Everybody's Brother by CeeLo Green Read Free Book Online

still take pleasure in then breaking those rules. I loved the attention, and all these new authority figures who seemed to care what I did. I went to the Riverside Academy’s website the other day, and on the front page it reads “Focused Learners, Cultivated Leaders, Dedicated Brothers.” Well, at least I was one very dedicated brother.
    Even though military school made a better man of me, the place definitely did not make me an ideal, follow-orderskind of soldier. Now, I didn’t mind wearing the uniforms. As you may have noticed, dressing up is one of my great pleasures, and I like that martial style. But there were other aspects of the experience that I did not adopt so easily. Like inspections. Inspection was when you stood by your bed in the barracks in the morning and evening and checked your shoes and your bed and your medals and stuff to make sure everything was clean and orderly. Then you would march by battalion up to meals in the mess hall. I can reveal this now because I’m out of the school and they can’t discipline me, but I used to grab an extra blanket and sleep on top of it so I could just jump up in the morning and go. I never changed my bed or sheets or anything.
    I also confess that my first experience with actual psychedelics was when I dropped acid with some other cadets a few months after I arrived at the academy. I have never been the type to do things in the right order—so somehow I ended up taking my first hit of acid before I even smoked a joint.
    For the record, here’s how it happened: I had a great friend at Riverside named Doberman who was one tough-ass white boy from Florida. Still, right from the start, Doberman was down with me. I figured out that Doberman was my friend when this other guy at school was fighting me and trying to hit me with his rifle, and unfortunately for me, I didn’t have a rifle with which to hit him back. That’s when I heard my new buddy Doberman say, “Hold everything right now. Wait one minute.” I figuredthat Doberman was going to kick his ass for me. But instead of taking this kid’s rifle away from him, Doberman gave me his own rifle and said, “Okay, now you two guys go for it.” That was Doberman—very tough, but very, very fair.
    There was another time when one of Doberman’s cousins sent him some acid and he generously wanted to share. And why not, since we were brothers in arms, even though only I was technically a brother? I remember that back then the acid came in those funny little tabs with little images of Snoopy or Charlie Brown on them that made it look kind of cute and harmless. Clearly, I was a kid with extremely shaky judgment, so of course, I made a bad choice and took the acid. Kids, remember, never give in to peer pressure.
    I thought I had picked the timing of this trip carefully. I thought wrong. After classes at Riverside, there were athletics—which could mean anything from playing football to doing fucking archery—which was not my thing even though some people might think I look a little bit like Cupid. After I came back from football that day, I got dressed in my uniform and decided to drop the acid right after passing evening inspection. I was thinking that the chemical reaction might make dinner more interesting or possibly even taste a little better.
    For whatever reason, the acid didn’t kick in until later, much later. After dinner, if you failed a class that week, you had to go to study hall—otherwise you could just be free to study in your room. Well, I had failed somethingthat week, so I had to go to study hall. I sat there in study hall that night just waiting for the acid to kick in and make that experience more exciting. Still nothing. When I came back to my room after that, it was almost time for taps. Then
phooomph
! The barracks lights switched out for the night.
    I still remember lying in bed in the darkness and telling my friends, “This shit is not working. It just must not work on black people.”