We went up to the neighborhood hilltop and found a nice perch. I suppose there were lots of days like this back then. I spent a lot of time on that hilltop. Bernal Hill. Such a noteworthy hill that its even got its own family of hawks living on it.
My friend was young like me. He wore a red 49ers jersey with a matching cap. His cap’s bill was kept straight and it still had the stickers on (I hated it when guys wore the sticker. Always thought it was stupid). I don’t remember his name. Jesus, it must have been over 15 years ago. Somehow we knew each other and decided to kick it. We had both grown up in San Francisco but his personality was much more thuggish than mine. You see, San Francisco before the dot-com boom was much more working class. Some neighborhoods had (and still have) dozens of rundown apartment complexes that were quite rough with aggressive mobs of youth running around - not all of them were exactly “gangs”. The result was a diverse breed of tough street kids who learned to navigate through a fairly ghetto urban environment. - This guy was an example of this world. He was a white kid who talked with a New Yorky kinda accent and sagged his pants. (The sagging pants annoyed the shit out of me too back then but whatever…)
As we sat there he told me about himself. He saw himself as being really hard core and felt that he had to “grow up at an early age”. He wasn’t a gangster as he didn’t claim any turf, but he seemed to be affiliated with them. He went on to explain to me all the crazy shit he’d seen and how that made him super ghetto. I’m not sure how we got into this conversation, but that’s pretty much all we talked about. Apparently, he wanted me to know just how hard he really was.
It was almost sunset. And the raptors who charm that beloved hill began to hover our heads in search of their next meal. We both looked up at the same time and saw the hawk. Its wing span curled up at the tips and it flapped only minimally. It sailed right in front of the sun.
“Oh shit blood! Lookit that bird!” he said.
He paused.
All of a sudden his smile faded and his face went completely relaxed. His lips were serious. Staring at the hawk, his eyes weren’t stern anymore. They had softened. His eyebrows arched into a look of wonder - almost concerned. Desperate.
“Hey blood…”
He paused again. His eyes still fixed on that hawk.
”..I wanna be a bird blood..”
