home and telling dad that I got cut.
0
SPEAKER_02
I mean, you wanted it for yourself too, but it just was not an option to come home and tell him you didn t make it.
0
SPEAKER_02
Remember that?
0
SPEAKER_03
I don t remember, but it sounds... You don t?
0
SPEAKER_03
Basketball was, I think, like a language that my dad established between us.
0
SPEAKER_03
Wow.
0
SPEAKER_03
Wow.
0
SPEAKER_03
You know the stereotype of the coach s son, and that was me.
0
SPEAKER_03
And I guess something I have to add as color to all of this basketball conversation is I am not tall.
0
SPEAKER_03
By any stretch of the imagination.
0
SPEAKER_03
And it s a tall person s sport.
0
SPEAKER_03
No, I mean, it s okay.
0
SPEAKER_03
But like, it is what it is.
0
SPEAKER_03
It s a tall man s sport.
0
SPEAKER_03
And my dad s taller than me.
0
SPEAKER_03
All my friends are taller than me because I played that sport.
0
SPEAKER_03
So that relief you saw when I came home and told you I made the team, that was real relief because I felt like I was in a losing battle at all times with that sport because I didn t have the most obvious advantage.
0
SPEAKER_03
And so I always felt my whole life I was
0
SPEAKER_03
clawing, scraping and clawing to hold on to that social advantage, the thing that girls liked, the things that kept me close to my friends.
0
SPEAKER_03
I watched as some of my friends didn t make teams.
0
SPEAKER_03
I saw how it changed their social lives.
0
SPEAKER_03
Basketball is huge in the DC, Maryland area.
0
SPEAKER_03
It s a very black area.
0
SPEAKER_03
There are tons of NBA players that came out of this area when I was in that age range with me, Kevin Durant, Ty Lawson, Carmelo Anthony, Mike Beasley, just so many guys.
0
SPEAKER_03
So anyway, it was a big, big thing.
0
SPEAKER_03
As important as I thought it was for me to make that basketball team, as much as I suppressed my feelings about Alicia to focus on making the team, the experience of being on the team was so much greater and more consuming than
0
SPEAKER_03
the expectation that I had coming into it.
0
SPEAKER_03
And when I say greater, I just mean volume.
0
SPEAKER_03
I have felt moments of celebrity.
0
SPEAKER_03
I have probably felt 17% of what the full celebrity scale can go up to.
0
SPEAKER_03
I ve never felt the celebrity that I felt being on this basketball team.
0
SPEAKER_03
Gyms that are packed.
0
SPEAKER_03
packed full of people, video cameras at a time when people didn t bring video cameras to basketball games.
0
SPEAKER_03
We had highlights on the news.
0
SPEAKER_03
We had fan sections from other schools.
0
SPEAKER_03
We have our own fans.
0
SPEAKER_03
They re singing songs.
0
SPEAKER_03
They have chants.
0
SPEAKER_03
They have face paint.
0
SPEAKER_03
Everything you imagine from a movie about college basketball, put that in a gym that only holds about 1,000 people so that they re literally sweating over the court that we re all on.
0
SPEAKER_03
That was our basketball experience for that year.
0
SPEAKER_03
The game is only played for an hour and a half to two hours, but the intensity of the ferocious sort of fawning from the community around us, the intensity of the games, that continued on into our lives after the games were over.
0
SPEAKER_05
So we know we in our travel suit, our new fresh whites.
0
SPEAKER_05
So we put them on.
0
SPEAKER_05
Just knowing when you step in that building, it s almost like game day.
0
SPEAKER_05
First period, everybody in their Blake attire, everybody face painted.
0
SPEAKER_05
From the first period, I don t think we was really focused on doing schoolwork.
0
SPEAKER_05
It s very tough on game day.
0
SPEAKER_05
So many distractions.
0
SPEAKER_05
So many people wanting to talk to you.
0
SPEAKER_05
So many people saying, hey, get me in through the back door.
0
SPEAKER_05
It was just very hard to be a student.
0
SPEAKER_05
So I think on game days, we was just the athlete.
0
SPEAKER_04
Those were the days that, if you want to use that word, celebrity, it started in the hallway, right?
0
SPEAKER_04
And then it ended at the party or whatever at the end of the night.
0
SPEAKER_04
But people calling your name down the hallway, like, hey, y all gonna get the win tonight?
0
SPEAKER_04
Kelvin, can you dunk three times for me?
0
SPEAKER_05
But it wasn t just the student body that s doing that.
0
SPEAKER_05
It was the security.
0
SPEAKER_03
It was the teachers.
0
SPEAKER_03
It was the principals.
0
SPEAKER_05
It was the counselors.
0
SPEAKER_05
The whole school was ready to rock for us as soon as we walked in the building.
0
SPEAKER_03
It s your girlfriend texting you from another school.
0
SPEAKER_03
It s your girlfriend at school.
0
SPEAKER_03
And then it s your other girl also at school texting you all at the same time, saying what s up in the hallway.
0
SPEAKER_03
Everybody just wants to feel like a part of the vibe.
0
SPEAKER_06
Every time, again, like our first fair class, we had Ms.
0
SPEAKER_06
Diller, and she would just let us sleep, go, take a break.
0
SPEAKER_06
You know what I m saying?
0
SPEAKER_06
Like on the long block days.
0
SPEAKER_06
And we would just leave, go to Ms.
0
SPEAKER_06
Lumpke, get a pass, come back to class.
0
SPEAKER_06
And that s our day.
0
SPEAKER_06
We just literally do whatever we needed to do to be successful on game day.
0
SPEAKER_03
Here s my older sister Shannon s perspective on the culture around the basketball team that year.
0
SPEAKER_01
I definitely remember that the team was treated in that celebrity way and I saw some of the girlfriends that the other guys got as a result or whatever.
0
SPEAKER_01
I saw that you started dating people and that some of those relationships kind of stemmed from that, at least the confidence.
0
SPEAKER_01
If not, I don t know that we need to use the word celebrity or whatever.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, definitely the confidence, the belonging, the community of it.
0
SPEAKER_01
Then I saw that you had all of those guys, they all became your friends and they were all sort of like brothers to you.
0
SPEAKER_01
High school is that weird time where some kids look like adults and some kids look like kids or people s body types start to come out and you can see that somebody s going to be 6 3 and somebody s going to be 5 2.
0
SPEAKER_01
I would see you hanging out with these other kids, in some cases who were super developed and seemed very adult-like, and I saw just the respect and the inclusion that you were getting from them, and that kind of made me start to see you differently.
0
SPEAKER_03
How so?
0
SPEAKER_01
Just some of them were very tall, and they were very, like I said, developed and muscular, and they seemed very confident.
0
SPEAKER_01
They had sort of this swagger.
0
SPEAKER_01
I just saw that they treated you like a peer.
0
SPEAKER_01
where I was still, partly because of being away at college for some of this time, I was still relating to you as like a younger brother at this point.
0
SPEAKER_01
But I began to see what the level of this currency was.
0
SPEAKER_01
I realized you were cool, you know, and you really always had been.
0
SPEAKER_01
I don t really agree that you were thought of as a nerd or that you were not treated as cool at an earlier point.
0
SPEAKER_01
But definitely at this point, I felt like you were really a leader, like you were really a superstar socially among your friends.
0
SPEAKER_03
My friend Theo didn t make the basketball team till his senior year, so he got to experience life at Blake before he was an athlete.
0
SPEAKER_00
OK, so Blake High School was a pretty diverse school in terms of like race.
0
SPEAKER_00
We had probably like 20% African-American kids, which is kind of big in our area.
0
SPEAKER_00
The regular breakdowns for everything else.
0
SPEAKER_00
But in terms of sports, sports was kind of like the key.
0
SPEAKER_00
If you played sports, you were kind of treated raceless.
0
SPEAKER_00
Being treated raceless is kind of a thing.
0
SPEAKER_00
It s a beautiful thing.
0
SPEAKER_00
The white people talk to you a certain way.
0
SPEAKER_00
They want to hang out with you.
0
SPEAKER_00
You get invited to all the parties, all the activities.
0
SPEAKER_00
People talk about you in a different way.
0
SPEAKER_00
If there s yearbook quotes, they re going to be about you.
0
SPEAKER_00
Things like that.
0
SPEAKER_00
I remember I had long hair, maybe until about 11th grade when I wasn t on the basketball team.
0
SPEAKER_00
I remember having my hair out and my biology teacher saying that my hair was in the way of class.
0
SPEAKER_00
That was a distraction.
1
SPEAKER_03
That was always stood out to me because I still remember, and I love these guys, but I still remember Kenny and Sean Neely and all them.
1
SPEAKER_03
Their hair was always out.
1
SPEAKER_03
And girls would be playing in their hair and, oh yeah, there s a game tonight.
1
SPEAKER_03
And everything was cool.
1
SPEAKER_00
Right.
1
SPEAKER_00
This is you on the outside.
1
SPEAKER_00
This is me on the outside.
1
SPEAKER_00
This is before you re in the program.
1
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_03
So it s like, wait a minute.
1
SPEAKER_03
You mean to tell me that if I get a basketball jersey, I can wear my hair out without being a distraction?
1
SPEAKER_03
Interesting.
1
SPEAKER_00
There was a freedom that we felt because of the success we had on the court and the fandom that we had in that community, which allowed us to walk into these environments that we were not previously invited to, such as white folks  houses, nice houses, big ass houses, beer kegs, bonfires, teenagers going in and out of rooms, messing around with each other, like all this shit I wasn t even privy to.
1
SPEAKER_00
I didn t know that black kids went to the white kids  houses sometimes, because they didn t, but the basketball team did.
1
SPEAKER_00
Maybe a couple kids here and there who knew how to, like, do the dance, but I wasn t really hip to that.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I wouldn t say we were treated racelessly, but our blackness was very much tied to our athleticism.
1
SPEAKER_00
and our maleness.
1
SPEAKER_00
You couldn t dissect the passionate fever of, and this is some real shit, it was the white kids who had this clawing desire to be close to us.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m not even saying the white girls, the dudes.
1
SPEAKER_00
So there were guys who liked to touch us.
1
SPEAKER_00
I ll start off moderate.
1
SPEAKER_00
Put a nice big hand right here on your back.
1
SPEAKER_00
Maybe now sometimes around your neck in a picture.
1
SPEAKER_00
All the way over to a little bit of smacking on the butt.
1
SPEAKER_00
All the way over to they see you when you show up to a party.
1
SPEAKER_00
They re so into it.
1
SPEAKER_00
They give you a big hug and a kiss on the cheek.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was unwelcome.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was this feeling like you didn t even know who the fuck I was.
1
SPEAKER_00
two months ago.
1
SPEAKER_00
Now you re my buddy.
1
SPEAKER_00
Now you re my homie.
1
SPEAKER_00
You re using those words to describe our relationship.
1
SPEAKER_00
Occasionally, you re using words that you re not supposed to use to describe our relationship.
1
SPEAKER_00
And you re putting your fucking lips on my cheek when I see you.
1
SPEAKER_00
And what I m talking about, it s not sexual.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s entitlement.
1
SPEAKER_00
You are of value now, so I wrap myself around you and put my body on you.
1
SPEAKER_00
So when Theo says we were treated racistly, I actually completely disagree.
1
SPEAKER_00
If you made the team, you went from being invisible, someone to be avoided, to an extremely high value item, something that people want in their party to show that the party is cool.
1
SPEAKER_00
And
1
SPEAKER_00
Those parties were, they were fun.
1
SPEAKER_00
They weren t average high school parties.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s the thing about it.
1
SPEAKER_00
The success we had on the basketball court, it was carrying over and into these houses and making people bring it for the party.
1
SPEAKER_00
Everybody was ready to do the thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
Dax Shepard told me about doing comedy.
1
SPEAKER_00
Why so many people end up doing drugs who do performance art like that.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s because you go up there, you feel this enormous high of connecting with an audience.
1
SPEAKER_00
Then you walk off stage, you don t want to come down from that feeling.
1
SPEAKER_00
You want to stay there.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s what was going on with these kids.
1
SPEAKER_00
The game was a high for all of us.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was like, ah, nobody wanted the feeling to come down.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I have to paint the picture because I haven t let it go.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s still in my head.
1
SPEAKER_00
I went to college.
1
SPEAKER_00
I went to a crazy ass college.
1
SPEAKER_00
I had that experience.
1
SPEAKER_00
But like, white kids party different.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s a different thing altogether.
1
SPEAKER_04
Bro, you came into the party, you re probably met with a chant of your name of some sort.
1
SPEAKER_04
Like, I got a Shilhenji many times.
1
SPEAKER_04
I m just like, dog, like, I m just the sixth man of the team.
1
SPEAKER_04
And then, like, a small thing, you re probably gonna come in and they re probably like, yo, sit right here.
1
SPEAKER_04
You re probably gonna get a seat to sit down and chill.
1
SPEAKER_04
And then somebody will probably sit right next to you.
1
SPEAKER_04
That s probably a girl.
1
SPEAKER_04
And they re gonna talk to you, you know what I m saying?
1
SPEAKER_04
Like, see how the game went.
1
SPEAKER_04
They might even ask you about
1
SPEAKER_04
One of your teammates like, so is Chad, is he coming tonight?
1
SPEAKER_04
Is he available?
1
SPEAKER_04
Like, tell me.
1
SPEAKER_04
All of that is going down and it s getting spicy.
1
SPEAKER_04
It s getting super spicy.
1
SPEAKER_04
So let me keep it a buck real quick.
1
SPEAKER_00
These are white people s houses.
1
SPEAKER_00
Right.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we are all black.
1
SPEAKER_00
We are black.
1
SPEAKER_00
And the white boys on the team are not coming.
1
SPEAKER_00
except for maybe Greg Carey.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we are several cars, a caravan s worth of black teenage boys walking into a white person s house, generally greeted by a white mother or father who is happy to see us there, and walking downstairs into a basement where basically anything goes.
1
SPEAKER_01
Right.
1
SPEAKER_01
So we come in and our same kind of clicks.
1
SPEAKER_01
Just think about it as being in Varsity Blues, like a movie like that.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, the house parties that they re in.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it s just crazy because you walk into the house, you got one long table, beer pong.
1
SPEAKER_01
The next long table, flip cup.
1
SPEAKER_01
The living room, just straight conversation.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it s just different environments, different parties in one party.
1
SPEAKER_01
And you just making it through.
1
SPEAKER_01
You just making it through until three, four o clock in the morning.
1
SPEAKER_01
Now, let s get it.
1
SPEAKER_01
Now we gonna decide who s in this room, who s in that room, who s in the living room, who s downstairs in the closet, who s in the bathroom.
1
SPEAKER_01
We gonna get through until it s that time.
1
SPEAKER_01
But it s just crazy because like we said before, it s like a movie.
1
SPEAKER_00
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Even the adults around us noticed how much fun we were having.
1
SPEAKER_00
Here s our assistant coach, Coach Wiggins.
1
SPEAKER_05
I m kind of jealous that I wasn t a student.
1
SPEAKER_05
during that year, because it was almost like a TV show.
1
SPEAKER_05
I think of that football, what is it, All-American?
1
SPEAKER_05
Friday Night Lights, All-American.
1
SPEAKER_05
See, I ve never really watched Friday Night, but I watched All-American recently.
1
SPEAKER_05
And I m like, yeah, when I see that, I think about y all.
1
SPEAKER_05
Where do you get this diversity of students?
1
SPEAKER_05
Hey, the black basketball team, and there are some white students in the basketball team.
1
SPEAKER_05
They had VIP passes to everywhere where not necessarily all of their friends could go to the party up in Alney.
1
SPEAKER_05
I hear about the parties with a lot of the white students and that s in the big houses, in the community.
1
SPEAKER_05
And you guys were there, you guys were in it.
1
SPEAKER_05
You had the pass to get in.
1
SPEAKER_05
You had celebrity status.
1
SPEAKER_05
I mean, it s magical.
1
SPEAKER_05
It was magical.
1
SPEAKER_02
You listen to music, you talked about the game.
1
SPEAKER_02
If it was a black party, there was dancing.
1
SPEAKER_02
If it was a white party, there was not.
1
SPEAKER_00
Same music, no dancing.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, exact same music, no dancing.
1
SPEAKER_00
More drinking, probably a little more smoking.
1
SPEAKER_00
Honestly, probably a little more hooking up at the white parties.
1
SPEAKER_00
I feel like the white kids, they had the better parties.
1
SPEAKER_00
And being on the basketball team was for me my ticket into those parties.
1
SPEAKER_00
I did learn about everything from their world.
1
SPEAKER_02
So their world is the one that we re all modeling after when we were in high school, college movies.
1
SPEAKER_02
You know, Road Trip at that time and Euro Trip, American Pie when they went off to college and all that stuff.
1
SPEAKER_02
So they were very much trying to emulate what they saw in those movies.
1
SPEAKER_02
And at the time, that s what I thought was really cool.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was two different types of fun.
2
SPEAKER_00
So let s say like the black parties, one, they re usually at a venue.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t know why exactly, but my guess would be most of the black families were not, they didn t have jobs where they re traveling all the time.
2
SPEAKER_00
And if they were, they,
2
SPEAKER_00
will make some type of arrangement for their kid so that the kid wasn t able to throw parties while they re gone, which was the complete opposite of, say, our white counterparts.
2
SPEAKER_00
So black parties, it s usually at a venue.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s usually music-centric, dancing, the whole bumping and grinding party kind of thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
which was totally fun.
2
SPEAKER_00
With that, you mix and mingle, you re chopping it up with people from other schools.
2
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes it was all good, and then sometimes your group of friends is eyeballing another group of guys the entire night, waiting for somebody to do something to set things off.
2
SPEAKER_00
But then you go to the white parties, usually somebody s house, there s always beer.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s definitely more of like an alcohol-driven scene.
2
SPEAKER_00
For us, being Black, and I never felt judged because we were Black at these places.
2
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes I would wonder, like,
2
SPEAKER_00
if the parents were home, would they be okay with us being there?
2
SPEAKER_03
You could feel it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Obviously, I didn t expect for it to be the kind of love I would get if I went to, say, your house or something like that.
2
SPEAKER_00
But sometimes I did wonder, you know, if so-and-so s mom was home, would they be okay with us being in their basement, you know, even if it was just something innocent?
2
SPEAKER_03
In their basement?
2
SPEAKER_03
Sometimes in their bedroom?
2
SPEAKER_00
Like...
2
SPEAKER_00
some of these parties we re going to, they re letting in like 50 high school kids into these random houses in the burbs.
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Big houses.
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Yeah, huge houses.
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Music, people are bringing games, there s beer.
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Sometimes people are bringing kegs.
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Now that I think about it, how did some of these people even have the access to these things?
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Bro, I never touched a keg.
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I never picked up a keg until I was a senior in college.
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Like, how are you even getting this stuff?
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And I mean, of course we felt cool because we were being invited to it, but I won t say that I wasn t comfortable in those situations because it felt like people looked up to us.
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People wanted us around.
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And I guess in terms of like high school, school hierarchy or whatever, like we were towards the top.
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The other thing I would say that was different between the two parties was that at the black parties, the lights are off and at the white parties, the lights are on.
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And I don t even know what is the significance of that.
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I still can t wrap my brain around it.
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But there s a couple of things about the white parties that I want to explore a little bit because
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I would say being in the band and wearing glass, there was a lot about me that was very nerdy.
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And then I was also an athlete, so I had that kind of thing.
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So in some ways, there were times where I felt like an imposter in both environments.
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But I definitely felt more comfortable
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just literally physically comfortable in the Black environment, because I knew those kids.
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My girlfriend was in that world.
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I felt like I kind of knew my place a little better.
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In the whiter environments, there was this sexy danger about it a little bit.
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It was like,
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I don t know if I m really even allowed to be here by their parents, my own parents, and I m only, like, just now really getting to know white girls.
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I m, like, 16, 17.
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It was, like, a little enchanting for me.
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So there was another major difference between these parties, and I can t pretend like I didn t see it then.
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In fact, I was very aware of it then.
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There would be very few, if any, Black girls at the white party.
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I have one specific memory going to a party in Olney, one of the houses that we always went to, and somebody said a purse disappeared or something.
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This particular time, we had brought two young black girls who were friends of ours, and
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Somebody said they lost a purse.
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Someone was accused of stealing that purse, which was one of the two girls that came with us.
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And I just knew they didn t steal the purse.
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Like I just, the way that you kind of know your friends or whatever as a kid, I still to this day, I m like, there s no way this girl stole a purse.
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And the result of it was, and I don t remember if it was directly communicated or if I just took this on myself, but it was basically like, don t bring any more black girls here.
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And that felt like the vibe sometimes was like,
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White girls, white guys, black athletes, nobody else.
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No black girls.
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Did you see that?
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I didn t know any black women who wanted to drink like that.
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So you think it was about the way we were kicking it?
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Yeah, I didn t know any black girls who wanted to play beer pong, shotgun beers, that kind of stuff, which is not to say that they didn t exist, right?
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I also wasn t friends with girls.
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I was friends with men.
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You re captain of football team.
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The girls that were there were through no action of mine.
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So I can t really say if they were,
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welcome or unwelcome.
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I will say that when things would go wrong in a party setting, Black people were the first to get blamed.
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Oh, yeah.
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But we never really took in consideration how we were viewed in the Black girls  mind.
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But we experienced it.
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I know it was a lot of Black girls who hated me.
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Because, like you said, we didn t provide them with our presence after the game because we were funneled to the white parties, you know what I mean?
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And I was getting the side eyes, but I was confused why I was getting the side eyes.
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I m like, damn, I didn t do nothing to you.
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And it was girls that I used to have relationship with, not physical relationship, but we used to be cool.
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We used to come by the hallway, what s up, what s up, what s up?
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And then it was just one time where they like, yo, what s going on?
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And I put it into perspective that
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That s what it was.
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It was that after the games, we was not giving them the time that they wanted.
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We were straight to the other s house.
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We didn t go to the Black parties like that.
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You were able to participate in things that were not in my reach at that point, because those parties that we talked about where you were allowed to bring one friend who was Black or whatever, that friend was understood to be a guy.
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Black girls were just not welcome in that space.
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there was no equivalent white guys looking for the social validation of black girls.
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And so what I experienced at that time was probably some envy.
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It wasn t conscious envy, because what I remember of my own experience then was just feeling like I did not belong to the place where I was, which was
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this community in high school.
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I just felt like I was not a relevant person for the people around me.
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And so I just kind of like didn t participate in anything in that space.
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I don t even know that regret is the right word.
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I m happy where I ended up and all of that.
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But I did experience being very, in some cases, like violently excluded from the same sphere that pulled you in.
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And some of those white girls, of course, had
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reasons to want to capitalize on your social currency.
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This is a really progressive community.
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You get a lot of points if you have a black friend.
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You get points if a black guy is attracted to you.
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That can really validate that you re a certain type of person or whatever.
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My sister Shannon s time in high school was very different from mine.
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She s really smart.
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She s a writer.
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We think similarly.
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We talk similarly.
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I knew that we were different socially.
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And I thought that the reason was just because nature, God zinged me with a social gene.
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And my sister, he made a little bit more introverted or something like that.
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But now I m an adult and I know I m an introvert.
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And I now can see that what actually happened was that she was a girl, I was a boy, and even though I was a natural introvert, I could pull off the performance of being charismatic because people were open to it, because I was a guy.
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People responded to me differently because I was a dude.
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White people responded to me differently in a spectrum of ways because I was a dude.
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I mean, those parties, being able to walk into that world and walk out of it,
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However dangerous I now as an adult know it was at the time, it was an adventure.
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I saw things, I learned things, I experienced things that I wouldn t want to give back.
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My sister was three years older than me, so our social worlds didn t have a whole lot of opportunity to collide.
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But what I know is basketball is what gave me a hall pass to
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experience certain sides of life.
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But what I also remember in this school, in this area, in this part of the county that was such a mash-up of races and cultures and not in a particularly harmonious way.
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A friend of mine, a song came on.
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We were listening to country or alt-rock.
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We were probably listening to Dashboard Confessional or Yellow Card or something, you know?
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And
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A rap song came on, and then my friend said, I didn t know we invited niggers to the party.
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She wasn t calling me a nigger.
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but I was the only black person there.
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And I just kind of left.
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I just like got in my car and left.
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The one disappointment I had was that everybody was sort of neutral about the moment and preferred for me to handle it with that person as opposed to taking a side.
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And they all had my back and agreed that it was messed up, but they weren t really willing to do more than that.
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If the same thing happened today, actually, I do know they would do more.
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But we were children, you know?
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Yeah.
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Something probably felt wrong for them, but they weren t sure if it was wrong.
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For literally everybody involved, it was our first time in that experience, right?
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Everything we re describing here, this is on the low end of the spectrum in terms of the intensity of race in the country we live in.
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I live in New York now.
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When I think about where do I want to raise kids, my heart and my brain, they pull up an image of the suburbs and the fences and the bonfires in the backyard and the football field, the grass and the trees and the fireflies.
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That is a vision of what I think
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most Americans have been told is perfection.
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And while I knew that I wanted to go in and tell an honest story about where we grew up, I felt this guilt about exposing the warts on something that we all told ourselves was next to perfect.
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My friend Marcus, who was one of my best friends from our rival high school, he was with me on the night where that parking lot fight broke out and one of the girls got killed.
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So as soon as the game was over, I guess everybody just knew there was going to be a fight or somebody said there was a fight.
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And I still remember helping my brother and some of his little friends get into my dad s car and girls fighting like right by the car and us having to push some of those girls out the way in order for my brother to get into the car and close the door.
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And then after finally they re out of the way, then our boy, he had gotten into a fracas that night.
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And I m sitting there and I m trying to calm him down.
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Blake is also right near People s Community Baptist Church.
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So take him and we start walking towards the church and we walk past a group of dudes.
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Apparently this group of dudes was some of the people that had gotten into a fracas with.
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So when we walked past that group of dudes, one of them s like, hey, ain t that that dude right there?
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So then I m like, what the hell?
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I m trying to walk to the place of the Lord and I m still dealing with bullshit.
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So I think this is probably when you start remembering that night.
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We run up the hill and we re like, yo, these motherfuckers trying to jump us.
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Y all need to come down and help us, blah, blah, blah.
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The whole game is mayhem.
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There s police there.
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I m the black kid who s running up and like, yo, they trying to jump us down here.
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As I m running up, the police kind of hit me up and they re like, yo, I could have gotten arrested that night.
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At least.
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Yeah, luckily, yeah, at least.
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I could have got jumped and left for dead.
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There s kids that got jumped and left for dead while we were growing up, right, and did die.
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So I ran up and I was about to get hemmed up by the police, but Reverend Boddy, Mr. Boddy, saw me get hemmed up and I was, since I was a student athlete, Mr. Boddy, who was very involved in Payne Branch Athletics, he saw me and he talked to the police and then the police kind of put me with,
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You, Chad.
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So that was like the precursor to when a girl actually did pass, could have lost our lives that night too.
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Just, I don t know, in this scenario where it s teenage high schoolers, alcohol, violence.
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So thank God that I m still here.
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If Reverend Boddy hadn t been there and vouched for Marcus, at the very least, he would have been arrested.
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And I think we all know that is not a safe place to be.
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for a teenage black kid.
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The thing about teenagers is when you see them do something that feels erratic or feels risky, most of the time, I think you trust where that feeling is coming from.
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At this stage, they re still pure.
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They still act in honesty.
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High schoolers are going through a lot of emotions all the time.
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They re all tangled up.
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They are feeling sadness and excitement, confusion, passion, and I think pain.
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I remember learning from a psychologist years ago that sex is like a go-to method of pain relief for young people.
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Sex, love, romance, teenage romance in particular, that s one of the greatest highs that you can feel.
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And throughout history, artists have connected the euphoria of young love with tragedy.
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That s ultimately what killed Alicia.
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She and the driver were just trying to go on a date.
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In the next episode, I m gonna get into my own experience with young love and how Alicia s death ended up bringing her best friend and I together.