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it back home in one piece. We knew that if we tested the wrong people uptown that we were liable to get killed at the blink of an eye. See, cats from uptown were ruthless. Uptown cats were the type that dealt with beef by literally cutting your head off and leaving it on your doorstep along with the daily newspaper. Your severed head would be a gift from them to your moms. So, needless to say, getting into any fights uptown was out of the question, unless of course we were getting totally played to the point where we’d have no other choice but to fight.
    Wednesday was also the night you could find out who had the best car in the Tri-State area. We stood and watched mad fly whips drive by. Top of the line BMWs, Mercedes, Ninja bikes, Lamborghinis, Lexuses—you name it, we saw it. There were so many chromed-out cars custom fitted with ragtops, spoilers, sunroofs, different color leather interiors which were made available by way of legendary Harlem entrepreneur Dapper Dan, neon-lights, and anything else you could imagine. Some cats had even bit the West Coast style and put hydraulics on their rides in order to make them bounce up and down.
    Fourth Crew’s biggest and only shortcoming as far as we were concerned was not having a phat ride. No one in the crew had a spanking car that they could claim as their own, and definitely not one that could match up with the expensive whips that we would see uptown every Wednesday night. In fact, it wasn’t just cars that we didn’t possess. It was gold chains and all of that other materialistic crap, too. And boy, did we wish we did own the gold chains and the phat cars just so that we would have been able to impress all of the females in the street.
    There were always a few ladies that who would give us some play and kick it to us for a little while, but they were never the Janet Jackson types. The Janet Jacksons wouldn’t dare talk to us because they were always on some, “What can you do for my image and can you help me to maintain the way I look?” shit. We didn’t have that Mercedes or those diamond studded medallions and rings. To put it in street lingo, our pockets weren’t fat.
    Something, however, was different about that Wednesday night. Due to the fact that we looked like we didn’t have much loot, we got dissed by females, which wasn’t so unusual. But usually we didn’t let the chickenheads that dissed us override the fun we would have. Personally, I could have cared less, ’cause see, my girl, Sabine, treated me real good and she wasn’t into all of that materialistic garbage. Besides, if those girls out there did ever talk to me or to anyone in the crew, all we would be after would be a piece of nah-nah. So getting dissed never hurt my ego too badly, because we were just kicking game to them anyway. After all, the whole player process is like one continuous game.
    But Latiefe and Randy, gigolos number one and two respectively, always let the disrespect bother them. I guess it was their egos playing insecure tricks on them. Latiefe’s hurt ego was probably what sparked off criminal minded conversation later that night. Rather, I should say early the next morning, because by the time we returned home from Harlem, it was technically a new day.
    Just like every Wednesday, that Wednesday also eventually came to an end. Unfortunately, that night we swayed from our normal routine and we didn’t visit Willie Burgers. We all just drove home. Xavier had driven us all back to the block. He went to his crib and the rest of us stood out in front of my house and talked until the sun rose.
    I was glad that Xavier had left us for his bed, because we started talking about conducting illegal ways to get paid, and I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to see Xavier getting caught up in anything illegal. Xavier only had one more year of college to complete, and I didn’t want things to end up for him the way they had for