Mi Vida Loca

7. Get The Strap

The sun was coming down as the night came that Saturday. The park filled up with the homies and the girls looking dressed to impressed. Shorts and tank tops with the makeup done smelling all good. The red blood on Tweety's kicks turned brown. We stayed at the park till around 7 when everybody decided to go to the next city over and go party. Not till later though, for now we just waited on more to show up and decided who's going in who's ride. BLA and BLT posted up in the hood. Now that I've been around long enough I started to notice the slight differences. One major difference is that BLA didn't fuck with ice (crystal), and BLT did even though they tried to keep it low key. The OG from BLT smoked that shit daily and the younger homies followed along. They would do that shit at the park sometimes like it was the thing to do. Most of the others only smoked weed.

"Ay Ricardo come here G" said Smokey.

I walked over to where he and some girls were to see what he wanted.

"You want a hit of this?" He said pulling out a glass pipe with ice in it.

"Nah ese I'm good" I said walking away.

I saw what that did to some of the homies and wasn't interested in smoking that shit. I wasn't feeling it that night and wasn't trying to go out. I wanted to go home and chill more than anything. So I said I was out and told the homies I'd see them later. Some of the homegirls walked with me until I got to the gates of the park. They gave me hugs and I went on my way. Going through the east side to get back home on a Saturday night walking. Saturday nights were always active, parties everywhere. Music in my headphones and lots of traffic in the streets.

"Youngster ! Come here man." Don shouted.

"Oh shit long time no see". I said

I was passing right by my old weed dealers house and stopped by real quick. Although the homies knew me as Niño he called me youngster since way back. Don was taller than most Mexicans I knew , he didn't speak much Spanish either he was more a white boy at heart. He showed me some of his stash and all the different types of weed he's got. His house was old and smelled like weed smoke throughout the entire house. I told him I was going to head out though and walked out the front door. We walked outside and to my surprise Victor heads right towards me. Don didn't know we had problems. Don was how I use to be, sold to everybody , plus his house was in the middle of the east side. Victor spoke to me first before I could say anything.

"Ay Ricky I heard you're banging now." He said

"Yeah... and what if I am..." I said back at him.

"I'm just asking , be careful ..." he said like he was going to do something.

I've been waiting to fight him so I was going to make sure it happened.

"Yeah or what ? You want to throw down ese?" I said letting him know I was banging.

"Look ay , I heard that you and you bitch ass homie jumped my brother earlier today. He's in the hospital with a broken nose. You used a bat fuckin pussy"

I laughed at the thought of his older brother lying about what happened. Typical fuckin east sider... always hiding the truth about what really happened.

"If you two want to fight do it out on the street" Don said so that the cops wouldn't be on his property.

I was cool with that, I started to walk towards the street when Victor tried to take a cheap shot at me. He ran at me full speed swinging his fists and missing every punch. I had no choice but to fight back on Don's front yard. Not even punching him more than 3 times he backed away. I didn't let him escape and tripped him. I stood above him and held his shirt punching his face as best I could as he tried to cover himself with his arms. He kicked me off and jumped back up.