Good Luck Have Fun
Image: Ansellia Kulikku. All night niggas got REKT on dockyard_breach: twenty-two kill streak, zero heals, no respawns. 2 a.m. & we rowdy on the teamchat—me, Suze, Jia, Andy L, and, of course, Missy Kim a.k.a. Miss Mess, a.k.a Kap’n Krunch, a.k.a Killa K straight deleting fools in ladder play. Our crew goes way back—talkin’ building forts in Andy’s grandma’s yard, playing Megazords & sneaking Parlys behind Delicious China Taco on Northern blvd. We sucking Redbulls; we cracking knuckles; we texting HR ’bout our personal days cuz tonight we was out for blood: Suze and Andy on DPS; Jia raining down her tasty heals; Missy on the backlines with those savage ganks and disruption spells. Meanwhile, yours truly is up on the front—sponging damage, drawing aggro, rearrangin’ muhfuckahs with a janked-up parking meter and a bicycle chain.
We playin’ mad joyous—moving clean, fast. They see us coming, tryin’ to post but we roll through, dropping niggas left and right. Missy bamfs to the rafters, detonates their sniper while the rest of us charge point—BOOM BOOOM BOOM straight RACKING niggas on the killfeed.
And it woulda been gg ez git gud scrubs.
But mid-match, our play got jacked. Missy’s cursing into his headset. I’m throwing up my shield but we all scattered. Bullets are raining down—Andy’s first. Then Missy. Then Jia. Out the corner of my eye, I see Suze scrambling, spraying wild, into the ceiling. Then something streaks my screen. My armor cracks. My HP melts.
Then I see the killfeed:
chingchong has killed jiaseed.
chingchong has killed killak.
chingchong has killed queenB.
then—
chingchong: gg u chinks :)
***
queenB was my CS name from back in the day—“queen” because obv, and “B” for Bea—which is short for Beatrice which is short for Bao-Tian, which lol don’t even bother.
First thing u gotta know is there’s a lot I ain’t proud of. Moving back to Queens, for one. I mean no offense but that ain’t exactly how I figured I’d be grinding my twenties. Like, I had DESIGNS, ya feel? Travelin’ the world, making bank, turning heads in my fly-ass whip with the Prince of Qatar on speaker lol. Instead a—what?—no job, no prospects, dragging ass up and down Main Street with Pops to bargain shop for mangoes?
tbh this place was s’posed to be in the rearview, lookin’ backwards, ya know? I been back like—what?—six months, and it don’t track like 100% real.
I ain’t know how to explain it exactly.
I mean I’m homegrown here & there’s stuff here you can’t help but love—like getting gooned out on j-pop in a KTV, or snacking legit tom yum, and fishball skewers on dat 4 a.m. creep on Roosevelt Ave.
But then there’s that other shit too.
Them low-rent fobby niggas, hunting gutter cigs outside QPL, or the grandpas boolin’ all day at Mickey-D’s with their Sing Tao spread like muhfuckin’ I Ching, or them dozo hos with their bad dye jobs thuggin’ bootleg northfaces & how everywhere yr dick-to-ass with muhfuckahs—overclocked 24/7 in they cars, in the shops, in the streets full-on HORDE mode.
I dunno, used to be I never thought twice about queens or flushing or any a that, but now, being here, it’s like there’s this bubble, and every second, all the time that bubble is getting bigger and stretching like it’s going to pop. ’Cept
