Throughout the many hours we spent on the beach, Chanell was covertly feeding me the scoop on everyone. She said that the fellas, along with Azmir, on this trip call themselves The Clan. There were hundreds of them according to her. She said Azmir was at the helm and, through Petey, he tried to inject positive activities for at risk youth in the hood. She said Azmir had serious ties to the streets and gives back although he’s now a successful businessman. I wanted to pry a little more but my gut told me to shut up and just listen. In between taking dips in the water, the others girls sleeping and going to the bar for drinks she gave me the back-stories on Kim and Syn and said that they’d been dating Petey and Kid for years. Their relationships’ beginning was unorthodox to say the least—all of these my words and not hers. Chanell was as hood as they come. Her disfluencies were off the charts…and I enjoyed it. She gossiped a lot, but I decided right away that I liked her. There was something very endearing about her.
Chanell reported that Syn was a local whore who lucked up with somebody in The Clan. She never knew her father nor had any brothers. All she had was a mother who had too many men with only one thing in mind, getting her ass. Because that was all she was surrounded with, all she knew was how to please a man physically. She would sneak into her mom’s closet and observe her sexual performances and developed skills. The first one she adapted was oral sex. Her mom would start off each love session with oral pleasure. So what she would do was wait until her cousin, Dinky, came over and practiced on him. Syn was seven while Dinky was six. Dinky didn’t exactly understand what was going on, he was a crack baby with brain deficiencies. While the words were pouring out of her mouth, all I could do was wonder why Syn would share this sensitive information with her. Did she have any dignity at all? Chanell continued her tale saying neither one of their mothers knew what was going on. They were always so high and drunk together; the children were doing them a service by getting lost. Syn’s sexual curiosities followed her to age sixteen when she was propositioned by one of her mother’s lovers. He offered to give her money if she shared her love with him every now and then. Ever since that day her dignity and self-value had been challenged.
Kid came along when she was at her lowest. Syn stayed with her mother along with a crack-head that ran with her mom back then. Kid was a young, very small time hustler back then and sold to her mother and friends on a regular basis. Kid worked out a deal where he would stay there with the women temporarily until he got on his feet and in exchange for rooming, he would supply her for free. The neighborhood that Charla, Syn’s mother, lived in was crack-head’s harbor and was not occupied by real runners so he was assigned to open up shop there. Syn wasn’t feeling him or the agreement but what could she do? At first Kid thought she was a freeloading broad that had no future and got high on the “low”. That was until he got to know her and after staying there for about a month a half she didn’t make any requests but would offer to make him meals when there was enough food. He took to that. He hadn’t had that type of care from a woman since his toddler stage. They say, “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” Chanell quoted. So when his time came to move on to greener domestic pastures Kid took Syn. And they’ve been together ever since. Miserable at times, but a couple with children.
She started on Kim next. Kim’s from Detroit and came to L.A. to do some acting. She got a few gigs as extras but nothing of significance ever materialized. Depression started settling in and in response she started partying wildly. This was back when Divine and Petey did local parties around the way. She went to one of the parties and met Petey when he was fresh out of the pen. He married her right away and they had five children right away. She put on an insane amount of weight as the children piled on and lost control of it. Chanell guessed that didn’t matter because they’re good together.
“She got his back and he take good care of her. She know Petey got crazy hours because he be out making sure all Divine street business is handled while he’s on the day job. She nice and all but she could just be so quiet!” Chanell told me. I was wondering what type of “street business” she was referring to but once again reserved my impulse to ask.