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Mike Tyson Recalls His Youth
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"From the beginning I was not afraid
of the cops," Mike remembered. "I have never feared cops. What pissed me off
was being caught by them. To be grabbed by these motherf___ers was to be
stupid," he said with a note of pride that could have come from any
Brooklyn homeboy whose perspective on the world doesn't go farther than the
slums of New York City. At ten he'd adopted a lifestyle that was a form of
intellectual and social suicide.
"I used to drink," he said, shaking his head in disbelief,
"Mad Dog, 20/20, Bacardi one fifty-one, Don "Q.", Brass Monkey, heavy stuff,
cheap heavy stuff, gasoline. I'm talking about straight,
f___ing straight. I didn't get drunk, really, but I was out of my
f___ing mind.
"I also smoked cigarettes for a long time, cigarettes that I
borrowed or robbed. But I know I was not addicted to them. People laughed
when they saw me smoking, because I was so young... ten years old."
At eleven and a half, all that was left of his innocent youth
was his age. "Then," Mike recalled, "I was already established around the
tough neighborhoods of Brownsville, East New York, and Crown Heights. Even
at ten, I was part of a big criminal clique all around. I knew many, many
criminals already and they were my friends. We did lots of crazy shit
together."
They would talk for hours about superheroes "and stuff like
that," Tyson said. "About who were the big guys, and the gangsters and the
tough guys in the neighborhood. We thought that the pimps, the thieves, and
the drug dealers were cool. We didn't talk much then. We performed." He
stretched his body and yawned, making the sound of a jungle animal.
"Shit, were we wild," he said, laughing. "We did not f___
around, man, we were a bunch of maniacs. Sometimes we got really crazy,
nuts, got guns and just started shooting in the neighborhood; jumped onto
our moped bikes and just go to the jam sessions in the street, you know,
disco parties in the neighborhood... block parties. We'd ride through these
parties very slow and we checked for chains and watches and money and
usually there was a lookout, a black guy. If he sees something wrong
happening, he'll come and then there was a crowd and we would pull the guns
and start shooting at them."
Mike coughed, cleared his throat, and transported himself
once again to his startling childhood.
"I had to make them mad at me first, antagonize them. I had
to do something to them... yeah, provoke them so they could get mad and hit
me. Once they attacked me, they were helpless. My friends would come up with
guns and say, 'Don't move,'and we would take their stuff... and older
people-their relatives and friends--would start running, leaving the kids
alone, and then we would start shooting, Bang! Bang! Bang! Looking back it
was rough." |
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Jose Torres-Fire & Fear: The Inside Story Of Mike
Tyson
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