A Walkman Full of Guardian Angels
A belated ode to the people who raised me, one cassette at a time.
As a teenager, there’s nothing more sacred than your bedroom.
In a house full of cartoons and chaos, it’s the only reprieve from pestering mothers, incessant chores, and nosy siblings.
I mean, sure. All the dirty clothes piled at the bottom of my closet weren’t particularly sexy, but I’d like to think the Mugsy Bogues poster and indoor basketball hoop made up for it. As did my Sega Genesis, which would spend night after night standing lookout as I chose Streets of Rage 2 over a reasonable bedtime.
I took tremendous pride in the sanctuary I created, which is exactly why I felt so betrayed to find my mom sitting on my bed after I got home from school. But before I could address this blatant invasion of privacy, she pulled out a white cassette tape and shoved it into my face.
“What’s this?”
The answer was Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle, the debut album of some Long Beach Crip who would one day revolutionize pop culture. But was I about to tell that to a woman who had me competing for Bible Bowl trophies and whose native language was speaking in tongues?
I sure the fuck was not. So I called an audible.
“Why are you in my room?!”
Melvin was my OG. He was two grades older and somehow kept his Charlotte Hornets Starter jacket immaculate. My mom was terrified of drug dealers corrupting the “mighty man of God” she was raising, but it was the school bootlegger she should’ve kept an eye on.
And his catalog was no joke.
Diary of a Mad Band. Midnight Marauders. 12 Play.
Maxi singles. Mad Flavor mixtapes.
He was my portal to another world—and had everything before Sam Goody did.
Not that she cared.
“What’s on this tape?”
Melvin’s signature was those white cassette tapes. The handwritten labels were dope, but I always ripped them off in case my sister got nosy.
Every time he flew out to visit his dad in the Bronx, he came back with more heat—and more bruises he refused to acknowledge. We’d spend hours talking about the music he discovered—how some group called SWV would be the next big thing—but he never charged me for a single bootleg.
I paid my tuition in attention.
Doggystyle became our newest curriculum, and with scripture woven into the walls of my home, Martha Stewart’s best friend took refuge in my underwear drawer.
Or so I thought.
Mothers know the answer to the question before they even ask. But since there’s no greater satisfaction than the truth, it’s a battle of wills. A test of integrity.
I contemplated my fate, then glanced at her.
“It’s John P. Kee.”
Since “Wash Me” had become the official soundtrack to my mom’s Chrysler New Yorker, it was the perfect, sanctified alibi.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said, studying the tape before meeting my eyes with her own. “Let’s go to the living room and listen to this together.”
I gulped as she rose to her feet.
“It is John P. Kee, right?”
“Okay!” I relented. With my allowance in jeopardy, I couldn’t wave the white flag fast enough. “It’s not John P. Kee!”
Without missing a beat, she strolled past me to the living room, twirling the incriminating evidence along the way.
“Oh, I know.”
In the living room, try as I might to persuade the judge, Snoop’s insistence that “bitches ain’t shit but hoes and tricks” undercut my pleas for leniency. His affinity for gin and juice only made matters worse. So by the time Nate Dogg got his balls licked on “Ain’t No Fun,” my face was already buried in my hands.
Her ruling was swift: I was grounded “until Jesus comes,” and any hope for salvation—or my allowance—was a distant memory. Then, as I grumbled under my breath and retreated to my room, she dumped salt in the wound:
“Just wait until your dad gets home.”
The next morning, after I eventually removed my father’s foot from my ass, I stumbled through the doors of Childers Middle School. As restless students swarmed the hallways, my Walkman and I were on the prowl for our next fix. I knew Melvin would let the jokes fly once he found out about Doggystyle, but he’d have a backpack full of H-Town and Tevin Campbell to ease the disgrace.
Except Melvin never made it back from the Bronx.
The morgue finally acknowledged his bruises.