Free Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bro by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc Page A

joke was to fly toward his dealers with his foot on the gas and a bazooka aimed out the window of his latest car. His Thanksgiving turkeys and bags of toys at Christmas did little to allay the threat of his presence; Joey terrorized the neighborhood.
    George asked Joey for work, and Joey hired him as a lookout at his spot on 156th and Courtlandt. “I idolized the guy,” said George. “He was running around in Benzes and all that good stuff—Porsches, BMWs, he had it all.” He had even given one of his girlfriends a silver Cadillac. “I said, ‘Shit, I want to be just like him.’ ” It was Joey who gave him his street name. “It’s different,” Boy George said. “It’s not like calling somebody Chino, or calling them Red or Lefty or Fingers. When you say Boy George, you’re talking about the singer or you’re talking about me.”
    Boy George soon became friendly with another of Joey’s workers, a boy named Talent. Talent had a female relative who worked in the heroin trade. George decided to switch over from selling coke to selling dope: “Less time and faster money.” Boys arrested with heroin received less jail time, too. George worked for the Torres brothers, who dominated the South Bronx market, becoming a lookout on Watson Avenue. He was soon promoted to the position of pitcher, which involved handing out glassines. Before long, he had hooked up with Talent’s relative and become a manager. George oversaw the sale of a brand called Blue Thunder at a spot on 166th and Washington.
    It was a profitable, desolate location. Rusted stoves jutted out of broken windows. Scrap yards interrupted block after block of garbage lots. At night, packs of wild dogs roamed the streets. The businesses, other than narcotics, were run by tired men in garages that resembled crumbling caves: there were mattress shops, where soiled mattresses were hocked and reupholstered, and auto-repair shops, which did the same with cars. Gunshots and shouts of “Radar!” were regularly heard in the streets. ( Radar was one of the ever-changing code words warning customers and dealers of approaching police.) The only uplifting sounds, aside from children’s voices, came from the determined gospel choir of a nearby storefront church.
    Boy George had scaled the hierarchy quickly; he soon learned how to talk the talk, even when he didn’t know what he was talking about. One Hundred Sixty-sixth and Washington was an excellent place for the driven young teenager to further prove himself. Lots of managers rolled out of bed at noontime, but Boy George got up early, like his mentor, and made sure the spot was open for the day. He didn’t spend the day smoking weed on the corner, or visiting girls. In a business full of deception and conning, George projected reliability and trust. He kept close tabs on the street dealers and maintained the supply. If he received $30,000 worth of work, $30,000 was returned; 166th and Washington cleared an average of $65,000 a week. George paid his people from his 10 percent and deliveredthe remainder to Talent’s relative. At one point, there was a turf war, an innocent bystander ended up dead, and George’s reputation was secured. He was only seventeen.
    George recruited several of his old Cabrini friends. He also pulled into the driveway of his old group home to show off his first Mercedes and invited the counselor on duty out to eat. “He knew how to present himself,” the counselor recalled, “and knew when people were playing a con game on him.”
    George’s living situation was still precarious, though. For a while, he moved in with Talent and his mom, but he also fell in with girls who gave him a place to stay. George and Joey Navedo sometimes shared breakfast at a Crown Donuts, where George had his eye on a smart green-eyed girl named Miranda who worked behind the counter. Miranda lived near his friend Rascal’s mother’s building. For their first date, George took Miranda and her baby son with