Thread: Tran-sending the ghetto (Contains some sexual references and language)

Outlook on a grim morning in the middle of Ramadan....

I stand tall, with an apathetically blank expression on my face, like I have just seen the genocide of ten thousand baby seals clubbed to death and somewhere deep inside I realized that I just don't care, as long as it's not me.

Better them than me, right?

I stare into a picture of a young me in my old apartment in the ghetto. The picture hangs loosely on a wall, attached by a yellowish piece of scotch tape. In the photograph I wear an over-sized jacket and look like a miniature gangster. I have the same expression on the picture. I look through my window and see a town that tries hard not to be a ghetto. Tries too hard but not enough. Just a collection of cleaned up projects. Projects, nonetheless. It is still uncomfortable to live here, or any other place in New York at this moment. Everything seems dirty and vile here. Like when a roach crawls over your newly washed floors. You know it won't taint them in the slightest, yet you feel the urge to wash it again and again, until you scrub the memory of the the little insect from your mind. Yes, the dirt and grime cover places on the outside, while stretching to depths only our emotions can reach. This doesn't mean I am not happy, so please don't label me as a pessimist, I am not.

I am trying to escape. Trying to get out. I pray that there is a place in the world, and I don't care if I have to conform or act like a decent, law abiding, dick-sucking citizen, where if I went to live there I could forget about the squalid lifestyle that I used to have. Somewhere where even if only one precious little baby seal was clubbed in the face, I would shed a tear.

At least feel a bit sad.

I sometimes imagine if it would be better living carefree on an island somewhere, drinking expensive liquor, eating healthy foods and swimming. It pains me to say that I would find a piece of the soul of the ghetto lying beneath the white sand. The underlying tone would still be that there is no point in this, it's just a big cover up. It was or will become a ghetto. I will feel undeserving. Then I would feel the island is supported through unsanitary means. Insane reasons. They are clubbing animal to death. Not tranquilizing, not humanly shooting them down with a rifle, but actually clubbing. Then they would sell the fur to aunt Bertha, who parades around, fat and loathsome, to get the approval of her friends.

Mindless aquatic distractions trying to destroy your real outlook of the world: ghetto. Ghetto. Ghetto.

A more refined ghetto. A slightly less ghetto. A place to make you forget the ghetto. Why does that word bother me so much now? You walk down the street and a group of young niggers calls you gay, faggot. Well, I get laid more than them, and I make more money. And I go to school. Yet I want to go up and confront them. It's all just a ghetto mentality. To be that false "man." To prove you have balls when you are just sucking life's dick. Life's juicy fat cock, enhanced to success by penis enlargement pills that now suddenly work. On the second try.

I look at my clock and it's off by an hour. What a drag. This is not a time to think right now. So... it's only 4am? And my life ends... in about xx to the tenth hours from now? What a long wait. Sorry to be so grim. It's early. Humans are very emotional at times. It's like have a brain period every now and again, depending on our serotonin levels in our brain.

So the ghetto is off my mind and I need to prepare for another day tomorrow. today. whatever.

Another year of college is starting and I need to kick this vicodin habit I am forming. Seems like it's my only escape at this point. My only real, true escape from the ugly underbelly of li- stop me if I am being morbidly cliche here. I do love life. Just sometimes I wish I could go into the mountains and practice kung-fu.

Wait

....

I found really nothing to hold on to in this piece. It seems like a drawn out ramble of a racist, misanthrope teen in an less than desirable neighborhood. Ask yourself these questions then rewrite: What is the intention of this? Why is this relevant to the reader? Will it capture their interest?
Because, it was a bit boring. Maybe including: Who this character is. Why he feels this way.(Maybe something happened to him.) Some detail of this "ghetto". Who are the people close to him. Why he's in the neighborhood. And the conflict of the story.

Just being truthful.

Haha, honesty is good! I have't written in like a year! I used to write all the time, but took a year off to work. The more brutal the response the easier it is for me to get back into the game.

Thanks for the advice man. I'll fix it up.

alentravorsky - I'm an old white man and you, presumably, are a young black man, but I've been around the world a few times. There's plenty to hold onto in your words. A ghetto is not a physical place. A ghetto is in the mind, planted so deep the world itself becomes a ghetto.

The L&N railroad tracks were three doors down from the house where I was born. Along the tracks for two blocks were the section houses. The railroad was divided into sections of 40 miles, and each section had a full-time crew that maintained the tracks and roadbed. In the South all the section crews were black, and they lived in houses provided by the railroad. They were good houses, at least as good as the houses in that white middle-class neighbourhood where I lived my first seven years. They were better maintained than most, and neatly kept. The railroad insisted on that, and bore the costs of upkeep. The section foreman was not only the boss of the work gang, he was also, you might say, the 'policeman' for the section houses and tolerated no drunkenness or rowdy behaviour. The section hands received good wages and lived in the section houses rent-free. They were essential to the safe operation of the road, so they were well taken care of. It was a nice place to live.

It was a ghetto.

This was Mississippi, 1940s. There were few other white kids in the neighbourhood, so I spent most of my time playing with the section kids. One of them was my best friend, and we became famous for searching around for the best lunch every day, going to my house, his house, my grandmother's house, his aunt's house, and inviting ourselves in to eat with whatever looked best that day. No one ever turned us away. Everyone saw us as just a couple of kids who meant no harm, and extra plates were always provided at the table.

Then school started, and I suddenly found out that my friend and I were different kinds of people. We talked the same two languages, black and white, we played the same games, we dressed the same way, we liked the same kinds of food, but once out of our little two-block-long world we were not the same. I went to a school he could not go to. I went to movies he could not see. Whenever the weather was really hot my sister and I would walk to Stone's Ice Cream Parlour for a cone. My friend could not go in Stone's. He was different.

All of a sudden we were made aware of the fact that the rest of the world saw us as two different kinds of kids, one white, the other black. We'd never noticed. Suddenly we had to. Suddenly we were faced with 'white only' signs. Suddenly, for my friend, those comfortable section quarters became a ghetto.

I grew up with the whole world to explore. He grew up in a ghetto. A nicely kept, comfortable ghetto, but a ghetto nonetheless.

Kick the Vicodin. Open your mind to two facts. One, you will always carry the ghetto with you, no matter what sunshiny Caribbean beach you lie on. My part of the old neighbourhood was not a ghetto, but remains with me as the starting point of everythng I do and still surrounds me everywhere I go. Two, you can park the ghetto in one corner of your mind and explore the rest of the world without unpacking all your baggage everywhere you stop.

Black, white, city, small town, old, young, we're all the same. The ones who try to say we are not are the ones who truly live in a ghetto, one of their own building.