Billy Badass 2

Gregory Romeo was a kid from school I had been friends with for years. He lived outside our neighborhood in a tiny duplex in a highly Latino section of the city. He was within walking distance of my neighborhood and one day, when I was in his area, we met up on the street. We laughed. We talked and we had fun as friends do, but somewhere something went sour.

Me and Gregory had a way of doing this. He had beat me in an armwrestling match one time at school, and from that day forward treated me like a child. When we got in our first fight, I won, and so it began. The two of us were working out a problem we had about who was the boy on top. Neither of us wanted to bend. Neither of us wanted to buckle. That day, Gregory and I went sour, and within an hour we were fighting.

He was faster this time. Stronger. His fists seemed harder, and after he got a few good ones on me, it shifted his way fast. He kicked me in the chest and when I doubled over, he grabbed me by the ears and slammed my head into the side of a Ford F100. I pulled back, dazed, and he was on me.

I struggled and gave him everything I had, but he was on top this time. Sometimes the other guy is a better fighter than you. The next day you might take him, but today he is invincible.

Gregory had me on my back. He had my arms pinned with his legs as he sat on my chest in the street. He had my head propped up on the curb, lifting it by the hair with one hand and with the other he was hammering it into the edge of the curb. I cried and begged, but he would not get off me. He finally grabbed my hair with both hands and started slamming my head into the curb.

I heard tires squeal and a car door opened. Suddenly Gregory was ripped from my chest and I sat up to see a man, who looked like he didn’t belong in this neighborhood, had pulled Gregory off me.

He yelled at us both for fighting, asking us what was so horrible that we had to do this to each other, and while he was talking I ran off.

“You better run, faggot!” Gregory screamed after me. I put as much distance as I could from him.

When I got a distance away, the world stopped making sense. It was too quiet for the rampaging of my heart. I was walking too slow. Things were too calm and I thought I was going to lose my mind from the juxtaposition of being savagely beaten one moment and walking casually the next.

I broke out in a run, crying, sobbing with my breath hitching in my chest.

I made it to my neighborhood and ran straight into Jad. I knocked into him and nearly fell. I couldn’t meet his eyes. He looked at me and within a breath he had me. He grabbed my shoulders and shook me a little.

“Little Billy, what the hell?” he said “Yo man, what the hell happened to you?”

“Greg-greg-greg beat my ass.” I sobbed.

Jad whistled to the corner where the Benders sat. “Yo Badass, your little man is all fucked up here.”

Billy came and shoved Jad off. “I got it, I got him. Hey Jesse, what the hell, man?”

I looked up at him and sobbed. I was not his guy anymore after this. Once I told him I had gotten my ass kicked, he was going to run me off. The other guys would not call me Little Billy anymore. Billy would think me weak. I could not meet his eye.

“Look at me right now!” Billy said.

I fought to look up the best I could.

“No Jesse, right now, you look me in the eye and tell me what happened to you. You got your ass kicked, I’m not going to let you be a pussy about it. Look me in the eye like a man and tell me what happened,” Billy said. “Be a man.”

I fought all of my instincts and looked up at him.

He grinned. “You look like shit. What happened? Who whipped your ass?”

“Gregory Romeo and I got into a fight.”

“Did you fight back?”

“Yes. He just got me this time. I beat him up sometimes. He just got me this time.”

“Wait a minute, you fought this guy more than once?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“We are fine for a while and then-”

“Wait, does this guy think he is a friend of yours?”

“He is my friend.”

Billy gritted his teeth and looked up at the sky. “Friends don’t do this kind of shit to each other. Those are friends.” He pointed at the Benders’ house where Demon Duck stood on the edge of the porch looking at the two of us. “Those are your friends. They are the guys fighting beside you, not the ones fighting against you. This guy would not take a knife for you, he is not your friend.”

Billy slapped the side of my face when I looked down at the ground again. “Look at me. Find a few friends. Not people that knock you down. Find a few you would take a blade for and fight for them not against them.” He shook his head. “Fuck man, how bad did he get you?”

I told him about the curb. I told him about the way he pounded me into the street.

Billy gritted his teeth and talked through them. “This fucking guy. Then he called you a faggot?”

I forced myself to look him in the eye when I nodded.

Billy ran for his bike.

Black BMX, black tires on red mag wheels. It was a Cadillac of bikes. Billy jumped on it and rode it to me. His bike hopped the curb like a well-trained bunny and he stopped right beside me.

“Get on,” Billy said.

I stepped on his front pegs and sat on his handlebars.

“Show me where he lives. Listen, I am not doing this because you lost this fight. I am not doing this because he called you a faggot. Anyone can call anyone anything. I’m doing this because he pretended to be your friend and he sat on your chest and hammered your head into a fucking curb. Friends don’t get to do that,” Billy said as he kicked his bike to a start. “Not ever.”

We rode to Gregory’s house, me pointing and Billy pedaling. We crossed out of Benders’ territory, and Billy leaned in and spoke quietly.

“Listen, if we get caught out here, you run your ass off,” Billy said. “Get back and get help if you can, but it will be too late.”

“I’m not leaving you out here alone, Badass,” I said. I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do about a rival gang in rival turf but I was not going to leave him out here. If I was going to get hammered into another curb, it was going to happen right beside Billy Badass.

We got to Gregory’s house and Billy jumped off the bike. He pointed at it. “Watch that. Watch the street. You see anything, you whistle.” He stopped long enough to tussle my hair.

That moment as I think back on it now is too surreal, too out of place to be real, yet I remember his hand in my hair clear and bright in this memory.

Billy Badass walked up to the door and knocked on the screen. The man who answered  had to be Gregory’s dad.

Billy punched through the screen. The man fell back and Billy let himself in. He beat that man into the ground. He beat up Gregory. Billy kicked the ass of both Gregory’s little brothers and Gregory’s mother. When he walked out of the house, he had a purse and a wallet.

Billy stood in the yard riffling through the purse, took all the money and dropped it like a sodden rag. He unfolded the wallet, took the money, and took a picture of Gregory out. He dropped the rest.

He handed me the picture then stuffed the money in his pocket.

“I am your friend,” Billy said. “That piece of shit is just shit.”

My parents moved us out of that neighborhood as soon as they could. When I was packed and on the truck headed to Illinois, we drove by the Benders’ house. Less was crying. I turned to the corner where Billy sold weed and I looked at him.

In the air he held up a fist.

That is my last memory of Billy Badass. A monster, a mentor, a hero, and a fiend. If I were to see him today I would cross the street, but I would not call the cops. Because Billy was my friend. He would take a blade for me.

I would take one for him.