October 31, 1990


	We came out of our apartment building at seven-thirty in the morning.  I
was nervous as shit, and I had good reason, it was Halloween.  There was me,
your humble narrator Glen, my cousin Tyrone who has staying with me and my
folks because his momma smoked crack, and finally Jamel, one of those
green-eyed Jamaican ganja-smoking mixed breed motherfuckers.  Okay, so
maybe he didn’t smoke ganja, he probably smoked crack like Tyrone’s momma.
	So we made our way to the bus stop, avoiding any group of more than
two kids.  I knew we were a target, three junior highschool kids with no gang
affiliations walking through one of the worst neighborhoods in Brooklyn.  It’s
not like I was so worried about going to school, most of the hoods were either
out buying eggs and shaving cream or still asleep.  I knew the terror would
begin, like all evil things at my age, when the clock hit three and we had to
come home.
	“So your mom wouldn’t let ya stay home?”  It was Jamel asking,
because dumb questions and being Jamaican go hand in hand, that’s what my
folks tell me.
	“If she had said yes would I be walking to the bus with you two?  Want
to ask another stupid question Jamel?”
	“Dafuck you jumping down my throat for nigga?  I was just asking.”
	“Well then stop asking when ya know the answer.  Shit son of course
she said no.  Hell, last week she asked me and Tyrone if we were going trick or
treating.  The woman has no clue what neighborhood she’s living in. 
Completely outta touch, yanno what I’m saying?”
	We made it to the B44 stop at the corner of Newkirk and Nostrand
avenue.  Tyrone, who hadn’t said shit all morning, went into the cornerstore to
waste his money on comicbooks. 
	“How come we don’t just skip school and go throw eggs at them grade
school kids?”
	“Jamel, what did you have for breakfast?”
	“Oatmeal.  Why?”
	“Yanno what I had?  Porridge.”
	“Shit.”
	“Exactly.  We can’t afford to waste eggs.  And if I ever said I was
gonna take my dad’s shaving cream to waste he would beat my ass with a wire
hanger.”
	“Or an extension cord.”
	“Damn straight.  If we were on foodstamps then we could afford to
waste food.”
	“Living like kings.”
	When Tyrone came out of the store with a handful of Superman, the
three of us huddled together amongst the old people who were waiting for the
bus.  There’s always some psycho who will lob eggs into a crowd but for the
most part most of the hoods didn’t have the balls to egg some old chick who
looked like their grandmother.
	Nothing happened on the ride to school, every window on the bus was
closed and I even managed to get a few minutes of sleep in.  When we got
there, half the fucking school was gone.  The place looked like a ghost-town,
with half-empty classrooms and empty hallways.
	“They probably all either cut or had parents with an ounce of sense.  I
wanna go home cousin, I don’t wanna be here.”  Tyrone finally spoke and by
the way his lip was quivering I knew that by the end of the day the little faggot
would be a whiny mess.
	School for us was a posh building in an even more posh white
neighborhood.  It was an hour out of our way and there were three schools
closer, but we weren’t complaining.  Pretty white houses, pretty white girls, and
not a drug dealer or gang banger around for five miles.  You almost feel like
you weren’t in Brooklyn anymore.  Marine Park Junior High I love you!
	So the day went slowly, like all Halloweens do in Brooklyn.  Just long
hours of busy work followed by a few minutes of fury and terror.  As me and
Jamel sat in our last class, I started to get anxious.  I can’t front, I was a little
nervous and I liked it.  It’s that same feeling right before a fight, that same
sweet pain in my gut that makes me horny and scared at the same time.  Jamel,
like the dumb Jamaican mutt he is, is busy trying to get the digits from some
Jewish chick with big tits in the seat in front of him.  I keep forgetting the
bitch’s name, and so will Jamel after he fucks her.
	When the final bell rang the class marched outside like fucking convicts
going to get capped by a firing squad.  I can’t shit ya, when me and Jamel met
up with Tyrone outside I was ready to piss my pants I was so fucking worried. 
The three of us caught the first bus we could and were on our way happily on
our way home.  Two stops later we hit our first bump in the road.
	“Close that window you stupid fuck!”  The bus driver was halfway out
of his seat and advancing on a stupid white guy wearing a suit too small for his
fat ass.  The guy looked at the driver blankly and a woman sitting next to him
said something to him in a language I can’t understand.  Tyrone, who was
sitting next to me and closer to the chick, said it was Russian.  I said I didn’t
give a fuck.
	“He doesn’t speak any English,” the foreign bitch said to the driver. 
“He just wants a little air.”
	“Close the fucking window!”  The driver answered.  Of course, he was
a big black dude, probably another goddamn Jamaican.  
	Jamel, who had been standing in the aisle across from these two idiots
the whole time, decided it was time for him to be a hero.  He leaned across the
fat Russian bastard and tried to get the window closed.  Like jackals smelling
rotting meat these two white boys, about sixteen or so, appear out of fucking
nowhere on the sidewalk next to the bus.  Each of them is carrying a half a
carton of eggs and they’re smiling like assholes.  Then they start cackling like
faggots as they lob egg after egg at the open window.  Most splattered against
the side of the bus, but a few hit the corner of the window and sprayed Jamel
and the fat Russian dickhead.  Three more made it into the bus cleanly before
the window was finally closed.  One egg smashed against the ceiling, another hit
some old black woman right in the face and another just missed Jerome and
cracked against a white girl’s leg.
	“Fucking assholes!” Jamel cursed, quickly taking off his jacket to check
out the damage.  I could tell by the look in his eyes he was pissed and wanted to
get off the bus to fuck them white boys up.  I wanted to go with him, anything
was better than riding in a bus that stunk like raw eggs.  Besides I had to put
them cocksuckers in their place for fucking with my homey.  It’s one thing if I
fuck with him, he’s my nigga, it’s another for some white boy to do it.
	I didn’t say a word, I just pressed the bell, nudged Jerome and the three
of us got off at the next stop.  The bus driver was still cursing at the two
Russians when we got off.  We ran back to the previous stop and looked for the
closest corner store or small grocery.  Tyrone saw one a half block away and
across the street, so we walked over.  We stuck out like a thumb in this
completely white neighborhood, and I could feel them store owners watching
us.  Just as we were about to cross the street the two white boys came out of
the store, bitching at the owner for not selling them anymore eggs.
	“Not here,” Jerome said quietly as we watched them.
	They were tall, skinny rich fucks, wearing new Yankee hats, gap clothes
and suede Jordan’s.  They were too busy giggling to themselves to even notice
us follow them away from the store.  When we were two blocks away from the
stores we stopped and took off our bookbags and jackets.  I moved my
bus-pass to my backpocket and pulled up my jeans to my waist.
	“Let’s roll,” Jerome grunted.  I’ll say one thing about my cousin, he may
be a crackbaby but he loves to brawl.
	We started in a jog, picking up speed as we crossed the street and
narrowed the distance between ourselves and them.  When they finally heard us
it was much too late.  Jerome caught the first one and slammed him into an iron
grate fence.  White boy went down and covered up quick.  Then Jerome put the
boots to him until the blood started flowing.  The other one spun around and
started swinging wild at Jamel.  They went blow for blow for a couple seconds
and then I popped the faggot in the back of the head.  He turned to swing at me
and Jamel wailed on him so bad he stumbled over his own feet and fell flat on
his ass.  
	“Now wassup eh?  Now laugh mothafuckah!”  Jamel was so pissed he
jumped on the kid and kept throwing until the little bitch started crying.  Finally
we calmed down and
snatched their new hats and walked away with em.  We were pretty low on the
hoodlum totem pole but we were still more than enough for two spoiled white
boys.
	We decided to walk down a couple blocks and catch the next bus, just
in case those pussies went home and called the cops or got their daddy’s burner
and tried to cap us.  We got on the next bus and were feeling good cause even
though it was packed, it hadn’t been hit with any eggs and smelled sweet.  In
less than an hour I was about to wish we had never gotten off the first bus to
fuck up those white boys.
	The ride went smoothly as we passed out of the white neighborhood
and into the black one.  Even when we got to the Junction at Flatbush avenue
no one was there and the bus emptied out enough for me to get a seat next to a
cute white girl with jet black hair.  I was blowing smoke up her ass, trying to
get her number but she wasn’t buying it.  She told me her name was Christina
and I knew the chick was lying to me.  
	I was working on her, telling the chick how hot she’d look with my dick
in her mouth when I looked through the bus’s windshield and saw that we were
getting close to home.  In the distance I could see the red brick apartment
buildings of the Vanderveer Projects.  I tried to pick out which building was
mine but I got bored with that quickly.  	As the bus turned onto New York
Avenue I started to get nervous again.  Jerome had found a seat in front of me
and he was reading his superman comics.  Jamel was standing on the other side
of the bus, grumbling to himself about his fucking jacket.  Just like a Jamaican,
they can never just let things go and move the fuck on.	
	Five blocks from home, the bus stopped to let off an old couple.  As
they stepped off the two I heard them start shouting and then I heard the
thumping of something against the side of the bus.  Jamel looked out one of the
side windows and went fucking white.  “Aww shit!  We’re fucked!”
	“Wassup?” I asked, looking over my shoulder.
	“They’re egging them!”
	He didn’t have to tell me who was doing the egging, I already knew. 
Suddenly the backdoor of the bus was pulled open and five talk black kids ran
in.  They were all dressed in black, wearing ski masks and werewolf masks to
hide their faces.  They were carrying cartons of eggs, cans of shaving cream,
and water balloons filled with what I knew could only be piss.  They were
smart, or as smart as egg flinging hoods could be.  The first on to the bus pulled
the red emergency cord, keeping the bus from moving and making it impossible
for the driver to open the frontdoor to let people out.  Two of the five turned to
the people in the very back of the bus, cutting them off and making them into an
omelet in no time.  The other three turned to us and let loose with those water
balloons.  The second the piss hit the floor the stampede began.  People started
running for the frontdoor, jumping over seats and knocking each other over. 
Christina jumped up like a fool and shoved me outta my seat and started
screaming like a baby.  I ended up on the bottom of a pile of screaming idiots,
with Jerome and the dump screaming white girl both on top of me.
	“For the love of god let us out!” some chick shouted at the bus driver. 
But there was nothing he could do until the bus restarted and he knew it.  And
more importantly the hoods knew it, because they swooped in on our asses like
fucking vultures.  They emptied a couple cartons of eggs on us, flinging them
wild at the crowd.
	I was bitten, stepped on and I could swear somebody grabbed my dick
at the bottom of that pile.  Emergency windows were popped open and mofos
started jumping from the windows to escape.  For the rest of us there was no
hope, they hoods moved in with the shaving cream.
	I can’t front, I screamed like a woman a few times.  I’m gonna be
truthful, I wet myself.  Now you’re probably thinking Glen’s a pussy, but I’m
just being real.  What would you have done if you were laying on a pissed
covered floor with ten people on top of ya while some big black dude tried to
shove shaving cream in your mouth?
	The whole thing only lasted a couple minutes but it was horrible. 
Finally the hoods ran out of ammo and disappeared back into the neighborhood
as quickly as they had come.  Very slowly people started to get the fuck off of
me and off the bus.  Stinking like piss and eggs me and Jerome met up with
Jamel outside.  The lucky fuck had jumped out a window and hidden behind
some parked cars.  Just like a Jamaican, quick to run when his friends need him
most, or at least that’s what my folks say.
	We had to walk the rest of the way home, which wasn’t a big deal
anymore because we smelled so bad no one came within ten feet of us.  Jerome
stopped twice to puke, otherwise we were cool.  We passed a couple little kids
in costumes going trick or treating.  We had no choice yanno, we had to stick
em up for their candy.

End