Da West: No Villain, No Hero
“Villains and chaos give birth to heroes. But what if heroes are responsible for the chaos in which villains emerge? What if there are no antagonists to craft your story around? Who are you without the villains that have created you?”
Good storytellers will jump fences and cross tracks to find a soul-stirring story. They’ll allow their curiosity to thrust them to depths that will suffocate self-interest and quench fears so they no longer exist, then enliven a new connectedness with humanity. When they seek the tales of the lowbrow and mundane, they discover the pith of society. Scarface reminded me, “On my block, it’s like the world don’t exist; we stay confined to this small section we living in.” The margins are rich in stories that can slip out and redirect our ambitions back to them.
Scene: Friday, February 24th. Jamaican & American Cafe. West Tampa, Howard Ave, off Exit 42.
Kwon: “You still move with the same feeling of paranoia as when you were younger?”
K Luvv: “Yeah, bro, I still do, even if I ain’t in the streets like that no more. It’s natural at this point.”
Kwon: “Yeah, I bet it’s second nature by now, no matter where you are.”
*food arrives later in the conversation*
K Luvv: “I was fresh off the streets when I went to college. These were fuckin kids I was in class sitting next to; we ain’t have shit in common.”
I drove from Brandon to West Tampa to meet with a friend who reached out on Instagram a few weeks prior. He plans on crafting a daily journal for high school seniors transitioning to college and asked my advice.
After a few exchanges, we agreed to connect. Honestly, the only book I’d ever planned on releasing was scrapped, unready for the scorching eyes of a cold world. But the process of composing it gave me enough experience to offer him whatever knowledge I’d had about writing and publishing.
I casually strolled into the small Jamaican cafe an hour late with a few of my own journals in a black Nike backpack. It was old fashioned, in a small strip just off Exit 42, on Howard Ave; slightly tattered on the outside with a Bahamian flag-colored overhang and outmoded on the inside.
When I entered, Kevin(K Luvv) sat in a booth toward the back, poised and attentive, facing the door and looking at his phone. We dap’d up, and he motioned me to the counter to order food from the menu written in black marker on a whiteboard, which he offered to pay for before sauntering back to the booth.
I had jerk chicken with cabbage; he ordered fried snapper and mango iced tea. The two cooks spoke softly and moved with ease rather than scurrying between the grill and the kitchen.
The ambient sounds were felt strongly in the silence. It was a quiet and empty mom-and-pop shop, and each detail about the room gave to its size. The smell of curry and spices gripped my nostrils soon after I walked in. A young man and a woman were sitting on the barstools eating at the counter; both looked like they lived near the area.
As small as the cafe was, the details pushed the four walls further apart. I heard a still fan running and music coming from a radio near us. One woman working in the back was older and polite, tawny-skinned with glasses, and had a heavy accent that drifted in and out of patois when speaking to the cook, a younger brown-skinned woman.
She told us the cafe had been around for 20 years. Kevin followed with a story about a man being shot and killed in the location before this one.
This was his second time inviting me to his old neighborhood— his home. I noticed him move through the space with a sense of familiarity and belonging, and he spoke to the cashier and cook with patience. It was like he knew no one here would harm him. And he ensured the same safety for them.
The structure of the hood has always seemed like a microcosm of restorative communities. One of the phones he had stacked on top of one another rang every few minutes, and as people entered, his eyes would raise before greeting whoever walked in.
Even though I’d written a story about him last year in July, I still asked questions I either knew or couldn’t believe the answers to. Some stories sound more troubling, more unbelievable, with each recount.
He spoke assuredly of the things artists lie about in rap stories, with the anxiety of a veteran telling war stories, and talked about his childhood and growing up in the West raised around street dudes and dope boys— those who smoked and who served.
He narrated with conviction and acceptance of the cards life dealt him, knowing much of what he experienced as an adolescent was uncommon and traumatic for most. We continually hold our lives in tandem with what culture deems normal— or even safe. One of the means of measuring just how warped our upbringings are and the extent to which the system has broken and assorted our experiences.
Our unique depths of trauma experiences have disconnected us as much as anything else. This is likely why Kevin assured me, “These college kids I was in class with ain’t have shit in common with me.”
During our conversation, something briefly blurred the line between two distinct realities. If you were to bring a young black boy in and ask him which one of us he aspired to be when he got older, neither answer would be completely wrong. He’d be staring at one possibility of himself, not knowing the paths that led us there, through college and even the same fraternity.
In both of us, beneath reserved demeanors and graffitied bodies, you could see two stories of odds defied. K Luvv was nothing short of the kind of guy I was warned to either stay away from or limit contact with as a child out of fear my sanctity and safety were being compromised. Guys we figured we were safer and more well-off than, but still wanted to be like them. Those we feared from afar but wanted to be known by.
Much of our safety seemed tied to their mercies and good decisions. But they were either the extent of our manhood or told us something else about the existence and possibilities of black boys. Something about what we needed to become or who we might drift toward being.
Praying women kept me in church and believed the environment he navigated, the same one they were raised in, would mold me into who many feared young men in the hood could devolve into.
Strangely, no matter how good a kid I was, the world looked at me and saw what it dreaded, who I fought not to be. And I could easily be a victim of this fear.
Our lives and upbringings were completely opposite, and strangely, past the awkward, stern-faced interactions and artless talk of urban black men, we found common ground. Our uniquely trodden paths brought us through a wilderness and valley and back to the same place.
Almost ten years later, it’s funny to say I didn’t listen to my elders because here I am, having lunch with a street dude who went to college, became a father and bulldog breeder, and still kept his block warm. I’d tell them even Jesus sat with sinners and tax collectors. In his song, “Someday,” Scarface reminded me, “I’m a sinner in the third degree. Ain’t afraid, 'cause I done’ seen niggas worse than me.”
The long life of a villain might be grace extended, and the short life of a saint is wrath withheld. And heroes need villains to be heroes, but what happens when villains have a change of heart? What if there are no longer villains to craft your story around? We need things and people to fail so we can be saviors or false representations of The real one.
Jay Z once said in a song with Kanye West, “Die and be a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.” But I was no saint nor hero and was still inclined to be as much of a villain as anyone else; my ignorance took form, even if it wasn’t the same as K Luvv’s and those around me. The streets took no prisoners and still accepted them. But Luvv was raised in them and didn’t need to adjust, like Bane and his momentous Batman speech. He beat the feds and streets bloody with his bare hands, and any soldiers lost, he inked on his body— those in prison or recovering from years of incarceration or no longer here.
Outside, Kevin smiled and motioned to a woman across the street. She was slim with lustrous dark skin and black hair. She looked giddy yet unbothered and greeted us both. She jokingly referred to him as “her husband,” and they crossed the street after he offered her a ride home.
It was all like watching a movie. The track for the scene of them walking back to his car would've been the Five Stairsteps “O-o-h Child.”
The sun’s rays danced on my skin as I slowly paced back to my car, observing a halfway-gentrified side of town; it was just a matter of time. Old residents and those raised here protected this side from the most dangerous threat to a neighborhood— not guys from the other side— the system trying to erase it and displace everyone there.
I realized I was looking at someone you would’ve convinced me was a villain 15 years ago, but I guess villains wear capes too. And here he was, again, in front of someone he didn’t have shit in common with. Heroes and Villains rarely have anything in common.
Told by: Kwon
