Day 2: Like Kids Again

My nephew, Desmond, was my first friend.

We grew up like brothers, raised in the same apartment as toddlers. Like me, he’s a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker who carries a profound and passionate love for the place he was born and reared. And like me, he moved someplace where making a life didn’t seem as difficult. He’s now married with a teenage son and living in Florida, but the life he had in Brooklyn is never as far away as all that.

It was entirely coincidental that our plans had us home at the same time. That hasn’t happened since I left New York myself. It turned out that the vacation he needed to re-center himself came at the same time as the one I needed to rediscover myself. We both had plans to get to “the source,” our old Flatbush block, to visit old friends. It only made sense that we ride together. Since my luggage was still in Canarsie, I made the train trek from Akeem’s Bushwick apartment to my sister’s place. A shower and a change of clothes followed.

Desmond arrived an hour or so later, and we took a minute to catch up. While we talk frequently, we hadn’t seen each other in over a year. He was escaping “some job bullshit,” and was excited to be home on a solo trip. We shot the breeze briefly and mused about life as adults and the responsibilities therein. Nyilah and Dionne came in while we talked and they caught up with Des; the three of them hadn’t seen each other in an unforgivably long time.

Des and I hopped a bus across Brooklyn to Flatbush to meet up with Kevin, a friend of ours who has long shared our independent spirit. Kev always had the kind of talent that seemed effortless. He dabbled in things—drawing, painting, photography, graphic design, among others—at a near-professional level. When we were teenagers, we collaborated on a comic book we called Flatline. It was our first attempt at ambitious, creative entrepreneurship. We never finished it because Kev found his true calling in music production and sound design, and has since had his hands on some great projects, like the SyFy series Z Nation and the DirecTV ad “Football on Your Phone” with Peyton Manning. Kev’s current project is a podcast, Voices In My Head, that he wanted to interview Desmond and me for. But that’s later.

We met Kev at Café Madeleine, a small hipster café that seemed out of place in my memory of Flatbush. The neighborhood has been in the rapidly expanding path of eastbound gentrification. Whether that’s good, bad, or neither, I can’t say; I did wonder, though, how many of the working-class people I knew a decade ago would find themselves among the students and freelancers using this place’s free Wi-Fi. After greetings, it came time to figure out what to do with our evening, and we came up with the only thing that any self-respecting adult from Brooklyn would ever want to do.

Coney Island. Duh.

But first, Kev figured he’d surprise his mom and bring us with him. It was on the way to the subway, and she’d want to see us anyway. As kids, we were in each other’s homes so much that all our parents had six or seven surrogate children. Our parents shared joy in all our accomplishments, whether we were their biological sons or not. We hadn’t seen Kev’s mom in ten years, maybe more, but when we stepped through that door, it was like no time had passed. She was still the same bubbly, energetic, loving, fast-talking Panamanian woman I remembered. She even looked the same—not that I’m surprised because black don’t crack. She hugged Desmond and me, sat with us and let us know how pleased she was that we weren’t the same knuckleheads we were as teens. She followed Desmond’s accomplishments as part of the U.S. Martial Arts Team and said proudly that she read my first novel. We enjoyed her company for a while, then made our way to Coney Island.

We called Leander, another longtime co-conspirator, to join us and off we were. We had dinner and drinks at Applebee’s and did some boardwalk navel-gazing before we decided to hit up the bumper cars.

I must say, there’s something liberating about removing the responsibility and consequence from driving. It turns everyone into a big kid. Low-speed collisions of rubber fenders and bumpers are fantastic fun. We laughed and shouted like we were six years old. Eight bucks, well spent. We upped the ante to go-karting, which stoked our competitive fire even though there was no way to tell who was winning.

On our way to the Wonder Wheel, we came across a new attraction, one where the seats moved around as part as an immersive, 3-D interactive horror movie.

It was competitive, of course, and even though I won the game, CGI zombies overwhelmed us by the end of it. From there, we hit the Wonder Wheel, and it was like we were kids again, just acting stupid and having fun. We did another round of Go-Karts and a couple of roller coasters and then strolled the boardwalk. Four old friends, kicking it old-school.

It sucked when we had part ways. But the thing about adulthood is that there’s something important to do the next day, even when you’re on vacation.

#2017 #Brooklyn #NewYorkCity #family #friends #love #Spring #ConeyISland