Free The Last Street Novel by Omar Tyree Page B

But we could talk about music till the fuckin’ cows come home. So it became obvious to me that the literature of our music had taken over. Only problem is, with an album, you can skip all the songs that actually mean anything. So instead of a girl listening to revolutionary shit, this bitch would rather skip to the club song. And excuse me for calling her a bitch, but that’s what she ends up being if she only pays attention to the ignorant club shit. So instead of spending so much time with that booty-shaking, Ying Yang shit, she should listen to songs and albums that mean something. Or read a book…that means something. But you know why they don’t. Because this shit is all entertainment to them. And if they’re not being entertained, then they don’t want to fuck with it.”
    Cynthia had finally caught him on something.
    She said, “Well, that’s contradictory, because you’re doing the same thing that the rappers are doing. You’re not giving them anything revolutionary to read. You’re giving them entertaining books. Booty-shaking books. It’s all the same thing. Look how you had them hootin’ and hollerin’ when you were reading your book tonight.”
    Shareef laughed out loud. He said, “It’s all contradictory. But yo, I wrote a poem a few years after college, when I first started writing novels. And it just seemed like the only people willing to listen to that revolutionary shit was broke niggas or people still in college.”
    She said, “Well, let me hear your poem and I’ll tell you want I think about it.”
    “Aw’ight, it’s about the only one I still remember,” he told her. He said, “‘I was born into this world / with the mind and spirit / of a revolutionary / unfortunately / in the time of my short existence / there was no longer / a revolution / so I walked the earth / for forty days / and forty nights / angry / apparently / at nothing.’ ‘Wasted,’ by Shareef Crawford.”
    She sat silent for a minute to remember it all in her mind, and to sum it up. Then she nodded to him, convinced of her assessment.
    “So, you already know your potential,” she responded. “You know all the arguments. And you know what you’re supposed to do. But you’ve given up.”
    He nodded back to her and said, “Yup. Now I’m doing what all the revolutionaries do when they give up. I’m chasing skirts. Go do the research.”
    She smiled again, shaking her head one last time.
    She said, “I got a story for you that they’ll read.”
    Shareef heard her and grinned. He said, “Come on, girl, we in New York. It’s eight million stories in this city. And that was twenty years ago. How many stories we got in New York now?”
    She ignored him and asked, “You ever hear of Michael Springfield?”
    He looked at her and raised his brow. “Michael Springfield? The Harlem drug dealer?”
    She nodded. “Yeah.”
    He said, “Everybody’s heard about him if you lived in Harlem during the eighties. He serving life without parole now, ain’t he?”
    “And he wants you to write his story,” she told him.
    Shareef studied her face and asked her, “How you know?”
    She said, “I know him.”
    He paused for a minute. Did she run with drug dealers, or was she related to him?
    He said, “You know him? How?”
    “Writing letters. Visiting. I just know him.”
    Shareef started to feel uneasy about it. He had to ask her the questions that popped into his head. All of a sudden the conversation became dead serious.
    “So…did he tell you to ask me that? What does he know about me? Is he just trying to find any writer to write his book, or did you bring me up to him, or what?”
    He was asking her questions as if he was conducting his own interview.
    Cynthia shook her head and said, “No, he brought you up to me. I didn’t know he even read your books. But he said Chocolate Lovers touched him. And he started thinking about his first girlfriend before he got into hustling. You made him think about the