Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Rap Brings Brothers Together

Ghostface Killah thunders from the blue car's speakers. My two younger brothers sit up front; Scott(four years younger) driving and Mike(eight years younger) beside him going through CDs. The blue car is a Saturn Ion. My entire family owns Saturns, so we differentiate them by color. Mike's car is the blue car, my mother's is the black, and Scott's is the white.

Normally we would be in the white car, but someone stole Scott's massive speakers out of the back while he was at work.

"Did you hear? Someone stole my fucking speakers, right out of the back of my car!" he says.

"How much was all that shit worth?" I ask.

"...a couple grand," he answers.

"Well...fuck."

He asks Mike to skip to the last track, "Three Bricks.", featuring the from the grave flow of the Notorious BIG. I ask Mike to instead to play the badmouthed kid skit. He chooses the latter and we all laugh at the child spewing profanities at Ghostface while he laments the perceived lack of discipline in today's children:

"That's the problem, ya'll kids don't get beat no more..."

I get Mike to play "The Champ" next, my favorite track. The fusion of lines from Rocky III and the boasts of Muhammad Ali delivered in guttural rage along side Killah's rapid-fire delivery is sick.

Mike moved into rap from metal during his last couple years of high school, though he still wears a Tool hoodie. The fact that we both own Fishscale -- though I bought it from Best Buy like a sucker -- is comforting. To say nothing of the nearly decade age gap it bridges, to me it shows that I haven't completely shed my connections with them and the old neighborhood. Or at least I hope it does. I've always had the sneaking feeling my brothers suspect that since I left PG County to live in relatively quiet Towson, then Foggy Bottom and now Columbia Heights, that I became somewhat...too highbrow for Laurel. Or that living in walking distance to Georgetown, having a real job and briefly being a married man, that I had grown up and looked back at them the way an adult might marvel at his baby pictures.

Ghostface brings me back to them, albeit with tons of obscenity.

We arrive at their gym in Bowie. Years ago when I still lived close by in Laurel, I worked out here. There was a Laurel location, but the basketball courts here are 94 feet long, like God intended.

The place hasn't changed much. The walk through the gravel parking lot; the climb up the stairs; the glass double doors; the familiarity is thick and I have to remind myself I wasn't just here yesterday. They even have my old information in their computer, and I spend a few minutes explaining to the front desk man that I don't live around here anymore, I'm just want to workout with my brothers today. Somehow, giving a former member a guest pass -- even at the absurd price of twenty dollars -- feels dirty to this man.

Catching up to Scott and Mike, I get berated for asking how much the guest pass was.

"You never ask how much," Scott says. "They might say 'fuck it' and just let you in, they don't care."

"I know, I just froze up. Technically I think I still owe them for four months back in 2002."

I have my own routine to do, so Scott and Mike go off to do their regular workout. I walk to the mat area, still in the same place. The machines are set up identically, though some are new. The walls are still lined with before and after pictures of the more persevering and disciplined members, portraits of the personal trainers, and basketball and racquet ball sign-ups.

Has nothing changed in Bowie?

It's painfully obvious one thing has when I rejoin Scott and Mike. I haven't worked out with Scott since before his stint as a Marine, and even then I considered it an accomplishment to lift the same weight, do the same amount of reps, or just to plain keep up with him since he was the athlete of the family. That was about four years ago.

Today, I find the Marines combined with his own discipline turned him into a machine. After watching him tear through an exercise, I don't even consider trying to keep up -- lightening the weight each time it's my turn. Mike does the same, though it doesn't seem to bother him at all.

"I don't think the kool-aid worked," he says.

The kool-aid is some kind of energy drink mix they took(and made me drink) before we left. It tastes like a sour version of it's namesake.

"This will get you jacked, son," Scott had said. "And this time, you won't puke."

Brothers never forget. Before a workout -- five fucking years ago -- Scott and his best friend(and current Marine) Greg coerced me into drinking a protein shake concoction of theirs. I downed the entire thing quickly, held it with a smile for a split second, promptly walked to the kitchen sink and heaved it all back up. Somehow, I still worked out that day.

Scott was right this time; I kept the entire thing down. Unlike his previous drink, this one doesn't taste like liquid feet.

Anyway, it doesn't seem to be working for Mike.

"Maybe it's because your working on four hours sleep dude," Scott says. "You stayed up all night again."

"That...could be it."

Good, two things haven't changed.

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