The Magic City (Opening Monologue)

I want you to listen to me. Very, very carefully. What you’re about to hear is not some bit of fiction or a concocted design of my own mind. I’m not deluded and I’m not some street performer hoping to dazzle you with brilliance or tragedy or shine your Bruno Magli’s for a buck.

What you are about to hear is the truth – it’s real. It’s ugly, and it’s real, and I’ll spoon-feed it to you, if you think you can stomach it.

What I want you to understand is that we are all just creatures of habit, whether we like it or not. How we act, how we react, how we feel – all based on predispositions set in motion long before we’ve cut the umbilical.

There is some varying degree of control over our situations, but minimal. Like being dealt a pair of eights in blackjack when you’re on tilt, last hand, you know what you need to do, but the question arises nonetheless. “Do I split? Do I play from 16? Do I double down? …Just what the hell do I do???”

You can make your choice, but it’s mostly illusion, smoke and mirrors, and in the end, the outcome is predetermined, and in the end they’ll say you chalk it up to how you played the game, and to some degree they’re right. But what you get, you had it comin’ anyway, and it’s more crapshoot than cards.

What I need you to understand is that this wasn’t my choice. None of it was. I am, and was, and ever will be, simply a victim of circumstance. Just another speck of dust hangin’ ‘round a cloud of the great cosmic debris, as some drug-freak philosopher once said to me, waitin’ to see what happens.

Hell, we all are. And who could blame us? One day you’re here, the next day you’re not, and in the end, what did it matter? Did your fancy car save your life? Did your comfortable house make a difference to anyone but your own selfish ass? Would you have spat in some poor shlub’s mouth just to save him from dying of thirst?

Maybe, maybe not… you’d have to ask the dealer. It’s not a question for the likes of me.

Some would say I’m jaded, and maybe so. If you’d been the places I’ve been and seen the things I’ve seen, you’d know – the highs and the lows, to’s and fro’s, hustlin’ bustlin’, three hundred dollar bottles of Champaign and the crack whores on the corners who forgot their babies back at home, the ins an outs and all abouts and whatever the fuck it’s all made of – you’d be jaded too.

Not my fault, none of it. Predisposition. Natural selection. The kind of shit you can’t fuck with. You know, the natural order of things.

I’m not some ghetto baby. Wasn’t born into a bad family. Wasn’t poor. Didn’t live in a bad neighborhood. But I was born of a breed, and there’s no use fightin’ those kinds of genes. Mom and Dad were honest. They just bore a bad egg, I guess.

1987, boy, I had the life! Sure, I was nine years old, but I had my Vision Gator and life was good. All the kids jocked that shit. I even had the checkered Slime Ball wheels.

Then someone hit the fast forward button, and I don’t know, pressed down a little too hard or a little too long, and the damn thing got stuck.

South Florida’s no place to raise a kid, I’ll tell you that right now. Sure as shit Miami ain’t no place to raise one, but I’ll expand my views and extend the invitation for all of South Florida to never raise a kid again. It’s like some fucked up phenomenon, comparable to the Bermuda Triangle, except instead of shit getting sucked in and lost, all the shit gets spit out, to fuck up society for the rest of the decent people who just grin and bear it and say, “nothin’ like one day after another”. It’s hard to see Opie running around a town built by cocaine cowboys, waitin’ for Aunt Mae to bake his ass some pie. Only pie anyone gets is in an alley on Eighth or Biscayne or at the Ally Cat, for lack of a better strip joint.
Well, maybe now I’m just being cynical.

Truth is, we all used to see more pussy’n’a litter box back in the day, and it never cost anyone a dime. Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning. Then I’ll lead you over here, over to where I’m at, to the end.