After our fourth round, we staggered off the ship and on to dry land. Oh my days, I didn’t know whether to laugh or be sick. We slumped down on a bench. I realised we must have been away for ages.
He disappeared for five minutes and came back with two burgers, handing me one as he sat down on the bench.
“Which part you from?” he asked, offering me the choice of a sachet of ketchup or mustard.
“Brixton Hill,” I replied, refusing both.
“No! Me too.”
We found we lived three blocks away from each other. He spotted my bracelet, which had slipped down from underneath the sleeve of my jumper, and noted the Arabic script.
“You Muslim?”
“None of your business.”
“What’s your number?”
I didn’t like all his questions.
“What do you want my number for?”
“Man wants your number, innit?”
Fat chance. The chances of my mum tolerating a call from a boy were negligible.
“She’d rather I get caught doing a crime than having a boy call my house.”
“From what man heard, she’s probably gonna get her wish,” he shrugged, rearranging the fold of his jeans. “If that’s what you want, that’s cool,” he said, jumping down off the picnic table. He had spotted Badman. I knew the two-tails would be waiting for me back at the toilets, but I was no longer interested in the crumbs they had to offer.
These new characters carried weight, and that had caught my attention.
From a distance, I watched as he and Badman greeted each other, pressing shoulders and patting each other on the back. I also saw a discreet exchange as one pressed cash into the hand of the other.
“Sour! Come, man.”
The pair of them beckoned me over to the fake wooden decking, where the rest of the Man Dem were falling over each other to get in to a photo booth, decorated like an old Wild West Saloon.
Nothing had got paid for that day. Well, nothing until that moment. Suddenly they were all willing to cough up for this.
The group of them emerged from the changing rooms, giggling like children at each other’s cravats and waistcoats and chaps and broad-brimmed hats. Each and everyone brandished a huge plastic musket. Drex arranged his false moustache, while Badman held his gun aloft.
“Here, put this on.”
He spiked some pink ostrich feathers in my hair, and fastened a black satin choker round my neck.
“Saloon girl!”
“You gotta be taking the piss.”
He found it hilarious, and swung an arm round me, pulling me into the group picture.
“Cheese.”
The flash bulb went off, illuminating the chains among the rawhide fancy dress.
The picture was sepia, in a big, flimsy frame that said WANTED above our heads. The boys loved it.
Drex dug into his pocket and bought another one for me.
“Present,” he said. The rest were laughing.
“That’s wicked, man. Look how he had his face!”
“Look at that pose!”
“Suits you, gyal.”
“That pistol suits you, man, time for an upgrade, innit.”
They laughed all the way home. It was the only thing they were willing to pay for. They stumped up their £2 no questions asked, and each boy took it home as if it were as precious as a ransom fee.
I rolled mine up and slipped it into my hoodie.
I often wonder where that picture is now. Me on my first day with the Man Dem. A few young friends posing with plastic guns – before the real weapons intervened and changed everything.
There are so many myths about gangs. People think there must be some kinda grisly initiation and a fucking Welcome Pack. They’re wrong. Ain’t no membership or code of honour. Ain’t no leaders or matching tattoos. There ain’t no rules.
Gangs don’t really exist, as most people imagine them. This is Brixton; it ain’t West Side Story.
Someone once said gangs only exist “in the way that chemical reactions exist: a mixture of dangerous elements that occasionally react and then disappear”.
I like that. We’re vapour. We’re the noxious gas that seeps through a city’s estates and poisons the minds of its children. My life was one messy chemical reaction after another. And “respect” was the accelerant. You hear a lot about that, “respect”. What is it? Easy. Respect is just the flip-side of fear.
Gang life has its own justice. If you show cowardice, you’re out. If you hesitate for a single second, you’ll be ridiculed. But if you were a face to be known, you’d be known. Bravery bought protection. Recklessness had its own rewards.
And don’t get me wrong. When I say “out” I don’t mean you’re free. I don’t mean that rejection by these boys sets you straight on the path to college. When you’re that far down the line, what do you think seems the safest choice? Being on the side of the ones with power? Or being on the side of those without? I didn’t pause for a second.
That was the deal I made when I met the Younger 28s. That was the world I entered. And I loved it.
Why? Because the real temptation to rolling with those boys – and they were all boys – was this: if you felt angry, you had people feeling angry with you. If you were broke, they were broke with you. If you wanted payback because you’d been short-changed by society, they had your back.
Or so I thought.
I was 15. I needed more. I needed entertainment. The Youngers gave me all the entertainment a ghetto girl could wish for.
But first, allow me to give you a bit of background. Why 28?
28s were top rank. They were the boys. They were the market leaders.
Perhaps there were 28 people originally, I don’t know. If there was a link with the South African prison gang of the same name – named after 28 black prisoners who revolted against their white guards – it was never spoken of.
All I know is that in South London there were three tiers of 28s: the originals, the Youngers, and the Younger Youngers. Like three generations.
The original 28s were British-born black boys who challenged the Jamaican Yardies’ monopoly around Brixton Hill; elders like Duffers had the endz on lock down.
When prison or bullets intervened, as they always did, that’s when younger ones like me came in to carry on the badness.
Duffers got shot up real bad. He was a real, real bad boy, who had a humorous side. If somebody ordered pizza, he would be the first one giving orders to rob the delivery guy. He wouldn’t just take his money. He’d take his helmet, his bike and his keys, and leave the poor guy with nothing but bare feet and panic attack. When Duffers ordered pizza, you knew some poor yout was leaving on foot without his trainers.
He got killed at a party, by people he thought were his friends. The rumours were they shot him up in a fight over a girl. Only God knows the real truth behind it.
I remember that funeral, and all the soul-searching it caused round our endz. That was probably the point that the Younger 28s came into their own.
After the mayhem