Da Art of Ridin Shotgun

November, 1994

“Dude, I’m telling you, you gotta see it. My girl Uma is in it, John Travolta, and that guy everyone thinks you look like,” Davante strains while trying to hold the smoke in his lungs, extending his right arm to pass the lit blunt to me from behind the wheel of his rickety 1986 Toyota Tercel. Between the pot and this car’s engine it smells like someone doused a skunk in Penzoil and set it on fire.  I pinch the spliff tightly between my thumb and forefinger to retrieve it from his grasp.  

“Eric Stoltz,” I say before raising the blunt to my lips while he shifts gears. “That’s my dude but are you serious? John Travolta? What the hell was the last movie that guy was in,” I add, exhaling so I can take my second hit before returning the blunt. 

“Wasn’t he in that talking baby movie?  Oh, that reminds me, Bruce Willis is in it too.”

This is pretty much how we roll. Davante driving, me riding.  It’s the only car we have and I don’t drive stick so in reality we ain’t got much choice. It’s become such second nature that we reflexively sit in the same configuration when we go to parties, him on the left, me on the right. Roll dawgs. 

We tried it the other way, once.  Went to Daytona Beach last Spring Break in a rented Cavalier.  He drove from southern Ohio all the way to Georgia, overnight, finally asked for a break so I took over just outside of Atlanta, at rush hour, after riding all night, smoking blunts the entire way. He made me pull off at a rest stop after about 30 minutes, convinced I was going to kill us. I wasn’t so sure he was wrong.  “Franticity.”  That’s what he calls my driving style.  

Suckas causing static cause they still be disagreein’

I don’t give a — cause I’m from F-L-I-N-T

M.C. Breed is one of the handful of cassettes we have in this hooptie along with a bunch of mixes by our boys Gerald and Darrell - G & D when they’re DJing. The tape deck is even more janky than the car. There’s a pair of lock pliers latched where the volume knob should be. That fell off on the trip to Toronto.  There’s also a pair of needle nose for when the tape gets stuck, which happens all the time.

“Yo, let me get that Snapple,” Davante asks, as he returns the dwindling Swisher Sweet to me, trading it for the requested beverage.  I feel I’ve perfected the art of riding shotgun.  Navigate, keep the music bumping, keep an eye out for Five-Oh, snacks, drinks, roll the blunts. 

 Davante continues campaigning me to see this movie. “Peep it though, at one point ol’ girl finds his sack of heroin and accidentally OD’s and then they bring her out of it by stabbing her in the heart with an adrenaline shot. Tarantino is buckwild.” 

“Yeah, I saw “Reservoir Dogs” but that doesn’t even sound plausible,” I shoot back. “You can’t stop an OD with a shot.”

I put the finishing hit on the blunt. “This thing is cashed.” Ash falls onto my gray Seton Hall sweatshirt as I crack the window and flick out the remnant of our last bit of weed.  Just in time too because a police cruiser pulls up on the other side of the intersection as we stop for a red light.  

To quote Slick Rick, this type of shit happens every day.  Of course we ran out of ganja just as a cop showed up. When the two of us are together it's like we’ve got this mystical bullshit deflector that deploys. We have zero control over it. Things just work out. We call it our Funky Twin powers.  Borrowed that from L.L. and Lords of the Underground.

Like the time we drove down to see Lil Mama.  Big ass thunderstorm hits just as we’re nearing her neighborhood.  This thing was torrential. Hail, lightning, the whole shebang. Forced us off the road.  When it slowed down enough for us to get rolling again, there was a rainbow up ahead and where does it appear to end? Right in her backyard.

Or that crazy trip to Daytona. Once we finally got down there, we were supposed to meet up with the girls in our crew but not so shockingly, after smoking for 16 straight hours, we couldn’t remember where they said they were staying. We finally gave up, so Davante pulled into this two-bit motel because it was the first one we had passed that still had its “Vacancy” sign lit.  Guess who we see walking across the parking lot with a bucket full of ice? 

Our motto has become, “fuck it, somethin’ll happen.”

I put two cigarettes in my mouth, light them both, and hand one over. Another shotgun duty - lighting the squares. That should cover whatever lingering blunt smoke is still in the air and isn’t already covered by the smell of the exhaust pipe.

“Over here Mr. Officer. I’m the one you’re looking for,” Davante taunts, waving his left hand just slightly from its 12 o’clock position on the steering wheel as he aggressively exhales cigarette smoke.  It’s about 10:30, so his antics are covered by the dark. His light brown skin illuminated by the red glow of the traffic light, he turns his Tigers hat around so that the Old English D is facing backwards. That’s how I always know shit is serious. 

 “Mack, look, this poor sucker is probably gonna be out here, all night, searching for people fucking up and we’re right in front of his nose.”  He almost sounds sympathetic and he’s certainly not wrong. We are high as shit.  Even though we’re out of weed, we’ve got a coffee can full of cigar guts and I guarantee our eyes are about as cracked as a downtown L.A. shop window after the riots. That’s “probable cause” all day.  Might not get arrested but this late at night I sure as hell am not interested in being cuffed while we wait for the K9 unit to arrive, plus we still got an hour drive back to campus as it is.

The light changes and we both pass through the intersection, heading opposite directions. The entrance ramp to the turnpike is just up ahead.  I watch Davante watch the cop in the rear view.

“One of these times, this is gonna bite us in the ass,”  I assert.

Breed is still in the tape deck. “I’m switching it up.”  I hit the eject button and miraculously the tape actually pops out.  I grab one of G & D’s mixtapes and feed it back in.  It starts in the middle of Mary J. Blige “Real Love” mixed with the beat from “Paid in Full” by Eric B and Rakim.  I gotta learn how to do that.

I ash my cigarette in the now empty iced tea bottle and as I sit back, I see a flash of red and blue across Davante’s face.

“Aw fuck!”

I spin around to see the cruiser pull a U-turn, lights on, siren screaming. I’m suddenly aware of my heartbeat throbbing in my neck. I start searching the floor for the spray can of concentrated air freshener we keep but it’s impossible to find anything in this mess. 

Davante lets off the accelerator and shifts into neutral as the Tercel coasts to a stop on the side of the road, his eyes fixed on the mirror.  Mr. Officer is coming fast. Six million scenarios are playing out in my head all at once.

And then, he blows right past us.  

Whoever he’s after, it’s not us. Within seconds the flashing lights are far in front of us, he hangs the next right, tires squealing, and he’s gone. Davante wastes no time putting the Tercel back in gear, steering us back onto the route to the turnpike. 

“Guess he found someone who was fucking up, huh?”

I immediately light two more Camels as my breathing slowly returns to a reasonable pace.  The Tercel glides up to the turnpike toll booth and Davante accepts the ticket from the white-haired woman seated there. I wonder about what must have happened in her life that she’s this old, working this late on a Sunday night doing this horrible job.

The gate raises and as we pull through, I see two signs, east to Cleveland, west to Toledo.  The weed combined with the residual effect of the adrenaline rush from our close encounter causes me to blank on which way to go. We gotta stop smoking this shit. 

“Well, navigator?” I hear the sarcasm in his voice, but he doesn’t know either

G & D’s mixtape answers for me.

Awwwwwwwww, yeah, ah come on come on come on

To the East, my brother, to the East

Uh, to the East, my brother, to the East, come on

They mixed out of “Paid in Full” and into “Fire & Earth” by X-Clan. We both stare at the tape deck in utter disbelief because sure enough, it’s right. “You heard the man. Git to gittin’, driver,” I retort with equal amounts of sarcasm and amazement.

Funky Twin powers, activate.