Black Buck(96)
They looked at each other for a long time. Jason whispered something to her, then she whispered something back. They turned around and headed for the door.
I bent down and sat on the floor, exhausted. I’d given it my all. I understood why they didn’t trust me, why they wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me.
“Aye!” Jason called.
When I looked up, they were both standing in the doorway, smiling.
“We’re in,” Soraya said. “But only as long as you keep it one hundred with us. The minute this goes south, we’re out. You got it?”
“Yeah,” I said, finally feeling like I understood who Ma was talking about when she said she wanted me to be who I was always meant to be. “I got it.”
“And I gotta boyfriend now. So don’ think this means there’s anything between us.”
“I got that too.”
“So where the fuck do we start?” Jason asked, taking off his Mickey D’s hat and dunking it into the garbage. “I’m tryna make that Daddy Warbucks paper.”
V.
Close
The good and the great are only separated by the willingness to sacrifice.
—KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR
6 Months Later
28
I know. The turns in this story are half absurd, half jaw-dropping, and a whole heaping of crazy. But I assure you, every single line is true. I’ve taken countless hours to teach you how to get ahead, to unshackle yourself from the fetters of the twenty-first century, and my job is almost done. But before I go, you must be curious as to how I ended up where I am today—writing to you from the penthouse of a one-hundred-one-year-old building worth millions of dollars that overlooks Central Park.
Well, I suppose all good things must come to an end, including the picture I painted for you when we met. Because, while I am writing this cautionary memoir from the highest floor of my building, the room I’m sitting in is six by eight feet. And if you need me to spell it out, that means I’m in prison—Lincoln Correctional Facility. Inmate number 8121988, nice to meet you. And now I’m sure as hell that you have more questions than a kid with ADHD watching porn for the first time, so let me explain how I became one of the one in three Black males who finds himself locked up. It all came down to one night.
Once we got the Happy Campers up and running, which took no time with the help of Rose, Brian, Ellen, and Jake, our numbers grew by twenty new recruits a week. That was even with us all working on it only part-time. Rose was in charge of making sure everything ran smoothly. Ellen created “homework,” which consisted of dangerous and almost life-threatening assignments for the recruits to execute. Brian was a counselor, ensuring that everyone found jobs. Jake took care of our financial and legal apparatus. And what did I do? Well, I was our fearless leader, the HNIC, and my job was to rally everyone behind our mission, be the final say on disputes, and ensure that we spread faster than syphilis in the sixties.
You see, in addition to directly bringing Happy Campers into Sumwun, the way it all worked was that I’d recommend Happy Camper SDRs to Barry and his portfolio companies. After surviving our top-notch sales boot camp, the SDRs would, of course, destroy the interview and get hired. Once hired, they’d recommend one or two other Happy Campers to the company, who would, of course, also be the best SDRs the company had ever laid their pretty blue or green eyes on.
At tech startups, there’s this ridiculous thing called a referral fee. So if I refer a friend to a job at my company and they get hired, I get a few thousand dollars, maybe more. The Happy Campers had a tradition of always donating half of your first paycheck to the organization as well as at least twenty-five percent of any referral fees you earned. And if the average SDR was getting paid a base salary of $40,000 a year, average referral fees were $5,000 per referral, and we had more than 250 Happy Campers, well . . .
This is getting more technical than it has to be. But all you need to know is that within six months we had close to half a million dollars in our bank account, a dozen chapters in every major American tech hub—New York, Boston, Austin, San Francisco, Raleigh, Seattle—and were expanding internationally to places like Dublin, London, and Tel Aviv, all while remaining anonymous. You know what? Let me shut the fuck up and just show you how it would go.
Picture two people, Mary and Denmark. Mary’s a senior SDR, maybe even a manager, at some bullshit startup in San Francisco. And Denmark just moved there from, say, Harlem. They don’t know each other, but through the network, Mary heard there may be a brother heading her way. Denmark walks into the bullshit startup, and since Mary is one of the few Black people there, if not the only one, some pigment-deficient higher-up, of course, micro-aggressively suggests she meet with Denmark to “you know, make him comfortable enough to show you the real him.”
Mary is sitting behind a desk. Denmark enters. Now watch closely. Mary, smiling, well dressed, and confident as a boss-ass bitch (BAB), will say, “How are you today?”
Denmark, breathing a sigh of relief as he hears the cue, answers with something like “Happy, thank you. How are you?”
Mary, now understanding that she is among family, says, “Happy as a camper,” before offering Denmark her right fist. To seal the deal and fully verify who Denmark is, Denmark bumps Mary’s fist and they each bring it to their chests—left side over the heart—twice. They’ll laugh, chat about mutual connections, and Mary will give Denmark the lay of the bullshit company’s land—fair starting salaries, who’s ass he needs to kiss in the interview, overseerlike folks to watch out for, and everything else he needs to know in order to navigate that instance of the Hundred Acre Peckerwood. Whoosh! Bang! Poof! Another young person of color is on their way to fat-pocketed professional success. And so the cycle continues.