Grip Trilogy Box Set

The double entendre of that question is not lost on me. As little sex as I’ve had the last year . . . years, I’m probably as tight as a peephole, but he’ll never know.

“It’s just been a long few weeks.”

“I know something that could relax you.”

He bends over me, pressing me back into cushions. “Grip, what are you—”

“Relax,” he interrupts with a laugh, stretching a few inches more to unscrew a jar sitting on the concrete pedestal beside my seat. He settles back into his space, freeing up my lungs to breathe again.

“My Uncle Jamal used to say if you can’t have a good ho.” He holds up a joint. “Have good dro.”

“Have I mentioned that your uncle is a misogynist who subscribes t

o antiquated and archetypal notions of womanhood?”

“Yeah, more than once, but I’m pretty sure he was a pimp, so that makes sense.”

What the what?

He says it as if he just told me his uncle was a fireman. “You mean like ‘big pimpin’, Jay-Z’ kind of pimp?”

“No, like, ‘bitch, go get my money on the corner’ kind of pimp.” A frown pleats Grip’s expression. “By the time he came out west, no, but I think back in Chicago he may have been a pimp.”

I’m having trouble processing this. I’ve met Grip’s Uncle Jamal a few times, and he never struck me . . . maybe that is an unfortunate way to think of it considering he may have struck the women who worked for him . . . but he never struck me as a pimp.

“He’s actually my great-uncle,” Grip says. “My grandmother’s brother. When she left Chicago to move out here in the seventies, he followed.”

Grip shakes his head, blowing out a heavy sigh.

“The generation before him thought Chicago was the answer to Jim Crow, so they left the South. And then they thought the answer to poverty and crime was California and left Chicago,” Grip says. “Always running. Stokely Carmichael said, ‘Our grandfathers had to run, run, run. My generation’s out of breath. We ain’t running no more.’”

We have Grip’s mother to thank for all the varied people he can quote.

“So your mother moved here for better opportunities?”

“My mother moved here because her mother moved them here.” Grip considers me a few extra seconds before going on. “My grandmother was part of the Black Panther movement, which was huge in Southern Cali.”

“What? I never knew that.”

“It isn’t exactly what I lead with when I meet someone.” Grip laughs.

“Weren’t they violent?” I ask carefully. “Like ‘blowing up things’ violent?”

“They were . . . complicated. They weren’t perfect, by any means, but they were providing free lunch for kids in poor neighborhoods, tutoring students, teaching self-defense, doing a lot of good. That’s what drew my grandmother to the movement.”

“And your mother?”

“Ma definitely ain’t a Panther.” He chuckles. “But don’t cross her because I wouldn’t put it past her to blow shit up.”

I have no plans to cross her.

He pulls a lighter from the pocket of his jeans, and I notice the black plastic watch on his strong wrist. I’ve never seen him without it since I won it at that carnival. I don’t know what to think about that, so I don’t let myself think about it.

“So you in or what?” he asks.

I drag my eyes from the plastic watch to the expectant expression on his face.

“You know I don’t smoke weed.”