Mess You Made

2.

Malibu.

I think immorality can be measured on a scale. Perhaps that's the mechanism I use to justify the things that I do. I do believe it to be true, though. Common sense.

There's always a scale and arguably, there's always worse things one can be doing. Stealing a glance at someone's phone, rude as fuck but low on the scale. Petty theft ranks low on the scale. Murder, high. Any forms of sexual assault, fucking sky high. Laundering and fraud and all of that sit somewhere in the middle where I don't care enough about them.

My point, to conclude, is that there are an abundance of things that are illegal, and an innumerable amount of things that anyone can deem as immoral. Although there are the solid and concrete rights and wrongs — murder, sexual assault — a lot of the rest of it is always up to interpretation.

I suppose murder can be up for interpretation too. I'd murder rapists and I'd do it as intensely immoral as I could possibly do it. I'd murder abusers. That's besides the overall point, here.

The point is there's a scale.

It's a tangible sort of scale in my mind. I always have the scale in mind. Faintly, I realise that the scale is just a warped way of me justifying wrongdoings. Myself, the people I love. That sickens me a bit. I wonder if murderers have a scale, if they thought there's worse shit they could be doing, so they felt legitimate too.

But people are pushed to do bad things. I suppose that's why things can be left to interpretation. Immorality sometimes becomes — a necessity.

It might sound like I like what I'm doing. An act of rebellion or some shit — no, I don't. I do what I need to do. That's my everyday. My entire life. It is the explanation for most of me. Whatever it takes, I do what I need to do unapologetically and that's all it is now — life was never much one of vigour but now it's mundane.

It's just that the necessities of what need to be done feel like they keep getting warped, keep getting worse. I swallow a rock in my throat if I even think about hearing papa's voice in my ear. Feel what would be his disappointment. He raised us entirely different — but it isn't like we're doing anything insanely bad.

Worse things on the scale.

We just have to ensure the business of his shop keeps running, from time to time. A routine sort of thing. Bad, but we don't have much of a choice so we do what we have to and there's no grand explanation, asides from that.

Papa — he'd grab us by the fucking ears and give us a good shaking if he knew what his children had been up to, what solutions they'd crafted in the desperation of not having him around anymore. He'd call us stupid, say we weren't raised to turn into the other little shits around the shithole we were raised in. We aren't meant to fall into Spanish Harlem's debauchery.

We do what we need to do, because we don't have much more choice. Like the other little shits around El Barrio.

I lower down onto my haunches, crouching on the other side of the street. A light gust of wind threatens to make my hood fall over my head so I tuck it over myself tighter. I'm submerged in the dark of night, the street lamp above me fluttering on and off brokenly.

We tend to venture into Hamilton Heights. Nearest neighbourhood to our Harlem so it's accessible, but richer than our own. Nicer buildings, nicer cars, the people here have a bit more to spend and less distrusting natures.

Makes sense. Hamilton Heights has an average crime rate, lower in property crime and all that. East Harlem, my home, to put it into perspective — a crime rate that's 438% higher than the rest of the US.