“The day I met my father was a perfect storm.”
“People don’t understand just how hard it is without a dad.”
“I didn’t have any male role models in my life to help guide me or make decisions. I had to go it alone – that was until I met Slinky. Slinky, like me, he was his own man. He had to be. It doesn’t matter whether you’re ten or twenty in the hood, if you’re the man of the family, you’re the man of the house.”
“Slinky wanted me to join his gang.”
“But before I could be in, I had to be bled in. I had to bleed and make someone else bleed. I had to prove my worth. I was a fifteen-year-old kid, in the middle of a park after dark, looking at a man on his knees, begging for his life.”
“I recognized his face.”
“It was my father.”
“This was the man who went out to work and never came home.”
“This was the man that made me promises to help me grow up, show me the way and be there for me.”
“This was the man who never kept any of em.”
“This mother fucker dipped at the first sight of drama and let me and my mom on our own up shit street without a fuckin’ penny for food, clothing, water or heat.”
“I didn’t hesitate.”
“His blood was my blood, but I spilt it just the same.”
“How many times have you stood at that doorway of your nice little house and told your princess that you’d be home soon, not to worry and that it was just a little business you had to take care of?”
“I saw a few myself, Luke.”
“How many times have you sat there with your daughter and promised her you’d play tea party later, or that you’d be home in time for supper?”
“How many times have you held her tight and promised her the world, only to step right back out that door into the lions fucking den?”
“I see my father in you, Luke.”
“It doesn’t matter that he left and never came back; in fact, I was better off that way. I didn’t dream about him after a while, or think about him, and I wasn’t ever punished with promises that never came true.”
“Now I look at your daughter, man. I look at Scarlett and the pain she suffers because you want to be the big swinging dick movie star, or the OSW World Champion. I can only imagine the tears streaming down her face every time you miss a play, or a recital, and she’s getting older now.”
“She recognizes it more.”
“Every kid needs a father.”
“But it takes more than that to be a dad.”
“I have plenty of reasons for wanting to whoop your ass, but none more so than in the end, your daughter would be better off without you.”
“Just like I was better off without mine.”
“He done fucked around and found out.”
“Walk out that door at Dead End and you ain’t walking back through it.”