Under Da Tree #2

…Old man Curry’s look of disgust was followed up by a one-fingered salute, rotated and aimed at each of us in our small circle, which was followed by, “All y’all stankin son-a-ma-bitches can kissssss my GOTTdamn ass.”
Mr. Curry then took a long swig of his Natty Daddy—and to be politically correct, it wasn’t a can of Natty Daddy at all that he was drinking. It was actually a can of Natural Ice, his favorite beer of choice; he just took the liberty of calling them Natty Ice or Natty Daddys, even way before the Natty Daddy brand actually came into existence.
Curry drained the can, crushed it with his foot, burped long and loudly, then smacked his lips as he looked at Lil D and said, “But it’on surprise me nan’ gottdamn bit dat a lil’ rotten-onion-breath son-a-ma-bitch like you a hate on a playa.”
“Playa?” said D, laughingly.
“Dat’s all you lil jittybugs be about nowadays,” Curry went on. “Don’t respect ya elders nan’ bit, ya lil ignorant son-a-ma-bitch you.”
Curry kept calling D “lil this” and “lil that” and, true, his nickname was in fact Lil D. And rightfully so. Lil D was no taller than five-six, at best. I stood six-foot-five, and I had to be almost a foot taller than D. Standing at six foot even, I guess it was safe to say Curry had a legitimate claim to calling D out on his short stature, and normally he didn’t hesitate to do so, as the two of them would go at each other frequently—hard and heavy with some serious jokes.
Yet, to preserve what little peace we had, I’d decided to go ahead and change the subject. “Well tell me this,” I said to my dawg Dead Al, “how the heck Hardy be gettin locked down all the time now? Hardy used to love comin and hangin out here with us. Now he—”
“Now that nigga straight-up pussy whupped,” said Dead, cutting me off with a deadpan stare that said he pretty much knew what the hell he was talking about. “Gottdamn white hoes got that nigga in the headlock. Gottdamn yackabacks! Big Reg, you know,” he nodded, still staring at me. “I’m tellin ya, Big Reg—a nigga gotta save Hardy. We oughta go to ‘is crib and make that nigga come out here so we can open ‘is eyes.”
“And make him see, what?” I asked, genuinely, totally unsure what Dead was aiming toward.
“A nigga gotta make Hardy see how he ain doin nothin but wasting his time wit them white hoes. On the real, though, them white hoes, they be some pretty-ass hoes when they young. Pretty blonde hair. Sparkly blue eyes. Fat pussies.” He began sharing eye contact with the others. “But when them gottdamn hoes fuck round and get old, they get ollllld. Them white hoes age badder than a mufucka, my nigga. Just watch, I bet if Hardy be wit them hoes for any long length of time, I bet he’ll end up takin a good, long look at a mufucka and decide, ‘Fuck this shit,’ and start kickin a bitch to the curb in the next five years. Mark my words. A mufucka like Lindsey Vonn ain got long neither. Yeah, she a dimepiece, for now. Beautiful blondie. But ten, fifteen years from now, that ho gon look like mufuckin Hulk Hogan or a gottdamn blonde Bruce Springsteen. Ho gon look like gottdamn Terry Bradshaw wit a wig, I’m tellin ya. Just watch.”
“Now dat gotdammit reminds me.” Curry pursed his lips, nodding in my direction. “While you had yo muddafuckin ass slavin away on da plantation earlier today, ya cousin Saul Jr. probation lady came round here. Now dat’s one ugly-ass muddafuckin black child.”
Fred looked at me and nodded and said, “He ain never lied. That bitch ugly. Ho look like, if Mike Tyson was to impregnate a muthafuckin aardvark, it’ll be her.”
“Um tellin ya. You shoulda seent it.” Curry laughed. “Dat gottdamn broad look like a gottdamn alligator wit a camel nose. Um tellin ya, if dat ugly muddafucka didn make a nigga wanna go run and go get a gottdamn baseball bat and start to swingin dat muddafucka…I took one look at dat ugly muddafucka and said to myself, “Lord god, how?’ Now DAT’S one ugly child! God had to’ve nodded off when he did er face.”
Out of nowhere, Lil D said, “Ay, though, but on the real though, how bout, them Hollywood hoes ain really all that. Ain nothin special bout em. They jus hoes like any other regular ho, ain a?” he said toward me.
I shrugged, neither confirming or denying the validity of his statement. And to be totally honest, I wasn’t cool at all with using the N-word or referring to women as bitches and hoes, not anymore. I once had a mother, two lovely grandmothers, two great-grandmothers, and a ton of aunts and female cousins, all of whom I’d cherished dearly, so it was rather difficult for me to formulate those words in my mouth like I had once done so frequently in the past. But this was the hangout spot, the tree, Big Saul’s yard, not a freaking convent, so I simply listened and went with the flow.
To answer D’s question verbally, however, I huffed out a laugh and said, “If I’m not mistaken”—pointing at him—“didn’t you come out here a while back, sayin how you just saw your future wife when you saw Tiffany Haddish in “Girls Trip?”
“That was way back then, though. That ho still bad, my nigga, but that was before I got a good look at that big-ass mufuckin moonrock mole on er face.That ho mole so big, that shit look like it a breathe hard and stare right at a nigga wit’out blinkin its eyes, and say, ‘Don’t kiss her lips wit’out kissin me too, nigga. I wanna be licked and kissed too, jus like the rest a her body.'”
“Nigga, you jus rappin,” Fred said to D. “You a get down on yo mufuckin knees and drank that ho bathwater and you know it. Like you got standards or somethin.”
Addressing everyone, Dead Al said, “If a mufuckin nigga a drank a ho bathwater, he a eat the mufuckin ass too. And a nigga can’t tell me no different neither.”
I cocked my head to the side, shrugged, looked at D, and laughed my ass off.
He shook his head and began laughing also.