If you missed the first chapters here’s where it begins... CHAPTER 01
Without further ado here’s...
Rube reigned supreme, backing the counter of Rosarita's in a soiled apron. Hair grease swayed under his ultimate b-boy championship cap, his head bumping as he flattened a ball of dough under palm. Deuce Biggn'Low was representing through pudgy cheeks, beat-boxing furiously from a stool by the window, his tight cornrows and bargain-basement bling almost pulling off his hustler steez. For now, they owned the joint. Rube freestyled as he pinched and stretched his disk of dough.
My man Deuce is on the scene, and he ain't wearing rubbers.
Like an animal trapped in a cage o' rage,
Rosario's pizza parlor be the Deuce man's stage.
If you be littering the streets with your message of hope,
He gonna crush your dreams with a bag full o' dope.
The Deuce-o-meter thermometer be here to measure,
D's got the mercury rising for your bitch's pleasure."
Deuce was lovin’ it like a triple stack Big Mac. But with jubilation came the rhyme’s ruin. The vocal percussion throw-down turned to blunder with a flurry of piercingly, arythmic turntable effects jutting from Deuce’s lips.
Giving up on his rhymes Rube humored his lesser counterpart. Spreading his fists, Rube stretched the dough as he started popping and locking his elbows.
"Yeah son!" Deuce leapt up, "the Rube is enforcin' with the 'za he be bakin', mozza and sauce he be makin' to bring home da bacon!"
Far from lyrics to go. He wanted to tell fat ass to button his abysmal trap and stick to the beats. But Rube made nice, busting a pimp walk behind the counter to the heinous train-wreck of rhyme.
"The beats in the streets from his head to his feets, hos’ can't get enough of his Nuyorican treats."
“Enough." Rube B Lethal a.k.a. Def Killah grabbed back the mike.
You failed hip hop class.
I give crack to the mass.
Hood loves it when I warm the hits.
Cum behind as I swarm the tits…”
A bantam crew of black kids strolled past Rosario's open door. The stage lights dimmed.
Rube knew those scrubby midgets. He wasn’t a fan. And he most definitely didn't appreciate the bitch-ass snark on their faces, trying to diss his hip-hop stylings. But Rube had already puffed a dozen vape hits this shift and as tempting as going buck wild might be--blastin' ass and robbing their stash--he didn't quite have it in him tonight.
"Wass 'appenin?" he managed.
The loud-mouthiest of the midgets, scrawny in a blue camouflage hoodie, responded to Rube's efforts at humanitarianism with verbal gunfire: "Pop Pop POP."
Rube lunged for the doorway, fronting. Just because he was in an apron flipping pie, didn't mean he would stand for any whack bitches and their fugly slut's derision.
"COME BY L.E.S. ONE MOTHAFUCKER! Come by the PJs later on and say that shit. Pussy ass motherfuckers!"
Rube spun the dough like an NCAA game ball. He and Deuce stared down their foe from Rosarita's glass box as the midgets paraded off, whooping it up. They kept busting a gut right at him. Or at the very least throwing a chuckle at the self-styled Puerto Rican Gigolo weighing down the stool next to him. Either way, Rube wanted to curb their teeth. He'd show them some pop, pop, pop. Set the hammer, round in the chamber--Rube whipped the doughy disk at the window, missing Deuce's fat face by a half inch. Didn't even realize he'd done it till he saw the midgets jump back, tripping like little bitches. Immediately pretending it wasn't shit.
This killed Deuce and Rube. Hysterical. Sleighed by an uncooked pie.
“Pussy ass motherfuckers.”
That useless, tubby, garlic-knot vacuum never hung round the night shift long enough. A few minutes of agonizing flow, with occasional boom-boom-clack repose to bolster Rube's off-the-chain freestyle and that half-stepping saramanbiche cabrón was out. And that's why chickenhead didn't get a cut. Deuce the sucker.
Rube wasn't some newjack hustler neither, sure he dealt piff and eightballs of ice right over the register--ignorant pizza parlor owning giuseppe motherfuckers--selling his goods to dumbass wannabe-players, and rich scummy white bitches ordering gourmet ricotta slices, dropping quarters in the tip jar through hundred-dollar nails, their Prada hanging open. Sometimes when they reached in their leather, it was all he could do not to jump the register and hightail it with a fistful of guap and plastic. But he had some big game in his scope he wasn't about to jeopardize. Some rhinoceros hustle shit.
But despite his imminent rise, once the droves thinned from boredom and burnout, Rube had nothing left to do but bust out the Ajax.
After a halfhearted once-over with the mop, Rube stood in the skanky bathroom smoking more vape. He puffed steam, then grabbed up the mop he'd bequeathed 'Little Ho' to push more cornmeal and kalamata. Devin The Dude's, "Broccoli & Cheese" distorted on the stereo. A decent track, but Rube's mold was more the pure Baricuas with non-stop attack-the-track-flow. Fat Joe, Cuban Link, Tony Touch, Hurricane G. But Rube's true hero was Big Pun, the South Bronx Punisher, the late 90's king of verbs, killer of words, the giant sumo papi chulo of Puerto Rican rappers. Big Pun even sweat sauce in a Bronx pizza shop, back when he was Dirty Chris Lee Rios, selling crack with a sawed off beneath his trench. The first solo Latin rapper to go platinum, dead before reaching his third decade. Rube liked to imagine the Pun sharing a VIP table in hell with Biggie and Tupac. Sadly his quintessential lyrical masterpeice I'M NOT A PLAYER (I just Fuck a lot) was the Pun's downfall rotation on Rosarita's stereo, "Climbin up the walls, with my balls, bangin off your hymen, I'm a diamond in the rough bustin in your face, taste the sweetness of my dick, rip your fetus out of place, yo". Turned out, the old grape-stoping moolies who owned the place didn't have any understanding of satirical hilarity. They banned the Pun outright, which Rube felt was a loss to every pizza patron in the L.E.S.
And that was how lesser MC's came to dominate the parlor's speakers.
That said, The Dude filled the blankness of dead air boredom nicely, making Rube's jock hard, willing every fly girl south of 14th Street to come in for a slice. He imagined sniffing all that quiff as he belted Devin's baller lyrics:
The front door chimed.
The slickly dressed Hasid walking to the counter with his scraggy slick-back full of product didn't look like much, but Rube knew better. Little fazed Rube, but being caught blasting The Dude’s pendejo lyrics in front of the Heeb was pure humiliation. The Jew weren’t no La Perla gangster from back San Juan way, but this Caco had some serious heat on Ludlow. From Rosarita’s own muttonhead owners who he jacked monthly for the exorbitant rent to Axlerod’s pull with the Five-O (the exception of course being that Barney Fife undercover neck tattoo hard-on who pepper sprayed Deuce and him that night on Eldrige yelling, "you're lucky I'm not a rookie, or you'd be a pool of fucking blood on the concrete!") Didn't seem to have much pull with that pig. But then again nobody did.
"Kid," the Yid dropped a bulging envelope on the counter. "I brought you something."
Rube knew it was best not to marvel. Nor to snatch the prize. He heard the words "Oh. A'ight then, Mr. Axlerod. Thanks," trickle out as he steadied, peeling his eyes off the envelope.
Moshe Axlerod gave a nod and turned on his heels.
Rube peered inside the envelope. A stubby stack of green stared back at him.
O.G. money.
He nearly dropped the mop, but he didn't let on. A MAC-10 motherfucker. The Baricua son of L.E.S. ONE. Rube knew just the play. Even Big Pun would have waxed poetic on the irony. His hometown of the Bronx in the Seventies--every building on whole blocks burning because the caseros that owned the hood did better off torching their own properties than charging rent. Of course the LES was far from kindling. These days shit was insane, the rents straight up stratospheric. No, he wasn't about to burn no prized tenement to the curb. Just give that hoe a taste.
But Rube had to admit he felt different about Mioko than any girl he'd trailed before. No doubt he wanted her, but something more. Something deep of the gut. She made him uncomfortable in a way that was unique. He spent late nights pondering if that pussy would taste as sweet as the thousand-dollar Cristal bottle-service he could now throw down for. Shit was conflicted. Besides, what had the fair photographer ever done to deserve the Axlerod’s special attention?
Never mind that. Rube had to look past his inflamed genitalia. Stay on target. He had shit to research online. Plus he had to hit up that obeast porker Deuce and bribe his tubby ass with a jumbo pack of Kennedy fried fowl, get a ride to Home Depot tomorrow and outlay some of his new scratch.
Rube could already smell that Roly Poly flatulating behind the wheel. Shameful motherfucker.
Useless as he was, though… at least he owned a whip.
CHAPTER 02
CHAPTER 03
CHAPTER 04
CHAPTER 05
CHAPTER 06
UPDATE: LOOKING FORWARD - CHAPTER 07
BEHIND THE KEYBOARD
Research is a huge part of my process and for many years I scoured the streets of the Lower East Side soaking up every aspect of the neighborhood that I could in the search for the inner Rube. No easy feat for a white guy born in Paris and raised in Nova Scotia before my now dozen year stretch in New York City. Most writers are admitted eavesdroppers and love digging into random conversations with strangers, and I’m no exception.
Here are a few tonal images I shot while writing the book on my YASHICA 124-G medium format camera, one of the ways I recorded my research and interactions:
The streets of the Big Apple are some of the very best in the world to glean amazing insights into outlandish characters and that’s one of the many reasons I’m happy to call this place home.
Yours In The Chain,
Doug Karr
SPECIAL THANKS to my wife @zenmommas for years of support during the writing process, @ericvancewalton for his trailblazing, inspired collaboration and incredible guidance, @andrarchy for his mind blowing insight and friendship, @bakerchristopher for being an inspiration as a human artist and bro, @complexring for his brilliance and enthusiasm, Masie Cochran, Taylor Rankin and @elenamoore for their skillful help in editing the manuscript, and to @opheliafu for the fantastic illustrations she created exclusively for the novel's launch on Steemit and to Elena Megalos for her wonderful character illustrations. I’d also like to thank Eddie Boyce, Jamie Proctor, Katie Mustard, Alan Cumming, Danai Gurira, Stephan Nowecki, Ron Simons, Dave Scott, Alden Karr, Missy Chimovitz, my dad Andy Karr and late mother Wendy, and everyone else who helped lead me to this moment.
I am a Brooklyn based writer, film & commercial director, and crypto-enthusiast, my projects include @HardFork-series an upcoming narrative crypto-noir and my novel Dwelling will soon be premiering exclusively on Steemit, and you can check out more of my work at dougkarr.com, piefacepictures.com, and www.imdb.com/name/nm1512347
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