Persuasion and force of personality were my weapons of choice, words my bullets. And highly effective they were too. Mediating, cajoling, haranguing, persuading and threatening, I was the mouth, the Muhammad Ali, of Cicero. I rarely came up for air once on a roll. With my verbal armory fully deployed, a man might feel as though he were in front of a firing squad! Capitulation was common.

But things were heating up on the streets. The dynamics were changing. By the early eighties, the volume of narcotics flowing into the ghetto had transformed the face of black organized crime. Hundreds of millions of dollars were in play weekly. The price of merchandise continued to plummet and the market grew exponentially. Gang-bangers were more heavily armed, more aggressive then ever and the ante was as high as it had ever been. Competition was deadly. Literally.

No longer a case of scrapping, slapping and maybe stabbing a way through the turf wars with fists, boots and knives, the gangs now relied on guns as their enforcers. Retribution could be grisly and permanent, but no matter how lethal, never served to dampen the violence. One death would escalate to two or three or a dozen, as family, friend and opportunist retaliated, and conflict spread like wildfires in a drought-dry forest.

Nobody ever said: “well damn! He just killed Jimmy. ***this bullshit, lets stop the violence now!”

No, it was far more likely that before nightfall, Jimmy would be avenged in blood, and another young black man added to the body count.

I knew the set was only going to get hotter and no one could possibly win. Homicide had no part in my world. Only a fool goes with violence as a strategy, it takes a stronger man to use words. The only possible winners of a shoot out were the undertakers and lawyers. As one mother buries her son another is preparing herself emotionally for a couple of decades of prison visits. She at least, will see her boy again, and not have to settle for kissing his picture on a tombstone.

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Like so many other Chicago black kids, I frequently daydreamed my way down the section of Lake Shore Drive that converges so sweetly with downtown Chicago. It was a favorite pastime. Cruising along with a couple of buddies, we enjoyed the warm summer nights best of all, all the more precious because there were so few. The top and windows down, the music up, we’d crank up the decibels until Frank Sinatra or Michael Franks, were blasting from the speakers with enough force to lift us off the road. Puffing on a joint or three, we’d meander up and down that beautiful stretch of highway, admiring the city’s dramatic profile.

I loved the brick and stucco, white-glove buildings that formed one boundary of the S-Curve, a sweeping arc of road stretching from North Lakeshore to East, hugging water, beaches and city. These dignified and stately apartments dominated the skyline, standing shoulder to shoulder, their banks of bright, unblinking eyes reflected on a black patent leather lake. This neighborhood was home to some serious old-money.

We’d stop, get out and sit down with our backs to the water, leaning back far enough, to be able to gaze upwards without cricking our necks. Picking out the penthouses, we’d imagine what it would be like to live in one of those palaces in the sky.

When those big, high-ceiling apartments were lit up from the inside, you might catch a glimpse of a flickering TV screen, the movement of people or the glitter of a majestic glass chandelier. We wove stories by the dozen and dreamed out loud. What great parties we’d throw, and what fine hosts we’d be! What beautiful women we’d have on our arms, how much Crystal champagne we’d drink and how everyone would look at us with envy…

It took me years to understand that those mind-pictures I painted hadn’t really been about owning an apartment on LSD at all. Rather those balmy, storytelling evenings had reflected a deep hankering to be the kind of man who inhabited one of those elegant, status-conscious buildings. I yearned to be a man of stature and substance, respected and accepted by other powerful people. Even as a young gang chief, I aspired to be more than Buddy Burrel leader on my block. I wanted to be a leader of men. Unable to articulate it in words, I dreamed it instead.

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I refined the science of engineering my days and nights chemically, for optimum efficiency. Through a potent combination of syrup, pills, weed, coke and sometimes heroin–I navigated my days and nights on autopilot. Hell, with all the experimentation I did, I should have qualified for a PHD in chemistry.

My mood swings were extreme. Getting high meant exactly that: a heightened state of sensory perception and leeriness. Coke did that for me. In contrast the effects of syrup or downers were soporific. A couple of slugs of Robitussin, Benalyn, Tussionex, or any of the other brands found at syrup houses all over the hood, combined with a handful of pills, usually 500 mg downers, turned me into a virtual zombie– unconscious but still moving. We called this sleep-walking and I sleep-walked my way through large tracts of my youth.

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