Tommy's rehab

Tommy was sick and tired of all this shit. He was stoned, like every morning. He had a headache, had had trouble standing up. He was not even thirty years old and, at this pace, he would not last very long. His apartment looked like a pigsty.  Bottles were littering the ground, it was a scene of desolation after a battle. He had to ask a stranger to get out of his room again. The guy was slumped in his sheets, all dressed with his shoes on. Cautious, Tommy had kindly asked him to leave. He never knew what kind of moron he could run into, he didn't want to die this morning. The guy had left by taking his time, vaguely provocative.  Those ghetto assholes were all mythomaniacs. They acted as if the city was at their feet, when no one cared about these badgers. They were all involved in drug dealing, making their way to rapper parties. More precisely, rapper gangsta asked them once or twice to do extras in their clips, as Tommy had done, and the guys thought they were his buddies. And they brought their friends to impress them. After that, it was impossible to get rid of them.  There were always fellas, invited by no one knew who, who were hitting on bitches, dancers, models who were the essential ingredient of any good rapping evening, with alcohol and drugs.

All this folk-life, he couldn't take it anymore. He had a great apartment in a trendy neighborhood. But, with his bullshit and his connections, the neighbors had already signed a petition to make him leave. The neighbours were couples or singles with no history, people who went to work in the morning or worked at home, gathered at the neighbourhood's organic leisure clubs, said hello when they saw him on the stairs. At first, Tommy was well received. They knew how to behave with Blacks in this hipster neighborhood. Most of them had voted for Obama, and they had learned, at university, about the long struggle of Blacks to achieve equal opportunities. Tommy had even made friends with a chick from the building. He had fucked her one night. But after two or three evenings, the neighbours had turned away from him, the neighbour had become distant. Tommy couldn't blame them, he had screwed up.

Tommy had kids everywhere, kids born of one-night stands, deplorable coitus with drunk or cokeheaded chicks.

He could see that he was replicating the pattern of his father who had left him when he was a toddler. Tommy's mother had fought all her life to have Tommy recognized by an indifferent father. His mother was a modest woman, probably not very smart. She had been young, cute, available. Tommy saw her in all the bitches he'd fucked, he knew the context. His father had died the year before, stabbed to death outside a dodgy bar. He was a player, ex-hopeful of the blues who had burned all his chances of breaking through by leading a life of madness, high every night with everything that could enter through his orifices. The father had been in jail, Tommy could see that this kind of misadventure could happen to him. With all the coke and crack in his house, it was amazing that the cops hadn't arrived yet.

Tommy forced himself to move. He dragged himself to the bathroom. The bathtub was dirty, there were footprints everywhere; there were still guys who had peed there, unable to access the toilets. Tommy blew out of frustration, opened the shower tap. He came out of the bathroom, went around the rooms. There was nothing left in the furniture drawers and closets. The guys had already used his stuff. They even robbed him of his underwear and took it away. Tommy had been forced to lock his clothes in metal trunks, closed with large padlocks.

It was still a mess everywhere. Everything was rotten, with stains of alcohol, cigarettes and cum.

Tommy went back to the bathroom and stood directly under the shower stream, all dressed up. He undressed slowly, threw his soaked clothes in a corner.

He slowly collapsed, crying. He stayed under the hot shower jet for a long time, until the hot water from the cumulus was exhausted and the water became cold. He was feeling better now.

He was still thinking of Molefi Kete asante, the Philadelphia teacher, and his son the writer. He thought like that, regularly, of all those intellectuals, the Lerone Bennett, Jr, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Kobi K.K. Kambon, all the black intellectuals of today.

No one knew, but Tommy was reading these people. He had subscribed to several magazines such as Black and Proud, Empowered, Pitt Magazine that shared the experiences, aspirations of African Americans who were raising their heads. All these people worked hard, graduated, got up so that their skin colour would not be an obstacle anymore.

What about him, Tommy? He was just a big piece of shit. He had no extraordinary athletic qualities, no fantastic intellectual abilities, he had had this taste for music. He had written a few lousy lines for his shitty songs, had opened a recording studio door. He was lucky, he had made it. But, for how long? with his lifestyle, he didn't have much money saved, the status of a rap star forced him to have beautiful cars, to invite many people to parties. Well, he had still given money to his mother and sister to put it aside, but it was not a serious management plan.

What did he want to do, really? He wanted to go to university.

He suddenly rushed to his room, searched his cell phone for the address of a cleaning company. After finding a number, he called: "Yes, hello, I have an apartment to clean out, put everything in the dumps. I'd need a team to get everything in order, get a little paint on, can you do that? Yeah, when?"

He gave his coordinates, hung up. He called the agency that rented him the apartment, gave his leave. He would have left before the end of the month. He again called the leasing company to also terminate the lease of his car. The Ferrari left the same evening. He finally called his banker to make an appointment and take an overview.

He walked around the apartment, naked, picking up everything that was lying around. He spent two hours cleaning, rubbing, emptying the apartment of everything that was lying around, starting with the empty coke bags that were lying around.

After several hours, he had filled nine garbage bags with everything that had been important in his life. He dressed and took the garbage out of the containers of the residence. 

He then walked out to a local hairdresser's house. He waited a few minutes under astonished eyes. When it was his turn, he asked the hairdresser to shave his head. The guy smiled, hesitated a little before asking him: "You are?..." The guy had said his stage name. No, Tommy wasn't that man anymore. He smiled kindly, admitted that he looked a lot like the rapper but it wasn't him and that, moreover, he didn't want to look like him anymore. The other did not insist.

After leaving the hairdresser's, Tommy called a taxi to go to a second-hand car dealer in Bensalem. He bought a black Hyundai Accent, a small, clean, ugly car, an Uncle Tom's car as he called it.

Between his new haircut and his broke little student car, he was moving fast away from his hip hop star image. He completed this action by going, with his Hyundai, to the Buffalo Exchange on Chestnut Street. He bought a complete wardrobe of office workers, the kind that pleased his mother...

When he got home, he put his last Hip Hop joker outfit in the garbage and went out, dressed like a normal dude.

He spent the end of the week in a motel on the outskirts, to avoid meeting the usual parasites at his door. He only came back to town to settle his last business. He didn't answer to anyone, neither to the chicks nor to his "buddies". He left a message saying that he was going on a trip, that it was useless to leave a message. Every night, he found himself with about ten messages. This said a lot about the level of concentration of those around him.

He took the opportunity to go for a medical check-up at a clinic. It was confirmed to him that he had abused drugs and alcohol quite a bit and that it was time to drink water and play sports. He followed a detoxification program and enrolled in a hiking club. It was perfect, the old people didn't know him. He discovered the wonders of Neshaminy State Park and Ringing Rocks County Park, and laughed with Whites. In other words, he opened his mind to something else than the ghetto subculture.

His last album had been released. He did his interviews, a cap screwed on his head with huge mirror glasses that ate his face. He was modest and kind but openly ignored coded rap messages, silly messages, vulgar questions. He preferred to talk about his passion for philosophy and the great black American authors, Octavia Butler, Roxane gay or Ralph Ellison. The radio hosts were just stupid.

He had discreetly enrolled in Temple University literature classes under his real name. There, he met several interesting people, the kind he had always wanted to be with. He was encouraged to continue his studies. He chose, without telling anyone, to study financial analysis. He realized he was good at this stuff. This helped him, moreover, to make more appropriate financial investments.

His new lifestyle disappointed many of his fans but won him the attention of other categories of individuals. He went back to the studios, but again, not the ones he had been in until then. He changed his phone number, worked with Indian, Chinese and European artists. He even participated in a symphonic work. He started advertising car brands, he became a presentable black man. It would make people talk, he didn't give a shit.

The rap media made him miserable, it was said that he had become a snob, that he had turned his back on his bros. It was funny, he was driving in a poor man's car, dressing in thrift stores, no longer spending thousands of euros celebrating and he was being called a snob. As for his "friends", he ignored them. All they had to do was find another dummy. He reconnected with some, however, those who had moved away from him when he was out in his gangsta delirium.

He also decided to recognize all the natural children he had had. Whenever possible, when the mother agreed, he would receive them at his home, write to them, try to do his best as a father. There were thus four children whom he tried to follow and accompany. He married one of the mothers.

After two years, after longer and longer stays and three published books, Tommy decided to move permanently to New York. There was a community of artists and intellectuals with whom there was an affinity. He opened a management company, specialized in the entertainment world, and led a quiet life in Williamsburg. He was out of the ghetto. rehabbed.

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