Whom Can I Run to When I Need Love

By Rohan Goodlett

In this thriller, Rohan Goodlett grows up in a wholesome traditional family, where he is sheltered from the streets. When he gets to high school, it doesn’t take long before his secret insatiable desire to dance on the dark side becomes his reality.

After graduating from Howard University, he gives Corporate America a try. After getting a bad shake at the Marriott, he is forced to turn in his letter of resignation before he gets terminated. In the following months, he finds a job doing what he loves most—barbering. It’s a dream job, but the temptation to get back into the hustle game soon overcomes him. During that next year, he spirals downward, deeper and deeper than he ever has before.

When his actions lead him into jails and mental institutions, he quickly discovers that when you’re behind the wall, “there ain’t no love,” especially when you have been branded with the stigma of being mentally ill.

In this story of love, losses, and mental illness, Rohan, a gambler, lays all his cards on the table when he finds himself believing murder is the only way out of a vicious cycle of lies and betrayal.

As time grows nearer to his release, he finds himself struggling to decide if he will go back to being best friends with the people who hurt him the most or if life will take him down a different road. It is then that he finds himself asking the age long question “Who can I run to when I need love?”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781645849865

Book preview

—Part 1—

The Fade to Black

Chapter 1

Family Comes First

I was the eldest of four boys, all born to the same mother and father, who were both natural-born Jamaican citizens. Although they were both born and raised in Jamaica, they did not meet until they got to the United States, where they both later became citizens. Born on July 29, 1948, my mother’s name was Jascinta Simmonds. Her first name was almost the exact same spelling as the Spanish word for flower, as I would later come to know. The only difference was the Spanish word for flower was spelled without the s (Jacinta). She was soft-spoken and a beautiful flower indeed. My mother was very athletic, playing several sports. She played net ball, which is the equivalent to our basketball here in the States, except for the fact that net ball was played without a backboard. She was also a very good volleyball player. To top it all off, she was a speed demon, excelling at several events in track and field. She represented Jamaica’s national team in the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash, and the 4 × 400 relay. She ran a 12 flat in the 100, and a 23.6 in the 200, not to mention she ran the anchor leg of the 4 × 400. She didn’t stop there though. She could also clear 17 feet in the long jump. She represented her country well, earning several medals, in many cases gold medals.

She was a great mother. She was very old-fashioned, doing almost all the cooking, and cleaning in the house. I am ashamed of the fact that I scampered off, routinely, after completing my meals, leaving her to clean up the kitchen, after slaving over a hot stove, making sure we all had something to eat. She could really cook her ass off. I would later follow suit, becoming quite the culinary artist myself.

She was very frugal, as tight as they come. She was a master at coupon clipping, so that she could save money on grocery shopping. She was a hairstylist by trade, another facet of her life that I would also follow suit with, becoming a barber, and a vicious one at that. I cut any, and everybody’s hair, from blacks to whites, to Chinese, or Hispanics. I cut even Stevens, temps, high fades, low fades, Mohawks, and Afros. When I cut Afros, I would pick out the hair at least three or four times, and cut the Afro freehanded, so that the hair would still look neat when the person combed their hair out.

My father, born on September 9, 1942, whose life’s work was being a mathematics professor, was also quite athletically inclined, playing both soccer and cricket. Cricket is very similar to our game of baseball, and is very popular in the West Indies. My father, Rackham Goodlett, was a great bowler, a pace bowler. A bowler in cricket is our equivalent to a pitcher in our game of baseball. The batter’s job is to make as many runs as he can, before being caught out, or having his wicket hit. The wicket is made of three wooden sticks, all measuring three feet in height, but very slim. They are all driven into the ground, about six inches in distance from one another. On top of the wicket are two small wood chips, which lie across the three wooden stumps. The wicket is erected three feet behind the batter. If at any time, during the at bat, the wooden chips fall from off the top of the wicket, the batter is out. There are infield players, outfield players, and players in the slips. It is referred to as the slips because if the ball slips off the bat and goes behind the batter, those players are positioned to catch the ball, or field it. The slips position is the equivalent to our catcher in baseball, except that there are two players in the slips, almost at all times. They play to the sides of the batter, behind him by a distance of about five yards. Hits can be scored as two runs for hits in the infield, four runs for hits into the outfield, and six runs for hits that get out of the park, in fair territory, the equivalent to our home runs.

My dad would frequently remind us of a time when he had to face one of the top batters in the sport, who would often bat for a century. A century is when the batter hits for at least a hundred runs. On that day, my father bowled him for ducks. Ducks is a term used to describe batters who got out without scoring a single run.

My father was very protective; some would say overprotective even. He became that way because his father didn’t hang around to raise him. His experiences caused him to want to be the best possible father he could be. My grandfather, Hubert Goodlett, abandoned my father mainly due to religious affiliation. Grandpa was a Seventh-Day Adventist. My grandmother, my father’s mother, Mary Dodd, was an Orthodox Evangelical Christian. Later in life, these same differences would cause my grandfather not to attend my father’s wedding. As a matter of fact, my father’s act of defiance in not marrying a Seventh-Day Adventist cut him off from any and all support he could have gotten from his father; that was a lot of support.

My grandfather had made himself a millionaire, buying and selling real estate, and trading stocks in the stock market. Good thing for me, my father chose to follow his heart, choosing love over money, and married my mother, or I probably wouldn’t be here today. That wasn’t the only close encounter I had before I was born. I was almost aborted because I was conceived out of wedlock, which went against a huge family tradition on my mother’s side of the family. It was an absolute deal breaker, so they decided to get married as soon as possible, and keep me a secret, until my mother started to show. I know we don’t talk much anymore, but thank you, God, for help getting me here. After all the obstacles I had to clear, I capped it off by winning the biggest race of my life; I cracked the egg first. Phew! It’s official, I’m here. According to my mom, I didn’t give her any pain. The doc smacked my ass, saying, What we have here is a bouncing baby boy. I was born seven pounds, one and a half ounces. I was delivered at 8:53 p.m. on September 13, 1975, all the odd numbers known to man. Quite odd, huh? My birthday seemed to fall on Friday the thirteenth at least 25 percent of the time, but it never seemed to bring on any bad luck. Anyway, I was a fighter. I scrap for mines. Get out the way or be harmed. I wasn’t always like that though, not until life came and stripped away the innocence, turning me into a coldhearted gangster.

I was born healthy. It was a cool night, my parents told me, where the wind outside was howling. It was the early part of fall, 1975, and there was a full moon glowing in the night sky, so you could clearly see all the constellations in the sky with the naked eye. It was September 16, and I was headed towards the place that I would call home for the next year and a half. It was just off Missouri Avenue, between Thirteenth and Fourteenth streets. It was a cozy two-bedroom apartment on Lynwood Drive, in Washington, DC, the same city I was born in. I was too young to remember, but we moved on May 29, 1976, into a bigger two-bedroom apartment. At the time, my mother was about six months pregnant with my brother Raymond. The apartment was at 422 Manchester Road, right off Piney Branch Road (Route 320). I was only eight months old, so I couldn’t tell you what the apartment or its furnishings looked like. Everything was a blur, until I reached about three-ish.

Ray, too, was born healthy, on November 10, 1976. When my dad saw his head, he shouted, Jas, we have a girl, because of all the hair that he saw. They both wanted a girl very badly. When the rest of Ray came out, they realized they were sadly mistaken. They had another boy. They were both happy, but disappointed at the fact that it wasn’t a girl.

Two years later, my brother Robert was born. He was born on June 7, 1978. There were still no complications for my mother, but still no girl. We soon were forced to move again for more room. Westchester West Apartments were able to accommodate our family size just fine. It was the summer of 1979 when we made that move. Our new address was 3168 Hewitt Avenue, Driveway number 4, apartment number 169. The apartment was a three-bedroom, which came equipped with two full baths. The kitchen and dining rooms were also more spacious. We would make that apartment home for the next eleven and a half years.

We liked our new apartment for plenty of reasons. Firstly, there was a shopping center, which was about an eight-minute walk, maybe even less. There were quite a few children in the neighborhood who were around our age-group. We would go outside, in the backyard, and play Wiffle ball, ride our tricycles, or play soccer. We had so much fun at that apartment. Chris Ulrich was a white kid that lived in the apartment building next to us. He was cool, but he always smelled foul. Then there was Joe, a little Asian kid who lived in the same complex as us too. Justin Haver was cool, too, but was closer to Robert than the rest of us. Justin spoke with a lisp tongue, so when he came to ask if Robert could come out and play, it came out more like Wah-bert, canoe come out and pu-way. We had the most fun when it snowed. In the winter of 1983, we experienced our first blizzard. I was eight years old then, Ray was seven, Robert was six, and Ronald was one. He had just been born on June 2, 1982. The snow was literally up to our necks.

While the doctor was delivering Ronald, one of the veins in my mom’s left leg popped. It began spewing out blood everywhere. The doctors had hell trying to stop the bleeding. At times, they thought they were going to lose her. They were eventually able to get the vein to clot and save her. The doctors told my mother that if she tried to have any more children, the vein might pop again, perhaps even causing her death. Both my parents were saddened by the news because they had both planned on trying until they got a girl. My parents, of course, decided not to have any more children. Just like that, my parents’ dreams of having a daughter came to an end. It was a huge letdown for them both.

A couple of months after we began living at our new apartment, we received news that a couple of our cousins from Jamaica, Marcus and Neil, were coming to live in the same exact apartment complex as us. When they finally arrived, they settled into an apartment in driveway number 3, the building right in our backyard. We also had an aunt and uncle who lived in driveway number 8, with their daughter, Sharon, and their two sons, Garry, and Sean. They were all older than us. We were a little closer to Garry than Sharon and Sean because Garry used to babysit us a lot when my parents had to be out. Their parents were our Uncle Peter and Aunt Madge.

Marcus was born on May 26, 1973, and Neil was born on February 17, 1976. They were closer to our ages, so naturally we were closer to them than Garry and his siblings. Neil’s name was really John O’Neil, but he preferred Neil. Marcus used to beat up on Neil when we were younger, but as they grew up, that all changed. Neil began to hold his own. Their mother was our Aunt Joan. She was married to my mom’s oldest brother and our Uncle John.

Uncle John lived in camp in Jamaica because he served in the military. He climbed all the way up to the rank of colonel. He was quite the disciplinarian. Uncle John was required to remain in Jamaica when Aunt Joan, Marcus, and Neil came to live in the States. Lucky for Marcus and Neil, they were able to get away from him. It gave them a new sense of freedom. My father ranked close behind Uncle John when it came to disciplining us. It didn’t matter if you were caught lying, cheating, stealing, or just playing ball in the house. My pop was quick to whip out the belt. Without going into detail, my pop used to whoop the shit out of us. It was tough love, for real. Sometimes, in his anger, he might have gone a little too far. On those occasions, he would come to us and inspect us, to make sure he didn’t hurt us too bad. He would often feel regretful when he did go too far, and would apologize to us.

That wasn’t where my close-knit family ended. I had several other aunts and uncles who had moved to Maryland from Jamaica. My Aunt Sonia and Uncle Curtis lived in Maryland too. They lived at 808 N. Belgrade Road, off Arcola Avenue, in Silver Spring. They lived about fifteen minutes away from us, by car. My Aunt Sones, as we called her, was my mother’s baby sister. They had two daughters, Myesha and Tamara, whom we called My-My and Tammy. Kareem would enter the picture a little after my brother Ronald. Kareem was born on May 4, 1984. Myesha was just two months younger than me, so until Ray and Tammy came on the scene, it was just me and My-My for about a year.

After the picture filled its way out, it was a beautiful thing. Later on, my cousins Sean and Gregory joined the picture too. By then I was in high school, my second high school. I had gotten kicked out of the first one. I started off at Wheaton High School, but skipping class, shooting dice, and getting into fights earned me a one-way ticket out of there. My grandpa Hubert had just died. He had tried to get to know my dad later in his life, in the years leading up to his death, in an attempt to make up for lost time. He ended up leaving some money behind, in his will, for my father. That’s the money my father used to make a down payment on our first house. The house was in Olney, Maryland. My older cousin Sean went to go live in Miami, Florida, while Greg came to live in Maryland.

When Greg came to live in the United States, he began attending Sherwood High School with Ray, Rob, and me. Greg stayed with us because his parents were still living in Jamaica. Adrian, their younger brother, didn’t come to live in the States until a couple of years later. Their parents were our Uncle Junior and Aunt Hyacinth. They still live in Jamaica up until this very day. Greg was Ray’s age, just fifteen months younger than me.

Both Ray and Greg represented their countries at the national level in soccer, Ray for the United States, and Greg for Jamaica. Having already played for Jamaica was the only reason Greg could not play for the US national team after becoming a US citizen. Greg was six feet four, in height. He was so tall, compared to the other players on his teams growing up, that he had been given the nickname Longa. His brother Sean was a few years older than me. His nickname was Big Red, because he was also very tall, with a very light skin complexion. He would always turn red in the sun. Adrian was closer to Ronald’s and Kareem’s age.

In the years before they all came to live in the States, we would look forward to their arrival for the summer. All twelve of us would get up early and get dressed for summer camp. Most of the time, we got dressed at home, and then drove over to my Uncle Curtis’s house. From their house, summer camp at Kemp Mill Elementary School was only a ten-to-fifteen-minute walk. While there, we would do all kinds of stuff to occupy our time. We even used to shoot rubber bands at flies, trying to kill them. Neil and Ray were the best at it. One of the counselors, Theresa, was in love with Neil’s Jamaican accent, especially when he would say he and Ray were going to kill some flies. Sometimes when she asked Neil what he wanted to do, he would respond, Me and Raymond are going to bust up some flies. In his Jamaican accent, it came out sounding more like Me and Raymond ago bussup sum flies. We also climbed the monkey bars, killed bees with our bare hands, played Ping-Pong, Wiffle ball, and even dabbled in a little bit of arts and crafts. When the day was through, we would walk back to the house. Aunt Joan, Neil’s and Marcus’s mom, was not working at the time, so she would usually be at the house when we got there. She would always have food prepared for us when we got there. We weren’t picky; we would be happy with pork ’n’ beans. Sometimes we would get hot dogs, sliced down the middle, with a slice of melted cheese, laid over the top of the hot dog. Those were bomb. My dad wouldn’t pick us up until later in the evening.

Our grandfather, Arthur Simmonds, who lived with my Uncle Curtis and Aunt Sonia, would always leave early in the morning to go to work. He was a painter by trade. He would return before my dad got there. He used to bring back candy and gum when he got home. He would usually bring us Tootsie Roll pops, and Hubba Bubba, or Bubblicious bubble gum. Blow pops were one of our favorites too.

His wife, our grandmother, Edith Simmonds, was a house sitter. She worked for a family named the Goldmans, who lived in Potomac, Maryland. I would later end up getting my first car from their daughter Sherrie for two hundred dollars. All it needed was an engine. I was happy as shit. Mumma, as we called her affectionately, was a hell of a cook. She used to cook rice and peas every Sunday, usually with some prime rib that was falling of the bone. It was absolutely sinful.

We were such a big unit that we mostly just hung out with one another. As far as friends went, we were cool with a few other kids at camp. Valerie was cool. Antoinette and Sydney, a.k.a. Beanie, were cousins. Besides them, the only other kids we really hung out with were Derek, Tracy, and Monique Williams. A couple of other guys we were cool with were Greg and Lance Smith. One time we were in the backyard, in plain sight, setting off fireworks, when we heard somebody saying, Aw, firecrackers are against the law. We thought we were in big trouble until we turned around and saw Valerie and Antoinette. I liked Antoinette. She was tall and sexy, but I didn’t have the nerve to tell her, because I thought she was out of my league at the time.

As we got older, life took us down different paths, some for the better, some for the worse. It was a bitter pill to swallow when I heard Beanie had passed away. I was so happy for him, just weeks before, when I heard his valet parking business was growing. I was informed that he had just landed a deal with Marc Barnes. He was contracted to facilitate the valet parking at Club Love, formerly known as DC Live. Beanie was doing a routine unplugging of the lights, in the rain, just weeks after landing the contract, and unfortunately, he was electrocuted.

Chapter 2

Best Friends for Life

In 1980, at the age of five, I began attending first grade. Right away, I hit it off with a boy named Michael Brooks. He was the coolest nigga in my class. Mike Brooks would prove to be a lifelong friend. Everybody liked Mike; he put the kool in kool kids. Mike was spoiled, if you ask me. He had the best of everything, the best clothes, the best shoes, the best toys, and even the best girls. Mike was a pretty boy, with hazel eyes and a perfect smile, so the bitches used to sweat him hard. He had swag, and he knew it, way before any of us even knew what swag was. I felt privileged to be friends with Mike. It made everybody else like me too.

Back in those days, if you had Optimus Prime, the Transformer, you were saying something. They were hard as hell to find though. In the winter of ’82, I had my dad take us to every Toys ’R’ Us, Kay Bee toy store, and anywhere else that sold toys, looking for Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots. Everywhere we went, they were sold out. We were disappointed, but we knew that during the Christmas season, it would be very hard to find one. Not only did Mike have Optimus Prime, but he also had Omega Supreme, the biggest Autobot there was.

A couple of other people who made lasting impressions on me were Mandy Manuel, Keisha Manderson, and Ottorino. Mandy and Keisha were both a terror to deal with. If you did wrong by either one of them, you were going to get dealt with. I don’t care if you were a girl or a boy, they didn’t have any problems getting with you. Whenever teachers got Keisha upset she would just flip out. She would get so upset that she would start throwing desks, and chairs everywhere. SHE JUST DIDN’T GIVE A FUCK. Keisha was another girl I had a crush on, but I never made it known. I thought she might beat me up or something. Keisha may have been a little rough around the edges, and somewhat of a tomboy when she was a child, but she grew up to be a beautiful and classy young lady.

Ottorino was an Italian. He had so much positive energy. You had to either love him or hate him, but there was no in between. I’m sure you know how much those Italians can just lift everyone’s spirits. He was as cool as the other side of the pillow, and had a great sense of humor. I loved that guy; I wonder how he’s doing now?

Ottorino also played ball with us for our school soccer team. The league we played in was called the CYO (Catholic Youth Organization). Mike and I scored most of the goals. One time, we beat a team 9–0. I had five goals that day; Mike had three. Other guys used to score, too, but not nearly as often. There were many occasions on which Mike would outscore me. When we got anywhere near the goal, we were both just as dangerous as the other. The name of our team was the Big Red. We won the championship at least five times. I have a ton of trophies at home from those elementary school days.

The name of our school was St. Andrews Apostle School. It was a private school, a Catholic school. Mike used to have sleepovers at his house from time to time, even as we got older. His parents, Howard and Sharon Brooks, were cool as a fan. Greg Smith, Troy Poole, and I used to sleep over there all the time. Troy played soccer, too, but he was a year younger than us, so he played in Ray’s age-group.

I remember one time, Ray’s team played Troy’s team, and Ray’s team was beating them pretty bad. Troy got so upset by Ray outplaying him that he started punching him in the stomach. I had never seen anything like that, not during the middle of a soccer game. That was the first time. It would be about fifteen years later before I saw anything like that again.

Anyway, when we played for St. Andrews, all the coaches had to take turns doing field preparations. That entailed lining the field, setting up the nets on the goals, and erecting the corner flags. The parents had to take turns bringing the refreshments. The halftime snacks included oranges, Gatorade, water, of course, and sometimes sodas, for afterwards, depending on who was doing refreshments that weekend. Sometimes when we had big wins over really good teams, we would go out for pizza. Our favorite spots to go to were Sole D’ Italias, Shakey’s, or Chuck E. Cheeses. One time, when we won the championship, we went to a place called Dominics on New Hampshire Avenue. Other times my dad and my grandma would take us to McDonald’s or 7-Eleven for Slurpees. Mumma often used to foot the bill, even when we ate at expensive restaurants. That left my dad to live up to his end of the bargain, which was a promise he made to pay us five dollars per goal, and an extra five dollars if we scored a hat trick. A hat trick is when one player scores three goals in a game. So if we scored a hat trick, we would get twenty dollars, in addition to the weekly allowance that we received for doing our chores. Dad didn’t know, but Mumma used to pay me for goals, too, and told me not to tell my dad. I was her favorite, but I couldn’t let anyone else know. Yeah! Even back then, a nigga had a hustle. That would be ice cream truck money for the whole week. The majority of the money, however, went towards buying baseball, basketball, football, and hockey cards. Right up until this very day, we have plenty of full sets, rookie cards, etc. Our collection probably amounts to somewhere between twelve thousand dollars and fifteen thousand dollars, maybe even as much as twenty thousand dollars. My dad took us to the House ‘O’ Cards one day, and I bought two packs of 1983 Topps baseball cards. The most expensive card in that set was the Wade Boggs rookie card. Wade played for the Boston Red Sox. The cards were worth about thirty-three dollars each at the time; the packs only ran me three dollars apiece. It must have been my lucky day because I found a Wade Boggs rookie card in each pack.

My grandma attended damn near every game my brothers and I played. The only time she didn’t was when our schedules clashed, and she had to choose. She would usually choose whichever game promised to be the most exciting. I loved watching my brothers play too. According to Mumma, the refs were always cheating. She never stopped cussing them out. She would call them thieves, in her Jamaican accent, which sounded more like Teef, uno too teef. That means You are thieves, you all are too crooked. Sometimes, she would get warned by the refs about her mouth. Once, the ref even showed her a red card, ejecting her from the game. She was upset that she had to watch the rest of the game from the car.

Another thing Mike had a foot up on everyone else in was music. Back then, we witnessed the birth and evolution of rap. I always took to rap over go-go, even though I was from DC. There were the Fat Boys, Run DMC, Curtis Blow, Eric B., and Rakim. At the time, Rakim was one of the game’s greatest lyricists. We also had LL Cool J, Busta Rhymes, K Solo, the Beastie Boys, Kool Moe Dee, Rob Bass, Cypress Hill, Bobby Brown, Kid ’n’ Play, Guru, Pete Rock, CL Smooth, Public Enemy, Grand Puba, KRS 1, EPMD, Slick Rick, and more. Slick was a vicious storyteller, who wore a patch over his eye due to some type of accident. On the female side of things, we had MC Lyte, Salt ’n’ Pepa, Yo-Yo, Queen Latifah, and TLC. We watched as some of these artists grew, and evolved, into some of the main contributors to the hip-hop culture of the future. I can still hear Mike’s boom box crankin’ You Be Illin’, for the first time, while we were in the back of our first-grade classroom. That jonk cranked so hard back then, slim; I’m tryna tell you.

Public Enemy had niggas rocking picks in their hair, black power fists on string necklaces, and black, red, and green charms in the shape of the continent of Africa. Case in point, my friend Nonye wore them. Nonye was from Nigeria. We met in the fifth grade. Nonye would also prove to be a lifelong friend, even closer than Mike. Don’t get it twisted though; Mike, that’s my man. Nonye’s real name was Chinonyerem Chidoze Charles Onyewu. When I first heard that shit, I busted out laughing. I went completely hysterical. I wondered why he didn’t just tell us Nonye, and leave it at that. He wore glasses, and had some nappy-ass hair. He was a cool-ass nigga though. He was a hell of an athlete too. That ma fucka had raw speed. I remember he ran 6.79 seconds in the 50-yard dash, when no one else could do better than a 7.39. He could jump his ass off too. The boy had bunnies. Sometimes, he used to jump all the way over people’s heads to grab a rebound while we were playing basketball when we were out for recess. To top it all off, the boy could do backflips, even on concrete.

Anyway, I was a very diverse connoisseur of music, listening to such artists as Culture Club. I used to go crazy when Karma Chameleon came on the radio. I liked everything from Duran Duran, Irene Cara, the Beatles, Air Supply, the Eurhythmics, Michael Jackson, Billy Joel, New Edition, and much more. Then I would also like it when Weird Al Yankovich’s rendition of Michael Jackson’s Beat It would come on. His version was called Eat It.

While I was still in first grade, I had the biggest crush on a girl named Riane (Ree-on) St. Jean. She was so pretty. Her brother Stephen played soccer with Mike and me. Their dad was one of our coaches. I later learned that crushes don’t just go away. I also learned that the phrase out of sight, out of mind doesn’t always ring true. Back then they were just crushes, no broken hearts. I would have never guessed back then that real true love would be so hard to find, hard for me, anyway.

My dad kept us laced with the best video game entertainment systems. He didn’t always have it easy financially, as we would later come to understand, but he didn’t want us to know that. He didn’t want us to feel deprived, or embarrassed in front of our friends. The first system we had was a Vic 20 Commodore. We had a game called Gorf, where the aliens would march side to side while advancing every time they got to one side of the screen. If you didn’t kill them before they got close enough to make contact with you, you would lose a life. You would only get three lives. We had another game called Slots, which operated just like the slots at the casino.

We also got the first Nintendo Entertainment System. I used to love playing Track ’n’ Field. In that game, you had to tense your body up and vibrate your hand, as fast as you could, while hitting the A button repeatedly to generate the maximum speed. Contra, Tecmo Bowl, Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Double Dribble, and Mike Tyson’s Punch Out were what kept us busy, while other kids were busy getting into trouble.

We got the Sega Genesis System when it first came out too. We were all very good at NHL Hockey. We were very competitive, so competitive that whenever Robert was getting blown out, he would get upset and hit the reset button. He would also throw the controllers down on the floor. Damn! Where’s the love? Rob was cold; I mean, he used to buy candy and gum, and hide them in his room. He would hide them in socks, shoes, anywhere. Rob loved candy so much that one day he went into a 7-Eleven, without money, and stole some. My dad caught him with it, and made him return it to the clerk at the register, then went home, and beat the living shit out of him. Ray and I laughed our ass off. It was always funny when you weren’t the one getting whooped. Speaking of beatings, my pop was hard on us when it came to math. He was sharp, and wanted to make sure we were too. He was so nice with numbers that even people who feared math would be able to learn with his assistance. He would break it down, so that anyone would be comfortable and more confident. Somebody was always coming to our house for tutoring. His hourly rate was somewhere between forty dollars and fifty dollars. He was so sharp that by the time I was three years old, I knew my multiplication tables, up to 8 × 12; I better have known them, or that was my ass. He had this way of asking you if you were sure, even when you had the right answer, to make you doubt yourself. If you weren’t sure, it was almost the same as being wrong. He wanted us to be so confident, that we didn’t have any doubt. When it came to math, I was a straight A student. As long as I got As in math, he would give me a pass on everything else. I was a beast at everything from basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, to geometry, fractions, and algebra. I even aced college algebra II and calculus. I took college algebra II, even though I placed out of it, because my father was teaching it that semester. I knew how to figure out everything from limits to integrals, to matrices, and simultaneous equations. I knew how to plot points on a graph, and to be able to tell where the X and Y intercepts were. I knew whether or not the graph was concave up or concave down. The only math that I didn’t master was trigonometry. Trigonometry dealt with things such as sine, cosine, and tangents; they were all foreign concepts to me. I later became good at crunching lottery numbers too. I hit so many lottery numbers that people thought I was cheating. Mike, my best friend, was sharp with numbers too. When we got older, sometimes, we would meet up at the track and bet on horses.

Chapter 3

My First Love

Due to the fact my parents grew up in Jamaica, and soccer was the most predominant sport in most third world countries, I was introduced to soccer before any other sport. I could have ended up being a vicious wide receiver or cornerback, but my dad didn’t want me getting seriously hurt. I was really small; even when I got to the sixth grade, I was just 5 feet 6, 126 pounds, give or take a few pounds.

I played soccer for several clubs. The first club I played for, outside school, was the Wheaton Wolves. My brother Ray was so nice by then that he played up a year, instead of playing in his own age-group. My cousin Neil played a couple of seasons with us too. When he first joined us, he had never played organized ball before. He turned out to be a damn good defender. Ray was a terrific playmaker, so he played in the midfield. He wasn’t a prolific goal scorer, but he sure knew how to distribute. Ray was special; he would see the whole field, and direct traffic. He was very vocal. Everybody got so used to Ray telling us where to be defensively that when we didn’t hear him, we would sometimes turn and ask him where we should be. Me, I did what I do best; I scored goals. I would still get money from my dad for scoring goals. I also got money from my coach Mr. Quinton Worrell for scoring goals. Mr. Worrell’s son Jason played the attacking midfield position, right in front of Ray. He was a pretty good dribbler. Mr. Worrell and Jason both trained in karate. Mr. Worrell was a black belt. He used to jump way up in the air, and kick the crossbar. I was blown away the first time I saw him do it.

We lost our fair share of games at the select club level. There were some really good teams, and great individual players in our league. You had to try out at the club level; you couldn’t just walk on. It was our first experience with losing. We were used to winning all the time. We won our share of games too. Ray excelled the most, making the cut for the Maryland State team, the regional team, and the United States national team pool. Every year, I would make it to the final cut for the state team before getting cut. I performed well at the combines, but I just wasn’t what the coach was looking for. Keith Tucker and Curtis Landy, the state team coaches, would later end up being our college coaches too. I found out then that what Coach Tucker was looking for was size. I ended up being at a game in Binghamton, New York, at a regional tournament when I was fifteen years old. I was there to watch Ray, but the under-fifteen-and-a-half team, my age-group, was there too. They were short on players, because some of the guys had to be with the national team. Somebody got hurt, and Coach Tucker needed a striker (forward), so he turned to me, and asked me if I wanted to play. Of course, I jumped at the opportunity. I suited up, while the team was playing a man short. When I was ready he inserted me into the game. I had a good showing, possessing the ball well, and limiting turnovers. When the game was over, I hadn’t scored the way I wanted to, but Coach Tucker was impressed. That was a great moment for me, making Coach Tucker think maybe, just maybe he had made a mistake in leaving me off the team.

I later played for another club team called the Wheaton Vipers under Coach Duncan, whose son Bryan also played for that team. We weren’t much good at all. By then Ray had started playing for a team named the Potomac Silver Streak in his appropriate age-group. They were a beast; they beat up on everybody. I later tried out for another team called the Potomac United in my age-group. Their team was a beast too. When I tried out, I made the cut to join the team in a tournament. Shortly after I got my first call to play, a fifty-fifty ball was played into the eighteen-yard box by one of my teammates. I was coming towards the goal to try to play the ball toward the net. The goalkeeper was also on his way to break up the play. I ended up in a slight collision with the goalkeeper. The referee not only blew the play dead for a foul, but also showed me a red card, ejecting me from the game. That didn’t go over well with the coaching staff, so that was the last game I got to play with the Potomac United. I got cut. I was really looking forward to playing with the likes of Mark Miles, Lil Jon Jon, Dave Lubeck, and company. It was an only an accident; damn, where’s the love?

Good thing, my brothers had better luck. The Potomac Silver Streak, the team Ray played for, was stacked. I remember them winning all types of awards and trophies. Their coach Dave Scaggs, whom we called Scooter, lived right around the corner from us in Olney, Maryland. He was a good coach and had a bunch of great kids on that team. They had trick plays and all that. They had Jah-monster, Danny Katz, Eric Fiavarri, and Matt Hahn on defense. Matt was a good hockey player, too, and would later go on to play professional hockey with the Washington Capitals. Adie Muys was one of their forwards. He was also an avid sports card collector, mainly baseball. Ray and Adie used to bring their cards to practice sometimes, and make trades. Ray would always okay everything with us before making any trades official. Evan Schaffer and Alex Geurerro were also good ballplayers. Evan played defense alongside Ray, while Alex played in the midfield. They later added Orlando Allen, a terrific goal scorer, whom most of them knew from playing at the state level. Orlando really had a knack for finding the net.

Robert’s team recruited Potomac United’s coach, Henry Danver, when the Potomac United team broke up, to add to an already heavily talented roster. Paul Weintraub, Adam Hughes, Louis Shapiro, and my brother Robert made up a solid defensive core. In the midfield, they were stacked with talent too. They had Hashim Anderson, (Shim [Sheem] Boat), who was a longtime friend of our family, and Jah-monster’s little brother. My dad knew their dad, Devon, from way back in the day, back in the seventies. Hashim was tremendously talented with the ball at his feet. Hardly anyone at that age could stop him on the dribble. They also had a kid named Matthew Gormley. He was a free kick specialist. He could put the ball in the net anywhere from within thirty-five yards out. At their age, the goalkeepers were not that tall, so he would score on a lot of his free kicks. He was their David Beckham at the time. At the forward position, they had Marwan Tulloch, who dubbed himself the Marvelous Marzi T. He was also a longtime family friend. My dad knew Marwan’s father, Barnaby, from back in the seventies too. Marwan was the perfect combination of finesse, bully, and greed, just the way you want your strikers to be. Marwan was big bodied, so you just had to hope he missed the shot, because you weren’t going to stop him along the way. Andy Goldman and Brett Isaacson added depth at the forward position. Andy was the baby in his family, and wasn’t really planned, but they say life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. Though not as physical as Marwan, they were both good forwards. Brett, being left-footed, added another dimension to an already powerful front line.

The greatest thing about that team was that the parents were all so hospitable, and got along with one another so well. Everybody was so fun to be around that Ray and I used to secretly hope we would get invited to wherever they were going to celebrate their tournament wins. Brett’s parents would always invite us to pool parties at their house. They used to tell my dad, Rackham, if the other boys want to come, we’ve got plenty of room. My dad would turn and look at us, with our hands clasped together, saying, Please, please, please. He would usually ask us, You guys really want to go, and we would reply, Yes, yes, yes. Matt Gormley’s parents were so kind to us. Bill and Sharon were the sweetest people I think I have ever met. Their demeanor rubbed off on their children too. Matt’s little brother Chris and older sister Ashley were also great people to be around. The Potomac Panther team was in the under-thirteen-and-a-half age-group, which meant a lot of bar mitzvahs, and bat mitzvahs. Ray and I never went to those, but I’m sure Rob always had a ton of fun. I mean, you’d think people from those types of neighborhoods, being so well-to-do, would be somewhat high and mighty, a little stuck up, maybe, but that was far from the case with these folks.

Marwan’s parents were very business savvy. They ran a travel agency, sold insurance, and had other hustles, too, so most of the time Marwan would roll with us. Marwan also had a big brother whose name was Pobbi (Poe-bee). Pobbi was my nigga. He gave new meaning to the term rude bwoy. That nigga didn’t give a fuck about shit. Pobbi raised pit bulls and sold them. He, too, always had a hustle. He stayed in trouble with the law; I just hadn’t started getting caught yet.

Pobbi was a wild and free spirit. By the time he turned twelve, he was on the liquor. By fifteen, he was on the weed hard too. Between the two of them, they had him bad! You could never find Pobbi without one or the other. As a matter of fact, it was hard to find Pobbi, period. I could never seem to catch up with him, unless they had one of those Jamaican get-togethers, like the Bob Marley soccer tournament, or something like that. Pobbi and Marwan’s parents were also Jamaican; so were Jahmanie and Hashim’s, so we would see them at all those gatherings too.

It had been years since I had last seen Pobbi. Pobbi had too many broads by the time he turned sixteen; plus he was always busy chasing that paper. That year, we formed a team of our own called the Jamaican Youth Nationals. All the years prior to that, we were just spectators. We were the next generation of Jamaicans whose parents had come to America in search of a better life. The Senior Jamaican Nationals Team was just that. They were mainly comprised of guys who played at the national level. They traveled to the United States once, for a tournament, and chose to defect when the last game was played, instead of boarding the plane to go back to Jamaica. It was kind of fucked up, because being as though they were not legal citizens it was hard for them to find work. In many cases, they ended up having to sell drugs to stay above water. Marwan’s parents, however, did not take the easy way out; they worked hard.

Diallo was one of our strikers. His parents, Basil and Joan, were also close friends with my parents. As a matter of fact, my dad and his mom worked together at Howard University for over thirty years. He had a brother named Quami, but he didn’t play soccer. He was very good at baseball though. Quami was older than us, so I didn’t know that much about him. Diallo also played with Ray and me when we played for the Wheaton Wolves. We did well in the Bob Marley tournament that year, qualifying for the quarterfinals, before losing our goalkeeper to an injury. It cost us a little scoring punch, because I had to go and play keeper. I was the only one crazy enough. To be quite honest, I wasn’t too shabby back there in the goal. Most of the players on the Jamaican Youth Nationals Team were between sixteen and eighteen. We were already up against it, playing against grown men, so the injury caused us to play at even more of a disadvantage. Anyway, we played our hearts out, in a losing effort, to an African team, by a score of 2–1. I let a goal through my legs on a one-on-one fast break. It was a lucky goal; it was the only place it could have scored. It didn’t matter, because we earned everyone’s respect that day.

People said we could never reach the elimination round, much less the quarterfinals. Then once there, it took an injury, of all places, in the goal, arguably the most important position on the field, to barely lose to the eventual winner. All the adults gave us a standing ovation; we came out on top. We never expected to win it all anyway. The way things turned out, it seemed like if we had stayed healthy, maybe we could have.

Who cares, the night was young, and we were all celebrities now. Those Jamaican gatherings always turned out to be a big party. It was time to have fun. There was always somebody there named Foody, and/or Juicy. These were people who ran concession stands, selling food, sodas, and beer. On the menu, there was everything from curry chicken, curry goat, fricasseed chicken, oxtail, jerk chicken, jerk pork, roast pork, and red snapper. Everybody was laid-back, just enjoying the festivities.

Pobbi played ball too. He even tried out for my club team once, but only got in the game for a short period of time, and really never got a chance to showcase his talent. After the game, the coach told him that he didn’t have any room on the roster. Pobbi was visibly upset. He was also vocal about it, telling my father and me, I only got in the game for five minutes. What’d he expect, Pelé [‘Pay-lay’] or something. Pelé was one of the greatest Brazilians to ever play the game. At the age of seventeen, he took to soccer’s biggest stage, the World Cup, and led his team to a championship. He went on to lead Brazil to three straight World Cup championships.

After that, the next time I saw Pobbi was when I heard he had just come home from the juvenile detention center, where he had just completed a two-year sentence for distribution of narcotics. I walked to his house after school that day, which was only about a fifteen-minute walk from Wheaton High School. My dad had warned me about going to see him, because he may have police on his trail. He told me that because he didn’t want me bringing any drama to his door.

When I got there, I found out, not only was he on house arrest, but he also had on an ankle bracelet. That was the first time I had ever seen one of those. We hung out, and caught up on some lost time, until I suddenly heard his mother’s keys jingling in the front door. He wasn’t supposed to have any visitors as a condition of his release, so I was forced to hide in his clothes closet. I stayed there until his mom came up to greet him. They talked for a while. When they were through, I jumped out of the second-story window of his room. By then, I knew I was a little short on time, so I began to jog, even running at some points, to cut down the amount of time I would need to get home. It was probably a twenty-five-minute walk; it couldn’t have been any longer than a fifteen-minute jog. When I got within a mile, and saw that it was a quarter to seven, I chilled, and started walking again. I thought I was home free. I knew my father always showed up at about 7:00 p.m. like clockwork, but not that night. For whatever reason, he just happened to get home five minutes earlier that night. Those five minutes was the difference from getting off and getting caught. I was so sure I