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LUDIC LOG

Pete and Ray are the smart ones. They sit in the back, with me, and bust the rhymes as I'm writing them. But they gots to sit behind me, almost where the spare is, to read what I'm writing. Ray's pops is a Mexican dude and he don't weigh but a buck oh nine, but Pete ain't no little fella. They got the Navigator up on jacks so whenever we hit a pothole Pete hits his head on the roof. If I laugh he'll just snatch the pad out my hand, and I just sit there with nothing to do like a fool, so I try to keep quiet. I have to say it's dope, having them back there getting the flow on lovely right as it comes out the pen, plus they don't make me call them by their stage names. But them fools up front never let me enjoy it.

"Yo Peace," yells Tyron. He's yelling because he sits right next to the motherfuckin' bass speaker. It makes his ear ice rattle. I notice that sort of shit, you know, because I got the eye, but they never let me put it in the joints. I tell him them little details give it verisimilitude. They say what the fuck is that? I try and explain it and they say it's pussy shit. I pretend I don't hear him.

"PEACE!" Can't pretend no more. He's in a pissy mood because his portfolio is tanking and that fat girl he was workin' it with left him for a tennis player. The boys call me 'Pistol Peace' because I don't like all the gat noise. I tell them I'd prefer to be called Nazim, just like it says on my paychecks.

"What."

"What who?"

"What the fuck you want, Tyron?"

"What the fuck you want OVERLORD," he hollers. The rest of the boys don't like it when I use their government names. The one who gets the most het up about it is Lord Scar, because his real name is Pierre. He used to smack me when I called him Pierre, until I told his no-skills-having ass that next time he put a hand to me he could write his own verses and see how that shit went over at the Source Awards. He laid off after that. Motherfucker once rhymed 'pimpin'' with 'jimmy', for Chrissake.

"What. The fuck. You want. OVERLORD." I'm right in the middle of a whole bit comparing us to them snipers that's gonna get the press all over our ass. It'll ship gold for sure. 'Caprice', 'police', 'deceased', the whole drill. I don't need no interruptions.

"We goin' down to Black Bob's. Lay it down on MC Ronin."

"What? How come?"

"You know, bitch! Like in 'Captain Smack a Fool'."

"I know 'Captain Smack a Fool'. I wrote 'Captain Smack a Fool.' I don't know what 'Captain Smack a Fool' gots to do with going to Black Bob's and dropping a beatdown on Kevin."

Eddie -- excuse me, TEC-Steel -- turns around from the driver's seat and gives me a look. "Man, why you gotta call him Kevin? You bullshit. You fuckin' up the whole mystique." Pete and Ray just laugh.

"Whateva, man. Why we gotta go punk out MC Ronin?" I pass the notebook back to the boys and let them work it out. It sounds tight, first time out. Sweet.

"'Cause you wrote that whole bit about shovin' a rubber up those who stay undercover lovers."

Oh, man. Here we go. More drama. "You ain't gonna."

"I am gonna."

"How many times I gotta tell you dumbasses that..."

Shiv Dansa, who was Roy Billings when he lived next door to me at the Green, pipes up. He's the dangerous one because he took a community college creative writing class. Motherfucker thinks he's Michiko Kakutani now. "Look, Peace. Everybody knows, you gotta write about what you know."

"That's right, fool! WRITE about what you KNOW." You can always count on Tyron to say the same thing someone else just said, only louder.

"But," knowing I'm gonna regret opening my stupid mouth before I even get the word out, "you don't gotta write about what you know. It's called imagination, you ignorant motherfuckers. Besides, even if that was true, you goin' about it in reverse. You always wait for me to write it then you think you gotta go out and..."

"Peace."

"See, it's okay that y'all live in Napierville now. I got y'all covered. Enjoy your success, doe. It's good that you don't have to..."

"Peace."

"I just don't understand why you gotta do this shit. I mean, yeah, that line about 'fifty hos in the snow, in a row, everybody have a go' was funny, but was it worth it? You guys looked exhausted. Pete had walking pneumonia."

"Peace."

"It's a waste of time. You had to pay some guy to bite your -- no, my -- rhymes, just so you could rack him for it. You could have been at home playing PlayStation."

"Peace." Shiv has on his reasonable face. "We have our credibility to think about. We're keeping it real."

Tyron says, "Keeping it REAL!" Thanks, Tyron.

"But...it ain't real. I write all of it. You were going to undertaker school when we put this shit together. You never been a crack dealer in your life. You don't even smoke cigarettes."

"Peace. We've talked about this, ain't we?"

I give up. "Yes."

"And what's your job?"

"Write the shit."

"And what's our job?"

Sigh. "Rip the shit."

"And we don't pay you to piss and moan about how we what?"

I grit my teeth and think about how big the paychecks are. "Live the shit."

"That's right. Now get your motherfuckin' pad -- Death Nell, Nailz, give the boy his pad back -- and get your motherfuckin' pen, and take some notes when we get to Black Bob's. Also, we ain't makin' nearly enough references to the Godfather trilogy or Third World dictators for my tastes, so get on that."

I roll my eyes. Eddie turns up the deck and puts in the new Ras Kass joint. I make a note to drop in a lot of references to 'Godfather III' just to make them look like dicks. I think about how I could have gone into advertising, or journalism school

Ray hands me the pad back. He's written a few notes in the margins of my latest. 'Gat/phat'. Hopeless.