A Basketball Game.
One night, I took my family to a basketball game. The tickets were kinda expensive, but I charged them on my mothers credit card.
While walking to our just below middle row seats, I felt a poke in my side. The music was so loud, and the crowd was so crowded, and the kids were so excited to be there, that I didn’t have a moment to investigate.
I got everyone settled, then went to the concession stand, where the AI bot made our seedless popcorn, and the waitress poured our soda-flavored pills, and kids walked the halls selling bags of pure sugar, 10 for a dollar, and tech bros sold Teslas, and girl bosses showed “affordable” homes in the newest development, and half the ICE agents traded high-fives while the other half pointed guns at people in the wrong seats, and shiny jewelry, and delicious alcohol, and designer clothes, and more and newer and more. I charged the remaining balance on the credit card and filled my cart.
When I returned, my family was gone. My son was in the nosebleeds, keeping it “real” with the homies, while my daughter was in the bathroom with the girls from school. Their families had the good seats, and all the good snacks.
At halftime, as Snoop Dogg crip-walked, Ice-T cop-walked, and Wells Fargo financed more of Blackrock’s homes, I went to the bathroom to empty out what I consumed. When I reached in my boxers, I found blood. In a panic, I ran to the sink, realizing that the “poke” was a stab wound, and the dark crimson fluid stained my Denim Tears.
A trio of gentlemen surrounded me. A tall man in a suit to my right showed me his phone, with his stock portfolio on the screen. He told me if I wanted to make it out of here alive, investing is the only way. I wondered why he was still there.
The man to my left, poorly-dressed, held a stack of books in his hands; some new, some used, others burned to a crisp. Reading the spines, I saw Marx, Lenin, Jordan and Fanon. He told me he knew who stabbed me and that understanding these books was the TRUE only way out. His conviction was convincing, and I believed him. Yet, there he was, hungrier than everyone else in the restroom.
The man in the middle had a bunch of napkins in his hands, but said before he could offer me any, he first needed me to publicly denounce the other two gentlemen, and support his organization with a small donation, so he can do the work to get others out alive.
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None of the 3 gentlemen gave me anything to stop the bleeding.
I ran out of the bathroom, slowing my run to a jog, then a speedwalk, as I seemed to be alerting the ICE agents that I was not content. I sat down in my seat, despondent. My kids were irritated, bored and ready to go. My wife returned, having watched almost 3 quarters of the game from someone else’s seat. I pulled her to the side and whispered that I’d been stabbed, and this was all a charade, and we were stuck in this stadium, and they ruined my favorite jeans, and some of these people have been here for years, and the game just ends and begins, and restarts over and over again, and nobody knows, or cares, and people still sell things anyway, with artificial joy, and arrogance, and they call it leisure, and the boys get recruited to train and play in the next game, or do the halftime show, or start selling stocks or wearing police badges, or pushing liquor, with fun, while the girls get trained to become cheerleaders, or real estate agents, or bottle girls, or model girls, or public relations for the boys with police badges, with synthetic fun, and Black girl magic, and we just gotta, we must, we have to figure out a way to get the hell outta this place, before the next game begins.
Hidden from her facial expression was a wandering mind. Remembering years of disappointment and unfaithfulness, horrified by all the times men left her unprotected from all the men with broken watches who can’t stop putting their hands on her body, intrigued by the rich men with the nice watches who smelled like luxury, annoyed by the basketball wives who scolded her for “settling”, and finally sick of Black men’s excuses about “capitalism this” and “white man that”, she was far too distracted to accept or process anything I was saying. Instead, she wondered why we weren’t sitting closer, wondered why she keeps attaching her future to broke niggas, wondered was she better off alone.
“Ok, baby”, she responded.
Looking around the arena, the weight of it all brought moisture to my eyes. The shimmering necklaces courtside, with speckles of Black entertainers sprinkled inbetween hierarchy rows, with the actual capitalists overseeing from the suites. The vendors, selling natural-flavored peanuts that cause cancer just to survive. And those poor little boys in the nosebleeds, downloading all of their dreams and their limitations inside the same 94 feet of hardwood. I wanted to reach for one of the ICE agents guns and get busy! But there was no time for blame, rage, or revenge.
I grabbed my wife’s hand, kissed the top of it softly, apologized for all the times I let her down, and lied about going to get some more soda-flavored pills.
I ran back to the bathroom, where the men awaited my return. The tall man in the red silk suit told me the AI revolution was coming fast, and if I didn’t “boss up”, I may as well kiss my family goodbye. For a brief moment, I thought about my wife and kids. Didn’t they deserve a “soft life”?
The man on the left snapped his fingers. “Wake up! If he was the way, why is he still here?”, he screamed.
“And YOU?”, I asked.
“I stayed behind and committed suicide to spread this message to you. Now, if you follow me, we need more men in the struggle.” He walked towards the door, but I stood still. I wanted to move, but I needed more information. Before I could ask, the man in the middle told me if I didn’t ignore the man on the left, and prevent the man on the right from taking power, we would ALL die in this arena. But I noticed he had on the same silk suit as the man on the right, just blue.
I sprinted out the bathroom with the man on the left. He said he didn’t know where we were going, but he knew how to get there. I asked him why weren’t there more people with us. He smiled, as he led me inside an empty coat-check closet, where he opened a trap door leading to an underground tunnel…
