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Drink the moon, my nigga. That's what he said to me. I didn't understand. I looked at him like he spoke to me in Creole. The sounds made sense but the meaning escaped me.
"What?" I asked.
"Drink in the moon, my nigga."
He repeated it with effect. So much so that his hands swished through the air at the end of each word.
Drink. In. The. Moon. My. Nigga.
Silence.
"What?"
"Drink in the moon, nigga."
"I mean, I hear what you're saying but I don't really understand what you're saying. Drink in the moon?"
He inhaled a deep pull from a thing too tight to be a cigarette and looked at me as if I was the dumbest person alive. With one eyebrow raised and his lips in a sneer, he blew smoke out the side of his mouth.
"You gotta do the knowledge, my nigga. I can't give you what I can't give you."
Perhaps it was the smoke, perhaps it was the look on his face, perhaps it was my confusion but for some strange reason, I took his words into serious consideration. They became dire to me. He can't give what he can't give? What does this mean? And although now really confused, utterly puzzled, I leaned forward, took the too tight thing that he passed, held it and smoked it.
I thought and thought...and thought and thought.
Drink in the moon?
After a space of five minutes, I made up my mind. I decided that the only logical explanation of 'Drink in the moon' was that this man beside me obviously knew how to imbibe the moon as if it's liquid.
He said do the knowledge. I did the knowledge. Drink in the moon. Alright, he can drink in the moon. So the next thing I had to do was ACTUALLY drink in the moon like he could. No problem. I set my jaw, concentrated my mind. If he could do it, I could do it. Fuck him. From my seated position in the warm passenger side of his BMW, I looked up through the windshield, past the club lights and found the moon floating full.
As I stared, concentrating, the son of bitch moon had the nerve to mock me. Fat and bloated and yellow, it sung, "Na na na nah, hoe, you can't drink me!"
I got angry. Reaching into the fast food bag between my knees, I pulled out one of the extra straws, broke the seal, pulled the paper away and stared at it.
"Ay Dulo," I asked, turning to him straight faced, dead serious, "But how do I get this muhfukka to stretch though?"
-Awkward Silence-
-And awkward silence-
-And more awkward silence-
Then he fell out laughing.
and fell out laughing
"What?" I asked, still very serious, still pointing a red striped, plastic cylinder at the moon, "Stop laughing. You said do the knowledge! I'm doing the knowledge! Tell me how to get it to stretch, my nigga! The fuck I'm supposed to drink it in without a straw?!"
When he finally gained his breath, some ten minutes later, he said,
"Na man, I just meant look at the moon, my nigga. Drink it in. It's full as shit."
"Oh,"
I said quietly.
And time went by in large ticks.
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