Everybody's Brother by CeeLo Green Read Free Book Online Page A

By now I began to think my trip had been cancelled, so I decided to say my nightly prayers. Growing up—and even now when I don’t forget—I’m still big on saying my nightly prayers. So I closed my eyes to pray… and that’s when the acid hit me. Hard. I started seeing things—big white dots and crazy colors and shapes. I screamed, “It’s working! It’s working!”
    I’m sure everybody was so happy that I was tripping too, but they weren’t saying anything, because we had to be really quiet. Which only freaked me out more. But they were all used to the insanity because, after all, they were a bunch of crazy white boys.
    Okay, they weren’t all crazy white boys. I also had a friend named Ayala from some exotic country. That night Ayala got high with us and snuck into our room—which was popular because I had this ghetto blaster boom box with eight-inch woofers all across the bottom and two tape decks in the corner. That boom box was massive and had great blinking lights all around the woofers. (I just know that boom box is in some Korean flea market right now and I want it back. Years later, I think I saw thatsame model—it might have been in the “Music” video by Madonna. I forgot to ask her about that at the Super Bowl. Maybe next time.)
    So we locked the door behind Ayala and were all just sitting and staring at that blinking boom box. Then Ayala started having a bad trip and went back to his room to lie down. A few minutes later he came back and started kicking on the door shouting over and over that a green man was trying to get him. We opened the door, but thankfully, that green man was nowhere to be seen. When it became clear that poor Ayala was tripping even more than I was, that somehow that brought me back to Planet Earth and under control a little. I didn’t want to see a friend being that scared. I also really didn’t want to us all to get kicked out of school or court-martialed or killed—all of which always seemed like distinct possibilities when you’re attending military school.
    I looked into Ayala’s eyes and tried to calm him down. I said, “Yo, what are you talking about green men? There’s no green men here.” But there was not any reasoning with Ayala at that point. So then I went the other way, and tried to quiet him down with a little brute military force. I said to Ayala, “If you don’t shut the fuck up about this green man shit, I swear I’m going to hit you.” Ayala took a deep breath and considered my threat for a moment. Then he looked at me and screamed, “Better you than the green man!” In his own trippy way, Ayala made an excellent point.

    In every way, military school was a true education for me. Even though I’d known a lot of white kids, I’d never learned to live with them before, and I definitely loved this close brush with cultural diversity. They say it takes all kinds, and I like all kinds. I was going to class and doing pretty good. But this episode in my life had to end prematurely. I didn’t realize until after I got to the school what a big expense it was for my mom to try to keep me there. It didn’t take long before it hit me that she could only afford the one year, and even that was pushing things. But like a lot of those tough decisions that life makes for you, this is one that worked out for the best eventually.
    I called my mom toward the end of the school year and told her, “Ma, I’ve got to come home.” It wasn’t just the money. I realized that my problem wasn’t learning to behave at military school. My problem was behaving in my natural environment, in Atlanta, where the good guys weren’t the only ones with guns. So I told my mother, “If I don’t solve my problems back home, then they won’t be solved at all.” In retrospect, I think that was something pretty profound for a thirteen-year-old to say.
    Like her son, my mom was a beautiful and strange bundle of contradictions. She was like both a father and an uncle. She