Herbie's

While partying at Dove's one Friday night as per the regular protocol with all the regular thrashers, someone mentioned we were going to a party. Apparently some friend of theirs named "Herbie" whom I had mysteriously never heard of or met, was having a party in the vicinity of Dove's place in the "H" section, a small cluster of even smaller houses, all on streets beginning with the letter H. We used to refer to the houses in the H section as "chicken coops" due to how small and crammed they were. Brampton was definitely the suburbs, and the H section was the closest thing to a "ghetto" with the exception of a small neighbourhood known as "Fleetwood" & "475 Bramalea" where Pooh and his family lived.

We partook in the usual consumption of alcohol in abundance at Dove's, and then headed out around nine o'clock pm. Herbie's place was only a few streets over, maybe a five minute walk at that, yet it took us about 20 minutes to get there as we had to get our fill of weed smoke in the lungs since we couldn't blaze in Dove's house.

When we arrived at Herbie's we were greeted at the door by one of his friends. The friend brought us in to the house where we found Herbie and another friend chilling on the couch. We exchanged formalities, then Herbie told us "the party is in the basement, head on down" When we got downstairs there wasn't even anybody there. We had our usual crew of 10-20 guys, so I guess we brought the party to the party. We were the party! For the time being...

My mind was somewhat blown when we got down to the basement. It was a large, empty, rectangular room with absolutely no furnishing. The only thing in the room was an abundance of speakers. To put it bluntly, Herbie literally had a wall of speakers. They spanned from one end of the room to the other, against the longer wall of the rectangular room. The speakers were also stacked right up to the ceiling.
I don't think I had ever heard music this loud in my life in someone's home and not in an auditorium. There was a door that went into what would have been the laundry room, but it had been converted into a DJ booth, with turntables, mixers, and more crates of vinyl than your local used record store.

We were having a grand old time, drinking, smoking, and grooving away to tunes. I noticed an unknown black guy stick his head around the wall at the bottom of the basement stairs, he looked at us all quickly, let out a giggle, and then ran up the stairs. The next thing I knew it sounded like a herd of elephants were rampaging through the house. In the blink of an eye the basement was packed with people...and they were all black! We were the only white people here now and we definitely didn't fit in. Ends up there was a school dance at North Peel Highschool and they all decided to come to Herbie's party after the dance ended.

I was feeling a little uncomfortable and paranoid to say the least, and the new party guests weren't helping my anxiety, as they walked around the room trying to demand beer and weed from us. "Who the fuck comes to a party with no party favours?" I thought to myself. Perhaps if they had asked politely someone may have obliged, but they were just being downright ignorant. We were clearly outnumbered but we stood our ground and didn't share our good with them.

At one point the ring leader of the bunch started talking to Dove, and surprisingly the guy was super nice all of a sudden. As they shot the breeze, one of the guys friends snuck up behind Dove and ripped a hole in the plastic bag full of beer Dove was holding. As the beer cans crashed and bounced off of the carpeted floor, all the black guys started scrambling around the floor grabbing them. I was utterly disgusted by what I had just witnessed, they were acting like straight up savages.
We ended up taking refuge in the DJ booth just to get away from the madness. After awhile tempers were flaring and the tension in the air was so thick you could cut it with a knife. We decided to get the fuck out of there and head back to Dove's.

Trying to get out of the house was a chore in itself, as the place was packed full of people, who were still trying to snatch our beers right out of our hands as we were leaving. It seemed like things were going to turn into a full blown brawl, and I was literally in fear of my life. Herbie managed to smooth things over and get us out of the house in one piece, apologizing for his people the whole while.

We made it back to Dove's alive, and we were all still dumbfounded and in shock over what had just happened. I'd been struggling with racial issues for years with my close minded friends, and now I was starting to question myself over it. Why was I so quick to defend a race of people I didn't belong to? Since Highschool started I had engaged in more negative situations than positive ones when it came to people of colour. Why was I so quick to defend people who would easily steal from me, threaten me, and stick a knife in me the first chance they got? I couldn't answer that question to myself.

You could have easily mistaken my kindness for weakness, but I am not a weak person. I was however starting to realize that my kindness could be the death of me...