Yo, for real, son...

...I say "nigga" a LOT. For real, today I was chilling with my boys because it was raining and we couldn't play tennis (real hood, street tennis of course) and I'm pretty certain I said "nigga" more than ten times in one sentence. Mind you, it was a long sentence. It was one of those distinctly Jonathan sentences that goes on for a while but doesn't necessarily mean anything once it's out there. Frankly, I don't even remember what we were talking about. All I know is that once I was done with my bit it was quiet. My boy Day-Day was the first to speak up:

"Son, you said nigga a LOT."

Again it was quiet, we were thinking about it. He spoke up again:

"For real, though, we all be saying shit way too much."

Once more, silence, even longer this time. The six of us: three Filipinos, one Cambodian, and two "Niggas" were somehow made to ponder our diction for what seemed like hours. As I considered how it was I became so comfortable with the term, I also wondered what the others were thinking. The thoughts of my black brothers were of particular interest to me. I'd always wondered what their stand on our use of the term was. What were the rules for its use? The black man has since come to own the term, but did we qualify? Was our status as minorities payment enough for a title that had so long been derogatory? Was the power of the term's negativity derived from the word itself or merely from the history we had so long associated with it? Were we niggas or did we just want a nigga be?

As all these thoughts ran through my mind and, I can only assume, the minds of my friends Day-Day looked around and then stomped his foot. We looked up, stunned out of our mental meanderings, expecting a revelation to end all revelations.

Day, with a passion in his eyes opened his mouth and declaratively asked:

"Yo, how a bitches cooch gonna smell like strawberries!?"

Shock.

"Naw, for real though, nigga. I dun smelled a lot of pussy in my day and I ain't gonna say they stank or nothing but they smelled like pussy. I was 'chilling' with this girl the other day and I wiped my nose, you know, cause I had the sniffles and I breathe in and I'm like, 'Damn, girl, what is that smell?' And I didn't mean it like that but she definitely thought I did. She started yelling at me like a nigga supposed to know every smell in the world."

Shock.

"I be wondering what she be washing with, you know? It's whatever, though, I still piped. Fuck that bitch, anyways. Whatever the fuck her name is. I just call her strawberries, now."

The moral of the story? Fuck if I know, it's just funny.

God, I love coming home.