Texts from Bennett (5 page)

After the show, we shared a couple pots of cheap coffee at a diner and talked, joked, swooned, and did things like exchange “Top 5 of All-Time Lists” about “Entertainment’s Holy Trinity.”

Until ten in the morning.

Mac’s Top 5’s

Films

1. 
The Wild Bunch

2. 
Goodfellas

3. 
Pulp Fiction

4. 
Boyz N the Hood

5. 
Dazed and Confused

Albums

1. Ice Cube’s
Death Certificate

2. Nas’s
Illmatic

3. Jay-Z’s
The Blueprint

4. Wu-Tang Clan’s
Enter the Wu-Tang

5. Scarface’s
The Diary

Books

1. John Kennedy Toole’s
A Confederacy of Dunces

2. Roald Dahl’s
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

3. Christopher Moore’s
Lamb

4. Iceberg Slim’s
Pimp

5. Neil Strauss
The Dirt

Harper’s Top 5’s

Harper’s Top 5’s

Films

1. 
Edward Scissorhands

2. 
Buffalo ’66

3. 
Synecdoche, New York

4. 
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

5. 
I Heart Huckabees

Albums

1. Radiohead’s
OK Computer

2. Sonic Youth’s
Goo

3. Patti Smith’s
Horses

4. Nick Drake’s
Five Leaves Left

5. Brian Eno’s
Ambient 1: Music for Airports

Books

1. Richard Bach’s
Jonathan Livingston Seagull

2. Dave Eggers’s
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

3. Lucy Knisley’s
French Milk

4. Oscar Wilde’s
The Picture of Dorian Gray

5. Mark Z. Danielewski’s
House of Leaves

I was drawn to her intelligence (college graduate, articulate, critical thinker, smart with money, informed politically); the places she’s traveled (England, Israel, Australia, Argentina, Iceland, Russia,
Mexico, New Zealand); her taste in hip art and obscure entertainment (see aforementioned Top 5’s); her spunky way of dressing (up-and-coming designer and thrift-store fashion; Euro hairstyles; Louis Vuitton loafers on casual days); her athletic, healthy body (vegetarian); and her fierce independence.

We were inseparable for the rest of her trip, and even after she flew back home, we talked on the phone every single night for the next five months. After a lot of long-distance admiration, the pent-up, quixotic energy was too much to handle, so she came out for a weekend stay at my new house.

But . . . we fell in love and she never flew home.

Luckily, Harper had the deep, family-bestowed finances to be able to do something like that. I didn’t fully grasp how loaded her family was until she found a job as the assistant to the regional director of a local computer company, for nothing more than “the socializing and the office gossip.”

She never looked down on me for not being educated like her. Well, she tried not to anyway. She never judged my broken, dysfunctional family, our limited income, or our white-trash instincts. Well, she tried not to anyway.

It seemed like she was really ready to ditch the attitude she’d grown up with and begin the underrated, difficult journey into adulthood.

She had officially lived with me for only a couple of months when shit hit the fan.

ME:
Why’d you go to jail last year?

BENNETT:
why da fuck did U just put ‘d at da end of why ? dum fuk

ME:
It’s an abbreviation. Why’d = why did

BENNETT:
wats a abrevation

ME:
Just tell me why you went to juvenile detention.

BENNETT:
i cudnt sleep cuz this bitch was laughing so i filled her car with water

ME:
Who was she?

BENNETT:
she lived in da house next door. she a russian ho

ME:
You filled your NEIGHBOR’S car with water?

BENNETT:
yea nigga i told you bennett is a boss hog gangsta

BENNETT:
basicly dis bitch standed out in her yard all day wit a hose waterring her grass . . . and she wud get mad at me and my homie loony for walken thru it

BENNETT:
she wud always B trippin sayin GET OFF MY GRASS U LITTEL ASS HOLES

BENNETT:
well i had to wake up early one mornin after she wuz on her bacc portch on da phone laughin talkin russia style all late at nite

ME:
Russia style?

BENNETT:
ya u know how they sound like they got hella loogys in there throat ? its wierd.

ME:
That’s Russian. Their language.

BENNETT:
watever .. she sounded like she swallowd a porky pine

BENNETT:
and i didnt appricate how loud she wuz bein bcuz i cudnt fall asleap .. i wuz starten my new job da next mornin at Taste Of India Buffay

BENNETT:
so i waited til like 2 am she had her lites off for a cpl hours . and i seen dat her car window was open a lil . so i took da bitch hose and stucc it in da window and turnt da hose on all nite

BENNETT:
Da very next day da cops showd up at da buffay and arrestid me.

BENNETT:
i cant keep a job ITS really wacc

ME:
Did the car have a lot of water in it?

BENNETT:
O fucc ya !

BENNETT:
i new i wuz gonna get in troubel wen i road by on my bike on da way to work da entire car wuz full of water. !

BENNETT:
fishes and lobstars cud have lived in dis bitchez car . i got off my bike and took da hose out . i wuz nervus as fuk.. but i wuz like maybe she will think it rained all nite and shit

ME:
What did they charge you with? How long were you in there exactly?

BENNETT:
disordarly conduct and criminil damage to proparty . i had 2 serve some time in JUVY Bcuz of my priar record it wuz gay.

BENNETT:
90 dayZ

BENNETT:
nigga im exited to live wit U we gon party like KRAZZY

ME:
I’m an adult man. I don’t party anymore.

BENNETT:
Wat. nigga pleaz We gunna have stripers over ! quit acten like U got a rainbow design on ur butt hole

And just like that I was suddenly reminded of how disrespectful and high-maintenance this kid was. Was I potentially biting off way more than any logical human could ever chew?

Yet, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he was at a
crucial
point in his life. Seventeen-year-old kids are wild and Bennett didn’t really have anyone looking out for him—as much as I loved Aunt Lillian, she wasn’t really helping him out.

I’m going to save the kid’s life. I owe my aunt that much.

In order to maintain
some
privacy, Bennett did not want his legal first name disclosed in this writing. But that doesn’t really matter. Bennett has always gone by Bennett. It’s his middle name and is his birth father’s first name . . . we
think.
There are two options as to who fertilized Lillian’s egg.

One is Bennett ***, a former semitruck driver from Liberty, Missouri. The other is Juaquin ******, a carpet salesman from Peculiar, Missouri. Aunt Lillian was romantically involved with both of them simultaneously, but felt that Juaquin ****** would be a better choice for a father since he “made more money.” However, once it was known that she was pregnant, neither man would ever be seen by her again, and family odds just fell on the truck driver.

Thus, Bennett grew up in a single-parent, low-income household, bouncing around from town to town and school to school. He grew up in trailer parks, skid-row apartment complexes, and around a lot of inner-city people. He dropped out of high school at age sixteen, has been to jail way more times than I was telling Harper, and represents the Crips, a predominantly black street gang that originated in South Central Los Angeles. People who meet him for the first time hear him dropping the n-bomb every other word and think he’s just another privileged white kid, assimilating urban, black culture. But he’s not.

He isn’t your typical white kid who “acts black” with his other white friends on the way to varsity lacrosse practice. Bennett has no idea that saying the
n
word is something he isn’t supposed to do. The way he acts is 100 percent natural to him. He doesn’t know any better and honestly probably relates to the plight of black people more than he does white people.

Bennett represents America’s white lower class. A very real, deeply threaded stitch in the fabric of our country.

HARPER:
Baby

HARPER:
I understand you want to help your family. I know you like your aunt.

HARPER:
But it’s not necessarily the right thing to do.

HARPER:
Also, you don’t even like having your friends over because they leave a couple of empty beer bottles in the living room. How could you possibly handle this?

Oh yeah. I didn’t even think about that.

ME:
I already thought about that. They won’t be messy. I’ll lay the law down if a single thing gets out of hand.

ME:
As far as Bennett’s concerned, he won’t do anything bad. I promise. He’s not a bad kid.

ME:
He just grew up with no guidance, like a lot of kids like him.

HARPER:
There are other kids like Bennett?

ME:
Are you kidding? Tons.

ME:
What are you doing right now? Am I distracting you from work?

HARPER:
No, go ahead. I’m drinking bubble tea in my car.

ME:
Ok, good. So there’s a legendary story

ME:
About Bennett.

HARPER:
Tell me.

ME:
Well, for example . . . I’m PRAYING he isn’t still seeing Mercedes. Or they’re in a fight or something.

HARPER:
Who’s Mercedes?

ME:
His girlfriend. Maybe his ex? Not sure. I know he has a girlfriend. Hopefully it isn’t Mercedes.

ME:
She has a tattoo under her belly button that says “THUG BITCH”. She has long, obnoxious acrylic fingernails that she paints weird colors.

HARPER:
:-O

HARPER:
Is she at least a nice person?

ME:
Absolutely NOT.

ME:
One time I was at the mall buying a new pair of dress shoes and I saw Bennett and Mercedes up there walking around. So I asked them if they want to get lunch at the cafeteria. Right?

HARPER:
. . .

ME:
We’re sitting at this table eating and Mercedes leans back in her chair, squinting at something in the distance.

ME:
Then under her breath she starts saying “What’s good, bitch? Wassup, bitch?”

ME:
She looks at both me and Bennett and says, “Look like we gots a problem. I don’t even know this ho and she’s been staring at me since we sat down.”

ME:
So she gets up and bolts! I was like “OH SHIT.” Out of nowhere she got up and RAN towards this chick.

HARPER:
To fight her?

ME:
Yeah but check this out.

ME:
She is running towards this lady screaming, “WASSUP BITCH? YOU WANNA FUCK WITH A THOROUGHBRED GHETTO BITCH, BITCH?”

ME:
Everyone in the food court is looking at her. Kids are hiding behind their parents. EVERYONE sees it.

HARPER:
Omg

ME:
She has her hands thrown up in the air with her fists clenched, looking like she’s getting ready to swing any second. ANY SECOND.

ME:
She gets about 10 feet away from her. About to throw a punch.

ME:
And then she suddenly stops.

ME:
She starts cracking up, turns around, and runs back to the table.

ME:
Meanwhile I’m trying to figure out what happened.

HARPER:
Wha?

ME:
Because it was a mannequin.

HARPER:
?

HARPER:
What???

ME:
She can’t see very well. She’s supposed to wear glasses and doesn’t. So she thought a fuckin mannequin posted outside of Nordstrom was a woman standing there staring at her. Bennett and her thought it was hilarious.

ME:
But what kind of idiot starts a fight with a mannequin?

HARPER:
Wow, she sounds terrifying.

ME:
Oh, one time Mercedes had B E N N E T T S H O painted across her fingernails.