High Price

what was really awkward was afterward, when she told everyone in school that we’d done it. That embarrassed me because she wasn’t the kind of girl I wanted to be with.
    There was a clear but complicated distinction in the hood between nice girls and “hos,” one that could devastate girls if they fell afoul of it. Kim, unfortunately, was already heading in the wrong direction. She was already known at age fourteen as the kind of girl you might see secretly but not be seen with. It was okay for guys to sleep with hos, but your rep would suffer if you made one your declared girlfriend rather than a casual “friend-girl.” The consequences were much worse, of course, for the girls who got stuck with that label. Most boys—including me—had no idea how it could ruin a girl’s life, devastating some girls more than even pregnancies did. Although today I am ashamed about and regret my participation in this cycle, it was the reality I faced as a child.
    Marcia Billings, on the other hand, was a good girl—but not too good. She was the girl I wanted, with a perfect hourglass figure. She was built and fine. Marcia was about five foot two and weighed around 120 pounds. I first saw her in a McDonald’s, after a basketball game when I was fourteen, a few weeks after I’d been with Kim. I awkwardly propositioned her, but she shot me down. All that took was a look and maybe a few harsh words, something like “Keep stepping” or “Nigga, please.”
    I was shocked; because I was skilled at reading girls’ signals, that kind of thing almost never happened to me. But a few months later, my cousin James was dating one of her friends and he reintroduced us. She didn’t remember the earlier incident. Now she was quite happy to meet the young DJ who was part of a crew that had begun tearing up the gyms and skating rinks of South Florida. She became my main girlfriend for most of high school. I gave Marcia my class ring and she was the one I took to the senior prom. As much as I was able to at the time, I loved her.
    The more time we spent together, the more her warmth and spirit nurtured me. In fact, I was soon spending most of my nights at her house. We watched the Brooke Shields movie Endless Love together and I’m sure we saw ourselves in the dangerous passion shared by the young couple in the movie. I knew that she had my back and she occupied much of my time.
    My mother was suspicious and even resentful of Marcia at first. She even tried to split us up by calling Marcia a ho and attempting to make me question Marcia’s loyalty to me. But when MH finally realized that this was a battle she’d never win—and that she could find out where I was by calling Marcia—she turned around and accepted our relationship. Still, Marcia was never the only girl I was seeing. Soon, in an ironic reversal, she would sometimes call MH to try to locate me when I was on the prowl.

    Marcia and me at my senior prom in May 1984.
    In our world, the girls knew the score and they, too, competed openly to win the finest man. It was understood implicitly that the popular guys had other women: it certainly wasn’t blindly accepted or preferred and it was often a source of friction, but nonmonogamy was seen as an undeniable reality. Many girls worked it as well as the boys did. This was something that also went unquestioned.
    Naomi was another girl I saw in high school—but in this case, one who nearly got me in serious trouble. Light-skinned with a fun-loving but no-nonsense personality, Naomi went by the alias Sweet Red. She was twenty-one but looked and acted much younger. I started seeing her when I was sixteen. One night, we were in the master bedroom of my cousin Betty’s house, which she shared with her husband and two children. Betty and Ernest were in the process of getting divorced. Because their conflict over disposal of the marital property meant that no one was home most of the time, my cousin James and I often took girls there. We even had the keys.
    However, when Ernest arrived unexpectedly and found Naomi and me in his bed, I had to very quickly demonstrate that Naomi was not his soon-to-be ex-wife and I was not any kind of rival for her attention. He was seeing red, believing that Betty had dared to bring another man into his own home. Fortunately, I was able to calm him down before he pulled his gun, but I was lucky not to be a victim of mistaken identity in my pursuit of Naomi.
    Those are just a few of the girls who