The Learning Curve

By D. H. C. Carter

The Learning Curve is the fictional story of a young African American male growing up in the 80s and 90s. It is the coming-of-age tale of a man who has to deal with the trials and tribulations of that life while coping with a mental illness. Main character Boyd Jenkinss life is interrupted just as he begins to learn what life is all about. In the blink of an eye, he goes from partying, social, B-boy to homeless vagrant. As his friends and family try to reel him in, Boyd is introduced to the world of psychiatry and learns what it means to be a patient in the system. As he frantically searches for reality and a way out, he embraces a higher understanding of the divine in an attempt to find a higher level of himself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524623784

D. H. C. Carter

Author D. H. C. Carter (David H. C. Carter) is a native of Richmond, Virginia, where he currently resides. He has been writing for fourteen years, and The Learning Curve is his sixth work. He graduated from Richmond Community High School for the gifted and talented in 1991 and studied at Hampton University as an undergraduate. His previous works—For God and Country, Seven Chiefs, The Boar and The Leopard, The Foundation of Heaven, and Paint It Black—are available online.

Book preview

Chapter One: Beginnings

BOYD JENKINS SAT IN HIS den with his friend of eight years Daniel Cummings and discussed the nature of things. They had a few drinks and the T.V. was on, showing a movie, Hannibal. It was then that Boyd had a revelation about his life and passed it on to Daniel.

Man, when I entered college I didn’t know if I was going to ace it out on the books or become a baller like you.

Daniel paused for a second, then responded,

And to think Boyd, you did neither.

Such was the nature of their relationship, a back-and-forth of truth and jokes. A sometimes acrimonious, tongue-and-cheek banter that always seemed to lead to deeper revelations.

It was early 2001, and things were going great for the two. Boyd had just come out of a long depression and was beginning to see life in a new way. Daniel was taking on the reigns of responsibility in his family, by taking care of the family home and managing the Adult facility the family owned.

Boyd had known Daniel since High School, late High School to be exact. He’d met him through his older brother Stan, when they used to go out and party on the weekends, visiting from College and introducing Boyd to the world of the nightlife. It is this world that had captivated Boyd at an early age and would hold him there for most of his life. What he learned from his brother and his brother’s friends he would translate to his own friends and they would use it to own the night as they came to know it.

Boyd attended an alternative High School for the gifted and talented as a youth. There he learned quickly the way of the flam: the art of getting what you wanted by using verbal skills and personal charisma. It was what he and his friends were good at, and whether one was flamming or being flammed depended on the circumstances surrounding the event or personal perspective. Boyd’s friend Virgil was particularly good at this art, and as he and his best friend Tariq would later put it, they’d been flammed many times. This would occur many a night, and would usually consist of Virgil and one his compatriots, Amp, getting some flave at a local crackspot and not telling Boyd and Tariq what they were going to do there. Leaving the two to think they were just visiting friends; totally clueless.

Such was the course of events on a weekend night in the city for Boyd and his friends, one that would usually include some High School sporting event, house party or nightclub. If it was spring, Sunday afternoon would be spent in the Park, profiling with supped-up rides, if you had one, and meeting girls with their fly gear, jewelry and hair extensions. It was the late eighties, and everyone was either hip-hop dancing or fighting the power.

Boyd’s older brother Stan attended a HBCU and would occasionally return home to see what everybody was doing and enjoy the nightlife. Sometimes Boyd would visit him with his friends to get a taste of college. It was this taste that started his adventure into the nightworld where he had his first beer while visiting Stan with his parents. There was a house party that was going on in an apartment complex off campus and Stan invited his younger brother to come along. Their parents gave the o.k. and young Boyd ventured off with his brother to see what college life was about in part. A large part.

Arriving at the apartment, he was introduced to Stan’s friends and acquaintances, one of whom offered him a beer, the cheap kind, Milwaukee’s Best, or The Beast as it was called, and the rest was history. He watched as one young man passed out and the rest partied on as if nothing had happened. He returned to High School with a new attitude, like he was young and invincible, and introduced beer drinking to Tariq who got a taste of it and was buzzed for life.

Not long after that Stan arrived home for summer break and took Boyd, Tariq and their friend Marcus out for a night of partying and drinking. There was a house party in the South side of town and hotel party in the county for Seniors of Boyd’s High School. The crew left Stan and Boyd’s parents’ house and picked up Marcus and a case of Blue Bull Malt Liquor. In order to get the alcohol, Marcus would usually ask an adult headed into the corner store. This worked nearly all of the time. From the store they picked up Tariq, whose eyes lit up when passed a brew, which he quickly guzzled. And from there they headed to South side.

The house party lit up the block, and people were everywhere, inside the house, in the back yard, in the front, and on the street. The group went to the front yard to check things out, and when satisfied, headed back to the car for more refreshments. Soon they were on their way to the hotel party and everyone was buzzed and feeling good.

At the hotel party people were in the parking lot having a good time and greeted the crew as they pulled in. They headed upstairs where they partied in the hallway and in one of the hotel rooms; the young Boyd happy to be mingling with the upper classmen and no one joking him because he and Tariq were there. No cops were called, and everybody had a good time.

This scene was groundbreaking for Boyd, who’d just gotten out of a relationship with his first love and was experiencing life on a totally new plane. Up to this point his life had been carefree, full of wonder and joy. He’d always felt close to his father and credited his parents with giving him a wonderful childhood. It was like something from out of The Cosby Show. They took family trips, had pizza on Fridays, played around the neighborhood and tended to their schoolwork and projects. Boyd’s father was an attorney who worked for the city and his mother a teacher. It was what Boyd’s parents tended to call it a middle-middle class lifestyle, and the family thrived in it.

Everything was going well and Boyd entered High School dressed well enough to impress – Stan had accompanied him on the back-to-school shopping trip with his mother, making sure he didn’t embarrass him or himself with his choice of clothing. Stone-washed jeans were the hit, and Boyd got a stylish jean jacket and pants, along with a tight white Izod shirt and white British Knight sneakers to go with it.

Stan was a Senior when Boyd entered and this put the pressure on Boyd to be popular like is older brother. Boyd attended the alternative High School with his three close buddies: Tariq, Nigel and Omar. They had been close in Middle School, always cracking, making personal jokes, on one another and playing video games. Stan warned him before going,

You can’t joke and play like you did in Middle School in High School, people will call you a nerd.

I just want to be myself. Boyd responded.

It wasn’t until later on that Boyd would discover the truth in his older brother’s words, but who cared about what people will call you Boyd thought. He was a very independent thinker, especially upon becoming a Freshman, but this would change a bit after his encounter with his first love, Vanessa.

She was about 5’4 tall and had blonde, wavy hair, blue eyes and a nice body to go with it, for a Freshman. She wasn’t his first girlfriend, nor his first white one – he’d had a few growing up, but she was his first serious one and he fell in love with her, head over feet". She taught him how to French kiss, and though he lied about already knowing how, caught on quick. They would sneak down to the basement of the school and kiss during class breaks, and Boyd loved this immensely. Though they only were together for two months in the spring, the relationship filled Boyd with love and this made his world joyful. He just knew he was going to have sex with her, as there was a stereotype that the white girls were looser than the black ones. But this never occurred. She had given him the opportunity at a party at his friend Jack’s house, but he didn’t follow through on it, only unbuttoning her shirt and making out with her. Before the party his father, concerned about him going to the unsupervised affair, had a talk with him about women in general and this sort of shielded him from any advances made by the opposite sex. His connection with his father was still strong.

Eventually, the two drifted apart, after Boyd found out she had made out with another friend of his, Chaka Robinson, on a field trip the freshman class had taken. Although she hadn’t had sex with him her infidelity caused a rift in the relationship, and it took him a long time to forgive her for it. His heart was broken and he saw as the only alternative to fix it to seek the world and make himself a heartbreaker to women. It was his way of getting back at her and what he saw as other girls. The first step was to listen more to his older brother. He dressed more hip, rocked a gold chain got a fade and parted it in the Rakim fashion, a prominent rapper at the time. With that he decided to change his grades from C’s, D’s and F’s to A’s, B’s and C’s. He was becoming more conscious of the world and accepted by his peers and teachers. It was an interesting transition, and one that involved his acceptance of Black consciousness as well, which was being taught one day a week by two involved teachers and an outside community activist.

This class opened Boyd’s eyes to the world of discrimination and the struggle of his people. He learned of Malcolm X and more about Dr. King and others, and began to speak out more in the classroom. The class evolved to an organization of young black men called African-Men who would have speaking engagements at area conventions and other schools. Boyd was becoming somewhat of an activist himself and so were some of his black classmates. African consciousness had resurfaced at the time, and Afro-centric thinking dominated hip-hop culture. It was the beginning of the golden age of rap and all kinds of positive messages were being delivered over the airwaves, on vinyl and cassette tapes.

Boyd’s social performance was improving and he would go home after school and start early on his homework and teach his little brother, Max, about what he was learning during the day. He would see Max watching afternoon cartoons on T.V. and tell him,

You have to turn the T.V. off, and do your homework first. The T.V. is holding you back from achieving scholastic goals.

Max would smile and nod his head, then go back to watching